Chapter VIII: Part 8

[26] The "Great Debate" in the Senate, between Webster and Hayne, had an unexpected origin. A resolution had been introduced by Senator Samuel Augustus Foot, of Connecticut, merely ordering an inquiry into the expediency of throwing restrictions around future sales of public lands of the United States. Into the discussion of this resolution, which lasted five months, was brought a large number of partisan pleas, tariff arguments, local jealousies, and questions of the right and wrong of slavery, and of the respective powers of the State and national governments. Recriminations and even personalities were not infrequent; and some of the Southern speakers did not refrain, in defence of the new "nullification" doctrine, from criticism of New England Federalism as having been essentially selfish, derisive, and unpatriotic. Senator Robert Young Hayne (1791-1840), of South Carolina, who had been a member of the Senate since 1823, was conspicuous, in this debate, for his advocacy of the idea that a State might suspend Federal laws at its discretion; and his assertions to that effect, combined with sharp criticisms of Massachusetts, led Mr. Webster to make his famous reply. Mr. Hayne was subsequently Governor of South Carolina, at the time of the almost armed collision between that State and President Jackson, in 1832, over the nullification of tariff laws. At one time Governor Hayne actually issued a proclamation of resistance to the authority of the general government; but subsequently Congress modified the objectionable tariff provisions and the State repealed its nullification ordinance, which President Jackson's firmness had certainly made "null, void, and no law."

[27] It had been charged that John Quincy Adams, during his presidency (1825-1829), had sought to purchase the support of Webster by giving offices to members of the old Federalist party, then merging into the "National Republican" or Whig party. Furthermore, the opposition had declared that Adams's bestowal of the Secretaryship of State upon Henry Clay was in accordance with a bargain by which Adams was to be supported by the Clay vote in the House of Representatives.

[28] Mr. Webster here quotes parts of lines 69 and 74 of Macbeth, Act III. Scene 14.

[29] The Ordinance of July 13, 1787, was an act of the Congress of the Confederation,--prior to the beginning of the constitutional government of the United States in 1789,--which, in its sixth article, said of the "Northwest Territory," organized by this Ordinance: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Under the provisions of this Ordinance Ohio became a State in 1802. Says Johnston in his "History of American Politics ": "The Ordinance of 1787 is noteworthy as an exercise by the Congress of the Confederacy of the right to exclude slavery from the territories. It will be found that the language of this Ordinance was copied in the efforts made in 1819 (Missouri), 1846 (Wilmot Proviso), and 1865 (XIIIth Amendment), to assert and maintain for the Federal Congress under the Constitution this power of regulating and abolishing slavery in the territories of the United States, and finally in the States as the result of civil war."

[30] The line between Pennsylvania, a free State, and Maryland, a slave State; originally run by two surveyors bearing these names.

[31] The "Virginia Resolutions of 1798," of which the most important is here quoted, and the similar Kentucky Resolutions of the same year, were protests of the Republican, or Anti-Federalist, legislatures of the two States, against the "Alien and Sedition Laws" passed by the Federalist majority in Congress. These laws were the outgrowth of an almost warlike feeling between the United States and France, due to a variety of causes, for the most part discreditable to France. They authorized the President to order out of the country any foreigner he deemed dangerous; and imposed fines and imprisonment upon alleged conspirators against Government measures, or libellers of Congress or the President. The laws were deemed by the Anti-Federalists to be autocratic and semi-monarchical. The Virginia protesting resolutions were put into form by James Madison, afterwards President.

[32] James Hillhouse (1754-1832), of Connecticut.

[33] The District of Columbia is governed directly by Congress, but sends no representative thereto.

[34] The Embargo Bill of 1807 prohibited American vessels from foreign trade, and foreign vessels from American, only coasting trade being permitted. It was directed against England, and was supported by the Anti-Federalists and bitterly opposed by the Federalists. For the time it almost destroyed American commerce, and bore especially heavily on New England.

[35] Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), author of the famous "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (1765-1769).

[36] Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1675) an eminent French general, who left memoirs of his campaigns from 1643 to 1658.

[37] See note on page xciv.

