Produced by Dianne Bean
WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH
AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850
By Herbert Darling Foster
With foreword by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
American Historical Review Vol. XXVII., No. 2
January, 1922
FOREWORD
It is very curious that much of the history of the United States in the
Forties and Fifties of the last century has vanished from the general
memory. When a skilled historian reopens the study of Webster's "Seventh
of March speech" it is more than likely that nine out of ten Americans
will have to cudgel their wits endeavoring to make quite sure just where
among our political adventures that famous oration fits in. How many
of us could pass a satisfactory examination on the antecedent train of
events--the introduction in Congress of that Wilmot Proviso designed to
make free soil of all the territory to be acquired in the Mexican War;
the instant and bitter reaction of the South; the various demands for
some sort of partition of the conquered area between the sections,
between slave labor and free labor; the unforeseen intrusion of the gold
seekers of California in 1849, and their unauthorized formation of a new
state based on free labor; the flaming up of Southern alarm, due not to
one cause but to many, chiefly to the obvious fact that the free states
were acquiring preponderance in Congress; the southern threats of
secession; the fury of the Abolitionists demanding no concessions to the
South, come what might; and then, just when a rupture seemed inevitable,
when Northern extremists and Southern extremists seemed about to snatch
control of their sections, Webster's bold play to the moderates on both
sides, his scheme of compromise, announced in that famous speech on the
seventh of March, 1850?
Most people are still aware that Webster was harshly criticized for
making that speech. It is dimly remembered that the Abolitionists
called him "Traitor", refusing to attribute to him any motive except the
gaining of Southern support which might land him in the Presidency.
At the time--so bitter was factional suspicion!--this view gained many
adherents. It has not lost them all, even now.
This false interpretation of Webster turns on two questions--was there
a real danger of secession in 1850? Was Webster sincere in deriving his
policy from a sense of national peril, not from self-interest? In the
study which follows Professor Foster makes an adequate case for Webster,
answering the latter question. The former he deals with in a general way
establishing two things, the fact of Southern readiness to secede, the
attendant fact that the South changed its attitude after the Seventh
of March. His limits prevent his going on to weigh and appraise the
sincerity of those fanatics who so furiously maligned Webster, who
created the tradition that he had cynically sold out to the Southerners.
Did they believe their own fiction? The question is a large one and
involves this other, did they know what was going on in the South? Did
they realize that the Union on March 6, 1850, was actually at a parting
of the ways,--that destruction or Civil War formed an imminent issue?
Many of those who condemned compromise may be absolved from the charge
of insincerity on the ground that they did not care whether the Union
was preserved or riot. Your true blue Abolitionist was very little of
a materialist. Nor did he have primarily a crusading interest in
the condition of the blacks. He was introspective. He wanted the
responsibility for slavery taken off his own soul. As later events were
to prove, he was also pretty nearly a pacifist; war for the Union, pure
and simple, made no appeal to him. It was part of Webster's insight that
he divined this, that he saw there was more pacifism than natural ardor
in the North of 1850, saw that the precipitation of a war issue might
spell the end of the United Republic. Therefore, it was to circumvent
the Northern pacifists quite as much as to undermine the Southern
expansionists that he offered compromise and avoided war.
But what of those other detractors of Webster, those who were for the
Union and yet believed he had sold out? Their one slim defense is the
conviction that the South did not mean what it said, that Webster, had
he dared offend the South, could have saved the day--from their point of
view--without making concessions. Professor Foster, always ready to do
scrupulous justice, points out the dense ignorance in each section of
the other, and there lets the matter rest. But what shall we say of a
frame of mind, which in that moment of crisis, either did not read the
Southern newspapers, or reading them and finding that the whole South
was netted over by a systematically organized secession propaganda made
no attempt to gauge its strength, scoffed at it all as buncombe! Even
later historians have done the same thing. In too many cases they have
assumed that because the compromise was followed by an apparent collapse
of the secession propaganda, the propaganda all along was without
reality. We know today that the propaganda did not collapse. For
strategic reasons it changed its policy. But it went on steadily growing
and gaining ground until it triumphed in 1861. Webster, not his foolish
opponents, gauged its strength correctly in 1850.
The clew to what actually happened in 1850 lies in the course of such an
ardent Southerner as, for example, Langdon Cheeves. Early in the year,
he was a leading secessionist, but at the close of the year a leading
anti-secessionist. His change of front, forced upon him by his own
thinking about the situation was a bitter disappointment to himself.
What animated him was a deep desire to take the whole South out of the
Union. When, at the opening of the year, the North seemed unwilling to
compromise, he, and many another, thought their time had come. At the
first Nashville Convention he advised a general secession, assuming that
Virginia, "our premier state," would lead the movement and when Virginia
later in the year swung over from secession to anti-secession, Cheeves
reluctantly changed his policy. The compromise had not altered his
views--broadly speaking it had not satisfied the Lower South--but it had
done something still more eventful, it had so affected the Upper South
that a united secession became for a while impossible. Therefore,
Cheeves and all like him--and they were the determining factor of the
hour--resolved to bide their time, to wait until their propaganda had
done its work, until the entire South should agree to go out together.
