what idea was espoused with the webster hayne debates

If the government of the United States be the agent of the state governments, then they may control it, provided they can agree in the manner of controlling it; if it be the agent of the people, then the people alone can control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is to state, and to defend, what I conceive to be the true principles of the Constitution under which we are here assembled. 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. . I admit that there is an ultimate violent remedy, above the Constitution, and in defiance of the Constitution, which may be resorted to, when a revolution is to be justified. Record of the Organization and Proceedings of The Massachusetts Lawmakers Investigate Working Condit State (Colonial) Legislatures>Massachusetts State Legislature. That led into a debate on the economy, in which Webster attacked the institution of slavery and Hayne labeled the policy of protectionist tariffs as the consolidation of a strong central government, which he called the greatest of evils. If this is to become one great consolidated government, swallowing up the rights of the states, and the liberties of the citizen, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman, and beggared yeomanry,[8] the Union will not be worth preserving. 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. Speech of Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, January 19, 1830. Robert Young Hayne spent more than two decades in elected offices, including mayor of Charleston, member of South Carolina's legislature, attorney general, and then governor of the state. The Webster-Hayne debate was a series of spontaneous speeches presented to the United States Senate by senators Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. Nullification, Webster maintained, was a political absurdity. . 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. Foote Idea To Limit The Sale Of Public Lands In The West To New Settlers. Would it be safe to confide such a treasure to the keeping of our national rulers? Senator Foote, of Connecticut, submitted a proposition inquiring into the expediency of limiting the sales of public lands to those already in the market. Webster argued that the American people had created the Union to promote the good of the whole. The Webster-Hayne debates began over one issue but quickly switched to another. . We see its consequences at this moment, and we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow. What followed, the Webster Hayne debate, was one of the most famous exchanges in Senate history. Pet Banks History & Effects | What are Pet Banks? [2] We deal in no abstractions. . . And here it will be necessary to go back to the origin of the federal government. Some of Webster's personal friends had felt nervous over what appeared to them too hasty a period for preparation. Understand the 1830 debate's significance through an overview of issues of the Constitution, the Union, and state sovereignty. It would be equally fatal to the sovereignty and independence of the states. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. . 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. . Correspondence Between Anthony Butler and Presiden State of the Union Address Part II (1846). But his standpoint was purely local and sectional. States' rights (South) vs. nationalism (North). 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. They will also better understand the debate's political context. It would enable Congress and the Executive to exercise a control over states, as well as over great interests in the country, nay, even over corporations and individualsutterly destructive of the purity, and fatal to the duration of our institutions. 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. . Address to the Slaves of the United States. We met it as a practical question of obligation and duty. We who come here, as agents and representatives of these narrow-minded and selfish men of New England, consider ourselves as bound to regard, with equal eye, the good of the whole, in whatever is within our power of legislation. . Sir, an immense national treasury would be a fund for corruption. Winners and Losers History's Famous Debates - Medium Well, let's look at the various parts. 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. The main issue of the Webster-Hayne Debate was the nature of the country that had been created by the Constitution. The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts [Senator Daniel Webster] has gone out of his way to pass a high eulogium on the state of Ohio. . In this moment in American history, the federal government had relatively little power. It has been said that Hayne was Calhoun's sword and buckler and that he returned to the contest refreshed each morning by nightly communions with the Vice-President, drawing auxiliary supplies from the well-stored arsenal of his powerful and subtle mind. Who Won the Webster-Hayne Debate of 1830? - Abbeville Institute . MTEL Speech: Public Discourse & Debate in the U.S. 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. Who, then, Mr. President, are the true friends of the Union? Expert Answers. We are ready to make up the issue with the gentleman, as to the influence of slavery on individual and national characteron the prosperity and greatness, either of the United States, or of particular states. Sir, I am one of those who believe that the very life of our system is the independence of the states, and that there is no evil more to be deprecated than the consolidation of this government. . Southern ships and Southern sailors were not the instruments of bringing slaves to the shores of America, nor did our merchants reap the profits of that accursed traffic.. . 