Nullification, Secession Webster's Argument and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions Part 1

Nullification, Secession Webster's Argument and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.

by Caleb William Loring.

PREFACE.

I was much shocked a few years ago, in reading a Life of Webster, by the statement of its able and distinguished author that really Hayne had the right of the argument in the renowned debate on nullification. In reply I prepared a statement of Webster's argument. Besides what Webster had so ably said, I found in the Const.i.tution itself other proofs of the nationality of our government, of the intent of those who made it to establish a nation, of their full belief that they had done so, and that, historically, there was no contention as to this.

The vital question is whether a national union was established by the States, or a confederacy of independent nations formed with the right of each to decide upon the validity of the acts of the General Government and leave it at its pleasure.

The superiority in men and wealth that gave the North the victory did not decide the right or wrong of secession: it may have shown its impracticability; but if the right ever existed it remains to-day.

There are many authors who have at great length discussed this matter on the side of the South, but the case of the North, it seems to me, has not been fully set forth. The idea appears to be creeping into history, a recent fad of some Northern writers and commentators, that the nationality of our government was a question from its inception, and that the United States Judiciary and Congress by a.s.sumptions have largely extended its powers.

The nation, as Pallas Athene full grown and armed from the brain of Zeus, sprang to life from the Const.i.tution with the sovereign authority necessary for its existence and the power to enforce its rule. In the beginning there was no debate, no question of its nationality. The early commentators on the Const.i.tution (and Story wrote three volumes upon that matter) did not even mention that there was a doubt of it.

To those who so often quote the Kentucky resolutions, it will perhaps be a matter of surprise to learn that their purport and existence were forgotten from the time they were promulgated until South Carolina's threat in 1830 of nullification.

That Virginian of Virginians, Patrick Henry, who so strenuously opposed his State's adoption of the Const.i.tution, struck the keynote, when he objected that it was "We, the people," and not "We, the States," that made the government. Later, when convinced of the wisdom of the adoption, and Virginia had shown by its resolutions its objections to the Alien and Sedition laws, and discontent at the rule of John Adams and the Federalists, he no less forcibly declared that Virginia _owed_ an obedience to the laws of the United States.

It will be new to many that the Virginia resolutions do not in the least countenance the doctrine of secession and nullification: that the resolutions and explanations of them by the Virginia Legislature testify to an attachment and love of the Union, and a professed intent to strengthen and perpetuate it, and are, as they declare, only a protest against the a.s.sumption by the government of undelegated power.

In the belief that the right and might both prevailed in our civil war, and in full trust in that faith, these remarks are submitted to the people of our whole country.

CALEB WILLIAM LORING.

CHAPTER I.

WEBSTER AND HAYNE.

In the renewed friendly relations at the dinner-table and in the lecture-room, the North of late has had the pleasure of listening to the speeches and discourses of Southern orators, soldiers, and politicians, who, while a.s.serting their loyalty to the Union, claim that that Union was a compact between independent sovereign States, from which each of these independent sovereign States had an undoubted right to secede; our Southern brethren, beaten in the trial of arms, persistently insist that they fought for the right.

Besides Jefferson Davis' _History of the Confederacy_, as bitter to some of its generals as to the North, the Vice-President of that government, of high repute for ability and reasoning powers, Alexander H. Stephens, published two ponderous volumes to prove not only that the South could secede, but that it was obligatory, if it wished to retain its equality and freedom, alleging as the princ.i.p.al reason the wrongful infringement of the right of the South to take its "peculiar property," slaves, into all the territories of the Union, the common property of all the States.

Recently was published Semmes' _Career of the Sumter and Alabama_, abusive of the Yankee and of Northern friends like Buchanan, insisting on the justice and necessity of secession, and a.s.serting the tyranny and mean oppression of the North. We have had also a republication of Governor Tazewell's _Review of President Jackson's Proclamation against Nullification_; and generally the dedication of statues and decorating of the graves of the soldiers of the Confederacy have been taken as occasions to show the justice of the lost cause.

It is to be hoped that few agree with General Early's declamation at Winchester as to those of the South who changed their opinion as to secession: "The Confederate who has deserted since the war is infinitely worse than the one who deserted during the war."

The same opinion as to the right of secession has been very generally held by British politicians; and that opinion to a great extent prevailed, and to-day prevails, in the English army and navy. Mr. John Morley, in his life of Burke, in reference to Burke's speeches denouncing the conduct of Great Britain towards us as colonies, says that "the current of opinion was then precisely similar in England in the struggle to which the United States owed its existence, as in the great civil war between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union"; "people in England convinced themselves, some after careful examination, others on hearsay, that the South had a right to secede."

