The Works of Daniel Webster Part 10

At the second session, bills were introduced into the Senate for erecting California and New Mexico into States; the question of slavery to be left to the people of the States respectively. These bills, however, did not pa.s.s the Senate. A few days before the close of the session, Mr. Walker of Wisconsin moved an amendment to the general appropriation bill for the support of government, providing for the extension of the revenue laws of the United States over California and New Mexico; to extend the provisions of the Const.i.tution of the United States to these territories, together with all the laws applicable to them; and granting authority to the President to appoint the officers necessary to carry these provisions into effect. This amendment prevailed in the Senate, but was further amended in the House, by adding to it the "Wilmot Proviso." The Senate refused to accede to this amendment of their amendment, and the two houses were brought to the verge of a disagreement, which would have prevented the pa.s.sage of the general appropriation bill, and stopped the wheels of government. The debates in the Senate were of the most impa.s.sioned kind, and were protracted till five o'clock of Sunday morning, the 4th of March; when the Senate, on the suggestion of Mr. Webster, disagreed to the amendment of the House relative to California, and at the same time receded from their own amendment, and thus pa.s.sed the general appropriation bill, as it originally came from the House. All provision for the territories was necessarily sacrificed by this course; but a bill which had previously pa.s.sed the House, extending the revenue laws of the United States to California, was pa.s.sed by the Senate, and rescued the people of California from an entire dest.i.tution of government on behalf of the United States. The Senate on this occasion was, for the first time since the adoption of the Const.i.tution, on the verge of disorganization; and it was felt throughout the day and night, that it was saved from falling into that condition mainly by the parliamentary tact and personal influence of Mr. Webster. This tribute was paid to Mr. Webster's arduous exertions on that occasion by a member of Congress warmly opposed to him.

Not the least important consequence of the Mexican war was the political revolution in the United States of which it was the cause. When the policy of invading and conquering Mexico was determined upon, it was probably regarded by the administration as a measure calculated to strengthen their party. Opponents were likely to expose themselves to odium by disapproving the war. The commanding generals were both Whigs, and one of them had been named as a candidate for the Presidency. It was probably thought that, if they succeeded, the glory would accrue to the administration; if they failed, the discredit would fall upon themselves.

If antic.i.p.ations like these were formed, they were signally disappointed. A series of the most brilliant triumphs crowned the arms both of General Taylor and General Scott. Those of General Taylor were first in time; and as they had been preceded by doubts, anxieties, and, in the case of Buena Vista, by rumors of disaster, they took the stronger hold of the public mind. The nomination for the Presidency was not reserved for the Whig convention. It was in effect made at Palto Alto and Monterey, and was confirmed at Buena Vista. It was a movement of the people to which resistance was in vain.

Statesmen and civilians, however, might well pause for a moment. The late experience of the country, under a President elected in consequence of military popularity, was not favorable to a repet.i.tion of the experiment; and General Taylor was wholly unknown in political life. At the Whig convention in Philadelphia other distinguished Whigs, General Scott, Mr. Clay, and Mr. Webster, had divided the votes with General Taylor. He was, however, selected by a great majority as the candidate of the party. Mr. Webster took the view of this nomination which might have been expected from a veteran statesman and a civilian of forty years' experience in the service of the country. He had, in common with the whole Whig party, in General Jackson's case, opposed the nomination of a military chieftain. How many Whigs who hailed General Taylor's nomination with enthusiasm had as good reasons for so doing as Mr.

Webster had for the moderation and reserve with which he spoke of it in his Marshfield speech? Few persons, at the present day, will find in that speech any thing, with respect to General Taylor's nomination, from which a candid and impartial judgment would dissent; and it is well known, that, in the progress of the canva.s.s, that nomination found no firmer supporter than Mr. Webster. On his accession to the Presidency, General Taylor found Mr. Webster disposed and prepared to give his administration a cordial and efficient support.

In the summer and autumn of 1849 events of the utmost importance occurred in California. The people of that region, left almost entirely without a government by Congress, met in convention to form a const.i.tution; and although nearly half of the members who were new-comers were from the Southern States, they unanimously agreed to the prohibition of slavery. The const.i.tution prepared by the convention was accepted by the people, and with it they applied for admission to the Union. General Riley, who had been appointed by the President to command the forces in that territory, was instructed to facilitate, as far as it was in his power, the a.s.sembling of a convention; and the course pursued by the convention and the people in the formation of the const.i.tution was understood to be in all respects approved by President Taylor.