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. The speech is also known for the line Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable, which would subsequently become the state motto of North Dakota, appearing on the state seal. But, according to the gentlemans reading, the object of the Constitution was to consolidate the government, and the means would seem to be, the promotion of injustice, causing domestic discord, and depriving the states and the people of the blessings of liberty forever. Debate on the Constitutionality of the Mexican War, Letters and Journals from the Oregon Trail. Hayne quotes from the Virginia Resolution (1798), authored by Thomas Jefferson, to protest the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798). Eloquence threw open the portals of eternal day. This is the sum of what I understand from him, to be the South Carolina doctrine; and the doctrine which he maintains. Ham, one of Noahs sons, saw him uncovered, for which Noah cursed him by making Hams son, Canaan, a slave to Ham's brothers. The taxes paid by foreign nations to export American cotton, for example, generated lots of money for the government. What started as a debate over the Tariff of Abominations soon morphed into debates over state and federal sovereignty and liberty and disunion. 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. . Such interference has never been supposed to be within the power of government; nor has it been, in any way, attempted. The excited crowd which had packed the Senate chamber, filling every seat on the floor and in the galleries, and all the available standing room, dispersed after the orator's last grand apostrophe had died away in the air, with national pride throbbing at the heart. This important consideration, seriously and deeply impressed on our minds, led each state in the Convention to be less rigid, on points of inferior magnitude, than might have been otherwise expected.. Webster and Hayne on the American Constitution This was the man to fire an aristocracy of fellow citizens ready to arm when their interests were in danger, and upon him, it devolved to advance the cause of South Carolina, break down the tariff, and fascinate the Union with the new rattlesnake theories. I know that there are some persons in the part of the country from which the honorable member comes, who habitually speak of the Union in terms of indifference, or even of disparagement. Web hardcover $30.00 paperback $17.00 kindle nook book ibook. One was through protective tariffs, high taxes on imports and exports. Webster-Hayne debate - Wikipedia 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. [was] fixed, forever, the character of the population in the vast regions Northwest of the Ohio, by excluding from them involuntary servitude. The people were not satisfied with it, and undertook to establish a better. . . . . What idea was espoused with the Webster-Hayne debates? . Webster's argument that the constitution should stand as a powerful uniting force between the states rather than a treaty between sovereign states held as a key concept in America's ideas about the federal government. Rachel Venter is a recent graduate of Metropolitan State University of Denver. And who are its enemies? Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people? An accomplished politician, Hayne was an eloquent orator who enthralled his audiences. Those who would confine the federal government strictly within the limits prescribed by the Constitutionwho would preserve to the states and the people all powers not expressly delegatedwho would make this a federal and not a national Unionand who, administering the government in a spirit of equal justice, would make it a blessing and not a curse. But I take leave of the subject. Sir, I should fear the rebuke of no intelligent gentleman of Kentucky, were I to ask whether, if such an ordinance could have been applied to his own state, while it yet was a wilderness, and before Boone had passed the gap of the Alleghany, he does not suppose it would have contributed to the ultimate greatness of that commonwealth? . Competing Conceptions of Union and Ordered Liberty in Rush-Bagot Treaty Structure & Effects | What was the Rush-Bagot Agreement? Tariff of Abominations of 1828 | What was the Significance of the Tariff of Abominations? . The tendency of all these ideas and sentiments is obviously to bring the Union into discussion, as a mere question of present and temporary expediency; nothing more than a mere matter of profit and loss. 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. Hayne argued that the sovereign and independent states had created the Union to promote their particular interests. Gloomy and downcast of late, Massachusetts men walked the avenue as though the fife and drum were before them. All regulated governments, all free governments, have been broken up by similar disinterested and well-disposed interference! It is worth noting that in the course of the debate, on the very floor of the Senate, both Hayne and Webster raised the specter of civil war 30 years before it commenced. In our contemplation, Carolina and Ohio are parts of the same country; states, united under the same general government, having interests, common, associated, intermingled. . Whose agent is it? In whatever is within the proper sphere of the constitutional power of this government, we look upon the states as one. And what has been the consequence? . Francis O. J. Smith to Secretary of State Dan Special Message to the House of Representatives, Special Message to Congress on Mexican Relations. . Hayne was a great orator, filled with