Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was an American lawyer, statesman, and diplomat who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress and served as the 14th and 19th U.S. secretary of state under presidents William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Millard Fillmore. Webster was one of the most prominent American lawyers of the 19th century, arguing over 200 cases before the United States Supreme Court in his career. During his life, Webster had been a member of the Federalist Party, the National Republican Party, and the Whig Party. He was among the three members of the Great Triumvirate along with Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun.
Born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, in 1782, Webster established a successful legal practice in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after graduating from Dartmouth College and serving a legal apprenticeship. A prominent opponent of the War of 1812, he won election to the United States House of Representatives, where he served as a leader of the Federalist Party. Webster left office after two terms and moved to Boston, Massachusetts. He became a leading attorney before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning cases such as Dartmouth College v. Woodward, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Gibbons v. Ogden.
Webster returned to Congress in 1823 and became a key supporter of President John Quincy Adams. He won election to the United States Senate in 1827 and worked with Henry Clay to build the National Republican Party in support of Adams. After Andrew Jackson defeated Adams in the 1828 U.S. presidential election, Webster became a leading opponent of Jackson's domestic policies. He strongly objected to the theory of nullification espoused by John C. Calhoun. His 1830 Second Reply to Hayne speech is widely regarded as one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in Congress.
Webster supported Jackson's defiant response to the nullification crisis but broke with the president due to disagreements over the Second Bank of the United States. Webster joined with other Jackson opponents in forming the Whig Party, and unsuccessfully ran in the 1836 U.S. presidential election. He supported Harrison in the 1840 U.S. presidential election and was appointed secretary of state after Harrison took office. Unlike the other members of Harrison's Cabinet, he continued to serve under President Tyler after Tyler broke with congressional Whigs. As secretary of state, Webster negotiated the Webster–Ashburton Treaty, which settled border disputes with Britain. In 1837, Webster was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.
Webster returned to the Senate in 1845 and resumed his status as a leading congressional Whig. During the Mexican–American War, he emerged as a leader of the "Cotton Whigs", a faction of Northern Whigs that emphasized good relations with the South over anti-slavery policies. In 1850, President Fillmore appointed Webster as secretary of state, and Webster contributed to the passage of the Compromise of 1850, which settled several territorial issues and enacted a new fugitive slave law. The Compromise proved unpopular in much of the North and undermined Webster's standing in his home state. Webster sought the Whig presidential nomination in the 1852 U.S. presidential election, but a split between supporters of Fillmore and Webster led to the nomination of Major General Winfield Scott. Webster is widely regarded as an important and talented attorney, orator, and politician, but historians and observers have offered mixed opinions on his moral qualities and ability as a national leader.
Early life
Daniel Webster was born on January 18, 1782, in Salisbury, New Hampshire, at a location within the present-day city of Franklin. His parents were Abigail (née Eastman) and Ebenezer Webster, a farmer and local official who served in the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. Ebenezer's ancestor, the English-born Thomas Webster, had migrated to North America around 1636. Ebenezer had three children from a previous marriage who survived to maturity, as well as five children from his marriage to Abigail; Webster was the second-youngest of the eight siblings. He was particularly close to his older brother, Ezekiel, who was born in 1780. As a youth, he helped work the family farm but was frequently in poor health. With the encouragement of his parents and tutors, he often read works by authors such as Alexander Pope and Isaac Watts.
In 1796, he attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire. Exeter's Daniel Webster Debate Society, founded in 1818, is generally regarded as the oldest secondary school debate society in the nation. After studying the classics and other subjects for several months under a clergyman, Webster was admitted to Dartmouth College in 1797. During his time at Dartmouth, he managed the school newspaper and emerged as a strong public speaker. He was chosen as the Fourth of July orator in the college town of Hanover in 1800, and his speech contained the substance of the political principles which he would later become famous for developing. Like his father, and like many other New England farmers, Webster was firmly devoted to the Federalist Party and favored a strong central government. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1801 and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
After graduating from Dartmouth, he apprenticed under Salisbury lawyer Thomas W. Thompson. Though unenthusiastic about studying the law, he believed that becoming a lawyer would allow him to "live comfortably" and avoid the bouts of poverty that had afflicted his father. In order to help support his brother Ezekiel's study at Dartmouth, Webster temporarily resigned from the law office to work as a schoolteacher at Fryeburg Academy in Maine. In 1804, he obtained a position in Boston under the prominent attorney Christopher Gore. Clerking for Gore—who was involved in international, national, and state politics—he learned about many legal and political subjects and met numerous New England politicians. He grew to love Boston, and, in 1805, was admitted to the bar.
