A CRISIS AND A COMPROMISE
In 1840 there were 200 Abolition societies, with a membership of over
200,000. Agitation had created all over the North a spirit of hostility
to slavery as it existed in the South, and especially to the admission
of new slave States into the Union. In 1840 the struggle over the
application of Texas for admission into the Union had already, for three
years, been mooted. Objections to the admission of the new State were
many, such as: American adventurers had wrongfully wrested control of
the new State from Mexico; boundary lines were unsettled; war with
Mexico would follow, etc.; but chiefly, Texas was a slave State, which
was, in the South, a strong reason for annexation. There were, however,
many sound and unanswerable arguments for the admission of the new
State, just such as had influenced Jefferson in purchasing the
Louisiana territory: Texas was contiguous, her territory and resources
immense.
On the issue thus joined the first great gun had been fired by Dr.
Channing, who, though still more moderate than some, might now be
classed as an Abolitionist. August 1, 1837, he wrote a long open letter
to Henry Clay against annexation, and in that letter he said:
To me it seems not only the right but the duty of the Free States,
in case of the annexation of Texas, to say to the slave-holding
States, "We regard this act as the dissolution of the Union; the
essential conditions of the National Compact are violated."[36]
[36] "Channing's Works," vol. II, ed. 1847, p. 237.
This was very like the pronunciamento already made by Garrison--"no
union with slavery."
The underlying reasons that controlled Southern statesmen in this
contest over Texas, and the motives that animated them in the fierce
battles they fought later for new slave States, are thus stated by Mr.
George Ticknor Curtis, of New England.[37]
[37] "Life of Buchanan," vol. II, p. 280.
It should in justice be remembered that the effort _at that period
to enlarge the area of slavery was an effort on the part of the
South, dictated by a desire to remain in the Union, and not to
accept the issue of an inherent incompatibility of a political
union between slave-holding and non-slave-holding States_.
In 1840 the first effort for the annexation of Texas, by treaty, was
defeated in the Senate.
If the Southerners had been as ready to accept the doctrine of an
inherent incompatibility between slave and free States as were Dr.
Channing and those other Abolitionists who were now declaring for "no
union with slave-holders," they would at once have seceded and joined
Texas; but the South still loved the Union, and strove, down to 1860,
persistently, and often passionately, for power that would enable it to
remain safely in its folds.
Texas was finally admitted in 1845, after annexation had been passed on
by the people in the presidential election of 1844. In that election
Clay was defeated by the Abolitionists. Because Clay was not
unreservedly against annexation the Abolitionists drew from the Whigs in
New York State enough votes, casting them for Birney, to defeat Clay and
elect Polk; and now Abolitionism was a factor in national politics.
The two great national parties were the Democrats and the Whigs, the
voters somewhat equally divided between them. For years both parties had
regarded the Abolitionists precisely as did the non-partisan meeting at
Faneuil Hall, in August, 1835--as a band of agitators, organized for the
purpose of interfering with slavery where it was none of their business;
and both parties had meted out to this new and, as they deemed it,
pestilent sect, unstinted condemnation. But at last the voters of this
despised cult had turned a presidential election and were making inroads
in both parties. Half a dozen Northern States, in which in 1835 "no
protest had been made against the fugitive slave law of 1793," had
already passed "personal liberty laws" intended to obstruct and nullify
that law. And now it was "slave-catchers" and not Abolitionists who were
being mobbed in the North.
Boston had reversed its attitude toward the Abolitionists. On May 31,
1849, the New England Anti-Slavery Society was holding its annual
convention in that very Faneuil Hall where, in 1835, Abolitionism had
been so roundly condemned; and now Wendell Phillips, pointing to one of
two fugitive slaves, who then sat triumphantly on the platform, said,
"amid great applause, ... 'We say that they may make their little laws
in Washington, but that _Faneuil Hall repeals them_, in the name of the
humanity of Massachusetts.'"[38]
[38] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. III, p. 247.
Poets headed by Whittier and Longfellow, authors like Emerson and
Lowell, and orators like Theodore Parker and Wendell Phillips, had
joined the agitators, and all united in assaulting the fugitive slave
law. The following, from James Russell Lowell's "Biglow Papers," No. 1,
June, 1840, is a specimen of the literature that was stirring up
hostility against slavery and the "slave-catcher" in the breasts of many
thousands, who were joining in an anti-slavery crusade while disdaining
companionship with the Abolitionists:
"Ain't it cute to see a Yankee
Take such everlastin' pains
All to get the Devil's Thankee
Helpin' on 'em weld their chains?"