Their argument, all preserved in print, but ignored by historians for
sixty years thereafter, was perfectly frank. As one of them put it, in
the face of the changed attitude of Virginia, "to secede now would be to
secede from the South."
Here is the aspect of Webster's great stroke that was so long ignored.
He did not satisfy the whole South. He did not make friends for himself
of Southerners generally. What he did do was to drive a wedge into the
South, to divide it temporarily against itself. He arrayed the Upper
South against the Lower and thus because of the ultimate purposes of men
like Cheeves, with their ambition to weld the South into a genuine unit,
he forced them all to stand still, and thus to give Northern pacifism a
chance to ebb, Northern nationalism a chance to develop. A comprehensive
brief for the defense on this crucial point in the interpretation of
American history, is Professor Foster's contribution.
NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON
WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850
The moral earnestness and literary skill of Whittier, Lowell, Garrison,
Phillips, and Parker, have fixed in many minds the antislavery doctrine
that Webster's 7th of March speech was "scandalous, treachery", and
Webster a man of little or no "moral sense", courage, or statesmanship.
That bitter atmosphere, reproduced by Parton and von Holst, was
perpetuated a generation later by Lodge. [1]
Since 1900, over fifty publications throwing light on Webster and the
Secession movement of 1850 have appeared, nearly a score
containing fresh contemporary evidence. These twentieth-century
historians--Garrison of Texas, Smith of Williams, Stephenson of
Charleston and Yale, Van Tyne, Phillips, Fisher in his True Daniel
Webster, or Ames, Hearon, and Cole in their monographs on Southern
conditions--many of them born in one section and educated in
another, brought into broadening relations with Northern and Southern
investigators, trained in the modern historical spirit and freed by the
mere lapse of time from much of the passion of slavery and civil
war, have written with less emotion and more knowledge than the
abolitionists, secessionists, or their disciples who preceded Rhodes.
Under the auspices of the American Historical Association have appeared
the correspondence of Calhoun, of Chase, of Toombs, Stephens, and
Cobb, and of Hunter of Virginia. Van Tyne's Letters of Webster (1902),
including hundreds hitherto unpublished, was further supplemented in
the sixteenth volume of the "National Edition" of Webster's Writings and
Speeches (1903). These two editions contain, for 1850 alone, 57 inedited
letters.
Manuscript collections and newspapers, comparatively unknown to earlier
writers, have been utilized in monographs dealing with the situation in
1850 in South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina,
Louisiana, and Tennessee, published by. universities or historical
societies.
The cooler and matured judgments of men who knew Webster
personally--Foote, Stephens, Wilson, Seward, and Whittier, in the last
century; Hoar, Hale, Fisher, Hosmer, and Wheeler in recent years-modify
their partizan political judgments of 1850. The new printed evidence
is confirmed by manuscript material: 2,500 letters of the Greenough
Collection available since the publication of the recent editions of
Webster's letters and apparently unused by Webster's biographers;
and Hundreds of still inedited Webster Papers in the New Hampshire
Historical Society, and scattered in minor collections. [2] This mass
of new material makes possible and desirable a re-examination of the
evidence as to (1) the danger from the secession movement in 1850; (2)
Webster's change in attitude toward the disunion danger in February,
1850; (3) the purpose and character of his 7th of March speech; (4) the
effects of his speech and attitude upon the secession movement.
I.
During the session of Congress of 1849-1850, the peace of the Union
was threatened by problems centering around slavery and the territory
acquired as a result of the Mexican War: California's demand for
admission with a constitution prohibiting slavery; the Wilmot Proviso
excluding slavery from the rest of the Mexican acquisitions (Utah and
New Mexico); the boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico; the
abolition of slave trade in the District of Columbia; and an effective
fugitive slave law to replace that of 1793.
The evidence for the steadily growing danger of secession until March,
1850, is no longer to be sought in Congressional speeches, but rather
in the private letters of those men, Northern and Southern, who were the
shrewdest political advisers of the South, and in the official acts of
representative bodies of Southerners in local or state meetings, state
legislatures, and the Nashville Convention. Even after the compromise
was accepted in the South and the secessionists defeated in 1850-1851,
the Southern states generally adopted the Georgia platform or its
equivalent declaring that the Wilmot Proviso or the repeal of the
fugitive-slave law would lead the South to "resist even (as a last
resort) to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union".
Southern disunion sentiment was not sporadic or a party matter; it was
endemic.
