394

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.

395

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

396

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.

NULLIFICATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

397

some have thought that Webster would not have presumed. to make reply. But as soon as Hayne attempted to meet Webster on constitutional grounds he was defeated. The great debate by no means settled the question at issue.

In October, South Carolina took the fatal step of calling a convention' for the purpose of nullifying the tariff act, and soon issued a nullification ordinance,2 which was followed three days later by a message of like import to the people of the State, from the Governor.3 At this crisis Calhoun resigned the Vice-Presidency to defend nullification, and was speedily returned to the Senate.1 In the form of a letter to Governor Hamilton, he made an exposition of the doctrine of nullification, which remains to this day its classic interpretation. It is a brief but comprehensive treatise on the subject of nullification, and its teachings are the inevitable conclusion from the premises laid down in the second Kentucky resolutions. According to Calhoun, the Constitution was formed and adopted not by the people of the United States, but by the States as independent and sovereign corporations. Collectively they had never performed a single political act. Whatever relation existed between the individual citizens of a State and the general government, was through the State, from which the conclusion followed that the Union was not one of individuals, as Hamilton had attempted to show, but of States as separate communities. The Constitution had been submitted to the States for their separate ratification and action. If ratified by one of them or by all except one it created no relation between a State and the general government and imposed

1 October 24, 1832, Niles, XLIII, 152.

2 November 24; Congressional Debates, IX, App., 154.

3 November 27; Niles, XLIII, 159.

4 December 12, 1832.

5 Calhoun's Works, VI, 144.

398

CALHOUN ON NULLIFICATION.

not the slightest obligation. North Carolina and Rhode Island, Calhoun claimed, stood for a time in the relation of a foreign State to the general government.1 As a State thus remained a sovereign body in the Union it possessed authority to pronounce an unconstitutional act of the General Government null and void.

Calhoun did not claim that a State has the right to abrogate an act of the government; such an act, he believed, being void of itself, for he conceived that the Constitution annulled an unconstitutional act. A State had the right to declare the extent of its obligations, from which, if true, it followed that the allegiance of the citizen was due primarily to his State. Webster, while recognizing the contractual relations created by the Constitution, also recognized it as the great organic act of the Nation; Calhoun viewed it as a treaty which the sovereign States had entered into, from which it followed, that the general government was only the agent of the States, and he insisted that this interpretation agreed with the original intention of the makers of the Constitution, who in none of its provisions had empowered it in any way to control a State. Indeed, they had refused to clothe the Supreme Court with this high power. They had made the government a confederation. Party folly had carried through the alien and sedition laws, but public opinion, referring to the election of Jefferson, quickly saved the government from the consequences of its error. For unconstitutional acts of any kind nullification was the rightful remedy. The Confederation could not coerce a State nor infringe the rights of any without violating the Constitution. Even if nullification resulted in secession, a State would still remain in its original relation as

1 For the discussion of the status of North Carolina and Rhode Island as understood at this time by these States, see pp. 169-187.