W'y it's jest es clear es figgers,
Clear es one and one makes two,
Chaps that makes black slaves of niggers
Want to make w'ite slaves o' you.
In the meantime the people of the South, much excited, were resorting to
repression, passing laws to prevent slaves from being taught to read,
and laws, in some States, inhibiting assemblages of slaves above given
numbers, unless some white person were present--all as safeguards
against insurrection. Thus, in 1835, an indictment was found in
Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, against one Williams, who had never been in
Alabama, for circulating there an alleged incendiary document, and
Governor Gayle made requisition on Governor Marcy, of New York, for the
extradition of Williams. Governor Marcy denied the request. The case was
the same as that more recently decided by the Supreme Court of the
United States, when it held that editors of New York and Indiana papers
could not be brought to the District of Columbia for trial.
The South, all the while clamoring to have the agitators put down, had
by still other means than these contributed to the ever-increasing
excitement in the North. Southerners had mobbed Abolitionists, and
whipped and driven out of the country persons found in possession of
_The Liberator_ or suspected of circulating other incendiary literature.
And violence in the South against the Abolitionists had precisely the
same effect on the Northern mind as the violence against them in the
North had from 1835 to 1838, but there was this difference: the refugee
from the distant South, whether he were an escaped slave or a fleeing
Abolitionist, could color and exaggerate the wrongs he had suffered and
so parade himself as a martyr. While this was true, it was also quite
often true that the outrage committed in the South against the suspect
was real enough--a mob had whipped and expelled him without any trial.
_And this is another of the lessons as to the evil effects of mob law
that crop out all through the history of the anti-slavery crusade. No
good can come from violating the law._
In 1848 another presidential election turned on the anti-slavery vote,
this time again in New York State. Anti-slavery Democrats bolted the
Democratic ticket, thus electing General Taylor, the Whig candidate.
In the canvass preceding this election originated, we are told, the
catch-phrase applied to Cass, the Democratic candidate--"a Northern man
with Southern principles." The phrase soon became quite common, South
and North--"a Southern man with Northern principles," and _vice versa_.
The invention and use of it in 1848 shows the progress that had been
made in arraying one section of the Union against the other. Later, a
telling piece of doggerel in Southern canvasses, and it must also have
been used North, was
He wired in and wired out,
Leaving the people all in doubt,
Whether the snake that made the track
Was going North, or coming back.
Over the admission of California in 1849 there was another battle.
California, 734 miles long, with about 50,000 people (less than the
usual number), and with a constitution improvised under military
government, applied for admission as a State. Southerners insisted on
extending the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific, thereby
making of the new territory two States. The South had been much
embittered by the opposition to the admission of Texas. Texas was,
nearly all of it, below the Missouri Compromise line, and the South
thought it was equitably entitled to come in under that agreement. Its
case, too, differed from that of Missouri, which already belonged to the
United States when it applied for admission as a State. Texas, with all
its vast wealth, was asking to come in without price.
Another continuing and increasing cause of distraction had been the use
made by Abolitionists of the right of petition. As already shown,
petitions to Congress against slavery had been received without question
till 1836, when Northern conservatives and Southern members, hoping to
abate this source of agitation, had combined to pass a resolution to lay
them on the table, which meant that they were to be no further noticed.
The Abolitionists were so delighted over the indefensible position into
which they had driven the conservatives--the "gag law"--that they
continued, up to the crisis of 1850, with unflagging zeal to hurry in
monster petitions, one after another. The debates provoked by the
presentation of these petitions, and the more and more heated
discussions in Congress of _slavery in the States_, which was properly
_a local and not a national question_, now attracted still wider public
attention. The Abolitionists had almost succeeded in arraying the entire
sections against each other, in making of the South and North two
hostile nations. Professor John W. Burgess, dean of the Faculty of
Political Science in Columbia University, says: "It would not be
extravagant to say that the whole course of the internal history of the
United States from 1836 to 1861 was more largely determined by the
struggle in Congress, over the _Abolition petitions_ and the use of the
mails for the Abolition literature, than anything else."[39]
[39] "The Middle Period," John W. Burgess, p. 274.