fiery passion and eloquent prose. Now that was a good debate! Speech of Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, January 25, 1830. . We look upon the states, not as separated, but as united. Assuredly not. It is the common pretense. Plus, get practice tests, quizzes, and personalized coaching to help you 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. How do Webster and Hayne differ in regard to their understandings of the proper relationship among the several states and between the states and the national government? . . Most people of the time supported a small central government and strong state governments, so the federal government was much weaker than you might have expected. When the gentleman says the Constitution is a compact between the states, he uses language exactly applicable to the old Confederation. As sovereign states, each state could individually interpret the Constitution and even leave the Union altogether. It was of a partizan and censorious character and drew nearly all the chief senators out. The United States, under the Constitution and federal government, was a single, unified nation, not a coalition of sovereign states. He must cut it with his sword. He accused them of a desire to check the growth of the West in the interests of protection. Webster's second reply to Hayne, in January 1830, became a famous defense of the federal union: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." Just beneath the surface of this debate lay the elements of the developing sectional crisis between North and South. . succeed. The Webster-Hayne Debate: An Inquiry into the Nature of Union by Stefan Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives. Webster's description of the U.S. government as "made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people," was later paraphrased by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address in the words "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Jackson himself would raise a national toast for 'the Union' later that year. . Competing Conceptions of Union and Ordered Liberty in The Webster-Hayne Two leading ideas predominated in this reply, and with respect to either Hayne was not only answered but put to silence. I regard domestic slavery as one of the greatest of evils, both moral and political. . This episode was used in nineteenth century America as a Biblical justification for slavery. But I do not understand the doctrine now contended for to be that which, for the sake of distinctness, we may call the right of revolution. The states cannot now make war; they cannot contract alliances; they cannot make, each for itself, separate regulations of commerce; they cannot lay imposts; they cannot coin money. This feeling, always carefully kept alive, and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine. Excerpts from Ratification Documents of Virginia a Ratifying Conventions>New York Ratifying Convention. 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 . The Confederation was, in strictness, a compact; the states, as states, were parties to it. 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. Speech of Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, January 26 and 27, 1830. The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the Supreme Law. The theory that the states' may vote against unfair laws. We do not impose geographical limits to our patriotic feeling or regard; we do not follow rivers and mountains, and lines of latitude, to find boundaries, beyond which public improvements do not benefit us. Congress could only recommendtheir acts were not of binding force, till the states had adopted and sanctioned them. 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. The debate was on. Speech on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. . I would strengthen the ties that hold us together. . . Historians love a good debate. I did not utter a single word, which any ingenuity could torture into an attack on the slavery of the South. This, sir, is General Washingtons consolidation. 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? The debate can be seen as a precursor to the debate that became . . I supposed, that on this point, no two gentlemen in the Senate could entertain different opinions. Sir, when gentlemen speak of the effects of a common fund, belonging to all the states, as having a tendency to consolidation, what do they mean? [O]pinions were expressed yesterday on the general subject of the public lands, and on some other subjects, by the gentleman from South Carolina [Senator Robert Hayne], so widely different from my own, that I am not willing to let the occasion pass without some reply. Enveloping all of these changes was an ever-growing tension over the economy, as southern states firmly defended slavery and northern states advocated for a more industrial, slave-free market. It makes but little difference, in my estimation, whether Congress or the Supreme Court, are invested with this power. . Webster-Hayne Debates, 1830 - Bill of Rights Institute 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. The honorable member himself is not, I trust, and can never be, one of these. 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 . Which of the following statements best represents the desires of the Northern states during the debate of Missouri statehood? I propose to consider it, and to compare it with the Constitution. Sheidley, Harlow W. "The Wester-Hayne Debate: Recasting New England's Sectionalism", Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 179899, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WebsterHayne_debate&oldid=1135315190, This page was last edited on 23 January 2023, at 22:54.