Basic Information
Name: Daniel Webster
Nickname: Black Dan, Dan the Man
Born: January 18, 1782
Died: October 24, 1852
Nationality: American
Hometown: Salisbury, NH
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Attorney, member of the House of Representatives, Senator, Secretary of State
Education: Phillips Exeter Academy, Dartmouth College
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: Ebenezer Webster, Abigail Eastman
Siblings: Mehitable, Abigail, Ezekiel, Sarah, and half-siblings Susannah, David, and Joseph
Spouse: Grace Fletcher, Caroline Le Roy
Children: Grace, Daniel Fletcher, Edward, Julia, Edward, Charles
Friends: Henry Clay, Millard Fillmore
Foes: Andrew Jackson, John Calhoun, James K. Polk
Analysis
When you hear the name Webster, do you think "dictionary?" Wrong Webster. Noah Webster created the American dictionary. Daniel Webster—no relation—was a famous politician during the first half of the 19th century. We're talking Bernie Sanders famous. He was such a skilled orator that he won a debate with the devil himself. Seriously.
Well, we exaggerate. Still, his reputation as an orator was such that when Stephen Vincent Benét wrote a short story about a guy who wanted to get out of a contract he made with the Devil, Daniel Webster was the character who was called in to extricate the man by debating Old Scratch in court.
Webster packed the house when he rose to speak in the Senate, and it was SRO whenever he gave a special public talk. 20,000 people came to hear him speak at an event commemorating the Battle of Bunker Hill (source).
So no dictionary, but plenty of diction.
The Granite Statesman
For all you New Hampshirites (there must be at least two of you out there), get excited. Because guess where Daniel Webster was from?
That's right, Vermont.
We kid, we kid. Webster was not only born in New Hampshire, but he went to the famous Phillips Exeter Academy and Dartmouth College, both in the Granite State. His father was a member of the New Hampshire militia that fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Like so many of his fellow antebellum-era politicians, Webster spent some years practicing law before becoming a two-term congressman for the seaport of Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1813 (source).
Webster was born into a farming family, and continued to live as what they used to call a "gentleman farmer," which is just about as grueling as it sounds, for the rest of his life. He actually had several farms in several states, his favorite being Marshfield in Massachusetts. If we're being honest, he lived a more lavish lifestyle than he should have for much of his life and was constantly in debt (source).
Webster was known from an early age for his intense look and swarthy complexion, which earned him the nickname "Black Dan." Much like his buddy Henry Clay, people found him riveting—the hottie of the legislature.
Taking Care of Business
Webster's first few decades as a lawyer and congressman were focused on helping protect trade and business. He opposed the War of 1812 with Great Britain because the region he represented, Portsmouth, NH (a seaport), traded with France and Britain and didn't want to alienate its trading partners. In Congress, he generally lobbied for a strong central government to ensure strong trade agreements (source).
In 1823, Webster left New Hampshire for Boston and became one of the highest-paid lawyers in the country (source). Not surprisingly, he was also very influential (those things tend to go together). He argued in some landmark Supreme Court cases under the famous Marshall Court, such as Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), which upheld the supremacy of the federal government over the states in regulating commerce.
In 1823, Webster began the first of two terms as a Massachusetts member of the House of Representatives, and in 1827, the legislature sent him to the Senate. (That's how senators were elected back then—by the state legislature, not by popular vote.)
Tariff-ic
Another example of his strong support of business and trade was his ideas about tariffs. Yes, we know, you were just waiting for us to bring this up. Who doesn't love tariff talk?
Early in his career, Webster was opposed to protective tariffs (taxes on imported goods), because he saw them as a threat to merchants, who needed free trade with other countries. He arrived in the Senate just in time to take part in the debate over the Tariff of 1828, which was causing a Major National Crisis /historical-texts/proclamation-regarding-nullification/ when South Carolina nullified it, i.e. decided it was unconstitutional— states' rights, yadda yadda, they weren't going to pay it, and for good measure they'd secede if anyone tried to make them.
Webster switched teams and supported the Tariff of 1828.
Why the change of heart? Well, he was now a senator from Massachusetts, where manufacturing was the basis for the state's economy. When your state is making things they want to sell instead of importing things from other places, tariffs can be a lot more attractive because they prevent other nations from flooding the market with cheap goods that you'd like to sell yourself.
A Way With Words
So the Tariff of 1828 led to the Nullification Crisis, which led to one of Webster's most famous speeches. He was in a debate with Robert Hayne of South Carolina about their nullification of the detested Tariff. On January 26 and 27, 1830, Webster delivered an epic rebuttal defending a strong national government over Hayne's states' rights arguments. He starts with nostalgia:
Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation, and distrust are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.
Then he takes aim at Haynes's states' rights argument:
No definition can be so clear, as to avoid possibility of doubt; no limitation so precise, as to exclude all uncertainty. Who, then, shall construe this grant of the people? Who shall interpret their will, where it may be supposed they have left it doubtful? With whom do they repose this ultimate right of deciding on the powers of government? Sir, they have settled all this in the fullest manner. They have left it with the government itself, in its appropriate branches.
Then the big finish:
When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured […] but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable! (source).
Pure political poetry, areweright?
The speech was an instant hit and secured Webster's reputation as genius orator. It was given one of the most creative and exciting titles in 19th-century politics: "Webster's Second Reply to Hayne". (The first reply was to Hayne's demand that Webster justify his opinion that Survivor: Cook Islands was totally the best season.)
