LogFAQs > #895861661

Not_an_Owl posted...

Tell me a story about Daniel Webster.

Webster is like the Benjamin Disraeli of American history where a lot of amazing quotes are attributes to him but its hard to really latch on to anything he ever actually, you know, did.

But he was a very gifted orator so lets talk about a speech hes famous for.

First of all Webster was a really flamboyant and well known trial lawyer. It would like Senator Johnny Cochran in terms of how he presented himself. He basically RAN the Congress as part of a 3-Man Whig leadership team alongside Henry Clay and John C Calhoun and this was in the period where Congress ran the country during a stretch of very week presidents.

Its a little known fact that a civil war almost got started in the 1830s during what we call the "nullification crisis". South Carolina basically decided that it wasnt going to pay any tarriffs and that if the federal government wanted them to then they could send soldiers down there to MAKE them. Tensions were high. Andrew Jackson was largely elected under the assumption that he would repeal the Tarriffs with Calhoun, a native of South Carolina, as his running mate. INSTEAD, Jackson asked for and signed ANOTHER Tariff.

So once again the President and Vice President were openly attacking each other with Webster stuck trying to simply prevent civil war and sell the need for unionism. The Senate had just passed an act allowing Jackson to send the army to South Carolina to enforce the tariff. War looked inevitable.
This didn't happen in a vacuum - the slavery debate looped into this too. So Webster engaged Calhouns dog, Senator Hayne in an open week-long rhetorical debate to try and talk the Senate into a compromise where none looked possible.

The result was a passionate speech about the benefits of union and the dangers of sectarianism that would become the rallying cry of every attempt to avoid a Civil War. He was able to actually win his colleagues and Calhoun over and work began on a compromise tarriff.

And that was that. South Carolina convened to vote to nullify the act authorizing the army to march on them - showing they still maintained the right to flout federal law (which would remain their justification for the right to secede 30 years later) but otherwise accepted the compromise and everyone declared victory.

And that's how you get people to remember you as GOAT Senator.
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Board 8's Voice of Reason
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