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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster's Seventh of March Speech
+and the Secession Movement
+
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+Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement
+
+by Herbert Darling Foster
+
+March, 1999  [Etext #1663]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster's Seventh of March Speech
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+
+WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH
+AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850
+
+By Herbert Darling Foster
+
+With foreword by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
+
+American Historical Review Vol. XXVII., No. 2
+
+January, 1922
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+It is very curious that much of the history of the United States
+in the Forties and Fifties of the last century has vanished from
+the general memory. When a skilled historian reopens the study of
+Webster's "Seventh of March speech" it is more than likely that
+nine out of ten Americans will have to cudgel their wits
+endeavoring to make quite sure just where among our political
+adventures that famous oration fits in. How many of us could pass
+a satisfactory examination on the antecedent train of events--the
+introduction in Congress of that Wilmot Proviso designed to make
+free soil of all the territory to be acquired in the Mexican War;
+the instant and bitter reaction of the South; the various demands
+for some sort of partition of the conquered area between the
+sections, between slave labor and free labor; the unforeseen
+intrusion of the gold seekers of California in 1849, and their
+unauthorized formation of a new state based on free labor; the
+flaming up of Southern alarm, due not to one cause but to many,
+chiefly to the obvious fact that the free states were acquiring
+preponderance in Congress; the southern threats of secession; the
+fury of the Abolitionists demanding no concessions to the South,
+come what might; and then, just when a rupture seemed inevitable,
+when Northern extremists and Southern extremists seemed about to
+snatch control of their sections, Webster's bold play to the
+moderates on both sides, his scheme of compromise, announced in
+that famous speech on the seventh of March, 1850?
+
+Most people are still aware that Webster was harshly criticized
+for making that speech. It is dimly remembered that the
+Abolitionists called him "Traitor", refusing to attribute to him
+any motive except the gaining of Southern support which might
+land him in the Presidency. At the time--so bitter was factional
+suspicion!--this view gained many adherents. It has not lost them
+all, even now.
+
+This false interpretation of Webster turns on two questions--was
+there a real danger of secession in 1850? Was Webster sincere in
+deriving his policy from a sense of national peril, not from
+self-interest? In the study which follows Professor Foster makes
+an adequate case for Webster, answering the latter question. The
+former he deals with in a general way establishing two things,
+the fact of Southern readiness to secede, the attendant fact that
+the South changed its attitude after the Seventh of March. His
+limits prevent his going on to weigh and appraise the sincerity
+of those fanatics who so furiously maligned Webster, who created
+the tradition that he had cynically sold out to the Southerners.
+Did they believe their own fiction? The question is a large one
+and involves this other, did they know what was going on in the
+South? Did they realize that the Union on March 6, 1850, was
+actually at a parting of the ways,--that destruction or Civil War
+formed an imminent issue?
+
+Many of those who condemned compromise may be absolved from the
+charge of insincerity on the ground that they did not care
+whether the Union was preserved or riot. Your true blue
+Abolitionist was very little of a materialist. Nor did he have
+primarily a crusading interest in the condition of the blacks. He
+was introspective. He wanted the responsibility for slavery taken
+off his own soul. As later events were to prove, he was also
+pretty nearly a pacifist; war for the Union, pure and simple,
+made no appeal to him. It was part of Webster's insight that he
+divined this, that he saw there was more pacifism than natural
+ardor in the North of 1850, saw that the precipitation of a war
+issue might spell the end of the United Republic. Therefore, it
+was to circumvent the Northern pacifists quite as much as to
+undermine the Southern expansionists that he offered compromise
+and avoided war.
+
+But what of those other detractors of Webster, those who were for
+the Union and yet believed he had sold out? Their one slim
+defense is the conviction that the South did not mean what
+it said, that Webster, had he dared offend the South, could have
+saved the day--from their point of view--without making
+concessions. Professor Foster, always ready to do scrupulous
+justice, points out the dense ignorance in each section of the
+other, and there lets the matter rest. But what shall we say of a
+frame of mind, which in that moment of crisis, either did not
+read the Southern newspapers, or reading them and finding that
+the whole South was netted over by a systematically organized
+secession propaganda made no attempt to gauge its strength,
+scoffed at it all as buncombe! Even later historians have done
+the same thing. In too many cases they have assumed that because
+the compromise was followed by an apparent collapse of the
+secession propaganda, the propaganda all along was without
+reality. We know today that the propaganda did not collapse. For
+strategic reasons it changed its policy. But it went on steadily
+growing and gaining ground until it triumphed in 1861. Webster,
+not his foolish opponents, gauged its strength correctly in 1850.
+
+The clew to what actually happened in 1850 lies in the course of
+such an ardent Southerner as, for example, Langdon Cheeves. Early
+in the year, he was a leading secessionist, but at the close of
+the year a leading anti-secessionist. His change of front, forced
+upon him by his own thinking about the situation was a bitter
+disappointment to himself. What animated him was a deep desire to
+take the whole South out of the Union. When, at the opening of
+the year, the North seemed unwilling to compromise, he, and many
+another, thought their time had come. At the first Nashville
+Convention he advised a general secession, assuming that
+Virginia, "our premier state," would lead the movement and when
+Virginia later in the year swung over from secession to
+anti-secession, Cheeves reluctantly changed his policy. The
+compromise had not altered his views--broadly speaking it had not
+satisfied the Lower South--but it had done something still more
+eventful, it had so affected the Upper South that a united
+secession became for a while impossible. Therefore, Cheeves and
+all like him--and they were the determining factor of the
+hour--resolved to bide their time, to wait until their propaganda
+had done its work, until the entire South should agree to go out
+together. Their argument, all preserved in print, but ignored by
+historians for sixty years thereafter, was perfectly frank. As
+one of them put it, in the face of the changed attitude of
+Virginia, "to secede now would be to secede from the South."
+
+Here is the aspect of Webster's great stroke that was so long
+ignored. He did not satisfy the whole South. He did not make
+friends for himself of Southerners generally. What he did do was
+to drive a wedge into the South, to divide it temporarily against
+itself. He arrayed the Upper South against the Lower and thus
+because of the ultimate purposes of men like Cheeves, with their
+ambition to weld the South into a genuine unit, he forced them
+all to stand still, and thus to give Northern pacifism a chance
+to ebb, Northern nationalism a chance to develop. A comprehensive
+brief for the defense on this crucial point in the interpretation
+of American history, is Professor Foster's contribution.
+
+NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON
+
+
+
+
+WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT,
+1850
+
+The moral earnestness and literary skill of Whittier, Lowell,
+Garrison, Phillips, and Parker, have fixed in many minds the
+antislavery doctrine that Webster's 7th of March speech was
+"scandalous, treachery", and Webster a man of little or no "moral
+sense", courage, or statesmanship. That bitter atmosphere,
+reproduced by Parton and von Holst, was perpetuated a generation
+later by Lodge.[1]
+
+[1] Cf. Parton with Lodge on intellect, morals, indolence,
+drinking, 7th of March speech, Webster's favorite things in
+England; references, note 63, below.
+
+
+Since 1900, over fifty publications throwing light on Webster
+and the Secession movement of 1850 have appeared, nearly a score
+containing fresh contemporary evidence. These twentieth-century
+historians--Garrison of Texas, Smith of Williams, Stephenson of
+Charleston and Yale, Van Tyne, Phillips, Fisher in his True
+Daniel Webster, or Ames, Hearon, and Cole in their monographs on
+Southern conditions--many of them born in one section and
+educated in another, brought into broadening relations with
+Northern and Southern investigators, trained in the modern
+historical spirit and freed by the mere lapse of time from much
+of the passion of slavery and civil war, have written with less
+emotion and more knowledge than the abolitionists, secessionists,
+or their disciples who preceded Rhodes.
+
+Under the auspices of the American Historical Association have
+appeared the correspondence of Calhoun, of Chase, of Toombs,
+Stephens, and Cobb, and of Hunter of Virginia. Van Tyne's Letters
+of Webster (1902), including hundreds hitherto unpublished, was
+further supplemented in the sixteenth volume of the "National
+Edition" of Webster's Writings and Speeches (1903). These two
+editions contain, for 1850 alone, 57 inedited letters.
+
+Manuscript collections and newspapers, comparatively unknown to
+earlier writers, have been utilized in monographs dealing with
+the situation in 1850 in South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia,
+Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Tennessee, published by.
+universities or historical societies.
+
+The cooler and matured judgments of men who knew Webster
+personally--Foote, Stephens, Wilson, Seward, and Whittier, in the
+last century; Hoar, Hale, Fisher, Hosmer, and Wheeler in recent
+years-modify their partizan political judgments of 1850. The new
+printed evidence is confirmed by manuscript material: 2,500
+letters of the Greenough Collection available since the
+publication of the recent editions of Webster's letters and
+apparently unused by Webster's biographers; and Hundreds of still
+inedited Webster Papers in the New Hampshire Historical Society,
+and scattered in minor collections.[2] This mass of new material
+makes possible and desirable a re-examination of the evidence as
+to (1) the danger from the secession movement in 1850; (2)
+Webster's change in attitude toward the disunion danger in
+February, 1850; (3) the purpose and character of his 7th of March
+speech; (4) the effects of his speech and attitude upon the
+secession movement.