Rise to prominence
Immediately after winning admission to the bar, Webster set up a legal practice in Boscawen, New Hampshire. He became increasingly involved in politics and began to speak locally in support of Federalist causes and candidates.Cheek, H. Lee Jr. "Webster, Daniel." In Schultz, David, ed. Encyclopedia of American Law,New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2002. Facts On File, Inc. American History Online After his father's death in 1806, he handed over his practice to his brother, Ezekiel, and opened a new practice in the larger town of Portsmouth. Over the decade-long period he lived in Portsmouth, he handled over 1700 cases, becoming one of the most prominent attorneys in New Hampshire. Along with two other lawyers, he was appointed to revise the New Hampshire criminal code and devise regulations for state prisons.
During this time the ongoing Napoleonic Wars began to more strongly affect Americans, as Britain impeded U.S. trade with France and impressed sailors on American ships who they alleged had deserted from the Royal Navy. President Thomas Jefferson retaliated with the Embargo Act of 1807, cutting off all American trade with Britain and France. As New England relied on commerce with the two nations, the region strongly suffered from the embargo, and Webster wrote an anonymous pamphlet attacking Jefferson's policies. He also campaigned for various Federalist candidates, including presidential candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and gubernatorial candidate Jeremiah Smith. Although Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party dominated national elections, the Federalist Party was competitive throughout the states of New England. In 1812, the United States declared war on Britain, beginning the War of 1812. On July 4, 1812, Webster was invited to give a speech before the Washington Benevolent Society. His speech, which strongly attacked the war but warned against secession, was reprinted in newspapers throughout New England.
After the speech, he was selected as a delegate to the Rockingham Convention, a local assembly that issued a report critical of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican successor, James Madison. The Rockingham Memorial, which was largely written by Webster, challenged Madison's reasons for going to war, arguing that France had been just as culpable in impeding American trade as Britain had and raising the specter of secession. The Rockingham Memorial gained nationwide notoriety as a document exemplifying New England's opposition to the war. After the convention, the state Federalist Party nominated him as a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. Though Madison won re-election in the 1812 U.S. presidential election, the Federalist-backed presidential candidate won New England, and Federalists swept the New Hampshire elections for the House of Representatives.
Congressman and constitutional lawyer First stint in the House, 1813–1817
By May 1813, when he arrived in the House of Representatives for the first time, the United States had seen numerous setbacks in the War of 1812. Nonetheless, Madison's Democratic-Republican Party dominated the Thirteenth Congress, controlling over three-fifths of the seats in the House of Representatives and over two-thirds of the seats in the Senate. Webster continued to criticize the war and attacked efforts to impose conscription, wartime taxes, and a new trade embargo. He was appointed to a steering committee that coordinated Federalist actions in the House of Representatives and, by the end of the Thirteenth Congress, he had emerged as a respected speaker on the House floor. In early 1815, the war came to an end after news of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent reached the United States.
After the war, President Madison called for the establishment of the Second Bank of the United States (known as the "national bank"), the imposition of a protective tariff, and federally-financed public works. While Speaker of the House Henry Clay and Congressman John C. Calhoun worked to pass Madison's proposals, other Democratic-Republicans opposed these policies because they conflicted with the party's traditional commitment to a weaker federal government. Webster favored a national bank in principle, but he voted against the bill that established the national bank because he believed that the bank should be required to remove paper banknotes issued by various state-charted banks from circulation. Before the national bank came into operation, he then led the passage of a bill that required all debts to the government to be paid in specie, Treasury notes, or notes issued by the national bank. In the tariff debate, he occupied a middle ground; he favored using tariff rates to protect domestic manufacturing, but did not want tariff rates to be so high that they would harm his home state's trading concerns. Though he took an active role in crafting the tariff bill, he ultimately missed the final vote on the Tariff of 1816. Seeking more lucrative legal work, he began to strongly consider relocating to Boston or New York during his time in Congress. In 1816, he declined to seek another term in the House of Representatives, instead establishing a new residence in Boston. In the 1816 elections, the Federalist Party suffered numerous defeats throughout the country and Democratic-Republican candidate James Monroe was elected president.
Leading lawyer