. He joined Hayne in using this opportunity to try to detach the West from the East, and restore the old cooperation of the West and the South against New England. . . We had no other general government. Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural So "The Whole Affair Seems the Work of a Madman", John Brown and the Principle of Nonresistance. Enveloping all of these changes was an ever-growing tension over the economy, as southern states firmly defended slavery and northern states advocated for a more industrial, slave-free market. Webster-Hayne Debate. . . 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. They tell us, in the letter submitting the Constitution to the consideration of the country, that, in all our deliberations on this subject, we kept steadily in our view that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true Americanthe consolidation of our Unionin which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety; perhaps our national existence. [Its leader] would have a knot before him, which he could not untie. The Destiny of America, Speech at the Dedication o An Address. . First, New England was vindicated. Sir, if we are, then vain will be our attempt to maintain the Constitution under which we sit. Now that was a good debate! 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. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. . Our Core Document Collection allows students to read history in the words of those who made it. States' rights (South) vs. nationalism (North). I said, only, that it was highly wise and useful in legislating for the northwestern country, while it was yet a wilderness, to prohibit the introduction of slaves: and added, that I presumed, in the neighboring state of Kentucky, there was no reflecting and intelligent gentleman, who would doubt, that if the same prohibition had been extended, at the same early period, over that commonwealth, her strength and population would, at this day, have been far greater than they are. The measures of the federal government have, it is true, prostrated her interests, and will soon involve the whole South in irretrievable ruin. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. . They significantly declare, that it is time to calculate the value of the Union; and their aim seems to be to enumerate, and to magnify all the evils, real and imaginary, which the government under the Union produces. The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the Supreme Law. Pet Banks History & Effects | What are Pet Banks? We look upon the states, not as separated, but as united. An error occurred trying to load this video. Sir, we will not stop to inquire whether the black man, as some philosophers have contended, is of an inferior race, nor whether his color and condition are the effects of a curse inflicted for the offences of his ancestors. We met it as a practical question of obligation and duty. . The impression which has gone abroad, of the weakness of the South, as connected with the slave question, exposes us to such constant attacks, has done us so much injury, and is calculated to produce such infinite mischiefs, that I embrace the occasion presented by the remarks of the gentleman from Massachusetts, to declare that we are ready to meet the question promptly and fearlessly. The people read Webster's speech and marked him as the champion henceforth against all assaults upon the Constitution. In The Webster-Hayne Debate, Christopher Childers examines the context of the debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and his Senate colleague Robert S. Hayne of South Carolina in January 1830.Readers will finish the book with a clear idea of the reason Webster's "Reply" became so influential in its own day. 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. Address to the People of the United States, by the What are the main points of difference between Webster and Hayne, especially on the question of the nature of the Union and the Constitution? Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster's "Second Reply" to South Carolina Senator Robert Y. Hayne has long been thought of as a great oratorical celebration of American Nationalism in a period of sectional conflict. Drama, suspense, it's all there. . A four-speech debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Hayne of South Carolina, in January 1830. . . . Northern states intended to strengthen the federal government, binding the states in the union under one supreme law, and eradicating the use of slave labor in the rapidly growing nation. 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. Address to the Slaves of the United States. ", What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?. It is one from which we are not disposed to shrink, in whatever form or under whatever circumstances it may be pressed upon us. . Excerpts from Ratification Documents of Virginia a Ratifying Conventions>New York Ratifying Convention. As a pious son of Federalism, Webster went the full length of the required defense. . Create your account. We are ready to make up the issue with the gentleman, as to the influence of slavery on individual and national characteron the prosperity and greatness, either of the United States, or of particular states. . So what was this debate really about? 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. South Carolinas Declaration of the Causes of Sece Distribution of the Slave Population by State. As sovereign states, each state could individually interpret the Constitution and even leave the Union altogether. a. an explanation of natural events that is well supported by scientific evidence b. a set of rules for ethical conduct during an experiment c. a statement that describes how natural events happen d. a possible answer to a scientific question Webster pursued his objective through a rhetorical strategy that ignored Benton, the principal opponent of New England sectionalism, and that provoked Hayne into an exposition and defense of what became the South Carolina doctrine of nullification. There yet remains to be performed, Mr. President, by far the most grave and important duty, which I feel to be devolved on me, by this occasion. This is the sense in which the Framers of the Constitution use the word consolidation; and in which sense I adopt and cherish it. The whole form and structure of the federal government, the opinions of the Framers of the Constitution, and the organization of the state governments, demonstrate that though the states have surrendered certain specific powers, they have not surrendered their sovereignty. Crittenden Compromise Plan & Reception | What was the Crittenden Compromise? He must say to his followers [members of the state militia], defend yourselves with your bayonets; and this is warcivil war. This feeling, always carefully kept alive, and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine. While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. By means of missionaries and political tracts, the scheme was in a great measure successful. But I take leave of the subject. My life upon it, sir, they would not. Webster denied it and, attempting to draw Hayne into a direct confrontation, disparaged slavery and attacked the constitutional scruples of southern nullifiers and their apparent willingness to calculate the Union's value in monetary terms. Battle of Fort Sumter in the Civil War | Who Won the Battle of Fort Sumter? It develops the gentlemans whole political system; and its answer expounds mine. Some of his historical deductions may be questioned; but far above all possible error on the part of her leaders, stood colonial and Revolutionary New England, and the sturdy, intelligent, and thriving people whose loyalty to the Union had never failed, and whose home, should ill befall the nation, would yet prove liberty's last shelter. All of these ideas, however, are only parts of the main point. 