+
+[2] In the preparation of this article, manuscripts have been
+used from the following collections: the Greenough, Hammond, and
+Clayton (Library of Congress); Winthrop and Appleton (Mass.
+Hist. Soc.); Garrison (Boston Public Library); N.H. Hist.
+Soc.; Dartmouth College; Middletown (Conn.) Hist. Soc.; Mrs.
+Alfred E. Wyman.
+
+
+I.
+
+During the session of Congress of 1849-1850, the peace of the
+Union was threatened by problems centering around slavery and the
+territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War: California's
+demand for admission with a constitution prohibiting slavery; the
+Wilmot Proviso excluding slavery from the rest of the Mexican
+acquisitions (Utah and New Mexico); the boundary dispute between
+Texas and New Mexico; the abolition of slave trade in the
+District of Columbia; and an effective fugitive slave law to
+replace that of 1793.
+
+The evidence for the steadily growing danger of secession until
+March, 1850, is no longer to be sought in Congressional speeches,
+but rather in the private letters of those men, Northern and
+Southern, who were the shrewdest political advisers of the South,
+and in the official acts of representative bodies of Southerners
+in local or state meetings, state legislatures, and the Nashville
+Convention. Even after the compromise was accepted in the South
+and the secessionists defeated in 1850-1851, the Southern states
+generally adopted the Georgia platform or its equivalent
+declaring that the Wilmot Proviso or the repeal of the fugitive-
+slave law would lead the South to "resist even (as a last resort)
+to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union".
+Southern disunion sentiment was not sporadic or a party matter;
+it was endemic.
+
+ The disunion sentiment in the North was not general; but
+Garrison, publicly proclaiming "I am an abolitionist and
+therefore for the dissolution of the Union", and his followers
+who pronounced "the Constitution a covenant with death and an
+agreement with hell", exercised a twofold effect far in excess of
+their numbers. In the North, abolitionists aroused bitter
+antagonism to slavery; in the South they strengthened the
+conviction of the lawfulness of slavery and the desirability of
+secession in preference to abolition. "The abolition question
+must soon divide us", a South Carolinian wrote his former
+principal in Vermont. "We are beginning to look upon it
+[disunion] as a relief from incessant insult. I have been myself
+surprised at the unusual prevalence and depth of this
+feeling."[3] "The abolition movement", as Houston has pointed
+out, "prevented any considerable abatement of feeling, and added
+volume to the current which was to sweep the State out of the
+Union in 1860." South Carolina's ex-governor, Hammond, wrote
+Calhoun in December, 1849, "the conduct of the abolitionists in
+congress is daily giving it [disunion] powerful aid". "The sooner
+we can get rid of it [the union] the better."[5] The conclusion
+of both Blair of Kentucky and Winthrop[6] of Massachusetts, that
+"Calhoun and his instruments are really solicitous to break up
+the Union", was warranted by Calhoun's own statement.
+
+[3] Bennett, Dec. 1, 1848, to Partridge, Norwich University. MS.
+Dartmouth.
+
+[4] Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, p. 141. Further
+evidence of Webster's thesis that abolitionists had developed
+Southern reaction in Phillips, South in the Building of the
+Nation, IV, 401-403; and unpublished letters approving Webster's
+speech.
+
+[5] Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol
+11.), pp. 1193-1194.
+
+[6] To Crittenden, Dec. 20, 1849, Smith, polit. Hist. Slavery, I.
+122; Winthrop MSS., Jan. 6, 1850.
+
+
+Calhoun, desiring to save the Union if he could, but at all
+events to save the South, and convinced that there was "no time
+to lose", hoped "a decisive issue will be made with the North".
+In February, 1850, he wrote, "Disunion is the only alternative
+that is left us."[7] At last supported by some sort of action in
+thirteen Southern states, and in nine states by appointment of
+delegates to his Southern Convention, he declared in the Senate,
+March 4, "the South, is united against the Wilmot proviso, and
+has committed itself, by solemn resolutions, to resist should it
+be adopted". "The South will be forced to choose between
+abolition and secession." "The Southern States . . . cannot
+remain, as things now are, consistently with honor and safety, in
+the Union."[8]
+
+[7] Calhoun, Corr., p. 781; cf. 764-766, 778, 780, 783-784.
+
+[8] Cong. Globe, XXI. 451-455, 463; Corr., p. 784. On Calhoun's
+attitude, Ames, Calhoun, pp. 6-7; Stephenson, in Yale Review,
+1919, p. 216; Newbury in South Atlantic Quarterly, XI. 259;
+Hamer, Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852, pp.
+49-54.
+
+
+That Beverley Tucker rightly judged that this speech of Calhoun
+expressed what was "in the mind of every man in the State" is
+confirmed by the.approval of Hammond and other observers; by
+their judgment that "everyone was ripe for disunion and no one
+ready to make a speech in favor of the union"; by the testimony
+of the governor, that South Carolina "is ready and anxious for an
+immediate separation"; and by the concurrent testimony of even
+the few "Unionists" like Petigru and Lieber, who wrote Webster,
+"almost everyone is for southern separation", "disunion is the .
+. . predominant sentiment". "For arming the state $350,000 has
+been put at the disposal of the governor." "Had I convened the
+legislature two or three weeks before the regular meeting," adds
+the governor, "such was the excited state of the public mind at
+that time, I am convinced South Carolina would not now have been
+a member of the Union. The people are very far ahead of their
+leaders." Ample first-hand evidence of South Carolina's
+determination to secede in 1850 may be found in the
+Correspondence of Calhoun, in Claiborne's Quitman, in the acts of
+the assembly, in the newspapers, in the legislature's vote "to
+resist at any and all hazards", and in the choice of
+resistance-men to the Nashville Convention and the state
+convention. This has been so convincingly set forth in Ames's
+Calhoun and the Secession Movement of 1850, and in Hamer's
+Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852, that there is
+need of very few further illustrations.[9]
+
+[9] Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol.
+II), pp. 1210-1212; Toombs, Corr., (id., 1911, vol. II), pp. 188,
+217; Coleman, Crittenden, I. 363; Hamer, pp. 55-56, 46-48, 54,
+82-83; Ames, Calhoun, pp. 21-22, 29; Claiborne, Quitman, H.
+36-39.
+
+
+That South Carolina postponed secession for ten years was due to
+the Compromise. Alabama and Virginia adopted resolutions
+accepting the compromise in 1850-1851; and the Virginia
+legislature tactfully urged South Carolina to abandon secession.
+The 1851 elections in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi showed
+the South ready to accept the Compromise, the crucial test being
+in Mississippi, where the voters followed Webster's supporter,
+Foote.[10] That Petigru was right in maintaining that South,
+Carolina merely abandoned immediate and separate secession is
+shown by the almost unanimous vote of the South Carolina State
+Convention of 1852,[11] that the state was amply justified "in
+dissolving at once all political connection with her co-States",
+but refrained from this "manifest right of self-government from
+considerations of expediency only".[12]
+
+[10] Hearon, Miss. and the Compromise of 1850, p. 209.
+
+[11] A letter to Webster, Oct. 22, 1851, Greenough MSS., shows
+the strength of Calhoun's secession ideas. Hamer, p. 125, quotes
+part.
+
+[12] Hamer, p. 142; Hearon, p. 220.
+
+
+In Mississippi, a preliminary convention, instigated by Calhoun,
+recommended the holding of a Southern convention at Nashville in
+June, 1850, to "adopt some mode of resistance". The "Resolutions"
+declared the Wilmot Proviso "such a breach of the federal compact
+as . . . will make it the duty . . . of the slave-holding states
+to treat the non-slave-holding states as enemies". The "Address"
+recommended "all the assailed states to provide in the last
+resort for their separate welfare by the formation of a compact
+and a Union". "The object of this [Nashville Convention] is to
+familiarize the public mind with the idea of dissolution",
+rightly judged the Richmond Whig and the Lynchburg Virginian.
+
+Radical resistance men controlled the legislature and "cordially
+approved" the disunion resolution and address, chose delegates to
+the Nashville Convention, appropriated $20,000 for their expenses
+and $200,000 for "necessary measures for protecting the state . .
+. in the event of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso", etc.[13]
+These actions of Mississippi's legislature one day before
+Webster's 7th of March speech mark approximately the peak of the
+secession movement.
+
+[13] Mar. 6, 1850. Laws (Miss.), pp. 521-526.
+
+
+Governor Quitman, in response to public demand, called the
+legislature and proposed "to recommend the calling of a regular
+convention . . . with full power to annul the federal compact".
+"Having no hope of an effectual remedy . . . but in separation
+from the Northern States, my views of state action will look to
+secession."[14] The legislature supported Quitman's and Jefferson
+Davis's plans for resistance, censured Foote's support of the
+Compromise, and provided for a state convention of
+delegates."[15]
+
+[14] Claiborne, Quitman, IL 37; Hearon, p. 161 n.
+
+[15] Hearon, pp. 180-181; Claiborne, Quitman, II. 51-52.
+
+
+Even the Mississippi "Unionists" adopted the six standard points
+generally accepted in the South which would justify resistance.
