Before the new President was inaugurated, in the winter of 1848-49, the struggle began in Congress, which led to the delivery of the 7th of March speech by Mr. Webster in the following year. At this point, therefore, it becomes necessary to turn back and review briefly and rapidly Mr. Webster's course in regard to the question of slavery.
His first important utterance on this momentous question was in 1819, when the land was distracted with the conflict which had suddenly arisen over the admission of Missouri. Massachusetts was strongly in favor of the exclusion of slavery from the new States, and utterly averse to any compromise. A meeting was held in the state-house at Boston, and a committee was appointed to draft a memorial to Congress, on the subject of the prohibition of slavery in the territories. This memorial,—which was afterwards adopted,—was drawn by Mr. Webster, as chairman of the committee. It set forth, first, the belief of its signers that Congress had the constitutional power "to make such a prohibition a condition on the admission of a new State into the Union, and that it is just and proper that they should exercise that power." Then came an argument on the constitutional question, and then the reasons for the exercise of the power as a general policy. The first point was that it would prevent further inequality of representation, such as existed under the Constitution in the old States, but which could not be increased without danger. The next argument went straight to the merits of the question, as involved in slavery as a system. After pointing out the value of the ordinance of 1787 to the Northwest, the memorial continued:—
"We appeal to the justice and the wisdom of the national councils to prevent the further progress of a great and serious evil. We appeal to those who look forward to the remote consequences of their measures, and who cannot balance a temporary or trifling convenience, if there were such, against a permanent growing and desolating evil.
"… The Missouri territory is a new country. If its extensive and fertile fields shall be opened as a market for slaves, the government will seem to become a party to a traffic, which in so many acts, through so many years, it has denounced as impolitic, unchristian, and inhuman…. The laws of the United States have denounced heavy penalties against the traffic in slaves, because such traffic is deemed unjust and inhuman. We appeal to the spirit of these laws; we appeal to this justice and humanity; we ask whether they ought not to operate, on the present occasion, with all their force? We have a strong feeling of the injustice of any toleration of slavery. Circumstances have entailed it on a portion of our community, which cannot be immediately relieved from it without consequences more injurious than the suffering of the evil. But to permit it in a new country, where yet no habits are formed which render it indispensable, what is it but to encourage that rapacity and fraud and violence against which we have so long pointed the denunciation of our penal code? What is it but to tarnish the proud fame of the country? What is it but to render questionable all its professions of regard for the rights of humanity and the liberties of mankind."
A year later Mr. Webster again spoke on one portion of this subject, and in the same tone of deep hostility and reproach. This second instance was that famous and much quoted passage of his Plymouth oration in which he denounced the African slave-trade. Every one remembers the ringing words:—
"I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who, by stealth and at midnight, labor in this work of hell,—foul and dark as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it."
This is directed against the African slave-trade, the most hideous feature, perhaps, in the system. But there was no real distinction between slavers plying from one American port to another and those which crossed the ocean for the same purpose. There was no essential difference between slaves raised for the market in Virginia—whence they were exported and sold—and those kidnapped for the same object on the Guinea coast. The physical suffering of a land journey might be less than that of a long sea-voyage, but the anguish of separation between mother and child was the same in all cases. The chains which clanked on the limbs of the wretched creatures, driven from the auction block along the road which passed beneath the national capitol, and the fetters of the captured fugitive were no softer or lighter than those forged for the cargo of the slave-ships. Yet the man who so magnificently denounced the one in 1820, found no cause to repeat the denunciation in 1850, when only domestic traffic was in question. The memorial of 1819 and the oration of 1820 place the African slave-trade and the domestic branch of the business on precisely the same ground of infamy and cruelty. In 1850 Mr. Webster seems to have discovered that there was a wide gulf fixed between them, for the latter wholly failed to excite the stern condemnation poured forth by the memorialist of 1819 and the orator of 1820. The Fugitive Slave Law, more inhuman than either of the forms of traffic, was defended in 1850 on good constitutional grounds; but the eloquent invective of the early days against an evil which constitutions might necessitate but could not alter or justify, does not go hand in hand with the legal argument.
The next occasion after the Missouri Compromise, on which slavery made its influence strongly felt at Washington, was when Mr. Adams's scheme of the Panama mission aroused such bitter and unexpected resistance in Congress. Mr. Webster defended the policy of the President with great ability, but he confined himself to the international and constitutional questions which it involved, and did not discuss the underlying motive and true source of the opposition. The debate on Foote's resolution in 1830, in the wide range which it took, of course included slavery, and Mr. Hayne had a good deal to say on that subject, which lay at the bottom of the tariff agitation, as it did at that of every Southern movement of any real importance. In his reply, Mr. Webster said that he had made no attack upon this sensitive institution, that he had simply stated that the Northwest had been greatly benefited by the exclusion of slavery, and that it would have been better for Kentucky if she had come within the scope of the ordinance of 1787. The weight of his remarks was directed to showing that the complaint of Northern attacks on slavery as existing in the Southern States, or of Northern schemes to compel the abolition of slavery, was utterly groundless and fallacious. At the same time he pointed out the way in which slavery was continually used to unite the South against the North.
"This feeling," he said, "always carefully kept alive, and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine. There is not and never has been a disposition in the North to interfere with these interests of the South. Such interference has never been supposed to be within the power of government; nor has it been in any way attempted. The slavery of the South has always been regarded as a matter of domestic policy left with the States themselves, and with which the Federal government had nothing to do. Certainly, sir, I am and ever have been of that opinion. The gentleman, indeed, argues that slavery, in the abstract, is no evil. Most assuredly, I need not say I differ with him altogether and most widely on that point. I regard domestic slavery as one of the greatest evils, both moral and political."
His position is here clearly defined. He admits fully that slavery within the States cannot be interfered with by the general government, under the Constitution. But he also insists that it is a great evil, and the obvious conclusion is, that its extension, over which the government does have control, must and should be checked. This is the attitude of the memorial and the oration. Nothing has yet changed. There is less fervor in the denunciation of slavery, but that may be fairly attributed to circumstances which made the maintenance of the general government and the enforcement of the revenue laws the main points in issue.
In 1836 the anti-slavery movement, destined to grow to such vast proportions, began to show itself in the Senate. The first contest came on the reception of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Mr. Calhoun moved that these petitions should not be received, but his motion was rejected by a large majority. The question then came on the petitions themselves, and, by a vote of thirty-four to six, their prayer was rejected, Mr. Webster voting with the minority because he disapproved this method of disposing of the matter. Soon after, Mr. Webster presented three similar petitions, two from Massachusetts and one from Michigan, and moved their reference to a committee of inquiry. He stated that, while the government had no power whatever over slavery in the States, it had complete control over slavery in the District, which was a totally distinct affair. He urged a respectful treatment of the petitions, and defended the right of petition and the motives and characters of the petitioners. He spoke briefly, and, except when he was charged with placing himself at the head of the petitioners, coldly, and did not touch on the merits of the question, either as to the abolition of slavery in the District or as to slavery itself.