The disunion sentiment in the North was not general; but Garrison,
publicly proclaiming "I am an abolitionist and therefore for the
dissolution of the Union", and his followers who pronounced "the
Constitution a covenant with death and an agreement with hell",
exercised a twofold effect far in excess of their numbers. In the North,
abolitionists aroused bitter antagonism to slavery; in the South
they strengthened the conviction of the lawfulness of slavery and the
desirability of secession in preference to abolition. "The abolition
question must soon divide us", a South Carolinian wrote his former
principal in Vermont. "We are beginning to look upon it [disunion] as
a relief from incessant insult. I have been myself surprised at the
unusual prevalence and depth of this feeling." [3] "The abolition
movement", as Houston has pointed out, "prevented any considerable
abatement of feeling, and added volume to the current which was to
sweep the State out of the Union in 1860." [4] South Carolina's ex-governor,
Hammond, wrote Calhoun in December, 1849, "the conduct of the
abolitionists in congress is daily giving it [disunion] powerful aid".
"The sooner we can get rid of it [the union] the better." [5] The
conclusion of both Blair of Kentucky and Winthrop [6] of Massachusetts,
that "Calhoun and his instruments are really solicitous to break up the
Union", was warranted by Calhoun's own statement.
Calhoun, desiring to save the Union if he could, but at all events to
save the South, and convinced that there was "no time to lose", hoped
"a decisive issue will be made with the North". In February, 1850, he
wrote, "Disunion is the only alternative that is left us." [7] At last
supported by some sort of action in thirteen Southern states, and in
nine states by appointment of delegates to his Southern Convention,
he declared in the Senate, March 4, "the South, is united against the
Wilmot proviso, and has committed itself, by solemn resolutions, to
resist should it be adopted". "The South will be forced to choose
between abolition and secession." "The Southern States... cannot remain,
as things now are, consistently with honor and safety, in the Union."
[8]
That Beverley Tucker rightly judged that this speech of Calhoun
expressed what was "in the mind of every man in the State" is confirmed
by the approval of Hammond and other observers; by their judgment that
"everyone was ripe for disunion and no one ready to make a speech
in favor of the union"; by the testimony of the governor, that South
Carolina "is ready and anxious for an immediate separation"; and by
the concurrent testimony of even the few "Unionists" like Petigru and
Lieber, who wrote Webster, "almost everyone is for southern separation",
"disunion is the... predominant sentiment". "For arming the state
$350,000 has been put at the disposal of the governor." "Had I convened
the legislature two or three weeks before the regular meeting," adds the
governor, "such was the excited state of the public mind at that time,
I am convinced South Carolina would not now have been a member of the
Union. The people are very far ahead of their leaders." Ample first-hand
evidence of South Carolina's determination to secede in 1850 may be
found in the Correspondence of Calhoun, in Claiborne's Quitman, in the
acts of the assembly, in the newspapers, in the legislature's vote "to
resist at any and all hazards", and in the choice of resistance-men
to the Nashville Convention and the state convention. This has been so
convincingly set forth in Ames's Calhoun and the Secession Movement of
1850, and in Hamer's Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852,
that there is need of very few further illustrations. [9]
That South Carolina postponed secession for ten years was due to the
Compromise. Alabama and Virginia adopted resolutions accepting the
compromise in 1850-1851; and the Virginia legislature tactfully urged
South Carolina to abandon secession. The 1851 elections in Alabama,
Georgia, and Mississippi showed the South ready to accept the
Compromise, the crucial test being in Mississippi, where the voters
followed Webster's supporter, Foote. [10] That Petigru was right in
maintaining that South, Carolina merely abandoned immediate and separate
secession is shown by the almost unanimous vote of the South Carolina
State Convention of 1852, [11] that the state was amply justified "in
dissolving at once all political connection with her co-States",
but refrained from this "manifest right of self-government from
considerations of expediency only". [12]
In Mississippi, a preliminary convention, instigated by Calhoun,
recommended the holding of a Southern convention at Nashville in June,
1850, to "adopt some mode of resistance". The "Resolutions" declared the
Wilmot Proviso "such a breach of the federal compact as... will make it
the duty... of the slave-holding states to treat the non-slave-holding
states as enemies". The "Address" recommended "all the assailed
states to provide in the last resort for their separate welfare by the
formation of a compact and a Union". "The object of this [Nashville
Convention] is to familiarize the public mind with the idea of
dissolution", rightly judged the Richmond Whig and the Lynchburg
Virginian.
Radical resistance men controlled the legislature and "cordially
approved" the disunion resolution and address, chose delegates to
the Nashville Convention, appropriated $20,000 for their expenses and
$200,000 for "necessary measures for protecting the state.. . in the
event of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso", etc. [13] These actions of
Mississippi's legislature one day before Webster's 7th of March speech
mark approximately the peak of the secession movement.
