That's what was happening out West. . Some of Webster's personal friends had felt nervous over what appeared to them too hasty a period for preparation. We resolved to make the best of the situation in which Providence had placed us, and to fulfil the high trust which had developed upon us as the owners of slaves, in the only way in which such a trust could be fulfilled, without spreading misery and ruin throughout the land. . . We had no other general government. Speech of Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, January 26 and 27, 1830. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. Battle of Fort Sumter in the Civil War | Who Won the Battle of Fort Sumter? The debaters were Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. . The senator from Massachusetts, in denouncing what he is pleased to call the Carolina doctrine,[5] has attempted to throw ridicule upon the idea that a state has any constitutional remedy by the exercise of its sovereign authority against a gross, palpable, and deliberate violation of the Constitution. He called it an idle or a ridiculous notion, or something to that effect; and added, that it would make the Union a mere rope of sand. flashcard sets. Certainly, sir, I am, and ever have been of that opinion. Regional Conflict in America: Debate Over States' Rights. The gentleman takes alarm at the sound. Compare And Contrast The Tension Between North And South. It moves vast bodies, and gives to them one and the same direction. . . 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. The speech is also known for the line Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable, which would subsequently become the state motto of North Dakota, appearing on the state seal. Record of the Organization and Proceedings of The Massachusetts Lawmakers Investigate Working Condit State (Colonial) Legislatures>Massachusetts State Legislature. 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. It is worth noting that in the course of the debate, on the very floor of the Senate, both Hayne and Webster raised the specter of civil war 30 years before it commenced. Rather, the debate eloquently captured the ideas and ideals of Northern and Southern representatives of the time, highlighting and summarizing the major issues of governance of the era. foote wanted to stop surveying lands until they could sell the ones already looked at Our notion of things is entirely different. But to remove all doubt it is expressly declared, by the 10th article of the amendment of the Constitution, that the powers not delegated to the states, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.. Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The American Anti-Slavery Society, Declaration of Sent Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, Protest in Illinois Legislature on Slavery. Sir, we narrow-minded people of New England do not reason thus. The arena selected for a first impression was the Senate, where the arch-heretic himself presided and guided the onset with his eye. Daniel webster (ma) and sen. Hayne of . In many respects, his speech betrays the mentality of Massachusetts conservatives seeking to regain national leadership and advance their particular ideas about the nation. We met it as a practical question of obligation and duty. They switched from a. the tariff of 1828 to national power . Well, the southern states were infuriated. Speech on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Union, of itself, is considered by the disciples of this school as hardly a good. The faction of voters in the North were against slavery and feared it spreading into new territory. 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. The other way was through the sale of federally-owned land to private citizens. The taxes paid by foreign nations to export American cotton, for example, generated lots of money for the government. 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. Senator Foote, of Connecticut, submitted a proposition inquiring into the expediency of limiting the sales of public lands to those already in the market. To all this, sir, I was disposed most cordially to respond. . We will not look back to inquire whether our fathers were guiltless in introducing slaves into this country. Webster scoffed at the idea of consolidation, labeling it "that perpetual cry, both of terror and delusion." What Hayne and his supporters actually meant to do, Webster claimed, was to resist those means that might strengthen the bonds of common interest. The growing support for nullification was quite obvious during the days of the Jackson Administration, as events such as the Webster-Hayne Debate, Tariff of 1832, Order of Nullification, and Worcester v. Georgia all made the tension grow between the North and the South. [2] We deal in no abstractions. South Carolinas Declaration of the Causes of Secession (1860), Jefferson Daviss Inaugural Address (1861), Documents in Detail: The Webster-Hayne Debates, Remarks in Congress on the Tariff of Abominations, Check out our collection of primary source readers. They attack nobody, and menace nobody. . Go to these cities now, and ask the question. Strange was it, however, that in heaping reproaches upon the Hartford Convention he did not mark how nearly its leaders had mapped out the same line of opposition to the national Government that his State now proposed to take, both relying upon the arguments of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 179899. It develops the gentlemans whole political system; and its answer expounds mine. In this