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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1663-h.zip b/1663-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ef7b28 --- /dev/null +++ b/1663-h.zip diff --git a/1663-h/1663-h.htm b/1663-h/1663-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..67d2fe7 --- /dev/null +++ b/1663-h/1663-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2769 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + Webster's Seventh of March Speech, by Herbert Darling Foster + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the +Secession Movement, by Herbert Darling Foster + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement + +Author: Herbert Darling Foster + +Commentator: Nathaniel Wright Stephenson + +Release Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1663] +Last Updated: January 26, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEBSTER'S SPEECH *** + + + + +Produced by Dianne Bean, and David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH + </h1> + <h2> + AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850 + </h2> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Herbert Darling Foster + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h3> + With foreword by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson + </h3> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h4> + American Historical Review Vol. XXVII., No. 2 <br /> January, 1922 + </h4> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h2> + Contents + </h2> + <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + <tr> + <td> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH AND THE + SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> I. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_FOOT"> FOOTNOTES </a> + </p> + </td> + </tr> + </table> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + FOREWORD + </h2> + <p> + 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? + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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? + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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." + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850 + </h2> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-1" + name="linknoteref-1" id="linknoteref-1"><small>1</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-2" name="linknoteref-2" + id="linknoteref-2"><small>2</small></a> 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. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I. + </h2> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-3" + name="linknoteref-3" id="linknoteref-3"><small>3</small></a> "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." <a href="#linknote-4" + name="linknoteref-4" id="linknoteref-4"><small>4</small></a> 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." + <a href="#linknote-5" name="linknoteref-5" id="linknoteref-5"><small>5</small></a> + The conclusion of both Blair of Kentucky and Winthrop <a href="#linknote-6" + name="linknoteref-6" id="linknoteref-6"><small>6</small></a> of + Massachusetts, that "Calhoun and his instruments are really solicitous to + break up the Union", was warranted by Calhoun's own statement. + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-7" + name="linknoteref-7" id="linknoteref-7"><small>7</small></a> 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." <a href="#linknote-8" + name="linknoteref-8" id="linknoteref-8"><small>8</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-9" name="linknoteref-9" + id="linknoteref-9"><small>9</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-10" name="linknoteref-10" + id="linknoteref-10"><small>10</small></a> 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, <a href="#linknote-11" name="linknoteref-11" + id="linknoteref-11"><small>11</small></a> 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". <a href="#linknote-12" + name="linknoteref-12" id="linknoteref-12"><small>12</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-13" + name="linknoteref-13" id="linknoteref-13"><small>13</small></a> These + actions of Mississippi's legislature one day before Webster's 7th of March + speech mark approximately the peak of the secession movement. + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-14" + name="linknoteref-14" id="linknoteref-14"><small>14</small></a> 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. <a href="#linknote-15" name="linknoteref-15" + id="linknoteref-15"><small>15</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-16" name="linknoteref-16" + id="linknoteref-16"><small>16</small></a> 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". <a href="#linknote-17" name="linknoteref-17" + id="linknoteref-17"><small>17</small></a> + </p> + <p> + "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." <a + href="#linknote-18" name="linknoteref-18" id="linknoteref-18"><small>18</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-19" name="linknoteref-19" + id="linknoteref-19"><small>19</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-20" name="linknoteref-20" + id="linknoteref-20"><small>20</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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". <a href="#linknote-21" name="linknoteref-21" + id="linknoteref-21"><small>21</small></a> "I see no prospect of a + continuance of this Union long", wrote Stephens two days later. <a + href="#linknote-22" name="linknoteref-22" id="linknoteref-22"><small>22</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-23" name="linknoteref-23" id="linknoteref-23"><small>23</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-24" name="linknoteref-24" + id="linknoteref-24"><small>24</small></a> 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. <a + href="#linknote-25" name="linknoteref-25" id="linknoteref-25"><small>25</small></a> + "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. <a href="#linknote-26" + name="linknoteref-26" id="linknoteref-26"><small>26</small></a> 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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". <a + href="#linknote-27" name="linknoteref-27" id="linknoteref-27"><small>27</small></a> + 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". <a href="#linknote-28" name="linknoteref-28" + id="linknoteref-28"><small>28</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a + href="#linknote-29" name="linknoteref-29" id="linknoteref-29"><small>29</small></a> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-30" name="linknoteref-30" id="linknoteref-30"><small>30</small></a> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-31" name="linknoteref-31" + id="linknoteref-31"><small>31</small></a> 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-32" + name="linknoteref-32" id="linknoteref-32"><small>32</small></a> + "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. <a + href="#linknote-33" name="linknoteref-33" id="linknoteref-33"><small>33</small></a> + 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. <a href="#linknote-34" name="linknoteref-34" + id="linknoteref-34"><small>34</small></a> + </p> + <p> + In Kentucky, Crittenden's repeated messages against "disunion" and + "entangling engagements" reveal the danger seen by a Southern Union + governor. <a href="#linknote-35" name="linknoteref-35" id="linknoteref-35"><small>35</small></a> + 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". <a href="#linknote-36" + name="linknoteref-36" id="linknoteref-36"><small>36</small></a> + 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". <a href="#linknote-37" + name="linknoteref-37" id="linknoteref-37"><small>37</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-38" + name="linknoteref-38" id="linknoteref-38"><small>38</small></a> 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. <a href="#linknote-39" name="linknoteref-39" id="linknoteref-39"><small>39</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-40" name="linknoteref-40" id="linknoteref-40"><small>40</small></a> + "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." <a href="#linknote-41" + name="linknoteref-41" id="linknoteref-41"><small>41</small></a> 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. <a href="#linknote-42" + name="linknoteref-42" id="linknoteref-42"><small>42</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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". <a + href="#linknote-43" name="linknoteref-43" id="linknoteref-43"><small>43</small></a> + 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. <a href="#linknote-44" + name="linknoteref-44" id="linknoteref-44"><small>44</small></a> 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. <a href="#linknote-45" name="linknoteref-45" + id="linknoteref-45"><small>45</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a + href="#linknote-46" name="linknoteref-46" id="linknoteref-46"><small>46</small></a> + "The Nashville Convention has been blown by your giant effort to the four + winds." <a href="#linknote-47" name="linknoteref-47" id="linknoteref-47"><small>47</small></a> + "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." + <a href="#linknote-48" name="linknoteref-48" id="linknoteref-48"><small>48</small></a> + 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]." <a href="#linknote-49" + name="linknoteref-49" id="linknoteref-49"><small>49</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a + href="#linknote-50" name="linknoteref-50" id="linknoteref-50"><small>50</small></a> + 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. <a href="#linknote-51" + name="linknoteref-51" id="linknoteref-51"><small>51</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a + href="#linknote-52" name="linknoteref-52" id="linknoteref-52"><small>52</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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". <a href="#linknote-53" name="linknoteref-53" id="linknoteref-53"><small>53</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-54" + name="linknoteref-54" id="linknoteref-54"><small>54</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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". <a href="#linknote-55" name="linknoteref-55" id="linknoteref-55"><small>55</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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". <a href="#linknote-56" + name="linknoteref-56" id="linknoteref-56"><small>56</small></a> 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-57" name="linknoteref-57" + id="linknoteref-57"><small>57</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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". + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-58" name="linknoteref-58" + id="linknoteref-58"><small>58</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-59" + name="linknoteref-59" id="linknoteref-59"><small>59</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a href="#linknote-60" + name="linknoteref-60" id="linknoteref-60"><small>60</small></a> + </p> + <p> + "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. <a href="#linknote-61" name="linknoteref-61" id="linknoteref-61"><small>61</small></a> + 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. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II. + </h2> + <p> + 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: + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-62" + name="linknoteref-62" id="linknoteref-62"><small>62</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-63" name="linknoteref-63" + id="linknoteref-63"><small>63</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a + href="#linknote-64" name="linknoteref-64" id="linknoteref-64"><small>64</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-65" name="linknoteref-65" id="linknoteref-65"><small>65</small></a> + 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'". <a + href="#linknote-66" name="linknoteref-66" id="linknoteref-66"><small>66</small></a> + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. <a href="#linknote-67" + name="linknoteref-67" id="linknoteref-67"><small>67</small></a> + </p> + <p> + 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." <a + href="#linknote-68" name="linknoteref-68" id="linknoteref-68"><small>68</small></a> + On February 28, Everett recognized that "the radicals at the South have + made up their minds to separate, the catastrophe seems to be inevitable". + <a href="#linknote-69" name="linknoteref-69" id="linknoteref-69"><small>69</small></a> + </p> + <p> + On March 1, Webster recorded his determination "to make an honest, + truth-telling speech, and a Union speech" <a href="#linknote-691" + name="linknoteref-691" id="linknoteref-691"><small>691</small></a> The + Washington correspondent of the Advertiser, March 4, reported that Webster + will "take a large view of the state of things and advocate a + straightforward course of legislation essentially such as the President + has recommended". "To this point public sentiment has been gradually + converging." "It will tend greatly to confirm opinion in favor of this + course should it meet with the decided concurrence of Mr. Webster." The + attitude of the plain citizen is expressed by Barker, of Beaver, + Pennsylvania, on the same day: "do it, Mr. Webster, as you can, do it as a + bold and gifted statesman and patriot; reconcile the North and South and + PRESERVE the UNION". "Offer, Mr. Webster, a liberal compromise to the + South." On March 4 and 5, Calhoun's Senate speech reasserted that the + South, no longer safe in the Union, possessed the right of peaceable + secession. On the 6th of March, Webster went over the proposed speech of + the next morning with his son, Fletcher, Edward Curtis, and Peter Harvey. + <a href="#linknote-70" name="linknoteref-70" id="linknoteref-70"><small>70</small></a> + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III. + </h2> + <p> + It was under the cumulative stress of such convincing evidence, public and + private utterances, and acts in Southern legislatures and in Congress, + that Webster made his Union speech on the 7th of March. The purpose and + character of the speech are rightly indicated by its title, "The + Constitution and the Union", and by the significant dedication to the + people of Massachusetts: "Necessity compels me to speak true rather than + pleasing things." "I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer to + save you, whatever be your attitude toward me." <a href="#linknote-71" + name="linknoteref-71" id="linknoteref-71"><small>71</small></a> The + malignant charge that this speech was "a bid for the presidency" was long + ago discarded, even by Lodge. It unfortunately survives in text-books more + concerned with "atmosphere" than with truth. The modern investigator finds + no evidence for it and every evidence against it. Webster was both too + proud and too familiar with the political situation, North and South, to + make such a monstrous mistake. The printed or manuscript letters to or + from Webster in 1850 and 1851 show him and his friends deeply concerned + over the danger to the Union, but not about the presidency. There is + rarest mention of the matter in letters by personal or political friends; + none by Webster, so far as the writer has observed. + </p> + <p> + If one comes to the speech familiar with both the situation in 1850 as now + known, and with Webster's earlier and later speeches and private letters, + one finds his position and arguments on the 7th of March in harmony with + his attitude toward Union and slavery, and with the law and the facts. + Frankly reiterating both his earlier view of slavery "as a great moral, + political and social evil" and his lifelong devotion to the Union and its + constitutional obligations, Webster took national, practical, courageous + grounds. On the fugitive slave bill and the Wilmot Proviso, where cautious + Whigs like Winthrop and Everett were inclined to keep quiet in view of + Northern popular feeling, Webster "took a large view of things" and + resolved, as Foote saw, to risk his reputation in advocating the only + practicable solution. Not only was Webster thoroughly familiar with the + facts, but he was pre-eminently logical and, as Calhoun had admitted, once + convinced, "he cannot look truth in the face and oppose it by arguments". + <a href="#linknote-72" name="linknoteref-72" id="linknoteref-72"><small>72</small></a> + He therefore boldly faced the truth that the Wilmot Proviso (as it proved + later) was needless, and would irritate Southern Union men and play into + hands of disunionists who frankly desired to exploit this "insult" to + excite secession sentiment. In a like case ten years later, "the + Republican party took precisely the same ground held by Mr. Webster in + 1850 and acted from the motives that inspired the 7th of March speech". <a + href="#linknote-73" name="linknoteref-73" id="linknoteref-73"><small>73</small></a> + </p> + <p> + Webster's anxiety for a conciliatory settlement of the highly dangerous + Texas boundary situation (which incidentally narrowed slave territory) was + as consistent with his national Union policy, as his desires for + California's admission as a free state and for prohibition of the + slave-trade in the District of Columbia were in accord with his opposition + to