+"And this is the Union party", was the significant comment of the
+New York Tribune. This Union Convention, however, believed that
+Quitman's message was treasonable and that there was ample
+evidence of a plot to dissolve the Union and form a Southern
+confederacy. Their programme was adopted by the State Convention
+the following year."[16] The radical Mississippians reiterated
+Calhoun's constitutional guarantees of sectional equality and
+non-interference with slavery, and declared for a Southern
+convention with power to recommend "secession from the Union and
+the formation of a Southern confederacy".[17]
+
+[16] Nov. 10, 1850, Hearon, pp. 178-180; 1851, pp. 209-212.
+
+[17] Dec. 10, Southern Rights Assoc. Hearon, pp. 183-187.
+
+
+"The people of Mississippi seemed . . . determined to defend
+their equality in the Union, or to retire from it by peaceful
+secession. Had the issue been pressed at the moment when the
+excitement was at its highest point, an isolated and very serious
+movement might have occurred, which South Carolina, without
+doubt, would have promptly responded to."[18]
+
+[18] Claiborne, Quitman, II. 52.
+
+
+In Georgia, evidence as to "which way the wind blows" was
+received by the Congressional trio, Alexander Stephens, Toombs,
+and Cobb, from trusted observers at home. "The only safety of the
+South from abolition universal is to be found in an early
+dissolution of the Union." Only one democrat was found justifying
+Cobb's opposition to Calhoun and the Southern Convention.[19]
+
+[19] July 1, 1849. Corr., p. 170 (Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual
+Report, 1911, vol. II.).
+
+
+Stephens himself, anxious to "stick to the Constitutional Union"
+reveals in confidential letters to Southern Unionists the rapidly
+growing danger of disunion. "The feeling among the Southern
+members for a dissolution of the Union . . . is becoming much
+more general." "Men are now [December, 1849] beginning to talk of
+it seriously who twelve months ago hardly permitted themselves to
+think of it." "Civil war in this country better be prevented if
+it can be." After a month's "farther and broader view", he
+concluded, "the crisis is not far ahead . . . a dismemberment of
+this Republic I now consider inevitable."[20]
+
+[20] Johnston, Stephens, pp. 238-239, 244; Smith, Political
+History of Slavery, 1. 121.
+
+
+On February 8, 1850, the Georgia legislature appropriated $30,000
+for a state convention to consider measures of redress, and gave
+warning that anti-slavery aggressions would "induce us to
+contemplate the possibility of a dissolution".[21] "I see no
+prospect of a continuance of this Union long", wrote Stephens two
+days later.[22]
+
+[21] Laws (Ga.), 1850, pp. 122, 405-410.
+
+[22] Johnston, Stephens, p. 247.
+
+
+Speaker Cobb's advisers warned him that "the predominant feeling
+of Georgia" was "equality or disunion", and that "the
+destructives" were trying to drive the South into disunion. "But
+for your influence, Georgia would have been more rampant for
+dissolution than South Carolina ever was." "S. Carolina will
+secede, but we can and must put a stop to it in Georgia."[23]
+
+[23] Corr., pp. 184,193-195, 206-208, July 21. Newspapers, see
+Brooks, in Miss. Valley Hist. Review, IX. 289.
+
+
+Public opinion in Georgia, which had been "almost ready for
+immediate secession", was reversed only after the passage of the
+Compromise and by means of a strenuous campaign against the
+Secessionists which Stephens, Toombs, and Cobb were obliged to
+return to Georgia to conduct to a Successful issue.[24] Yet even
+the Unionist Convention of Georgia, elected by this campaign,
+voted almost unanimously "the Georgia platform" already
+described, of resistance, even to disruption, against the Wilmot
+Proviso, the repeal of the fugitive slave law, and the other
+measures generally selected for reprobation in the South.[25]
+"Even the existence of the Union depended upon the settlement";
+"we would have resisted by our arms if the wrong [Wilmot Proviso]
+had been perpetuated", were Stephens's later judgments.[26] It is
+to be remembered that the Union victory in Georgia was based upon
+the Compromise and that Webster's share in "strengthening the
+friends of the Union" was recognized by Stephens.
+
+[24] Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, pp. 163-166.
+
+[25] Ames, Documents, pp. 271-272; Hearon, p. 190.
+
+[26] 1854, Amer. Hist. Review, VIII. 92-97; 1857, Johnston,
+Stephens, pp. 321-322; infra, pp. 267, 268.
+
+
+The disunion movement manifested also dangerous strength in
+Virginia and Alabama, and showed possibilities of great danger in
+Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland,
+Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas. The majority of the people may not
+have favored secession in 1850 any more than in 1860; but the
+leaders could and did carry most of the Southern legislatures in
+favor of uniting for resistance.
+
+The "ultras" in Virginia, under the lead of Tucker, and in
+Alabama under Yancey, frankly avowed their desire to stimulate
+impossible demands so that disunion would be inevitable. Tucker
+at Nashville "ridiculed Webster's assertion that the Union could
+not be dissolved without bloodshed". On the eve of Webster's
+speech, Garnett of Virginia published a frank advocacy of a
+Southern Confederacy, repeatedly reprinted, which Clay declared
+"the most dangerous pamphlet he had ever read".[27] Virginia, in
+providing for delegates to the Nashville Convention, announced
+her readiness to join her "sister slave states" for "mutual
+defence". She later acquiesced in the Compromise, but reasserted
+that anti-slavery aggressions would "defeat restoration of
+peaceful sentiments".[28]
+
+[27] Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8; Virginia Resolves, Feb. 12;
+Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia, p. 246; N. Y. Tribune, June 14;
+M. R. H. Garnett, Union Past and Future, published between Jan.
+24 and Mar. 7. Alabama: Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, p.
+281; Dubose, Yancey, pp. 247-249, 481; Fleming, Civil War and
+Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 13; Cobb, Corr., pp. 193-195, 207.
+President Tyler of the College of William and Mary kindly
+furnished evidence of Garnett's authorship; see J. M. Garnett, in
+Southern Literary Messenger, I. 255.
+
+[28] Resolutions, Feb. 12, 1850; Acts, 1850, pp. 223-224; 1851,
+p. 201.
+
+
+In Texas there was acute danger of collision over the New Mexico
+boundary with Federal troops which President Taylor was preparing
+to send. Stephens frankly repeated Quitman's threats of Southern
+armed support of Texas.[29] Cobb, Henderson of Texas, Duval of
+Kentucky, Anderson of Tennessee, and Goode of Virginia expressed
+similar views as to the "imminent cause of danger to the Union
+from Texas". The collision was avoided because the more
+statesmanlike attitude of Webster prevailed rather than the
+"soldier's" policy of Taylor.
+
+[29] Stephens, Corr., p. 192; Globe, XXII. II. 1208.
+
+
+The border states held a critical position in 1850, as they did
+in 1860. "If they go for the Southern movement we shall have
+disunion." "Everything is to depend from this day on the course
+of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri."[30] Webster's conciliatory
+Union policy, in harmony with that of border state leaders, like
+Bell of Tennessee, Benton of Missouri, Clay and Crittenden of
+Kentucky, enabled Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri to stand by
+the Union and refuse to send delegates to the Nashville
+Convention.
+
+[30] Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 23.
+
+
+The attitude of the Southern states toward disunion may be
+followed closely in their action as to the Nashville Convention.
+Nine Southern states approved the Convention and appointed
+delegates before June, 1850, six during the critical month
+preceding Webster's speech: Georgia, February 6, 8; Texas and
+Tennessee, February 11; Virginia, February 12; Alabama, just
+before the adjournment of the legislature, February 13;
+Mississippi, March 5, 6.[31] Every one of the nine seceded in
+1860-1861; the border states (Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) which
+kept out of the Convention in 1850 likewise kept out of secession
+in 1861; and only two states which seceded in 1861 failed to join
+the Southern movement in 1850 (North Carolina and Louisiana).
+This significant parallel between the action of the Southern
+states in 1850 and in 1860 suggests the permanent strength of the
+secession movement of 1850. Moreover, the alignment of leaders
+was strikingly the same in 1850 and 1860. Those who headed the
+secession movement in 1850 in their respective states were among
+the leaders of secession in 1860 and 1861: Rhett in South
+Carolina; Yancey in Alabama; Jefferson Davis and Brown in
+Mississippi Garnett, Goode, and Hunter in Virginia; Johnston in
+Arkansas; Clingman in North Carolina. On the other hand, nearly
+all the men who in 1850 favored the Compromise, in 1860 either
+remained Union men, like Crittenden, Houston of Texas, Sharkey,
+Lieber, Petigru, and Provost Kennedy of Baltimore, or, like
+Stephens, Morehead, and Foote, vainly tried to restrain
+secession.
+
+[31] South Carolina, Acts, 1849, p, 240, and the following Laws
+or Acts, all 1850: Georgia, pp. 418, 405-410, 122; Texas, pp.
+93-94, 171; Tennessee, p. 572 (Globe, XXI. I. 417. Cole, Whig
+Party in the South, p. 161) ; Mississippi, pp. 526-528; Virginia,
+p. 233; Alabama, Weekly Tribune, Feb. 23, Daily, Feb. 25.