Other occurrences, however, had in the mean time taken place, which materially increased the difficulties attending the territorial question. The subject of slavery had for fifteen or twenty years been agitated with steadily increasing warmth, and for the latter portion of the period with growing violence. On the acquisition of the Mexican provinces, the representatives of the non-slaveholding States generally deemed it their duty to introduce into the acts pa.s.sed for their government a restriction a.n.a.logous to the antislavery proviso of the Ordinance of 1787. A motion to this effect having been made by Mr.

Wilmot of Pennsylvania, by way of amendment to one of the appropriation bills pa.s.sed during the war, the restriction has obtained the name of the "Wilmot Proviso." This motion in the House of Representatives was extensively seconded by the press, by popular a.s.semblies, and by legislative resolutions throughout the non-slaveholding States, and caused a considerable increase of antislavery agitation.

The South, of course, took an interest in the question not inferior to that of the North. The extension of the United States on the southwestern frontier has long been a cardinal point in the policy of most Southern statesmen. The application of an antislavery proviso to territories acquired by conquest in that quarter came into direct conflict with this policy. Meetings were accordingly held at Washington during the first session of the Thirtieth Congress, attended by a majority of the members from the slaveholding States, to take into consideration the measures proper to be adopted. At one of these meetings a sub-committee was appointed, of which Mr. Calhoun was chairman, to prepare an address "of the Southern delegates to their const.i.tuents." At a subsequent meeting a subst.i.tute for this address was submitted by Mr. Berrien of Georgia, under the t.i.tle of an address "to the people of the United States." The original paper was, however, adopted in preference, and received the signatures of forty-eight of the members of Congress from the slaveholding States. Of these all but two were of the Democratic party.[30]

These proceedings contributed materially to increase the discontents existing at the South. Nor was the progress of excitement less rapid at the North. The nomination of General Taylor by the Whig convention, accompanied by the refusal of that convention to countenance the Wilmot Proviso, led to the organization of the Free Soil party in the non-slaveholding States. In the summer of 1848, a convention of delegates of this party a.s.sembled at Buffalo in New York, at which an antislavery platform was adopted, and Mr. Van Buren was nominated as a candidate for the Presidency.

These occurrences and the state of feeling which they created, or indicated, appeared to Mr. Webster to const.i.tute a crisis in the condition of the country of a most formidable description. Opinion at the North and South had, in his judgment, either reached, or was rapidly reaching, a point at which the cooperation of the two sections of the country in carrying on the government as coequal members of the Federal Union would cease to be practicable. The const.i.tutional opinions and the views on the subject of slavery set forth in Mr. Calhoun's address he deemed to be such as could never be acquiesced in by the non-slaveholding States. On the other hand, the organization of a party on the basis of antislavery agitation at the North appeared to him equally menacing to the Union. The professions of attachment to the Union and the Const.i.tution made on both sides, and often, no doubt, in entire good faith, did but increase the danger, by their tendency to produce misapprehension and self-deception as to the really irreconcilable nature of the opposite extremes of opinion.

It was his profound and anxious sense of the dangers of the Union, in this crisis of affairs, which reconciled Mr. Webster to the nomination of General Taylor. He saw in his position as a citizen of a Southern State and a slaveholder the basis of support to his administration from that quarter of the Union; while his connection with the Whig party, the known moderation of his views, with his declared sentiments on the subject of the Presidential veto, were a sufficient ground for the confidence of the North. In fact, in the existing state of things, it was soon apparent that there was no other candidate of either party so well calculated to allay sectional differences, and guide the vessel of state over the stormy sea of excitement and agitation.

But whatever reliance might justly have been placed upon the character and disposition of General Taylor, the prospect of affairs was sufficiently dark and inauspicious. Thoughtful persons looked forward to a struggle on the territorial question, at the first session of the Thirty-first Congress, which would convulse the country. In this state of things the event which we have already alluded to took place, and California presented herself for admission as a State, with a const.i.tution prohibiting slavery. As California was the only portion of the Mexican territory in reference to which the question was of practical importance, Mr. Webster derived from this unexpected and seasonable occurrence a gleam of hope. It removed a topic of controversy in reference to which it had seemed hopeless to propose any terms of compromise; and it opened, as it were providentially, the door for an understanding on other points, on the basis of carrying into execution existing compacts and const.i.tutional provisions on the one hand, and not strenuously insisting, on the other hand, upon applying the antislavery proviso where, as in Utah and New Mexico, he was persuaded it could be of no practical importance.