slavery. Seeing both abolitionists and secessionists threatening the + Union, he rebuked both severely for disloyalty to their "constitutional + obligations", while he pleaded for a more conciliatory attitude, for faith + and charity rather than "heated imaginations". The only logical + alternative to the union policy was disunion, advocated alike by + Garrisonian abolitionists and Southern secessionists. "The Union... was + thought to be in danger, and devotion to the Union rightfully inclined men + to yield... where nothing else could have so inclined them", was Lincoln's + luminous defense of the Compromise in his debate with Douglas. <a + href="#linknote-74" name="linknoteref-74" id="linknoteref-74"><small>74</small></a> + </p> + <p> + Webster's support of the constitutional provision for "return of persons + held to service" was not merely that of a lawyer. It was in accord with a + deep and statesmanlike conviction that "obedience to established + government... is a Christian duty", the seat of law is "the bosom of God, + her voice the harmony of the universe". <a href="#linknote-75" + name="linknoteref-75" id="linknoteref-75"><small>75</small></a> Offensive + as this law was to the North, the only logical alternatives were to fulfil + or to annul the Constitution. Webster chose to risk his reputation; the + extreme abolitionists, to risk the Union. Webster felt, as his opponents + later recognized, that "the habitual cherishing of the principle", + "resistance to unjust laws is obedience to God", threatened the + Constitution. "He... addressed himself, therefore, to the duty of calling + the American people back from revolutionary theories to... submission to + authority." <a href="#linknote-76" name="linknoteref-76" + id="linknoteref-76"><small>76</small></a> As in 1830 against Haynes, so in + 1850 against Calhoun and disunion, Webster stood not as "a Massachusetts + man, but as an American", for "the preservation of the Union". <a + href="#linknote-77" name="linknoteref-77" id="linknoteref-77"><small>77</small></a> + In both speeches he held that he was acting not for Massachusetts, but for + the "whole country" (1830), "the good of the whole" (1850). His devotion + to the Union and his intellectual balance led him to reject the + impatience, bitterness, and disunion sentiments of abolitionists and + secessionists, and to work on longer lines. "We must wait for the slow + progress of moral causes", a doctrine already announced in 1840, he + reiterated in 1850,—"the effect of moral causes, though sure is + slow." <a href="#linknote-78" name="linknoteref-78" id="linknoteref-78"><small>78</small></a> + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV. + </h2> + <p> + The earlier accounts of Webster's losing his friends as a result of his + speech are at variance with the facts. Cautious Northerners naturally + hesitated to support him and face both the popular convictions on fugitive + slaves and the rasping vituperation that exhausted sacred and profane + history in the epithets current in that "era of warm journalistic + manners"; Abolitionists and Free Soilers congratulated one another that + they had "killed Webster". In Congress no Northern man save Ashmun of + Massachusetts supported him in any speech for months. On the other hand, + Webster did retain the friendship and confidence of leaders and common men + North and South, and the tremendous influence of his personality and + "unanswerable" arguments eventually swung the North for the Compromise. + From Boston came prompt expressions of "entire concurrence" in his speech + by 800 representative men, including George Ticknor, William H. Prescott, + Rufus Choate, Josiah Quincy, President Sparks and Professor Felton of + Harvard, Professors Woods, Stuart, and Emerson of Andover, and other + leading professional, literary, and business men. Similar addresses were + sent to him from about the same number of men in New York, from supporters + in Newburyport, Medford, Kennebeck River, Philadelphia, the Detroit Common + Council, Manchester, New Hampshire, and "the neighbors" in Salisbury. His + old Boston Congressional district triumphantly elected Eliot, one of + Webster's most loyal supporters, by a vote of 2,355 against 473 for + Charles Sumner. <a href="#linknote-781" name="linknoteref-781" + id="linknoteref-781"><small>781</small></a> The Massachusetts legislature + overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to instruct Webster to vote for the + Wilmot Proviso. Scores of unpublished letters in the New Hampshire + Historical Society and the Library of Congress reveal hearty approval from + both parties and all sections. Winthrop of Massachusetts, too cautious to + endorse Webster's entire position, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts + that as a result of the speech, "disunion stock is already below par". <a + href="#linknote-79" name="linknoteref-79" id="linknoteref-79"><small>79</small></a> + "You have performed the responsible duties of, a national Senator", wrote + General Dearborn. "I thank you because you did not speak upon the subject + as a Massachusetts man", said Reverend Thomas Worcester of Boston, an + overseer of Harvard. "Your speech has saved the Union", was the verdict of + Barker of Pennsylvania, a man not of Webster's party. <a + href="#linknote-80" name="linknoteref-80" id="linknoteref-80"><small>80</small></a> + "The Union threatened... you have come to the rescue, and all + disinterested lovers of that Union must rally round you", wrote Wainwright + of New York. In Alabama, Reverend J. W. Allen recognized the + "comprehensive and self-forgetting spirit of patriotism" in Webster, + "which, if followed, would save the Union, unite the country and prevent + the danger in the Nashville Convention". Like approval of Webster's + "patriotic stand for the preservation of the Union" was sent from Green + County and Greensboro in Alabama and from Tennessee and Virginia. <a + href="#linknote-81" name="linknoteref-81" id="linknoteref-81"><small>81</small></a> + "The preservation of the Union is the only safety-valve. On Webster + depends the tranquility of the country", says an anonymous writer from + Charleston, a native of Massachusetts and former pupil of Webster. <a + href="#linknote-82" name="linknoteref-82" id="linknoteref-82"><small>82</small></a> + Poinsett and Francis Lieber, South Carolina Unionists, expressed like + views. <a href="#linknote-83" name="linknoteref-83" id="linknoteref-83"><small>83</small></a> + The growing influence of the speech is testified to in letters from all + sections. Linus Child of Lowell finds it modifying his own previous + opinions and believes that "shortly if not at this moment, it will be + approved by a large majority of the people of Massachusetts". <a + href="#linknote-84" name="linknoteref-84" id="linknoteref-84"><small>84</small></a> + "Upon sober second thought, our people will generally coincide with your + views", wrote ex-Governor and ex-Mayor Armstrong of Boston. <a + href="#linknote-85" name="linknoteref-85" id="linknoteref-85"><small>85</small></a> + "Every day adds to the number of those who agree with you", is the + confirmatory testimony of Dana, trustee of Andover and former president of + Dartmouth. <a href="#linknote-86" name="linknoteref-86" id="linknoteref-86"><small>86</small></a> + "The effect of your speech begins to be felt", wrote ex-Mayor Eliot of + Boston. <a href="#linknote-87" name="linknoteref-87" id="linknoteref-87"><small>87</small></a> + Mayor Huntington of Salem at first felt the speech to be too Southern; but + "subsequent events at North and South have entirely satisfied me that you + were right... and vast numbers of others here in Massachusetts were + wrong." "The change going on in me has been going on all around me." "You + saw farther ahead than the rest or most of us and had the courage and + patriotism to stand upon the true ground." <a href="#linknote-88" + name="linknoteref-88" id="linknoteref-88"><small>88</small></a> This + significant inedited letter is but a specimen of the change of attitude + manifested in hundreds of letters from "slow and cautious Whigs". <a + href="#linknote-89" name="linknoteref-89" id="linknoteref-89"><small>89</small></a> + One of these, Edward Everett, unable to accept Webster's attitude on Texas + and the fugitive slave bill, could not "entirely concur" in the Boston + letter of approval. "I think our friend will be able to carry the weight + of it at home, but as much as ever." "It would, as you justly said," he + wrote Winthrop, "have ruined any other man." This probably gives the + position taken at first by a good many moderate anti-slavery then. + Everett's later attitude is likewise typical of a change in New England. + He wrote in 1851 that Webster's speech "more than any other cause, + contributed to avert the catastrophe", and was "a practical basis for the + adjustment of controversies, which had already gone far to dissolve the + Union". <a href="#linknote-90" name="linknoteref-90" id="linknoteref-90"><small>90</small></a> + </p> + <p> + Isaac Hill, a bitter New Hampshire political opponent, confesses that + Webster's "kindly answer" to Calhoun was wiser than his own might have + been. Hill, an experienced political observer, had feared in the month + preceding Webster's speech a "disruption of the Union" with "no chance of + escaping a conflict of blood". He felt that the censures of Webster were + undeserved, that Webster was not merely right, but had "power he can + exercise at the North, beyond any other man", and that "all that is of + value will declare in favor of the great principles of your late Union + speech". "Its tranquilizing effect upon public opinion has been + wonderful"; "it has almost the unanimous support of this community", wrote + the New York philanthropist Minturn. "The speech made a powerful + impression in this state... Men feel they can stand on it with security." + <a href="#linknote-93" name="linknoteref-93" id="linknoteref-93"><small>93</small></a> + In Cincinnati, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsfield (with + only one exception) the speech was found "wise and patriotic". <a + href="#linknote-94" name="linknoteref-94" id="linknoteref-94"><small>94</small></a> + The sender of a resolution of approval from the grand jury of the United + States court at Indianapolis says that such judgment is almost universal. + <a href="#linknote-95" name="linknoteref-95" id="linknoteref-95"><small>95</small></a> + "It is thought you may save the country.. . you may keep us still united", + wrote Thornton of Memphis, who soberly records the feeling of thoughtful + men that the Southern purpose of disunion was stronger than appeared in + either newspapers or political gatherings. <a href="#linknote-96" + name="linknoteref-96" id="linknoteref-96"><small>96</small></a> "Your + speech has disarmed-has, quieted the South; <a href="#linknote-97" + name="linknoteref-97" id="linknoteref-97"><small>97</small></a> has + rendered invaluable service to the harmony and union of the South and the + North". <a href="#linknote-98" name="linknoteref-98" id="linknoteref-98"><small>98</small></a> + "I am confident of the higher approbation, not of a single section of the + Union, but of all sections", wrote a political opponent in Washington. <a + href="#linknote-99" name="linknoteref-99" id="linknoteref-99"><small>99</small></a> + </p> + <p> + The influence of Webster in checking the radical purposes of the Nashville + Convention has been shown above. <a href="#linknote-100" + name="linknoteref-100" id="linknoteref-100"><small>100</small></a> + </p> + <p> + All classes of men from all sections show a substantial and growing + backing of Webster's 7th of March speech as "the only statesmanlike and + practicable way to save the Union". "To you, more than to any other + statesman of modern times, do the people of this country owe their + national feeling which we trust is to save this Union in this its hour of + trial", was the judgment of "the neighbors", the plain farmers of + Webster's old New Hampshire home. <a href="#linknote-101" + name="linknoteref-101" id="linknoteref-101"><small>101</small></a> Outside + of the Abolition and Free Soil press, the growing tendency in newspapers, + like that of their readers, was to support Webster's logical position. <a + href="#linknote-102" name="linknoteref-102" id="linknoteref-102"><small>102</small></a> + </p> + <p> + Exaggerated though some of these expressions of approval may have been, + they balance the exaggerated vituperation of Webster in the anti-slavery + press; and the extremes of approval and disapproval both concur in + recognizing the widespread effect of the speech. "No speech ever delivered + in Congress produced... so beneficial a change of opinion. The change of, + feeling and temperament wrought in Congress by this speech is miraculous." + <a href="#linknote-103" name="linknoteref-103" id="linknoteref-103"><small>103</small></a> + </p> + <p> + The contemporary testimony to Webster's checking of disunion is + substantiated by the conclusions of Petigru of South Carolina, Cobb of + Georgia in 1852, Allen of Pennsylvania in 1853, and by Stephens's mature + judgment of "the profound sensation upon the public mind throughout the + Union made by Webster's 7th of March speech. The friends of the Union + under the Constitution were strengthened in their hopes and inspired with + renewed energies." <a href="#linknote-104" name="linknoteref-104" + id="linknoteref-104"><small>104</small></a> In 1866 Foote wrote, "The + speech produced beneficial effects everywhere." "His statement of facts + was generally looked upon as unanswerable; his argumentative conclusions + appeared to be inevitable; his conciliatory tone.. . softened the + sensibilities of all patriots." <a href="#linknote-105" + name="linknoteref-105" id="linknoteref-105"><small>105</small></a> "He + seems to have gauged more accurately [than most] the grave dangers which + threatened the republic and... the fearful consequences which must follow + its disruption", was Henry Wilson's later and wiser judgment. <a + href="#linknote-106" name="linknoteref-106" id="linknoteref-106"><small>106</small></a> + "The general judgment," said Senator Hoar in 1899, "seems to be coming to + the conclusion that Webster differed from the friends of freedom of his + time not in a weaker moral sense, but only in a larger, and profounder + prophetic vision." "He saw what no other man saw, the certainty of civil + war. I was one of those who... judged him severely, but I have learned + better." "I think of him now... as the orator who bound fast with + indissoluble strength the bonds of union." <a href="#linknote-107" + name="linknoteref-107" id="linknoteref-107"><small>107</small></a> + </p> + <p> + Modern writers, North and South-Garrison, Chadwick, T. C. Smith, Merriam, + for instance <a href="#linknote-108" name="linknoteref-108" + id="linknoteref-108"><small>108</small></a>—now recognize the menace + of disunion in 1850 and the service of Webster in defending the Union. + Rhodes, though condemning Webster's support of the fugitive slave bill, + recognizes that the speech was one of the few that really altered public + opinion and won necessary Northern support for the Compromise. "We see now + that in the War of the Rebellion his principles were mightier than those + of Garrison." "It was not the Liberty or Abolitionist party, but the Union + party that won." <a href="#linknote-109" name="linknoteref-109" + id="linknoteref-109"><small>109</small></a> + </p> + <p> + Postponement of secession for ten years gave the North preponderance in + population, voting power, production, and transportation; new party + organization; and convictions which made man-power and economic resources + effective. The Northern lead of four million people in 1850 had increased + to seven millions by 1860. In 1850, each section had thirty votes in the + Senate; in 1860, the North had a majority of six, due to the admission of + California, Oregon, and Minnesota. In the House of Representatives, the + North had added seven to her majority. The Union states and territories + built during the decade 15,000 miles of railroad, to 7,000 or 8,000 in the + eleven seceding states. In shipping, the North in 1860 built about 800 + vessels to the seceding states' 200. In 1860, in the eleven most important + industries for war, Chadwick estimates that the Union states produced + $735,500,000; the seceding states $75,250,000, "a manufacturing + productivity eleven times as great for the North as for the South". <a + href="#linknote-110" name="linknoteref-110" id="linknoteref-110"><small>110</small></a> + In general, during the decade, the census figures for 1860 show that since + 1850 the North had increased its man-power, transportation, and economic + production from two to fifty times as fast as the South, and that in 1860 + the Union states were from two to twelve times as powerful as the seceding + states. + </p> + <p> + Possibly Southern secessionists and Northern abolitionists had some basis + for thinking that the North would let the "erring sisters depart in peace" + in 1850. Within the next ten years, however, there came a decisive change. + The North, exasperated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the high-handed + acts of Southerners in Kansas in 1856, and the Dred Scott dictum of the + Supreme Court