The South had its full share in the hot debates that took place over
these matters in Congress. Its congressmen were quite as aggressive as
those from the North, and they were accused of being imperious in
manner, when demanding that a stop should be put to Abolition petitions,
and Abolition literature going South in the mails.
There was another cause of complaint from the South, and this was grave.
By the "two underground railroads" that had been established, slaves,
estimated at 2,000 annually, abducted or voluntarily escaping, were
secretly escorted into or through the free States to Canada. To show how
all this was then regarded by those who sympathized with the
Abolitionists, and how it is still looked upon by some modern
historians, the following is given from Hart's "Abolition and Slavery":
"The underground railroad was manned chiefly by orderly citizens,
members of churches, and philanthropical citizens. _To law-abiding folk_
what could be more delightful than the sensation of aiding an oppressed
slave, _exasperating_ a cruel master, and at the same time incurring the
penalties of _defying an unrighteous law_?"
Southerners at that time thought that conductors on that line were
practising, and readers of the above paragraph will probably think that
Dr. Hart in his attractive rhetoric is now extolling in his history,
"higher law doctrines."
It is undoubtedly true that, in 1850, a large majority of the Northern
people strongly disapproved of the Abolitionists and their methods.
Modern historians carefully point out the difference between the great
body of Northern anti-slavery people and the Abolitionists.
Nevertheless, here were majorities in eleven Northern States voting for,
and sustaining, the legislators who passed and kept upon the statute
books laws which were intended to enable Southern slaves to escape from
their masters. The enactment and the support of these laws was an attack
upon the constitutional rights of slave-holders; and Southern people
looked upon all the voters who sustained these laws, and all the
anti-slavery lecturers, speakers, pulpit orators, and writers of the
North, as engaged with the Abolitionists in one common crusade against
slavery. From the Southern stand-point a difference between them could
only be made by a Hudibras:
He was in logic a great critic
Profoundly skilled in analytic,
He could distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt South and South West side.
As to how much of the formidable anti-slavery sentiment of that day had
been created by the Abolitionists, we have this opinion of a
distinguished English traveller and observer. Mr. L. W. A. Johnston was
in Washington, in 1850, studying America. He says:
"Extreme men like Garrison seldom have justice done to them. It is true
they may be impracticable, both as to their measures and their men, but
that unmixed evil is the result of their exertions, all history of
opinion in every country, I think, contradicts. Such ultra men are as
necessary as the more moderate and reasonable advocates of any growing
opinion; and, as _an impartial person_, who never happened to fall in
with one of the party in the course of my tour, I must express my belief
that the present wide diffusion of anti-slavery sentiment in the United
States is, in no small degree, owing to their exertions."[40]
[40] "Notes on North America," London, 1851, vol. II, p. 486.
And Professor Smith, of Williams College, speaking of the anti-slavery
feeling in the North in 1850, says:
"This sentiment of the free States regarding slavery was to a large
degree the result of an agitation for its abolition which had been
active for a score of years (1831-1850) without any positive
results."[41]
[41] "Parties and Slavery," Smith, pp. 3, 4.
But no matter what had produced it, the anti-slavery sentiment that
pervaded the North in 1850 boded ill to slavery and to the Constitution,
and the South was bitterly complaining. Congress met in December, 1849,
and was to sit until October, 1850. Lovers of the Union, North and
South, watched its proceedings with the deepest anxiety. The South was
much excited. The continual torrent of abuse to which it was subjected,
the refusal to allow slavery in States to be created from territory in
the South-west that was below the parallel of the Missouri Compromise,
and the complete nullification of the fugitive slave law, seemed to many
to be no longer tolerable, and from sundry sources in that section came
threats of secession.
In 1849-50 the South was demanding a division of California, an
efficient fugitive slave law, and that the territories of New Mexico and
Arizona should be organized with no restrictions as to slavery. Other
minor demands were unimportant.
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, Lewis Cass, and other
conservative leaders came forward and, after long and heated debates in
Congress, the Compromise of 1850 was agreed on. To satisfy the North,
California, as a whole, came in as a free State, and the slave trade was
abolished in the District of Columbia. To satisfy the South, a new and
stringent fugitive slave law was agreed on, and the territories of New
Mexico and Arizona were organized with no restrictions as to slavery.
In bringing about this compromise, Daniel Webster was, next to Clay, the
most conspicuous figure. He was the favorite son of New England and the
greatest statesman in all the North. On the 7th of March, 1850, Mr.
