. . The scene depicted in the painting is Webster concluding his debate with Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. To all this, sir, I was disposed most cordially to respond. Every scheme or contrivance by which rulers are able to procure the command of money by means unknown to, unseen or unfelt by, the people, destroys this security. They have agreed, that certain specific powers shall be exercised by the federal government; but the moment that government steps beyond the limits of its charter, the right of the states to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them,[7] is as full and complete as it was before the Constitution was formed. He speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789. The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts while he exonerates me personally from the charge, intimates that there is a party in the country who are looking to disunion. Sir, when arraigned before the bar of public opinion, on this charge of slavery, we can stand up with conscious rectitude, plead not guilty, and put ourselves upon God and our country. As sovereign states, each state could individually interpret the Constitution and even leave the Union altogether. Speech of Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, January 25, 1830. . . To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. The Constitutional Convention: The Great Compromise, The Webster-Hayne Debate of 1830: Summary & Issues, The History of American Presidential Debates, Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening: Sermons & Biography, Who Was Susan B. Anthony? And, therefore, I cannot but feel regret at the expression of such opinions as the gentleman has avowed; because I think their obvious tendency is to weaken the bond of our connection. It is one from which we are not disposed to shrink, in whatever form or under whatever circumstances it may be pressed upon us. The Webster-Hayne debate was a series of unplanned speeches in the Senate between January 19th and 27th of 1830 between Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. If an inquiry should ever be instituted in these matters, however, it will be found that the profits of the slave trade were not confined to the South. Sir, I cordially respond to that appeal. They had burst forth from arguments about a decision by Connecticut Senator Samuel Foote. Sir, I deprecate and deplore this tone of thinking and acting. . South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification 1832 | Crisis, Cause & Issues. . The people had had quite enough of that kind of government, under the Confederacy. Where in these debates do we see a possible argument in defense of Constitutional secession by the states, later claimed by the Southern Confederacy before, during, and after the Civil War? Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. This was the tenor of Webster's speech, and nobly did the country respond to it. His ideas about federalism and his interpretation of the Constitution as a document uniting the states under one supreme law were highly influential in the eyes of his contemporaries and would influence the rebuilding of the nation after the Civil War. Nullification, Webster maintained, was a political absurdity. The Revelation on Celestial Marriage: Trouble Amon Hon. The Webster Hayne Debate. Some of his historical deductions may be questioned; but far above all possible error on the part of her leaders, stood colonial and Revolutionary New England, and the sturdy, intelligent, and thriving people whose loyalty to the Union had never failed, and whose home, should ill befall the nation, would yet prove liberty's last shelter. What idea was espoused with the Webster-Hayne debates? Daniel Webster, in a dramatic speech, showed the danger of the states' rights doctrine, which permitted each State to decide for itself which laws were unconstitutional, claiming it would lead to civil war. The Webster-Hayne debate laid out key issues faced by the Senate in the 1820s and 1830s. - Definition and Uses, Public Speaking: Assignment 1 - Informative Speech, Public Speaking: Assignment 3 - Special Occasion Speech, The Role of Probability Distributions, Random Numbers & the Computer in Simulations, The Monte Carlo Simulation: Scope & Common Applications, Working Scholars Bringing Tuition-Free College to the Community, The methods by which the federal government earned its revenue, The federal government's surveying and selling of land west of the Mississippi River, The issue of slavery, which was beginning to divide the Northern and Southern states, The balance of power between federal and state governments. These verses recount the first occurrence of slavery. . sir, this is but the old story. The great debate, which culminated in Hayne's encounter with Webster, came about in a somewhat casual way. If the federal government, in all or any of its departments, are to prescribe the limits of its own authority; and the states are bound to submit to the decision, and are not to be allowed to examine and decide for themselves, when the barriers of the Constitution shall be overleaped, this is practically a government without limitation of powers; the states are at once reduced to mere petty corporations, and the people are entirely at your mercy. For the next several days, the men traded speeches which contemporaries of the time described as the greatest orations ever delivered in the Senate. . . Noah grew a vineyard, got drunk on wine and lay naked. He was dressed with scrupulous care, in a blue coat with metal buttons, a buff vest rounding over his full abdomen, and his neck encircled with a white cravat. In this moment in American history, the federal government had relatively little power. What followed, the Webster Hayne debate, was one of the most famous exchanges in Senate history. Connecticut's proposal was an attempt to slow the growth of the nation, control westward expansion, and bolster the federal government's revenue. Hayne argued that the sovereign and independent states had created the Union to promote their particular interests. . It would enable Congress and the Executive