The Works of Daniel Webster Part 9

We have in the preceding remarks confined ourselves to the topics connected with the treaty of Washington. But other subjects of great importance connected with the foreign affairs of the country engaged the attention of Mr. Webster as Secretary of State.

The first of these pertained to our controversies with Mexico, and was treated in a letter to M. de Bocanegra, the Mexican Secretary of State and Foreign Relations. The great and unexpected changes which have taken place in that quarter since the date of this correspondence will not impair the interest with which it will be read. It throws important light on the earlier stages of our controversy with that ill-advised and infatuated government. Among the papers in this part of the volume are those which relate to the Santa Fe prisoners and Captain Jones's attack on Monterey.

Under the head of "Relations with Spain" will be found a correspondence of great interest between the Chevalier d'Argaz, the representative of that government, and Mr. Webster, on the subject of the "Amistad." The pertinacity with which this matter was pursued by Spain, after its adjudication by the Supreme Court of the United States, furnishes an instructive commentary upon the sincerity of that government in its measures for the abolition of the slave-trade. The entire merits of this important and extraordinary case are condensed in Mr. Webster's letters of the 1st of September, 1841, and 21st of June, 1842.

Of still greater interest are the inst.i.tution of the mission to China, and the steps which led to the establishment of the independence of the Sandwich Islands. The sixth volume of this collection contains the instructions given to Mr. Cushing as commissioner to China, and the correspondence between Mr. Webster and Messrs. Richards and Haalilio on behalf of the Sandwich Islands. At any period less crowded with important events the opening of diplomatic relations with China, and the conclusion of a treaty of commerce with that power, would have been deemed occurrences of unusual importance. It certainly reflects great credit on the administration, that it acted with such prompt.i.tude and efficiency in seizing this opportunity of multiplying avenues of commercial intercourse. Nor is less praise due to the energy and skill of the negotiator,[29] to whom this novel and important undertaking was confided, and who was able to embark from China, on his return homeward, in six months after his arrival, having in the mean time satisfactorily concluded the treaty.

The application of the representatives of the Sandwich Islands to the government of the United States, and the countenance extended to them at Washington, exercised a most salutary and seasonable influence over the destiny of those islands. The British government was promptly made aware of the course pursued by the United States, and was no doubt led, in a considerable degree, by this circ.u.mstance, to promise the Hawaiian delegates, on the part of England, to respect the independent neutrality of their government. In the mean time, the British admiral on that station had taken provisional possession of them on behalf of his government, in antic.i.p.ation of a similar movement which was expected on the part of France. If intelligence of this occurrence had been received in London before the promise above alluded to was given by Lord Aberdeen to Messrs. Richards and Haalilio, it is not impossible that Great Britain might have felt herself warranted in retaining the protectorate of the Hawaiian Islands as an offset for the occupation of Tahiti by the French. As it was, the temporary arrangement of the British admiral was disavowed, and the government restored to the native chief.

Among the papers contained in the sixth volume will be found a correspondence between Mr. Webster and the Portuguese Minister, on the subject of duties on Portuguese wines, and a report of great importance on the Sound duties and the Zoll-Verein, topics to which the recent changes in the Germanic system will henceforward impart a greatly increased importance.

This brief enumeration will of itself sufficiently show the extensive range of the subjects to which the attention of Mr. Webster was called, during the two years for which he filled the Department of State.

The published correspondence probably forms but a small portion of the official labors of the Department of State for the period during which it was filled by Mr. Webster. They const.i.tute, nevertheless, the most important part of the doc.u.mentary record of a period of official service, brief, indeed, but as beneficial to the country as any of which the memory is preserved in her annals. The administration of General Harrison found the United States, in the spring of 1841, on the verge of a war, not with a feeble Spanish province, scarcely capable of a respectable resistance, but with the most powerful government on earth.

