Daniel Webster

American politician and diplomat

• Born: January 18, 1782
• Birthplace: Salisbury, New Hampshire
• Died: October 24, 1852
• Place of death: Marshfield, Massachusetts

Perhaps the greatest American orator of his time, Webster, more than any other individual, articulated a near-mystical devotion to the Union that would define Northern patriotism during the Civil War.

Early Life

Daniel Webster was the son of Ebenezer Webster. A veteran of the French and Indian War and of the American Revolution, his father was a tavern keeper, farmer, and local politician in New Hampshire. Webster’s mother, Abigail Eastman, was a second wife, who, like her predecessor, bore Ebenezer five children; Daniel was the youngest except for one girl. The teamsters who put up at his father’s tavern nicknamed him “Black Dan” because of his dark complexion, jet-black hair, and black eyes.

Slight of stature for his age, although with an unusually large head, Daniel was often spared the heavier chores that his brothers and sisters shared on the farm. As a boy he cultivated his precocious mind and strongly emotional nature. Books were hard to come by, but he read everything he found and, blessed with almost total recall, remembered what he read. His father, with whom he had a close relationship, hoped Daniel would get the kind of education he had missed, and in May, 1796, enrolled him in the Phillips Academy in Exeter. The boy was shy and sensitive about his homespun clothing, clumsy cowhide boots, and awkward manners, but he made “tolerable progress” with his studies. Only in declamation was he unable to match his fellows; at the public exhibitions, despite careful preparation, he could never command sufficient resolution to rise from his seat and present his speeches.

In December, 1796, Webster returned to Salisbury without having completed his course. A brief period of country schoolteaching ended with an arrangement for him to study with a minister in the neighboring community of Boscawen, who had offered to prepare him for Dartmouth College. At Dartmouth, Webster pursued his studies with energy, was graduated near the top of his class, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In contrast to his failure at Exeter, he was outstanding in his college literary society and developed a reputation as a public speaker. Although only a junior, he was invited to deliver a Fourth of July address at Hanover.

Following graduation, Webster spent several years in rather desultory preparation for a legal career. He read law with a Salisbury attorney, taught in the academy in Fryeburg, Maine, and finally went to Boston, Massachusetts, in July, 1804, where he was accepted as a clerk in the law office of a leading New England Federalist, Christopher Gore. After completing his studies and being admitted to the bar in March, 1805, he began to practice law in Boscawen, where he could be near his family In September, 1807, his father having died the previous year, Webster moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he remained for nine happy years. In May, 1808, he married Grace Fletcher, a clergyman’s daughter. In August, 1816, he moved with his wife and two children to Boston, a rising metropolis.

Life’s Work

Webster entered politics as a strict constructionist and an antinationalist. During two terms in the House of Representatives as a Federalist, 1813-1817, Webster opposed the War of 1812. Although he did not advocate secession, he kept up his obstructionist activities in Congress, while the Republican administration grew increasingly desperate. As a spokesperson for the dominant merchants and shippers of New England, he vigorously opposed protective tariffs as probably unconstitutional and certainly inexpedient; in later years, as a protectionist, he was hard put to refute himself.

What national reputation Webster enjoyed prior to 1830 was largely derived from his appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court. He joined with Chief JusticeJohn Marshall in giving a nationalistic, Hamiltonian interpretation to the Constitution. His skillful arguments in the Dartmouth College case (1819), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) brought him recognition as the nation’s leading constitutional lawyer.

In 1822, Webster won the Boston district seat in the House of Representatives. He shortly transcended his early sectionalism to become an outstanding nationalist, favoring a national bank, federal appropriations for internal improvements, and, reflecting New England’s shift from commerce to manufacturing, a protective tariff. He became known as one of the chief exponents of the “cause of humanity” because of his advocacy of American support for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. In June, 1827, the Massachusetts legislature elected the ex-Federalist as a National Republican to the U.S. Senate. After the death of his wife, he was married in December, 1829, to Caroline Le Roy, the daughter of a wealthy New York merchant.

Webster’s second reply to South Carolina senator Robert Y. Hayne, delivered in the Senate on January 26-27, 1830, answered Hayne’s defense of John C. Calhoun’s nullification doctrine with a powerful defense of national sovereignty. It gave Webster a reputation as one of the leading statesmen of the nation. His new stature made Webster a potential presidential candidate, and thereafter the hope of reaching the White House was constantly in the back of his mind and influenced many of his actions.

Webster’s support for President Andrew Jackson during the nullification crisis of 1832-1833 brought rumors of a rapprochement between the two antagonists. Webster thought of uniting Jacksonians and Websterites in an anti-nullification “Constitution and Union” Party that would secure his own election to the presidency in 1836. He made overtures to Jackson, only to be rebuffed, and had no choice but to join the emerging Whig Party and to seek the presidency through that organization. His candidacy for 1836 ended when most northern Whigs and Anti-Masons supported General William Henry Harrison, a hero of the War of 1812. Webster received only the fourteen electoral votes of Massachusetts.