Lord Coleridge, who served as one of the British commissioners in the Geneva arbitration, in an address recently delivered at Exeter on Sir Stafford Northcote, says:

"I have myself seen that most distinguished man, Charles Francis Adams, subjected in society to treatment which, if he had resented it, might have seriously imperilled the relations of the two countries.... But in this critical state of things, in and out of Parliament, Mr. Disraeli and Sir Stafford Northcote on one side, and the Duke of Argyll and Sir George Cornewall Lewis on the other, mainly contributed to keep this country neutral, and to save us from the serious mistake of taking part with the South."

Even Mr. Bryce, a most learned author, whose opinion in this matter has great weight, intimates that the seceding States legally may have been right.[1]

[1] Bryce's _American Commonwealth_, vol. i., pages 409 and _seq._ Yet Mr. Bryce's whole work is in accordance with the theory he a.s.serts at the beginning of chapter iv., vol. i., page 29: "The acceptance of the Const.i.tution of 1789 made the American people a nation. It turned what had been a league of States into a Federal State by giving it a National Government with a direct authority over all citizens."

Lord Wolseley, in his article in _Macmillan's Magazine_ on the life of Lee, extolling him as the greatest general of his age and the most perfect man,[2] informs us that each State possessed the right both historically and legally under the Const.i.tution to leave the Union at its will. Apparently he did not know that January 23, 1861, Lee wrote to his son: "Secession is nothing but revolution." "It" (the Const.i.tution) "is intended for perpetual union, so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government not a compact, and which can only be dissolved by revolution or the a.s.sent of all the people in convention a.s.sembled. It is idle to talk of secession."[2]

[2] General Long's _Memoirs of Lee_, page 88.

Possibly in time the North may be of the same opinion as to Lee's transcendent ability as a general. No one doubts now his great soldierly attainments and the worth of his private character, but for the sake of the existence of our nation, may it never believe he fought for the right.

Very generally and very fortunately for the country our Southern fellow-citizens, except their historians, some of their politicians, and a few whom they call unreconstructed rebels, concede that the right of secession has been put to the arbitrament of war and decided against the South forever. Now they tell us that none are more loyal and will march more willingly under the Stars and Stripes than those who fought so bravely to the bitter end under the flag of the Confederacy. Even Jefferson Davis, in the conclusion of his history, concedes that the result of the war has shown that secession is impracticable. It is difficult, however, to understand how might has made right, and the conquest of the richer and more populous North over the weaker South has settled forever the right or wrong of the matter. The North does not believe in the sneering maxim of Frederick the Great, that the Almighty is on the side of the heavier battalions.

Nor need we go to the South or to our English military critics for this opinion as to the Northern right. In a recent short life of Webster written for the American Statesmen series, a distinguished Republican politician and historian, Henry Cabot Lodge, in criticising the greatest speech of our greatest orator, Webster's in reply to Hayne, on South Carolina's nullification doctrines, makes these astounding statements:

"That it was probably necessary, at all events Mr. Webster felt it to be so, to argue that the Const.i.tution at the outset was not a compact between States, but a national instrument....

When the Const.i.tution was adopted, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment entered upon by the States, and from which each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised."

This is a declaration of the right of secession at the inception of our government and that every one held that belief. If this be correct, with such a right the Union was no enduring tie, but was a mere rope of sand.

He adds that the weak places in Webster's armor were historical in nature. In support of this opinion, he instances the Virginia and Kentucky resolves in 1799, and the Hartford convention of 1814; a few disloyal, some might say treasonable, acts and declarations; and then tells us a confederacy had grown into a nation, and that Mr. Webster set forth the national conception of the Union; and the principles, which he made clear and definite, went on broadening and deepening and carried the North through the civil war and preserved the national life. A singular result from a speech, if it were so fundamentally and historically wrong.

If Mr. Lodge, and those who agree with him, and there are some at the North who do, be right, and Hayne got the better of Webster in that celebrated contest, the nullification doctrines and acts of South Carolina were const.i.tutionally sound and legal; and if South Carolina were right in her nullification, the secession of the South, thirty years afterwards, was also right.

We do not concede that nullification and secession have been barred because the course of events has been such that independent sovereign States have grown into a nation; nor do we admit that the Union and its indissolubility depend only on the result of an appeal to arms. We claim with Webster that nullification and secession were entirely indefensible const.i.tutionally, and also in the light of history at the time of the foundation of our Const.i.tution, and ever since.