The conduct of our foreign relations was intrusted to Mr. Webster, as Secretary of State, and in the two years during which he filled that office controversies of fifty years' standing were terminated, new causes of quarrel that sprung up like hydra's heads were settled, and peace was preserved upon honorable terms. The British government, fresh from the conquest of China, perhaps never felt itself stronger than in the year 1842, and a full share of credit is due to the spirit of conciliation which swayed its counsels. Much is due to the wise and amiable minister who was despatched from England on the holy errand of peace; much to the patriotism of the Senate of the United States, who confirmed the treaty of Washington by a larger majority than ever before sustained a measure of this kind which divided public opinion; but the first meed of praise is unquestionably due to the American negotiator.

Let the just measure of that praise be estimated, by reflecting what would have been our condition during the last few years, if, instead of, or in addition to, the war with Mexico, we had been involved in a war with Great Britain.

FOOTNOTES

[23] This chapter is republished, with but slight modifications, from the volume of Mr. Webster's Diplomatic and Official Papers which appeared in 1848, to which it served as the Introduction.

[24] Mr. Stevenson.

[25] Senate Papers, Twenty-seventh Congress, First Session, No. 33.

[26] Younger son of Mr. Webster, who died in Mexico, in 1848, being a major in the regiment of Ma.s.sachusetts Volunteers.

[27] The authorities are given in Story's Commentaries Vol. III. pp.

675, 676; Conflict of Laws, pp. 520, 522; and in Kent's Commentaries, Vol. I. pp. 36, 37.

[28] The following pa.s.sage from a letter of Robert Walsh, Esq., to the editors of the National Intelligencer, dated Paris, 28th October, 1842, furnishes confirmation of the remark in the text:--

"The former journal [The Times], of the 18th instant, acknowledges that Mr. Webster 'has not exaggerated the hardships and evils which the practice of impressment occasioned in the last war.' It ratifies his ideas of the probable aggravation of them, if the practice should be ever renewed; it would even dispense with press-warrants at home, as adverse to the general principles of British liberty and law: it advises some general measure for the entire abolition of arbitrary impressment both at home and abroad, and it expresses its belief of a very strong probability, that, in the event of a war, no instructions for the impressment of British seamen found in American merchant-vessels will be issued to her Majesty's cruisers. The Standard chimes with the great oracle, and concludes in this strain: 'We may infer that, whatever may be the plan hereafter for managing our navy, impressment will never again be resorted to; this is beyond a doubt: _the practice complained of by Mr. Webster will be abandoned_.'"

[29] Mr. Cushing.

CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Webster resigns his Place in Mr. Tyler's Cabinet.--Attempts to draw public Attention to the projected Annexation of Texas.--Supports Mr. Clay's Nomination for the Presidency.--Causes of the Failure of that Nomination.--Mr. Webster returns to the Senate of the United States.--Admission of Texas to the Union.--The War with Mexico.--Mr. Webster's Course in Reference to the War.--Death of Major Webster in Mexico.--Mr. Webster's unfavorable Opinion of the Mexican Government.--Settlement of the Oregon Controversy.--Mr. Webster's Agency in effecting the Adjustment.--Revival of the Sub-Treasury System and Repeal of the Tariff Law of 1842.--Southern Tour.--Success of the Mexican War and Acquisition of the Mexican Provinces.--Efforts in Congress to organize a Territorial Government for these Provinces.--Great Exertions of Mr. Webster on the last Night of the Session.--Nomination of General Taylor, and Course of Mr. Webster in Reference to it.--A Const.i.tution of State Government adopted by California prohibiting Slavery.--Increase of Antislavery Agitation.--Alarming State of Affairs.--Mr. Webster's Speech for the Union.--Circ.u.mstances under which it was made, and Motives by which he was influenced.--General Taylor's Death, and the Accession of Mr.

Fillmore to the Presidency.--Mr. Webster called to the Department of State.

Mr. Webster remained in the Department of State but a little over two years. His last act was the preparation of the instructions of Mr.