+
+
+In the states unrepresented at the Nashville Convention-Missouri,
+Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana--there was much
+sympathy with the Southern movement. In Louisiana, the governor's
+proposal to send delegates was blocked by the Whigs.[32]
+"Missouri", in case of the Wilmot Proviso, "will be found in
+hearty co-operation with the slave-holding states for mutual
+protection against . . . Northern fanaticism", her legislature
+resolved.[33] Missouri's instructions to her senators were
+denounced as "disunion in their object" by her own Senator
+Benton. The Maryland legislature resolved, February 26: "Maryland
+will take her position with her Southern sister states in the
+maintenance of the constitution with all its compromises." The
+Whig senate, however, prevented sanctioning of the convention and
+sending of delegates. Florida's governor wrote the governor of
+South Carolina that Florida would co-operate with Virginia and
+South Carolina "in any measure in defense of our common
+Constitution and sovereign dignity". "Florida has resolved to
+resist to the extent of revolution", declared her representative
+in Congress, March 5. Though the Whigs did not support the
+movement, five delegates came from Florida to the Nashville
+Convention. [34]
+
+[32] White, Miss. Valley Hist. Assoc., III. 283.
+
+[33] Senate Miscellaneous, 1849-1850, no. 24.
+
+[34] Hamer, p. 40; cf. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 162;
+Cong. Globe, Mar. 5.
+
+
+In Kentucky, Crittenden's repeated messages against "disunion"
+and "entangling engagements" reveal the danger seen by a
+Southern Union governor.[35] Crittenden's changing attitude
+reveals the growing peril, and the growing reliance on Webster's
+and Clay's plans. By April, Crittenden recognized that "the Union
+is endangered", "the case . . . rises above ordinary rules",
+"circumstances have rather changed". He reluctantly swung from
+Taylor's plan of dealing with California alone, to the Clay and
+Webster idea of settling the "whole controversy".[36]
+Representative Morehead wrote Crittenden, "The extreme Southern
+gentlemen would secretly deplore the settlement of this question.
+The magnificence of a Southern Confederacy . . . is a dazzling
+allurement." Clay like Webster, saw "the alternative, civil
+war".[37]
+
+
+[35] Coleman, Crittenden, I. 333, 350.
+
+[36] Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf. Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369.
+
+[37] Smith, History of Slavery, 1. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851, letter,
+in Curtis, Webster, II, 584-585.
+
+
+In North Carolina, the majority appear to have been loyal to the
+Union; but the extremists--typified by Clingman, the public
+meeting at Wilmington, and the newspapers like the Wilmington
+Courier--reveal the presence of a dangerously aggressive body
+"with a settled determination to dissolve the Union" and frankly
+"calculating the advantages of a Southern Confederacy." Southern
+observers in this state reported that "the repeal of the Fugitive
+Slave Law or the abolition of slavery in the District will
+dissolve the Union". The North Carolina legislature acquiesced in
+the Compromise but counselled retaliation in case of anti-slavery
+aggressions.[38] Before the assembling of the Southern convention
+in June, every one of the Southern states, save Kentucky, had
+given some encouragement to the Southern movement, and Kentucky
+had given warning and proposed a compromise through Clay.[39]
+
+[38] Clingman, and Wilmington Resolutions, Globe, XXI. I.
+200-205, 311; National Intelligencer, Feb. 25; Cobb, Corr., pp.
+217-218; Boyd, "North Carolina on the Eve of Secession," in Amer.
+Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1910), pp. 167-177.
+
+[39] Hearndon, Nashville Convention, p. 283.
+
+
+Nine Southern states-Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
+Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee sent about
+176 delegates to the Nashville Convention. The comparatively
+harmless outcome of this convention, in June, led earlier
+historians to underestimate the danger of the resistance movement
+in February and March when backed by legislatures, newspapers,
+and public opinion, before the effect was felt of the death of
+Calhoun and Taylor, and of Webster's support of conciliation.
+Stephens and the Southern Unionists rightly recognized that the
+Nashville Convention "will be the nucleus of another sectional
+assembly". "A fixed alienation of feeling will be the result."
+"The game of the destructives is to use the Missouri Compromise
+principle [as demanded by the Nashville Convention] as a medium
+of defeating all adjustments and then to . . . infuriate the
+South and drive her into measures that must end in disunion."
+"All who go to the Nashville Convention are ultimately to fall
+into that position." This view is confirmed by Judge Warner and
+other observers in Georgia and by the unpublished letters of
+Tucker.[40] "Let the Nashville Convention be held", said the
+Columbus, Georgia, Sentinel, "and let the undivided voice of the
+South go forth . . . declaring our determination to resist even
+to civil war."[41] The speech of Rhett of South Carolina, author
+of the convention's "Address", "frankly and boldly unfurled the
+flag of disunion". "If every Southern State should quail . . .
+South Carolina alone should make the issue." "The opinion of the
+[Nashville] address is, and I believe the opinion of a large
+portion of the Southern people is, that the Union cannot be made
+to endure", was delegate Barnwell's admission to Webster.[42]
+
+[40] Johnston, Stephens, p. 247; Corr., pp. 186, 193, 194,
+206-207; Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8.
+
+[41] Ames, Calhoun, p. 26.
+
+[42] Webster, Writings and Speeches, X. 161-162.
+
+
+The influence of the Compromise is brought out in the striking
+change in the attitude of Senator Foote, and of judge Sharkey of
+Mississippi, the author of the radical "Address" of the
+preliminary Mississippi Convention, and chairman of both this and
+the Nashville Convention. After the Compromise measures were
+reported in May by Clay and Webster's committee, Sharkey became
+convinced that the Compromise should be accepted and so advised
+Foote. Sharkey also visited Washington and helped to pacify the
+rising storm by "suggestions to individual Congressmen".[43] In
+the Nashville Convention, Sharkey therefore exercised a
+moderating influence as chairman and refused to sign its disunion
+address. Convinced that the Compromise met essential Southern
+demands, Sharkey urged that "to resist it would be to dismember
+the Union". He therefore refused to call a second meeting of the
+Nashville Convention. For this change in position he was bitterly
+criticized by Jefferson Davis.[44] Foote recognized the
+"emergency" at the same time that Webster did, and on February
+25, proposed his committee of thirteen to report some
+"scheme of compromise". Parting company with Calhoun, March 5, on
+the thesis that the South could not safely remain without new
+"constitutional guarantees", Foote regarded Webster's speech as
+"unanswerable", and in April came to an understanding with him as
+to Foote's committee and their common desire for prompt
+consideration of California. The importance of Foote's influence
+in turning the tide in Mississippi, through his pugnacious
+election campaign, and the significance of his judgment of the
+influence of Webster and his speech have been somewhat
+overlooked, partly perhaps because of Foote's swashbuckling
+characteristics.[45]
+
+[43] Cyclopedia Miss. Hist., art. "Sharkey."
+
+[44] Hearon, pp. 124, 171-174. Davis to Clayton (Clayton MSS.),
+Nov. 22, 1851.
+
+[45] Globe, XXI. I. 418, 124, 712; infra, p. 268.
+
+
+That the Southern convention movement proved comparatively
+innocuous in June is due in part to confidence inspired by the
+conciliatory policy of one outstanding Northerner, Webster.
+"Webster's speech", said Winthrop, "has knocked the Nashville
+Convention into a cocked hat."[46] The Nashville Convention has
+been blown by your giant effort to the four winds."[47] "Had you
+spoken out before this, I verily believe the Nashville Convention
+had not been thought of. Your speech has disarmed and quieted the
+South."[48] Webster's speech caused hesitation in the South.
+"This has given courage to all who wavered in their resolution or
+who were secretly opposed to the measure [Nashville
+Convention]."[49]
+
+[46] MSS., Mar. 10. AM. HIST. REV., voL. xxvii.--18.
+
+[47] Anstell, Bethlehem, May 21, Greenough Collection.
+
+[48] Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8, ibid.
+
+[49] Goode, Hunter Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report
+(1916, vol. II.), p. 111.
+
+
+Ames cites nearly a store of issues of newspapers in Mississippi,
+South Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia
+reflecting the change in public opinion in March. Even some of
+the radical papers referred to the favorable effect of Webster's
+speech and "spirit" in checking excitement. "The Jackson
+(Mississippi) Southron had at first supported the movement [for a
+Southern Convention], but by March it had grown lukewarm and
+before the Convention assembled, decidedly opposed it. The last
+of May it said, 'not a Whig paper in the State approves'." In the
+latter part of March, not more than a quarter of sixty papers
+from ten slave-holding states took decided ground for a Southern
+Convention.[50] The Mississippi Free Trader tried to check the
+growing support of the Compromise, by claiming that Webster's
+speech lacked Northern backing. A South Carolina pamphlet cited
+the Massachusetts opposition to Webster as proof of the political
+strength of abolition."[51]
+
+[50] Ames, Calhoun, pp. 24-27.
+
+[51] Hearon, pp. 120-123; Anonymous, Letter on Southern Wrongs .
+. . in Reply to Grayson (Charleston, 1850).