regard, Webster anticipated an argument that Abraham Lincoln made in his First Inaugural Address (1861). The specific issue that sparked the Webster-Hayne debate was a proposal by the state of Connecticut which said that the federal government should halt its surveying of land west of the Mississippi and focus on selling the land it had already surveyed to private citizens. Will it promote the welfare of the United States to have at our disposal a permanent treasury, not drawn from the pockets of the people, but to be derived from a source independent of them? Hayne quotes from the Virginia Resolution (1798), authored by Thomas Jefferson, to protest the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798). . To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. Sir, as to the doctrine that the federal government is the exclusive judge of the extent as well as the limitations of its powers, it seems to be utterly subversive of the sovereignty and independence of the states. I understand the honorable gentleman from South Carolina to maintain, that it is a right of the state legislatures to interfere, whenever, in their judgment, this government transcends its constitutional limits, and to arrest the operation of its laws. I would strengthen the ties that hold us together. The measures of the federal government have, it is true, prostrated her interests, and will soon involve the whole South in irretrievable ruin. In January 1830, a debate on the nature of sovereignty in the America. . All of these ideas, however, are only parts of the main point. Their own power over their own instrument remains. At the foundation of the constitution of these new Northwestern states, . The main issue of the Webster-Hayne Debate was the nature of the country that had been created by the Constitution. If this Constitution, sir, be the creature of state Legislatures, it must be admitted that it has obtained a strange control over the volitions of its creators. But until they shall alter it, it must stand as their will, and is equally binding on the general government and on the states. . The gentleman has made an eloquent appeal to our hearts in favor of union. . . What idea was espoused with the Webster-Hayne debates? . Webster-Hayne Debate book. . I shrink almost instinctively from a course, however necessary, which may have a tendency to excite sectional feelings, and sectional jealousies. We love to dwell on that union, and on the mutual happiness which it has so much promoted, and the common renown which it has so greatly contributed to acquire. He served as a U.S. senator from 1823 to 1832, and was a leading proponent of the states' rights doctrine. Can any man believe, sir, that, if twenty-three millions per annum was now levied by direct taxation, or by an apportionment of the same among the states, instead of being raised by an indirect tax, of the severe effect of which few are aware, that the waste and extravagance, the unauthorized imposition of duties, and appropriations of money for unconstitutional objects, would have been tolerated for a single year? I am opposed, therefore, in any shape, to all unnecessary extension of the powers, or the influence of the Legislature or Executive of the Union over the states, or the people of the states; and, most of all, I am opposed to those partial distributions of favors, whether by legislation or appropriation, which has a direct and powerful tendency to spread corruption through the land; to create an abject spirit of dependence; to sow the seeds of dissolution; to produce jealousy among the different portions of the Union, and finally to sap the very foundations of the government itself. I say, the right of a state to annul a law of Congress, cannot be maintained, but on the ground of the unalienable right of man to resist oppression; that is to say, upon the ground of revolution. The Union to be preserved, while it suits local and temporary purposes to preserve it; and to be sundered whenever it shall be found to thwart such purposes. This means that South Carolina is essentially its own nation, Georgia is its own nation, and so on. What was going on? . . . But, sir, the gentleman is mistaken. But his reply was gathered from the choicest arguments and the most decadent thoughts that had long floated through his brain while this crisis was gathering; and bringing these materials together in a lucid and compact shape, he calmly composed and delivered before another crowded and breathless auditory a speech full of burning passages, which will live as long as the American Union, and the grandest effort of his life. On that system, Ohio and Carolina are different governments, and different countries, connected here, it is true, by some slight and ill-defined bond of union, but, in all main respects, separate and diverse. The debate continued, in some ways not being fully settled until the completion of the Civil War affirmed the power of the federal government to preserve the Union over the sovereignty of the states to leave it. The Commercial Greatness of the United States, Special Message to Congress (Tyler Doctrine), Estranged Labour and The Communist Manifesto, State of the Union Address Part II (1848). I did not utter a single word, which any ingenuity could torture into an attack on the slavery of the South. I now proceed to show that it is perfectly safe, and will practically have no effect but to keep the federal government within the limits of the Constitution, and prevent those unwarrantable assumptions of power, which cannot fail to impair the rights of the states, and finally destroy the Union itself. . In this moment in American history, the federal government had relatively little power. Neither side can be said to have 'won' the debate, but Webster's articulation of the Union solidified for many the role of the federal government. . So what was this debate really about? The United States' democratic process was evolving and its leaders were putting the newly ratified Constitution into practice. Webster's articulation of the concept of the Union went on to shape American attitudes about the federal government. Daniel Webster stood as a ready and formidable opponent from the north who, at different stages in his career, represented both the states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. 