On these principles, and with this object in view, Mr. Webster made his great speech of the 7th of March, 1850.

It would be too much to expect, in reference to a subject of so much difficulty, and one on which the public mind has been so greatly excited, that a speech of this description should find universal favor in any part of the country. It is believed, however, that by the majority of patriotic and reflecting citizens in every part of the United States, while on single topics there may be differences of opinion, it has been regarded as holding out a practical basis for the adjustment of controversies, which had already gone far to dissolve the Union, and could not be much longer pursued without producing that result. If those who have most strongly expressed their dissent from the doctrines of the speech (we do not, of course, allude to the mere clamor of political or personal enemies) will pause from the work of denunciation, and make the attempt themselves to lay down _a practicable platform_ on which this great controversy can in fact be settled, and the union of the States perpetuated, they will not find it so hard to censure what is done by others as to do better themselves. It is quite easy to construct a Southern platform or a Northern platform; the difficulty is to find a basis on which South and North will be able and _willing_ to stand together. Of all those who have condemned the views of Mr. Webster, who has gone further than he, in the speech of the 7th of March, 1850, to furnish such a basis? Or rather, we may ask, who of those that have been loudest in condemnation of his course has taken a single step towards effecting this paramount object?

Mr. Webster's thoughts are known to have been earnestly and profoundly employed on this subject from the commencement of the session. He saw beforehand the difficulties and the dangers incident to the step which he adopted, but he believed that, unless some such step was taken in the North, the separation of the States was inevitable. The known state of opinion of leading members of Congress led him to look for little support from them. He opened the matter to some of his political friends, but they did not encourage him in the course he felt bound to pursue. He found that he could not expect the cooperation of the members of Congress from his own State, nor that of many of the members from the other Northern States. He gave up all attempt to rally beforehand a party which would sustain him. His own description of his feelings at the time was, "that he had made up his mind to embark alone on what he was aware would prove a stormy sea, because, in that case, should final disaster ensue, there would be but one life lost." But he believed that the step which he was about to take would be sanctioned by the ma.s.s of the people, and in that reliance he went forward.

While the compromise measures were still undecided before Congress, about midsummer of 1850, President Taylor was removed from his high office by death. In the reorganization of the executive occasioned by this event, Mr. Webster, to the general satisfaction of the country, was placed by President Fillmore at the head of the administration.

Subsequent events are too recent to need to be described. The correspondence with the Austrian Charge d'Affaires is the worthy complement, after an interval of a quarter of a century, to the profound discussion of international politics contained in the speech of January, 1824, on the revolution in Greece, and that of 1826, on the Congress of Panama. We have before us a translation of this correspondence furtively published in Germany, and circulated throughout the Austrian empire. The fervid appeals to the patriotism of the people, with which Mr. Webster has electrified the Union on various occasions during the last nine months, have contributed materially to the great work of sectional conciliation; and his last n.o.ble effort, on laying the corner-stone of the Capitol, will be read with admiration as long as the Capitol itself shall last.

Such, in a brief and imperfect narrative, is the public life of Mr.

Webster, extending over a period of forty years, marked by the occurrence of events of great importance. It has been the aim of the writer to prevent the pen of the biographer from being too much influenced by the partiality of the friend. Should he seem to the candid not wholly to have escaped that error, (which, however, he trusts will not be the case,) he ventures to hope that it will be forgiven to an intimacy which commenced in the youth of one of the parties and the boyhood of the other, and which has subsisted for nearly half a century. It will be admitted, he thinks, by every one, that this career, however inadequately delineated, has been one of singular eminence and brilliancy. Entering upon public life at the close of the first epoch in the political history of the United States under the present Const.i.tution, Mr. Webster has stood below none of the distinguished men who have impressed their character on the second.