Cushing, who had been appointed Commissioner to China. Difficulties had occurred the summer before, between President Tyler and some of the members of his Cabinet, and all of those gentlemen, with the exception of Mr. Webster, tendered their resignations, which were accepted. Hard thoughts were entertained of Mr. Webster in some quarters for continuing to hold his seat after the resignation of his colleagues. President Tyler, however, had in no degree withdrawn his confidence from Mr.

Webster in reference to the foreign affairs of the country, nor interfered with the administration of his department, and Mr. Webster conceived that the interests involved in his remaining at his post were far too important to be sacrificed to punctilio. His own sense of duty in this respect was confirmed by the unanimous counsel of the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation in Congress, and by judicious friends in all parts of the country. In fact, it will be remembered that when difficulties sprung up between Mr. Tyler and the Whig party in Congress, in 1842, the Whig press generally throughout the country called upon the members of the Cabinet appointed by General Harrison to retain their places till they should be removed by Mr. Tyler.

Mr. Webster remained in private life during the residue of President Tyler's administration, occupied as usual with professional pursuits, and enjoying in the appropriate seasons the retirement of his farm. He endeavored by private communications to arouse the feeling of the North to the projects which he perceived to be in agitation for the annexation of Texas but the danger was regarded at that time as too remote to be contended against. A short time only elapsed before the fulfilment of his antic.i.p.ations was forced upon the country, with fearful urgency, and a train of consequences of which it will be left to a late posterity to witness the full development. Between the years 1843 and 1845 the fortunes of the United States were subjected to an influence, for good or for evil, not to be exhausted for centuries.

The nomination of Mr. Clay to the Presidency in 1844 was cordially supported by Mr. Webster. He took the field, as in the summer of 1840 in favor of General Harrison. The proofs of the untiring zeal with which he entered into the canva.s.s, and of the great power and fertility with which he discussed the various topics of the day, will be seen in the second volume of the present collection. It has, however, been found impossible to insert more than a selection of the speeches made by him during the campaign. Others not inferior in merit and interest were made by him in the course of the summer and autumn of 1844.

It is well known that the result of this election was decisive of the question of the annexation of Texas. The opinions expressed by Mr. Van Buren against the immediate consummation of that project had prevented his receiving the nomination of the Baltimore Convention. Mr. Clay was pledged against the measure, and Mr. Polk was selected as its sure friend. If in 1844 the friends of Mr. Van Buren, instead of giving in their adhesion to the Baltimore nomination (which was in fact turning the scale in favor of Texas), had been prepared, as in 1848, to support a separate nomination, or even if the few thousand votes cast by the "Liberty party" against Mr. Clay had been given in his favor, he would have been chosen President of the United States, to the indefinite postponement of the annexation of Texas and the Mexican war, with all their consequences. But in great things as in small, men throw away the substance while they grasp at the shadow.

At the first session of the Twenty-ninth Congress (1845-46), Mr. Webster took his seat as the successor of Mr. Choate in the Senate of the United States. The question of the admission of Texas was decided at the very commencement of the session. It was opposed by Mr. Webster. To all the other objections to the measure in his mind was added that of unconst.i.tutionality. The annexation was now brought about simply by a joint resolution of the two houses, after it had been found impossible to effect it by treaty, the only form known to the Const.i.tution by which a compact can be entered into with a foreign power. Mr. Jefferson was of opinion in 1803, that even a treaty with France was not sufficient for the annexation of Louisiana, but that an amendment of the Const.i.tution was necessary for that purpose. In 1845 the executive and a majority of Congress, having failed to carry the ratification of a treaty of annexation by the const.i.tutional majority, scrupled not to accomplish their purpose by a joint resolution of the two houses; and this measure was effected under the lead of statesmen who claim to construe the Const.i.tution with literal strictness. Events like these furnish a painful ill.u.s.tration of the frailty of const.i.tutional restraints as a barrier against the consummation of the favorite measures of a dominant party.

