Famous Americans of Recent Times. James Parton
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sense enough to settle their disputes in any other way; and when once they have begun, never stop killing one another as long as they have money enough "to pay the butchers." So it appeared in our case. Of all the men who took part in this preliminary war of words, Daniel Webster was incomparably the ablest. He seemed charged with a message and a mission to the people of the United States; and almost everything that he said in his whole life of real value has reference to that message and that mission. The necessity of the Union of these States, the nature of the tie that binds them together, the means by which alone that tie can be kept strong—this was what he came charged to impart to us; and when he had fully delivered this message, he had done his work. His numberless speeches upon the passing questions of the day—tariff, Bank, currency, Sub-treasury, and the rest—in which the partisan spoke rather than the man may have had their value at the time, but there is little in them of durable worth. Those of them which events have not refuted, time has rendered obsolete. No general principles are established in them which can be applied to new cases. Indeed, he used often to assert that there were no general principles in practical statesmanship, but that the government of nations is, and must be, a series of expedients. Several times, in his published works, can be found the assertion, that there is no such thing as a science of political economy, though he says he had "turned over" all the authors on that subject from Adam Smith to his own time. It is when he speaks of the Union and the Constitution, and when he is rousing the sentiment of nationality, that he utters, not, indeed, eternal truths, but truths necessary to the existence of the United States, and which can only become obsolete when the nation is no more.
The whole of his previous life had been an unconscious preparation for these great debates. It was one of the recollections of his childhood, that, in his eighth year, he had bought a handkerchief upon which was printed the Constitution of 1787, which he then read through; and while he was a farmer's boy at home, the great question of its acceptance or rejection had been decided. His father's party was the party for the Constitution, whose only regret concerning it was, that it was not so much of a constitution as they wished it to be. The Republicans dwelt upon its defects and dangers; the Federalists, upon its advantages and beauties: so that all that this receptive lad heard of it at his father's fireside was of its value and necessity. We see in his youthful orations that nothing in the history of the continent struck his imagination so powerfully as the spectacle of thirty-eight gentlemen meeting in a quiet city, and peacefully settling the terms of a national union between thirteen sovereign States, most of which gave up, voluntarily, what the sword alone was once supposed capable of extorting. In all his orations on days of national festivity or mourning, we observe that his weightiest eulogy falls upon those who were conspicuous in this great business. Because Hamilton aided in it, he revered his memory; because Madison was its best interpreter, he venerated his name and deferred absolutely to his judgment. It was clear to his mind that the President can only dismiss an officer of the government as he appoints him, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he would not permit himself to think so against Mr. Madison's decision. His own triumphs at the bar—those upon which he plumed himself—were all such as resulted from his lonely broodings over, and patient study of, the Constitution of his country. A native of one of the smallest of the States, to which the Union was an unmixed benefit and called for no sacrifice of pride, he grew up into nationality without having to pass through any probation of States' rights scruples. Indeed, it was as natural for a man of his calibre to be a national man as it is for his own Monadnock to be three thousand feet above the level of the sea.
The South Carolina Exposition of 1828 appeared to fall still-born from the press. Neither General Jackson nor any of his nearest friends seem to have been so much as aware of its existence; certainly they attached no importance to it. Colonel Benton assures us, that to him the Hayne debate, so far as it related to constitutional questions, seemed a mere oratorical display, without adequate cause or object; and we know that General Jackson, intimately allied with the Hayne family and strongly attached to Colonel Hayne himself, wished him success in the debate, and heard with regret that Mr. Webster was "demolishing" him. Far, indeed, was any one from supposing that a movement had been set on foot which was to end only with the total destruction of the "interest" sought to be protected by it. Far was any one from foreseeing that so poor and slight a thing as the Exposition was the beginning of forty years of strife. It is evident from the Banquo passage of Mr. Webster's principal speech, when, looking at Vice-President Calhoun, he reminded that ambitious man that, in joining the coalition which made Jackson President, he had only given Van Buren a push toward the Presidency—"No son of theirs succeeding,"—it is evident, we say, from this passage, and from other covert allusions, that he understood the game of Nullification from the beginning, so far as its objects were personal. But there is no reason for supposing that he attached importance to it before that memorable afternoon in December, 1830, when he strolled from the Supreme Court into the Senate-chamber, and chanced to hear Colonel Hayne reviling New England, and repeating the doctrines of the South Carolina Exposition.
Every one knows the story of this first triumph of the United States over its enemies. Daniel Webster, as Mr. Everett records, appeared to be the only person in Washington who was entirely at his ease; and he was so remarkably unconcerned, that Mr. Everett feared he was not aware of the expectations of the public, and the urgent necessity of his exerting all his powers. Another friend mentions, that on the day before the delivery of the principal speech the orator lay down as usual, after dinner, upon a sofa, and soon was heard laughing to himself. Being asked what he was laughing at, he said he had just thought of a way to turn Colonel Hayne's quotation about Banquo's ghost against himself, and he was going to get up and make a note of it. This he did, and then resumed his nap.
Notwithstanding these appearances of indifference, he was fully roused to the importance of the occasion; and, indeed, we have the impression that only on this occasion, in his whole life, were all his powers in full activity and his entire mass of being in full glow. But even then the artist was apparent in all that he did, and particularly in the dress which he wore. At that time, in his forty-eighth year, his hair was still as black as an Indian's, and it lay in considerable masses about the spacious dome of his forehead. His form had neither the slenderness of his youth nor the elephantine magnitude of his later years; it was fully, but finely, developed, imposing and stately, yet not wanting in alertness and grace. No costume could have been better suited to it than his blue coat and glittering gilt buttons, his ample yellow waistcoat, his black trousers, and snowy cravat. It was in some degree, perhaps, owing to the elegance and daintiness of his dress that, while the New England men among his hearers were moved to tears, many Southern members, like Colonel Benton, regarded the speech merely as a Fourth-of-July oration delivered on the 6th of January. Benton assures us, however, that he soon discovered his error, for the Nullifiers were not to be put down by a speech, and soon revealed themselves in their true character, as "irreconcilable" foes of the Union. This was Daniel Webster's own word in speaking of that faction in 1830—"irreconcilable."
After this transcendent effort—perhaps the greatest of its kind ever made by man—Daniel Webster had nothing to gain in the esteem of the Northern States. He was indisputably our foremost man, and in Massachusetts there was no one who could be said to be second to him in the regard of the people: he was a whole species in himself. In the subsequent winter of debate with Calhoun upon the same subject, he added many details to his argument, developed it in many directions, and accumulated a great body of constitutional reasoning; but so far as the people were concerned, the reply to Hayne sufficed. In all those debates we are struck with his colossal, his superfluous superiority to his opponents; and we wonder how it could have been that such a man should have thought it worth while to refute such puerilities. It was, however, abundantly worth while. The assailed Constitution needed such a defender. It was necessary that the patriotic feeling of the American people, which was destined to a trial so severe, should have an unshakable basis of intelligent conviction. It was necessary that all men should be made distinctly to see that the Constitution was not a "compact" to which the States "acceded," and from which they could secede, but the fundamental law, which the people had established and ordained, from which there could be no secession but by revolution. It was necessary that the country should be made to understand that Nullification and Secession were one and the same; and that to admit the first, promising to stop short at the second, was as though a man "should take the plunge of Niagara and cry out that he would stop half-way