The debate itself, a nine-day long unplanned exchange between Senators Robert Y. Hayne and Daniel Webster, directly addressed the methods by which the federal government was generating revenue, namely through protective tariffs and the selling of federal lands in the newly acquired western territories. These irreconcilable views of national supremacy and state sovereignty framed the constitutional struggle that led to Civil War thirty years later. Do they mean, or can they mean, anything more than that the Union of the states will be strengthened, by whatever continues or furnishes inducements to the people of the states to hold together? Webster believed that the Constitution should be viewed as a binding document between the United States rather than an agreement between sovereign states. Hayne was a great orator, filled with fiery passion and eloquent prose. The Northwest Ordinance. Are we in that condition still? Its like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. The Webster Hayne Debate. I said, only, that it was highly wise and useful in legislating for the northwestern country, while it was yet a wilderness, to prohibit the introduction of slaves: and added, that I presumed, in the neighboring state of Kentucky, there was no reflecting and intelligent gentleman, who would doubt, that if the same prohibition had been extended, at the same early period, over that commonwealth, her strength and population would, at this day, have been far greater than they are. . Perhaps a quotation from a speech in Parliament in 1803 of Lord Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (17691822) during a debate over the conduct of British officials in India. 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. Finally, sir, the honorable gentleman says, that the states will only interfere, by their power, to preserve the Constitution. Webster and the northern states saw the Constitution as binding the individual states together as a single union. Daniel Webster stood as a ready and formidable opponent from the north who, at different stages in his career, represented both the states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. . Robert Young Hayne, (born Nov. 10, 1791, Colleton District, S.C., U.S.died Sept. 24, 1839, Asheville, N.C.), American lawyer, political leader, and spokesman for the South, best-remembered for his debate with Daniel Webster (1830), in which he set forth a doctrine of nullification. The Webster-Hayne Debate | Overview, Issues & Significance - Study . If slavery, as it now exists in this country, be an evil, we of the present day found it ready made to our hands. Expert Answers. I now proceed to show that it is perfectly safe, and will practically have no effect but to keep the federal government within the limits of the Constitution, and prevent those unwarrantable assumptions of power, which cannot fail to impair the rights of the states, and finally destroy the Union itself. . Every scheme or contrivance by which rulers are able to procure the command of money by means unknown to, unseen or unfelt by, the people, destroys this security. South Carolina nullification was now coming in sight, and a celebrated debate that belongs to the first session exposed its claims and its fallacies to the country. Nor those other words of delusion and folly,liberty first, and union afterwardsbut everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole Heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heartliberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable! The Senate debates between Whig Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Democrat Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina in January 1830 started out as a disagreement over the sale of Western lands and turned into one of the most famous verbal contests in American history. The 1830 WebsterHayne debate centered around the South Carolina nullification crisis of the late 1820s, but historians have largely ignored the sectional interests underpinning Webster's argument on behalf of Unionism and a transcendent nationalism. Sir, when the gentleman provokes me to such a conflict, I meet him at the threshold. Nullification, Webster maintained, was a political absurdity. Crittenden Compromise Plan & Reception | What was the Crittenden Compromise? First, New England was vindicated. . South Carolinas Declaration of the Causes of Sece Distribution of the Slave Population by State. Now, I wish to be informedhowthis state interference is to be put in practice, without violence, bloodshed, and rebellion. They tell us, in the letter submitting the Constitution to the consideration of the country, that, in all our deliberations on this subject, we kept steadily in our view that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true Americanthe consolidation of our Unionin which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety; perhaps our national existence. Ah! Webster stood in favor of Connecticut's proposal that the federal government should stop surveying western land and sell the land it had already surveyed to boost it's revenue and strengthen it's authority. Webster realized that if the social, political, and economic elite of Massachusetts and the Northeast were to once again lay claim to national leadership, he had to justify New England's previous history of sectionalism within a framework of nationalistic progression. There is not, and never has been, a disposition in the North to interfere with these interests of the South. . Can any man believe, sir, that, if twenty-three millions per annum was now levied by direct taxation, or by an apportionment of the same among the states, instead of being raised by an indirect tax, of the severe effect of which few are aware, that the waste and extravagance, the unauthorized imposition of duties, and appropriations of money for unconstitutional objects, would have been tolerated for a single year? Who, then, Mr. President, are the true friends of the Union? It impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to bear up any other than free men. Webster's "Second Reply to Hayne" was generally regarded as "the most eloquent speech ever delivered in Congress."