daniel webster
united states senator
quote
"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"
biography
Webster was born on Jan. 18, 1782, in Salisbury, New Hampshire. He was so frail as a child that he was the only member of his pioneer family who was exempt from hard labor. His mother, an uncommonly intelligent woman, early discovered the boy's remarkable mental powers. She taught him all she knew and insisted that he enter the Exeter Academy at 14. When he was 15 he entered Dartmouth College. After graduating from Dartmouth, he taught in an academy until he could send his brother Ezekiel to college.
Webster studied law at Salisbury and Bost until he was admitted to the Boston bar in 1805. So shy as a child that he could not stand in school to speak pieces, Webster soon became famous for his eloquence at the bar.
Two years later he established a law practice in Portsmouth, N.H., and became active in politics and joined the Federalist party. As did many new Englanders, Webster resented the predominance of Virginians in the national government and opposed the War of 1812. From 1813 to 1817 he served in the U.S. House of Representatives and eloquently defended Federalist principles.
At the age of 30 he was elected to the House of Representatives from New Hampshire. After remaining there for four years, he retired to return to the Boston bar. His income soon rose to $20,000, a great sum in those days and his reputation became national with his winning of the famous Dartmouth College charter case. This Supreme Court decision asserted the authority of the federal government over the states and was a blow to the theory of states' rights.
In 1823 Webster was again in the House of Representatives, this time from Massachusetts. In 1827 the legislature of that state chose him to represent Massachusetts in the Senate. He had opposed legislation for a protective tariff in 1816 and did so again in 1824. Under the influence of expanding New England industrial interests, Webster abandoned his free-trade position.
On Jan. 26 and 27, 1830, the United States Senate heard one of the greatest speeches ever delivered before it, as Daniel Webster answered Senator Robert Young Hayne of South Carolina. The issue was the nullification controversy. Hayne, a confederate of John C. Calhoun, had said that the federal government was a mere confederation of states and that the states could refuse to obey any laws passed by the Congres. Webster refuted Hayne's notion of "Liberty first and Union afterwards" with the memorable words, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"
It was during the presidency of Andrew Jackson that the tariff issue arose. Manufacturing interests in the North favored high tariffs, while Southern agriculturalists wanted low tariffs. Jackson was against his vice-president, John C. Calhoun, who brilliantly stated the right of states to nullify federal laws. Webster was on Jackson's side, but the two were never close. And on the matter of a national bank, they disagreed completely. Webster's desire to succeed Jackson in the White House was thwarted by the president, who promoted Martin Van Buren.
After the Whig Party was formed in 1834, Webster became on of its leaders, receiving the electoral vote of Massachusetts for President in 1836. In 1841, Webster was appointed as secretary of state. While in this office he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain, signed in 1842, which settled the Maine boundary dispute.
In 1845, Webster reentered the Senate and opposed the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. After the war, however, he became involved in the sectional crisis concerning slavery in the new territories gained from Mexico. He supported Henry Clay's compromise proposals, one of which would organize the territories with no prohibition of slavery. He argued that the West was unsuitable for plantation slavery. For his support of compromise he was roundly condemned by antislavery factions. The poet John Greenleaf Whittier memorialized this denunciation in his poem 'Ichabod'.
As secretary of state under Fillmore from 1850 to 1852, Webster’s enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law further enraged abolitionists. It was his espousal of nationalism and his willingness to compromise on slavery that cost him any chance for the presidency during the period after 1840. Webster remained as secretary of state until the condition of his health became so critical that he was forced to resign. He returned to his home in Marshfield, Massachusetts, where he died on Oct. 24, 1852.