Governor Quitman, in response to public demand, called the legislature
and proposed "to recommend the calling of a regular convention...
with full power to annul the federal compact". "Having no hope of an
effectual remedy... but in separation from the Northern States, my views
of state action will look to secession." [14] The legislature supported
Quitman's and Jefferson Davis's plans for resistance, censured Foote's
support of the Compromise, and provided for a state convention of
delegates. [15]
Even the Mississippi "Unionists" adopted the six standard points
generally accepted in the South which would justify resistance. "And
this is the Union party", was the significant comment of the New York
Tribune. This Union Convention, however, believed that Quitman's message
was treasonable and that there was ample evidence of a plot to dissolve
the Union and form a Southern confederacy. Their programme was
adopted by the State Convention the following year. [16] The radical
Mississippians reiterated Calhoun's constitutional guarantees of
sectional equality and non-interference with slavery, and declared for
a Southern convention with power to recommend "secession from the Union
and the formation of a Southern confederacy". [17]
"The people of Mississippi seemed... determined to defend their equality
in the Union, or to retire from it by peaceful secession. Had the issue
been pressed at the moment when the excitement was at its highest point,
an isolated and very serious movement might have occurred, which South
Carolina, without doubt, would have promptly responded to." [18]
In Georgia, evidence as to "which way the wind blows" was received
by the Congressional trio, Alexander Stephens, Toombs, and Cobb, from
trusted observers at home. "The only safety of the South from abolition
universal is to be found in an early dissolution of the Union." Only
one democrat was found justifying Cobb's opposition to Calhoun and the
Southern Convention. [19]
Stephens himself, anxious to "stick to the Constitutional Union" reveals
in confidential letters to Southern Unionists the rapidly growing danger
of disunion. "The feeling among the Southern members for a dissolution
of the Union... is becoming much more general." "Men are now [December,
1849] beginning to talk of it seriously who twelve months ago hardly
permitted themselves to think of it." "Civil war in this country better
be prevented if it can be." After a month's "farther and broader view",
he concluded, "the crisis is not far ahead... a dismemberment of this
Republic I now consider inevitable." [20]
On February 8, 1850, the Georgia legislature appropriated $30,000 for a
state convention to consider measures of redress, and gave warning that
anti-slavery aggressions would "induce us to contemplate the possibility
of a dissolution". [21] "I see no prospect of a continuance of this
Union long", wrote Stephens two days later. [22]
Speaker Cobb's advisers warned him that "the predominant feeling of
Georgia" was "equality or disunion", and that "the destructives" were
trying to drive the South into disunion. "But for your influence,
Georgia would have been more rampant for dissolution than South Carolina
ever was." "S. Carolina will secede, but we can and must put a stop to
it in Georgia." [23]
Public opinion in Georgia, which had been "almost ready for immediate
secession", was reversed only after the passage of the Compromise and by
means of a strenuous campaign against the Secessionists which Stephens,
Toombs, and Cobb were obliged to return to Georgia to conduct to a
Successful issue. [24] Yet even the Unionist Convention of Georgia,
elected by this campaign, voted almost unanimously "the Georgia
platform" already described, of resistance, even to disruption, against
the Wilmot Proviso, the repeal of the fugitive slave law, and the other
measures generally selected for reprobation in the South. [25] "Even
the existence of the Union depended upon the settlement"; "we would
have resisted by our arms if the wrong [Wilmot Proviso] had been
perpetuated", were Stephens's later judgments. [26] It is to be
remembered that the Union victory in Georgia was based upon the
Compromise and that Webster's share in "strengthening the friends of the
Union" was recognized by Stephens.
The disunion movement manifested also dangerous strength in Virginia and
Alabama, and showed possibilities of great danger in Tennessee, North
Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas.
The majority of the people may not have favored secession in 1850 any
more than in 1860; but the leaders could and did carry most of the
Southern legislatures in favor of uniting for resistance.
The "ultras" in Virginia, under the lead of Tucker, and in Alabama under
Yancey, frankly avowed their desire to stimulate impossible demands
so that disunion would be inevitable. Tucker at Nashville "ridiculed
Webster's assertion that the Union could not be dissolved without
bloodshed". On the eve of Webster's speech, Garnett of Virginia
published a frank advocacy of a Southern Confederacy, repeatedly
reprinted, which Clay declared "the most dangerous pamphlet he had
ever read". [27] Virginia, in providing for delegates to the Nashville
Convention, announced her readiness to join her "sister slave states"
for "mutual defence". She later acquiesced in the Compromise, but
reasserted that anti-slavery aggressions would "defeat restoration of
peaceful sentiments". [28]
In Texas there was acute danger of collision over the New Mexico
boundary with Federal troops which President Taylor was preparing to
send. Stephens frankly repeated Quitman's threats of Southern armed
support of Texas. [29] Cobb, Henderson of Texas, Duval of Kentucky,
Anderson of Tennessee, and Goode of Virginia expressed similar views as
to the "imminent cause of danger to the Union from Texas". The collision
was avoided because the more statesmanlike attitude of Webster prevailed
rather than the "soldier's" policy of Taylor.