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. There is not, and never has been, a disposition in the North to interfere with these interests of the South. . Edited and introduced by Jason W. Stevens. Now, have they given away that right, or agreed to limit or restrict it in any respect? . This was the tenor of Webster's speech, and nobly did the country respond to it. 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? The United States, under the Constitution and federal government, was a single, unified nation, not a coalition of sovereign states. . But, the simple expression of this sentiment has led the gentleman, not only into a labored defense of slavery, in the abstract, and on principle, but, also, into a warm accusation against me, as having attacked the system of domestic slavery, now existing in the Southern states. . "The most eloquent speech ever delivered in Congress" may have been Webster's 1830 "Second Reply to Hayne", a South Carolina Senator who had echoed John C. Calhoun's case for state's rights.. Webster realized that if the social, political, and economic elite of Massachusetts and the Northeast were to once again lay claim to national leadership, he had to justify New England's previous history of sectionalism within a framework of nationalistic progression. It impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to bear up any other than free men. Judiciary Act of 1801 | Overview, History & Significance, General Ulysses S. Grant Takes Charge: His Strategic Plan for Ending the War. Sir, I may be singularperhaps I stand alone here in the opinion, but it is one I have long entertained, that one of the greatest safeguards of liberty is a jealous watchfulness on the part of the people, over the collection and expenditure of the public moneya watchfulness that can only be secured where the money is drawn by taxation directly from the pockets of the people. [Its leader] would have a knot before him, which he could not untie. . The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the Supreme Law. Well, you're not alone. It cannot be doubted, and is not denied, that before the formation of the constitution, each state was an independent sovereignty, possessing all the rights and powers appertaining to independent nations; nor can it be denied that, after the Constitution was formed, they remained equally sovereign and independent, as to all powers, not expressly delegated to the federal government. The Webster-Hayne Debate between New Hampshire Senator Daniel Webster and South Carolina Senator Robert Young Hayne highlighted the sectional nature of the controversy. . Hayne quotes from Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, December 26, 1825, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-william-branch-giles/?_sft_document_author=thomas-jefferson. 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. 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. Though the debate began as a standard policy debate, the significance of Daniel Webster's argument reached far beyond a single policy proposal. Hayne's few but zealous partizans shielded him still, and South Carolina spoke with pride of him. It was a speech delivered before a crowded auditory, and loud were the Southern exultations that he was more than a match for Webster. Differences between Northern and Southern ideas of good governance, which eventually led to the American Civil War, were beginning to emerge. 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 Webster-Hayne debate concluded with Webster's ringing endorsement of "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." In contrast, Hayne espoused the radical states' rights doctrine of nullification, believing that a state could prevent a federal law from being enforced within its borders. I wish to see no new powers drawn to the general government; but I confess I rejoice in whatever tends to strengthen the bond that unites us, and encourages the hope that our Union may be perpetual. . We all know that civil institutions are established for the public benefit, and that when they cease to answer the ends of their existence, they may be changed. The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts [Senator Daniel Webster] has gone out of his way to pass a high eulogium on the state of Ohio. And here it will be necessary to go back to the origin of the federal government. That led into a debate on the economy, in which Webster attacked the institution of slavery and Hayne labeled the policy of protectionist tariffs as the consolidation of a strong central government, which he called the greatest of evils. See what I mean? The next day, however, Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster rose with his reply, and the northern states knew they had found their champion.

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