The Southerners, especially the extremists and the nullifiers, were always more ready than any one else to strain the powers of the central government to the last point, and use them most tyrannically and illegally in their own interest and in that of their pet institution. The session of 1836 furnished a striking example of this characteristic quality. Mr. Calhoun at that time introduced his monstrous bill to control the United States mails in the interests of slavery, by authorizing postmasters to seize and suppress all anti-slavery documents. Against this measure Mr. Webster spoke and voted, resting his opposition on general grounds, and sustaining it by a strong and effective argument. In the following year, on his way to the North, after the inauguration of Mr. Van Buren, a great public reception was given to him in New York, and on that occasion he made the speech in Niblo's Garden, where he defined the Whig principles, arraigned so powerfully the policy of Jackson, and laid the foundation for the triumphs of the Harrison campaign. In the course of that speech he referred to Texas, and strongly expressed his belief that it should remain independent and should not be annexed. This led him to touch upon slavery. He said:—
"I frankly avow my entire unwillingness to do anything that shall extend the slavery of the African race on this continent, or add other slave-holding States to the Union. When I say that I regard slavery in itself as a great moral, social, and political evil, I only use the language which has been adopted by distinguished men, themselves citizens of slave-holding States. I shall do nothing, therefore, to favor or encourage its further extension. We have slavery already amongst us. The Constitution found it in the Union, it recognized it, and gave it solemn guaranties. To the full extent of the guaranties we are all bound in honor, in justice, and by the Constitution…. But when we come to speak of admitting new States, the subject assumes an entirely different aspect…. In my opinion, the people of the United States will not consent to bring into the Union a new, vastly extensive, and slave-holding country, large enough for half a dozen or a dozen States. In my opinion, they ought not to consent to it…. On the general question of slavery a great portion of the community is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted attention as a question of politics, but it has struck a far deeper-toned chord. It has arrested the religious feeling of the country; it has taken strong hold on the consciences of men. He is a rash man, indeed, and little conversant with human nature, and especially has he a very erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, who supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised. It will assuredly cause itself to be respected. It may be reasoned with, it may be made willing—I believe it is entirely willing—to fulfil all existing engagements and all existing duties, to uphold and defend the Constitution as it is established, with whatever regrets about some provisions which it does actually contain. But to coerce it into silence, to endeavor to restrain its free expression, to seek to compress and confine it, warm as it is and more heated as such endeavors would inevitably render it,—should this be attempted, I know nothing, even in the Constitution or in the Union itself, which would not be endangered by the explosion which might follow."
Thus Mr. Webster spoke on slavery and upon the agitation against it, in 1837. The tone was the same as in 1820, and there was the same ring of dignified courage and unyielding opposition to the extension and perpetuation of a crying evil.
In the session of Congress preceding the speech at Niblo's Garden, numerous petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District had been offered. Mr. Webster reiterated his views as to the proper disposition to be made of them; but announced that he had no intention of expressing an opinion as to the merits of the question. Objections were made to the reception of the petitions, the question was stated on the reception, and the whole matter was laid on the table. The Senate, under the lead of Calhoun, was trying to shut the door against the petitioners, and stifle the right of petition; and there was no John Quincy Adams among them to do desperate battle against this infamous scheme.
In the following year came more petitions, and Mr. Calhoun now attempted to stop the agitation in another fashion. He introduced a resolution to the effect that these petitions were a direct and dangerous attack on the "institution" of the slave-holding States. This Mr. Clay improved in a substitute, which stated that any act or measure of Congress looking to the abolition of slavery in the District would be a violation of the faith implied in the cession by Virginia and Maryland,—a just cause of alarm to the South, and having a direct tendency to disturb and endanger the Union. Mr. Webster wrote to a friend that this was an attempt to make a new Constitution, and that the proceedings of the Senate, when they passed the resolutions, drew a line which could never be obliterated. Mr. Webster also spoke briefly against the resolutions, confining himself strictly to demonstrating the absurdity of Mr. Clay's doctrine of "plighted faith." He disclaimed carefully, and even anxiously, any intention of expressing an opinion on the merits of the question; although he mentioned one or two reasonable arguments against abolition. The resolutions were adopted by a large majority, Mr. Webster voting against them on the grounds set forth in his speech. Whether the approaching presidential election had any connection with his careful avoidance of everything except the constitutional point, which contrasted so strongly with his recent utterances at Niblo's Garden, it is, of course, impossible to determine. John Quincy Adams, who had no love for Mr. Webster, and who was then in the midst of his desperate struggle for the right of petition, says, in his diary, in March, 1838, speaking of the delegation from Massachusetts:—
"Their policy is dalliance with the South; and they care no more for the right of petition than is absolutely necessary to satisfy the feeling of their constituents. They are jealous of Cushing, who, they think, is playing a double game. They are envious of my position as the supporter of the right of petition; and they truckle to the South to court their favor for Webster. He is now himself tampering with the South on the slavery and the Texas question."
This harsh judgment may or may not be correct, but it shows very plainly that Mr. Webster's caution in dealing with these topics was noticed and criticised at this period. The annexation of Texas, moreover, which he had so warmly opposed, seemed to him, at this juncture, and not without reason, to be less threatening, owing to the course of events in the young republic. Mr. Adams did not, however, stand alone in thinking that Mr. Webster, at this time, was lukewarm on the subject. In 1839 Mr. Giddings says "that it was impossible for any man, who submitted so quietly to the dictation of slavery as Mr. Webster, to command that influence which was necessary to constitute a successful politician." How much Mr. Webster's attitude had weakened, just at this period, is shown better by his own action than by anything Mr. Giddings could say. The ship Enterprise, engaged in the domestic slave-trade from Virginia to New Orleans, had been driven into Port Hamilton, and the slaves had escaped. Great Britain refused compensation. Thereupon, early in 1840, Mr. Calhoun introduced resolutions declaratory of international law on this point, and setting forth that England had no right to interfere with, or to permit, the escape of slaves from vessels driven into her ports. The resolutions were idle, because they could effect nothing, and mischievous because they represented that the sentiment of the Senate was in favor of protecting the slave-trade. Upon these resolutions, absurd in character and barbarous in principle, Mr. Webster did not even vote. There is a strange contrast here between the splendid denunciation of the Plymouth oration and this utter lack of opinion, upon resolutions designed to create a sentiment favorable to the protection of slave-ships engaged in the domestic traffic. Soon afterwards, when Mr. Webster was Secretary of State, he advanced much the same doctrine in the discussion of the Creole case, and his letter was approved by Calhoun. There may be merit in the legal argument, but the character of the cargo, which it was sought to protect, put it beyond the reach of law. We have no need to go farther than the Plymouth oration to find the true character of the trade in human beings as carried on upon the high seas.