[1]. . . For all this, there was not the slightest foundation, in anything said or intimated by me. Let us look at the historical facts. . . Under that system, the legal actionthe application of law to individuals, belonged exclusively to the states. a. an explanation of natural events that is well supported by scientific evidence b. a set of rules for ethical conduct during an experiment c. a statement that describes how natural events happen d. a possible answer to a scientific question It would be equally fatal to the sovereignty and independence of the states. Rush-Bagot Treaty Structure & Effects | What was the Rush-Bagot Agreement? Congress could only recommendtheir acts were not of binding force, till the states had adopted and sanctioned them. The scene depicted in the painting is Webster concluding his debate with Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. Webster's Reply to Hayne - National Park Service Create your account. Sir, when arraigned before the bar of public opinion, on this charge of slavery, we can stand up with conscious rectitude, plead not guilty, and put ourselves upon God and our country. His speech was indeed a powerful one of its eloquence and personality. Wilmot Proviso of 1846: Overview & Significance | What was the Wilmot Proviso? Liberty has been to them the greatest of calamities, the heaviest of curses. The whole form and structure of the federal government, the opinions of the Framers of the Constitution, and the organization of the state governments, demonstrate that though the states have surrendered certain specific powers, they have not surrendered their sovereignty. I will yield to no gentleman here in sincere attachment to the Union,but it is a Union founded on the Constitution, and not such a Union as that gentleman would give us, that is dear to my heart. The Revelation on Celestial Marriage: Trouble Amon Hon. Van Buren responded to the Panic of 1837 with the idea of the independent treasury, which was a. a system of depositing money in select independent banks I regard domestic slavery as one of the greatest of evils, both moral and political. Get unlimited access to over 88,000 lessons. If I had, sir, the powers of a magician, and could, by a wave of my hand, convert this capital into gold for such a purpose, I would not do it. Tariff of Abominations of 1828 | What was the Significance of the Tariff of Abominations? Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The American Anti-Slavery Society, Declaration of Sent Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, Protest in Illinois Legislature on Slavery. An equally talented orator, Webster rose as the advocate of the North in the debate with his captivating reply to Hayne's initial argument. I distrust, therefore, sir, the policy of creating a great permanent national treasury, whether to be derived from public lands or from any other source. To them, the more money the central government made, the stronger it became and the more it took rights away from the states to govern themselves. If they mean merely this, then, no doubt, the public lands as well as everything else in which we have a common interest, tends to consolidation; and to this species of consolidation every true American ought to be attached; it is neither more nor less than strengthening the Union itself. Senator Foote, of Connecticut, submitted a proposition inquiring into the expediency of limiting the sales of public lands to those already in the market. Speech of Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, January 25, 1830. . Hayne and the South saw it as basically a treaty between sovereign states. . By establishing justice, promoting domestic tranquility, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. This is the true reading of the Constitution. . For one, Hayne and Webster were arguing for the fate of the West and, in particular, whether the North or South would control western development. They have agreed, that certain specific powers shall be exercised by the federal government; but the moment that government steps beyond the limits of its charter, the right of the states to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them,[7] is as full and complete as it was before the Constitution was formed. In The Webster-Hayne Debate, Christopher Childers examines the context of the debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and his Senate colleague Robert S. Hayne of South Carolina in January 1830 . . Webster was eloquent, he was educated, he was witty, and he was a staunch defender of American liberty. I understand him to maintain an authority, on the part of the states, thus to interfere, for the purpose of correcting the exercise of power by the general government, of checking it, and of compelling it to conform to their opinion of the extent of its powers. . Southern states advocated for strong, sovereign state governments, a small federal government, the western expansion of the agricultural economy, and with it, the maintenance of the institution of slavery. . . Hayne, South Carolina's foremost Senator, was the chosen champion; and the cause of his State, both in its right and wrong sides, could have found no abler exponent while [Vice President] Calhoun's official station kept him from the floor. The Webster-Hayne debate was a series of unplanned speeches in the Senate between January 19th and 27th of 1830 between Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. They will not destroy it, they will not impair itthey will only save, they will only preserve, they will only strengthen it! Correct answers: 2 question: Which of the following is the best definition of a hypothesis? . I am opposed, therefore, in any shape, to all unnecessary extension of the powers, or the influence of the Legislature or Executive of the Union over the states, or the people of the states; and, most of all, I am opposed to those partial distributions of favors, whether by legislation or appropriation, which has a direct and powerful tendency to spread corruption through the land; to create an abject spirit of dependence; to sow the seeds of dissolution; to produce jealousy among the different portions of the Union, and finally to sap the very foundations of the government itself. But his reply was gathered from the choicest arguments and the most decadent thoughts that had long floated through his brain while this crisis was gathering; and bringing these materials together in a lucid and compact shape, he calmly composed and delivered before another crowded and breathless auditory a speech full of burning passages, which will live as long as the American Union, and the grandest effort of his life. Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people? Thirty years before the Civil War broke out, disunion appeared to be on the horizon with the Nullification Crisis. . . . | 12 The purpose of the Constitution was to permit cooperation between states under a shared political standard, but that meant that any growth in a federal government threatened the sovereignty of the states. This is a delicate and sensitive point, in southern feeling; and of late years it has always been touched, and generally with effect, whenever the object has been to unite the whole South against northern men, or northern measures. The dominant historical opinion of the famous debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Young Hayne of South Carolina which took place in the United States Senate in 1830 has long been that Webster defeated Hayne both as an orator and a statesman. A four-speech debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Hayne of South Carolina, in January 1830. He tells us, we have heard much, of late, about consolidation; that it is the rallying word for all who are endeavoring to weaken the Union by adding to the power of the states. But consolidation, says the gentleman, was the very object for which the Union was formed; and in support of that opinion, he read a passage from the address of the president of the Convention[3] to Congress (which he assumes to be authority on his side of the question.) Webster-Hayne Debate 1830, an unplanned series of speeches in the Senate, during which Robert Hayne of South Carolina interpreted the Constitution as little more than a treaty between sovereign states, and Daniel Webster expressed the concept of the United States as one nation. What started as a debate over the Tariff of Abominations soon morphed into debates over state and federal sovereignty and liberty and disunion. I would definitely recommend Study.com to my colleagues. . A speech by Louisiana Senator Edward Livingston, however, neatly explains how American nationhood encompasses elements of both Webster and Hayne's ideas. I maintain that, from the day of the cession of the territories by the states to Congress, no portion of the country has acted, either with more liberality or more intelligence, on the subject of the Western lands in the new states, than New England. See what I mean? Connecticut and other northeastern states were worried about the pace of growth and wanted to slow this down. In contrasting the state of Ohio with Kentucky, for the purpose of pointing out the superiority of the former, and of attributing that superiority to the existence of slavery, in the one state, and its absence in the other, I thought I could discern the very spirit of the Missouri question[1] intruded into this debate, for objects best known to the gentleman himself. In fact, Webster's definition of the Constitution as for the People, by the People, and answerable to the People would go on to form one of the most enduring ideas about American democracy. What can I say? Record of the Organization and Proceedings of The Massachusetts Lawmakers Investigate Working Condit State (Colonial) Legislatures>Massachusetts State Legislature. ", What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?. Webster-Hayne Debate - Federalism in America - CSF Sir, I deprecate and deplore this tone of thinking and acting. . Well, let's look at the various parts. Some of his historical deductions may be questioned; but far above all possible error on the part of her leaders, stood colonial and Revolutionary New England, and the sturdy, intelligent, and thriving people whose loyalty to the Union had never failed, and whose home, should ill befall the nation, would yet prove liberty's last shelter. The gentleman, therefore, only follows out his own principles; he does no more than arrive at the natural conclusions of his own doctrines; he only announces the true results of that creed, which he has adopted himself, and would persuade others to adopt, when he thus declares that South Carolina has no interest in a public work in Ohio. And now, Mr. President, let me run the honorable gentlemans doctrine a little into its practical application. . I have but one word more to add. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. Nullification, Webster maintained, was a political absurdity. In January 1830, a debate on the nature of sovereignty in the America. Where in these debates do we see a possible argument in defense of Constitutional secession by the states, later claimed by the Southern Confederacy before, during, and after the Civil War? Now, have they given away that right, or agreed to limit or restrict it in any respect? . All of these contentious topics were touched upon in Webster and Hayne's nine day long debate. We met it as a practical question of obligation and duty. . Shedding weak tears over sufferings which had existence only in their own sickly imaginations, these friends of humanity set themselves systematically to work to seduce the slaves of the South from their masters. It is the common pretense. Why was the Hayne-Webster debate important? - eNotes.com . . . The Webster-Hayne Debate: An Inquiry into the Nature of Union by Stefan Mr. Hayne having rejoined to Mr. Webster, especially on the constitutional question. 