to exercise a control over states, as well as over great interests in the country, nay, even over corporations and individualsutterly destructive of the purity, and fatal to the duration of our institutions. Before his term as a U.S. senator, Hayne had served as a state senator, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, South Carolina's Speaker of the House, and Attorney General of South Carolina. . . Most people of the time supported a small central government and strong state governments, so the federal government was much weaker than you might have expected. I know that there are some persons in the part of the country from which the honorable member comes, who habitually speak of the Union in terms of indifference, or even of disparagement. Webster was eloquent, he was educated, he was witty, and he was a staunch defender of American liberty. Be this as it may, Hayne was a ready and copious orator, a highly-educated lawyer, a man of varied accomplishments, shining as a writer, speaker, and counselor, equally qualified to draw up a bill or to advocate it, quick to memories, well fortified by wealth and marriage connections, dignified, never vulgar nor unmindful of the feelings of those with whom he mingled, Hayne moved in an atmosphere where lofty and chivalrous honor was the ruling sentiment. I would strengthen the ties that hold us together. . Hayne launched his confident javelin at the New England States. Those who are in favor of consolidation; who are constantly stealing power from the states and adding strength to the federal government; who, assuming an unwarrantable jurisdiction over the states and the people, undertake to regulate the whole industry and capital of the country. It was about protectionist tariffs.The speeches between Webster and Hayne themselves were not planned. During his first years in Congress, Webster railed against President James Madison 's war policies, invoking a states' rights argument to oppose a conscription bill that went down to defeat.. . In January 1830, a debate on the nature of sovereignty in the American federal union occurred in the United States Senate between Senators Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Hayne of South Carolina. . Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people? Our Core Document Collection allows students to read history in the words of those who made it. Speech of Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, January 20, 1830. It was a great and salutary measure of prevention. It has been said that Hayne was Calhoun's sword and buckler and that he returned to the contest refreshed each morning by nightly communions with the Vice-President, drawing auxiliary supplies from the well-stored arsenal of his powerful and subtle mind. It is only regarded as a possible means of good; or on the other hand, as a possible means of evil. . . To them, the more money the central government made, the stronger it became and the more it took rights away from the states to govern themselves. It is observable enough, that the doctrine for which the honorable gentleman contends, leads him to the necessity of maintaining, not only that this general government is the creature of the states, but that it is the creature of each of the states severally; so that each may assert the power, for itself, of determining whether it acts within the limits of its authority. How do Webster and Hayne differ in regard to their understandings of the proper relationship among the several states and between the states and the national government? When they shall become dissatisfied with this distribution, they can alter it. The debate itself, a nine-day long unplanned exchange between Senators Robert Y. Hayne and Daniel Webster, directly addressed the methods by which the federal government was generating revenue, namely through protective tariffs and the selling of federal lands in the newly acquired western territories. Rachel Venter is a recent graduate of Metropolitan State University of Denver. I understand him to maintain, that the ultimate power of judging of the constitutional extent of its own authority, is not lodged exclusively in the general government, or any branch of it; but that, on the contrary, the states may lawfully decide for themselves, and each state for itself, whether, in a given case, the act of the general government transcends its power. It makes but little difference, in my estimation, whether Congress or the Supreme Court, are invested with this power. In fact, Webster's definition of the Constitution as for the People, by the People, and answerable to the People would go on to form one of the most enduring ideas about American democracy. Nor shall I stop there. Thousands of these deluded victims of fanaticism were seduced into the enjoyment of freedom in our Northern cities. I said, only, that it was highly wise and useful in legislating for the northwestern country, while it was yet a wilderness, to prohibit the introduction of slaves: and added, that I presumed, in the neighboring state of Kentucky, there was no reflecting and intelligent gentleman, who would doubt, that if the same prohibition had been extended, at the same early period, over that commonwealth, her strength and population would, at this day, have been far greater than they are. President Andrew Jackson had just been elected, most of the states got rid of property requirements for voting, and an entire new era of democracy was being born. There was no clear winner of the debate, but the Union's victory over the Confederacy just a few decades later brought Webster's ideas to fruition. The 1830 Webster-Hayne debate centered around the South Carolina nullification crisis of the late 1820s, but historians have largely ignored the sectional interests underpinning Webster's argument on behalf of Unionism and a transcendent nationalism. Connecticut and other northeastern states were worried about the pace of growth and wanted to slow this down. But his standpoint was purely local and sectional. Address to the Slaves of the United States. Most are forgettable, to put it charitably. . On this subject, as in all