After leaving the cabinet, and resuming his law practice, Mr. Webster, of course, continued to watch with attention the progress of events. The formation of the Liberty party, in the summer of 1843, appeared to him a very grave circumstance. He had always understood the force of the anti-slavery movement at the North, and it was with much anxiety that he now saw it take definite shape, and assume extreme grounds of opposition. This feeling of anxiety was heightened when he discovered, in the following winter, while in attendance upon the Supreme Court at Washington, the intention of the administration to bring about the annexation of Texas, and spring the scheme suddenly upon the country. This policy, with its consequence of an enormous extension of slave territory, Mr. Webster had always vigorously and consistently opposed, and he was now thoroughly alarmed. He saw what an effect the annexation would produce upon the anti-slavery movement, and he dreaded the results. He therefore procured the introduction of a resolution in Congress against annexation; wrote some articles in the newspapers against it himself; stirred up his friends in Washington and New York to do the same, and endeavored to start public meetings in Massachusetts. His friends in Boston and elsewhere, and the Whigs generally, were disposed to think his alarm ill-founded. They were absorbed in the coming presidential election, and were too ready to do Mr. Webster the injustice of supposing that his views upon the probability of annexation sprang from jealousy of Mr. Clay. The suspicion was unfounded and unfair. Mr. Webster was wholly right and perfectly sincere. He did a good deal in an attempt to rouse the North. The only criticism to be made is that he did not do more. One public meeting would have been enough, if he had spoken frankly, declared that he knew, no matter how, that annexation was contemplated, and had then denounced it as he did at Niblo's Garden. "One blast upon his bugle-horn were worth a thousand men." Such a speech would have been listened to throughout the length and breadth of the land; but perhaps it was too much to expect this of him in view of his delicate relations with Mr. Clay. At a later period, in the course of the campaign, he denounced annexation and the increase of slave territory, but unfortunately it was then too late. The Whigs had preserved silence on the subject at their convention, and it was difficult to deal with it without reflecting on their candidate. Mr. Webster vindicated his own position and his own wisdom, but the mischief could not then be averted. The annexation of Texas after the rejection of the treaty in 1844 was carried through, nearly a year later, by a mixture of trickery and audacity in the last hours of the Tyler administration.
Four days after the consummation of this project Mr. Webster took his seat in the Senate, and on March 11 wrote to his son that, "while we feel as we ought about the annexation of Texas, we ought to keep in view the true grounds of objection to that measure. Those grounds are,—want of constitutional power,—danger of too great an extent of territory, and opposition to the increase of slavery and slave representation. It was properly considered, also, as a measure tending to produce war." He then goes on to argue that Mexico had no good cause for war; but it is evident that he already dreaded just that result. When Congress assembled again, in the following December, the first matter to engage their attention was the admission of Texas as a State of the Union. It was impossible to prevent the passage of the resolution, but Mr. Webster stated his objections to the measure. His speech was brief and very mild in tone, if compared with the language which he had frequently used in regard to the annexation. He expressed his opposition to this method of obtaining new territory by resolution instead of treaty, and to acquisition of territory as foreign to the true spirit of the Republic, and as endangering the Constitution and the Union by increasing the already existing inequality of representation, and extending the area of slavery. He dwelt on the inviolability of slavery in the States, and did not touch upon the evils of the system itself.
By the following spring the policy of Mr. Polk had culminated, intrigue had done its perfect work, hostilities had been brought on with Mexico, and in May Congress was invited to declare a war which the administration had taken care should already exist. Mr. Webster was absent at this time, and did not vote on the declaration of war; and when he returned he confined himself to discussing the war measures, and to urging the cessation of hostilities, and the renewal of efforts to obtain peace.
The next session—that of the winter of 1846-47—was occupied, of course, almost entirely with the affairs of the war. In these measures Mr. Webster took scarcely any part; but toward the close of the session, when the terms on which the war should be concluded were brought up, he again came forward. February 1, 1847, Mr. Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced the famous proviso, which bears his name, as an amendment to the bill appropriating three millions of dollars for extraordinary expenses. By this proviso slavery was to be excluded from all territory thereafter acquired or annexed by the United States. A fortnight later Mr. Webster, who was opposed to the acquisition of more territory on any terms, introduced two resolutions in the Senate, declaring that the war ought not to be prosecuted for the acquisition of territory, and that Mexico should be informed that we did not aim at seizing her domain. A similar resolution was offered by Mr. Berrien of Georgia, and defeated by a party vote. On this occasion Mr. Webster spoke with great force and in a tone of solemn warning against the whole policy of territorial aggrandizement. He denounced all that had been done in this direction, and attacked with telling force the Northern democracy, which, while it opposed slavery and favored the Wilmot Proviso, was yet ready to admit new territory, even without the proviso. His attitude at this time, in opposition to any further acquisition of territory on any terms, was strong and determined, but his policy was a terrible confession of weakness. It amounted to saying that we must not acquire territory because we had not sufficient courage to keep slavery out of it. The Whigs were in a minority, however, and Mr. Webster could effect nothing. When the Wilmot Proviso came before the Senate Mr. Webster voted for it, but it was defeated, and the way was clear for Mr. Polk and the South to bring in as much territory as they could get, free of all conditions which could interfere with the extension of slavery. In September, 1847, after speaking and voting as has just been described in the previous session of Congress, Mr. Webster addressed the Whig convention at Springfield on the subject of the Wilmot Proviso. What he then said is of great importance in any comparison which may be made between his earlier views and those which he afterwards put forward, in March, 1850, on the same subject. The passage is as follows:—
"We hear much just now of a panacea for the dangers and evils of slavery and slave annexation, which they call the 'Wilmot Proviso.' That certainly is a just sentiment, but it is not a sentiment to found any new party upon. It is not a sentiment on which Massachusetts Whigs differ. There is not a man in this hall who holds to it more firmly than I do, nor one who adheres to it more than another.
"I feel some little interest in this matter, sir. Did I not commit myself in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely? And I must be permitted to say that I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim the merit, and take out a patent.
"I deny the priority of their invention. Allow me to say, sir, it is not their thunder.
"There is no one who can complain of the North for resisting the increase of slave representation, because it gives power to the minority in a manner inconsistent with the principles of our government. What is past must stand; what is established must stand; and with the same firmness with which I shall resist every plan to augment the slave representation, or to bring the Constitution into hazard by attempting to extend our dominions, shall I contend to allow existing rights to remain.
"Sir, I can only say that, in my judgment, we are to use the first, the last, and every occasion which occurs, in maintaining our sentiments against the extension of the slave-power."
In the following winter Mr. Webster continued his policy of opposition to all acquisitions of territory. Although the cloud of domestic sorrow was already upon him, he spoke against the legislative powers involved in the "Ten Regiment" Bill, and on the 23d of March, after the ratification of the treaty of peace, which carried with it large cessions of territory, he delivered a long and elaborate speech on the "Objects of the Mexican War." The weight of his speech was directed against the acquisition of territory, on account of its effect on the Constitution, and the increased inequality of representation which it involved. He referred to the plan of cutting up Texas so as to obtain ten senators, as "borough mongering" on a grand scale, a course which he proposed to resist to the last; and he concluded by denouncing the whole project as one calculated to turn the Constitution into a curse rather than a blessing. "I resist it to-day and always," he said. "Whoever falters or whoever flies, I continue the contest."
In June General Taylor was nominated, and soon after Mr. Webster left Washington, although Congress was still in session. He returned in August, in time to take part in the settlement of the Oregon question. The South, with customary shrewdness, was endeavoring to use the territorial organization of Oregon as a lever to help them in their struggle to gain control of the new conquests. A bill came up from the House with no provision in regard to slavery, and Mr. Douglas carried an amendment to it, declaring the Missouri Compromise to be in full force in Oregon. The House disagreed, and, on the question of receding, Mr. Webster took occasion to speak on the subject of slavery in the territories. He was disgusted with the nomination of Taylor and with the cowardly silence of the Whigs on the question of the extension of slavery. In this frame of mind he made one of the strongest and best speeches he ever delivered on this topic. He denied that slavery was an "institution;" he denied that the local right to hold slaves implied the right of the owner to carry them with him and keep them in slavery on free soil; he stated in the strongest possible manner the right of Congress to control slavery or to prohibit it in the territories; and he concluded with a sweeping declaration of his opposition to any extension of slavery or any increase of slave representation. The Oregon bill finally passed under the pressure of the "Free-Soil" nominations, with a clause inserted in the House, embodying substantially the principles of the Wilmot Proviso.