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It is the servant of four-and-twenty masters, of different wills and different purposes, and yet bound to obey all. After his term as a senator, he served as the Governor of South Carolina. It develops the gentlemans whole political system; and its answer expounds mine. . Sir, it is because South Carolina loves the Union, and would preserve it forever, that she is opposing now, while there is hope, those usurpations of the federal government, which, once established, will, sooner or later, tear this Union into fragments. copyright 2003-2023 Study.com. Webster also tried to assert the importance of New England in the face of . . Rather, the debate eloquently captured the ideas and ideals of Northern and Southern representatives of the time, highlighting and summarizing the major issues of governance of the era. It is one from which we are not disposed to shrink, in whatever form or under whatever circumstances it may be pressed upon us. The measures of the federal government have, it is true, prostrated her interests, and will soon involve the whole South in irretrievable ruin. They undertook to form a general government, which should stand on a new basisnot a confederacy, not a league, not a compact between states, but a Constitution; a popular government, founded in popular election, directly responsible to the people themselves, and divided into branches, with prescribed limits of power, and prescribed duties. Available in hard copy and for download. we find the most opposite and irreconcilable opinions between the two parties which I have before described. Webster scoffed at the idea of consolidation, labeling it "that perpetual cry, both of terror and delusion." What Hayne and his supporters actually meant to do, Webster claimed, was to resist those means that might strengthen the bonds of common interest. But his calm, unperturbed manner reassured them in an instant. The Webster-Hayne Debate between New Hampshire Senator Daniel Webster and South Carolina Senator Robert Young Hayne highlighted the sectional nature of the controversy. Their own power over their own instrument remains. Sir, I may be singularperhaps I stand alone here in the opinion, but it is one I have long entertained, that one of the greatest safeguards of liberty is a jealous watchfulness on the part of the people, over the collection and expenditure of the public moneya watchfulness that can only be secured where the money is drawn by taxation directly from the pockets of the people. I supposed, that on this point, no two gentlemen in the Senate could entertain different opinions. If this Constitution, sir, be the creature of state Legislatures, it must be admitted that it has obtained a strange control over the volitions of its creators. TEST: THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT Flashcards | Quizlet Will it promote the welfare of the United States to have at our disposal a permanent treasury, not drawn from the pockets of the people, but to be derived from a source independent of them? Besides that, however, the federal government was still figuring out its role in American society. Who Won the Webster-Hayne Debate of 1830? - Abbeville Institute U.S. Senate: The Most Famous Senate Speech . The action, the drama, the suspensewho needs the movies? But I do not admit that, under the Constitution, and in conformity with it, there is any mode in which a state government, as a member of the Union, can interfere and stop the progress of the general government, by force of her own laws, under any circumstances whatever. . An equally. . Even Benton, whose connection with the debate made him at first belittle these grand utterances, soon felt the danger and repudiated the company of the nullifiers. flashcard sets. Then, in January of 1830, a senator from Connecticut introduced a proposal to the Senate stating that the federal government should stop surveying the lands west of the Mississippi River. Conversation-based seminars for collegial PD, one-day and multi-day seminars, graduate credit seminars (MA degree), online and in-person. T he Zionist-evangelical back story goes back several decades, with 90-year-old televangelist Pat Robertson being a prime case study.. One of the more notable "coincidences" or anomalies Winter Watch brings to your attention is the image of Robertson on the cover of Time magazine in 1986 back before the public was red pilled by the Internet -as the pastor posed with a gesture called . Two leading ideas predominated in this reply, and with respect to either Hayne was not only answered but put to silence. . . Daniel webster, in a dramatic speech, showed the. This means that South Carolina is essentially its own nation, Georgia is its own nation, and so on. The people were not satisfied with it, and undertook to establish a better. He rose, the image of conscious mastery, after the dull preliminary business of the day was dispatched, and with a happy figurative allusion to the tossed mariner, as he called for a reading of the resolution from which the debate had so far drifted, lifted his audience at once to his level. His ideas about federalism and his interpretation of the Constitution as a document uniting the states under one supreme law were highly influential in the eyes of his contemporaries and would influence the rebuilding of the nation after the Civil War. The following states came from the territory north and west of the Ohio river: Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Wisconsin (1848) and Minnesota (1858). Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) | Case, Significance & Summary. There was no clear winner of the debate, but the Union's victory over the Confederacy just a few decades later brought Webster's ideas to fruition. Are we yet at the mercy of state discretion, and state construction? It is to state, and to defend, what I conceive to be the true principles of the Constitution under which we are here assembled. During the course of the debates, the senators touched on pressing political issues of the daythe tariff, Western lands, internal improvementsbecause behind these and others were two very different understandings of the origin and nature of the American Union. Sir, I will not stop at the border; I will carry the war into the enemys territory, and not consent to lay down my arms, until I shall have obtained indemnity for the past, and security for the future.[4] It is with unfeigned reluctance that I enter upon the performance of this part of my duty. "The most eloquent speech ever delivered in Congress" may have been Webster's 1830 "Second Reply to Hayne", a South Carolina Senator who had echoed John C. Calhoun's case for state's rights.. It is, sir, the peoples Constitution, the peoples government; made for the people; made by the people; and answerable to the people. These debates transformed into a national crisis when South Carolina threatened . The Webster-Hayne debate was a series of spontaneous speeches delivered before the Senate in 1830. Neither side can be said to have 'won' the debate, but Webster's articulation of the Union solidified for many the role of the federal government.
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what idea was espoused with the webster hayne debates