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. Hayne argued that the sovereign and independent states had created the Union to promote their particular interests. flashcard sets. It impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to bear up any other than free men. In contrasting the state of Ohio with Kentucky, for the purpose of pointing out the superiority of the former, and of attributing that superiority to the existence of slavery, in the one state, and its absence in the other, I thought I could discern the very spirit of the Missouri question[1] intruded into this debate, for objects best known to the gentleman himself. There was no winner or loser in the Webster-Hayne debate. . . The debate, which took place between January 19th and January 27th, 1830, encapsulated the major issues facing the newly founded United States in the 1820s and 1830s; the balance of power between the federal and state governments, the development of the democratic process, and the growing tension between Northern and Southern states. It was motivated by a dispute over the continued sale of western lands, an important source of revenue for the federal government. . Francis O. J. Smith to Secretary of State Dan Special Message to the House of Representatives, Special Message to Congress on Mexican Relations. All regulated governments, all free governments, have been broken up by similar disinterested and well-disposed interference! In many respects, his speech betrays the mentality of Massachusetts conservatives seeking to regain national leadership and advance their particular ideas about the nation. He was a lawyer turned congressional representative who eventually worked his way to the office of U.S. Secretary of State. Religious Views: Letter to the Editor of the Illin Democratic Party Platform 1860 (Douglas Faction), (Northern) Democratic Party Platform Committee. The other way was through the sale of federally-owned land to private citizens. This, sir, is General Washingtons consolidation. But I do not admit that, under the Constitution, and in conformity with it, there is any mode in which a state government, as a member of the Union, can interfere and stop the progress of the general government, by force of her own laws, under any circumstances whatever. For one, Hayne and Webster were arguing for the fate of the West and, in particular, whether the North or South would control western development. | 12 I must now beg to ask, sir, whence is this supposed right of the states derived?where do they find the power to interfere with the laws of the Union? . I know, full well, that it is, and has been, the settled policy of some persons in the South, for years, to represent the people of the North as disposed to interfere with them, in their own exclusive and peculiar concerns. Finding our lot cast among a people, whom God had manifestly committed to our care, we did not sit down to speculate on abstract questions of theoretical liberty. In all the efforts that have been made by South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional laws which Congress has extended over them, she has kept steadily in view the preservation of the Union, by the only means by which she believes it can be long preserveda firm, manly, and steady resistance against usurpation. We found that we had to deal with a people whose physical, moral, and intellectual habits and character, totally disqualified them from the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. . Explore the Webster-Hayne debate. . . New England, the Union, and the Constitution in its integrity, all were triumphantly vindicated. Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives. Most assuredly, I need not say I differ with him, altogether and most widely, on that point. Since as Vice President and President of the Senate, Calhoun could not take place in the debate, Hayne represented the pro-nullification point-of-view. But that was found insufficient, and inadequate to the public exigencies. Far, indeed, in my wishes, very far distant be the day, when our associated and fraternal stripes shall be severed asunder, and when that happy constellation under which we have risen to so much renown, shall be broken up, and be seen sinking, star after star, into obscurity and night! For the next several days, the men traded speeches which contemporaries of the time described as the greatest orations ever delivered in the Senate. An equally. This government, sir, is the independent offspring of the popular will. T he Zionist-evangelical back story goes back several decades, with 90-year-old televangelist Pat Robertson being a prime case study.. One of the more notable "coincidences" or anomalies Winter Watch brings to your attention is the image of Robertson on the cover of Time magazine in 1986 back before the public was red pilled by the Internet -as the pastor posed with a gesture called . We will not look back to inquire whether our fathers were guiltless in introducing slaves into this country. He rose, the image of conscious mastery, after the dull preliminary business of the day was dispatched, and with a happy figurative allusion to the tossed mariner, as he called for a reading of the resolution from which the debate had so far drifted, lifted his audience at once to his level. Inflamed and mortified at this repulse, Hayne soon returned to the assault, primed with a two-day speech, which at great length vaunted the patriotism of South Carolina and bitterly attacked New England, dwelling particularly upon her conduct during the late war. Get unlimited access to over 88,000 lessons. Speech of Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, January 27, 1830. . It has been said that Hayne was Calhoun's sword and buckler and that he returned to the contest refreshed each morning by nightly communions with the Vice-President, drawing auxiliary supplies from the well-stored arsenal of his powerful and subtle mind. The real significance of this debate was in each man's interpretation of the United States Constitution. It was of a partizan and censorious character and drew nearly all the chief senators out. One of those was the Webster-Hayne debate, a series of unplanned speeches presented before the Senate between January 19th and 27th of 1830. This is the sum of what I understand from him, to be the South Carolina doctrine; and the doctrine which he maintains. . That's what was happening out West. Between January and May 1830, twenty-one of the forty-eight senators delivered a staggering sixty-five speeches on the nature of the Union. Whose agent is it? The gentleman, therefore, only follows out his own principles; he does no more than arrive at the natural conclusions of his own doctrines; he only announces the true results of that creed, which he has adopted himself, and would persuade others to adopt, when he thus declares that South Carolina has no interest in a public work in Ohio. It is not the creature of state Legislatures; nay, more, if the whole truth must be told, the people brought it into existence, established it, and have hitherto supported it, for the very purpose, amongst others, of imposing certain salutary restraints on state sovereignties. I deem far otherwise of the Union of the states; and so did the Framers of the Constitution themselves. Sir, it is because South Carolina loves the Union, and would preserve it forever, that she is opposing now, while there is hope, those usurpations of the federal government, which, once established, will, sooner or later, tear this Union into fragments. He accused them of a desire to check the growth of the West in the interests of protection. . Sir, I will not stop at the border; I will carry the war into the enemys territory, and not consent to lay down my arms, until I shall have obtained indemnity for the past, and security for the future.[4] It is with unfeigned reluctance that I enter upon the performance of this part of my duty. . Then, in January of 1830, a senator from Connecticut introduced a proposal to the Senate stating that the federal government should stop surveying the lands west of the Mississippi River. . They cherish no deep and fixed regard for it, flowing from a thorough conviction of its absolute and vital necessity to our welfare. All rights reserved. But, sir, the gentleman is mistaken. copyright 2003-2023 Study.com. An accomplished politician, Hayne was an eloquent orator who enthralled his audiences. They will also better understand the debate's political context. Webster's description of the U.S. government as "made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people," was later paraphrased by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address in the words "government of the people, by the people, for the people." President John Quincy Adams and the Election of 1824. If slavery, as it now exists in this country, be an evil, we of the present day found it ready made to our hands. Debate on the Constitutionality of the Mexican War, Letters and Journals from the Oregon Trail. He remained a Southern Unionist through his long public career and a good type of the growing class of statesman devoted to slave interests who loved the Union as it was and doted upon its compromises. Van Buren responded to the Panic of 1837 with the idea of the independent treasury, which was a. a system of depositing money in select independent banks He speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789. Now, I wish to be informedhowthis state interference is to be put in practice, without violence, bloodshed, and rebellion. In the course of my former remarks, I took occasion to deprecate, as one of the greatest of evils, the consolidation of this government. But the topic which became the leading feature of the whole debate and gave it an undying interest was that of nullification, in which Hayne and Webster came forth as chief antagonists. . When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Webster and the North treated it as binding the states together as a single union. See what I mean? The Northwest Ordinance. Which of the following statements best represents the desires of the Northern states during the debate of Missouri statehood? . 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 idea of a strong federal government The ability of the people to revolt against an unfair government The theory that the states' may vote against unfair laws The role of the president in commanding the government 2 See answers Advertisement holesstanham Answer: . Sir, there exists, moreover, a deep and settled conviction of the benefits, which result from a close connection of all the states, for purposes of mutual protection and defense. Webster's articulation of the concept of the Union went on to shape American attitudes about the federal government. These irreconcilable views of national supremacy and state sovereignty framed the constitutional struggle that led to Civil War thirty years later. Webster and the northern states saw the Constitution as binding the individual states together as a single union. . The debate was important because it laid out the arguments in favor of nationalism in the face of growing sectionalism. In whatever is within the proper sphere of the constitutional power of this government, we look upon the states as one. . In our contemplation, Carolina and Ohio are parts of the same country; states, united under the same general government, having interests, common, associated, intermingled. I understand the gentleman to maintain, that, without revolution, without civil commotion, without rebellion, a remedy for supposed abuse and transgression of the powers of the general government lies in a direct appeal to the interference of the state governments. MTEL Speech: Public Discourse & Debate in the U.S. . Robert Young Hayne spent more than two decades in elected offices, including mayor of Charleston, member of South Carolina's legislature, attorney general, and then governor of the state. This absurdity (for it seems no less) arises from a misconception as to the origin of this government and its true character. President Andrew Jackson had just been elected, most of the states got rid of property requirements for voting, and an entire new era of democracy was being born. He tells us, we have heard much, of late, about consolidation; that it is the rallying word for all who are endeavoring to weaken the Union by adding to the power of the states. But consolidation, says the gentleman, was the very object for which the Union was formed; and in support of that opinion, he read a passage from the address of the president of the Convention[3] to Congress (which he assumes to be authority on his side of the question.) The taxes paid by foreign nations to export American cotton, for example, generated lots of money for the government. We do not impose geographical limits to our patriotic feeling or regard; we do not follow rivers and mountains, and lines of latitude, to find boundaries, beyond which public improvements do not benefit us. State governments were in control of their own affairs and expected little intervention from the federal government. The scene depicted in the painting is Webster concluding his debate with Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. Hayne launched his confident javelin at the New England States.