How Did the Speeches of Daniel Webster Inspire the North to Fight To Preserve the Union?

Today we will reflect on this question: How Did the
Speeches of Daniel Webster Inspire the North to Fight To
Preserve the Union?
Why were Northern soldiers so eager to fight for what
sounds to us as an abstract cause, the preservation of the
Union?
Why were the leaders of South Carolina so eager to
secede from the Union? Were they repeating history?
How did the efforts of Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster,
and Henry Clay preserve the Union for three decades?

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I joined an online discussion with Professor Gary Gallagher, who had recorded a
series of Civil War lectures for the Teaching Company, now Wondrium. Although it
was easy for me to understand how Southern soldiers were eager to fight the Civil
War to preserve slavery, I was puzzled: Why were Northern soldiers so eager to fight
for such an abstract cause as preserving the Union?
I also asked an easier question: Did many informed citizens during that time fear
that if the Civil War was not fought and the Confederacy were left alone, would
there eventually be armed conflict over whether the Western territories would join
the Union or the Confederacy? An example of that violence was Bleeding Kansas.
His answer, based on his combing through newspaper accounts before and during
the Civil War, was that this was indeed a concern.

Tragic Prelude,
John Brown, by
John Stuart Curry,
painted 1938

Why were Northern soldiers so eager to fight to preserve the Union? To
understand this, you need to study American history three decades
before the Civil War, when South Carolina first threatened to secede from
the Union over the issue of high tariffs; although, at that time, the
institution of slavery was also zealously guarded by the South. But to
really understand the fervor with which many in the North fought to
preserve the Union, we need to dig deeper into the emotional speeches
delivered in response to these crises from the 1830’s, which we will
reflect on today.
But before we can adequately reflect on these events, we first need to
provide some background information.

The 1820 Presidential Election was held during the Era of Good
Feelings. The Democratic-Republican Party nominated James
Monroe for President. He was the last of the Founding Fathers to
serve as President and won all but one of the votes of the
Electoral College. The New England Federalist Party fielded a
candidate for Vice-President but not for President, since the
party was increasingly unpopular due to New England’s sympathy
with the British before the War of 1812, where English sailors
plundered the White House and Congressional buildings. Soon
after the Federalist Party disintegrated.

Independence Day Celebration in Centre Square, Philadelphia, by John Lewis Krimmel, 1819

The Era of Good Feelings ended after the 1824 Presidential Elections
when various factions within the Democratic-Republican Party nominated
four candidates for President. Andrew Jackson won a plurality, but not a
majority, of both the popular votes and the Electoral College votes. John
Quincy Adams, son of the Founding Father and second President John
Adams, came in second, while Henry Clay came in fourth. Since no
candidate won a majority of the Electoral College votes, the Constitution
required that the Presidency be determined in the House of
Representatives, with one vote for each state. Since many of the
Northeastern states are small, their votes counted more heavily, and they
elected John Quincy Adams as the next President.

After John Quincy Adams appointed Henry Clay as Secretary of State, the Jacksonian
faction cried foul, accusing them of a corrupt bargain. Eventually, John Quincy
Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and former Federalists congealed around the
National Republican Party, which in future decades morphed into the Whig Party,
then the Free Soil Party, and finally the Republican Party shortly before the Civil War.
This doomed the Presidency of John Quincy Adams, and when he ran for reelection
in 1828, Andrew Jackson beat him handily in both the popular vote and the
Electoral College vote. This also ended the Era of Good Feelings, afterwards partisan
emotions ran high, contrary to the hopeful vision of George Washington and the
Founding Fathers, who saw partisanship as destructively divisive. Andrew Jackson
was from Tennessee while John C Calhoun, his Vice-Presidential running mate, was
from South Carolina.

Evolution of US Two-Party Politics
Unfavorable and favorable campaign depictions of Andrew Jackson, portrait of John Quincy Adams

This partisanship also began to show the strains between the
slave-holding South and the Free Soil North. The Democratic-
Republican Party split into the Democratic Party and the National
Republican Party. Andrew Jackson was an agrarian slave-holding
Southerner, while the more business-friendly National
Republican Party, which was active from 1824 to 1834, was home
to the political giants Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. When the
National Republican Party dissolved, most party members joined
the Whig Party, which was a national party active from 1833 to
1856, when disputes over slavery broke up the party.

In this 1850
political cartoon,
the artist attacks
abolitionist, Free
Soil and other
sectionalist
interests of 1850
as dangers to the
Union.