in 1857, felt that these things amounted to a repeal of the + Missouri Compromise and the opening up of the territory to slavery. In + 1860 Northern conviction, backed by an effective, thorough party platform + on a Union basis, swept the free states. In 1850, it was a "Constitutional + Union" party that accepted the Compromise and arrested secession in the + South; and Webster, foreseeing a "remodelling of parties", had prophesied + that "there must be a Union party". <a href="#linknote-111" + name="linknoteref-111" id="linknoteref-111"><small>111</small></a> + Webster's spirit and speeches and his strengthening of federal power + through Supreme Court cases won by his arguments had helped to furnish the + conviction which underlay the Union Party of 1860 and 1964. His consistent + opposition to nullification and secession, and his appeal to the Union and + to the Constitution during twenty years preceding the Civil War—from + his reply to Hayne to his seventh of March speech—had developed a + spirit capable of making economic and political power effective. + </p> + <p> + Men inclined to sneer at Webster for his interest in manufacturing, + farming, and material prosperity, may well remember that in his mind, and + more slowly in the minds of the North, economic progress went hand in hand + with the development of union and of liberty secured by law. + </p> + <p> + Misunderstandings regarding both the political crisis and the personal + character of the man are already disappearing as fact replaces fiction, as + "truth gets a hearing", in the fine phrase of Wendell Phillips. There is + nothing about Daniel Webster to be hidden. Not moral blindness but moral + insight and sound political principles reveal themselves to the reader of + Webster's own words in public speech and unguarded private letter. One of + those great men who disdained to vindicate himself, he does not need us + but we need him and his vision that Liberty comes through Union, and + healing through cooperation, not through hate. + </p> + <p> + Whether we look to the material progress of the North from 1850 to 1860 or + to its development in "imponderables", Webster's policy and his power over + men's thoughts and deeds were essential factors in the ultimate triumph of + the Union, which would have been at least dubious had secession been + attempted in 1850. It was a soldier, not the modern orator, who first said + that "Webster shotted our guns". A letter to Senator Hoar from another + Union soldier says that he kept up his heart as he paced up and down as + sentinel in an exposed place by repeating over and over, "Liberty and + Union now and forever, one and inseparable". <a href="#linknote-112" + name="linknoteref-112" id="linknoteref-112"><small>112</small></a> Hosmer + tells us that he and his boyhood friends of the North in 1861 "did not + argue much the question of the right of secession", but that it was the + words of Webster's speeches, "as familiar to us as the sentences of the + Lord's prayer and scarcely less consecrated,... with which we sprang to + battle". Those boys were not ready in 1850. The decisive human factors in + the Civil War were the men bred on the profound devotion to the Union + which Webster shared with others equally patriotic, but less profoundly + logical, less able to mould public opinion. Webster not only saw the + vision himself; he had the genius to make the plain American citizen see + that liberty could come through union and not through disunion. Moreover, + there was in Webster and the Compromise of 1850 a spirit of conciliation, + and therefore there was on the part of the North a belief that they had + given the South a "square deal", and a corresponding indignation at the + attempts in the next decade to expand slavery by violating the Compromises + of 1820 and 1850. So, by 1860, the decisive border states and Northwest + were ready to stand behind the Union. + </p> + <p> + When Lincoln, born in a border state, coming to manhood in the Northwest, + and bred on Webster's doctrine,—"the Union is paramount",—accepted + for the second time the Republican nomination and platform, he summed up + the issues of the war, as he had done before, in Webster's words. Lincoln, + who had grown as masterly in his choice of words as he had become profound + in his vision of issues, used in 1864 not the more familiar and rhetorical + phrases of the reply to Hayne, but the briefer, more incisive form, + "Liberty and Union", of Webster's "honest, truth-telling, Union speech" on + the 7th of March, 1850. <a href="#linknote-113" name="linknoteref-113" + id="linknoteref-113"><small>113</small></a> + </p> + <p> + HERBERT DARLING FOSTER. <a name="link2H_FOOT" id="link2H_FOOT"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + FOOTNOTES: + </h2> + <p> + <a name="linknote-1" id="linknote-1"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 1 (<a href="#linknoteref-1">return</a>)<br /> [ Cf. Parton with Lodge on + intellect, morals, indolence, drinking, 7th of March speech, Webster's + favorite things in England; references, note 63, below.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-2" id="linknote-2"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 2 (<a href="#linknoteref-2">return</a>)<br /> [ In the preparation of this + article, manuscripts have been used from the following collections: the + Greenough, Hammond, and Clayton (Library of Congress); Winthrop and + Appleton (Mass. Hist. Soc.); Garrison (Boston Public Library); N.H. Hist. + Soc.; Dartmouth College; Middletown (Conn.) Hist. Soc.; Mrs. Alfred E. + Wyman.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-3" id="linknote-3"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 3 (<a href="#linknoteref-3">return</a>)<br /> [ Bennett, Dec. 1, 1848, to + Partridge, Norwich University. MS. Dartmouth.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-4" id="linknote-4"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 4 (<a href="#linknoteref-4">return</a>)<br /> [ Houston, Nullification in + South Carolina, p. 141. Further evidence of Webster's thesis that + abolitionists had developed Southern reaction in Phillips, South in the + Building of the Nation, IV, 401-403; and unpublished letters approving + Webster's speech.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-5" id="linknote-5"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 5 (<a href="#linknoteref-5">return</a>)<br /> [ Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. + Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol 11.), pp. 1193-1194.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-6" id="linknote-6"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 6 (<a href="#linknoteref-6">return</a>)<br /> [ To Crittenden, Dec. 20, + 1849, Smith, polit. Hist. Slavery, I. 122; Winthrop MSS., Jan. 6, 1850.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-7" id="linknote-7"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 7 (<a href="#linknoteref-7">return</a>)<br /> [ Calhoun, Corr., p. 781; cf. + 764-766, 778, 780, 783-784.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-8" id="linknote-8"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 8 (<a href="#linknoteref-8">return</a>)<br /> [ Cong. Globe, XXI. 451-455, + 463; Corr., p. 784. On Calhoun's attitude, Ames, Calhoun, pp. 6-7; + Stephenson, in Yale Review, 1919, p. 216; Newbury in South Atlantic + Quarterly, XI. 259; Hamer, Secession Movement in South Carolina, + 1847-1852, pp. 49-54.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-9" id="linknote-9"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 9 (<a href="#linknoteref-9">return</a>)<br /> [ Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. + Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol. II), pp. 1210-1212; Toombs, Corr., (id., + 1911, vol. II), pp. 188, 217; Coleman, Crittenden, I. 363; Hamer, pp. + 55-56, 46-48, 54, 82-83; Ames, Calhoun, pp. 21-22, 29; Claiborne, Quitman, + H. 36-39.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-10" id="linknote-10"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 10 (<a href="#linknoteref-10">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearon, Miss. and the + Compromise of 1850, p. 209.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-11" id="linknote-11"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 11 (<a href="#linknoteref-11">return</a>)<br /> [ A letter to Webster, Oct. + 22, 1851, Greenough MSS., shows the strength of Calhoun's secession ideas. + Hamer, p. 125, quotes part.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-12" id="linknote-12"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 12 (<a href="#linknoteref-12">return</a>)<br /> [ Hamer, p. 142; Hearon, p. + 220.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-13" id="linknote-13"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 13 (<a href="#linknoteref-13">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 6, 1850. Laws + (Miss.), pp. 521-526.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-14" id="linknote-14"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 14 (<a href="#linknoteref-14">return</a>)<br /> [ Claiborne, Quitman, IL + 37; Hearon, p. 161 n.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-15" id="linknote-15"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 15 (<a href="#linknoteref-15">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearon, pp. 180-181; + Claiborne, Quitman, II. 51-52.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-16" id="linknote-16"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 16 (<a href="#linknoteref-16">return</a>)<br /> [ Nov. 10, 1850, Hearon, + pp. 178-180; 1851, pp. 209-212.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-17" id="linknote-17"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 17 (<a href="#linknoteref-17">return</a>)<br /> [ Dec. 10, Southern Rights + Assoc. Hearon, pp. 183-187.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-18" id="linknote-18"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 18 (<a href="#linknoteref-18">return</a>)<br /> [ Claiborne, Quitman, II. + 52.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-19" id="linknote-19"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 19 (<a href="#linknoteref-19">return</a>)<br /> [ July 1, 1849. Corr., p. + 170 (Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report, 1911, vol. II.).] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-20" id="linknote-20"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 20 (<a href="#linknoteref-20">return</a>)<br /> [ Johnston, Stephens, pp. + 238-239, 244; Smith, Political History of Slavery, 1. 121.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-21" id="linknote-21"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 21 (<a href="#linknoteref-21">return</a>)<br /> [ Laws (Ga.), 1850, pp. + 122, 405-410.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-22" id="linknote-22"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 22 (<a href="#linknoteref-22">return</a>)<br /> [ Johnston, Stephens, p. + 247.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-23" id="linknote-23"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 23 (<a href="#linknoteref-23">return</a>)<br /> [ Corr., pp. 184,193-195, + 206-208, July 21. Newspapers, see Brooks, in Miss. Valley Hist. Review, + IX. 289.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-24" id="linknote-24"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 24 (<a href="#linknoteref-24">return</a>)<br /> [ Phillips, Georgia and + State Rights, pp. 163-166.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-25" id="linknote-25"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 25 (<a href="#linknoteref-25">return</a>)<br /> [ Ames, Documents, pp. + 271-272; Hearon, p. 190.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-26" id="linknote-26"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 26 (<a href="#linknoteref-26">return</a>)<br /> [ 1854, Amer. Hist. Review, + VIII. 92-97; 1857, Johnston, Stephens, pp. 321-322; infra, pp. 267, 268.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-27" id="linknote-27"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 27 (<a href="#linknoteref-27">return</a>)<br /> [ Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, + Feb. 8; Virginia Resolves, Feb. 12; Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia, p. + 246; N. Y. Tribune, June 14; M. R. H. Garnett, Union Past and Future, + published between Jan. 24 and Mar. 7. Alabama: Hodgson, Cradle of the + Confederacy, p. 281; Dubose, Yancey, pp. 247-249, 481; Fleming, Civil War + and Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 13; Cobb, Corr., pp. 193-195, 207. + President Tyler of the College of William and Mary kindly furnished + evidence of Garnett's authorship; see J. M. Garnett, in Southern Literary + Messenger, I. 255.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-28" id="linknote-28"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 28 (<a href="#linknoteref-28">return</a>)<br /> [ Resolutions, Feb. 12, + 1850; Acts, 1850, pp. 223-224; 1851, p. 201.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-29" id="linknote-29"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 29 (<a href="#linknoteref-29">return</a>)<br /> [ Stephens, Corr., p. 192; + Globe, XXII. II. 1208.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-30" id="linknote-30"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 30 (<a href="#linknoteref-30">return</a>)<br /> [ Boston Daily Advertiser, + Feb. 23.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-31" id="linknote-31"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 31 (<a href="#linknoteref-31">return</a>)<br /> [ South Carolina, Acts, + 1849, p, 240, and the following Laws or Acts, all 1850: Georgia, pp. 418, + 405-410, 122; Texas, pp. 93-94, 171; Tennessee, p. 572 (Globe, XXI. I. + 417. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 161); Mississippi, pp. 526-528; + Virginia, p. 233; Alabama, Weekly Tribune, Feb. 23, Daily, Feb. 25.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-32" id="linknote-32"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 32 (<a href="#linknoteref-32">return</a>)<br /> [ White, Miss. Valley Hist. + Assoc., III. 283.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-33" id="linknote-33"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 33 (<a href="#linknoteref-33">return</a>)<br /> [ Senate Miscellaneous, + 1849-1850, no. 24.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-34" id="linknote-34"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 34 (<a href="#linknoteref-34">return</a>)<br /> [ Hamer, p. 40; cf. Cole, + Whig Party in the South, p. 162; Cong. Globe, Mar. 5.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-35" id="linknote-35"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 35 (<a href="#linknoteref-35">return</a>)<br /> [ Coleman, Crittenden, I. + 333, 350.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-36" id="linknote-36"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 36 (<a href="#linknoteref-36">return</a>)<br /> [ Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf. + Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-37" id="linknote-37"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 37 (<a href="#linknoteref-37">return</a>)<br /> [ Smith, History of + Slavery, 1. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851, letter, in Curtis, Webster, II, + 584-585.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-38" id="linknote-38"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 38 (<a href="#linknoteref-38">return</a>)<br /> [ Clingman, and Wilmington + Resolutions, Globe, XXI. I. 200-205, 311; National Intelligencer, Feb. 25; + Cobb, Corr., pp. 217-218; Boyd, "North Carolina on the Eve of Secession," + in Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1910), pp. 167-177.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-39" id="linknote-39"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 39 (<a href="#linknoteref-39">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearndon, Nashville + Convention, p. 283.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-40" id="linknote-40"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 40 (<a href="#linknoteref-40">return</a>)<br /> [ Johnston, Stephens, p. + 247; Corr., pp. 186, 193, 194, 206-207; Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-41" id="linknote-41"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 41 (<a href="#linknoteref-41">return</a>)<br /> [ Ames, Calhoun, p. 26.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-42" id="linknote-42"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 42 (<a href="#linknoteref-42">return</a>)<br /> [ Webster, Writings and + Speeches, X. 161-162.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-43" id="linknote-43"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 43 (<a href="#linknoteref-43">return</a>)<br /> [ Cyclopedia Miss. Hist., + art. "Sharkey."] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-44" id="linknote-44"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 44 (<a href="#linknoteref-44">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearon, pp. 124, 171-174. + Davis to Clayton (Clayton MSS.), Nov. 22, 1851.