The border states held a critical position in 1850, as they did in
1860. "If they go for the Southern movement we shall have disunion."
"Everything is to depend from this day on the course of Kentucky,
Tennessee and Missouri." [30] Webster's conciliatory Union policy,
in harmony with that of border state leaders, like Bell of Tennessee,
Benton of Missouri, Clay and Crittenden of Kentucky, enabled Maryland,
Kentucky, and Missouri to stand by the Union and refuse to send
delegates to the Nashville Convention.
The attitude of the Southern states toward disunion may be followed
closely in their action as to the Nashville Convention. Nine Southern
states approved the Convention and appointed delegates before June,
1850, six during the critical month preceding Webster's speech: Georgia,
February 6, 8; Texas and Tennessee, February 11; Virginia, February 12;
Alabama, just before the adjournment of the legislature, February
13; Mississippi, March 5, 6. [31] Every one of the nine seceded in
1860-1861; the border states (Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) which kept
out of the Convention in 1850 likewise kept out of secession in 1861;
and only two states which seceded in 1861 failed to join the Southern
movement in 1850 (North Carolina and Louisiana). This significant
parallel between the action of the Southern states in 1850 and in 1860
suggests the permanent strength of the secession movement of 1850.
Moreover, the alignment of leaders was strikingly the same in 1850
and 1860. Those who headed the secession movement in 1850 in their
respective states were among the leaders of secession in 1860 and 1861:
Rhett in South Carolina; Yancey in Alabama; Jefferson Davis and Brown
in Mississippi Garnett, Goode, and Hunter in Virginia; Johnston in
Arkansas; Clingman in North Carolina. On the other hand, nearly all the
men who in 1850 favored the Compromise, in 1860 either remained Union
men, like Crittenden, Houston of Texas, Sharkey, Lieber, Petigru, and
Provost Kennedy of Baltimore, or, like Stephens, Morehead, and Foote,
vainly tried to restrain secession.
In the states unrepresented at the Nashville Convention-Missouri,
Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana--there was much
sympathy with the Southern movement. In Louisiana, the governor's
proposal to send delegates was blocked by the Whigs. [32] "Missouri", in
case of the Wilmot Proviso, "will be found in hearty co-operation with
the slave-holding states for mutual protection against... Northern
fanaticism", her legislature resolved. [33] Missouri's instructions to
her senators were denounced as "disunion in their object" by her
own Senator Benton. The Maryland legislature resolved, February 26:
"Maryland will take her position with her Southern sister states in
the maintenance of the constitution with all its compromises." The Whig
senate, however, prevented sanctioning of the convention and sending of
delegates. Florida's governor wrote the governor of South Carolina
that Florida would co-operate with Virginia and South Carolina "in any
measure in defense of our common Constitution and sovereign dignity".
"Florida has resolved to resist to the extent of revolution", declared
her representative in Congress, March 5. Though the Whigs did not
support the movement, five delegates came from Florida to the Nashville
Convention. [34]
In Kentucky, Crittenden's repeated messages against "disunion" and
"entangling engagements" reveal the danger seen by a Southern Union
governor. [35] Crittenden's changing attitude reveals the growing
peril, and the growing reliance on Webster's and Clay's plans. By April,
Crittenden recognized that "the Union is endangered", "the case...
rises above ordinary rules", "circumstances have rather changed". He
reluctantly swung from Taylor's plan of dealing with California alone,
to the Clay and Webster idea of settling the "whole controversy".
[36] Representative Morehead wrote Crittenden, "The extreme Southern
gentlemen would secretly deplore the settlement of this question. The
magnificence of a Southern Confederacy... is a dazzling allurement."