There is a cla.s.s of public questions in reference to which the opinions of most men are greatly influenced by prejudices founded in natural temperament, early a.s.sociation, and real or supposed local interest. As far as such questions are concerned, it is too much to hope that, in times of high party excitement, full justice will be done to prominent statesmen by those of their contemporaries who differ from them. We greatly err, however, if candid men of all parties, and in all parts of the country, do not accord to Mr. Webster the praise of having formed to himself a large and generous view of the character of an American statesman, and of having adopted the loftiest standard of public conduct. They will agree that he has conceived, in all its importance, the position of the country as a member of the great family of nations, and as the leading republican government. In reference to domestic politics it will be as generally conceded, that, reposing less than most public men on a party basis, it has been the main object of his life to confirm and perpetuate the great work of the const.i.tutional fathers of the last generation.

By their wisdom and patriotic forethought we are blessed with a system in which the several States are brought into a union so admirably composed and balanced,--both complicated and kept distinct with such skill,--as to seem less a work of human prudence than of Providential interposition.[31] Mr. Webster has at all times been fully aware of the evils of anarchy, discord, and civil war at home, and of utter national insignificance abroad, from which the formation of the Union saved us.

He has been not less sensible to the obstacles to be overcome the perils to be encountered, and the sufferings to be borne, before this wonderful framework of government could be established. And he has been firmly persuaded that, if once destroyed, it can never be reconstructed. With these views, his political life has been consecrated to the maintenance in all their strength of the principles on which the Const.i.tution rests, and to the support of the system of government created by it.

The key to his whole political course is the belief that, when the Union is dissolved, the internal peace, the vigorous growth, and the prosperity of the States, and the welfare of their inhabitants, are blighted for ever, and that, while the Union endures, all else of trial and calamity which can befall a nation may be remedied or borne. So believing, he has pursued a course which has earned for him an honored name among those who have discharged the duty of good citizens with the most distinguished ability, zeal, and benefit to the country. In the relations of civilized life, there is no higher service which man can render to man, than thus to preserve a wise const.i.tution of government in healthful action. Nor does the most eloquent of the statesmen of antiquity content himself with p.r.o.nouncing this the highest human merit.

In that admirable treatise on the Republic, of which some precious chapters have been restored to us after having been lost for ages, he does not hesitate to affirm, that there is nothing in which human virtue approaches nearer the divine, than in establishing and preserving states: "neque enim ulla res est, in qua propius ad deorum numen virtus accedat humana, quam civitates aut condere novas aut conservare jam conditas."[32]

FOOTNOTES

[30] In compiling this narrative much use has been made of the third volume of the work ent.i.tled "The Statesman's Manual," a most useful work of reference.

[31] This idea is beautifully expressed in the following pa.s.sage of a late letter from Mr. Webster, in reply to an invitation from the citizens of Macon, Georgia:--

"The States are united, not consolidated;

'Not, chaos-like, together crashed and bruised, But, like the world, harmoniously confused, Where order in variety we see; And where, though all things differ, all agree.'"

[32] M. Tulli Ciceronis de Re Publica quae supersunt, edente Angelo Maio. Lib. I. -- 7.

FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

The first public anniversary celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth took place under the auspices of the "Old Colony Club,"

of whose formation an account may be found in the interesting little work of William S. Russell, Esq., ent.i.tled "Guide to Plymouth and Recollections of the Pilgrims."

This club was formed for general purposes of social intercourse, in 1769; but its members determined, by a vote pa.s.sed on Monday the 18th of December of that year, "to keep" Friday, the 22d, in commemoration of the landing of the fathers. A particular account of the simple festivities of this first public celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims will be found at page 220 of Mr. Russell's work.

The following year, the anniversary was celebrated much in the same manner as in 1769, with the addition of a short address, p.r.o.nounced "with modest and decent firmness, by a member of the club, Edward Winslow, Jr., Esq.," being the first address ever delivered on this occasion.

In 1771, it was suggested by Rev. Chandler Robbins, pastor of the First Church at Plymouth, in a letter addressed to the club, "whether it would not be agreeable, for the entertainment and instruction of the rising generation on these anniversaries, to have a sermon in public, some part of the day, peculiarly adapted to the occasion." This recommendation prevailed, and an appropriate discourse was delivered the following year by the Rev. Dr. Robbins.

