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392

WEBSTER AND HAYNE.

economic treatment of the subject. Many who listened to him were living when the Constitution was ratified, and remembered the opinions of that time. They knew that ratification had been a federal, not a national act, and that the States had then jealously asserted their claims to sovereignty. Madison, the author of the Virginia resolutions, and also of the report which Hayne had cited as his chief authority, was still living, and was the most venerated man in America. Almost from the inception of the Union, the South had controlled its policy. For a quarter of a century the party which had sprung up with the doctrine of '98, had been in power, controlling both Houses of Congress without interruption, and the executive department also, except during the administration of John Quincy Adams, which all true Democrats were wont to look upon as no more than a Federalist inter

regnum.

There was one man who could reply to Hayne, but his friends were not sure of him, for his real opinions were in doubt among them. Webster had listened attentively throughout the speech, but the New England delegation and many who knew him well feared that he could not make an adequate reply. Senator Bell, of New Hampshire, plainly stated these fears to him, remarking sadly, that it was high time that the people of the country knew what the Constitution meant. "By the blessings of Heaven," Webster answered, "they shall learn this day before the sun goes down what I understand it to be."

Of the reply which Webster made to Hayne, on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of January, the world has long taken note.1 He spoke of the Union as it was in 1830, not as it was during its infancy and early struggles. The Nation, no longer a mere compact, had be1 Webster's Works, III, 270.

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come a living, breathing, sentient organism. The Union had become an object of human sentiment and affection and was no longer considered a mere legal compact between thirteen governments in thirteen petty States. Hayne's every point was answered, but all not fully or equally. The strict letter of the law and the history of the country were largely on Hayne's side. He knew his ground and made the most of its opportunity. Webster equally familiar with our history knew the weakness of the South Carolina doctrine as a fixed national policy. He knew that no government can be administered solely on its history. He knew that the organic life of the Union is the corrective of its history, and therefore, he raised the whole discussion to a higher level than Hayne had attained. It was time to leave the past with its abstractions, its doctrinaire policies, its hair-splitting distinctions in constitutional construction and to turn to the American people as a Nation among the powers of the earth. The sentiment of Union in its moral comprehensiveness must forever efface the doctrine of '98. Hayne had rebuked New England for disloyalty at the time of the Hartford convention. Webster replied, that if New England had been disloyal, and she had not been, Hayne should extend his buffetings in like manner to all similar proceedings wherever else found.

The main proposition, on which the whole debate hinged, was embodied in the question "Whose prerogative is it to decide on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the laws?" Webster did not expatiate on the tariff of 1828, nor attempt to prove, as a lesser man might have done, that a policy of protection is essential to the maintenance of the Union. He discussed the issue in a larger way and maintained that the Union could not endure if its own judgment was not final on the constitu

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BASIS OF WEBSTER'S SPEECH.

tionality of its laws. This raised the old question of sovereignty, and in answering it he planted himself by the side of the authors of the Federalist. Sovereignty, he argued, is in the nation, and a residuary sovereignty is in the States.1 Like William Penn, when he established the most liberal of colonial governments, Webster placed the power with the people, in whom he declared, the ultimate political sovereignty of the nation has ever been found. And then he gave that definition of the American Union, which may be said to be the oldest and the most complete in our history: "I hold it to be a popular government elected by the people; those who administer it responsible to the people and itself capable of being maintained and modified just as the people choose it should be. It is as popular, just as truly emanating from the people as the State Governments. It is created for one purpose, the State Governments for another. It has its powers, they have theirs. There is no more authority with them to arrest the operation of a law of Congress, than with Congress to arrest the operation of their laws. We are here to administer a Constitution emanating immediately from the people and trusted by them to our administration. It is not the creature of the State government." The remedy for unconstitutional laws for which Hayne had contended, must unavoidably result in direct collision, force meeting force. A doctrine, said Webster, which goes the length of revolution. It was incompatible with any peaceful administration of the government, and would lead directly to civil commotion and disunion. When the last words of this most famous speech in the history of Congress were spoken, "liberty and Union now and forever, one and inseparable," and their reverberation through the Senate Chamber had ceased, no man present 1 Federalist, Nos. XXXII and LXXXI.

FAME OF THE TWO SPEECHES.

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was longer in doubt what Webster understood by the Constitution of the United States. His great speech went forth to the world as the exposition of American nationality, and lovers of the Union everywhere hailed him as the Expounder and Defender of the Constitution.

During Hayne's speech, Calhoun sat opposite him, drank in his words and was satisfied. Nullification had found a voice more eloquent, though no more faithful, than his own. Henceforth, thought he, the youth of the South need only recite the burning words of Hayne to arouse an oppressed people to sacred resistance to unjust laws, and history would be Hayne's best friend. His speech passed at once into literature and became a popular selection at school and college. Whatever Hayne had failed to do, he had not failed to write his name in the memory of the Southern people. Webster's reply also passed into our literature. Cicero took delight that, during his lifetime, the boys at Rome were taught in the schools to recite his orations; Webster's reply to Hayne was honored in like manner. To-day the memory of thousands goes back to the district school house sunning itself like a beggar beside the dusty road, and to the time when the neighborhood gathered within it to hear the boys speak their last pieces; one recited Hayne's speech on nullification; another Webster's reply, and even their feeble repetition stirred the passions of the listeners. It was a tribute to the powers of ideas. Webster's reply is a mile-stone in our constitutional history. It was the first forensic utterance which put our political institutions into perspective and clothed them with the imperishable beauty of literature. It projected them into all time. Appealing to the sensibilities of the American people he put their aspirations into palpable form, and since the day of his great reply to Hayne, writers and speakers of every political school have

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CHARACTER OF THE UNION.

quarried from the rich mines of his imagination and eloquence. More than this, his logic and lofty political economy remain the convincing proof of the rightful sovereignty of the Nation.1

Webster in his reply forsook economic ground and made his argument almost wholly constitutional. The two debaters were advocates of antagonistic political systems. The United States was not industrially homogeneous at this time and a true national Union was impossible without such homogeneity. Thus the discussion was largely one of abstract propositions, not one of concrete industrial interests. Had it been limited to economic conditions

1 An instance of the force and influence of Webster's method and style is related by Herndon in his Life of Lincoln. At the close of the Republican State Convention of Illinois, which nominated Mr. Lincoln as its candidate for United States Senator, he delivered the epoch-making speech on the "House Divided Against Itself" (June 16, 1858, Works, I, 240), which it has often been said made him President. Long before the world knew the history of its preparation, the similarity between its opening paragraph and the exordium of the reply to Hayne, had doubtless been observed. "It may not be amiss to note," remarks Herndon, "that in this instance Webster's effort was carefully read by Lincoln, and served as his model." When late in January, following his election to the Presidency, he was considering the preparation of his inaugural, he made a list of the works he wished to consult, and asked Herndon, his law partner, who possessed a respectable collection of books, "to furnish him his Henry Clay's great speech, delivered in 1850; Andrew Jackson's Proclamation against nullification and a copy of the Constitution." He afterward called for Webster's reply to Hayne, a speech which he had read when he lived at New Salem, and which he always regarded as the greatest specimen of American oratory. With these few master-pieces and no other source, he locked himself in a room upstairs over a store, across the street from the State House, and there, cut off from all communication and intrusion, prepared the address. See Herndon's Lincoln, (Edition 1889) pp. 400, 478. The simplicity, eloquence and power of Lincoln's first inaugural appeal to us even more strongly when we know that his genious had been touched by the inspiration of the great reply.

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