+
+
+The newer, day by day, first-hand evidence, in print and
+manuscript, shows the Union in serious danger, with the
+culmination during the three weeks preceding Webster's speech;
+with a moderation during March; a growing readiness during the
+summer to await Congressional action; and slow, acquiescence in
+the Compromise measures of September, but with frank assertion on
+the part of various Southern states of the right and duty of
+resistance if the compromise measures were violated. Even in
+December, 1850, Dr. Alexander of Princeton found sober Virginians
+fearful that repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act would throw
+Virginia info the Southern movement and that South Carolina "by
+some rash act" would precipitate "the crisis". "All seem to
+regard bloodshed as the inevitable result."[52]
+
+[52] Letters, II. 111, 121, 127.
+
+
+To the judgments and legislative acts of Southerners already
+quoted, may be added some of the opinions of men from the North.
+Erving, the diplomat, wrote from New York, "The real danger is in
+the fanatics and disunionists of the North". "I see no salvation
+but in the total abandonment of the Wilmot Proviso." Edward
+Everett, on the contrary, felt that "unless some southern men of
+influence have courage enough to take grounds against the
+extension of slavery and in favor of abolition . . . we shall
+infallibly separate".[53]
+
+[53] Winthrop MSS., Jan. 16, Feb. 7.
+
+
+A Philadelphia editor who went to Washington to learn the real
+sentinments of the Southern members, reported February 1, that
+if the Wilmot Proviso were not given up, ample provision made for
+fugitive slaves and avoidance of interference with slavery in the
+District of Columbia, the South would secede, though this was not
+generally believed in the North. "The North must decide whether
+she would have the Wilmot Proviso without the Union or the Union
+without the Wilmot Proviso."[54]
+
+[54] Philadelphia Bulletin, in McMaster, VIII. 15.
+
+
+In answer to inquiries from the Massachusetts legislature as to
+whether the Southern attitude was "bluster" or "firm Resolve",
+Winthrop wrote, "the country has never been in more serious
+exigency than at present". "The South is angry, mad." "The Union
+must be saved . . . by prudence and forbearance." "Most sober men
+here are apprehensive that the end of the Union is nearer than
+they have ever before imagined." Winthrop's own view on February
+19 had been corroborated by General Scott, who wrote him four
+days earlier, "God preserve the Union is my daily prayer, in and
+out of church".[55]
+
+[55] Winthrop MSS., Feb. 10, 6.
+
+
+Webster however, as late as February 14, believed that there was
+no "serious danger". February 16, he still felt that "if, on our
+side, we keep cool, things will come to no dangerous pass".[56]
+But within the next week, three acts in Washington modified
+Webster's optimism: the filibuster of Southern members, February
+18; their triumph in conference, February 19; their interview
+with Taylor about February 23.
+
+[56] Writings and Speeches, XVI. 533; XVIII. 355.
+
+
+On February 18, under the leadership of Stephens, the Southern
+representatives mustered two-thirds of the Southern Whigs and a
+majority from every Southern state save Maryland for a successful
+series of over thirty filibustering votes against the admission
+of California without consideration of the question of slavery in
+New Mexico and Utah. So indisputable was the demonstration of
+Southern power to block not only the President's plan but all
+Congressional legislation, that the Northern leaders next day in
+conference with. Southern representatives agreed that California
+should be admitted with her free constitution, but that in New
+Mexico and Utah government should be organized with no
+prohibition of slavery and with power to form, in respect to
+slavery, such constitutions as the people pleased--agreements
+practically enacted in the Compromise.[57]
+
+[57] Stephens, War between the States, II. 201-205, 232; Cong.
+Globe, XXI. I. 375-384.
+
+
+The filibuster of the 18th of February, Mann described as "a
+revolutionary proceeding". Its alarming effect on the members of
+the Cabinet was commented upon by the Boston Advertiser, February
+19. The New York Tribune, February 20, recognized the
+determination of the South to secede unless the Missouri
+Compromise line were extended to the Pacific. February 22, the
+Springfield Republican declared that "if the Union cannot be
+preserved" without the extension of slavery, "we allow the tie of
+Union to be severed". It was on this day, that Webster decided
+"to make a Union speech and discharge a clear conscience".
+
+That same week (apparently February 23) occurred the famous
+interview of Stephens and Toombs with Taylor which convinced the
+President that the Southern movement "means disunion". This was
+Taylor's judgment expressed to Weed and Hamlin, "ten minutes
+after the interview". A week later the President seemed to Horace
+Mann to be talking like a child about his plans to levy an
+embargo and blockade the Southern harbors and "save the Union".
+Taylor was ready to appeal to arms against "these Southern men in
+Congress [who] are trying to bring on civil war" in connection
+with the critical Texas boundary question.[58]
+
+[58] Thurlow Weed, Life, II. 177-178, 180-181 (Gen. Pleasanton's
+confirmatory letter). Wilson, Slave Power, II. 249. Both
+corroborated by Hamline letter Rhodes, I. 134. Stephens's
+letters, N. Y. Herald, July 13, Aug, 8, 1876, denying threatening
+language used by Taylor "in my presence," do not nullify evidence
+of Taylor's attitude. Mann, Life, p. 292. Private Washington
+letter, Feb. 23, reporting interview, N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 25.
+
+
+On this 23d of February, Greeley, converted from his earlier and
+characteristic optimism, wrote in his leading editorial: "instead
+of scouting or ridiculing as chimerical the idea of a Dissolution
+of the Union, we firmly believe that there are sixty members of
+Congress who this day desire it and are plotting to effect it. We
+have no doubt the Nashville Convention will be held and that the
+leading purpose of its authors is the separation of the slave
+states . . . with the formation of an independent Confederacy."
+"This plot . . . is formidable." He warned against "needless
+provocation" which would lisupply weapons to the Disunionists". A
+private letter to Greeley from Washington, the same day, says:
+"H-- is alarmed and confident that blood will be spilt on the
+floor of the House. Many members go to the House armed every day.
+W-- is confident that Disunionism is now inevitable. He knows
+intimately nearly all the Southern members, is familiar with
+their views and sees the letters that reach them from their
+constituents. He says the most ultra are well backed up in their
+advices from home."[59]
+
+[59] Weekly Tribune, Mar. 2, reprinted from Daily, Feb. 27. Cf.
+Washington National Intelligencer, Feb. 21, quoting: Richmond
+Enquirer; Wilmington Commercial; Columbia Telegraph.
+
+
+The same February 23, the Boston Advertiser quoted the
+Washington correspondence of the Journal of Commerce: "excitement
+pervades the whole South, and Southern members say that it has
+gone beyond their control, that their tone is moderate in
+comparison with that of their people". "Persons who condemn Mr.
+Clay's resolutions now trust to some vague idea that Mr. Webster
+can do something better." "If Mr. Webster has any charm by the
+magic influence of which he can control the ultraism, of the
+North and of the South, he cannot too soon try its effects." "If
+Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri go for the Southern movement,
+we shall have disunion and as much of war as may answer the
+purposes either of Northern or Southern fanaticism." On this
+Saturday, February 23, also, "several Southern members of
+Congress had a long and interesting interview with Mr. Webster".
+"The whole subject was discussed and the result is, that the
+limitations of a compromise have been examined, which are
+satisfactory to our Southern brethren. This is good news, and
+will surround Mr. Webster's position with an uncommon
+interest."[60]
+
+[60] New York Herald, Feb. 25; Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 26.
+
+
+"Webster is the only man in the Senate who has a position which
+would enable him to present a plan which would be carried", said
+Pratt of Maryland.[61] The National Intelligencer, which had
+hitherto maintained the safety of the Union, confessed by
+February 21 that "the integrity of the Union is at some hazard",
+quoting Southern evidence of this. On February 25, Foote, in
+proposing to the Senate a committee of thirteen to report some
+scheme of compromise, gave it as his conclusion from consultation
+with both houses, that unless something were done at once, power
+would pass from Congress.
+
+[61] Tribune, Feb. 25.
+
+
+II.
+
+It was under these highly critical circumstances that Webster, on
+Sunday, February 24, the day on which he was accustomed to dine
+with his unusually well-informed friends, Stephens, Toombs, Clay
+and Hale, wrote to his only surviving son:
+
+I am nearly broken down with labor and anxiety. I know not how to
+meet the present emergency, or with what weapons to beat down the
+Northern and Southern follies, now raging in equal extremes. If
+you can possibly leave home, I want you to be here, a day or two
+before I speak . . . I have poor spirits and little courage. Non
+sum qualis eram.[62]
+
+[62] Writings and Speeches, XVI. 534.
+
+
+Mr. Lodge's account of this critical February period shows
+ignorance not only of the letter of February 24, but of the real
+situation. He relies upon von Holst instead of the documents,
+then misquotes him on a point of essential chronology, and from
+unwarranted assumptions and erroneous and incomplete data draws
+unreliable conclusions. Before this letter of February 24 and the
+new cumulative evidence of the crisis, there falls to the ground
+the sneer in Mr. Lodge's question, "if [Webster's] anxiety was
+solely of a public nature, why did it date from March 7 when,
+prior to that time, there was much greater cause for alarm than
+afterwards?" Webster was anxious before the 7th of March, as so
+many others were, North and South, and his extreme anxiety
+appears in the letter of February 24, as well as in repeated
+later utterances. No one can read through the letters of Webster
+without recognizing that he had a genuine anxiety for the safety
+of the Union; and that neither in his letters nor elsewhere is
+there evidence that in his conscience he was "ill at ease" or
+"his mind not at peace". Here as elsewhere, Mr. Lodge's
+biography, written over forty years ago, reproduces anti-slavery
+bitterness and ignorance of facts (pardonable in 1850) and
+seriously misrepresents Webster's character and the situation in
+that year.[63]
+
+[63] Lodge's reproduction of Parton, pp. 16-17, 98, 195, 325-326,
+349, 353, 356, 360. Other errors in Lodge's Webster, pp. 45, 314,
+322, 328, 329-330, 352.