Webster made one of the greatest speeches of his life on the Compromise
measures. Rising above the sectional prejudices of the hour, he spoke
for the Constitution and the Union. The manner in which he and his
reputation were treated by popular historians in the North, for half a
century afterward, on account of this speech, is the most pathetic and,
at the same time, the most instructive story in the whole history of the
anti-slavery crusade.
Mr. Webster was under the ban of Northern public opinion for all this
half a century, not because of inconsistency between that speech and his
former avowals, an averment often made and never proven, but because he
was consistent. He stood squarely upon his record, and the venom of the
assaults that were afterward made upon him was just in proportion to the
love and veneration which had been his before he offended. His offence
was that he would not move with the anti-slavery movement.[42] He did
not stand with his section in a sectional dispute.
[42] McMaster says: "The great statesman was behind the
times."--"Webster," p. 19.
Henry Clay, old and feeble, had come back into the Senate to render his
last service to his country. He was the author of the Compromise. Daniel
Webster was everywhere known as the champion of the Union. Henry Clay
was known as the "Old Man Eloquent," and he now spoke with all his
old-time fire; but Webster's great speech probably had more influence on
the result.
Before taking up Mr. Webster's speech his previous attitude toward
slavery must be noted. The purpose of the friends of the Union was, of
course, to effect a compromise that would, if possible, put an end to
sectional strife. Compromise means concession, and a compromise of
political differences, made by statesmen, may involve some concession of
view previously held by those who advocate as well as by those who
accept it. Webster thought his section of the Union should now make
concessions.
Fanaticism, however, concedes nothing; it never compromises, although
statesmanship does. One of the most notable utterances of Edmund Burke
was:
"_All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue
and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter._"
Great statesmen, on great occasions, speak not only to their countrymen
and for the time being, but they speak to all mankind and for all time.
So spoke Burke in that famous sentence when advocating, in the British
Parliament in 1776, "conciliation with America"; and so did Daniel
Webster speak, in the Senate of the United States, on the 7th of March,
1850, for "the Constitution and the Union." If George III and Lord North
had heeded Burke, and if the British government and people, from that
day forth, had followed the wise counsels given in that speech by their
greatest statesman, all the English-speaking peoples of the world, now
numbering over 170,000,000, might have been to-day under one government,
that government commanding the peace of the world. And if all the people
of the United States in 1850 and from that time on, had heeded the words
of Daniel Webster, we should have been spared the bloodiest war in the
book of time; every State of the Union would have been left free to
solve its own domestic problems, and it is not too much to say that
these problems would have been solved in full accord with the advancing
civilization of the age.
The sole charge of inconsistency against Webster that has in it a shadow
of truth relates to the proposition he made in his speech as to the
"Wilmot proviso." That celebrated proviso was named for David Wilmot, of
Pennsylvania, its author. It provided against slavery in all the
territory acquired from Mexico. The South had opposed the Wilmot proviso
because the territory in question, much of it, was south of the Missouri
Compromise line extended. Mr. Webster had often voted for the Wilmot
proviso, as all knew. In his speech for the Compromise, by which the
South was urged to and did give up its contentions as to the admission
of California, and its contentions as to the slave trade in the District
of Columbia, Webster argued that _the North might forego_ the proviso as
to New Mexico and Arizona for the reason that the proviso was, as to
these territories, _immaterial_. Those territories, he argued, would
never come in as slave States, because the God of nature had so
determined. Climate and soil would forbid. Time vindicated this
argument. In 1861 Charles Francis Adams said, in Congress, that New
Mexico, open to slave-holders and their slaves for more than ten years,
then had only twelve slaves domiciled on the surface of over 200,000
square miles of her extent.[43]
[43] "Vindication of Webster," William C. Wilkinson, p. 69.
Daniel Webster's services to the cause of the Union, the preservation of
which had been the passion of his life, had been absolutely
unparalleled. It is perhaps true that without him Abraham Lincoln and
the armies of the Union in 1861-65 would have been impossible. The sole
and, as he then stated and as time proved, immaterial concession this
champion of the Union now (1850) made for the sake of preserving the
Union was his proposition as to New Mexico and Arizona.
Henry Clay spoke before Webster. These words were the key-note of Clay's
great speech: "In my opinion the body politic cannot be preserved unless
this agitation, this distraction, this exasperation, which is going on
between the two sections of the country, shall cease."