Although the abolitionists actively opposed slavery from the 1830’s,
many Northerners were uncomfortable with many of their ideas, the
belief that the black man was equal to the white man was a radical belief
at that time. Rather, since there were no large plantations in the North,
Northerners opposed the unfair competition that small farmers and
businessmen faced from the free labor of slaves. This unease gave birth
to the Northern Free Soil Party, active from 1848 to 1854. Then former
Whigs and Free Soil Party members migrated to the Republican Party in
1854, which was mostly a Northern party. The Democratic Party
remained a national party, though it was split during the Civil War. The
Democratic General George McClellan ran as a peace candidate against
Lincoln during the Civil War.

Proslavery riot in
Alton, Illinois, in 1837,
where abolitionist
Elijah Parish Lovejoy
was murdered.

Burning of
Pennsylvania Hall,
home of the
Pennsylvania Anti-
Slavery Society.
Print by John
Caspar Wild. Note
firemen spraying
water on adjacent
building.

Passionately Preserving the Union

The National Republicans and future Whigs Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were
famous for their passionate pleas for preserving the Union, this was pursued with
evangelical fervor in their speeches. Although there were Democrats who favored
seceding from the Union if their states disagreed with national policy, President
Andrew Jackson was just as fervent in preserving the Union.
Although slavery was becoming a sectional controversy dividing North and South,
the major issue dividing Northern industrial interests and Southern agrarian
interests was the national tariff, which was a major revenue source for the federal
government in 1830. Northern industrialists favored a high tariff to protect the
market for the smaller factories of the north from being undersold by the more
efficient and large British factories. Southern plantation owners favored a lower
tariff so they could purchase supplies at a lower price, which enabled them to
export cotton to Britain at a lower price.

Daniel
Webster
monument,
Central Park,
New York
City

A national crisis was provoked in 1830 when South
Carolina threatened to nullify, or resist, the collection of a
new higher national tariff. Three decades later, the South
Carolina militia opened fire on Fort Sumter, an island
federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, in response to the
election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, sparking
the Civil War. Then, as now, many in the North were
resentful that the South would not respect the results of a
fair and free Presidential election.

Evening Gun, Fort
Sumter, Conrad
Wise Chapman &
John Gadsby
Chapman, 1864

Vice-President John C Calhoun, who was
from South Carolina, was provoked into
supporting the doctrine of Nullification by
the passage of the higher Tariff of
Abominations, as it was called. Our Webster
biographer, Robert Remini, wrote that
“Calhoun argued the constitutional right of a
state to nullify federal legislation within its
borders whenever such legislation violated
its rights or sovereignty.” This states’ Rights
attitude persists to the current day. “If the
central government used force against the
state to execute its laws, then the state could
rightfully secede from the Union.”

This controversy damaged Calhoun’s standing with
Jackson, who was more than willing to call his bluff
and send federal troops into South Carolina to
enforce the tariff, to preserve the Union. But later
compromises crafted by Henry Clay would defuse the
political situation.

John C
Calhoun, by
George Peter
Alexander
Healy, 1845
Andrew
Jackson, by
Ralph Eleaser
Whiteside
Earl

In addition to his duties as a US
Senator, Daniel Webster also
represented Northern industrial
interests in their disputes before
the Supreme Court. Remini notes
that “he had already acquired a
reputation as the ‘Great
Expounder and Defender of the
Constitution’ who virtually
provided the Supreme Court with
all the basic arguments for its
major decisions.”

Excerpts from Daniel Webster’s Senate Debates on
Preserving the Union would be memorized by
schoolchildren for many decades, even into the
twentieth century, as mentioned in LBJ’s biography.

Webster replying to Hayne, by George PA Healy, 1830
The Webster-Payne Debate in the Senate

There were other divisive regional issues, one was a
proposal to limit the sale of Western lands, another
key source of federal revenue. This benefited the
West at the expense of Eastern factory owners, who
lost low-paid employees who migrated west to buy
land and farm.

The young Senator Robert Hayne rose to
speak on a bill limiting Western land sales,
but he addressed also the tariff issue
dividing the North and South. “The very
life of our system is the independence of
the states and there is no evil more to be
deprecated than the consolidation of this
Government.” Remini notes that “Hayne
wanted the government to have no
permanent sources of income as provided
by the tariff and sale of public lands. It
only ‘consolidates’ the government and
corrupts the people.”