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-45" id="linknote-45"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 45 (<a href="#linknoteref-45">return</a>)<br /> [ Globe, XXI. I. 418, 124, + 712; infra, p. 268.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-46" id="linknote-46"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 46 (<a href="#linknoteref-46">return</a>)<br /> [ MSS., Mar. 10. AM. HIST. + REV., voL. xxvii.—18.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-47" id="linknote-47"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 47 (<a href="#linknoteref-47">return</a>)<br /> [ Anstell, Bethlehem, May + 21, Greenough Collection.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-48" id="linknote-48"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 48 (<a href="#linknoteref-48">return</a>)<br /> [ Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8, + ibid.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-49" id="linknote-49"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 49 (<a href="#linknoteref-49">return</a>)<br /> [ Goode, Hunter Corr., + Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1916, vol. II.), p. 111.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-50" id="linknote-50"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 50 (<a href="#linknoteref-50">return</a>)<br /> [ Ames, Calhoun, pp. + 24-27.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-51" id="linknote-51"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 51 (<a href="#linknoteref-51">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearon, pp. 120-123; + Anonymous, Letter on Southern Wrongs. .. in Reply to Grayson (Charleston, + 1850).] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-52" id="linknote-52"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 52 (<a href="#linknoteref-52">return</a>)<br /> [ Letters, II. 111, 121, + 127.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-53" id="linknote-53"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 53 (<a href="#linknoteref-53">return</a>)<br /> [ Winthrop MSS., Jan. 16, + Feb. 7.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-54" id="linknote-54"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 54 (<a href="#linknoteref-54">return</a>)<br /> [ Philadelphia Bulletin, in + McMaster, VIII. 15.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-55" id="linknote-55"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 55 (<a href="#linknoteref-55">return</a>)<br /> [ Winthrop MSS., Feb. 10, + 6.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-56" id="linknote-56"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 56 (<a href="#linknoteref-56">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, + XVI. 533; XVIII. 355.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-57" id="linknote-57"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 57 (<a href="#linknoteref-57">return</a>)<br /> [ Stephens, War between the + States, II. 201-205, 232; Cong. Globe, XXI. I. 375-384.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-58" id="linknote-58"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 58 (<a href="#linknoteref-58">return</a>)<br /> [ Thurlow Weed, Life, II. + 177-178, 180-181 (Gen. Pleasanton's confirmatory letter). Wilson, Slave + Power, II. 249. Both corroborated by Hamline letter Rhodes, I. 134. + Stephens's letters, N. Y. Herald, July 13, Aug, 8, 1876, denying + threatening language used by Taylor "in my presence," do not nullify + evidence of Taylor's attitude. Mann, Life, p. 292. Private Washington + letter, Feb. 23, reporting interview, N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 25.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-59" id="linknote-59"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 59 (<a href="#linknoteref-59">return</a>)<br /> [ Weekly Tribune, Mar. 2, + reprinted from Daily, Feb. 27. Cf. Washington National Intelligencer, Feb. + 21, quoting: Richmond Enquirer; Wilmington Commercial; Columbia + Telegraph.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-60" id="linknote-60"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 60 (<a href="#linknoteref-60">return</a>)<br /> [ New York Herald, Feb. 25; + Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 26.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-61" id="linknote-61"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 61 (<a href="#linknoteref-61">return</a>)<br /> [ Tribune, Feb. 25.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-62" id="linknote-62"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 62 (<a href="#linknoteref-62">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, + XVI. 534.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-63" id="linknote-63"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 63 (<a href="#linknoteref-63">return</a>)<br /> [ Lodge's reproduction of + Parton, pp. 16-17, 98, 195, 325-326, 349, 353, 356, 360. Other errors in + Lodge's Webster, pp. 45, 314, 322, 328, 329-330, 352.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-64" id="linknote-64"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 64 (<a href="#linknoteref-64">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, + XVIII. 356, 387; XVI. 542, W; X. 116; Curtis, Life II. 596; XIII. 434.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-65" id="linknote-65"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 65 (<a href="#linknoteref-65">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 19, Cong. Globe, + XXII. II. 1063.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-66" id="linknote-66"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 66 (<a href="#linknoteref-66">return</a>)<br /> [ Aug. 12, ibid., p. 1562.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-67" id="linknote-67"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 67 (<a href="#linknoteref-67">return</a>)<br /> [ U. S. Bonds (1867). About + 112-113, Dec., Jan., Feb., 1850; "inactive" before Webster's speech; + "firmer," Mar. 8; advanced to 117, 119, May; 116-117 after Compromise.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-68" id="linknote-68"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 68 (<a href="#linknoteref-68">return</a>)<br /> [ E. P. Wheeler, Sixty + Years of American Life, p. 6; cf. Webster's Buffalo Speech, Curtis, Life, + II. 576; Weed, Autobiography, p. 596.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-69" id="linknote-69"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 69 (<a href="#linknoteref-69">return</a>)<br /> [ Winthrop MSS.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-691" id="linknote-691"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 691 (<a href="#linknoteref-691">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, + XVI. 534-5.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-70" id="linknote-70"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 70 (<a href="#linknoteref-70">return</a>)<br /> [ Webster to Harvey, Apr. + 7, MS. Middletown (Conn.) Hist. Soc., adds Fletcher's name. Received + through the kindness of Professor George M. Dutcher.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-71" id="linknote-71"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 71 (<a href="#linknoteref-71">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, X. + 57; "Notes for the Speech," 281-291; Winthrop MSS., Apr. 3.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-72" id="linknote-72"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 72 (<a href="#linknoteref-72">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, + XVIII. 371-372.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-73" id="linknote-73"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 73 (<a href="#linknoteref-73">return</a>)<br /> [ Blaine, Twenty Years of + Congress, I. 269-271.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-74" id="linknote-74"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 74 (<a href="#linknoteref-74">return</a>)<br /> [ Works, II. 202-203.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-75" id="linknote-75"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 75 (<a href="#linknoteref-75">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, + XVI. 580-581.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-76" id="linknote-76"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 76 (<a href="#linknoteref-76">return</a>)<br /> [ Seward, Works, III. + 111-116.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-77" id="linknote-77"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 77 (<a href="#linknoteref-77">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, X. + 57, 97.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-78" id="linknote-78"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 78 (<a href="#linknoteref-78">return</a>)<br /> [ Ibid., XIII. 595; X. 65.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-781" id="linknote-781"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 781 (<a href="#linknoteref-781">return</a>)<br /> [ Garrison childishly + printed Eliot's name upside down, and between black lines, Liberator, + Sept. 20.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-79" id="linknote-79"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 79 (<a href="#linknoteref-79">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 10. MS., "Private," + to Governor Clifford.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-80" id="linknote-80"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 80 (<a href="#linknoteref-80">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar 11, Apr. 13. Webster + papers, N.H. Hist. Soc., cited hereafter as "N.H.".] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-81" id="linknote-81"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 81 (<a href="#linknoteref-81">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 11, 25, 22, 17, 26, + 28, Greenough Collection, hereafter as "Greenough."] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-82" id="linknote-82"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 82 (<a href="#linknoteref-82">return</a>)<br /> [ May 20. N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-83" id="linknote-83"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 83 (<a href="#linknoteref-83">return</a>)<br /> [ Apr. 19, May 4. N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-84" id="linknote-84"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 84 (<a href="#linknoteref-84">return</a>)<br /> [ Apr. 1. Greenough.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-85" id="linknote-85"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 85 (<a href="#linknoteref-85">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, + XVIII. 357.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-86" id="linknote-86"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 86 (<a href="#linknoteref-86">return</a>)<br /> [ Apr. 19. N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-87" id="linknote-87"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 87 (<a href="#linknoteref-87">return</a>)<br /> [ June 12. N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-88" id="linknote-88"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 88 (<a href="#linknoteref-88">return</a>)<br /> [ Dec. 13. N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-89" id="linknote-89"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 89 (<a href="#linknoteref-89">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and SPeeches, + XVI. 582.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-90" id="linknote-90"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 90 (<a href="#linknoteref-90">return</a>)<br /> [ Winthrop MSS., Mar. 21 + and Apr. 10, 1850, Nov. 1951; Curtis, Life, II. 580; Everett's Memoir; + Webster's Works (1851), I. clvii.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-93" id="linknote-93"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 93 (<a href="#linknoteref-93">return</a>)<br /> [ Barnard, Albany, Apr. 19. + N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-94" id="linknote-94"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 94 (<a href="#linknoteref-94">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 15, 28. N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-95" id="linknote-95"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 95 (<a href="#linknoteref-95">return</a>)<br /> [ June 10. Greenough. ] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-96" id="linknote-96"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 96 (<a href="#linknoteref-96">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 28. Greenough.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-97" id="linknote-97"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 97 (<a href="#linknoteref-97">return</a>)<br /> [ H. L Anderson, Tenn., + Apr. 8. Greenough. ] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-98" id="linknote-98"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 98 (<a href="#linknoteref-98">return</a>)<br /> [ Nelson, Va., May 2. N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-99" id="linknote-99"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 99 (<a href="#linknoteref-99">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 8. Greenough.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-100" id="linknote-100"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 100 (<a href="#linknoteref-100">return</a>)<br /> [ Pp. 17-20.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-101" id="linknote-101"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 101 (<a href="#linknoteref-101">return</a>)<br /> [ August, 1850; 127 + signatures. N.H.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-102" id="linknote-102"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 102 (<a href="#linknoteref-102">return</a>)<br /> [ Ogg, Webster, p. 379; + Rhodes, I. 157-58.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-103" id="linknote-103"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 103 (<a href="#linknoteref-103">return</a>)<br /> [ New York Journal of + Commerce, Boston Advertiser, Richmond Whig Mar. 12; Baltimore Sun, Mar. + 18; Ames, Calhoun, p. 25; Boston Watchman and Reflector, in Liberator, + Apr. 1.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-104" id="linknote-104"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 104 (<a href="#linknoteref-104">return</a>)<br /> [ War between the States, + II. 211.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-105" id="linknote-105"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 105 (<a href="#linknoteref-105">return</a>)<br /> [ War of the Rebellion + (1866), pp. 130-131.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-106" id="linknote-106"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 106 (<a href="#linknoteref-106">return</a>)<br /> [ Slave Power, II. 246.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-107" id="linknote-107"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 107 (<a href="#linknoteref-107">return</a>)<br /> [ Scribner's Magazine + XXVI. 84.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-108" id="linknote-108"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 108 (<a href="#linknoteref-108">return</a>)<br /> [ Garrison, Westward + Expansion, pp. 327-332; Chadwick, The Causes of the Civil War, pp. 49-51; + Smith, Parties and Slavery, p. 9; Merriam, Life of Bowles, I. 81.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-109" id="linknote-109"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 109 (<a href="#linknoteref-109">return</a>)<br /> [ Rhodes, I. 157, 161.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-110" id="linknote-110"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 110 (<a href="#linknoteref-110">return</a>)<br /> [ Preliminary Report, + Eighth Census, 1860; Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, p. 28.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-111" id="linknote-111"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 111 (<a href="#linknoteref-111">return</a>)<br /> [ Oct. 2, 1950. Writings + and Speeches, XVI. 568-569.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-112" id="linknote-112"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 112 (<a href="#linknoteref-112">return</a>)<br /> [ Scribner, XXVI. 84; + American Law Review, XXXV. 804.] + </p> + <p> + <a name="linknote-113" id="linknote-113"> + <!