[38] John Fries (1764?-1825) was the leader of seven hundred men who forcibly resisted the levying of the "house or window" tax in Northampton, Bucks, and Montgomery counties, Pennsylvania, in 1798-1799. These men liberated prisoners and "arrested" the assessors themselves; and Fries, when marching toward Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, resisted a United States marshal. He was tried for treason in 1799, found guilty, given a new trial in 1800, again found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged; but President John Adams, against the advice of all his cabinet, pardoned him and gave a general amnesty to the rioters. Fries became a well-to-do merchant in Philadelphia.

[39] Interesting examples of Webster's revision of important passages in this speech may be found by comparing the present standard text with the original versions as preserved in the Boston Public Library. The eulogium of Massachusetts, beginning "Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium" and ending with "the very spot of its origin," was spoken thus:

"Sir, I shall be led on this occasion into no eulogium on Massachusetts. I shall paint no portraiture of her merits, original, ancient or modern. Yet, Sir, I cannot but remember that Boston was the cradle of liberty, that in Massachusetts (the parent of this accursed policy so eternally narrow to the West), etc., etc., etc. I cannot forget that Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill _are_ in Massachusetts, and that in men and means and money she _did_ contribute more than any other State to carry on the Revolutionary war. There was not a State in the Union whose soil was not wetted with Massachusetts blood in the Revolutionary war, and it is to be remembered that of the army to which Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown a majority consisted of New England troops. It is painful to me to recur to these recollections even for the purpose of self-defence, and even to that end, Sir, I will not extol the intelligence, the character and the virtue of the people of New England. I leave the theme to itself, here and everywhere, now and forever."

The first form of the famous concluding passage was as follows:

"When my eyes shall be turned for the last time on the meridian sun, I hope I may see him shining bright upon my united, free, and happy country. I hope I shall not live to see his beams falling upon the dispersed fragments of the structure of this once glorious Union. I hope I may not see the flag of my country with its stars separated or obliterated; torn by commotions, smoking with the blood of civil war. I hope I may not see the standard raised of separate State rights, star against star, and stripe against stripe; but that the flag of the Union may keep its stars and its stripes corded and bound together in indissoluble ties. I hope I shall not see written as its motto, '_First_ liberty, and _then_ Union.' I hope I shall see no such delusive and deluded motto on the flag of that country. I hope to see, spread all over it, blazoned in letters of light and proudly floating over land and sea, that other sentiment, dear to my heart, 'Union _and_ Liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable.'"

[40] At the beginning of the nineteenth century Marcus Tullius Cicero was often called Tully.

[41] Bishop George Berkeley's (1684-1753) "On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America."

[42] A remark by Fisher Ames (1758-1808), of Massachusetts,--perhaps the extremest Federalist of his time.

[43] The famous phrase "honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none" was not Washington's, but Jefferson's.

[44] In the debate on Henry Clay's Compromise resolutions.

[45] Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad, book xviii., lines 701-4. Webster changes the first word, "Thus," to "Now."

[46] Shakespeare, King Henry the Fifth, Prologue, lines 1-4.

[47] Mr. Webster's table contained, of course, the figures for 1793 and 1851 only. For the sake of illustration, those for 1900 are now added.

[48] Including Hawaii, but not the other foreign possessions.

[49] Including Alaska, but no other possession not contiguous to the United States.

[50] Male population available for defence.

[51] Total lighted aids in the year 1893.

[52] The area given for 1851 was incorrect.

[53] Exclusive of double tracks and sidings.

[54] Total liabilities.

[55] Excluding private lines.

[56] Including public, society, and school libraries.

[57] Total from all parts of the world.

[58] The Washington monument here mentioned had been begun in 1848. Work was continued, by State and other donations, until 1855, when it was abandoned until 1877. But as the unfinished condition of the shaft was felt to be a sort of national disgrace, its construction was resumed in the last-named year, under a Congressional appropriation, and steadily pushed forward until the completion of the noble obelisk in 1884, at a total cost of $1,300,000. It is built of white Maryland marble, and is 555 feet high--the loftiest masonry construction in the world, though much surpassed in height by the steel Eiffel Tower in Paris.

[59] From the address at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument.