WHY DANIEL WAS SENT TO CONGRESS.
Even in his Sophomore year at college Daniel had taken a considerable
interest in public affairs, as might readily be shown by extracts from
his private correspondence. This interest continued after he entered
upon the practice of the law, but up to the period of his election
to Congress he had never filled a public office. It is generally the
case with our public men that they serve one or more preliminary terms
in one or both branches of the State Legislature, thus obtaining a
practical knowledge of parliamentary proceedings. This was not the case
with Mr. Webster. His public career would probably have been still
further postponed but for the unfortunate state of our relations with
England and France for some years preceding the war of 1812.
I can only allude very briefly to the causes which had almost
annihilated our commerce and paralyzed our prosperity. Both England
and France had been guilty of aggressions upon our commercial rights,
and the former government especially had excited indignation by its
pretended right to search American vessels, for British seamen and
deserters. This was intensified by the retaliatory order of Napoleon,
issued Dec. 17, 1807, known as the Milan Décrets, in accordance with
which every vessel, of whatever nationality, that submitted to be
searched, forfeited its neutral character, and even neutral vessels
sailing between British ports were declared lawful prizes. Thus America
was between two fires, and there seemed to be small chance of escape
for any. Moreover, Great Britain interdicted all trade by neutrals
between ports not friendly to her, and the United States was one of the
chief sufferers from the extraordinary assumptions of the two hostile
powers.
To save our vessels from depredation President Jefferson recommended
what is known as the Embargo, which prevented the departure of our
vessels from our own ports, and thus of course suspended our commercial
relations with the rest of the world. The Embargo was never a popular
measure, and its effects were felt to be widely injurious. I do not
propose to discuss the question, but merely to state that in 1808 Mr.
Webster published a pamphlet upon the Embargo, and, as his biographer
claims, this must be regarded as his first appearance in a public
character. I must refer such of my readers as desire more fully to
understand the condition of public affairs and the part that the young
lawyer took therein to the first volume of Mr. Curtis’s memoir.
It may be stated here, however, to explain the special interest which
he felt in the matter, that Portsmouth, as a seaport, was largely
affected by the suspension of American commerce, and its citizens
felt an interest easily explained in what was so disastrous to their
business prosperity.
On the Fourth of July, 1812, Mr. Webster delivered by invitation an
oration before the “Washington Benevolent Society,” of Portsmouth, in
which he discussed in a vigorous way the policy of the government,
which he did not approve. Sixteen days before Congress had declared
war against England. To this war Mr. Webster was opposed. Whatever
grievances the government may have suffered from England, he contended
that there was “still more abundant cause of war against France.”
Moreover America was not prepared for war. The navy had been suffered
to fall into neglect during Jefferson’s administration, until it was
utterly insufficient for the defense of our coasts and harbors.
On this point he says: “If the plan of Washington had been pursued,
and our navy had been suffered to grow with the growth of our commerce
and navigation, what a blow might at this moment be struck, and what
protection yielded, surrounded, as our commerce now is, with all the
dangers of sudden war! Even as it is, all our immediate hopes of glory
or conquest, all expectation of events that shall gratify the pride
or spirit of the nation, rest on the gallantry of that little remnant
of a navy that has now gone forth, like lightning, at the beck of
Government, to scour the seas.
“It will not be a bright page in our history which relates the total
abandonment of all provision for naval defense by the successors of
Washington. Not to speak of policy and expediency, it will do no credit
to the national faith, stipulated and plighted as it was to that object
in every way that could make the engagement solemn and obligatory. So
long as our commerce remains unprotected, and our coasts and harbors
undefended by naval and maritime means, the essential objects of the
Union remain unanswered, and the just expectation of those who assented
to it, unanswered.
“A part of our navy has been suffered to go to entire decay; another
part has been passed, like an article of useless lumber, under the
hammer of the auctioneer. As if the millennium had already commenced,
our politicians have beaten their swords into plowshares. They have
actually bargained away in the market essential means of national
defense, and carried the product to the Treasury. Without loss by
accident or by enemies the second commercial nation in the world is
reduced to the limitation of being unable to assert the sovereignty of
its own seas, or to protect its navigation in sight of its own shores.
What war and the waves have sometimes done for others, we have done for
ourselves. We have taken the destruction of our marine out of the power
of fortune, and richly achieved it by our own counsels.”
This address made a profound impression, voicing as it did the general
public feeling in New Hampshire on the subjects of which it treated.
It led to an assembly of the people of Rockingham County a few weeks
later, called to prepare a memorial to the President protesting against
the war. To this convention Mr. Webster was appointed a delegate, and
it was he who was selected to draft what has been since known as the
“Rockingham Memorial.”
One of the most noteworthy passages in this memorial—noteworthy because
it is an early expression of his devotion to the Union—I find quoted
by Mr. Curtis, and I shall follow his lead in transferring it to my
pages.
“We are, sir, from principle and habit attached to the Union of these
States. But our attachment is to the substance, and not to the form.
It is to the good which this Union is capable of producing, and not to
the evil which is suffered unnaturally to grow out of it. If the time
should ever arrive when this Union shall be holden together by nothing
but the authority of law; when its incorporating, vital principles
shall become extinct; when its principal exercises shall consist in
acts of power and authority, not of protection and beneficence; when
it shall lose the strong bond which it hath hitherto had in the public
affections; and when, consequently, we shall be one, not in interest
and mutual regard, but in name and form only—we, sir, shall look on
that hour as the closing scene of our country’s prosperity.
“We shrink from the separation of the States as an event fraught with
incalculable evils, and it is among our strongest objections to the
present course of measures that they have, in our opinion, a very
dangerous and alarming bearing on such an event. If a separation of
the States ever should take place, it will be on some occasion when
one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate and to
sacrifice the interest of another; when a small and heated majority
in the Government, taking counsel of their passions, and not of their
reason, contemptuously disregarding the interests and perhaps stopping
the mouths of a large and respectable minority, shall by hasty, rash
and ruinious measures, threaten to destroy essential rights, and lay
waste the most important interests.
“It shall be our most fervent supplication to Heaven to avert both the
event and the occasion; and the Government may be assured that the tie
that binds us to the Union will never be broken by us.”
Even my young readers will be struck by the judicial calmness, the
utter absence of heated partisanship, which mark the extracts I
have made, and they will recall the passage well known to every
schoolboy—the grand closing passage of the reply to Hayne.
As regards style it will be seen that, though yet a young man, Mr.
Webster had made a very marked advance on the Fourth of July address
which he delivered while yet a college-student. He was but thirty years
old when the memorial was drafted, and in dignified simplicity and
elevation of tone it was worthy of his later days. The young lawyer,
whose time had hitherto been employed upon cases of trifling moment in
a country town, had been ripening his powers, and expanding into the
intellectual proportions of a statesman. It was evident at any rate
that his neighbors thought so, for he was nominated as a Representative
to the Thirteenth Congress, in due time elected, and, as has already
been stated, he first took his seat at a special session called by the
President on the 24th of May, 1813.
It was in this Congress that Daniel Webster made the acquaintance
of two eminent men, with whose names his own is now most frequently
associated—Henry Clay, of Kentucky, and John C. Calhoun, of South
Carolina.