Congressional Giants. J. Michael Martinez

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      Owing to his prominence, Webster was always a serious presidential contender in the Whig Party, but he faced a new, formidable opponent. He had always known that Henry Clay was a presidential rival, but General Zachary Taylor emerged in 1848. Old Rough and Ready was a hero of the Mexican War, and he capitalized on his newfound fame. Although he was not well known as a Whig, Taylor’s popularity and newcomer status made him an attractive candidate. Taylor eventually won the party’s nomination.⁷⁶

      By 1848, the Whigs were a dying political party. Taylor, nominally a Whig, captured the presidency, but he was hardly an exemplar of Whig orthodoxy. The more zealous antislavery Whigs could not stomach Taylor, and so they broke away to join forces with antislavery Democrats, the so-called Barnburners, to form the Free Soil Party. Webster once again was caught in the cross fire. He might have joined forces with the Free Soilers—after all, he had promised never to support Taylor—but he reluctantly cast his lot with the Whigs.

      Despite throwing his support to his party’s nominee, Webster was not a Taylor man. He could not expect a political reward in exchange for his support. Indeed, he was closed out of the new administration’s deliberations on patronage. Godlike Daniel appeared to be anything but like a god. He was a man without a party, still influential, but far past his prime.⁷⁷

      Within a year of President Taylor stepping into office, a new crisis emerged. As Webster had feared, the addition of new territories to the United States directly raised that nagging question of slavery, a question that had lingered for decades, but now worsened. All the talk of nullification and secession had raised the political temperature, and it appeared that North and South, after all the threats and bluster, might come to blows.

      Henry Clay, the Great Pacificator, tried one last time to mollify all parties. In January 1850, he offered a legislative package to resolve the current crisis. No one believed it would settle the issue indefinitely, but perhaps it could preserve the peace a while longer. The Compromise of 1850 sought to balance interests between slaveholding and nonslaveholding states. Extreme partisans on each side rejected the measures as a violation of deeply held principles.⁷⁸

      Webster’s support was crucial. Aside from Henry Clay and possibly President Taylor, he was the leading Whig in the United States. He resolved to make his opinion known on the floor of the Senate, as he had on so many memorable occasions. On March 7, 1850, spectators crowded into the chamber to hear the great man’s words. Anticipation was high. Webster did not possess the singular power to determine the fate of the legislation, but he could sway the vote at the margins.⁷⁹

      He opened his three-and-a-half-hour speech with one of his most stirring rhetorical flourishes. “Mr. President,” he said, referring to the Senate’s presiding officer, “I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States.” It was a dangerous time, and something must be done to soothe the fears of all men in every region. “It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions and our government,” he said. “The imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the North, and the stormy South combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and disclose 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 СКАЧАТЬ