Congressional Giants. J. Michael Martinez
its profoundest depths.”
He pointed out that for good or ill, slavery had existed in the United States and was unlikely to end in the foreseeable future. Abolitionists who called for an immediate end to bondage were fooling themselves. The institution was firmly planted on American soil, and it was not to be dislodged easily. At the same time, it was unlikely to spread in the southwestern territories. They were arid and not easily cultivated. Without an agricultural base, slavery could not flourish. In Webster’s opinion, the assault on slaveholders and their property was overblown. Enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act—a crucial part of Clay’s legislative compromise—would not undermine the abolitionist position.
Webster did not merely castigate northern men. He faulted southerners for employing hysterical threats to tear apart the Union if they did not get their way. Secession talk harmed everyone’s interests, and must be avoided.
He was eager to redirect the discussion toward reaching a suitable compromise. “And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in those caverns of darkness, instead of groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let us come out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh air of Liberty and Union.” It was a ringing endorsement of Clay’s plan, and the speech swayed some opinions, helping the bills known collectively as the Compromise of 1850 eventually pass the Senate.80
The Seventh of March speech, as it came to be known, destroyed Webster’s political support in New England. The famous writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson typified the response. He was aghast. “ ‘Liberty! Liberty!’ Pho! Let Mr. Webster, for decency’s sake, shut his lips for once and forever on this word. The word ‘Liberty’ in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word ‘love’ in the mouth of a courtesan.” Theodore Parker, a prominent abolitionist, exclaimed that “no living man has done so much to debauch the conscience of the nation.” Horace Mann, an influential educator, denounced Webster’s proposal as a “vile catastrophe.” The great orator had once walked among the gods, but his stock had fallen. He now consorted among “harlots and leeches.” Senator William H. Seward characterized Webster as a “traitor to the cause of freedom.” Future Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, a vocal opponent of slavery, added Webster’s name to the “dark list of apostates.” Sumner believed that “Mr. Webster’s elaborate treason has done more than anything else to break down the North.”81
Outside of New England, many Americans viewed Webster as a hero. He had known that the speech probably would destroy his political career, but he spoke up, anyway. The National Intelligencer, an influential newspaper in Washington, DC, hailed the senator’s speech, arguing that it would add “fresh lustre to the fame of the great orator” owing to Webster’s “truly national and patriotic spirit.” Webster’s longtime adversary, Isaac Hill, a newspaper editor who previously served as a U.S. senator and governor of New Hampshire, proclaimed the speech “the crowning act” of a great man’s life. In his book, Profiles in Courage, written more than a century after the speech, Senator John F. Kennedy wrote movingly of the man who, “to the end . . . had been true to the Union, and to his greatest act of courageous principle.”82
By all accounts, Daniel Webster in his dotage could call up his famous eloquence upon occasion, but mostly he was embittered and given to heavy drinking. Immediately following his March Seventh speech, he worried that Clay’s compromise was doomed to failure. Webster’s reputation would sink into an abyss as a result. Indeed, there was a good reason to worry. President Taylor opposed Clay’s plan, leading to a legislative impasse. There the matter remained until the intervention of a deus ex machina almost too strange to believe. For the second time in a decade, a Whig president died in office. Old Rough and Ready was neither as rough nor as ready as he had appeared. Taylor fell ill from a gastrointestinal illness and passed away on July 9, 1850, elevating his vice president, Millard Fillmore, into office.
Fillmore initially agreed with Taylor that Clay’s scheme must be resisted. He soon changed his tune, much to the delight of moderates from both parties. Fillmore also installed Webster as his secretary of state. Given his alienation from other Massachusetts men, Webster no doubt heaved a sigh of relief when he resigned from the Senate. He would never return.83
His second stint at the State Department found Webster laboring to push through the Compromise of 1850. In the meantime, Clay took a leave of absence while Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois performed the heavy lifting of lobbying for the plan. Douglas oversaw the division of the legislative package into separate bills, and the piecemeal enactment of each measure. For his part, Webster drafted a special message for President Fillmore to present to Congress asking that the crisis be ended. Webster also used administration patronage to attract supporters to the cause. After the compromise was enacted, Webster helped enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, ensuring his continued estrangement from antislavery New Englanders. A coalition of Democrats and Whigs in the Massachusetts state legislature elected Charles Sumner, a strong antislavery advocate, to the U.S. Senate in a move that was widely considered a rebuke to Webster.84
The secretary retained his interest in foreign policy as the administration pursued trade relations with Asian countries, especially Japan. With Webster at the helm, the administration asserted American power in Latin America, and negotiated the release of a Hungarian rebel, Lajos Kossuth, in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Webster triggered a diplomatic crisis with Austria, which controlled Hungary, when he toasted Kossuth and Hungarian independence at a congressional banquet in Washington, DC, in January 1852.85
As the 1852 presidential election neared, he harbored a desire to run one final time, although it was an irrational hope. Webster had never garnered much support outside of New England. Now, after his crucial role in engineering the Compromise of 1850 and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, he had eroded what little support he had ever enjoyed in the North. At the 1852 Whig National Convention, President Fillmore and another hero of the Mexican War, General Winfield Scott, jockeyed for the party’s nomination. Scott eventually prevailed, going on to lose in the general election to the Democrat, Franklin Pierce. Daniel Webster’s last chance to campaign for president was lost.86
Even if he had won the Whig nomination, he would not have served as president. The Whigs were a dying breed, soon to be buried forever. The same could be said of Webster. He was seventy years old in 1852, at a time when that age was ancient, indeed. He was the last of the Great Triumvirate to pass from the scene. John C. Calhoun had died in 1850, and Henry Clay was gone in June 1852. Webster remained in office, but his performance as secretary of state frequently was subpar, occasionally embarrassing. The great man knew his salad days were long past, and so he drank to take his mind off the sad state of affairs. He may have suffered from cirrhosis of the liver as well as a range of vague, undiagnosed illnesses.
To exacerbate matters, Webster suffered a severe head injury in May 1852. As the months progressed, he became increasingly frail. It was clear that he could not continue as secretary of state. On October 18, 1852, he wrote the last letter of his life. Addressing the correspondence to President Fillmore, he opened with the customary salutation, “Dear Sir.” He said he wished he could serve out the rest of his term “with you, around your Council Board.” It was not to be. “Consider my Resignation as always before you, to be accepted, any moment you please.” Six days later, in the words of a colorful New York Times obituary writer, Webster “passed from the scene of his vast labors and his glorious triumphs, to join the great of all ages in the spirit-land.” The time was 2:35 a.m. on Sunday, October 24, 1852.87
Today Daniel Webster’s legacy looms large. Modern commentators forgive him his apostasy on the Compromise of 1850, for it was a divisive question in a divisive time. Instead, he is remembered and revered for his unparalleled eloquence, his status as a silver-tongued orator without equal in the annals of the U.S. Congress. His famous addresses still thrill students of American history—certainly not as much as in his day, but undeniably so. His paeans in favor of the Union and his pleas to place country above party are testaments to the power of statesmanship to effect positive change. If Webster did not always live up to his aspirations, he nonetheless inspired future generations