-- Note --></a> + </p> + <p class="foot"> + 113 (<a href="#linknoteref-113">return</a>)<br /> [ Nicolay and Hay, IX. + 76.] + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and +the Secession Movement, by Herbert Darling Foster + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEBSTER'S SPEECH *** + +***** This file should be named 1663-h.htm or 1663-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/6/1663/ + +Produced by Dianne Bean, and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement + +Author: Herbert Darling Foster + +Commentator: Nathaniel Wright Stephenson + +Posting Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1663] +Release Date: March, 1999 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEBSTER'S SPEECH *** + + + + +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] + +On March 1, Webster recorded his determination "to make an honest, +truth-telling speech, and a Union speech" [691] The Washington +correspondent of the Advertiser, March 4, reported that Webster will +"take a large view of the state of things and advocate a straightforward +course of legislation essentially such as the President has +recommended". "To this point public sentiment has been gradually +converging." "It will tend greatly to confirm opinion in favor of this +course should it meet with the decided concurrence of Mr. Webster." +The attitude of the plain citizen is expressed by Barker, of Beaver, +Pennsylvania, on the same day: "do it, Mr. Webster, as you can, do it as +a bold and gifted statesman and patriot; reconcile the North and South +and PRESERVE the UNION". "Offer, Mr. Webster, a liberal compromise to +the South." On March 4 and 5, Calhoun's Senate speech reasserted that +the South, no longer safe in the Union, possessed the right of peaceable +secession. On the 6th of March, Webster went over the proposed speech +of the next morning with his son, Fletcher, Edward Curtis, and Peter +Harvey. [70] + + + + +III. + +It was under the cumulative stress of such convincing evidence, public +and private utterances, and acts in Southern legislatures and in +Congress, that Webster made his Union speech on the 7th of March. The +purpose and character of the speech are rightly indicated by its title, +"The Constitution and the Union", and by the significant dedication to +the people of Massachusetts: "Necessity compels me to speak true rather +than pleasing things." "I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer +to save you, whatever be your attitude toward me." [71] The malignant +charge that this speech was "a bid for the presidency" was long ago +discarded, even by Lodge. It unfortunately survives in text-books more +concerned with "atmosphere" than with truth. The modern investigator +finds no evidence for it and every evidence against it. Webster was +both too proud and too familiar with the political situation, North +and South, to make such a monstrous mistake. The printed or manuscript +letters to or from Webster in 1850 and 1851 show him and his friends +deeply concerned over the danger to the Union, but not about the +presidency. There is rarest mention of the matter in letters by +personal or political friends; none by Webster, so far as the writer has +observed. + +If one comes to the speech familiar with both the situation in 1850 as +now known, and with Webster's earlier and later speeches and private +letters, one finds his position and arguments on the 7th of March in +harmony with his attitude toward Union and slavery, and with the law and +the facts. Frankly reiterating both his earlier view of slavery "as a +great moral, political and social evil" and his lifelong devotion to +the Union and its constitutional obligations, Webster took national, +practical, courageous grounds. On the fugitive slave bill and the Wilmot +Proviso, where cautious Whigs like Winthrop and Everett were inclined +to keep quiet in view of Northern popular feeling, Webster "took a large +view of things" and resolved, as Foote saw, to risk his reputation +in advocating the only practicable solution. Not only was Webster +thoroughly familiar with the facts, but he was pre-eminently logical +and, as Calhoun had admitted, once convinced, "he cannot look truth in +the face and oppose it by arguments". [72] He therefore boldly faced +the truth that the Wilmot Proviso (as it proved later) was needless, and +would irritate Southern Union men and play into hands of disunionists +who frankly desired to exploit this "insult" to excite secession +sentiment. In a like case ten years later, "the Republican party took +precisely the same ground held by Mr. Webster in 1850 and acted from the +motives that inspired the 7th of March speech". [73] + +Webster's anxiety for a conciliatory settlement of the highly dangerous +Texas boundary situation (which incidentally narrowed slave territory) +was as consistent with his national Union policy, as his desires for +California's admission as a free state and for prohibition of the +slave-trade in the District of Columbia were in accord with his +opposition to slavery. Seeing both abolitionists and secessionists +threatening the Union, he rebuked both severely for disloyalty to their +"constitutional obligations", while he pleaded for a more conciliatory +attitude, for faith and charity rather than "heated imaginations". The +only logical alternative to the union policy was disunion, advocated +alike by Garrisonian abolitionists and Southern secessionists. "The +Union... was thought to be in danger, and devotion to the Union +rightfully inclined men to yield... where nothing else could have so +inclined them", was Lincoln's luminous defense of the Compromise in his +debate with Douglas. [74] + +Webster's support of the constitutional provision for "return of persons +held to service" was not merely that of a lawyer. It was in accord +with a deep and statesmanlike conviction that "obedience to established +government... is a Christian duty", the seat of law is "the bosom of +God, her voice the harmony of the universe". [75] Offensive as this law +was to the North, the only logical alternatives were to fulfil or +to annul the Constitution. Webster chose to risk his reputation; the +extreme abolitionists, to risk the Union. Webster felt, as his opponents +later recognized, that "the habitual cherishing of the principle", +"resistance to unjust laws is obedience to God", threatened the +Constitution. "He... addressed himself, therefore, to the duty of +calling the American people back from revolutionary theories to... +submission to authority." [76] As in 1830 against Haynes, so in 1850 +against Calhoun and disunion, Webster stood not as "a Massachusetts man, +but as an American", for "the preservation of the Union". [77] In both +speeches he held that he was acting not for Massachusetts, but for the +"whole country" (1830), "the good of the whole" (1850). His devotion to +the Union and his intellectual balance led him to reject the impatience, +bitterness, and disunion sentiments of abolitionists and secessionists, +and to work on longer lines. "We must wait for the slow progress of +moral causes", a doctrine already announced in 1840, he reiterated in +1850,--"the effect of moral causes, though sure is slow." [78] + + + + +IV. + +The earlier accounts of Webster's losing his friends as a result of his +speech are at variance with the facts. Cautious Northerners naturally +hesitated to support him and face both the popular convictions on +fugitive slaves and the rasping vituperation that exhausted sacred +and profane history in the epithets current in that "era of warm +journalistic manners"; Abolitionists and Free Soilers congratulated one +another that they had "killed Webster". In Congress no Northern man save +Ashmun of Massachusetts supported him in any speech for months. On the +other hand, Webster did retain the friendship and confidence of leaders +and common men North and South, and the tremendous influence of his +personality and "unanswerable" arguments eventually swung the North +for the Compromise. From Boston came prompt expressions of "entire +concurrence" in his speech by 800 representative men, including George +Ticknor, William H. Prescott, Rufus Choate, Josiah Quincy, President +Sparks and Professor Felton of Harvard, Professors Woods, Stuart, +and Emerson of Andover, and other leading professional, literary, and +business men. Similar addresses were sent to him from about the same +number of men in New York, from supporters in Newburyport, Medford, +Kennebeck River, Philadelphia, the Detroit Common Council, Manchester, +New Hampshire, and "the neighbors" in Salisbury. His old Boston +Congressional district triumphantly elected Eliot, one of Webster's most +loyal supporters, by a vote of 2,355 against 473 for Charles Sumner. +[781] The Massachusetts legislature overwhelmingly defeated a +proposal to instruct Webster to vote for the Wilmot Proviso. Scores +of unpublished letters in the New Hampshire Historical Society and the +Library of Congress reveal hearty approval from both parties and all +sections. Winthrop of Massachusetts, too cautious to endorse Webster's +entire position, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts that as a result +of the speech, "disunion stock is already below par". [79] "You have +performed the responsible duties of, a national Senator", wrote General +Dearborn. "I thank you because you did not speak upon the subject as +a Massachusetts man", said Reverend Thomas Worcester of Boston, an +overseer of Harvard. "Your speech has saved the Union", was the verdict +of Barker of Pennsylvania, a man not of Webster's party. [80] "The Union +threatened... you have come to the rescue, and all disinterested lovers +of that Union must rally round you", wrote Wainwright of New York. +In Alabama, Reverend J. W. Allen recognized the "comprehensive and +self-forgetting spirit of patriotism" in Webster, "which, if followed, +would save the Union, unite the country and prevent the danger in the +Nashville Convention". Like approval of Webster's "patriotic stand for +the preservation of the Union" was sent from Green County and Greensboro +in Alabama and from Tennessee and Virginia. [81] "The preservation of +the Union is the only safety-valve. On Webster depends the tranquility +of the country", says an anonymous writer from Charleston, a native of +Massachusetts and former pupil of Webster. [82] Poinsett and Francis +Lieber, South Carolina Unionists, expressed like views. [83] The growing +influence of the speech is testified to in letters from all sections. +Linus Child of Lowell finds it modifying his own previous opinions and +believes that "shortly if not at this moment, it will be approved by a +large majority of the people of Massachusetts". [84] "Upon sober second +thought, our people will generally coincide with your views", wrote +ex-Governor and ex-Mayor Armstrong of Boston. [85] "Every day adds to +the number of those who agree with you", is the confirmatory testimony +of Dana, trustee of Andover and former president of Dartmouth. [86] +"The effect of your speech begins to be felt", wrote ex-Mayor Eliot of +Boston. [87] Mayor Huntington of Salem at first felt the speech to be +too Southern; but "subsequent events at North and South have entirely +satisfied me that you were right... and vast numbers of others here in +Massachusetts were wrong." "The change going on in me has been going on +all around me." "You saw farther ahead than the rest or most of us and +had the courage and patriotism to stand upon the true ground." [88] This +significant inedited letter is but a specimen of the change of attitude +manifested in hundreds of letters from "slow and cautious Whigs". [89] +One of these, Edward Everett, unable to accept Webster's attitude on +Texas and the fugitive slave bill, could not "entirely concur" in the +Boston letter of approval. "I think our friend will be able to carry +the weight of it at home, but as much as ever." "It would, as you justly +said," he wrote Winthrop, "have ruined any other man." This probably +gives the position taken at first by a good many moderate anti-slavery +then. Everett's later attitude is likewise typical of a change in New +England. He wrote in 1851 that Webster's speech "more than any other +cause, contributed to avert the catastrophe", and was "a practical +basis for the adjustment of controversies, which had already gone far to +dissolve the Union". [90] + +Isaac Hill, a bitter New Hampshire political opponent, confesses that +Webster's "kindly answer" to Calhoun was wiser than his own might have +been. Hill, an experienced political observer, had feared in the month +preceding Webster's speech a "disruption of the Union" with "no chance +of escaping a conflict of blood". He felt that the censures of Webster +were undeserved, that Webster was not merely right, but had "power he +can exercise at the North, beyond any other man", and that "all that +is of value will declare in favor of the great principles of your late +Union speech". "Its tranquilizing effect upon public opinion +has been wonderful"; "it has almost the unanimous support of this +community", wrote the New York philanthropist Minturn. "The speech +made a powerful impression in this state... Men feel they can stand +on it with security." [93] In Cincinnati, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New +York, and Pittsfield (with only one exception) the speech was found +"wise and patriotic". [94] The sender of a resolution of approval from +the grand jury of the United States court at Indianapolis says that +such judgment is almost universal. [95] "It is thought you may save the +country.. . you may keep us still united", wrote Thornton of Memphis, +who soberly records the feeling of thoughtful men that the Southern +purpose of disunion was stronger than appeared in either newspapers or +political gatherings. [96] "Your speech has disarmed-has, quieted the +South; [97] has rendered invaluable service to the harmony and union +of the South and the North". [98] "I am confident of the higher +approbation, not of a single section of the Union, but of all sections", +wrote a political opponent in Washington. [99] + +The influence of Webster in checking the radical purposes of the +Nashville Convention has been shown above. [100] + +All classes of men from all sections show a substantial and growing +backing of Webster's 7th of March speech as "the only statesmanlike +and practicable way to save the Union". "To you, more than to any other +statesman of modern times, do the people of this country owe their +national feeling which we trust is to save this Union in this its hour +of trial", was the judgment of "the neighbors", the plain farmers of +Webster's old New Hampshire home. [101] Outside of the Abolition and +Free Soil press, the growing tendency in newspapers, like that of their +readers, was to support Webster's logical position. [102] + +Exaggerated though some of these expressions of approval may have been, +they balance the exaggerated vituperation of Webster in the anti-slavery +press; and the extremes of approval and disapproval both concur in +recognizing the widespread effect of the speech. "No speech ever +delivered in Congress produced... so beneficial a change of opinion. The +change of, feeling and temperament wrought in Congress by this speech is +miraculous." [103] + +The contemporary testimony to Webster's checking of disunion is +substantiated by the conclusions of Petigru of South Carolina, Cobb of +Georgia in 1852, Allen of Pennsylvania in 1853, and by Stephens's mature +judgment of "the profound sensation upon the public mind throughout the +Union made by Webster's 7th of March speech. The friends of the Union +under the Constitution were strengthened in their hopes and inspired +with renewed energies." [104] In 1866 Foote wrote, "The speech produced +beneficial effects everywhere." "His statement of facts was generally +looked upon as unanswerable; his argumentative conclusions appeared to +be inevitable; his conciliatory tone.. . softened the sensibilities +of all patriots." [105] "He seems to have gauged more accurately [than +most] the grave dangers which threatened the republic and... the fearful +consequences which must follow its disruption", was Henry Wilson's later +and wiser judgment. [106] "The general judgment," said Senator Hoar in +1899, "seems to be coming to the conclusion that Webster differed from +the friends of freedom of his time not in a weaker moral sense, but only +in a larger, and profounder prophetic vision." "He saw what no other man +saw, the certainty of civil war. I was one of those who... judged him +severely, but I have learned better." "I think of him now... as the +orator who bound fast with indissoluble strength the bonds of union." +[107] + +Modern writers, North and South-Garrison, Chadwick, T. C. Smith, +Merriam, for instance [108]--now recognize the menace of disunion in +1850 and the service of Webster in defending the Union. Rhodes, though +condemning Webster's support of the fugitive slave bill, recognizes that +the speech was one of the few that really altered public opinion and won +necessary Northern support for the Compromise. "We see now that in +the War of the Rebellion his principles were mightier than those of +Garrison." "It was not the Liberty or Abolitionist party, but the Union +party that won." [109] + +Postponement of secession for ten years gave the North preponderance +in population, voting power, production, and transportation; new +party organization; and convictions which made man-power and economic +resources effective. The Northern lead of four million people in 1850 +had increased to seven millions by 1860. In 1850, each section had +thirty votes in the Senate; in 1860, the North had a majority of six, +due to the admission of California, Oregon, and Minnesota. In the House +of Representatives, the North had added seven to her majority. The Union +states and territories built during the decade 15,000 miles of railroad, +to 7,000 or 8,000 in the eleven seceding states. In shipping, the North +in 1860 built about 800 vessels to the seceding states' 200. In 1860, +in the eleven most important industries for war, Chadwick estimates that +the Union states produced $735,500,000; the