Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts
By 1830, a new generation of leaders emerged in America. The Founding Fathers, who had charted the country’s course since its beginning, were largely gone. These new leaders were left to meet the challenges of a still-young country. States’ rights, slavery, and the admission of new states to the Union were chief among the issues of the day. America grew more divided along regional lines as tensions between North and South became more pronounced.
As more emphasis was being placed on regional differences, so were differences between state and federal power. What power did the states have over the federal government? Could the states nullify federal law? These were a few of the questions being asked at the time.
Against this backdrop, a debate in the Senate over federal land sales in the West turned into a much greater philosophical one. Robert Hayne of South Carolina argued that land sales would enrich the North and take wealth away from the West. But Hayne took things a step further when he asserted on the Senate floor that states have the right to nullify federal laws that they believe are not in their state’s best interest. With such sovereignty, it was implied that states have the right to succeed from the Union should they choose.
Daniel Webster, considered one of the best orators in American history, spoke in response for several hours over two days, defending the Union while discussing the Constitution and the nature of the American government. His speech, known in history as his “Second Reply to Hayne,” is considered by many to be the greatest speech ever given in the Senate. To Webster, the nation was a “popular government, erected by the people; those who administer it are responsible to the people; and itself capable of being amended and modified, just as the people may choose it should be.”
Webster recorded the speech in shorthand and then edited it himself before releasing it in writing a month after it was delivered. Generations of schoolchildren would go on to memorize the closing words of the speech, including its famous closing line, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
The speech is well regarded because it made the case for America as a country of enumerated powers, with the Constitution as the basis for all laws. It stressed the chaos that would result if states could pick and choose what laws they wanted to follow. It made the case for one America under one law rather than a confederation of loosely-knit states.
Webster served in the Senate from 1827 to 1841 and again from 1845 to 1850. Along with Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, he was part of the “Great Triumvirate” due to the influence these men shared over the Senate in the 1830s and 40s. The different positions on state sovereignty and the Union would reach their climax during the Civil War in 1861. Daniel Webster’s speech influenced the two sides’ arguments.
Below are the closing words of Daniel Webster’s speech delivered on January 26 and 27, 1830:
“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 luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as “What is all this worth?” nor those other words of delusion and folly, “Liberty first and Union afterwards”; but everywhere, spread all over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every American heart – Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”