When Congress adjourned, Mr. Webster returned to Marshfield, where he made the speech on the nomination of General Taylor. It was a crisis in his life. At that moment he could have parted with the Whigs and put himself at the head of the constitutional anti-slavery party. The Free-Soilers had taken the very ground against the extension of slavery which he had so long occupied. He could have gone consistently, he could have separated from the Whigs on a great question of principle, and such a course would have been no stronger evidence of personal disappointment than was afforded by the declaration that the nomination of Taylor was one not fit to be made. Mr. Webster said that he fully concurred in the main object of the Buffalo Convention, that he was as good a Free-Soiler as any of them, but that the Free-Soil party presented nothing new or valuable, and he did not believe in Mr. Van Buren. He then said it was not true that General Taylor was nominated by the South, as charged by the Free-Soilers; but he did not confess, what was equally true, that Taylor was nominated through fear of the South, as was shown by his election by Southern votes. Mr. Webster's conclusion was, that it was safer to trust a slave-holder, a man without known political opinions, and a party which had not the courage of its convictions, than to run the risk of the election of another Democrat. Mr. Webster's place at that moment was at the head of a new party based on the principles which he had himself formulated against the extension of slavery. Such a change might have destroyed his chances for the presidency, if he had any, but it would have given him one of the greatest places in American history and made him the leader in the new period. He lost his opportunity. He did not change his party, but he soon after accepted the other alternative and changed his opinions.
His course once taken, he made the best of it, and delivered a speech in Faneuil Hall, in which it is painful to see the effort to push aside slavery and bring forward the tariff and the sub-treasury. He scoffed at this absorption in "one idea," and strove to thrust it away. It was the cry of "peace, peace," when there was no peace, and when Daniel Webster knew there could be none until the momentous question had been met and settled. Like the great composer who heard in the first notes of his symphony "the hand of Fate knocking at the door," the great New England statesman heard the same warning in the hoarse murmur against slavery, but he shut his ears to the dread sound and passed on.
When Mr. Webster returned to Washington, after the election of General Taylor, the strife had already begun over our Mexican conquests. The South had got the territory, and the next point was to fasten slavery upon it. The North was resolved to prevent the further spread of slavery, but was by no means so determined or so clear in its views as its opponent. President Polk urged in his message that Congress should not legislate on the question of slavery in the territories, but that if they did, the right of slave-holders to carry their slaves with them to the new lands should be recognized, and that the best arrangement was to extend the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific. For the originator and promoter of the Mexican war this was a very natural solution, and was a fit conclusion to one of the worst presidential careers this country has ever seen. The plan had only one defect. It would not work. One scheme after another was brought before the Senate, only to fail. Finally, Mr. Webster introduced his own, which was merely to authorize military government and the maintenance of existing laws in the Mexican cessions, and a consequent postponement of the question. The proposition was reasonable and sensible, but it fared little better than the others. The Southerners found, as they always did sooner or later, that facts were against them. The people of New Mexico petitioned for a territorial government and for the exclusion of slavery. Mr. Calhoun pronounced this action "insolent." Slavery was not only to be permitted, but the United States government was to be made to force it upon the people of the territories. Finally, a resolution was offered "to extend the Constitution" to the territories,—one of those utterly vague propositions in which the South delighted to hide well-defined schemes for extending, not the Constitution, but slave-holding, to fresh fields and virgin soil. This gave rise to a sharp debate between Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun as to whether the Constitution extended to the territories or not. Mr. Webster upheld the latter view, and the discussion is chiefly interesting from the fact that Mr. Webster got the better of Mr. Calhoun in the argument, and as an example of the latter's excessive ingenuity in sustaining and defending a more than doubtful proposition. The result of the whole business was, that nothing was done, except to extend the revenue laws of the United States to New Mexico and California.
Before Congress again assembled, one of the subjects of their debates had taken its fortunes into its own hands. California, rapidly peopled by the discoveries of gold, had held a convention and adopted a frame of government with a clause prohibiting slavery. When Congress met, the Senators and Representatives of California were in Washington with their free Constitution in their hands, demanding the admission of their State into the Union.
New Mexico was involved in a dispute with Texas as to boundaries, and if the claim of Texas was sanctioned, two thirds of the disputed territory would come within the scope of the annexation resolutions, and be slave-holding States. Then there was the further question whether the Wilmot Proviso should be applied to New Mexico on her organization as a territory.
The President, acting under the influence of Mr. Seward, advised that California should be admitted, and the question of slavery in the other territories be decided when they should apply for admission. Feeling was running very high in Washington, and there was a bitter and protracted struggle of three weeks, before the House succeeded in choosing a Speaker. The State Legislatures on both sides took up the burning question, and debated and resolved one way or the other with great excitement. The Southern members held meetings, and talked about secession and about withdrawing from Congress. The air was full of murmurs of dissolution and intestine strife. The situation was grave and even threatening.
In this state of affairs Mr. Clay, now an old man, and with but a short term of life before him, resolved to try once more to solve the problem and tide over the dangers by a grand compromise. The main features of his plan were: the admission of California with her free Constitution; the organization of territorial governments in the Mexican conquests without any reference to slavery; the adjustment of the Texan boundary; a guaranty of the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia until Maryland should consent to its abolition; the prohibition of the slave-trade in the District; provision for the more effectual enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, and a declaration that Congress had no power over the slave-trade between the slave-holding States. As the admission of California was certain, the proposition to bring about the prohibition of the slave-trade in the District was the only concession to the North. Everything else was in the interest of the South; but then that was always the manner in which compromises with slavery were made. They could be effected in no other way.
This outline Mr. Clay submitted to Mr. Webster January 21, 1850, and Mr. Webster gave it his full approval, subject, of course, to further and more careful consideration. February 5 Mr. Clay introduced his plan in the Senate, and supported it in an eloquent speech. On the 13th the President submitted the Constitution of California, and Mr. Foote moved to refer it, together with all matters relating to slavery, to a select committee. It now became noised about that Mr. Webster intended to address the Senate on the pending measures, and on the 7th of March he delivered the memorable speech which has always been known by its date.
It may be premised that in a literary and rhetorical point of view the speech of the 7th of March was a fine one. The greater part of it is taken up with argument and statement, and is very quiet in tone. But the famous passage beginning "peaceable secession," which came straight from the heart, and the peroration also, have the glowing eloquence which shone with so much splendor all through the reply to Hayne. The speech can be readily analyzed. With extreme calmness of language Mr. Webster discussed the whole history of slavery in ancient and modern times, and under the Constitution of the United States. His attitude is so judicial and historical, that if it is clear he disapproved of the system, it is not equally evident that he condemned it. He reviewed the history of the annexation of Texas, defended his own consistency, belittled the Wilmot Proviso, admitted substantially the boundary claims of Texas, and declared that the character of every part of the country, so far as slavery or freedom was concerned, was now settled, either by law or nature, and that he should resist the insertion of the Wilmot Proviso in regard to New Mexico, because it would be merely a wanton taunt and reproach to the South. He then spoke of the change of feeling and opinion both at the North and the South in regard to slavery, and passed next to the question of mutual grievances. He depicted at length the grievances of the South, including the tone of the Northern press, the anti-slavery resolutions of the Legislature, the utterances of the abolitionists, and the resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law. The last, which he thought the only substantial and legally remediable complaint, he dwelt on at great length, and severely condemned the refusal of certain States to comply with this provision of the Constitution. Then came the grievances of the North against the South, which were dealt with very briefly. In fact, the Northern grievances, according to Mr. Webster, consisted of the tone of the Southern press and of Southern speeches which, it must be confessed, were at times a little violent and somewhat offensive. The short paragraph reciting the unconstitutional and high-handed action of the South in regard to free negroes employed as seamen on Northern vessels, and the outrageous treatment of Mr. Hoar at Charleston in connection with this matter, was not delivered, Mr. Giddings says, but was inserted afterwards and before publication, at the suggestion of a friend. After this came the fine burst about secession, and a declaration of faith that the Southern convention called at Nashville would prove patriotic and conciliatory. The speech concluded with a strong appeal in behalf of nationality and union.