others, we ask nothing of our Northern brethren but to let us alone; leave us to the undisturbed management of our domestic concerns, and the direction of our own industry, and we will ask no more. . . They ordained such a government; they gave it the name of a Constitution, and therein they established a distribution of powers between this, their general government, and their several state governments. . Perhaps a quotation from a speech in Parliament in 1803 of Lord Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (17691822) during a debate over the conduct of British officials in India. The people read Webster's speech and marked him as the champion henceforth against all assaults upon the Constitution. . It was plenary then, and never having been surrendered, must be plenary now. The Destiny of America, Speech at the Dedication o An Address. The Webster-Hayne debates began over one issue but quickly switched to another. Though Webster made an impassioned argument, the political, social, and economic traditions of New England informed his ideas about the threatened nation. Finding our lot cast among a people, whom God had manifestly committed to our care, we did not sit down to speculate on abstract questions of theoretical liberty. . Historians love a good debate. Sir, it is because South Carolina loves the Union, and would preserve it forever, that she is opposing now, while there is hope, those usurpations of the federal government, which, once established, will, sooner or later, tear this Union into fragments. No hanging over the abyss of disunion, no weighing of the chances, no doubting as to what the Constitution was worth, no placing of liberty before Union, but "liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable." All rights reserved. But until they shall alter it, it must stand as their will, and is equally binding on the general government and on the states. Shedding weak tears over sufferings which had existence only in their own sickly imaginations, these friends of humanity set themselves systematically to work to seduce the slaves of the South from their masters. I hold it to be a popular government, erected by the people; those who administer it responsible to the people; and itself capable of being amended and modified, just as the people may choose it should be. Nullification, Webster maintained, was a political absurdity. When the honorable member rose, in his first speech, I paid him the respect of attentive listening; and when he sat down, though surprised, and I must say even astonished, at some of his opinions, nothing was farther from my intention than to commence any personal warfare: and through the whole of the few remarks I made in answer, I avoided, studiously and carefully, everything which I thought possible to be construed into disrespect. . Southern states advocated for strong, sovereign state governments, a small federal government, the western expansion of the agricultural economy, and with it, the maintenance of the institution of slavery. - Women's Rights Facts & Significance, Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points: Definition, Speech & Summary, Fireside Chats: Definition & Significance, JFK's New Frontier: Definition, Speech & Program. In all the efforts that have been made by South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional laws which Congress has extended over them, she has kept steadily in view the preservation of the Union, by the only means by which she believes it can be long preserveda firm, manly, and steady resistance against usurpation. In The Webster-Hayne Debate, Christopher Childers examines the context of the debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and his Senate colleague Robert S. Hayne of South Carolina in January 1830.Readers will finish the book with a clear idea of the reason Webster's "Reply" became so influential in its own day. Enrolling in a course lets you earn progress by passing quizzes and exams. . Speech on Assuming Office of the President. Webster pursued his objective through a rhetorical strategy that ignored Benton, the principal opponent of New England sectionalism, and that provoked Hayne into an exposition and defense of what became the South Carolina doctrine of nullification. . In coming to the consideration of the next great question, what ought to be the future policy of the government in relation to the public lands? This absurdity (for it seems no less) arises from a misconception as to the origin of this government and its true character. . He remained a Southern Unionist through his long public career and a good type of the growing class of statesman devoted to slave interests who loved the Union as it was and doted upon its compromises. What idea was espoused with the Webster-Hayne debates? . . . Having thus distinctly stated the points in dispute between the gentleman and myself, I proceed to examine them. The Senate debates between Whig Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Democrat Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina in January 1830 started out as a disagreement over the sale of Western lands and turned into one of the most famous verbal contests in American history. . The militia of the state will be called out to sustain the nullifying act. Some of Webster's personal friends had felt nervous over what appeared to them too hasty a period for preparation. All of these ideas, however, are only parts of the main point. The following states came from the territory north and west of the Ohio river: Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Wisconsin (1848) and Minnesota (1858). Consolidation!that perpetual cry, both of terror and delusionconsolidation! Mr. Webster arose, and, in conclusion, said: A few words, Mr. President, on this constitutional argument, which the honorable gentleman has labored to reconstruct. We who come here, as agents and representatives of these narrow-minded and selfish men of New England, consider ourselves as bound to regard, with equal eye, the good of the whole, in whatever is within our power of legislation.
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