Clay like Webster, saw "the alternative, civil war". [37]
In North Carolina, the majority appear to have been loyal to the
Union; but the extremists--typified by Clingman, the public meeting at
Wilmington, and the newspapers like the Wilmington Courier--reveal the
presence of a dangerously aggressive body "with a settled determination
to dissolve the Union" and frankly "calculating the advantages of a
Southern Confederacy." Southern observers in this state reported that
"the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law or the abolition of slavery in
the District will dissolve the Union". The North Carolina legislature
acquiesced in the Compromise but counselled retaliation in case of
anti-slavery aggressions. [38] Before the assembling of the Southern
convention in June, every one of the Southern states, save Kentucky,
had given some encouragement to the Southern movement, and Kentucky had
given warning and proposed a compromise through Clay. [39]
Nine Southern states-Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee sent about 176
delegates to the Nashville Convention. The comparatively harmless
outcome of this convention, in June, led earlier historians to
underestimate the danger of the resistance movement in February and
March when backed by legislatures, newspapers, and public opinion,
before the effect was felt of the death of Calhoun and Taylor, and of
Webster's support of conciliation. Stephens and the Southern Unionists
rightly recognized that the Nashville Convention "will be the nucleus of
another sectional assembly". "A fixed alienation of feeling will be the
result." "The game of the destructives is to use the Missouri Compromise
principle [as demanded by the Nashville Convention] as a medium of
defeating all adjustments and then to... infuriate the South and
drive her into measures that must end in disunion." "All who go to the
Nashville Convention are ultimately to fall into that position." This
view is confirmed by Judge Warner and other observers in Georgia and by
the unpublished letters of Tucker. [40] "Let the Nashville Convention
be held", said the Columbus, Georgia, Sentinel, "and let the undivided
voice of the South go forth... declaring our determination to resist
even to civil war." [41] The speech of Rhett of South Carolina, author
of the convention's "Address", "frankly and boldly unfurled the flag of
disunion". "If every Southern State should quail... South Carolina alone
should make the issue." "The opinion of the [Nashville] address is, and
I believe the opinion of a large portion of the Southern people is, that
the Union cannot be made to endure", was delegate Barnwell's admission
to Webster. [42]
The influence of the Compromise is brought out in the striking change in
the attitude of Senator Foote, and of judge Sharkey of Mississippi,
the author of the radical "Address" of the preliminary Mississippi
Convention, and chairman of both this and the Nashville Convention.
After the Compromise measures were reported in May by Clay and Webster's
committee, Sharkey became convinced that the Compromise should be
accepted and so advised Foote. Sharkey also visited Washington and
helped to pacify the rising storm by "suggestions to individual
Congressmen". [43] In the Nashville Convention, Sharkey therefore
exercised a moderating influence as chairman and refused to sign its
disunion address. Convinced that the Compromise met essential Southern
demands, Sharkey urged that "to resist it would be to dismember the
Union". He therefore refused to call a second meeting of the Nashville
Convention. For this change in position he was bitterly criticized by
Jefferson Davis. [44] Foote recognized the "emergency" at the same time
that Webster did, and on February 25, proposed his committee of thirteen
to report some "scheme of compromise". Parting company with Calhoun,
March 5, on the thesis that the South could not safely remain without
new "constitutional guarantees", Foote regarded Webster's speech as
"unanswerable", and in April came to an understanding with him as to
Foote's committee and their common desire for prompt consideration of
California. The importance of Foote's influence in turning the tide
in Mississippi, through his pugnacious election campaign, and the
significance of his judgment of the influence of Webster and his
speech have been somewhat overlooked, partly perhaps because of Foote's
swashbuckling characteristics. [45]
That the Southern convention movement proved comparatively innocuous in
June is due in part to confidence inspired by the conciliatory policy of
one outstanding Northerner, Webster. "Webster's speech", said Winthrop,
"has knocked the Nashville Convention into a cocked hat." [46] "The
Nashville Convention has been blown by your giant effort to the four
winds." [47] "Had you spoken out before this, I verily believe the
Nashville Convention had not been thought of. Your speech has disarmed
and quieted the South." [48] Webster's speech caused hesitation in the
South. "This has given courage to all who wavered in their resolution or
who were secretly opposed to the measure [Nashville Convention]." [49]
Ames cites nearly a store of issues of newspapers in Mississippi, South
Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia reflecting
the change in public opinion in March. Even some of the radical papers
referred to the favorable effect of Webster's speech and "spirit" in
checking excitement. "The Jackson (Mississippi) Southron had at first
supported the movement [for a Southern Convention], but by March it had
grown lukewarm and before the Convention assembled, decidedly opposed
it. The last of May it said, 'not a Whig paper in the State approves'."
In the latter part of March, not more than a quarter of sixty papers
from ten slave-holding states took decided ground for a Southern
Convention. [50] The Mississippi Free Trader tried to check the growing
support of the Compromise, by claiming that Webster's speech lacked
Northern backing. A South Carolina pamphlet cited the Massachusetts
opposition to Webster as proof of the political strength of abolition.
[51]
The newer, day by day, first-hand evidence, in print and manuscript,
shows the Union in serious danger, with the culmination during the three
weeks preceding Webster's speech; with a moderation during March; a
growing readiness during the summer to await Congressional action; and
slow, acquiescence in the Compromise measures of September, but with
frank assertion on the part of various Southern states of the right and
duty of resistance if the compromise measures were violated. Even
in December, 1850, Dr. Alexander of Princeton found sober Virginians
fearful that repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act would throw Virginia info
the Southern movement and that South Carolina "by some rash act"
would precipitate "the crisis". "All seem to regard bloodshed as the
inevitable result." [52]
To the judgments and legislative acts of Southerners already quoted,
may be added some of the opinions of men from the North. Erving, the
diplomat, wrote from New York, "The real danger is in the fanatics
and disunionists of the North". "I see no salvation but in the total
abandonment of the Wilmot Proviso." Edward Everett, on the contrary,
felt that "unless some southern men of influence have courage enough
to take grounds against the extension of slavery and in favor of
abolition... we shall infallibly separate". [53]
A Philadelphia editor who went to Washington to learn the real
sentiments of the Southern members, reported February 1, that if the
Wilmot Proviso were not given up, ample provision made for fugitive
slaves and avoidance of interference with slavery in the District of
Columbia, the South would secede, though this was not generally believed
in the North. "The North must decide whether she would have the Wilmot
Proviso without the Union or the Union without the Wilmot Proviso." [54]
In answer to inquiries from the Massachusetts legislature as to whether
the Southern attitude was "bluster" or "firm Resolve", Winthrop wrote,
"the country has never been in more serious exigency than at present".