In the “log-cabin-hard cider” election of 1840, Webster campaigned for Harrison, and the victorious candidate made him secretary of state. The elderly Harrison died on April 4, 1841, only one month after his inauguration. Webster continued in office under Harrison’s successor, John Tyler. His effort to settle the northeastern boundary dispute with Great Britain was successfully concluded with the signing of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. Webster’s decision to remain in the Tyler cabinet after all of his fellow Whigs had resigned severely strained his party ties and threatened his political future. Tyler’s desire to annex Texas gave Webster the excuse he needed to give up his office in May, 1843.

Webster went back to the Senate in 1845. Mindful of the lasting harm that his opposition to the War of 1812 had done to his presidential ambitions, he reluctantly supported the Mexican War, but he never believed it to be justified. The election of 1848 brought him the usual fourth year frustration as the Whigs nominated General Zachary Taylor, the victor of Buena Vista, who was elected. Webster’s seventh of March speech in support of the Compromise of 1850 was his final effort to eliminate the slavery issue from national politics; it enraged New England antislavery men, who likened him to a fallen angel.

After Taylor’s death in July, 1850, Webster became secretary of state in Millard Fillmore’s administration. His presidential ambitions were again revived in 1852, but the Whigs nominated General Winfield Scott. Sick in mind and body, Webster repudiated Scott’s candidacy and correctly prophesied the downfall of the Whig Party. He died at his farm, Marshfield, on October 24, 1852, murmuring, “I still live!” Reflecting no more than his mental confusion about experiencing death, these final words would later take on a much broader symbolic meaning to many people.

Significance

Webster was a highly flawed yet fascinating human being, the stuff of which legends are made. He drank and ate to excess, spent money recklessly, and was chronically dependent on powerful creditors such as the National Bank. Combined with his political ambition, these weaknesses in his character constituted the “Black Dan” alter ego of his patriotic, disinterested, “Godlike Daniel” self. The Democrats never tired of reminding the voters that the champion of the Constitution and the Union had been a partisan Federalist congressman during the War of 1812.

A perennial presidential candidate after 1830, Webster had to transcend New England’s regional interests, while continuing to serve them. Intoning hymns to the Union was an obvious solution, and Webster’s high point was his great debate with Hayne. Generations of northern schoolchildren would memorize his ringing appeal: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” Webster believed that the United States had a special destiny and that Americans had a unique character with which to fulfill it. The last hopes of humankind, he said at Bunker Hill in 1825, rested on the success of the Union, the American experiment in popular government.

Webster was less successful in trying to get the federal government to adopt a policy of economic nationalism, helping business in an age of economic growth through high tariffs, bank charters, and transportation subsidies. In his various roles as constitutional lawyer, orator, politician, and diplomat, he strengthened the sense of American nationalism. President Abraham Lincoln would echo Webster’s Union theme in his Civil War addresses, such as the one at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863.

Bibliography

Bartlett, Irving H. Daniel Webster. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. This gracefully written, psychologically insightful biography is an attempt to understand the Black Dan-Godlike Man paradox along with the enigmatic inner man behind the dual images.

Baxter, Maurice G. Daniel Webster and the Supreme Court. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1966. Webster exerted a particularly strong influence on the bench in its application of the commerce and contract clauses. Baxter’s handling of Webster’s legal career, and especially his many appearances before the Supreme Court, is masterful.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984. Benefiting from the Webster Papers project at Dartmouth College, this is the long-awaited full-scale scholarly biography. Webster is portrayed as an ardent patriot, an advocate of American nationality, and a champion of peace and Union—who was at the same time a self-promoting politician who changed his principles to meet the interests of his constituents and who was sometimes insensitive to the great moral issues of the day.

Brown, Norman D. Daniel Webster and the Politics of Availability. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969. An account of Webster’s presidential ambitions during the years in which a second American party system of National Republican-Whig and Democratic parties emerged out of the superficial Republican unity of the so-called Era of Good Feelings. General Andrew Jackson’s tremendous popular success influenced Whig strategists to pass over Webster in 1836, 1840, 1848, and 1852 in favor of military heroes for the presidency.

Current, Richard N. Daniel Webster and the Rise of National Conservatism. Boston: Little, Brown, 1955. This excellent brief biography emphasizes Webster’s advocacy of a national conservatism for the United States as his response to the needs of the business community. The elements of his political philosophy were an expansive but peaceful Americanism, self-discipline, Constitution worship, beneficent technology, the harmony of group interests, and power tied to property.

Dalzell, Robert F., Jr. Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism: 1843-1852. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Dalzell explains better than any previous study Webster’s actions during his tragic last years, when the pressures on him to confirm, modify, or abandon his nationalism were the greatest.

Nathans, Sydney. Daniel Webster and Jacksonian Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. This study explores Webster’s responses, as a man and as a type of political leader, to the organized, systematic, and continued party strife that took firm root in the era of Andrew Jackson.

Remini, Robert V. Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Remini, biographer of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, explores the “Godlike Daniel-Black Dan” dichotomy evident in Webster’s political career and personal life. The book provides a meticulously researched and balanced portrayal of Webster.

Smith, Craig R. Daniel Webster and the Oratory of Civil Religion. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005. Biography focusing on Webster’s legendary rhetorical ability. Smith examines Webster’s career from the perspective of his greatest speeches, analyzing and placing the speeches into context, and describing how Webster’s rhetoric created a civil religion of romantic patriotism.