The country waited with anxiety to hear from Webster. Hundreds of
suggestions and appeals went to him. Both sides were hopeful.[44]
Anti-slavery people knew his aversion to slavery. He had never
countenanced anti-slavery agitation, but he had voted for the Wilmot
proviso. They knew, too, that he had long been ambitious to be
President, and, carried away by their enthusiasm, they hoped that
Webster would swim along with the tide that was sweeping over the
majority section of the Union. In view of Mr. Webster's past record,
however, it would be difficult to believe that Abolitionists were really
disappointed in him had we not many such proofs as the following stanza
from Whittier's ode, published after the speech:
Oh! dumb be passing, stormy rage
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night!
[44] McMaster's "Webster."
The conservatives also were hopeful. They knew that, though Webster had
always been, as an individual, opposed to slavery, he had at all times
stood by the Constitution, as well as the Union. At no time had he ever
qualified or retracted these words in his speech at Niblo's Garden in
1839: "Slavery, as it exists in the States, is beyond the reach of
Congress. It is a concern of the States themselves. They have never
submitted it to Congress, and Congress has no rightful power over it. I
shall concur therefore in _no act_, _no measure_, _no menace_, no
indication of purpose which _shall interfere or threaten to interfere
with the exclusive authority_ of the several States over the subject of
slavery, as it exists within their respective limits. All this appears
to me to be matter of plain imperative duty."
Nullifying the fugitive slave law was a plain "interference" with the
rights of the slave States.
Mr. Webster's intent, when he spoke on the Compromise measures, is best
explained by his own words, on June 17, while these measures were still
pending: "Sir, my object is peace. My object is reconciliation. My
purpose is not to make up a case _for the North_ or a case _for the
South_. My object is not to continue useless and irritating
controversies. I am against agitators, North and South, and all narrow
local contests. I am an American, and I know no locality but America."
In his speech made on the 7th of March he dwelt at length on existing
conditions, on the attitude of the North toward the fugitive slave law,
and argued fully the questions involved in the "personal liberty" laws
passed by Northern States. Referring to the complaints of the South
about these, he said: "In that respect _the South, in my judgment, is
right and the North is wrong_. Every member of every Northern
legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country,
to support the Constitution of the United States; and the article of the
Constitution which says to these States that they shall deliver up
fugitives from service _is as binding in honor and conscience as any
other article_. _No man fulfils his duty in any legislature who sets
himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes, from this constitutional
obligation._"
And further on he said: "Then, sir, there are the Abolition societies,
of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard to which I have very
clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. _I think their
operations for the last twenty years have produced nothing good or
valuable.... I cannot but see what mischief their interference with the
South has produced._"
In these statements is the substance of Webster's offending.
Webster's speech was followed, on the 11th of March, by the speech of
Senator Seward, of New York, in the same debate. Quoting the fugitive
slave provision of the Federal Constitution, Mr. Seward said: "This is
from the Constitution of the United States in 1787, and the parties were
the Republican States of the Union. The law of nations _disavows such
compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of
freemen, repudiates them_."[45] The people of the North, instead of
following Webster, chose to follow Seward, the apostle of a _law higher
than the Constitution_; and when, ten years later, it appeared to them
that the whole North had given in its adhesion to the "higher law"
doctrine, the people of eleven Southern States seceded, and put over
themselves in very substance the Constitution that Seward had flouted
and Webster had pleaded for in vain.
[45] _Congressional Globe_, 31st Congress, 1st session, Appendix, p.
263.
Anti-slavery enthusiasts in the North generally, and Abolitionists
especially, in their comments on Webster's speech scouted the idea that
the preservation of the Union depended upon the faithful execution of
the fugitive slave law or the cessation of anti-slavery agitation.
"What," said Theodore Parker, "cast off the North! They set up for
themselves! Tush! Tush! Fear boys with bugs!... I think Mr. Webster knew
there was no danger of a dissolution of the Union."[46]
[46] "Vindication of Webster," William C. Wilkinson, p. 191.