Mr. Curtis correctly says that a great majority of Mr. Webster's constituents, if not of the whole North, disapproved this speech. He might have added that that majority has steadily increased. The popular verdict has been given against the 7th of March speech, and that verdict has passed into history. Nothing can now be said or written which will alter the fact that the people of this country who maintained and saved the Union have passed judgment upon Mr. Webster and condemned what he said on the 7th of March, 1850, as wrong in principle and mistaken in policy. This opinion is not universal,—no opinion is,—but it is held by the great body of mankind who know or care anything about the subject, and it cannot be changed or substantially modified, because subsequent events have fixed its place and worth irrevocably. It is only necessary, therefore, to examine very briefly the grounds of this adverse judgment, and the pleas put in against it by Mr. Webster and by his most devoted partisans.
From the sketch which has been given of Mr. Webster's course on the slavery question, we see that in 1819 and 1820 he denounced in the strongest terms slavery and every form of slave-trade; that while he fully admitted that Congress had no power to touch slavery in the States, he asserted that it was their right and their paramount duty absolutely to stop any further extension of slave territory. In 1820 he was opposed to any compromise on this question. Ten years later he stood out to the last, unaffected by defeat, against the principle of compromise which sacrificed the rights and the dignity of the general government to the resistance and threatened secession of a State.
After the reply to Hayne in 1830, Mr. Webster became a standing candidate for the presidency, or for the Whig nomination to that office. From that time forth, the sharp denunciation of slavery and traffic in slaves disappears, although there is no indication that he ever altered his original opinion on these points; but he never ceased, sometimes mildly, sometimes in the most vigorous and sweeping manner, to attack and oppose the extension of slavery to new regions, and the increase of slave territory. If, then, in the 7th of March speech, he was inconsistent with his past, such inconsistency must appear, if at all, in his general tone in regard to slavery, in his views as to the policy of compromise, and in his attitude toward the extension of slavery, the really crucial question of the time.
As to the first point, there can be no doubt that there is a vast difference between the tone of the Plymouth oration and the Boston memorial toward slavery and the slave-trade, and that of the 7th of March speech in regard to the same subjects. For many years Mr. Webster had had but little to say against slavery as a system, but in the 7th of March speech, in reviewing the history of slavery, he treats the matter in such a very calm manner, that he not only makes the best case possible for the South, but his tone is almost apologetic when speaking in their behalf. To the grievances of the South he devotes more than five pages of his speech, to those of the North less than two. As to the infamy of making the national capital a great slave-mart, he has nothing to say—although it was a matter which figured as one of the elements in Mr. Clay's scheme.
But what most shocked the North in this connection were his utterances in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law. There can be no doubt that under the Constitution the South had a perfect right to claim the extradition of fugitive slaves. The legal argument in support of that right was excellent, but the Northern people could not feel that it was necessary for Daniel Webster to make it. The Fugitive Slave Law was in absolute conflict with the awakened conscience and moral sentiment of the North. To strengthen that law, and urge its enforcement, was a sure way to make the resistance to it still more violent and intolerant. Constitutions and laws will prevail over much, and allegiance to them is a high duty, but when they come into conflict with a deep-rooted moral sentiment, and with the principles of liberty and humanity, they must be modified, or else they will be broken to pieces. That this should have been the case in 1850 was no doubt to be regretted, but it was none the less a fact. To insist upon the constitutional duty of returning fugitive slaves, to upbraid the North with their opposition, and to urge upon them and upon the country the strict enforcement of the extradition law, was certain to embitter and intensify the opposition to it. The statesmanlike course was to recognize the ground of Northern resistance, to show the South that a too violent insistence upon their constitutional rights would be fatal, and to endeavor to obtain such concessions as would allay excited feelings. Mr. Webster's strong argument in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law pleased the South, of course; but it irritated and angered the North. It promoted the very struggle which it proposed to allay, for it admitted the existence of only one side to the question. The consciences of men cannot be coerced; and when Mr. Webster undertook to do it he dashed himself against the rocks. People did not stop to distinguish between a legal argument and a defence of the merits of catching runaway slaves. To refer to the original law of 1793 was idle. Public opinion had changed in half a century; and what had seemed reasonable at the close of the eighteenth century was monstrous in the middle of the nineteenth.
All this Mr. Webster declined to recognize. He upheld without diminution or modification the constitutional duty of sending escaping slaves back to bondage; and from the legal soundness of this position there is no escape. The trouble was that he had no word to say against the cruelty and barbarity of the system. To insist upon the necessity of submitting to the hard and repulsive duty imposed by the Constitution was one thing. To urge submission without a word of sorrow or regret was another. The North felt, and felt rightly, that while Mr. Webster could not avoid admitting the force of the constitutional provisions about fugitive slaves, and was obliged to bow to their behest, yet to defend them without reservation, to attack those who opposed them, and to urge the rigid enforcement of a Fugitive Slave Law, was not in consonance with his past, his conscience, and his duty to his constituents. The constitutionality of a Fugitive Slave Law may be urged and admitted over and over again, but this could not make the North believe that advocacy of slave-catching was a task suited to Daniel Webster. The simple fact was that he did not treat the general question of slavery as he always had treated it. Instead of denouncing and deploring it, and striking at it whenever the Constitution permitted, he apologized for its existence, and urged the enforcement of its most obnoxious laws. This was not his attitude in 1820; this was not what the people of the North expected of him in 1850.