seceding states $75,250,000, +"a manufacturing productivity eleven times as great for the North as for +the South". [110] In general, during the decade, the census figures +for 1860 show that since 1850 the North had increased its man-power, +transportation, and economic production from two to fifty times as fast +as the South, and that in 1860 the Union states were from two to twelve +times as powerful as the seceding states. + +Possibly Southern secessionists and Northern abolitionists had some +basis for thinking that the North would let the "erring sisters depart +in peace" in 1850. Within the next ten years, however, there came a +decisive change. The North, exasperated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of +1854, the high-handed acts of Southerners in Kansas in 1856, and the +Dred Scott dictum of the Supreme Court in 1857, felt that these things +amounted to a repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the opening up of +the territory to slavery. In 1860 Northern conviction, backed by an +effective, thorough party platform on a Union basis, swept the free +states. In 1850, it was a "Constitutional Union" party that accepted the +Compromise and arrested secession in the South; and Webster, foreseeing +a "remodelling of parties", had prophesied that "there must be a Union +party". [111] Webster's spirit and speeches and his strengthening of +federal power through Supreme Court cases won by his arguments had +helped to furnish the conviction which underlay the Union Party of 1860 +and 1964. His consistent opposition to nullification and secession, +and his appeal to the Union and to the Constitution during twenty years +preceding the Civil War--from his reply to Hayne to his seventh of March +speech--had developed a spirit capable of making economic and political +power effective. + +Men inclined to sneer at Webster for his interest in manufacturing, +farming, and material prosperity, may well remember that in his mind, +and more slowly in the minds of the North, economic progress went hand +in hand with the development of union and of liberty secured by law. + +Misunderstandings regarding both the political crisis and the personal +character of the man are already disappearing as fact replaces fiction, +as "truth gets a hearing", in the fine phrase of Wendell Phillips. There +is nothing about Daniel Webster to be hidden. Not moral blindness but +moral insight and sound political principles reveal themselves to the +reader of Webster's own words in public speech and unguarded private +letter. One of those great men who disdained to vindicate himself, +he does not need us but we need him and his vision that Liberty comes +through Union, and healing through cooperation, not through hate. + +Whether we look to the material progress of the North from 1850 to 1860 +or to its development in "imponderables", Webster's policy and his power +over men's thoughts and deeds were essential factors in the ultimate +triumph of the Union, which would have been at least dubious had +secession been attempted in 1850. It was a soldier, not the modern +orator, who first said that "Webster shotted our guns". A letter to +Senator Hoar from another Union soldier says that he kept up his heart +as he paced up and down as sentinel in an exposed place by repeating +over and over, "Liberty and Union now and forever, one and inseparable". +[112] Hosmer tells us that he and his boyhood friends of the North in +1861 "did not argue much the question of the right of secession", but +that it was the words of Webster's speeches, "as familiar to us as the +sentences of the Lord's prayer and scarcely less consecrated,... with +which we sprang to battle". Those boys were not ready in 1850. The +decisive human factors in the Civil War were the men bred on the +profound devotion to the Union which Webster shared with others equally +patriotic, but less profoundly logical, less able to mould public +opinion. Webster not only saw the vision himself; he had the genius +to make the plain American citizen see that liberty could come through +union and not through disunion. Moreover, there was in Webster and the +Compromise of 1850 a spirit of conciliation, and therefore there was on +the part of the North a belief that they had given the South a "square +deal", and a corresponding indignation at the attempts in the next +decade to expand slavery by violating the Compromises of 1820 and 1850. +So, by 1860, the decisive border states and Northwest were ready to +stand behind the Union. + +When Lincoln, born in a border state, coming to manhood in +the Northwest, and bred on Webster's doctrine,--"the Union is +paramount",--accepted for the second time the Republican nomination and +platform, he summed up the issues of the war, as he had done before, +in Webster's words. Lincoln, who had grown as masterly in his choice of +words as he had become profound in his vision of issues, used in 1864 +not the more familiar and rhetorical phrases of the reply to Hayne, +but the briefer, more incisive form, "Liberty and Union", of Webster's +"honest, truth-telling, Union speech" on the 7th of March, 1850. [113] + +HERBERT DARLING FOSTER. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Cf. Parton with Lodge on intellect, morals, indolence, +drinking, 7th of March speech, Webster's favorite things in England; +references, note 63, below.] + +[Footnote 2: In the preparation of this article, manuscripts have been +used from the following collections: the Greenough, Hammond, and +Clayton (Library of Congress); Winthrop and Appleton (Mass. Hist. Soc.); +Garrison (Boston Public Library); N.H. Hist. Soc.; Dartmouth College; +Middletown (Conn.) Hist. Soc.; Mrs. Alfred E. Wyman.] + +[Footnote 3: Bennett, Dec. 1, 1848, to Partridge, Norwich University. +MS. Dartmouth.] + +[Footnote 4: Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, p. 141. Further +evidence of Webster's thesis that abolitionists had developed Southern +reaction in Phillips, South in the Building of the Nation, IV, 401-403; +and unpublished letters approving Webster's speech.] + +[Footnote 5: Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899, +vol 11.), pp. 1193-1194.] + +[Footnote 6: To Crittenden, Dec. 20, 1849, Smith, polit. Hist. Slavery, +I. 122; Winthrop MSS., Jan. 6, 1850.] + +[Footnote 7: Calhoun, Corr., p. 781; cf. 764-766, 778, 780, 783-784.] + +[Footnote 8: Cong. Globe, XXI. 451-455, 463; Corr., p. 784. On Calhoun's +attitude, Ames, Calhoun, pp. 6-7; Stephenson, in Yale Review, 1919, +p. 216; Newbury in South Atlantic Quarterly, XI. 259; Hamer, Secession +Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852, pp. 49-54.] + +[Footnote 9: Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899, +vol. II), pp. 1210-1212; Toombs, Corr., (id., 1911, vol. II), pp. 188, +217; Coleman, Crittenden, I. 363; Hamer, pp. 55-56, 46-48, 54, 82-83; +Ames, Calhoun, pp. 21-22, 29; Claiborne, Quitman, H. 36-39.] + +[Footnote 10: Hearon, Miss. and the Compromise of 1850, p. 209.] + +[Footnote 11: A letter to Webster, Oct. 22, 1851, Greenough MSS., shows +the strength of Calhoun's secession ideas. Hamer, p. 125, quotes part.] + +[Footnote 12: Hamer, p. 142; Hearon, p. 220.] + +[Footnote 13: Mar. 6, 1850. Laws (Miss.), pp. 521-526.] + +[Footnote 14: Claiborne, Quitman, IL 37; Hearon, p. 161 n.] + +[Footnote 15: Hearon, pp. 180-181; Claiborne, Quitman, II. 51-52.] + +[Footnote 16: Nov. 10, 1850, Hearon, pp. 178-180; 1851, pp. 209-212.] + +[Footnote 17: Dec. 10, Southern Rights Assoc. Hearon, pp. 183-187.] + +[Footnote 18: Claiborne, Quitman, II. 52.] + +[Footnote 19: July 1, 1849. Corr., p. 170 (Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual +Report, 1911, vol. II.).] + +[Footnote 20: Johnston, Stephens, pp. 238-239, 244; Smith, Political +History of Slavery, 1. 121.] + +[Footnote 21: Laws (Ga.), 1850, pp. 122, 405-410.] + +[Footnote 22: Johnston, Stephens, p. 247.] + +[Footnote 23: Corr., pp. 184,193-195, 206-208, July 21. Newspapers, see +Brooks, in Miss. Valley Hist. Review, IX. 289.] + +[Footnote 24: Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, pp. 163-166.] + +[Footnote 25: Ames, Documents, pp. 271-272; Hearon, p. 190.] + +[Footnote 26: 1854, Amer. Hist. Review, VIII. 92-97; 1857, Johnston, +Stephens, pp. 321-322; infra, pp. 267, 268.] + +[Footnote 27: Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8; Virginia Resolves, Feb. 12; +Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia, p. 246; N. Y. Tribune, June 14; M. R. +H. Garnett, Union Past and Future, published between Jan. 24 and Mar. 7. +Alabama: Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, p. 281; Dubose, Yancey, pp. +247-249, 481; Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 13; +Cobb, Corr., pp. 193-195, 207. President Tyler of the College of William +and Mary kindly furnished evidence of Garnett's authorship; see J. M. +Garnett, in Southern Literary Messenger, I. 255.] + +[Footnote 28: Resolutions, Feb. 12, 1850; Acts, 1850, pp. 223-224; 1851, +p. 201.] + +[Footnote 29: Stephens, Corr., p. 192; Globe, XXII. II. 1208.] + +[Footnote 30: Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 23.] + +[Footnote 31: South Carolina, Acts, 1849, p, 240, and the following Laws +or Acts, all 1850: Georgia, pp. 418, 405-410, 122; Texas, pp. 93-94, +171; Tennessee, p. 572 (Globe, XXI. I. 417. Cole, Whig Party in the +South, p. 161); Mississippi, pp. 526-528; Virginia, p. 233; Alabama, +Weekly Tribune, Feb. 23, Daily, Feb. 25.] + +[Footnote 32: White, Miss. Valley Hist. Assoc., III. 283.] + +[Footnote 33: Senate Miscellaneous, 1849-1850, no. 24.] + +[Footnote 34: Hamer, p. 40; cf. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 162; +Cong. Globe, Mar. 5.] + +[Footnote 35: Coleman, Crittenden, I. 333, 350.] + +[Footnote 36: Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf. Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369.] + +[Footnote 37: Smith, History of Slavery, 1. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851, +letter, in Curtis, Webster, II, 584-585.] + +[Footnote 38: Clingman, and Wilmington Resolutions, Globe, XXI. I. +200-205, 311; National Intelligencer, Feb. 25; Cobb, Corr., pp. 217-218; +Boyd, "North Carolina on the Eve of Secession," in Amer. Hist. Assoc., +Annual Report (1910), pp. 167-177.] + +[Footnote 39: Hearndon, Nashville Convention, p. 283.] + +[Footnote 40: Johnston, Stephens, p. 247; Corr., pp. 186, 193, 194, +206-207; Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8.] + +[Footnote 41: Ames, Calhoun, p. 26.] + +[Footnote 42: Webster, Writings and Speeches, X. 161-162.] + +[Footnote 43: Cyclopedia Miss. Hist., art. "Sharkey."] + +[Footnote 44: Hearon, pp. 124, 171-174. Davis to Clayton (Clayton MSS.), +Nov. 22, 1851.] + +[Footnote 45: Globe, XXI. I. 418, 124, 712; infra, p. 268.] + +[Footnote 46: MSS., Mar. 10. AM. HIST. REV., voL. xxvii.--18.] + +[Footnote 47: Anstell, Bethlehem, May 21, Greenough Collection.] + +[Footnote 48: Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8, ibid.] + +[Footnote 49: Goode, Hunter Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report +(1916, vol. II.), p. 111.] + +[Footnote 50: Ames, Calhoun, pp. 24-27.] + +[Footnote 51: Hearon, pp. 120-123; Anonymous, Letter on Southern Wrongs. +.. in Reply to Grayson (Charleston, 1850).] + +[Footnote 52: Letters, II. 111, 121, 127.] + +[Footnote 53: Winthrop MSS., Jan. 16, Feb. 7.] + +[Footnote 54: Philadelphia Bulletin, in McMaster, VIII. 15.] + +[Footnote 55: Winthrop MSS., Feb. 10, 6.] + +[Footnote 56: Writings and Speeches, XVI. 533; XVIII. 355.] + +[Footnote 57: Stephens, War between the States, II. 201-205, 232; Cong. +Globe, XXI. I. 375-384.] + +[Footnote 58: Thurlow Weed, Life, II. 177-178, 180-181 (Gen. +Pleasanton's confirmatory letter). Wilson, Slave Power, II. 249. Both +corroborated by Hamline letter Rhodes, I. 134. Stephens's letters, N. +Y. Herald, July 13, Aug, 8, 1876, denying threatening language used by +Taylor "in my presence," do not nullify evidence of Taylor's attitude. +Mann, Life, p. 292. Private Washington letter, Feb. 23, reporting +interview, N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 25.] + +[Footnote 59: Weekly Tribune, Mar. 2, reprinted from Daily, Feb. 27. Cf. +Washington National Intelligencer, Feb. 21, quoting: Richmond Enquirer; +Wilmington Commercial; Columbia Telegraph.] + +[Footnote 60: New York Herald, Feb. 25; Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. +26.] + +[Footnote 61: Tribune, Feb. 25.] + +[Footnote 62: Writings and Speeches, XVI. 534.] + +[Footnote 63: Lodge's reproduction of Parton, pp. 16-17, 98, 195, +325-326, 349, 353, 356, 360. Other errors in Lodge's Webster, pp. 45, +314, 322, 328, 329-330, 352.] + +[Footnote 64: Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 356, 387; XVI. 542, W; X. +116; Curtis, Life II. 596; XIII. 434.] + +[Footnote 65: Mar. 19, Cong. Globe, XXII. II. 1063.] + +[Footnote 66: Aug. 12, ibid., p. 1562.] + +[Footnote 67: U. S. Bonds (1867). About 112-113, Dec., Jan., Feb., 1850; +"inactive" before Webster's speech; "firmer," Mar. 8; advanced to 117, +119, May; 116-117 after Compromise.] + +[Footnote 68: E. P. Wheeler, Sixty Years of American Life, p. 6; cf. +Webster's Buffalo Speech, Curtis, Life, II. 576; Weed, Autobiography, p. +596.] + +[Footnote 69: Winthrop MSS.] + +[Footnote 691: Writings and Speeches, XVI. 534-5.] + +[Footnote 70: Webster to Harvey, Apr. 7, MS. Middletown (Conn.) Hist. +Soc., adds Fletcher's name. Received through the kindness of Professor +George M. Dutcher.] + +[Footnote 71: Writings and Speeches, X. 57; "Notes for the Speech," +281-291; Winthrop MSS., Apr. 3.] + +[Footnote 72: Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 371-372.] + +[Footnote 73: Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, I. 269-271.] + +[Footnote 74: Works, II. 202-203.] + +[Footnote 75: Writings and Speeches, XVI. 580-581.] + +[Footnote 76: Seward, Works, III. 111-116.] + +[Footnote 77: Writings and Speeches, X. 57, 97.] + +[Footnote 78: Ibid., XIII. 595; X. 65.] + +[Footnote 781: Garrison childishly printed Eliot's name upside down, and +between black lines, Liberator, Sept. 20.] + +[Footnote 79: Mar. 10. MS., "Private," to Governor Clifford.] + +[Footnote 80: Mar 11, Apr. 13. Webster papers, N.H. Hist. Soc., cited +hereafter as "N.H.".] + +[Footnote 81: Mar. 11, 25, 22, 17, 26, 28, Greenough Collection, +hereafter as "Greenough."] + +[Footnote 82: May 20. N.H.] + +[Footnote 83: Apr. 19, May 4. N.H.] + +[Footnote 84: Apr. 1. Greenough.] + +[Footnote 85: Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 357.] + +[Footnote 86: Apr. 19. N.H.] + +[Footnote 87: June 12. N.H.] + +[Footnote 88: Dec. 13. N.H.] + +[Footnote 89: Writings and SPeeches, XVI. 582.] + +[Footnote 90: Winthrop MSS., Mar. 21 and Apr. 10, 1850, Nov. 1951; +Curtis, Life, II. 580; Everett's Memoir; Webster's Works (1851), I. +clvii.] + +[Footnote 93: Barnard, Albany, Apr. 19. N.H.] + +[Footnote 94: Mar. 15, 28. N.H.] + +[Footnote 95: June 10. Greenough. ] + +[Footnote 96: Mar. 28. Greenough.] + +[Footnote 97: H. L Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8. Greenough. ] + +[Footnote 98: Nelson, Va., May 2. N.H.] + +[Footnote 99: Mar. 8. Greenough.] + +[Footnote 100: Pp. 17-20.] + +[Footnote 101: August, 1850; 127 signatures. N.H.] + +[Footnote 102: Ogg, Webster, p. 379; Rhodes, I. 157-58.] + +[Footnote 103: New York Journal of Commerce, Boston Advertiser, Richmond +Whig Mar. 12; Baltimore Sun, Mar. 18; Ames, Calhoun, p. 25; Boston +Watchman and Reflector, in Liberator, Apr. 1.] + +[Footnote 104: War between the States, II. 211.] + +[Footnote 105: War of the Rebellion (1866), pp. 130-131.] + +[Footnote 106: Slave Power, II. 246.] + +[Footnote 107: Scribner's Magazine XXVI. 84.] + +[Footnote 108: Garrison, Westward Expansion, pp. 327-332; Chadwick, The +Causes of the Civil War, pp. 49-51; Smith, Parties and Slavery, p. 9; +Merriam, Life of Bowles, I. 81.] + +[Footnote 109: Rhodes, I. 157, 161.] + +[Footnote 110: Preliminary Report, Eighth Census, 1860; Chadwick, Causes +of the Civil War, p. 28.] + +[Footnote 111: Oct. 2, 1950. Writings and Speeches, XVI. 568-569.] + +[Footnote 112: Scribner, XXVI. 84; American Law Review, XXXV. 804.] + +[Footnote 113: Nicolay and Hay, IX. 76.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and +the Secession Movement, by Herbert Darling Foster + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEBSTER'S SPEECH *** + +***** This file should be named 1663.txt or 1663.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/6/1663/ + +Produced by Dianne Bean + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Etext scanned by Dianne Bean using OmniPage Pro software donated +by Caere + + + + + +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] + +[1] Cf. Parton with Lodge on intellect, morals, indolence, +drinking, 7th of March speech, Webster's favorite things in +England; references, note 63, below. + + +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. + +[2] In the preparation of this article, manuscripts have been +used from the following collections: the Greenough, Hammond, and +Clayton (Library of Congress); Winthrop and Appleton (Mass. +Hist. Soc.); Garrison (Boston Public Library); N.H. Hist. +Soc.; Dartmouth College; Middletown (Conn.) Hist. Soc.; Mrs. +Alfred E. Wyman. + + +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." 