There can be no doubt of the effect of Webster's speeches at the time of their delivery; they aroused the national pride of the people, and the whole country, except portions of the South, responded.

It was in this nullification controversy that Webster won the t.i.tle of the Great Expounder of the Const.i.tution; he was then at his prime, physically and mentally. Always carefully dressed, when he made his speeches, in the blue coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, buff waistcoat, and white cravat of the Whigs of Fox's time; his large frame, his ma.s.sive head with dark, straight hair, and deep set and, in debate, luminous black eyes; his superb swarthy complexion brightened with brilliant color that is even in women so handsome; his grand and rich voice; his emphatic delivery;--all served to make him the most impressive of orators.

It was often said by his contemporaries at the bar that unless Webster wholly believed in the justice of the cause he was maintaining he could not argue well. He was not like some of the greatest advocates, whose ability and ingenuity are only fully brought forth when they have to contend with the difficulties of a weak and almost desperate case.

Hayne, his antagonist, was an able, eloquent, and accomplished orator.

His speech did not create that enthusiasm at the South that Webster's did at the North; but his own State pertinaciously adhered to its doctrine of nullification and saw no defeat to its champion.

There were no less than three speeches of Hayne's--one of them, the second, running through two days--and the same number of replies by Webster. The debate took place in the Senate in January, 1830; it arose on an amended resolution originally offered by Mr. Foote as to the expediency of limiting or hastening the sales of the public lands. South Carolina was then threatening to declare the existing tariff null and void, and to pa.s.s laws preventing the United States from collecting duties in its ports. Hayne urged that the government should dispose of the public lands and after paying the national debt with the proceeds should get rid of the remainder, so that there should not be a shilling of permanent revenue; he looked with alarm on the consolidation of the government. To get the support of the West against the East, he accused the East of a narrow policy towards the West as to the public lands and the tariff, "the accursed tariff," as he termed it, which kept mult.i.tudes of laborers in the East to the detriment of the West. In his second speech, Hayne not only attacked the East and its policy as to the public lands and support of the tariff, but went further and "carried the war into Africa," as he styled it, reading speeches, pamphlets, and sermons, showing, as he claimed, the disloyalty of New England in the war of 1812.

He maintained that the United States had exceeded the powers granted to it by the Const.i.tution in making the existing tariff, which protected the manufacturing industry of the East, only a section of the country, and compelled the non-manufacturing States to pay tribute to it; that the United States government was a compact between independent sovereign States; that each of the States, being an independent sovereign, had a right in its own sovereign capacity to decide whether laws made by the United States exceeded the powers given it by the Const.i.tution, and if a State held a law made by the United States was not authorized by the Const.i.tution, it could treat it as null and void; that the existing tariff was a clear and palpable violation of the Const.i.tution, and that South Carolina could and would pa.s.s laws forbidding and preventing the collection in its territory of the duties levied under it.

Before taking up Webster's const.i.tutional argument, we will give a brief account of his answer to the attack made on himself and the East.

Webster, in his great speech, the second in reply to Hayne, alluding to Hayne's allegation that he, Webster, had slept upon his first speech, said, "he must have slept upon it, or not slept at all": and he a.s.sured him that he did sleep on it and slept soundly.

One of the most stinging and dramatic events that ever occurred in the Senate-chamber, as a distinguished Senator from Maine has told the writer, was the manner in which Webster turned upon his opponents the taunt of Hayne, that the ghost of the murdered coalition, like Banquo's, would not down at their bidding, and had brought up him and his friends to defend themselves. Webster replied that it was not the friends but the enemies of the murdered Banquo, at whose bidding the spirit would not down. The ghost of Banquo, like that of Hamlet, was an honest ghost; then turning on and pointing to Calhoun, who, as Vice-President in Jackson's first administration, was presiding over the Senate, and whose reputed ambition to succeed as President had signally failed, he asked:

"Those who murdered Banquo, what did they win by it?

Substantial good? Permanent power? Or disappointment rather, and sore mortification;--dust and ashes--the common fate of vaulting ambition overleaping itself?... Did they not soon find that for another they had 'filed their mind,' that their ambition had put

"'A barren sceptre in their gripe, Thence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand-- No son of theirs succeeding.'"

Calhoun showed his emotion and moved in his chair. In a speech made three years afterwards, when a Senator, he denied that he had aspired after the presidency.