+
+
+By the last week in February and the first in March, the peak of
+the secession movement was reached. Never an alarmist, Webster,
+like others who loved the Union, become convinced during this
+critical last week in February of an "emergency". He determined
+"to make a Union Speech and discharge a clear conscience." "I
+made up my mind to risk myself on a proposition for a general
+pacification. I resolved to push my skiff from the shore alone."
+"We are in a crisis," he wrote June 2, "if conciliation makes no
+progress." "It is a great emergency, a great exigency, that the
+country is placed in", he said in the Senate, June 17. "We have,"
+he wrote in October, "gone through the most important crisis
+which has occurred since the foundation of the government." A
+year later he added at Buffalo, "if we had not settled these
+agitating questions [by the Compromise] . . . in my opinion,
+there would have been civil war". In Virginia, where he had known
+the situation even better, he declared, "I believed in my
+conscience that a crisis was at hand, a dangerous, a fearful
+crisis."[64]
+
+[64] Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 356, 387; XVI. 542, W; X.
+116; Curtis, Life II. 596; XIII. 434.
+
+
+Rhodes's conclusion that there was "little danger of an overt act
+of secession while General Taylor was in the presidential chair"
+was based on evidence then incomplete and is abandoned by more
+recent historians. It is moreover significant that, of the
+speeches cited by Rhodes, ridiculing the danger of secession, not
+one was delivered before Webster's speech. All were uttered after
+the danger had been lessened by the speeches and attitude ' of
+Clay and Webster. Even such Northern anti-slavery speeches
+illustrated danger of another sort. Hale of New Hampshire "would
+let them go" rather than surrender the rights threatened by the
+fugitive slave bill.[65] Giddings in the very speech ridiculing
+the danger of disunion said, "when they see fit to leave the
+Union, I would say to them 'Go in peace"'.[66] Such utterances
+played into the hands of secessionists, strengthening their
+convictions that the North despised the South and would not fight
+to keep her in the Union.
+
+[65] Mar. 19, Cong. Globe, XXII. II. 1063.
+
+[66] Aug. 12, ibid., p. 1562.
+
+
+It is now clear that in 1850 as in 1860 the average Northern
+senator or anti-slavery minister or poet was ill-informed or
+careless as to the danger of secession, and that Webster and the
+Southern Unionists were well-informed and rightly anxious.
+Theodore Parker illustrated the bitterness that befogs the mind.
+He. concluded that there was no danger of dissolution because
+"the public funds of the United States did not go down one mill."
+The stock market might, of course, change from many causes, but
+Parker was wrong as to the facts. An examination of the daily
+sales of United States bonds in New York, 1849-1850, shows that
+the change, instead of being, not one mill," as Parker
+asserted, was four or five dollars during this period; and what
+change there was, was downward before Webster's speech and upward
+thereafter.[67]
+
+[67] U. S. Bonds (1867). About 112-113, Dec., Jan., Feb., 1850;
+"inactive" before Webster's speech; "firmer," Mar. 8; advanced to
+117, 119, May; 116-117 after Compromise.
+
+
+We now realize what Webster knew and feared in 1849-1850. "If
+this strife between the South and the North goes on, we shall
+have war, and who is ready for that?" "There would have been a
+Civil War if the Compromise had not passed." The evidence
+confirms Thurlow Weed's mature judgment: "the country had every
+appearance of being on the eve of a Revolution."[68] On February
+28, Everett recognized that "the radicals at the South have made
+up their minds to separate, the catastrophe seems to be
+inevitable".[69]
+
+[68] E. P. Wheeler, Sixty Years of American Life, p. 6; cf.
+Webster's Buffalo Speech, Curtis, Life, II. 576; Weed,
+Autobiography, p. 596.
+
+[69] Winthrop MSS.
+
+
+On March 1, Webster recorded his determination "to make an
+honest, truth-telling speech, and a Union speech"[69a] The
+Washington correspondent of the Advertiser, March 4, reported
+that Webster will "take a large view of the state of things and
+advocate a straightforward course of legislation essentially such
+as the President has recommended". "To this point public
+sentiment has been gradually converging." "It will tend greatly
+to confirm opinion in favor of this course should it meet with
+the decided concurrence of Mr. Webster." The attitude of the
+plain citizen is expressed by Barker, of Beaver, Pennsylvania, on
+the same day: "do it, Mr. Webster, as you can, do it as a bold
+and gifted statesman and patriot; reconcile the North and South
+and PRESERVE the UNION". "Offer, Mr. Webster, a liberal
+compromise to the South." On March 4 and 5, Calhoun's Senate
+speech reasserted that the South, no longer safe in the Union,
+possessed the right of peaceable secession. On the 6th of March,
+Webster went over the proposed speech of the next morning with
+his son, Fletcher, Edward Curtis, and Peter Harvey.[70]
+
+[69a] Writings and Speeches, XVI. 534-5.
+
+[70] Webster to Harvey, Apr. 7, MS. Middletown (Conn.) Hist.
+Soc., adds Fletcher's name. Received through the kindness of
+Professor George M. Dutcher.
+
+
+III.
+
+It was under the cumulative stress of such convincing
+evidence, public and private utterances, and acts in Southern
+legislatures and in Congress, that Webster made his Union speech
+on the 7th of March. The purpose and character of the speech are
+rightly indicated by its title, "The Constitution and the Union",
+and by the significant dedication to the people of Massachusetts:
+"Necessity compels me to speak true rather than pleasing things."
+"I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer to save you,
+whatever be your attitude toward me."[71] The malignant charge
+that this speech was "a bid for the presidency" was long ago
+discarded, even by Lodge. It unfortunately survives in text-books
+more concerned with "atmosphere" than with truth. The modern
+investigator finds no evidence for it and every evidence against
+it. Webster was both too proud and too familiar with the
+political situation, North and South, to make such a monstrous
+mistake. The printed or manuscript letters to or from Webster in
+1850 and 1851 show him and his friends deeply concerned over the
+danger to the Union, but not about the presidency. There is
+rarest mention of the matter in letters by personal or political
+friends; none by Webster, so far as the writer has observed.
+
+[71] Writings and Speeches, X. 57; "Notes for the Speech,"
+281-291; Winthrop MSS., Apr. 3.
+
+
+If one comes to the speech familiar with both the situation in
+1850 as now known, and with Webster's earlier and later speeches
+and private letters, one finds his position and arguments on the
+7th of March in harmony with his attitude toward Union and
+slavery, and with the law and the facts. Frankly reiterating both
+his earlier view of slavery "as a great moral, political and
+social evil" and his lifelong devotion to the Union and its
+constitutional obligations, Webster took national, practical,
+courageous grounds. On the fugitive slave bill and the Wilmot
+Proviso, where cautious Whigs like Winthrop and Everett were
+inclined to keep quiet in view of Northern popular feeling,
+Webster "took a large view of things" and resolved, as Foote saw,
+to risk his reputation in advocating the*only practicable
+solution. Not only was Webster thoroughly familiar with the
+facts, but he was pre-eminently logical and, as Calhoun had
+admitted, once convinced, "he cannot look truth in the face and
+oppose it by arguments".[72] He therefore boldly faced the truth
+that the Wilmot Proviso (as it proved later) was needless, and
+would irritate Southern Union men and play into hands of
+disunionists who frankly desired to exploit this "insult" to
+excite secession sentiment. In a like case ten years later, "the
+Republican party took precisely the same ground held by Mr.
+Webster in 1850 and acted from the motives that inspired the 7th
+of March speech".[73]
+
+[72] Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 371-372.
+
+[73] Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, I. 269-271.
+
+
+Webster's anxiety for a conciliatory settlement of the highly
+dangerous Texas boundary situation (which incidentally narrowed
+slave territory) was as consistent with his national Union
+policy, as his desires for California's admission as a free state
+and for prohibition of the slave-trade in the District of
+Columbia were in accord with his opposition to slavery. Seeing
+both abolitionists and secessionists threatening the Union, he
+rebuked both severely for disloyalty to their "constitutional
+obligations", while he pleaded for a more conciliatory attitude,
+for faith and charity rather than "heated imaginations". The
+only logical alternative to the union policy was disunion,
+advocated alike by Garrisonian abolitionists and Southern
+secessionists. "The Union . . . was thought to be in danger, and
+devotion to the Union rightfully inclined men to yield . . .
+where nothing else could have so inclined them", was Lincoln's
+luminous defense of the Compromise in his debate with
+Douglas.[74]
+
+[74] Works, II. 202-203.