In regard to the policy of compromise there is a much stronger contrast between Mr. Webster's attitude in 1850 and his earlier course than in the case of his views on the general subject of slavery. In 1819, although not in public life, Mr. Webster, as is clear from the tone of the Boston memorial, was opposed to any compromise involving an extension of slavery. In 1832-33 he was the most conspicuous and unyielding enemy of the principle of compromise in the country. He then took the ground that the time had come to test the strength of the Constitution and the Union, and that any concession would have a fatally weakening effect. In 1850 he supported a compromise which was so one-sided that it hardly deserves the name. The defence offered by his friends on this subject—and it is the strongest point they have been able to make—is that these sacrifices, or compromises, were necessary to save the Union, and that—although they did not prevent ultimate secession—they caused a delay of ten years, which enabled the North to gather sufficient strength to carry the civil war to a successful conclusion. It is not difficult to show historically that the policy of compromise between the national principle and unlawful opposition to that principle was an entire mistake from the very outset, and that if illegal and partisan State resistance had always been put down with a firm hand, civil war might have been avoided. Nothing strengthened the general government more than the well-judged and well-timed display of force by which Washington and Hamilton crushed the Whiskey Rebellion, or than the happy accident of peace in 1814, which brought the separatist movement in New England to a sudden end. After that period Mr. Clay's policy of compromise prevailed, and the result was that the separatist movement was identified with the maintenance of slavery, and steadily gathered strength. In 1819 the South threatened and blustered in order to prevent the complete prohibition of slavery in the Louisiana purchase. In 1832 South Carolina passed the nullification ordinance because she suffered by the operation of a protective tariff. In 1850 a great advance had been made in their pretensions. Secession was threatened because the South feared that the Mexican conquests would not be devoted to the service of slavery. Nothing had been done, nothing was proposed even, prejudicial to Southern interests; but the inherent weakness of slavery, and the mild conciliatory attitude of Northern statesmen, incited the South to make imperious demands for favors, and seek for positive gains. They succeeded in 1850, and in 1860 they had reached the point at which they were ready to plunge the country into the horrors of civil war solely because they lost an election. They believed, first, that the North would yield everything for the sake of union, and secondly, that if there was a limit to their capacity for surrender in this direction, yet a people capable of so much submission in the past would never fight to maintain the Union. The South made a terrible mistake, and was severely punished for it; but the compromises of 1820, 1833, and 1850 furnished some excuse for the wild idea that the North would not and could not fight. Whether a strict adherence to the strong, fearless policy of Hamilton, which was adopted by Jackson and advocated by Webster in 1832-33, would have prevented civil war, must, of course, remain matter of conjecture. It is at least certain that in that way alone could war have been avoided, and that the Clay policy of compromise made war inevitable by encouraging slave-holders to believe that they could always obtain anything they wanted by a sufficient show of violence.
It is urged, however, that the policy of compromise having been adopted, a change in 1850 would have simply precipitated the sectional conflict. In judging Mr. Webster, the practical question, of course, is as to the best method of dealing with matters as they actually were and not as they might have been had a different course been pursued in 1820 and 1832. The partisans of Mr. Webster have always taken the ground that in 1850 the choice was between compromise and secession; that the events of 1861 showed that the South, in 1850, was not talking for mere effect; that the maintenance of the Union was the paramount consideration of a patriotic statesman; and that the only practicable and proper course was to compromise. Admitting fully that Mr. Webster's first and highest duty was to preserve the Union, it is perfectly clear now, when all these events have passed into history, that he took the surest way to make civil war inevitable, and that the position of 1832 should not have been abandoned. In the first place, the choice was not confined to compromise or secession. The President, the official head of the Whig party, had recommended the admission of California, as the only matter actually requiring immediate settlement, and that the other questions growing out of the new territories should be dealt with as they arose. Mr. Curtis, Mr. Webster's biographer, says this was an impracticable plan, because peace could not be kept between New Mexico and Texas, and because there was great excitement about the slavery question throughout the country. These seem very insufficient reasons, and only the first has any practical bearing on the matter. General Taylor said: Admit California, for that is an immediate and pressing duty, and I will see to it that peace is preserved on the Texan boundary. Zachary Taylor may not have been a great statesman, but he was a brave and skilful soldier, and an honest man, resolved to maintain the Union, even if he had to shoot a few Texans to do it. His policy was bold and manly, and the fact that it was said to have been inspired by Mr. Seward, a leader in the only Northern party which had any real principle to fight for, does not seem such a monstrous idea as it did in 1850 or does still to those who sustain Mr. Webster's action. That General Taylor's policy was not so wild and impracticable as Mr. Webster's friends would have us think, is shown by the fact that Mr. Benton, Democrat and Southerner as he was, but imbued with the vigor of the Jackson school, believed that each question should be taken up by itself and settled on its own merits. A policy which seemed wise to three such different men as Taylor, Seward, and Benton, could hardly have been so utterly impracticable and visionary as Mr. Webster's partisans would like the world to believe. It was in fact one of the cases which that extremely practical statesman Nicolo Machiavelli had in mind when he wrote that, "Dangers that are seen afar off are easily prevented; but protracting till they are near at hand, the remedies grow unseasonable and the malady incurable."
It may be readily admitted that there was a great and perilous political crisis in 1850, as Mr. Webster said. In certain quarters, in the excitement of party strife, there was a tendency to deride Mr. Webster as a "Union-saver," and to take the ground that there had been no real danger of secession. This, as we can see now very plainly, was an unfounded idea. When Congress met, the danger of secession was very real, although perhaps not very near. The South, although they intended to secede as a last resort, had no idea that they should be brought to that point. Menaces of disunion, ominous meetings and conventions, they probably calculated, would effect their purpose and obtain for them what they wanted, and subsequent events proved that they were perfectly right in this opinion. On February 14 Mr. Webster wrote to Mr. Harvey:—
"I do not partake in any degree in those apprehensions which you say some of our friends entertain of the dissolution of the Union or the breaking up of the government. I am mortified, it is true, at the violent tone assumed here by many persons, because such violence in debate only leads to irritation, and is, moreover, discreditable to the government and the country. But there is no serious danger, be assured, and so assure our friends."
The next day he wrote to Mr. Furness, a leader of the anti-slavery party, expressing his abhorrence of slavery as an institution, his unwillingness to break up the existing political system to secure its abolition, and his belief that the whole matter must be left with Divine Providence. It is clear from this letter that he had dismissed any thought of assuming an aggressive attitude toward slavery, but there is nothing to indicate that he thought the Union could be saved from wreck only by substantial concessions to the South. Between the date of the letter to Harvey and March 7, Mr. Curtis says that the aspect of affairs had materially changed, and that the Union was in serious peril. There is nothing to show that Mr. Webster thought so, or that he had altered the opinion which he had expressed on February 14. In fact, Mr. Curtis's view is the exact reverse of the true state of affairs. If there was any real and immediate danger to the Union, it existed on February 14, and ceased immediately afterwards, on February 16, as Dr. Von Holst correctly says, when the House of Representatives laid on the table the resolution of Mr. Root of Ohio, prohibiting the extension of slavery to the territories. By that vote, the victory was won by the slave-power, and the peril of speedy disunion vanished. Nothing remained but to determine how much the South would get from their victory, and how hard a bargain they could drive. The admission of California was no more of a concession than a resolution not to introduce slavery in Massachusetts would have been. All the rest of the compromise plan, with the single exception of the prohibition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, was made up of concessions to the Southern and slave-holding interest. That Henry Clay should have originated and advocated this scheme was perfectly natural. However wrong or mistaken, this had been his steady and unbroken policy from the outset, as the best method of preserving the Union and advancing the cause of nationality. Mr. Clay was consistent and sincere, and, however much he may have erred in his general theory, he never swerved from it. But with Mr. Webster the case was totally different. He had opposed the principle of compromise from the beginning, and in 1833, when concession was more reasonable than in 1850, he had offered the most strenuous and unbending resistance. Now he advocated a compromise which was in reality little less than a complete surrender on the part of the North. On the general question of compromise he was, of course, grossly inconsistent, and the history of the time, as it appears in the cold light of the present day, shows plainly that, while he was brave and true and wise in 1833, in 1850 he was not only inconsistent, but that he erred deeply in policy and statesmanship. It has also been urged in behalf of Mr. Webster that he went no farther than the Republicans in 1860 in the way of concession, and that as in 1860 so in 1850, anything was permissible which served to gain time. In the first place, thetu quoqueargument proves nothing and has no weight. In the second place, the situations in 1850 and in 1860 were very different.