No Friend of Andrew
Webster's support of the Tariff of 1928 was just about the only time he supported a policy of President Andrew Jackson. Webster battled with Jackson about almost everything, and with Clay and others, formed a political party—the Whigs—to oppose Old Hickory. They called themselves the Whigs after the anti-monarchy British Whig party, because they thought Jackson was acting too much like a king and not enough like an elected public servant.
Webster and the Whigs supported the establishment of a central bank, wanted the nation to spend money on infrastructure, and advocated a strong federal government…but with serious limits on executive power. Looking at you, A.J.
Jackson, OTOH, despised all those ideas. He thought a central bank represented a monopoly by the elites; he believed the President was the sole true representative of the people's will; he didn't think it was the government's business to spend money on building roads and canals to support economic development in the states. When he vetoed the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, Webster wrote a strong dissenting opinion.
Jackson won the Bank battle, but the Whigs managed to win the White House in 1840. And in 1841, President William Henry Harrison appointed Webster to be his Secretary of State. His major achievement was the appropriately-named Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 with Britain. The treaty ended a long dispute over what was Maine and what was Canada. (What were those differences again?)
Bringing Down the House…Or Rather, the Senate
In 1845, Webster returned to the Senate. By 1850, he was famous, part of the "Great Triumvirate" of the Senate with Henry Clay and John Calhoun. Webster was particularly famous for his speechifying, largely because of his "Second Reply to Hayne."
You make one good speech and you can ride on those coattails for decades, apparently.
When the Compromise of 1850 was being hammered out, Webster thought hard about how he could contribute to the process. Finally, in early March, he announced that he was giving a speech. This was like Beyoncé announcing a surprise performance. Everyone was excited to hear what the legendary Webster was going to say.
On March 7, 1850, Isaac Walker of Wisconsin, who'd made an antislavery argument the day before, got up in front of Congress and immediately ceded the floor to Webster. He knew why the Senate chamber was packed that day, and it was not to hear him speak. Poor Isaac. Kelly Rowland knows how you feel.
Webster got up to speak. One observer described it like this, in case you don't believe the Beyoncé comparison:
…the getting up of Daniel Webster was not a mere act; it was a process…The beholder saw the most wonderful head that his vision ever rested on rising slowly in the air; he saw a lionlike countenance, with great, deep-set, luminous eyes, gazing at him with solemn majesty; in short, he saw the godlike Daniel getting on his feet (source).
Webster then gave his other really famous speech. Again, it has a really punchy, creative title: it's known as "the Seventh of March speech".
In this speech, Webster made a rather interesting and potentially controversial argument to support the Compromise of 1850. He argued that regulating slavery in the new western territories was unnecessary, because the land in that region wasn't right for a slave-based plantation economy. So really, why bother discussing it? People wouldn't want to expand large-scale slavery there anyway. No worries.
In Webster's days of pondering who to support in this debate, he decided that keeping the Union together was the most important thing of all. He blamed both North and South for bringing the country to the brink of war. Despite being from a free state, he thought southerners had a legitimate reason to want a stronger fugitive slave act. His pro-Union stance earned him a lot of praise.
Here's a taste of Webster's rhetoric for you, from the "Seventh of March" speech:
Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States… I speak for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause. […]
The imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the West, the North, and the stormy South all combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and disclose its profoundest depths. […]
Webster tries to see all sides of the slavery issue, even though as a northerner, he himself was personally opposed. He defends the South's push for stronger fugitive slave laws. After all, it's a slaveowner's right in the Constitution to have their "property" returned to them. He also isn't favorable towards abolition groups, since "their operations for the last twenty years have produced nothing good or valuable" (source).
All of these groups of people, though, have "honest and good men, perfectly well-meaning men" (source) among them.
Webster can't see the point of risking the Union:
Why, what would be the result [of secession]? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede? What is to remain American? What am I to be—an American no longer? Where is the flag of the republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground? Why, sir, our ancestors […] would rebuke and reproach us; and our children, and our grandchildren, would cry out, Shame upon us! If we, of this generation, should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government, and the harmony of the Union (source)
We'd reprint the whole beautiful talk, but it was a three-and-a-half-hour speech and we know you have four episodes of Silicon Valley to watch before Thursday.
You Can't Always Get What You Want
You know how it is when you try to please everybody; you can end up pleasing nobody. Webster had a huge fan base; his impressive demeanor and mad oratorical skills kept him popular throughout his career. But the Seventh of March speech marked the beginning of the end of his career in the Senate. There was massive blowback from his native New England, accusing him of trying to pander to southern interests to get their votes for an eventual run at the Presidency.
Webster ended up resigning from the Senate in 1850 and was appointed a few months later as Secretary of State under President Millard Fillmore. He spent much of his second stint as SOS focusing on the problems at home. Like that "fugitive slave law" that caused such a fuss.
After the brouhaha of the Compromise of 1850, Webster worked at State to make sure the rules of the Compromise were enforced. You might ask: "Wait, isn't the Secretary of State supposed to be involved in international relations?" You'd be right. Webster, though, thought these domestic affairs were more pressing at the time.
Webster hoped to bring together enough members of the Whig party to elect him President, but it was not to be. Like the rest of the Great Triumvirate, he never made it to the top spot. Still, he's remembered for his president-y commitment to keeping the Union together in the face of serious regional differences. In his Seventh of March speech, he made it clear that he believed there was no such thing as a peaceable secession; it was impossible to think that the Union could be dissolved without a bloody conflict.
Webster died in October, 1852, after falling from a horse on his Marshfield farm and hitting his head. We're kind of glad he didn't live to see what happened less than a decade later.