The great event of the administration of President Polk was the war with Mexico. The time has not yet arrived when the counsels under which this war was brought about can be fully unfolded. On the 2d of December, 1845, in his first annual message, having communicated to Congress the acceptance by Texas of the terms of annexation offered by the joint resolution, President Polk thus expressed himself:--

"This accession to our territory has been a bloodless achievement.

No arm of force has been raised to produce the result. The sword has had no part in the victory. We have not sought to extend our territorial possessions by conquest, or our republican inst.i.tutions over a reluctant people. It was the deliberate homage of each people to the great principle of our federative Union."

The proffered annexation of Texas had been declined both by General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, on the ground that, unless made with the consent of Mexico, it would involve a war with that power. That this would be the effect was not less certain on the 2d of December, 1845, when Congress were congratulated on the "bloodless" acquisition, than it was when, on the 13th of January following, General Taylor was instructed to occupy the left bank of the Rio del Norte. In fact, in the very message in which President Polk remarks to Congress "that the sword had had no part in the victory," he gives them also the significant information, that, upon the earnest appeal both of the Congress and convention of Texas, he had ordered "an efficient military force to take a position between the Nueces and the Del Norte."

This force, however efficient in proportion to its numbers and in virtue of the gallantry and skill of its commander, was found to be inadequate to sustain the brunt of the Mexican arms. Rapid movements on the part of Generals Ampudia and Arista, commanding on the frontier, seriously endangered the safety of General Taylor's force, and it became necessary for Congress to strengthen it by prompt reinforcements. In this way the war was commenced. No formal declaration had taken place, nor had it been in the power of Congress to make known its will on the subject, till an absolute necessity arose of reinforcing General Taylor, and the subject had ceased to be one for legislative discretion.

Under these circ.u.mstances it was of course impossible for Mr. Webster to approve the war. It had been brought on by the executive will, and without the concurrence of Congress till Congress had ceased to have an option, and its well-known ulterior objects were such as he could not but contemplate with equal disapprobation and alarm. Still, however, in common with the body of his political friends, in and out of Congress, he abstained from all factious opposition, and all measures calculated to embarra.s.s the government. The supplies were voted for by him, but he never ceased to urge upon the President to pursue a magnanimous policy toward the distracted and misgoverned country with which we had been brought in collision. Nor did his opinions of the character of the war lead him to discourage the inclination of his younger son, Mr. Edward Webster, to accept a commission in the regiment of Ma.s.sachusetts Volunteers. This young gentleman had evinced an energy beyond his years, and practical talent of a high order, as a member of the commission for marking the boundary line between Maine and the British Provinces under the treaty of Washington. His friends looked forward with confidence to his running a brilliant military career. These hopes, like those which accompanied so many other gallant and patriotic spirits to the scene of action, were destined to be early blasted. Major Webster fell a victim to the labors and exposures of the service, and to the climate of the country, under the walls of Mexico.

To avoid all misconception, it may be proper to state that Mr. Webster has at all times entertained an unfavorable opinion of the various administrations by which Mexico, almost ever since her revolution, has been successively misgoverned. He has felt constrained to regard the greater part of them as military factions, bent more upon supplanting each other than upon promoting the welfare of their country. He was fully aware of the justice of many of the complaints of citizens of the United States for wrongs inflicted and justice withheld. Both while in the executive government himself, and as a member of Congress, he had uniformly expressed himself in terms of severe condemnation of the conduct of the Mexican government in withholding or delaying redress; and he foresaw and foretold that, in obstinately refusing to recognize the independence of Texas, she was laying up for herself a store of consequences the most humiliating and disastrous. Nothing but the most deplorable infatuation could have led the government of Mexico to suppose, that, after the independence of Texas had been recognized by the United States, Great Britain, France, and Belgium, it would be possible for a power as feeble as that of Mexico to reduce the rebellious province to submission. If any confirmation of these statements is needed, it may be found in Mr. Webster's letter to Mr. de Bocanegra, in the sixth volume of this collection.

The settlement of the controversy with England relative to the boundary of Oregon was effected in the first year of Mr. Polk's administration.