In a subsequent debate, Daniel Webster spit
out the word: “Consolidation! That perpetual
cry both terror and delusion: Consolidation!”
Why would consolidation be bad, what is
wrong with encouraging “the people of the
states to hold together?” Although he said that
he did not seek to increase the powers of the
federal government, Webster emphasized that
“I confess I rejoice in whatever strengthens the
bonds that unite us, and encourage the hope
that our Union may be perpetual.” This Union
“is essential to the prosperity and safety of the
states. I am a Unionist, and, in this sense, a
national republican.” Portrait of Daniel Webster, by Francis Alexander, 1834

Webster first pointed out that “New
England had always opposed the tariff.”
Then he spoke of the issue that would, in
time, divide the Union: SLAVERY. He
pointed out that the Northwest
Ordinance of 1787, which created the
Northwest Territory which spanned the
current states from Ohio to Minnesota,
forbade slavery in the territory. He looked
forward to a debate where he could
“reassert, in even stronger terms, the
supremacy of the federal Union.”
Stamp of Daniel Webster,r, Issue of 1879

Hayne took the bait, but “he weakened and
seriously damaged his argument by attempting
to demonstrate the supposed beneficial
influences.” Then he fell completely into
Webster’s trap, going beyond Calhoun’s
assertion that the “states would be a check on
the unlimited power of the central government.”
Hayne claimed that the “states and central
authority acted as equals in the Constitution.
The states’ rights argument claimed that the
states, and only the states, created the national
government, that the central government is the
creature of the states.”
Photograph of Daniel Webster, 1847

When Hayne argued that “slavery, in the
abstract, is no evil,” Webster countered
that “the abolition of slavery must come
from the slaveholding states themselves.
‘It is their affair, not mine,’ he proclaimed.
Neither the central government nor
Congress had any authority to emancipate
the slaves.” This Northern sentiment would
only shift amidst the bloody battles and
thousands of slaves crossing the Union
lines during the Civil War.
Daguerreotype Photograph of Daniel
Webster, by John Adams Whipple, 1847

Remini recounts Webster’s argument:
“The people declared that the
Constitution shall be the supreme
law. The states are sovereign as long
as they do not disturb the supreme
law.” “The South Carolina doctrine, as
Webster called nullification, would
grant each of the twenty-four states
the authority to decide which laws
are legal and constitutional and
which are not.”
Daniel Webster for Senate, by Adrian Lamb, 1955

Webster asked, “Does
this not approach
absurdity?” Either the
laws of the central
government are
beyond the control of
the states or we have
“no constitution of
general government,
and are thrust back
again to the Articles of
Confederation.”

These Articles preceded the Constitution, they
created a federal government with no powers of
taxation, reliant on contributions by the states for
funding, a weak President, no powers to regulate
commerce, and a Confederation where each state
had one vote.

Commemorative stamp, Articles of Confederation, 200th anniversary, 1977 issue

Who interprets the will of the people? Do the
states interpret the will of the people? No,
answered Webster, “the people left it to the
central government itself.” Who has the last
say? “The federal judicial power shall extend to
all cases arising under the Constitution and
laws of the United States.” “I maintain, that
between the submission to the decision of the
constituted tribunals, and revolution, or
disunion, there is no middle ground; there is
no ambiguous condition between half-
allegiance and half-rebellion.”
Daniel Webster, by Matthew Brady Studios, 1849

Remini recounts: “Webster reminded
his listeners of the prosperity and honor
achieved by the nation through the
‘preservation of our Federal Union.’” “It
is to that Union we owe our safety at
home and dignity abroad. It is that
Union that makes us most proud of our
country. Every year brings new evidence
of its blessings.” Webster proclaimed,
“The Union has been to us all a copious
fountain of national, social, and
personal happiness.”

Then Webster spoke his long-
remembered conclusion: “While the
Union lasts, we have high, exciting,
gratifying prospects spread out before
us, for us and our children.” “When my
eyes shall be turned to behold for the
last time the sun in heaven, may I NOT
see him shining on the broken and
dishonored fragments of a once glorious
Union; on States dissevered, discordant,
belligerent; on a land rent with civil
feuds, or drenched, it may be, in
fraternal blood!”
Stamp of Daniel Webster, Issue of 1903

Webster continues: Let us not say,
“Liberty first and union afterwards;”
“but everywhere, spread all over in
characters of living light, blazing on
all its ample fields, as they float over
the sea and over the land, and in
every wind under the whole
heavens, that other sentiment, dear
to every true American heart:
‘Liberty and Union, now and forever,
one and inseparable!’”

Daniel Webster’s speech, recited by generations of
schoolboys, formed the core of the quasi-religious
attitude that inspired many a Northern soldier to
volunteer to invade the South, to fight to preserve
the Union, with fraternal blood.

Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Currier & Ives, 1861
South Carolina Nullification, and Secession?