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. + +[3] Bennett, Dec. 1, 1848, to Partridge, Norwich University. MS. +Dartmouth. + +[4] Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, p. 141. Further +evidence of Webster's thesis that abolitionists had developed +Southern reaction in Phillips, South in the Building of the +Nation, IV, 401-403; and unpublished letters approving Webster's +speech. + +[5] Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol +11.), pp. 1193-1194. + +[6] To Crittenden, Dec. 20, 1849, Smith, polit. Hist. Slavery, I. +122; Winthrop MSS., Jan. 6, 1850. + + +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] + +[7] Calhoun, Corr., p. 781; cf. 764-766, 778, 780, 783-784. + +[8] Cong. Globe, XXI. 451-455, 463; Corr., p. 784. On Calhoun's +attitude, Ames, Calhoun, pp. 6-7; Stephenson, in Yale Review, +1919, p. 216; Newbury in South Atlantic Quarterly, XI. 259; +Hamer, Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852, pp. +49-54. + + +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] + +[9] Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol. +II), pp. 1210-1212; Toombs, Corr., (id., 1911, vol. II), pp. 188, +217; Coleman, Crittenden, I. 363; Hamer, pp. 55-56, 46-48, 54, +82-83; Ames, Calhoun, pp. 21-22, 29; Claiborne, Quitman, H. +36-39. + + +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] + +[10] Hearon, Miss. and the Compromise of 1850, p. 209. + +[11] A letter to Webster, Oct. 22, 1851, Greenough MSS., shows +the strength of Calhoun's secession ideas. Hamer, p. 125, quotes +part. + +[12] Hamer, p. 142; Hearon, p. 220. + + +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. + +[13] Mar. 6, 1850. Laws (Miss.), pp. 521-526. + + +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] + +[14] Claiborne, Quitman, IL 37; Hearon, p. 161 n. + +[15] Hearon, pp. 180-181; Claiborne, Quitman, II. 51-52. + + +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] + +[16] Nov. 10, 1850, Hearon, pp. 178-180; 1851, pp. 209-212. + +[17] Dec. 10, Southern Rights Assoc. Hearon, pp. 183-187. + + +"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] + +[18] Claiborne, Quitman, II. 52. + + +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] + +[19] July 1, 1849. Corr., p. 170 (Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual +Report, 1911, vol. II.). + + +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] + +[20] Johnston, Stephens, pp. 238-239, 244; Smith, Political +History of Slavery, 1. 121. + + +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] + +[21] Laws (Ga.), 1850, pp. 122, 405-410. + +[22] Johnston, Stephens, p. 247. + + +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] + +[23] Corr., pp. 184,193-195, 206-208, July 21. Newspapers, see +Brooks, in Miss. Valley Hist. Review, IX. 289. + + +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. + +[24] Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, pp. 163-166. + +[25] Ames, Documents, pp. 271-272; Hearon, p. 190. + +[26] 1854, Amer. Hist. Review, VIII. 92-97; 1857, Johnston, +Stephens, pp. 321-322; infra, pp. 267, 268. + + +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] + +[27] Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8; Virginia Resolves, Feb. 12; +Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia, p. 246; N. Y. Tribune, June 14; +M. R. H. Garnett, Union Past and Future, published between Jan. +24 and Mar. 7. Alabama: Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, p. +281; Dubose, Yancey, pp. 247-249, 481; Fleming, Civil War and +Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 13; Cobb, Corr., pp. 193-195, 207. +President Tyler of the College of William and Mary kindly +furnished evidence of Garnett's authorship; see J. M. Garnett, in +Southern Literary Messenger, I. 255. + +[28] Resolutions, Feb. 12, 1850; Acts, 1850, pp. 223-224; 1851, +p. 201. + + +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. + +[29] Stephens, Corr., p. 192; Globe, XXII. II. 1208. + + +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. + +[30] Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 23. + + +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. + +[31] South Carolina, Acts, 1849, p, 240, and the following Laws +or Acts, all 1850: Georgia, pp. 418, 405-410, 122; Texas, pp. +93-94, 171; Tennessee, p. 572 (Globe, XXI. I. 417. Cole, Whig +Party in the South, p. 161) ; Mississippi, pp. 526-528; Virginia, +p. 233; Alabama, Weekly Tribune, Feb. 23, Daily, Feb. 25. + + +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] + +[32] White, Miss. Valley Hist. Assoc., III. 283. + +[33] Senate Miscellaneous, 1849-1850, no. 24. + +[34] Hamer, p. 40; cf. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 162; +Cong. Globe, Mar. 5. + + +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] + + +[35] Coleman, Crittenden, I. 333, 350. + +[36] Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf. Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369. + +[37] Smith, History of Slavery, 1. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851, letter, +in Curtis, Webster, II, 584-585. + + +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] + +[38] Clingman, and Wilmington Resolutions, Globe, XXI. I. +200-205, 311; National Intelligencer, Feb. 25; Cobb, Corr., pp. +217-218; Boyd, "North Carolina on the Eve of Secession," in Amer. +Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1910), pp. 167-177. + +[39] Hearndon, Nashville Convention, p. 283. + + +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] + +[40] Johnston, Stephens, p. 247; Corr., pp. 186, 193, 194, +206-207; Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8. + +[41] Ames, Calhoun, p. 26. + +[42] Webster, Writings and Speeches, X. 161-162. + + +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] + +[43] Cyclopedia Miss. Hist., art. "Sharkey." + +[44] Hearon, pp. 124, 171-174. Davis to Clayton (Clayton MSS.), +Nov. 22, 1851. + +[45] Globe, XXI. I. 418, 124, 712; infra, p. 268. + + +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] + +[46] MSS., Mar. 10. AM. HIST. REV., voL. xxvii.--18. + +[47] Anstell, Bethlehem, May 21, Greenough Collection. + +[48] Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8, ibid. + +[49] Goode, Hunter Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report +(1916, vol. II.), p. 111. + + +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] + +[50] Ames, Calhoun, pp. 24-27. + +[51] Hearon, pp. 120-123; Anonymous, Letter on Southern Wrongs . +. . in Reply to Grayson (Charleston, 1850). + + +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] + +[52] Letters, II. 111, 121, 127. + + +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] + +[53] Winthrop MSS., Jan. 16, Feb. 7. + + +A Philadelphia editor who went to Washington to learn the real +sentinments 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] + +[54] Philadelphia Bulletin, in McMaster, VIII. 15. + + +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] + +[55] Winthrop MSS., Feb. 10, 6. + + +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. + +[56] Writings and Speeches, XVI. 533; XVIII. 355. + + +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] + +[57] Stephens, War between the States, II. 201-205, 232; Cong. +Globe, XXI. I. 375-384. + + +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] + +[58] Thurlow Weed, Life, II. 177-178, 180-181 (Gen. Pleasanton's +confirmatory letter). Wilson, Slave Power, II. 249. Both +corroborated by Hamline letter Rhodes, I. 134. Stephens's +letters, N. Y. Herald, July 13, Aug, 8, 1876, denying threatening +language used by Taylor "in my presence," do not nullify evidence +of Taylor's attitude. Mann, Life, p. 292. Private Washington +letter, Feb. 23, reporting interview, N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 25. + + +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 lisupply 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] + +[59] Weekly Tribune, Mar. 2, reprinted from Daily, Feb. 27. Cf. +Washington National Intelligencer, Feb. 21, quoting: Richmond +Enquirer; Wilmington Commercial; Columbia Telegraph. + + +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] + +[60] New York Herald, Feb. 25; Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 26. + + +"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. + +[61] Tribune, Feb. 25. + + +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] + +[62] Writings and Speeches, XVI. 534. + + +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] + +[63] Lodge's reproduction of Parton, pp. 16-17, 98, 195, 325-326, +349, 353, 356, 360. Other errors in Lodge's Webster, pp. 45, 314, +322, 328, 329-330, 352. + + +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] + +[64] Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 356, 387; XVI. 542, W; X. +116; Curtis, Life II. 596; XIII. 434. + + +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. + +[65] Mar. 19, Cong. Globe, XXII. II. 1063. + +[66] Aug. 12, ibid., p. 1562. + + +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] + +[67] U. S. Bonds (1867). About 112-113, Dec., Jan., Feb., 1850; +"inactive" before Webster's speech; "firmer," Mar. 8; advanced to +117, 119, May; 116-117 after Compromise. + + +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] + +[68] E. P. Wheeler, Sixty Years of American Life, p. 6; cf. +Webster's Buffalo Speech, Curtis, Life, II. 576; Weed, +Autobiography, p. 596. + +[69] Winthrop MSS. + + +On March 1, Webster recorded his determination "to make an +honest, truth-telling speech, and a Union speech"[69a] The +Washington correspondent of the Advertiser, March 4, reported +that Webster will "take a large view of the state of things and +advocate a straightforward course of legislation essentially such +as the President has recommended". "To this point public +sentiment has been gradually converging." "It will tend greatly +to confirm opinion in favor of this course should it meet with +the decided concurrence of Mr. Webster." The attitude of the +plain citizen is expressed by Barker, of Beaver, Pennsylvania, on +the same day: "do it, Mr. Webster, as you can, do it as a bold +and gifted statesman and patriot; reconcile the North and South +and PRESERVE the UNION". "Offer, Mr. Webster, a liberal +compromise to the South." On March 4 and 5, Calhoun's Senate +speech reasserted that the South, no longer safe in the Union, +possessed the right of peaceable secession. On the 6th of March, +Webster went over the proposed speech of the next morning with +his son, Fletcher, Edward Curtis, and Peter Harvey.[70] + +[69a] Writings and Speeches, XVI. 534-5. + +[70] Webster to Harvey, Apr. 7, MS. Middletown (Conn.) Hist. +Soc., adds Fletcher's name. Received through the kindness of +Professor George M. Dutcher. + + +III. + +It was under the cumulative stress of such convincing +evidence, public and private utterances, and acts in Southern +legislatures and in Congress, that Webster made his Union speech +on the 7th of March. The purpose and character of the speech are +rightly indicated by its title, "The Constitution and the Union", +and by the significant dedication to the people of Massachusetts: +"Necessity compels me to speak true rather than pleasing things." +"I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer to save you, +whatever be your attitude toward me."[71] The malignant charge +that this speech was "a bid for the presidency" was long ago +discarded, even by Lodge. It unfortunately survives in text-books +more concerned with "atmosphere" than with truth. The modern +investigator finds no evidence for it and every evidence against +it. Webster was both too proud and too familiar with the +political situation, North and South, to make such a monstrous +mistake. The printed or manuscript letters to or from Webster in +1850 and 1851 show him and his friends deeply concerned over the +danger to the Union, but not about the presidency. There is +rarest mention of the matter in letters by personal or political +friends; none by Webster, so far as the writer has observed. + +[71] Writings and Speeches, X. 57; "Notes for the Speech," +281-291; Winthrop MSS., Apr. 3. + + +If one comes to the speech familiar with both the situation in +1850 as now known, and with Webster's earlier and later speeches +and private letters, one finds his position and arguments on the +7th of March in harmony with his attitude toward Union and +slavery, and with the law and the facts. Frankly reiterating both +his earlier view of slavery "as a great moral, political and +social evil" and his lifelong devotion to the Union and its +constitutional obligations, Webster took national, practical, +courageous grounds. On the fugitive slave bill and the Wilmot +Proviso, where cautious Whigs like Winthrop and Everett were +inclined to keep quiet in view of Northern popular feeling, +Webster "took a large view of things" and resolved, as Foote saw, +to risk his reputation in advocating the*only practicable +solution. Not only was Webster thoroughly familiar with the +facts, but he was pre-eminently logical and, as Calhoun had +admitted, once convinced, "he cannot look truth in the face and +oppose it by arguments".[72] He therefore boldly faced the truth +that the Wilmot Proviso (as it proved later) was needless, and +would irritate Southern Union men and play into hands of +disunionists who frankly desired to exploit this "insult" to +excite secession sentiment. In a like case ten years later, "the +Republican party took precisely the same ground held by Mr. +Webster in 1850 and acted from the motives that inspired the 7th +of March speech".[73] + +[72] Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 371-372. + +[73] Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, I. 269-271. + + +Webster's anxiety for a conciliatory settlement of the highly +dangerous Texas boundary situation (which incidentally narrowed +slave territory) was as consistent with his national Union +policy, as his desires for California's admission as a free state +and for prohibition of the slave-trade in the District of +Columbia were in accord with his opposition to slavery. Seeing +both abolitionists and secessionists threatening the Union, he +rebuked both severely for disloyalty to their "constitutional +obligations", while he pleaded for a more conciliatory attitude, +for faith and charity rather than "heated imaginations". The +only logical alternative to the union policy was disunion, +advocated alike by Garrisonian abolitionists and Southern +secessionists. "The Union . . . was thought to be in danger, and +devotion to the Union rightfully inclined men to yield . . . +where nothing else could have so inclined them", was Lincoln's +luminous defense of the Compromise in his debate with +Douglas.[74] + +[74] Works, II. 202-203. + + +Webster's support of the constitutional provision for "return of +persons held to service" was not merely that of a lawyer. It was +in accord with a deep and statesmanlike conviction that +"obedience to established government . . . is a Christian duty", +the seat of law is "the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of +the universe".[75] Offensive as this law was to the North, the +only logical alternatives were to fulfil or to annul the +Constitution. Webster chose to risk his reputation; the extreme +abolitionists, to risk the Union. Webster felt, as his opponents +later recognized, that "the habitual cherishing of the +principle", "resistance to unjust laws is obedience to God", +threatened the Constitution. "He . . . addressed himself, +therefore, to the duty of calling the American people back from +revolutionary theories to . . . submission to authority."[76] As +in 1830 against Haynes, so in 1850 against Calhoun and disunion, +Webster stood not as "a Massachusetts man, but as an American", +for "the preservation of the Union".[77] In both speeches he held +that he was acting nof for Massachusetts, but for the "whole +country" (1830), "the good of the whole" (1850). His devotion to +the Union and his intellectual balance led him to reject the +impatience, bitterness, and disunion sentiments of abolitionists +and secessionists, and to work on longer lines. "We must wait for +the slow progress of moral causes", a doctrine already announced +in 1840, he reiterated in 1850,--"the effect of moral causes, +though sure is slow."[78] + +[75] Writings and Speeches, XVI. 580-581. + +[76] Seward, Works, III. 111-116. + +[77] Writings and Speeches, X. 57, 97. + +[78] Ibid., XIII. 595; X. 65. + + +IV. + +The earlier accounts of Webster's losing his friends as a +result of his speech are at variance with the facts. Cautious +Northerners naturally hesitated to support him and face both the +popular convictions on fugitive slaves and the rasping +vituperation that exhausted sacred and profane history in the +epithets current in that "era of warm journalistic manners"; +Abolitionists and Free Soilers congratulated one another that +they had "killed Webster". In Congress no Northern man save +Ashmun of Massachusetts supported him in any speech for months. +On the other hand, Webster did retain the friendship and +confidence of leaders and common men North and South, and the +tremendous influence of his personality and "unanswerable" +arguments eventually swung the North for the Compromise. From +Boston came prompt expressions of "entire concurrence" in his +speech by 800 representative men, including George Ticknor, +William H. Prescott, Rufus Choate, Josiah Quincy, President +Sparks and Professor Felton of Harvard, Professors Woods, Stuart, +and Emerson of Andover, and other leading professional, literary, +and business men. Similar addresses were sent to him from about +the same number of men in New York, from supporters in +Newburyport, Medford, Kennebeck River, Philadelphia, the Detroit +Common Council, Manchester, New Hampshire, and "the neighbors" in +Salisbury. His old Boston Congressional district triumphantly +elected Eliot, one of Webster's most loyal supporters, by a vote +of 2,355 against 473 for Charles Sumner.