The foundations for this adjustment had long been laid; in fact, as long ago as the administration of Mr. Monroe, the United States had offered to England the obvious basis of the extension of the forty-ninth degree of lat.i.tude to the Pacific. Great Britain allowed herself to be influenced by the Hudson's Bay Company so far, as to insist upon following the course of the Columbia down to the sea. She even took the extravagant ground that, although the United States, by the Louisiana and Florida treaties, combined the Spanish and the French t.i.tles with that of actual contiguity and prior discovery of the Columbia River, they had no exclusive t.i.tle to any portion of the territory, but that it was all subject to her own joint and rival claim. This unreasonable pretension brought the two countries to the verge of war. The Baltimore Convention, in the year 1844, set up a claim, equally unreasonable, to the whole of the territory. President Polk in his inaugural message, quoting the words of the resolution of the Baltimore Convention, p.r.o.nounced our t.i.tle to the territory to be "clear and unquestionable."

The a.s.sertion of these opposite extremes of pretension happily resulted in the final adjustment on the forty-ninth degree. Mr. Webster had uniformly been of opinion that this was the fair basis of settlement.

Had he supposed that an arrangement could have been effected on this basis with Lord Ashburton, he would gladly have included it in the treaty of Washington. After Mr. Webster's retirement from the Department of State, it is stated by President Polk that Mr. Upshur instructed Mr.

Everett to offer that line to the British government; but the negotiation had in the mean time, by the appointment of Mr. Pakenham, been transferred to Washington. The offer of the forty-ninth degree of lat.i.tude was renewed to Mr. Pakenham, but accompanied with conditions which led him to decline it, and to express the hope that the United States would make "some further proposal for the settlement of the Oregon question more consistent with fairness and equity, and with the reasonable expectations of the British government." The offer thus injudiciously rejected was withdrawn by the administration. In this dangerous juncture of affairs, the following incidents occurred, which we give in the words of the "London Examiner":

"In reply to a question put to him in reference to the present war establishments of this country, and the propriety of applying the principle of arbitration in the settlement of disputes arising among nations, Mr. McGregor, one of the candidates for the representation of Glasgow, took occasion to narrate the following very important and remarkable anecdote in connection with our recent, but now happily terminated differences with the United States on the Oregon question. At the time our amba.s.sador at Washington, the Hon. Mr.

Pakenham, refused to negotiate on the forty-ninth parallel of north lat.i.tude as the basis of a treaty, and when by that refusal the danger of a rupture between Great Britain and America became really imminent, Mr. Daniel Webster, formerly Secretary of State to the American government, wrote a letter to Mr. McGregor, in which he strongly deprecated Mr. Pakenham's conduct, which, if persisted in and adopted at home, would, to a certainty, embroil the two countries, and suggested an equitable compromise, taking the forty-ninth parallel as the basis of an adjustment. Mr. McGregor agreeing entirely with Mr. Webster in the propriety of a mutual giving and taking to avoid a rupture, and the more especially as the whole territory in dispute was not worth 20,000 to either power, while the preparations alone for a war would cost a great deal more before the parties could come into actual conflict, communicated the contents of Mr. Webster's letter to Lord John Russell, who at the time was living in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, and, in reply, received a letter from Lord John, in which he stated his entire accordance with the proposal recommended by Mr. Webster, and approved of by Mr. McGregor, and requested the latter, as he (Lord John) was not in a position to do it himself, to intimate his opinion to Lord Aberdeen. Mr. McGregor, through Lord Canning, Under-Secretary for the Foreign Department, did so, and the result was, that the first packet that left England carried out to America the proposal, in accordance with the communication already referred to, on which the treaty of Oregon was happily concluded. Mr.

McGregor may, therefore, be very justly said to have been the instrument of preserving the peace of the world; and for that alone, even if he had no other services to appeal to, he has justly earned the applause and admiration, not of his own countrymen only, but of all men who desire to promote the best interests of the human race."

Without wishing to detract in any degree from the praise due to Mr.