"The South is angry, mad." "The Union must be saved... by prudence and
forbearance." "Most sober men here are apprehensive that the end of the
Union is nearer than they have ever before imagined." Winthrop's own
view on February 19 had been corroborated by General Scott, who wrote
him four days earlier, "God preserve the Union is my daily prayer, in
and out of church". [55]
Webster however, as late as February 14, believed that there was no
"serious danger". February 16, he still felt that "if, on our side, we
keep cool, things will come to no dangerous pass". [56] But within the
next week, three acts in Washington modified Webster's optimism:
the filibuster of Southern members, February 18; their triumph in
conference, February 19; their interview with Taylor about February 23.
On February 18, under the leadership of Stephens, the Southern
representatives mustered two-thirds of the Southern Whigs and a majority
from every Southern state save Maryland for a successful series of over
thirty filibustering votes against the admission of California without
consideration of the question of slavery in New Mexico and Utah. So
indisputable was the demonstration of Southern power to block not
only the President's plan but all Congressional legislation, that the
Northern leaders next day in conference with. Southern representatives
agreed that California should be admitted with her free constitution,
but that in New Mexico and Utah government should be organized with no
prohibition of slavery and with power to form, in respect to slavery,
such constitutions as the people pleased--agreements practically enacted
in the Compromise. [57]
The filibuster of the 18th of February, Mann described as "a
revolutionary proceeding". Its alarming effect on the members of the
Cabinet was commented upon by the Boston Advertiser, February 19. The
New York Tribune, February 20, recognized the determination of the
South to secede unless the Missouri Compromise line were extended to the
Pacific. February 22, the Springfield Republican declared that "if the
Union cannot be preserved" without the extension of slavery, "we allow
the tie of Union to be severed". It was on this day, that Webster
decided "to make a Union speech and discharge a clear conscience".
That same week (apparently February 23) occurred the famous interview of
Stephens and Toombs with Taylor which convinced the President that the
Southern movement "means disunion". This was Taylor's judgment expressed
to Weed and Hamlin, "ten minutes after the interview". A week later the
President seemed to Horace Mann to be talking like a child about his
plans to levy an embargo and blockade the Southern harbors and "save the
Union". Taylor was ready to appeal to arms against "these Southern men
in Congress [who] are trying to bring on civil war" in connection with
the critical Texas boundary question. [58]
On this 23d of February, Greeley, converted from his earlier and
characteristic optimism, wrote in his leading editorial: "instead of
scouting or ridiculing as chimerical the idea of a Dissolution of the
Union, we firmly believe that there are sixty members of Congress who
this day desire it and are plotting to effect it. We have no doubt the
Nashville Convention will be held and that the leading purpose of its
authors is the separation of the slave states... with the formation of
an independent Confederacy." "This plot... is formidable." He warned
against "needless provocation which would supply weapons to the
Disunionists". A private letter to Greeley from Washington, the same
day, says: "H---- is alarmed and confident that blood will be spilt on
the floor of the House. Many members go to the House armed every
day. W---- is confident that Disunionism is now inevitable. He knows
intimately nearly all the Southern members, is familiar with their views
and sees the letters that reach them from their constituents. He says
the most ultra are well backed up in their advices from home." [59]
The same February 23, the Boston Advertiser quoted the Washington
correspondence of the Journal of Commerce: "excitement pervades the
whole South, and Southern members say that it has gone beyond their
control, that their tone is moderate in comparison with that of their
people". "Persons who condemn Mr. Clay's resolutions now trust to some
vague idea that Mr. Webster can do something better." "If Mr. Webster
has any charm by the magic influence of which he can control the
ultraism, of the North and of the South, he cannot too soon try
its effects." "If Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri go for the Southern
movement, we shall have disunion and as much of war as may answer the
purposes either of Northern or Southern fanaticism." On this Saturday,
February 23, also, "several Southern members of Congress had a long
and interesting interview with Mr. Webster". "The whole subject was
discussed and the result is, that the limitations of a compromise have
been examined, which are satisfactory to our Southern brethren. This
is good news, and will surround Mr. Webster's position with an uncommon
interest." [60]
"Webster is the only man in the Senate who has a position which would
enable him to present a plan which would be carried", said Pratt of
Maryland. [61] The National Intelligencer, which had hitherto maintained
the safety of the Union, confessed by February 21 that "the integrity
of the Union is at some hazard", quoting Southern evidence of this. On
February 25, Foote, in proposing to the Senate a committee of thirteen
to report some scheme of compromise, gave it as his conclusion from
consultation with both houses, that unless something were done at once,
power would pass from Congress.