The immediate effect of the speech was wonderful; congratulations poured
in upon Mr. Webster from conservative classes in every quarter, and he
must have felt gratified to know that he had contributed greatly to the
enactment of measures that, for a time, had some effect in allaying
sectional strife. But the revilings of the Abolitionists prevailed, and
it turned out that Daniel Webster, great as he was, had undertaken a
task that was too much even for him. His enemies struck out boldly at
once: and years afterward, when the anti-slavery movement that Webster's
appeals could not arrest had culminated in secession, and when the
Union had been saved by arms, the triumphant hosts of the anti-slavery
crusade all but succeeded in writing Daniel Webster down permanently in
the history of his country as an apostate from principle for the sake of
an office he did not get. Here is their verdict, which Mr. Lodge, a
biographer of Webster, passes on into history:
"The _popular verdict_ has been given against the 7th of March speech,
_and that verdict has passed into history_. Nothing can be said or done
which will alter the fact that the people of this country, _who
maintained and saved the Union, have passed judgment on Mr. Webster_,
and condemned what he said on the 7th of March as _wrong in principle
and mistaken in policy_."
Here are specimens of the assaults that were made on Webster after his
speech. They are selected from among many given by one of his
biographers.[47]
[47] McMaster's "Webster," p. 316 _et seq._
"'Webster,' said Horace Mann, 'is a fallen star! Lucifer descended from
Heaven.'... 'Webster,' said Sumner, 'has placed himself in the dark
list of apostates.' When Whittier named him Ichabod, and mourned for him
in verse as one dead, he did but express the feeling of half New
England:
'Let not the land once proud of him
Mourn for him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim
Dishonored brow.
* * * * *
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame!
Walk backward with averted gaze
And hide his shame.'"
After much more to the same effect, Professor McMaster proceeds: "The
attack by the press, the _expressions of horror_ that rose from New
England, Webster felt keenly, but the absolute isolation in which he was
left by his New England colleagues cut him to the quick."[48]
[48] Professor McMaster in the chapter preceding that containing these
extracts, has collected much evidence to show that Webster aspired to be
President, and the biographer entitles the chapter, "Longing for the
Presidency," apparently the author's clod on the grave of a buried
reputation.
On Mr. Webster's speech, its purpose and effect, we have this opinion
from Mr. Lodge:
"The speech, if exactly defined, is in reality a powerful effort, not
for a compromise, or for the fugitive slave law, or for any other one
thing, _but to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement_, and in that way
_put an end to the danger which threatened the Union and restore harmony
to the jarring sections_."
And then he adds:
"_It was a mad project. Mr. Webster might as well have attempted to stay
the incoming tide at Marshfield with a rampart of sand, as to check the
anti-slavery movement with a speech._"
To undertake at this time to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement by
holding up the Constitution was indeed useless.
Seward, who had spoken for the "higher law," was riding on the tide of
anti-slavery sentiment that was submerging "the Sage of Marshfield," who
had stood for the Constitution. Seward's reputation, in the years
following, went steadily up, while Webster's was going down. Webster
died, in dejection, in 1852.
Seward, at Rochester, in 1854, later on in the same crusade, made
another famous declaration--there was an "irrepressible conflict between
slavery and freedom." The conflict was "irrepressible," as Seward well
knew; and this was simply and solely because the anti-slavery crusade
could not be suppressed. Clay and Webster, now both dead and gone, had
tried it in vain. Every one knew that if, in 1850, or at any other time,
the anti-slavery hosts had halted, and asked for, or consented to,
peace, they could have had it at once.
Mr. Lodge, in the following paragraph, seems to have almost made up his
mind to defend Webster. He says: "What most shocked the North were his
utterances in regard to the fugitive slave law. There can be no doubt
that, _under the Constitution_, the South had a _perfect right_ to claim
the extradition of fugitive slaves. The legal _argument to support that
right was excellent_." This would seem to justify the speech in that
regard. "But," Mr. Lodge adds, "the Northern people could not feel that
it was _necessary_ for _Daniel Webster_ to make it." They wanted him to
be sectional or to hold his tongue. Then Mr. Lodge goes on to say: "The
fugitive slave law was in _absolute conflict with the awakened
conscience and moral sentiment of the North_."
The conscience of _the North_ at that time, Mr. Lodge means, was a
_higher law_ than the _Constitution_; and Webster's "excellent
argument," therefore, fell on deaf ears.
No American historian stands higher as an authority than Mr. Rhodes. He
says on page 161, vol. I, of his "History of the United States,"
published in 1892: "_Until the closing years of our century a
dispassionate judgment could not be made of Webster_; but we see now
that in the war of secession his principles were mightier than those of
Garrison. It was not 'No Union with slave-holders,' but _Liberty and
Union_ that won."