+
+
+Webster's support of the constitutional provision for "return of
+persons held to service" was not merely that of a lawyer. It was
+in accord with a deep and statesmanlike conviction that
+"obedience to established government . . . is a Christian duty",
+the seat of law is "the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of
+the universe".[75] Offensive as this law was to the North, the
+only logical alternatives were to fulfil or to annul the
+Constitution. Webster chose to risk his reputation; the extreme
+abolitionists, to risk the Union. Webster felt, as his opponents
+later recognized, that "the habitual cherishing of the
+principle", "resistance to unjust laws is obedience to God",
+threatened the Constitution. "He . . . addressed himself,
+therefore, to the duty of calling the American people back from
+revolutionary theories to . . . submission to authority."[76] As
+in 1830 against Haynes, so in 1850 against Calhoun and disunion,
+Webster stood not as "a Massachusetts man, but as an American",
+for "the preservation of the Union".[77] In both speeches he held
+that he was acting nof for Massachusetts, but for the "whole
+country" (1830), "the good of the whole" (1850). His devotion to
+the Union and his intellectual balance led him to reject the
+impatience, bitterness, and disunion sentiments of abolitionists
+and secessionists, and to work on longer lines. "We must wait for
+the slow progress of moral causes", a doctrine already announced
+in 1840, he reiterated in 1850,--"the effect of moral causes,
+though sure is slow."[78]
+
+[75] Writings and Speeches, XVI. 580-581.
+
+[76] Seward, Works, III. 111-116.
+
+[77] Writings and Speeches, X. 57, 97.
+
+[78] Ibid., XIII. 595; X. 65.
+
+
+IV.
+
+The earlier accounts of Webster's losing his friends as a
+result of his speech are at variance with the facts. Cautious
+Northerners naturally hesitated to support him and face both the
+popular convictions on fugitive slaves and the rasping
+vituperation that exhausted sacred and profane history in the
+epithets current in that "era of warm journalistic manners";
+Abolitionists and Free Soilers congratulated one another that
+they had "killed Webster". In Congress no Northern man save
+Ashmun of Massachusetts supported him in any speech for months.
+On the other hand, Webster did retain the friendship and
+confidence of leaders and common men North and South, and the
+tremendous influence of his personality and "unanswerable"
+arguments eventually swung the North for the Compromise. From
+Boston came prompt expressions of "entire concurrence" in his
+speech by 800 representative men, including George Ticknor,
+William H. Prescott, Rufus Choate, Josiah Quincy, President
+Sparks and Professor Felton of Harvard, Professors Woods, Stuart,
+and Emerson of Andover, and other leading professional, literary,
+and business men. Similar addresses were sent to him from about
+the same number of men in New York, from supporters in
+Newburyport, Medford, Kennebeck River, Philadelphia, the Detroit
+Common Council, Manchester, New Hampshire, and "the neighbors" in
+Salisbury. His old Boston Congressional district triumphantly
+elected Eliot, one of Webster's most loyal supporters, by a vote
+of 2,355 against 473 for Charles Sumner.[78a] The Massachusetts
+legislature overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to instruct
+Webster to vote for the Wilmot Proviso. Scores of unpublished
+letters in the New Hampshire Historical Society and the Library
+of Congress reveal hearty approval from both parties and all
+sections. Winthrop of Massachusetts, too cautious to endorse
+Webster's entire position, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts
+that as a result of the speech, "disunion stock is already below
+par".[79] "You have performed the responsible duties of, a
+national Senator", wrote General Dearborn. "I thank you because
+you did not speak upon the subject as a Massachusetts man", said
+Reverend Thomas Worcester of Boston, an overseer of Harvard.
+"Your speech has saved the Union", was the verdict of Barker of
+Pennsylvania, a man not of Webster's party.[80] "The Union
+threatened . . . you have come to the rescue, and all
+disinterested lovers of that Union must rally round you", wrote
+Wainwright of New York. In Alabama, Reverend J. W. Allen
+recognized the "comprehensive and self-forgetting spirit of
+patriotism" in Webster, "which, if followed, would save the
+Union, unite the country and prevent the danger in the Nashville
+Convention". Like approval of Webster's "patriotic stand for the
+preservation of the Union" was sent from Green County and
+Greensboro in Alabama and from Tennessee and Virginia.[81] "The
+preservation of the Union is the only safety-valve. On Webster
+depends the tranquility of the country", says an anonymous writer
+from Charleston, a native of Massachusetts and former pupil of
+Webster.[82] Poinsett and Francis Lieber, South Carolina
+Unionists, expressed like views.[83] The growing influence of the
+speech is testified to in letters from all sections. Linus Child
+of Lowell finds it modifying his own previous opinions and
+believes that "shortly if not at this moment, it will be approved
+by a large majority of the people of Massachusetts".[84] "Upon
+sober second thought, our people will generally coincide with
+your views", wrote ex-Governor and ex-Mayor Armstrong of
+Boston.[85] "Every day adds to the number of those who agree with
+you", is the confirmatory testimony of Dana, trustee of Andover
+and former president of Dartmouth.[86] "The effect of your speech
+begins to be felt", wrote ex-Mayor Eliot of Boston.[87] Mayor
+Huntington of Salem at first felt the speech to be too Southern;
+but "subsequent events at North and South have entirely satisfied
+me that you were right . . . and vast numbers of others here in
+Massachusetts were wrong." "The change going on in me has been
+going on all around me." "You saw farther ahead than the rest or
+most of us and had the courage and patriotism to stand upon the
+true ground."[88] This significant inedited letter is but a
+specimen of the change of attitude manifested in hundreds of
+letters from "slow and cautious Whigs".[89] One of these, Edward
+Everett, unable to accept Webster's attitude on Texas and the
+fugitive slarve bill, could not "entirely concur" in the Boston
+letter of approval. "I think our friend will be able to carry the
+weight of it at home, but as much as ever." "It would, as you
+justly said," he wrote Winthrop, "have ruined any other man."
+This probably gives the position taken at first by a good many
+moderate anti-slavery then. Everett's later attitude is likewise
+typical of a change in New England. He wrote in 1851 that
+Webster's speech "more than any other cause, contributed to avert
+the catastrophe", and was "a practical basis for the adjustment
+of controversies, which had already gone far to dissolve the
+Union".[90]
+
+[78a] Garrison childishly printed Eliot's name upside down, and
+between black lines, Liberator, Sept. 20.
+
+[79] Mar. 10. MS., "Private," to Governor Clifford.
+
+[80] Mar 11, Apr. 13. Webster papers, N.H. Hist. Soc., cited
+hereafter as "N.H.".
+
+[81] Mar. 11, 25, 22, 17, 26, 28, Greenough Collection, hereafter
+as "Greenough."
+
+[82] May 20. N.H.
+
+[83] Apr. 19, May 4. N.H.
+
+[84] Apr. 1. Greenough.
+
+[85] Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 357.
+
+[86] Apr. 19. N.H.
+
+[87] June 12. N.H.
+
+[88] Dec. 13. N.H.
+
+[89] Writings and SPeeches, XVI. 582.
+
+[90] Winthrop MSS., Mar. 21 and Apr. 10, 1850, Nov. 1951; Curtis,
+Life, II. 580; Everett's Memoir; Webster's Works (1851), I.
+clvii.
+
+
+Isaac Hill, a bitter New Hampshire political opponent, confesses
+that Webster's "kindly answer" to Calhoun was wiser than his own
+might have been. Hill, an experienced political observer, had
+feared in the month preceding Webster's speech a "disruption of
+the Union" with "no chance of escaping a conflict of blood". He
+felt that the censures of Webster were undeserved, that Webster
+was not merely right, but had "power he can exercise at the
+North, beyond any other man", and that "all that is of value will
+declare in favor of the great principles of your late Union
+speech".[91] "Its tranquilizing effect upon public opinion has
+been wonderful"; "it has almost the unanimous support of this
+community", wrote the New York philanthropist Minturn.[92] "The
+speech made a powerful impression in this state . . .  Men feel
+they can stand on it with security."[93] In Cincinnati,
+Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsfield (with only one
+exception) the speech was found "wise and patriotic".[94] The
+sender of a resolution of approval from the grand jury of the
+United States court at Indianapolis says that such judgment is
+almost universal.[95] "It is thought you may save the country . .
+. you may keep us still united", wrote Thornton of Memphis, who
+soberly records the feeling of thoughtful men that the Southern
+purpose of disunion was stronger than appeared in either
+newspapers or political gatherings.[96] "Your speech has
+disarmed-has, quieted the South;[97] has rendered invaluable
+service to the harmony and union of the South and the North".[98]
+"I am confident of the higher approbation, not of a single
+section of the Union, but of all sections", wrote a political
+opponent in Washington.[99]
+
+[93] Barnard, Albany, Apr. 19. N.H.
+
+[94] Mar. 15, 28. N.H.
+
+[95] June 10. Greenough. 
+
+[96] Mar. 28. Greenough.
+
+[97] H. L Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8. Greenough. 
+
+[98] Nelson, Va., May 2. N.H.
+
+[99] Mar. 8. Greenough.
+
+
+The influence of Webster in checking the radical purposes of the
+Nashville Convention has been shown above.[100]
+
+[100] Pp. 17-20.