II.
It was under these highly critical circumstances that Webster, on
Sunday, February 24, the day on which he was accustomed to dine with his
unusually well-informed friends, Stephens, Toombs, Clay and Hale, wrote
to his only surviving son:
I am nearly broken down with labor and anxiety. I know not how to meet
the present emergency, or with what weapons to beat down the Northern
and Southern follies, now raging in equal extremes. If you can possibly
leave home, I want you to be here, a day or two before I speak... I have
poor spirits and little courage. Non sum qualis eram. [62]
Mr. Lodge's account of this critical February period shows ignorance not
only of the letter of February 24, but of the real situation. He relies
upon von Holst instead of the documents, then misquotes him on a point
of essential chronology, and from unwarranted assumptions and erroneous
and incomplete data draws unreliable conclusions. Before this letter of
February 24 and the new cumulative evidence of the crisis, there falls
to the ground the sneer in Mr. Lodge's question, "if [Webster's] anxiety
was solely of a public nature, why did it date from March 7 when, prior
to that time, there was much greater cause for alarm than afterwards?"
Webster was anxious before the 7th of March, as so many others were,
North and South, and his extreme anxiety appears in the letter of
February 24, as well as in repeated later utterances. No one can read
through the letters of Webster without recognizing that he had a genuine
anxiety for the safety of the Union; and that neither in his letters nor
elsewhere is there evidence that in his conscience he was "ill at ease"
or "his mind not at peace". Here as elsewhere, Mr. Lodge's biography,
written over forty years ago, reproduces anti-slavery bitterness and
ignorance of facts (pardonable in 1850) and seriously misrepresents
Webster's character and the situation in that year. [63]
By the last week in February and the first in March, the peak of the
secession movement was reached. Never an alarmist, Webster, like others
who loved the Union, become convinced during this critical last week in
February of an "emergency". He determined "to make a Union Speech and
discharge a clear conscience." "I made up my mind to risk myself on a
proposition for a general pacification. I resolved to push my skiff
from the shore alone." "We are in a crisis," he wrote June 2, "if
conciliation makes no progress." "It is a great emergency, a great
exigency, that the country is placed in", he said in the Senate, June
17. "We have," he wrote in October, "gone through the most important
crisis which has occurred since the foundation of the government." A
year later he added at Buffalo, "if we had not settled these agitating
questions [by the Compromise]... in my opinion, there would have been
civil war". In Virginia, where he had known the situation even better,
he declared, "I believed in my conscience that a crisis was at hand, a
dangerous, a fearful crisis." [64]
Rhodes's conclusion that there was "little danger of an overt act of
secession while General Taylor was in the presidential chair" was based
on evidence then incomplete and is abandoned by more recent historians.
It is moreover significant that, of the speeches cited by Rhodes,
ridiculing the danger of secession, not one was delivered before
Webster's speech. All were uttered after the danger had been lessened
by the speeches and attitude of Clay and Webster. Even such Northern
anti-slavery speeches illustrated danger of another sort. Hale of
New Hampshire "would let them go" rather than surrender the rights
threatened by the fugitive slave bill. [65] Giddings in the very speech
ridiculing the danger of disunion said, "when they see fit to leave the
Union, I would say to them 'Go in peace'". [66] Such utterances played
into the hands of secessionists, strengthening their convictions that
the North despised the South and would not fight to keep her in the
Union.
It is now clear that in 1850 as in 1860 the average Northern senator
or anti-slavery minister or poet was ill-informed or careless as to the
danger of secession, and that Webster and the Southern Unionists were
well-informed and rightly anxious. Theodore Parker illustrated the
bitterness that befogs the mind. He concluded that there was no danger
of dissolution because "the public funds of the United States did not
go down one mill." The stock market might, of course, change from many
causes, but Parker was wrong as to the facts. An examination of the
daily sales of United States bonds in New York, 1849-1850, shows that
the change, instead of being, "not one mill," as Parker asserted, was
four or five dollars during this period; and what change there was, was
downward before Webster's speech and upward thereafter. [67]
We now realize what Webster knew and feared in 1849-1850. "If this
strife between the South and the North goes on, we shall have war,
and who is ready for that?" "There would have been a Civil War if the
Compromise had not passed." The evidence confirms Thurlow Weed's mature
judgment: "the country had every appearance of being on the eve of a
Revolution." [68] On February 28, Everett recognized that "the radicals
at the South have made up their minds to separate, the catastrophe seems
to be inevitable". [69]