[78a] The Massachusetts +legislature overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to instruct +Webster to vote for the Wilmot Proviso. Scores of unpublished +letters in the New Hampshire Historical Society and the Library +of Congress reveal hearty approval from both parties and all +sections. Winthrop of Massachusetts, too cautious to endorse +Webster's entire position, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts +that as a result of the speech, "disunion stock is already below +par".[79] "You have performed the responsible duties of, a +national Senator", wrote General Dearborn. "I thank you because +you did not speak upon the subject as a Massachusetts man", said +Reverend Thomas Worcester of Boston, an overseer of Harvard. +"Your speech has saved the Union", was the verdict of Barker of +Pennsylvania, a man not of Webster's party.[80] "The Union +threatened . . . you have come to the rescue, and all +disinterested lovers of that Union must rally round you", wrote +Wainwright of New York. In Alabama, Reverend J. W. Allen +recognized the "comprehensive and self-forgetting spirit of +patriotism" in Webster, "which, if followed, would save the +Union, unite the country and prevent the danger in the Nashville +Convention". Like approval of Webster's "patriotic stand for the +preservation of the Union" was sent from Green County and +Greensboro in Alabama and from Tennessee and Virginia.[81] "The +preservation of the Union is the only safety-valve. On Webster +depends the tranquility of the country", says an anonymous writer +from Charleston, a native of Massachusetts and former pupil of +Webster.[82] Poinsett and Francis Lieber, South Carolina +Unionists, expressed like views.[83] The growing influence of the +speech is testified to in letters from all sections. Linus Child +of Lowell finds it modifying his own previous opinions and +believes that "shortly if not at this moment, it will be approved +by a large majority of the people of Massachusetts".[84] "Upon +sober second thought, our people will generally coincide with +your views", wrote ex-Governor and ex-Mayor Armstrong of +Boston.[85] "Every day adds to the number of those who agree with +you", is the confirmatory testimony of Dana, trustee of Andover +and former president of Dartmouth.[86] "The effect of your speech +begins to be felt", wrote ex-Mayor Eliot of Boston.[87] Mayor +Huntington of Salem at first felt the speech to be too Southern; +but "subsequent events at North and South have entirely satisfied +me that you were right . . . and vast numbers of others here in +Massachusetts were wrong." "The change going on in me has been +going on all around me." "You saw farther ahead than the rest or +most of us and had the courage and patriotism to stand upon the +true ground."[88] This significant inedited letter is but a +specimen of the change of attitude manifested in hundreds of +letters from "slow and cautious Whigs".[89] One of these, Edward +Everett, unable to accept Webster's attitude on Texas and the +fugitive slarve bill, could not "entirely concur" in the Boston +letter of approval. "I think our friend will be able to carry the +weight of it at home, but as much as ever." "It would, as you +justly said," he wrote Winthrop, "have ruined any other man." +This probably gives the position taken at first by a good many +moderate anti-slavery then. Everett's later attitude is likewise +typical of a change in New England. He wrote in 1851 that +Webster's speech "more than any other cause, contributed to avert +the catastrophe", and was "a practical basis for the adjustment +of controversies, which had already gone far to dissolve the +Union".[90] + +[78a] Garrison childishly printed Eliot's name upside down, and +between black lines, Liberator, Sept. 20. + +[79] Mar. 10. MS., "Private," to Governor Clifford. + +[80] Mar 11, Apr. 13. Webster papers, N.H. Hist. Soc., cited +hereafter as "N.H.". + +[81] Mar. 11, 25, 22, 17, 26, 28, Greenough Collection, hereafter +as "Greenough." + +[82] May 20. N.H. + +[83] Apr. 19, May 4. N.H. + +[84] Apr. 1. Greenough. + +[85] Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 357. + +[86] Apr. 19. N.H. + +[87] June 12. N.H. + +[88] Dec. 13. N.H. + +[89] Writings and SPeeches, XVI. 582. + +[90] Winthrop MSS., Mar. 21 and Apr. 10, 1850, Nov. 1951; Curtis, +Life, II. 580; Everett's Memoir; Webster's Works (1851), I. +clvii. + + +Isaac Hill, a bitter New Hampshire political opponent, confesses +that Webster's "kindly answer" to Calhoun was wiser than his own +might have been. Hill, an experienced political observer, had +feared in the month preceding Webster's speech a "disruption of +the Union" with "no chance of escaping a conflict of blood". He +felt that the censures of Webster were undeserved, that Webster +was not merely right, but had "power he can exercise at the +North, beyond any other man", and that "all that is of value will +declare in favor of the great principles of your late Union +speech".[91] "Its tranquilizing effect upon public opinion has +been wonderful"; "it has almost the unanimous support of this +community", wrote the New York philanthropist Minturn.[92] "The +speech made a powerful impression in this state . . . Men feel +they can stand on it with security."[93] In Cincinnati, +Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsfield (with only one +exception) the speech was found "wise and patriotic".[94] The +sender of a resolution of approval from the grand jury of the +United States court at Indianapolis says that such judgment is +almost universal.[95] "It is thought you may save the country . . +. you may keep us still united", wrote Thornton of Memphis, who +soberly records the feeling of thoughtful men that the Southern +purpose of disunion was stronger than appeared in either +newspapers or political gatherings.[96] "Your speech has +disarmed-has, quieted the South;[97] has rendered invaluable +service to the harmony and union of the South and the North".[98] +"I am confident of the higher approbation, not of a single +section of the Union, but of all sections", wrote a political +opponent in Washington.[99] + +[93] Barnard, Albany, Apr. 19. N.H. + +[94] Mar. 15, 28. N.H. + +[95] June 10. Greenough. + +[96] Mar. 28. Greenough. + +[97] H. L Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8. Greenough. + +[98] Nelson, Va., May 2. N.H. + +[99] Mar. 8. Greenough. + + +The influence of Webster in checking the radical purposes of the +Nashville Convention has been shown above.[100] + +[100] Pp. 17-20. + + +All classes of men from all sections show a substantial and +growing backing of Webster's 7th of March speech as "the only +statesmanlike and practicable way to save the Union". "To you, +more than to any other statesman of modern times, do the people +of this country owe their national feeling which we trust is to +save this Union in this its hour of trial", was the judgment of +"the neighbors", the plain farmers of Webster's old New Hampshire +home.[101] Outside of the Abolition and Free Soil press, the +growing tendency in newspapers, like that of their readers, was +to support Webster's logical position.[102] + +[101] August, 1850; 127 signatures. N.H. + +[102] Ogg, Webster, p. 379; Rhodes, I. 157-58. + + +Exaggerated though some of these expressions of approval may have +been, they balance the exaggerated vituperation of Webster in the +anti-slavery press; and the extremes of approval and disapproval +both concur in recognizing the widespread effect of the speech. +"No speech ever delivered in Congress produced . . . so +beneficial a change of opinion. The change of, feeling and +temperament wrought in Congress by this speech is +miraculous."[103] + +[103] New York Journal of Commerce, Boston Advertiser, Richmond +Whig Mar. 12; Baltimore Sun, Mar. 18; Ames, Calhoun, p. 25; +Boston Watchman and Reflector, in Liberator, Apr. 1. + + +The contemporary testimony to Webster's checking of disunion is +substantiated by the conclusions of Petigru of South Carolina, +Cobb of Georgia in 1852, Allen of Pennsylvania in 1853, and by +Stephens's mature judgment of "the profound sensation upon the +public mind throughout the Union made by Webster's 7th of March +speech. The friends of the Union under the Constitution were +strengthened in their hopes and inspired with,renewed +energies."[104] In 1866 Foote wrote, "The speech produced +beneficial effects everywhere." "His statement of facts was +generally looked upon as unanswerable; his argumentative +conclusions appeared to be inevitable; his conciliatory tone . . +. softened the sensibilities of all patriots."[105] "He seems to +have gauged more accurately [than most] the grave dangers which +threatened the republic and . . . the fearful consequences which +must follow its disruption", was Henry Wilson's later and wiser +judgment.[106] "The general judgment," said Senator Hoar in 1899, +"seems to be coming to the conclusion that Webster differed from +the friends of freedom of his time not in a weaker moral sense, +but only in a larger, and profounder prophetic vision." "He saw +what no other man saw, the certainty of civil war. I was one of +those who . . . judged him severely, but I have learned better." +"I think of him now . . . as the orator who bound fast with +indissoluble strength the bonds of union."[107] + +[104] War between the States, II. 211. + +[105] War of the Rebellion (1866), pp. 130-131. + +[106] Slave Power, II. 246. + +[107] Scribner's Magazine XXVI. 84. + + +Modern writers, North and South-Garrison, Chadwick, T. C. Smith, +Merriam, for instance[108]--now recognize the menace of disunion +in 1850 and the service of Webster in defending the Union. +Rhodes, though condemning Webster's support of the fugitive slave +bill, recognizes that the speech was one of the few that really +altered public opinion and won necessary Northern support for the +Compromise. "We see now that in the War of the Rebellion his +principles were mightier than those of Garrison." "It was not the +Liberty or Abolitionist party, but the Union party that +won."[109] + +[108] Garrison, Westward Expansion, pp. 327-332; Chadwick, The +Causes of the Civil War, pp. 49-51; Smith, Parties and Slavery, +p. 9; Merriam, Life of Bowles, I. 81. + +[109] Rhodes, I. 157, 161. + + +Postponement of secession for ten years gave the North +preponderance in population, voting power, production, and +transportation; new party organization; and convictions which +made man-power and economic resources effective. The Northern +lead of four million people in 1850 had increased to seven +millions by 1860. In 1850, each section had thirty votes in the +Senate; in 1860, the North had a majority of six, due to the +adrhission of California, Oregon, and Minnesota. In the House of +Representatives, the North had added seven to her majority. The +Union states and territories built during the decade 15,000 miles +of railroad, to 7,000 or 8,000 in the eleven seceding states. In +shipping, the North in 1860 built about 800 vessels to the +seceding states' 200. In 1860, in the eleven most important +industries for war, Chadwick estimates that the Union states +produced $735,500,000; the seceding states $75,250,000, "a +manufacturing productivity eleven times as great for the North as +for the South".[110] In general, during the decade, the census +figures for 1860 show that since 1850 the North had increased its +man-power, transportation, and economic production from two to +fifty times as fast as the South, and that in 1860 the Union +states were from two to twelve times as powerful as the seceding +states. + +[110] Preliminary Report, Eighth Census, 1860; Chadwick, Causes +of the Civil War, p. 28. + + +Possibly Southern secessionists and Northern abolitionists had +some basis for thinking that the North would let the "erring +sisters depart in peace" in 1850. Within the next ten years, +however, there came a decisive change. The North, exasperated by +the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the high-handed acts of +Southerners in Kansas in 1856, and the Dred Scott dictum of the +Supreme Court in 1857, felt that these things amounted to a +repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the opening up of the +territory to slavery. In 1860 Northern conviction, backed by an +effective, thorough party platform on a Union basis, swept the +free states. In 1850, it was a "Constitutional Union" party that +accepted the Compromise and arrested secession in the South; and +Webster, foreseeing a "remodelling of parties", hadprophesied +that "there must be a Union party".[111] Webster's spirit +and speeches and his strengthening of federal power through +Supreme Court cases won by his arguments had helped to furnish +the conviction which underlay the Union Party of 1860 and 1964. +His consistent opposition to nullification and secession, and his +appeal to the Union and to the Constitution during twenty years +preceding the Civil War--from his reply to Hayne to his seventh +of March speech--had developed a spirit capable of making +economic and political power effective. + +[111] Oct. 2, 1950. Writings and Speeches, XVI. 568-569. + + +Men inclined to sneer at Webster for his interest in +manufacturing, farming, and material prosperity, may well +remember that in his mind, and more slowly in the minds of the +North, economic progress went hand in hand with the development +of union and of liberty secured by law. + +Misunderstandings regarding both the political crisis and the +personal character of the man are already disappearing as fact +replaces fiction, as "truth gets a hearing", in the fine phrase +of Wendell Phillips. There is nothing about Daniel Webster to be +hidden. Not moral blindness but moral insight and sound political +principles reveal themselves to the reader of Webster's own words +in public speech and unguarded private letter. One of those great +men who disdained to vindicate himself, he does not need us but +we need him and his vision that Liberty comes through Union, and +healing through cooperation, not through hate. + +Whether we look to the material progress of the North from 1850 +to 1860 or to its development in "imponderables", Webster's +policy and his power over men's thoughts and deeds were essential +factors in the ultimate triumph of the Union, which would have +been at least dubious had secession been attempted in 1850. It +was a soldier, not the modern orator, who first said that +"Webster shotted our guns". A letter to Senator Hoar from another +Union soldier says that he kept up his heart as he paced up and +down as sentinel in an exposed place by repeating over and over, +"Liberty and Union now and forever, one and inseparable".[112] +Hosmer tells us that he and his boyhood friends of the North in +1861 "did not argue much the question of the right of secession", +but that it was the words of Webster's speeches, "as familiar to +us as the sentences of the Lord's prayer and scarcely less +consecrated, . . . with which we sprang to battle". Those +boys were not ready in 1850. The decisive human factors in the +Civil War were the men bred on the profound devotion to the Union +which Webster shared with others equally patriotic, but less +profoundly logical, less able to mould public opinion. Webster +not only saw the vision himself; he had the genius to make the +plain American citizen see that liberty could come through union +and not through disunion. Moreover, there was in Webster and the +Compromise of 1850 a spirit of conciliation, and therefore there +was on the part of the North a belief that they had given the +South a "square deal", and a corresponding indignation at the +attempts in the next decade to expand slavery by violating the +Compromises of 1820 and 1850. So, by 1860, the decisive border +states and Northwest were ready to stand behind the Union. + +[112] Scribner, XXVI. 84; American Law Review, XXXV. 804. + + +When Lincoln, born in a border state, coming to manhood in the +Northwest, and bred on Webster's doctrine,--"the Union is +paramount",--accepted for the second time the Republican +nomination and platform, he summed up the issues of the war, as +he had done before, in Webster's words. Lincoln, who had grown as +masterly in his choice of words as he had become profound in his +vision of issues, used in 1864 not the more familiar and +rhetorical phrases of the reply to Hayne, but the briefer, more +incisive form, "Liberty and Union", of Webster's "honest, +truth-telling, Union speech" on the 7th of March, 1850.[113] + +HERBERT DARLING FOSTER. + +[113] Nicolay and Hay, IX. 76. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg etext of Webster's Seventh of March +Speech, and the Secession Movement, 1850. + diff --git a/old/wsm7s10.zip b/old/wsm7s10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a2cfdc2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wsm7s10.zip |