There were at the former period, in reference to slavery, four parties in the country—the Democrats, the Free-Soilers, the Abolitionists, and the Whigs. The three first had fixed and widely-varying opinions; the last was trying to live without opinions, and soon died. The pro-slavery Democrats were logical and practical; the Abolitionists were equally logical but thoroughly impracticable and unconstitutional, avowed nullifiers and secessionists; the Free-Soilers were illogical, constitutional, and perfectly practical. As Republicans, the Free-Soilers proved the correctness and good sense of their position by bringing the great majority of the Northern people to their support. But at the same time their position was a difficult one, for while they were an anti-slavery party and had set on foot constitutional opposition to the extension of slavery, their fidelity to the Constitution compelled them to admit the legality of the Fugitive Slave Law and of slavery in the States. They aimed, of course, first to check the extension of slavery and then to efface it by gradual restriction and full compensation to slave-holders. When they had carried the country in 1860, they found themselves face to face with a breaking Union and an impending war. That many of them were seriously frightened, and, to avoid war and dissolution, would have made great concessions, cannot be questioned; but their controlling motive was to hold things together by any means, no matter how desperate, until they could get possession of the government. This was the only possible and the only wise policy, but that it involved them in some contradictions in that winter of excitement and confusion is beyond doubt. History will judge the men and events of 1860 according to the circumstances of the time, but nothing that happened then has any bearing on Mr. Webster's conduct. He must be judged according to the circumstances of 1850, and the first and most obvious fact is, that he was not fighting merely to gain time and obtain control of the general government. The crisis was grave and serious in the extreme, but neither war nor secession were imminent or immediate, nor did Mr. Webster ever assert that they were. He thought war and secession might come, and it was against this possibility and probability that he sought to provide. He wished to solve the great problem, to remove the source of danger, to set the menacing agitation at rest. He aimed at an enduring and definite settlement, and that was the purpose of the 7th of March speech. His reasons—and of course they were clear and weighty in his own mind—proceeded from the belief that this wretched compromise measure offered a wise, judicious, and permanent settlement of questions which, in their constant recurrence, threatened more and more the stability of the Union. History has shown how wofully mistaken he was in this opinion.
The last point to be considered in connection with the 7th of March speech is the ground then taken by Mr. Webster with reference to the extension of slavery. To this question the speech was chiefly directed, and it is the portion which has aroused the most heated discussion. What Mr. Webster's views had always been on the subject of slavery extension every one knew then and knows now. He had been the steady and uncompromising opponent of the Southern policy, and in season and out of season, sometimes vehemently sometimes gently, but always with firmness and clearness, he had declared against it. The only question is, whether he departed from these often-expressed opinions on the 7th of March. In the speech itself he declared that he had not abated one jot in his views in this respect, and he argued at great length to prove his consistency, which, if it were to be easily seen of men, certainly needed neither defence nor explanation. The crucial point was, whether, in organizing the new territories, the principle of the Wilmot Proviso should be adopted as part of the measure. This famous proviso Mr. Webster had declared in 1847 to represent exactly his own views. He had then denied that the idea was the invention of any one man, and scouted the notion that on this doctrine there could be any difference of opinion among Whigs. On March 7 he announced that he would not have the proviso attached to the territorial bills, and should oppose any effort in that direction. The reasons he gave for this apparent change were, that nature had forbidden slavery in the newly-conquered regions, and that the proviso, under such circumstances, would be a useless taunt and wanton insult to the South. The famous sentence in which he said that he "would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor to reënact the will of God," was nothing but specious and brilliant rhetoric. It was perfectly easy to employ slaves in California, if the people had not prohibited it, and in New Mexico as well, even if there were no cotton nor sugar nor rice plantations in either, and but little arable land in the latter. There was a classic form of slave-labor possible in those countries. Any school-boy could have reminded Mr. Webster of
"Seius whose eight hundred slavesSicken in Ilva's mines."
Mining was one of the oldest uses to which slave-labor had been applied, and it still flourished in Siberia as the occupation of serfs and criminals. Mr. Webster, of course, was not ignorant of this very obvious fact; and that nature, therefore, instead of forbidding slave-labor in the Mexican conquests, opened to it a new and almost unlimited field in a region which is to-day one of the greatest mining countries in the world. Still less could he have failed to know that this form of employment for slaves was eagerly desired by the South; that the slave-holders fully recognized their opportunity, announced their intention of taking advantage of it, and were particularly indignant at the action of California because it had closed to them this inviting field. Mr. Clingman of North Carolina, on January 22, when engaged in threatening war in order to bring the North to terms, had said, in the House of Representatives: "But for the anti-slavery agitation our Southern slave-holders would have carried their negroes into the mines of California in such numbers that I have no doubt but that the majority there would have made it a slave-holding State."[1] At a later period Mr. Mason of Virginia declared, in the Senate, that he knew of no law of nature which excluded slavery from California. "On the contrary," he said, "if California had been organized with a territorial form of government only, the people of the Southern States would have gone there freely, and have taken their slaves there in great numbers. They would have done so because the value of the labor of that class would have been augmented to them many hundred fold."[2] These were the views of practical men and experienced slave-owners who represented the opinions of their constituents, and who believed that domestic slavery could be employed to advantage anywhere. Moreover, the Southern leaders openly avowed their opposition to securing any region to free labor exclusively, no matter what the ordinances of nature might be. In 1848, it must be remembered in this connection, Mr. Webster not only urged the limitation of slave area, and sustained the power of Congress to regulate this matter in the territories, but he did not resist the final embodiment of the principle of the Wilmot Proviso in the bill for the organization of Oregon, where the introduction of slavery was infinitely more unlikely than in New Mexico. Cotton, sugar, and rice were excluded, perhaps, by nature from the Mexican conquests, but slavery was not. It was worse than idle to allege that a law of nature forbade slaves in a country where mines gaped to receive them. The facts are all as plain as possible, and there is no escape from the conclusion that in opposing the Wilmot Proviso, in 1850, Mr. Webster abandoned his principles as to the extension of slavery. He practically stood forth as the champion of the Southern policy of letting the new territories alone, which could only result in placing them in the grasp of slavery. The consistency which he labored so hard to prove in his speech was hopelessly shattered, and no ingenuity, either then or since, can restore it.
[Footnote 1:Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 1st Session, p. 203.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., Appendix, p. 510.]