In 1773 the Old Colony Club was dissolved, in consequence of the conflicting opinions of its members on the great political questions then agitated. Notwithstanding this event, the anniversary celebrations of the 22d of December continued without interruption till 1780, when they were suspended. After an interval of fourteen years, a public discourse was again delivered by the Rev. Dr. Robbins. Private celebrations took place the four following years, and from that time till the year 1819, with one or two exceptions, the day was annually commemorated, and public addresses were delivered by distinguished clergymen and laymen of Ma.s.sachusetts.

In 1820 the "Pilgrim Society" was formed by the citizens of Plymouth and the descendants of the Pilgrims in other places, desirous of uniting "to commemorate the landing, and to honor the memory of the intrepid men who first set foot on Plymouth rock." The foundation of this society gave a new impulse to the anniversary celebrations of this great event. The Hon. Daniel Webster was requested to deliver the public address on the 22d of December of that year, and the following discourse was p.r.o.nounced by him on the ever-memorable occasion. Great public expectation was awakened by the fame of the orator; an immense concourse a.s.sembled at Plymouth to unite in the celebration; and it may be safely antic.i.p.ated, that some portion of the powerful effect of the following address on the minds of those who were so fortunate as to hear it, will be perpetuated by the press to the latest posterity.

From 1820 to the present day, with occasional interruptions, the 22d of December has been celebrated by the Pilgrim Society. A list of all those by whom anniversary discourses have been delivered since the first organization of the Old Colony Club, in 1769, may be found in Mr.

Russell's work.

Nor has the notice of the day been confined to New England. Public celebrations of the landing of the Pilgrims have been frequent in other parts of the country, particularly in New York. The New England Society of that city has rarely permitted the day to pa.s.s without appropriate honors. Similar societies have been formed at Philadelphia, Charleston, S. C., and Cincinnati, and the day has been publicly commemorated in several other parts of the country.

FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.[33]

Let us rejoice that we behold this day. Let us be thankful that we have lived to see the bright and happy breaking of the auspicious morn, which commences the third century of the history of New England. Auspicious, indeed,--bringing a happiness beyond the common allotment of Providence to men,--full of present joy, and gilding with bright beams the prospect of futurity, is the dawn that awakens us to the commemoration of the landing of the Pilgrims.

Living at an epoch which naturally marks the progress of the history of our native land, we have come hither to celebrate the great event with which that history commenced. For ever honored be this, the place of our fathers' refuge! For ever remembered the day which saw them, weary and distressed, broken in every thing but spirit, poor in all but faith and courage, at last secure from the dangers of wintry seas, and impressing this sh.o.r.e with the first footsteps of civilized man!

It is a n.o.ble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness with what is distant in place or time; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth, in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in the future by hope and antic.i.p.ation. By ascending to an a.s.sociation with our ancestors; by contemplating their example and studying their character; by partaking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; by accompanying them in their toils, by sympathizing in their sufferings, and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs; we seem to belong to their age, and to mingle our own existence with theirs. We become their contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like manner, by running along the line of future time, by contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are coming after us, by attempting something which may promote their happiness, and leave some not dishonorable memorial of ourselves for their regard, when we shall sleep with the fathers, we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as well as all that is past, into the narrow compa.s.s of our earthly existence. As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb, which, amidst this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings, with which his goodness has peopled the infinite of s.p.a.ce; so neither is it false or vain to consider ourselves as interested and connected with our whole race, through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last, with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of G.o.d.

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry, which nourishes only a weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and grovelling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with excellence which is departed; and a consciousness, too, that in its acts and conduct, and even in its sentiments and thoughts, it may be actively operating on the happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to have few stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm the mind, than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry, only because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but the handmaid of true philosophy and morality; it deals with us as human beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this state of existence is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not what sympathy with ourselves; and when it carries us forward, also, and shows us the long continued result of all the good we do, in the prosperity of those who follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us, it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with sentiments which belong to us as human beings.

Standing in this relation to our ancestors and our posterity, we are a.s.sembled on this memorable spot, to perform the duties which that relation and the present occasion impose upon us. We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our grat.i.tude for their labors; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty, which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish. And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles and private virtue, in our veneration of religion and piety, in our devotion to civil and religious liberty, in our regard for whatever advances human knowledge or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin.