The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1

But, Sir, what is the prospect of change? Is there any hope that the national sentiment will recover its accustomed tone, and restore to the government a just and efficient administration?

Sir, if there be something of doubt on this point, there is also something, perhaps much, of hope. The popularity of the present chief magistrate, springing from causes not connected with his administration of the government, has been great. Public gratitude for military service has remained fast to him, in defiance of many things in his civil administration calculated to weaken its hold. At length there are indications, not to be mistaken, of new sentiments and new impressions. At length, a conviction of danger to important interests, and to the security of the government, has made its lodgement in the public mind. At length, public sentiment begins to have its free course and to produce its just effects. I fully believe, Sir, that a great majority of the nation desire a change in the administration; and that it will be difficult for party organization or party denunciation to suppress the effective utterance of that general wish. There are unhappy differences, it is true, about the fit person to be successor to the present incumbent in the chief magistracy; and it is possible that this disunion may, in the end, defeat the will of the majority. But so far as we agree together, let us act together. Wherever our sentiments concur, let our hands coöperate. If we cannot at present agree who should be President, we are at least agreed who ought not to be. I fully believe, Sir, that gratifying intelligence is already on the wing. While we are yet deliberating in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania is voting. This week, she elects her members to the next Congress. I doubt not the result of that election will show an important change in public sentiment in that State; nor can I doubt that the great States adjoining her, holding similar constitutional principles and having similar interests, will feel the impulse of the same causes which affect her. The people of the United States, by a countless majority, 277 are attached to the Constitution. If they shall be convinced that it is in danger, they will come to its rescue, and will save it. It cannot bi destroyed, even now, if they will undertake its guardianship and protection.

But suppose, Sir, there was less hope than there is, would that consideration weaken the force of our obligations? Are we at a post which we are at liberty to desert when it becomes difficult to hold it? May we fly at the approach of danger? Does our fidelity to the Constitution require no more of us than to enjoy its blessings, to bask in the prosperity which it has shed around us and our fathers? and are we at liberty to abandon it in the hour of its peril, or to make for it but a faint and heartless struggle, for the want of encouragement and the want of hope? Sir, if no State come to our succor, if everywhere else the contest should be given up, here let it be protracted to the last moment. Here, where the first blood of the Revolution was shed, let the last effort be made for that which is the greatest blessing obtained by the Revolution, a free and united government. Sir, in our endeavors to maintain our existing forms of government, we are acting not for ourselves alone, but for the great cause of constitutional liberty all over the globe. We are trustees holding a sacred treasure, in which all the lovers of freedom have a stake. Not only in revolutionized France, where there are no longer subjects, where the monarch can no longer say, I am the state; not only in reformed England, where our principles, our institutions, our practice of free government, are now daily quoted and commended; but in the depths of Germany, also, and among the desolated fields and the still smoking ashes of Poland, prayers are uttered for the preservation of our union and happiness. We are surrounded, Sir, by a cloud of witnesses. The gaze of the sons of liberty, everywhere, is upon us, anxiously, intently, upon us. They may see us fall in the struggle for our Constitution and government, but Heaven forbid that they should see us recreant.

At least, Sir, let the star of Massachusetts be the last which shall be seen to fall from heaven, and to plunge into the utter darkness of disunion. Let her shrink back, let her hold others back if she can, at any rate, let her keep herself back, from this gulf, full at once of fire and of blackness; yes, Sir, as far as human foresight can scan, or human imagination fathom, full 278 of the fire and the blood of civil war, and of the thick darkness of general political disgrace, ignominy, and rain. Though the worst may happen that can happen, and though she may not be able to prevent the catastrophe, yet let her maintain her own integrity, her own high honor, her own unwavering fidelity, so that with respect and decency, though with a broken and a bleeding heart, she may pay the last tribute to a glorious, departed, free Constitution.

RECEPTION AT BUFFALO. 100

In the summer of 1833, Mr. Webster made a visit to the State of Ohio. On his way thither, while at Buffalo, New York, he was invited by the citizens of that place to attend a public dinner, which his engagements, and the necessity of an early departure, compelled him to decline. He accepted, however, an invitation to be present at the launching of a steamboat, to which the proprietors had given the name of Daniel Webster, and, in reply to an address from one of them, made the following remarks:—

I avail myself gladly of this opportunity of making my acknowledgments to the proprietors of this vessel, for the honor conferred upon me by allowing her to bear my name. Such a token of regard, had it proceeded from my immediate friends and neighbors, could not but have excited feelings of gratitude. It is more calculated to awaken these sentiments, when coming from gentlemen of character and worth with whom I have not had the pleasure of personal acquaintance, and whose motive, I may flatter myself, is to be found in an indulgent opinion towards well-intentioned services in a public situation.

It gives me great pleasure, also, on the occasion of so large an assembly of the people of Buffalo, to express to them my thanks for the kindness and hospitality with which I have been received in this young, but growing and interesting city. The launching of another vessel on these inland seas is but a fresh occasion of congratulation on the rapid growth, the great active prosperity, and the animating prospects of this city. Eight years ago, fellow-citizens, I enjoyed the pleasure of a short visit to this place. There was then but one steamboat on Lake 282 Erie; it made its passage once in ten or fifteen days only; and I remember that persons in my own vicinity, intending to travel to the Far West by that conveyance, wrote to their friends here to learn the day of the commencement of the contemplated voyage. I understand that there are now eighteen steamboats plying on the lake, all finding full employment; and that a boat leaves Buffalo twice every day for Detroit and the ports in Ohio. The population of Buffalo, now four times as large as it was then, has kept pace with the augmentation of its commercial business. This rapid progress is an indication, in a single instance, of what is likely to be the rate of the future progress of the city. So many circumstances incline to favor its advancement, that it is difficult to estimate the rate by which it may hereafter proceed. It will probably not be long before the products of the fisheries of the East, the importations of the Atlantic frontier, the productions, mineral and vegetable, of all the Northwestern States, and the sugars of Louisiana, will find their way hither by inland water communication. Much of this, indeed, has already taken place, and is of daily occurrence. Many, who remember the competition between Buffalo and Black Rock for the site of the city, will doubtless live to see the city spread over both. This singular prosperity, fellow-citizens, so gratifying for the present, and accompanied with such high hopes for the future, is due to your own industry and enterprise, to your favored position, and to the flourishing condition of the internal commerce of the country; and the blessings and the riches of that internal commerce, be it ever remembered, are the fruits of a united government, and one general, common commercial system.

It is not only the trade of New York, of Ohio, of New England, of Indiana, or of Michigan, but it is a part of the great aggregate of the trade of all the States, in which you so largely and so successfully partake. Who does not see that the advantages here enjoyed spring from a general government and a uniform code? Who does not see, that, if these States had remained severed, and each had existed with a system of imposts and commercial regulations of its own, all excluding and repelling, rather than inviting, the intercourse of the rest, the place could hardly have hoped to be more than a respectable frontier post? Or can any man look to the one and to the other side 283 of this beautiful lake and river, and not see, in their different conditions, the plain and manifest results of different political institutions and commercial regulations?

It would be pleasant, fellow-citizens, to dwell on these topics, so worthy at all times of regard and reflection; and especially so fit to engage attention at the present moment. But this is not the proper moment to pursue them; and, tendering to you once more my thanks and good wishes, I take my leave of you by expressing my hope for the continued success of that great interest, so essential to your happiness,—The commerce of the Lakes, a new-discovered source of national prosperity, and a new bond of national union.

An address was also made to Mr. Webster in behalf of the mechanics and manufacturers of Buffalo, to which he returned the following reply:—

I need hardly say, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, that it gives me much satisfaction to receive this mark of approbation of my public conduct from the manufacturers and mechanics of Buffalo. Those who are the most immediately affected by the measures of the government are naturally the earliest to perceive their operation, and to foresee their final results. Allow me to say, Gentlemen, that the confidence expressed by you in my continuance in the general course which I have pursued must rest, and may rest safely, I trust, on the history of the past. Desiring always to avoid extremes, and to observe a prudent moderation in regard to the protective system, I yet hold steadiness and perseverance, in maintaining what has been established, to be essential to the public prosperity. Nothing can be worse than that laws concerning the daily labor and the daily bread of whole classes of the people should be subject to frequent and violent changes. It were far better not to move at all than to move forward and then fall back again.

My sentiments, Gentlemen, on the tariff question, are generally known. In my opinion, a just and a leading object in the whole system is the encouragement and protection of American manual labor. I confess, that every day’s experience convinces me more and more of the high propriety of regarding this object. Our government is made for all, not for a few. Its object is to promote the greatest good of the whole; and this ought to be kept constantly in view in its administration. The far greater number of those who maintain the government belong 284 to what may be called the industrious or productive classes of the community. With us labor is not depressed, ignorant, and unintelligent. On the contrary, it is active, spirited, enterprising, seeking its own rewards, and laying up for its own competence and its own support. The motive to labor is the great stimulus to our whole society; and no system is wise or just which does not afford this stimulus, as far as it may. The protection of American labor against the injurious competition of foreign labor, so far, at least, as respects general handicraft productions, is known historically to have been one end designed to be obtained by establishing the Constitution; and this object, and the constitutional power to accomplish it, ought never in any degree to be surrendered or compromised.

Our political institutions, Gentlemen, place power in the hands of all the people; and to make the exercise of this power, in such hands, salutary, it is indispensable that all the people should enjoy, first, the means of education, and, second, the reasonable certainty of procuring a competent livelihood by industry and labor. These institutions are neither designed for, nor suited to, a nation of ignorant paupers. To disseminate knowledge, then, universally, and to secure to labor and industry their just rewards, is the duty both of the general and the State governments, each in the exercise of its appropriate powers. To be free, the people must be intelligently free; to be substantially independent, they must be able to secure themselves against want, by sobriety and industry; to be safe depositaries of political power, they must be able to comprehend and understand the general interests of the community, and must themselves have a stake in the welfare of that community. The interest of labor, therefore, has an importance, in our system, beyond what belongs to it as a mere question of political economy. It is connected with our forms of government, and our whole social system. The activity and prosperity which at present prevail among us, as every one must notice, are produced by the excitement of compensating prices to labor; and it is fervently to be hoped that no unpropitious circumstances and no unwise policy may counteract this efficient cause of general competency and public happiness.

I pray you, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, to receive personally my thanks for the manner in which you have communicated to me the sentiments of the meeting which you represent.

RECEPTION AT PITTSBURG

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Mr. Webster arrived at Pittsburg on the evening of the 4th of July accompanied by a numerous cavalcade of citizens. He was immediately waited on by a committee, with the following letter:—

“To the Hon. Daniel Webster.

“Pittsburg, July 4, 1833.

“Sir,—At a meeting of the citizens of Pittsburg, the undersigned were appointed a committee to convey to you a cordial welcome, and an assurance of the exalted sense which is entertained of your character and public services.

“The feeling is one which pervades our whole community, scorning any narrower discrimination than that of lovers of our sacred Union, and admirers of the highest moral and intellectual qualities, steadily and triumphantly devoted to the noblest purposes.

“The resolutions under which the committee act indicate no particular form of tribute, but contain only an earnest injunction to seek the best mode by which to manifest the universal recognition of your claim to the admiration and gratitude of every American citizen. It will be deeply mortifying to us, if our execution of this trust shall fail adequately to represent the enthusiastic feeling in which it had its origin.

“The committee will have the honor of waiting on you in person, at such an hour as you may please to designate, with a view to ascertain how they can best fulfil the purposes of their appointment. It will be very gratifying if your convenience will permit you to partake of a public dinner at any period during your stay.

“We have the honor to be, with the highest respect, &c.

JAMES ROSS,

BENJAMIN BAKEWELL,

CHARLES AVERY,

WILLIAM WADE,

SAMUEL PETTIGREW,

GEORGE MILTENBERGER,

ISAAC LIGHTNER,

SYLVANUS LATHROP,

JOHN ARTHURS,

ALEX. BRACKENRIDGE,

WILLIAM ROBINSON, Jun.

GEORGE A. COOK,

W. W. FETTERMAN,

SAMUEL ROSEBURGH,

WILLIAM MACKEY,

JAMES JOHNSTON,

RICHARD BIDDLE,

SAMUEL P. DARLINGTON,

MICHAEL TIERNAN,

SAMUEL FAHNESTOCK,

THOMAS BAKEWELL,

WALTER H. LOWRIE,

WILLIAM W. IRWIN,

ROBERT S. CASSAT,

CORNELIUS DARRAGH,

BENJAMIN DARLINGTON,

NEVILLE B. CRAIG,

WILSON McCANDLES,

OWEN ASHTON,

CHARLES SHALER,

THOMAS SCOTT,

CHARLES H. ISRAEL.”

To this letter Mr. Webster returned the following reply:—

“Pittsburg, July 5, 1833.

“Gentlemen,—I hardly know how to express my thanks for the hospitable and cordial welcome with which the citizens of Pittsburg are disposed to receive me on this my first visit to their city. The terms in which you express their sentiments, in your letter of yesterday, far transcend all merits of mine, and can have their origin only in spontaneous kindness and good feeling. I tender to you, Gentlemen, and to the meeting which you represent, my warmest acknowledgments. I rejoice sincerely to find the health of the city so satisfactory; and I reciprocate with all the people of Pittsburg the most sincere and hearty good wishes for their prosperity and happiness. Long may it continue what it now is, an abode of comfort and hospitality, a refuge for the well-deserving from all nations, a model of industry, and an honor to the country.

“It is my purpose, Gentlemen, to stay a day or two among you, to see such of your manufactories and public institutions as it may be in my power to visit. I most respectfully pray leave to decline a public dinner, but shall have great pleasure in meeting such of your fellow-citizens as may desire it, in the most friendly and unceremonious manner.

“I am, Gentlemen, with very true regard, yours,“Daniel Webster.

“To Hon. James Ross and others,

Gentlemen of the Committee.”

In deference to Mr. Webster’s wishes, the idea of a formal dinner was abandoned; but, as there was a general desire for some collective expression of public esteem, it was determined to invite him to meet the citizens in a spacious grove, at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 8th. Refreshments of a plain kind were spread around, under the charge of the committee; but the tables could serve only as a nucleus to the multitude. His Honor the Mayor called the company to order, and addressed them as follows:—

“I have to ask, Gentlemen, your attention for a few moments.

“We are met here to mark our sense of the extraordinary merits of a distinguished statesman and public benefactor. At his particular request, every thing like parade or ceremonial has been waived; and, in consequence, he has been the better enabled to receive, and to reciprocate, the hearty and spontaneous expression of your good-will. I am now desired to attempt, in your name, to give utterance to the universal feeling around me.

“Gentlemen, we are this day citizens of the United States. The Union is safe. Not a star has fallen from that proud banner around which our affections have so long rallied. And when, with this delightful assurance, we cast our eyes back upon the eventful history of the last year,—when we recall the gloomy apprehensions, and perhaps hopeless despondency, 289 which came over us,—who, Gentlemen, can learn, without a glow of enthusiasm, that the great champion of the Constitution, that Daniel Webster, is now in the midst of us. To his mighty intellect, the nation, with one voice, confided its cause,—of life or death. Shall there be withheld from the triumphant advocate of the nation a nation’s gratitude? Ours, Gentlemen, is a government not of force, but of opinion. The reason of the people must be satisfied before a call to arms. The mass of our peaceful and conscientious citizens cannot, and ought not, except in a clear case, to be urged to abandon the implements of industry for the sword and the bayonet. This consideration it is that imparts to intellectual preëminence in the service of truth its incalculable value. And hence the preciousness of that admirable and unanswerable exposition, which has put down, once and for ever, the artful sophisms of nullification.

“If, Gentlemen, we turn to other portions of the public history of our distinguished guest, it will be found that his claims to grateful acknowledgment are not less imposing. The cause of domestic industry, of internal improvement, of education, of whatever, in short, is calculated to render us a prosperous, united, and happy people, has found in him a watchful and efficient advocate. Nor is it the least of his merits, that to our gallant Navy Mr. Webster has been an early, far-sighted, and persevering friend. Our interior position cannot render us cold and unobservant on this point, whilst the victory of Perry yet supplies to us a proud and inspiring anniversary. And such is the wonderful chain of mutual dependence which binds our Union, that, in the remotest corner of the West, the exchangeable value of every product must depend on the security with which the ocean can be traversed.

“Gentlemen, I have detained you too long; yet I will add one word. I do but echo the language of the throngs that have crowded round Mr. Webster in declaring, that the frank and manly simplicity of his character and manners has created a feeling of personal regard which no mere intellectual ascendency could have secured. We approached him with admiration for the achievements of his public career, never supposing for a moment that our hearts could have aught to do in the matter; we shall part as from a valued friend, the recollection of whose virtues cannot pass away.”

Mr. Webster then addressed the assembly as follows:

RECEPTION AT PITTSBURG. 101

Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen:—I rise, fellow-citizens, with unaffected sensibility, to give you my thanks for the hospitable manner in which you have been kind enough to receive me, on this my first visit to Pittsburg, and to make all due acknowledgments to your worthy Mayor, for the sentiments which he has now seen fit to express.

Although, Gentlemen, it has been my fortune to be personally acquainted with very few of you, I feel, at this moment, that we are not strangers. We are fellow-countrymen, fellow-citizens, bound together by a thousand ties of interest, of sympathy, of duty; united, I hope I may add, by bonds of mutual regard. We are bound together, for good or for evil, in our great political interests. I know that I am addressing Americans, every one of whom has a true American heart in his bosom; and I feel that I have also an American heart in my bosom. I address you, then, Gentlemen, with the same fervent good wishes for your happiness, the same brotherly affection, and the same feelings of regard and esteem, as if, instead of being upon the borders of the Ohio, I stood by the Connecticut or the Merrimack. As citizens, countrymen, and neighbors, I give you my hearty good wishes, and thank you, over and over again, for your abundant hospitality.

Gentlemen, the Mayor has been pleased to advert, in terms beyond all expectation or merit of my own, to my services in defence of the glorious Constitution under which we live, and which makes you and me all that we are, and all that we desire to be. He has done much more than justice to my efforts; but 292 he has not overstated the importance of the occasion on which those efforts were made.

Gentlemen, it is but a few short months since dark and portentous clouds did hang over our heavens, and did shut out, as it were, the sun in his glory. A new and perilous crisis was upon us. Dangers, novel in their character, and fearful in their aspect, menaced both the peace of the country and the integrity of the Constitution. For forty years our government had gone on, I need hardly say how prosperously and gloriously, meeting, it is true, with occasional dissatisfaction, and, in one or two instances, with ill-concerted resistance to law. Through all these trials it had successfully passed. But now a time had come when the authority of law was opposed by authority of law, when the power of the general government was resisted by the arms of State government, and when organized military force, under all the sanctions of State conventions and State laws, was ready to resist the collection of the public revenues, and hurl defiance at the statutes of Congress.

‘Gentlemen, this was an alarming moment. In common with all good citizens, I felt it to be such. A general anxiety pervaded the breasts of all who were, at home, partaking in the prosperity, honor, and happiness which the country had enjoyed. And how was it abroad? Why, Gentlemen, every intelligent friend of human liberty, throughout the world, looked with amazement at the spectacle which we exhibited. In a day of unparalleled prosperity, after a half-century’s most happy experience of the blessings of our Union; when we had already become the wonder of all the liberal part of the world, and the envy of the illiberal; when the Constitution had so amply falsified the predictions of its enemies, and more than fulfilled all the hopes of its friends; in a time of peace, with an overflowing treasury; when both the population and the improvement of the country had outrun the most sanguine anticipations;—it was at this moment that we showed ourselves to the whole civilized world as being apparently on the eve of disunion and anarchy, at the very point of dissolving, once and for ever, that Union which had made us so prosperous and so great. It was at this moment that those appeared among us who seemed ready to break up the national Constitution, and to scatter the twenty-four States into twenty-four unconnected communities.