Congressional Giants. J. Michael Martinez

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СКАЧАТЬ Webster drafted a special message for President Fillmore to present to Congress asking that the crisis be ended. Webster also used administration patronage to attract supporters to the cause. After the compromise was enacted, Webster helped enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, ensuring his continued estrangement from antislavery New Englanders. A coalition of Democrats and Whigs in the Massachusetts state legislature elected Charles Sumner, a strong antislavery advocate, to the U.S. Senate in a move that was widely considered a rebuke to Webster.⁸⁴

      The secretary retained his interest in foreign policy as the administration pursued trade relations with Asian countries, especially Japan. With Webster at the helm, the administration asserted American power in Latin America, and negotiated the release of a Hungarian rebel, Lajos Kossuth, in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Webster triggered a diplomatic crisis with Austria, which controlled Hungary, when he toasted Kossuth and Hungarian independence at a congressional banquet in Washington, DC, in January 1852.⁸⁵

      As the 1852 presidential election neared, he harbored a desire to run one final time, although it was an irrational hope. Webster had never garnered much support outside of New England. Now, after his crucial role in engineering the Compromise of 1850 and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, he had eroded what little support he had ever enjoyed in the North. At the 1852 Whig National Convention, President Fillmore and another hero of the Mexican War, General Winfield Scott, jockeyed for the party’s nomination. Scott eventually prevailed, going on to lose in the general election to the Democrat, Franklin Pierce. Daniel Webster’s last chance to campaign for president was lost.⁸⁶

      Even if he had won the Whig nomination, he would not have served as president. The Whigs were a dying breed, soon to be buried forever. The same could be said of Webster. He was seventy years old in 1852, at a time when that age was ancient, indeed. He was the last of the Great Triumvirate to pass from the scene. John C. Calhoun had died in 1850, and Henry Clay was gone in June 1852. Webster remained in office, but his performance as secretary of state frequently was subpar, occasionally embarrassing. The great man knew his salad days were long past, and so he drank to take his mind off the sad state of affairs. He may have suffered from cirrhosis of the liver as well as a range of vague, undiagnosed illnesses.

      To exacerbate matters, Webster suffered a severe head injury in May 1852. As the months progressed, he became increasingly frail. It was clear that he could not continue as secretary of state. On October 18, 1852, he wrote the last letter of his life. Addressing the correspondence to President Fillmore, he opened with the customary salutation, “Dear Sir.” He said he wished he could serve out the rest of his term “with you, around your Council Board.” It was not to be. “Consider my Resignation as always before you, to be accepted, any moment you please.” Six days later, in the words of a colorful New York Times obituary writer, Webster “passed from the scene of his vast labors and his glorious triumphs, to join the great of all ages in the spirit-land.” The time was 2:35 a.m. on Sunday, October 24, 1852.⁸⁷

      Today Daniel Webster’s legacy looms large. Modern commentators forgive him his apostasy on the Compromise of 1850, for it was a divisive question in a divisive time. Instead, he is remembered and revered for his unparalleled eloquence, his status as a silver-tongued orator without equal in the annals of the U.S. Congress. His famous addresses still thrill students of American history—certainly not as much as in his day, but undeniably so. His paeans in favor of the Union and his pleas to place country above party are testaments to the power of statesmanship to effect positive change. If Webster did not always live up to his aspirations, he nonetheless inspired future generations with his masterful expressions of the nation’s ideals.

      John C. Calhoun

      For modern audiences, John Caldwell Calhoun is the most difficult member of the Great Triumvirate to understand or appreciate. He is remembered as an ardent apologist for state rights and slavery. Because ultimately he landed on the wrong side of history, his legacy is tainted. Why couple with him celebrated legislative giants such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster? Calhoun was simply another crass, heartless, and self-interested southerner dressing up his racist views under a blanket of constitutional niceties that, when stripped away, do not survive serious scrutiny, or so his detractors, then and now, have charged.

      It wasn’t always that way. Young Calhoun was a nationalist who sought to improve America’s position in, and preparedness for, world affairs. He never questioned the legitimacy of slavery as a defensible institution, it is true, but few white Americans of the time argued against the existence of the institution. At the start of his long career, Calhoun was not quite the zealous proslavery advocate and state rights champion he was to become. Time and circumstances changed him.⁸⁸

      He was born in the Abbeville District, South Carolina, on March 18, 1782, the fourth of five children born to Patrick Calhoun, a farmer, planter, and eventual member of the South Carolina state legislature, and his wife, Martha. Patrick fought in the American Revolution, but opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution because he feared it would strip too much power from the states, an anti-centralist position his son later adopted. In 1796, Patrick Calhoun died, leaving thirteen-year-old John to help operate the family business since his siblings had already left home.

      As a child of the South Carolina frontier, Calhoun’s life was difficult, and his future appeared bleak. Yet he refused to accept his lot in life. Aside from working to support his family, he read and studied mostly on his own, although he briefly attended an academy in Georgia. It was obvious that the young man was gifted. His brothers recognized his potential, and they decided to cultivate it by sending him to Yale College in Connecticut. The opportunity forever altered the trajectory of his life and career.⁸⁹

      While he was a student at Yale, Calhoun encountered Timothy Dwight, the university’s president, a committed Federalist. Dwight bitterly opposed President Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, arguing passionately for the right of secession should New England choose to separate from the rest of the Union. It is ironic that Calhoun was first exposed to secession—which came to be identified so closely with the southern states, and with Calhoun himself—while under the tutelage of a northern man, and a Federalist at that.⁹⁰

      He excelled at his studies, graduating as Yale’s valedictorian in 1804. Afterward, Calhoun remained in Connecticut to study at Litchfield Law School, the first school of its kind in the United States. He returned to South Carolina and became a member of the bar in 1807. Although Calhoun did not especially enjoy practicing law, he developed a knack for it. His arguments were logical, and his manner serious. Like the other members of the Great Triumvirate, he was known for his superior oratorical style. He was not quite a match for Webster or Clay in eloquence, but Calhoun established a reputation for logical reasoning and tightly argued opinions. He possessed a pleasant baritone voice and a self-confident, arguably arrogant public persona that impressed and often intimidated others. He was truly a cast-iron man.⁹¹

      He enjoyed one success after another, beginning with his personal life. In 1811, he married a first cousin once removed, Floride Bonneau Calhoun. The couple produced ten children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. Their daughter Anna Maria later married Thomas Green Clemson, founder of the South Carolina University that still bears his name.⁹²

      

      Even as he raised a family, Calhoun threw himself into politics, his lifelong passion. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1810, he arrived in Washington, DC, the same year that Henry Clay became a congressman, and two years before Daniel Webster. Although he and Clay would differ on many political issues in subsequent years, in 1811 they were united in their calls for the United States to declare war against Great Britain. The war hawks, a faction of which Clay and Calhoun were leading members, believed that Great Britain’s attacks on American shipping threatened the health of the nation and undermined its values. Calhoun helped prepare the Report on Foreign Relations as well as the War Report of 1812, two documents that laid the groundwork СКАЧАТЬ