McGregor for his judicious and liberal conduct on this occasion, the credit of the main result is exclusively due to his American correspondent. A powerful influence was ascribed also to an able article in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1845, in which the reasonableness of this basis of settlement was set forth with great ability.

The first session of the Twenty-ninth Congress was signalized by the revival of the sub-treasury system, and the overthrow of the tariff of 1842. At a moment when the public finances were, in reference to the means of collection, custody, and transfer, in a sound and healthy condition, the administration deemed it expedient to subject the country and the treasury to the hazard and inconvenience of a change. Mr.

Webster spoke with equal earnestness and power against the renewal of experiments which had already proved so disastrous; but the bill was carried by a party vote. The same success attended the President's recommendation of an entire change in the revenue system, by which, instead of specific duties, _ad valorem_ duties were to be a.s.sessed on the foreign valuation. Various other changes were made in the tariff established in 1842, equally tending to depress our own manufactures, and to give a preference to foreign over native labor, and this even in cases where no benefit could be expected to accrue to the treasury from the change. Mr. Webster made a truly Herculean effort against the government project, in his speech of the 25th and 26th of July, 1846, but the decree had gone forth. The scale was turned by the Senators from the new State of Texas, which had been brought into the Union by the votes of members of Congress whose const.i.tuents had the deepest interest in sustaining the tariff of 1842.

In the spring of 1847, after the adjournment of Congress, Mr. Webster undertook a tour to the South. His object was to pa.s.s by the way of the Atlantic States to New Orleans, and to ascend the Mississippi. He had never seen that part of the Union, and promised himself equal gratification and instruction from an opportunity, however brief, of personal inspection. He was ever of opinion that higher motives than those of curiosity and recreation should lead the citizens of different parts of the country to the interchange of visits of this kind. That they had become so much less frequent than they were in former years he regarded as one of the inauspicious features of the times. He was accompanied on this excursion by his family. They pa.s.sed hastily through Virginia and North Carolina to South Carolina. At Charleston he was received with the most distinguished attention and cordiality. He was welcomed on his arrival by an a.s.semblage of the most respectable citizens. Entertainments were given him by the New England Society of Charleston and by the Charleston Bar. At these festivals the sentiments and speeches were of the most cordial description. Similar hospitalities and honors were paid him at Columbia, Augusta, and Savannah. No trace of sectional or party feeling detracted from the warmth of his reception.

His visit was everywhere regarded as an interesting public event.

Unhappily, his health failed him on his arrival at Savannah; and the advance of the season made it impossible for him to execute the original project of a journey to New Orleans. He was compelled to hasten back to the North.

Meantime events of higher importance were in progress. Success crowned our arms in the Mexican war. The military skill, gallantry, and indomitable resolution of the great captains to whom the chief command of the war had been committed, (though not by the first choice of the administration,) aided by the spirit and discipline of the troops, achieved the conquest of Mexico. Peace was dictated to her from Washington, and a treaty concluded, by which extensive portions of her territory, comprising the province of New Mexico and a considerable part of California, were ceded to the United States. Mr. Webster, foreseeing that these cessions would prove a Pandora's box of discord and strife between the different sections of the Union, voted against the ratification of the treaty. He was sustained in this course by some Southern Whig Senators, but the const.i.tutional majority deemed any treaty better than the continuation of the war.

With the restoration of peace, the question what should be done with the territories presented itself with alarming prominence. Formidable under any circ.u.mstances, it became doubly so in consequence of the discovery of gold in California, and the prodigious rush to that quarter of adventurers from every part of the world. Population flocked into and took possession of the country, its ancient political organization, feeble at best, was subverted, and the immediate action of Congress was necessary to prevent a state of anarchy. The House of Representatives pa.s.sed a bill providing for the organization of a territorial government for the provinces newly acquired from Mexico, with the antislavery proviso, borrowed from the Ordinance of 1787. This bill failed to pa.s.s the Senate, and nothing was done at the first session of the Thirtieth Congress to meet the existing emergency in California.