+
+
+All classes of men from all sections show a substantial and
+growing backing of Webster's 7th of March speech as "the only
+statesmanlike and practicable way to save the Union". "To you,
+more than to any other statesman of modern times, do the people
+of this country owe their national feeling which we trust is to
+save this Union in this its hour of trial", was the judgment of
+"the neighbors", the plain farmers of Webster's old New Hampshire
+home.[101] Outside of the Abolition and Free Soil press, the
+growing tendency in newspapers, like that of their readers, was
+to support Webster's logical position.[102]
+
+[101] August, 1850; 127 signatures. N.H.
+
+[102] Ogg, Webster, p. 379; Rhodes, I. 157-58.
+
+
+Exaggerated though some of these expressions of approval may have
+been, they balance the exaggerated vituperation of Webster in the
+anti-slavery press; and the extremes of approval and disapproval
+both concur in recognizing the widespread effect of the speech.
+"No speech ever delivered in Congress produced . . . so
+beneficial a change of opinion. The change of, feeling and
+temperament wrought in Congress by this speech is
+miraculous."[103]
+
+[103] New York Journal of Commerce, Boston Advertiser, Richmond
+Whig Mar. 12; Baltimore Sun, Mar. 18; Ames, Calhoun, p. 25;
+Boston Watchman and Reflector, in Liberator, Apr. 1.
+
+
+The contemporary testimony to Webster's checking of disunion is
+substantiated by the conclusions of Petigru of South Carolina,
+Cobb of Georgia in 1852, Allen of Pennsylvania in 1853, and by
+Stephens's mature judgment of "the profound sensation upon the
+public mind throughout the Union made by Webster's 7th of March
+speech. The friends of the Union under the Constitution were
+strengthened in their hopes and inspired with,renewed
+energies."[104] In 1866 Foote wrote, "The speech produced
+beneficial effects everywhere." "His statement of facts was
+generally looked upon as unanswerable; his argumentative
+conclusions appeared to be inevitable; his conciliatory tone . .
+. softened the sensibilities of all patriots."[105] "He seems to
+have gauged more accurately [than most] the grave dangers which
+threatened the republic and . . . the fearful consequences which
+must follow its disruption", was Henry Wilson's later and wiser
+judgment.[106] "The general judgment," said Senator Hoar in 1899,
+"seems to be coming to the conclusion that Webster differed from
+the friends of freedom of his time not in a weaker moral sense,
+but only in a larger, and profounder prophetic vision." "He saw
+what no other man saw, the certainty of civil war. I was one of
+those who . . . judged him severely, but I have learned better."
+"I think of him now . . . as the orator who bound fast with
+indissoluble strength the bonds of union."[107]
+
+[104] War between the States, II. 211.
+
+[105] War of the Rebellion (1866), pp. 130-131.
+
+[106] Slave Power, II. 246.
+
+[107] Scribner's Magazine XXVI. 84.
+
+
+Modern writers, North and South-Garrison, Chadwick, T. C. Smith,
+Merriam, for instance[108]--now recognize the menace of disunion
+in 1850 and the service of Webster in defending the Union.
+Rhodes, though condemning Webster's support of the fugitive slave
+bill, recognizes that the speech was one of the few that really
+altered public opinion and won necessary Northern support for the
+Compromise. "We see now that in the War of the Rebellion his
+principles were mightier than those of Garrison." "It was not the
+Liberty or Abolitionist party, but the Union party that
+won."[109]
+
+[108] Garrison, Westward Expansion, pp. 327-332; Chadwick, The
+Causes of the Civil War, pp. 49-51; Smith, Parties and Slavery,
+p. 9; Merriam, Life of Bowles, I. 81.
+
+[109] Rhodes, I. 157, 161.
+
+
+Postponement of secession for ten years gave the North
+preponderance in population, voting power, production, and
+transportation; new party organization; and convictions which
+made man-power and economic resources effective. The Northern
+lead of four million people in 1850 had increased to seven
+millions by 1860. In 1850, each section had thirty votes in the
+Senate; in 1860, the North had a majority of six, due to the
+adrhission of California, Oregon, and Minnesota. In the House of
+Representatives, the North had added seven to her majority. The
+Union states and territories built during the decade 15,000 miles
+of railroad, to 7,000 or 8,000 in the eleven seceding states. In
+shipping, the North in 1860 built about 800 vessels to the
+seceding states' 200. In 1860, in the eleven most important
+industries for war, Chadwick estimates that the Union states
+produced $735,500,000; the seceding states $75,250,000, "a
+manufacturing productivity eleven times as great for the North as
+for the South".[110] In general, during the decade, the census
+figures for 1860 show that since 1850 the North had increased its
+man-power, transportation, and economic production from two to
+fifty times as fast as the South, and that in 1860 the Union
+states were from two to twelve times as powerful as the seceding
+states.
+
+[110] Preliminary Report, Eighth Census, 1860; Chadwick, Causes
+of the Civil War, p. 28.
+
+
+Possibly Southern secessionists and Northern abolitionists had
+some basis for thinking that the North would let the "erring
+sisters depart in peace" in 1850. Within the next ten years,
+however, there came a decisive change. The North, exasperated by
+the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the high-handed acts of
+Southerners in Kansas in 1856, and the Dred Scott dictum of the
+Supreme Court in 1857, felt that these things amounted to a
+repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the opening up of the
+territory to slavery. In 1860 Northern conviction, backed by an
+effective, thorough party platform on a Union basis, swept the
+free states. In 1850, it was a "Constitutional Union" party that
+accepted the Compromise and arrested secession in the South; and
+Webster, foreseeing a "remodelling of parties", hadprophesied
+that "there must be a Union party".[111] Webster's spirit
+and speeches and his strengthening of federal power through
+Supreme Court cases won by his arguments had helped to furnish
+the conviction which underlay the Union Party of 1860 and 1964.
+His consistent opposition to nullification and secession, and his
+appeal to the Union and to the Constitution during twenty years
+preceding the Civil War--from his reply to Hayne to his seventh
+of March speech--had developed a spirit capable of making
+economic and political power effective.
+
+[111] Oct. 2, 1950. Writings and Speeches, XVI. 568-569.
+
+
+Men inclined to sneer at Webster for his interest in
+manufacturing, farming, and material prosperity, may well
+remember that in his mind, and more slowly in the minds of the
+North, economic progress went hand in hand with the development
+of union and of liberty secured by law.
+
+Misunderstandings regarding both the political crisis and the
+personal character of the man are already disappearing as fact
+replaces fiction, as "truth gets a hearing", in the fine phrase
+of Wendell Phillips. There is nothing about Daniel Webster to be
+hidden. Not moral blindness but moral insight and sound political
+principles reveal themselves to the reader of Webster's own words
+in public speech and unguarded private letter. One of those great
+men who disdained to vindicate himself, he does not need us but
+we need him and his vision that Liberty comes through Union, and
+healing through cooperation, not through hate.
+
+Whether we look to the material progress of the North from 1850
+to 1860 or to its development in "imponderables", Webster's
+policy and his power over men's thoughts and deeds were essential
+factors in the ultimate triumph of the Union, which would have
+been at least dubious had secession been attempted in 1850. It
+was a soldier, not the modern orator, who first said that
+"Webster shotted our guns". A letter to Senator Hoar from another
+Union soldier says that he kept up his heart as he paced up and
+down as sentinel in an exposed place by repeating over and over,
+"Liberty and Union now and forever, one and inseparable".[112]
+Hosmer tells us that he and his boyhood friends of the North in
+1861 "did not argue much the question of the right of secession",
+but that it was the words of Webster's speeches, "as familiar to
+us as the sentences of the Lord's prayer and scarcely less
+consecrated, . . . with which we sprang to battle". Those
+boys were not ready in 1850. The decisive human factors in the
+Civil War were the men bred on the profound devotion to the Union
+which Webster shared with others equally patriotic, but less
+profoundly logical, less able to mould public opinion. Webster
+not only saw the vision himself; he had the genius to make the
+plain American citizen see that liberty could come through union
+and not through disunion. Moreover, there was in Webster and the
+Compromise of 1850 a spirit of conciliation, and therefore there
+was on the part of the North a belief that they had given the
+South a "square deal", and a corresponding indignation at the
+attempts in the next decade to expand slavery by violating the
+Compromises of 1820 and 1850. So, by 1860, the decisive border
+states and Northwest were ready to stand behind the Union.
+
+[112] Scribner, XXVI. 84; American Law Review, XXXV. 804.
+
+
+When Lincoln, born in a border state, coming to manhood in the
+Northwest, and bred on Webster's doctrine,--"the Union is
+paramount",--accepted for the second time the Republican
+nomination and platform, he summed up the issues of the war, as
+he had done before, in Webster's words. Lincoln, who had grown as
+masterly in his choice of words as he had become profound in his
+vision of issues, used in 1864 not the more familiar and
+rhetorical phrases of the reply to Hayne, but the briefer, more
+incisive form, "Liberty and Union", of Webster's "honest,
+truth-telling, Union speech" on the 7th of March, 1850.[113]
+
+HERBERT DARLING FOSTER.
+
+[113] Nicolay and Hay, IX. 76.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg etext of Webster's Seventh of March
+Speech, and the Secession Movement, 1850.
+
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