A dispassionate examination of Mr. Webster's previous course on slavery, and a careful comparison of it with the ground taken in the 7th of March speech, shows that he softened his utterances in regard to slavery as a system, and that he changed radically on the policy of compromise and on the question of extending the area of slavery. There is a confused story that in the winter of 1847-48 he had given the anti-slavery leaders to understand that he proposed to come out on their ground in regard to Mexico, and to sustain Corwin in his attack on the Democratic policy, but that he failed to do so. The evidence on this point is entirely insufficient to make it of importance, but there can be no doubt that in the winter of 1850 Mr. Webster talked with Mr. Giddings, and led him, and the other Free-Soil leaders, to believe that he was meditating a strong anti-slavery speech. This fact was clearly shown in the recent newspaper controversy which grew out of the celebration of the centennial anniversary of Webster's birth. It is a little difficult to understand why this incident should have roused such bitter resentment among Mr. Webster's surviving partisans. To suppose that Mr. Webster made the 7th of March speech after long deliberation, without having a moment's hesitation in the matter, is to credit him with a shameless disregard of principle and consistency, of which it is impossible to believe him guilty. He undoubtedly hesitated, and considered deeply whether he should assume the attitude of 1833, and stand out unrelentingly against the encroachments of slavery. He talked with Mr. Clay on one side. He talked with Mr. Giddings, and other Free-Soilers, on the other. With the latter the wish was no doubt father to the thought, and they may well have imagined that Mr. Webster had determined to go with them, when he was still in doubt and merely trying the various positions. There is no need, however, to linger over matters of this sort. The change made by Mr. Webster can be learned best by careful study of his own utterances, and of his whole career. Yet, at the same time, the greatest trouble lies not in the shifting and inconsistency revealed by an examination of the specific points which have just been discussed, but in the speech as a whole. In that speech Mr. Webster failed quite as much by omissions as by the opinions which he actually announced. He was silent when he should have spoken, and he spoke when he should have held his peace. The speech, if exactly defined, is, in reality, a powerful effort, not for compromise or for the Fugitive Slave Law, or any other one thing, but to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement, and in that way put an end to the dangers which threatened the Union and restore lasting harmony between the jarring sections. It was a mad project. Mr. Webster might as well have attempted to stay the incoming tide at Marshfield with a rampart of sand as to seek to check the anti-slavery movement by a speech. Nevertheless, he produced a great effect. His mind once made up, he spared nothing to win the cast. He gathered all his forces; his great intellect, his splendid eloquence, his fame which had become one of the treasured possessions of his country,—all were given to the work. The blow fell with terrible force, and here, at last, we come to the real mischief which was wrought. The 7th of March speech demoralized New England and the whole North. The abolitionists showed by bitter anger the pain, disappointment, and dismay which this speech brought. The Free-Soil party quivered and sank for the moment beneath the shock. The whole anti-slavery movement recoiled. The conservative reaction which Mr. Webster endeavored to produce came and triumphed. Chiefly by his exertions the compromise policy was accepted and sustained by the country. The conservative elements everywhere rallied to his support, and by his ability and eloquence it seemed as if he had prevailed and brought the people over to his opinions. It was a wonderful tribute to his power and influence, but the triumph was hollow and short-lived. He had attempted to compass an impossibility. Nothing could kill the principles of human liberty, not even a speech by Daniel Webster, backed by all his intellect and knowledge, his eloquence and his renown. The anti-slavery movement was checked for the time, and pro-slavery democracy, the only other positive political force, reigned supreme. But amid the falling ruins of the Whig party, and the evanescent success of the Native Americans, the party of human rights revived; and when it rose again, taught by the trials and misfortunes of 1850, it rose with a strength which Mr. Webster had never dreamed of, and, in 1856, polled nearly a million and a half of votes for Fremont. The rise and final triumph of the Republican party was the condemnation of the 7th of March speech and of the policy which put the government of the country in the hands of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. When the war came, inspiration was not found in the 7th of March speech. In that dark hour, men remembered the Daniel Webster who replied to Hayne, and turned away from the man who had sought for peace by advocating the great compromise of Henry Clay.
The disapprobation and disappointment which were manifested in the North after the 7th of March speech could not be overlooked. Men thought and said that Mr. Webster had spoken in behalf of the South and of slavery. Whatever his intentions may have been, this was what the speech seemed to mean and this was its effect, and the North saw it more and more clearly as time went on. Mr. Webster never indulged in personal attacks, but at the same time he was too haughty a man ever to engage in an exchange of compliments in debate. He never was in the habit of saying pleasant things to his opponents in the Senate merely as a matter of agreeable courtesy. In this direction, as in its opposite, he usually maintained a cold silence. But on the 7th of March he elaborately complimented Calhoun, and went out of his way to flatter Virginia and Mr. Mason personally. This struck close observers with surprise, but it was the real purpose of the speech which went home to the people of the North. He had advocated measures which with slight exceptions were altogether what the South wanted, and the South so understood it. On the 30th of March Mr. Morehead wrote to Mr. Crittenden that Mr. Webster's appointment as Secretary of State would now be very acceptable to the South. No more bitter commentary could have been made. The people were blinded and dazzled at first, but they gradually awoke and perceived the error that had been committed.
Mr. Webster, however, needed nothing from outside to inform him as to his conduct and its results. At the bottom of his heart and in the depths of his conscience he knew that he had made a dreadful mistake. He did not flinch. He went on in his new path without apparent faltering. His speech on the compromise measures went farther than that of the 7th of March. But if we study his speeches and letters between 1850 and the day of his death, we can detect changes in them, which show plainly enough that the writer was not at ease, that he was not master of that real conscience of which he boasted.
His friends, after the first shock of surprise, rallied to his support, and he spoke frequently at union meetings, and undertook, by making immense efforts, to convince the country that the compromise measures were right and necessary, and that the doctrines of the 7th of March speech ought to be sustained. In pursuance of this object, during the winter of 1850 and the summer of the following year, he wrote several public letters on the compromise measures, and he addressed great meetings on various occasions, in New England, New York, and as far south as Virginia. We are at once struck by a marked change in the character and tone of these speeches, which produced a great effect in establishing the compromise policy. It had never been Mr. Webster's habit to misrepresent or abuse his opponents. Now he confounded the extreme separatism of the abolitionists and the constitutional opposition of the Free-Soil party, and involved all opponents of slavery in a common condemnation. It was wilful misrepresentation to talk of the Free-Soilers as if they were identical with the abolitionists, and no one knew better than Mr. Webster the distinction between the two, one being ready to secede to get rid of slavery, the other offering only a constitutional resistance to its extension. His tone toward his opponents was correspondingly bitter. When he first arrived in Boston, after his speech, and spoke to the great crowd in front of the Revere House, he said, "I shall support no agitations having their foundations in unreal, ghostly abstractions." Slavery had now become "an unreal, ghostly abstraction," although it must still have appeared to the negroes something very like a hard fact. There were men in that crowd, too, who had not forgotten the noble words with which Mr. Webster in 1837 had defended the character of the opponents of slavery, and the sound of this new gospel from his lips fell strangely on their ears. So he goes on from one union meeting to another, and in speech after speech there is the same bitter tone which had been so foreign to him in all his previous utterances. The supporters of the anti-slavery movement he denounces as insane. He reiterates his opposition to slave extension, and in the same breath argues that the Union must be preserved by giving way to the South. The feeling is upon him that the old parties are breaking down under the pressure of this "ghostly abstraction," this agitation which he tries to prove to the young men of the country and to his fellow-citizens everywhere is "wholly factitious." The Fugitive Slave Law is not in the form which he wants, but still he defends it and supports it. The first fruits of his policy of peace are seen in riots in Boston, and he personally advises with a Boston lawyer who has undertaken the cases against the fugitive slaves. It was undoubtedly his duty, as Mr. Curtis says, to enforce and support the law as the President's adviser, but his personal attention and interest were not required in slave cases, nor would they have been given a year before. The Wilmot Proviso, that doctrine which he claimed as his own in 1847, when it was a sentiment on which Whigs could not differ, he now calls "a mere abstraction." He struggles to put slavery aside for the tariff, but it will not down at his bidding, and he himself cannot leave it alone. Finally he concludes this compromise campaign with a great speech on laying the foundation of the capitol extension, and makes a pathetic appeal to the South to maintain the Union. They are not pleasant to read, these speeches in the Senate and before the people in behalf of the compromise policy. They are harsh and bitter; they do not ring true. Daniel Webster knew when he was delivering them that that was not the way to save the Union, or that, at all events, it was not the right way for him to do it.