South Carolina convened a state convention to discuss the tariff laws of
1828 and 1832, which met in late November. The Convention
overwhelmingly passed an Ordinance of Nullification declaring that these
tariffs were null, void, and not binding on South Carolina, and that if force
were applied to enforce them, South Carolina would secede from the
Union. Then Hayne resigned from the Senate, Calhoun resigned from the
Vice-Presidency, and then the South Carolina Legislature appointed
Calhoun to the Senate, as Senators were not elected at this time, and
Hayne was elected Governor.
As a general, Andrew Jackson had defeated the British at New Orleans in
the War of 1812, making him a national hero immediately, and his
toughness earned him the nickname “Old Hickory.”

The Battle of New
Orleans, by Edward
Percy Moran, 1910.
In 1815, at the end
of the War of 1812
against Britain,
General Andrew
Jackson stands on
the parapet of his
makeshift defenses
as his troops
repulse attacking
Highlanders.

As expected, Jackson responded
immediately to this challenge, issuing his
Proclamation to the people of South
Carolina, cautioning them of the
“dreadful consequences” should the
state follow through on this threat. He
proclaimed, “Disunion by armed force is
treason. Are you ready to incur its
guilt?”
But since he was both a Southerner and
a slaveholder, Jackson was also
conciliatory, offering to lower the tariffs.

Webster quickly affirmed this message.
“The principles contained in Jackson’s
Proclamation are such as I entirely
approve. I esteem them to be the true
principles of the Constitution.”
Nullification is nothing more than
“resistance to law by force, is is
secession by force: IT IS CIVIL WAR!” “If
the government, on this first trial, should
not be able to keep all the States in their
proper places, from that moment the
whole Union is virtually dissolved.”
Portrait of Daniel Webster, by N Currier, 1852

Abraham Lincoln listened to this
speech, as did many Americans,
and Remini, our historian, says
they learned these lessons:
• “First, the President must
execute the laws. In this he
has no choice. Therefore, if a
state violates the law, the
President must see to it that
the law is enforced,
employing ‘lawful means,’
including the use of armed
force.

• Second, the notion that one
state may secede from the
Union is absurd. Once the
Union is broken, it will break
again and again, leaving a
fragmented country with
various governments warring
with one another and all
subject to the dastardly
intrigues of foreign powers.
The Union must be preserved,
as Jackson had said, and
rebellion put down by
whatever means necessary.”

Meanwhile, compromises were sought. Jackson
proposed that tariffs be reduced fifty percent to their
1816 level. Henry Clay proposed that tariffs be
gradually reduced over ten years until they were
eliminated. Webster opposed reducing the tariffs.

Andrew Jackson sent his Force Bill
to Congress for their approval,
authorizing the President to close
any port necessary, tweaking the
laws to permit the jailing of
nullifiers, protect US property, and
strengthening the 1792 legislation
that gave the “President the power
to call out the militia and use
federal ships and troops. But force
would not be used unless South
Carolina initiated it.”
General Andrew Jackson, by John Wesley Jarvis, 1819

In his first major speech in the Senate,
Calhoun proclaimed that the Force Bill was a
“Bloody Bill, a War Bill,” “and an
unconstitutional declaration of war against a
sovereign state.” Calhoun sneered, “Does
any man in his senses believe that the Union
can be preserved by force?” “No, no. You
cannot keep the States united in their
constitutional and federal bonds by force.”
Calhoun concluded that the present contest
is a “contest between power and liberty,” “a
contest in which the weaker section, with its
peculiar labor,” referring to slavery, “has at
stake all that can be dear to freeman.” John Calhoun at forty, by Charles Bird King, 1822

Remini summarizes the opposing arguments by
Daniel Webster:
• “The Constitution is” “founded by the people,
creating direct relations between itself and the
people.”
• “No state can dissolve these relations, and
therefore secession is impossible without
revolution.”
• “The supreme law consists of the Constitution
and the acts of Congress to be interpreted by
Congress or the Supreme Court.”
• “Nullification is unconstitutional, a usurpation of
powers of the general government and the rights
of other states and therefore revolutionary.”

“The people of the United States,” Webster
declared, “are one people. They are one in
making war and one in making peace; they
are one in regulating commerce, and one in
laying duties of impost. The very end and
purpose of the Constitution was to make
them one people in these particulars.”
Webster continues, “The majority MUST
govern. In matters of common concern, the
judgment of a majority MUST stand as the
judgment of the whole.” “To do otherwise
strikes at the very heart of liberty.” Daniel Webster, by Nathaniel Currier

Our historian Remini writes, “The
Senate passed the Force Bill by a vote
of thirty-two to one. All the nullifiers
left the chamber during the voting.”
Henry Clay proposed his compromise
tariff,” where they “would be slowly
reduced over ten years until they
stood at a uniform twenty percent.”
“During this ten-year truce period,” the
tariff would not be adjusted further.