This tribute to services Webster had rendered to the Union in his great
speech in 1850, in which he advocated "Liberty and Union, now and
forever," exactly as he was advocating it in 1830, is just. How pathetic
that the historian was impelled also to record the fact, in the same
sentence, that for nearly half a century partisan prejudice had rendered
it impossible to form a dispassionate judgment of him who had pleaded in
vain for the Union without war!
After an able analysis of his "7th of March speech," and a discussion of
his record, in which he paralleled Webster and Edmund Burke, Mr. Rhodes
declares: "His dislike of slavery was strong, but his love of the Union
was stronger, and the more powerful motive outweighed the other, for he
believed that _the crusade against slavery had arrived at a point where
its further prosecution was hurtful to the Union_. As has been said of
Burke, 'He changed his front but he never changed his ground.'"[49]
[49] _Ib._, p. 160.
Daniel Webster's name and its place in history may be likened to a giant
oak, a monarch of the forest, that, while towering high above all
others, was stripped of its branches; for a time it stood, a rugged
trunk, robbed of its glory by a cyclone; but its roots were deep down in
the rich earth; the storm is passing away; the tree has put out buds
again; now its branches are stretching out once more into the clear
reaches of the upper air.
Mr. Rhodes seems to be the first historian of note to do justice to
Daniel Webster and the great speech which, McMaster takes pains to
inform us, historians have written down as his "7th of March speech," in
spite of the fact that Mr. Webster himself entitled it "The
Constitution and the Union."
Other historians besides Mr. Rhodes have come to the rescue of Webster's
speech for "the Constitution and the Union." Mr. John Fiske says of it
in a volume (posthumous) published in 1907: "So far as Mr. Webster's
moral attitude was concerned, although he was not prepared for the
bitter hostility that his speech provoked in many quarters, he must
nevertheless have known it was quite as likely to injure him at the
North as to gain support for him in the South, and his resolute adoption
of a policy that he regarded as national rather than sectional was
really an instance of high moral courage."[50]
[50] "Daniel Webster and the Sentiment of Union," John Fiske, "Essays
Historical and Literary," pp. 408-9.
Mr. William C. Wilkinson has recently written an able "Vindication of
Daniel Webster," and, after a conclusive argument on that branch of his
subject, he says: "Webster's consistency stands like a rock on the shore
after the fretful waves are tired with beating upon it in vain."[51]
[51] "Daniel Webster: A Vindication," p. 47.
Mr. E. P. Wheeler, concluding a masterly sketch of Daniel Webster,
setting forth his services as statesman and expounder of the
Constitution, and not deigning to notice the partisan charges against
him, concludes with these words:
"Great men elevate and ennoble their countrymen. In the glory of Webster
we find the glory of our whole country."
The story of Daniel Webster and his great speech in 1850 has been told
at some length because it is instructive. The historians who had set
themselves to the task of upholding the idea that it was the
aggressiveness of the South, during the controversy over slavery, and
not that of the North, that brought on secession and war, could not make
good their contention while Daniel Webster and his speech for "the
Constitution and the Union" stood in their way. They, therefore, wrote
the great statesman "down and out," as they conceived. But Webster and
that speech still stand as beacon lights in the history of that crusade.
The attack came from the North. The South, standing for its
constitutional rights in the Union, was the conservative party.
Southern leaders, it is true, were, during the controversy over
slavery, often aggressive, but they were on the defensive-aggressive,
just as Lee was when he made his campaign into Pennsylvania for the
purpose of stopping the invasion of his own land; and the South lost in
her political campaign just for the same reason that Lee lost in his
Gettysburg campaign: numbers and resources were against her. "The stars
in their courses fought against Sisera."
Mr. Webster in his great speech for "the Constitution and the Union," as
became a great statesman pleading for conciliation, measured the terms
in which he condemned "personal liberty" laws and Abolitionism. But
afterward, irritated by the attacks made upon him, he naturally spoke
out more emphatically. McMaster quotes several expressions from his
speeches and letters replying to these assaults, and says: "His hatred
of Abolitionists and Free-soilers grew stronger and stronger. To him
these men were a 'band of sectionalists, narrow of mind, wanting in
patriotism, without a spark of national feeling, and quite ready to see
the Union go to pieces if their own selfish ends were gained.'" Such,
if this is a fair summing up of his views, was Webster's final opinion
of those who were carrying on the great anti-slavery crusade.[52]
[52] McMaster's "Webster," p. 340.