WEBSTER'S REPLY TO HAYNE

January 26, 1830

IN 1824 when Henry Clay proposed a tariff bill which raised the duty on imported goods to thirty-three and a third per cent and to a minimum of thirty cents a yard on cotton cloth, the measure was opposed by Daniel Webster. He maintained that Engish manufacturerers had prospered in spite of protection, not because of it; and he questioned the wisdom of attempting to support a business that "cannot support itself." Much more outspoken in their opposition to a protective tariff at this time, however, were Calhoun, Randolph, and other southern statesmen. They held that the current import duties were designed to rob the southern agriculturists for the benefit of New England.

In 1828 when a still higher tariff was under discussion Webster failed to oppose the measure. While in theory he was still inclined to free trade, he believed it unwise to press his own views since the country had committed itself to protection in 1824 and various industries had been organized with that understanding. This change in his public policy, without regard for his conflicting personal feelings. is a tribute to the earnestness and sincerity of his patriotism. The bill when passed was dubbed by the South, The Tariff of Abominations. Unable to overcome the sentiment in favor of protection in Congress, Vice-President Calhoun formulated his doctrine of Nullification.

According to this theory, any state might forbid the operation within its limits of any act of Congress which in its opinion did not accord with the Federal Constitution. Although rumors of South Carolina's advocacy of Nullification were current, the doctrine was never presented in Congress until a Land Bill was debated in 1830.

This measure which proposed to cease temporarily, the marketing of public land, was strenuously opposed by members of Congress from the Western States. Mr. Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, was quick to note this lack of agreement between the West and the East, and he attempted to use the difference of opinion for the benefit of his own state. He proposed that the South and West unite their forces in Congress to secure desired legislation. The South was to get a lower tariff and the West was to obtain legislation that would facilitate the marketing of public land. In furthering this plan he eulogized South Carolina and attacked New England from many points of view. In particular he criticized the tariff legislation favored by New England and, in the course of his discussion, set forth for the first time a full exposition of Calhoun's doctrine of Nullification.

The day following Hayne's speech, Webster, then in his first term as senator from Massachusetts, made his famous reply. He had had only the intervening night in which to make formal preparation, but he never spoke to better advantage. In clearness and dignity of language, and in force of argument, his speech is unsurpassed. His words, as Lodge says, which rang out in 1830 in the Senate Chamber have come down through the long years of political conflict and civil war and at last have become part of the political creed of every one of his countrymen. He expressed what

the truest patriots of his time felt but could not say. He defined the character of the Union.

REPLY TO HAYNE

DANIEL WEBSTER

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LET me observe that the eulogium pronounced by the honorable gentleman1 on the character of the State of South Carolina, for her Revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence.2 I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard to whatever of distinguished talent, or distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor; I partake in the pride of her great names. claim them for countrymen, one and all-the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions— Americans all, whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by state lines, than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,does he esteem me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light of Massachusetts instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir, increased gratification and delight, rather. I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place

here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own state or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue, in any son of the South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by state jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no states cherished greater harmony, both in principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution; hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling (if it exists), alienation, and distrusts are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.

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Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is! Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every state from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sus

tained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at it and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amid the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.

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. I understand him to maintain this right, as a right existing under the Constitution, not as a right to overthrow it on the ground of extreme necessity, such as would justify violent revolution. I understand him to insist that, if the exigency of the case, in the opinion of any state government, require it, such state government may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an act of the general government which it deems plainly and palpably unconstitutional.

This leads us to inquire into the origin of this government and the source of its power. Whose agent is it? Is it the creature of the state legislators, or the creature of the people? If the government of the United States be the agent of the State governments, then they may control it, provided they can agree in the manner of controlling it; if it be the agent of the people, then the people alone can control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is observable enough that the doctrine for which the honorable gentleman contends leads him to the necessity