This Compromise Tariff
passed Congress with
comfortable margins.
Perhaps Daniel Webster was
like JFK, great at giving
speeches, while Henry Clay
was like LBJ, great at passing
legislation. Remini recounts,
“South Carolina repealed its
Ordinance of Nullification
but, to save face, or maintain
its defiance, nullified the
Force Bill.” Henry Clay, between John C Calhoun and Daniel Webster, introduces
the Compromise of 1850 in the Senate, drawn by Peter Rothermel,
engraved by Robert Whitechurch, 1855

Daniel Webster stealing Henry Clay's thunder, from Book of
History of the United States by Charles and Mary Beard
Everyone knew this did
not end the struggle to
preserve the Union.
Webster knew that “the
question of paramount
importance in our affairs
is likely to be, for some
time to come, the
Preservation of the
Union, or its Dissolution;
and now power can
decide this question, but
that of the People
themselves.”

South Carolina not only set bad precedent, but she
had enacted a state law that stated that state militia
could resist federal forces sent in to enforce the laws
passed by Congress under the Constitution. Thus,
you could argue that the Civil War did not start in
1864, that it really started in the 1830’s.

1860 Presidential Election and Fort Sumter

The Democratic Party split into a Northern and Southern wing over the
issue of whether slavery could be extended into the western territories.
The Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas bravely campaigned in both the
North and the South, braving hostile Southern crowds, but he won the
least votes of all the candidates. The candidate for the short-lived
Constitutional Union Party, comprised mostly of former Southern Whigs,
won the votes of several border states. And Abraham Lincoln, running for
the Republican Party, won the majority of the electoral votes in Northern
and Western states, though he only won forty percent of the popular
vote. However, the Southern wing of the Democratic Party won only
eighteen percent of the popular vote. Abraham Lincoln would be
inaugurated in March 1865.

Stephen Douglas/Johnson
Democratic Party
Bell/ Everett
Constitutional Union Party
Breckinridge/ Lane
Southern Democrats
Abraham Lincoln/ Hamlin
Republican Party
1860 Presidential Election: The Southern States walked out of the
convention and formed their own party. Four parties fielded candidates;
the Constitutional Union Party appealed to the Border States who wanted
to preserve the Union.

Although Abraham Lincoln only ran on not extending slavery in the territories,
promising as did Daniel Webster several decades before not to disturb slavery in the
Southern states, once he was elected many Southern states began considering
seceding from the Union. South Carolina was the first to secede, of course, and
demanded that the outgoing President Buchanan, who favored the South, abandon
Fort Sumter, but he did nothing. In April 1865 Abraham Lincoln attempted to
resupply Fort Sumter with food and non-military supplies. The Confederates opened
fire on Fort Sumter, and the garrison, outgunned, surrendered the next day. The
Civil War had begun.
The views Abraham Lincoln expressed while campaigning and as President were not
news to Americans, he was only repeating much of what Daniel Webster had
shouted in his soaring Senatorial debates delivered during the Nullification crisis.

Major Anderson
Raising the Flag
on the Morning
of His Taking
Possession of
Fort Sumter,
1860, by Edwin
White, painted
1862

Our Yale Lecture Notes also examine how slavery and
the abolitionist movement were also causes of the
Civil War, and how slaves helped the North win the
Civil War to Preserve the Union.

https://youtu.be/kmLg8CDjOOY
https://youtu.be/89ulb20cy8Q
https://youtu.be/f5nPNnvDBCY https://youtu.be/weGmYOe0Lyg

We also have an enjoyable video on the Civil War as
seen through paintings.

Professor Gallagher’s book on the Union War spent too much time
debating with his fellow professors from recent scholarly conferences,
and not enough time reviewing the relevant history of Daniel Webster,
Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson in the 1830’s. We drew most of our
discussion from this readable biography of Daniel Webster by Robert
Remini, and we look forward to reflecting on the remainder of Webster’s
biographies in future reflections. We will also reflect on the biographies
of the other giant of these times, the Great Compromiser, whose
compromises helped preserve the Union, Henry Clay.
We also highly recommend Professor Gallagher’s lectures on both the
battles and the causes of the Civil War.

https://www.wondrium.com/the-american-civil-war
https://amzn.to/3KRgTc1

https://www.meetup.com/Reflections/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqDkfFbWhXOnzdjp__YZtg/

How Did the Speeches of Daniel Webster Inspire the North to Fight To Preserve the Union?

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