He must say to his followers [members of the state militia], defend yourselves with your bayonets; and this is warcivil war. . Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions | Overview, Impact & Significance, Public Speaking for Teachers: Professional Development, AEPA Earth Science (AZ045): Practice & Study Guide, ORELA Early Childhood Education: Practice & Study Guide, Praxis Middle School English Language Arts (5047) Prep, MTLE Physical Education: Practice & Study Guide, ILTS Mathematics (208): Test Practice and Study Guide, MTLE Earth & Space Science: Practice & Study Guide, AEPA Business Education (NT309): Help & Review, Counselor Preparation Comprehensive Examination (CPCE): Exam Prep & Study Guide, GACE Special Education Adapted Curriculum Test I (083) Prep, GACE Special Education Adapted Curriculum Test II (084) Prep, Create an account to start this course today. Most assuredly, I need not say I differ with him, altogether and most widely, on that point. Under that system, the legal actionthe application of law to individuals, belonged exclusively to the states. . Speech on Assuming Office of the President. But that was found insufficient, and inadequate to the public exigencies. . But still, throughout American history, several debates have captured the nation's attention in a way that would make even Hollywood jealous. This seemed like an Eastern spasm of jealousy at the progress of the West. Are we yet at the mercy of state discretion, and state construction? . . Sir, we will not stop to inquire whether the black man, as some philosophers have contended, is of an inferior race, nor whether his color and condition are the effects of a curse inflicted for the offences of his ancestors. 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. . Though the debate began as a standard policy debate, the significance of Daniel Webster's argument reached far beyond a single policy proposal. After his term as a senator, he served as the Governor of South Carolina. . Northern states intended to strengthen the federal government, binding the states in the union under one supreme law, and eradicating the use of slave labor in the rapidly growing nation. I know, full well, that it is, and has been, the settled policy of some persons in the South, for years, to represent the people of the North as disposed to interfere with them, in their own exclusive and peculiar concerns. I would definitely recommend Study.com to my colleagues. . An accomplished politician, Hayne was an eloquent orator who enthralled his audiences. . I spoke, sir, of the ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery, in all future times, northwest of the Ohio,[6] as a measure of great wisdom and foresight; and one which had been attended with highly beneficial and permanent consequences. . It is the servant of four-and-twenty masters, of different wills and different purposes, and yet bound to obey all. Broadside Advertisement for Runaway Slave, Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Free-Soiler, Free & Slave-holding States and Territories. In our contemplation, Carolina and Ohio are parts of the same country; states, united under the same general government, having interests, common, associated, intermingled. . There was an end to all apprehension. He had allowed himself but a single night from eve to morn to prepare for a critical and crowning occasion. 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 action, the drama, the suspensewho needs the movies? Even more pointedly, his speech reflected a decade of arguments from other Massachusetts conservatives who argued against supposed threats to New England's social order.[2]. Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people? . - Women's Rights Facts & Significance, Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points: Definition, Speech & Summary, Fireside Chats: Definition & Significance, JFK's New Frontier: Definition, Speech & Program. They will also better understand the debate's political context. The other way was through the sale of federally-owned land to private citizens. Before his term as a U.S. senator, Hayne had served as a state senator, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, South Carolina's Speaker of the House, and Attorney General of South Carolina. And here it will be necessary to go back to the origin of the federal government. Nullification, Webster maintained, was a political absurdity. All of these contentious topics were touched upon in Webster and Hayne's nine day long debate. . 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. Assuredly not. Address to the Slaves of the United States. . This episode was used in nineteenth century America as a Biblical justification for slavery. TeachingAmericanHistory.org is a project of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, 401 College Avenue, Ashland, Ohio 44805 PHONE (419) 289-5411 TOLL FREE (877) 289-5411 EMAIL [emailprotected], The Congress Sends Twelve Amendments to the States, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 3rd Debate Part I, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 3rd Debate Part II, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 4th Debate Part I, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 4th Debate Part II, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 6th Debate Part I, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 6th Debate Part II, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 7th Debate Part I, National Disfranchisement of Colored People, William Lloyd Garrison to Thomas Shipley. 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.. Our notion of things is entirely different. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. 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? On the one side it is contended that the public land ought to be reserved as a permanent fund for revenue, and future distribution among the states, while, on the other, it is insisted that the whole of these lands of right belong to, and ought to be relinquished to, the states in which they lie. They had burst forth from arguments about a decision by Connecticut Senator Samuel Foote. . To all this, sir, I was disposed most cordially to respond. It develops the gentlemans whole political system; and its answer expounds mine. 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. What can I say? In this moment in American history, the federal government had relatively little power. Strange was it, however, that in heaping reproaches upon the Hartford Convention he did not mark how nearly its leaders had mapped out the same line of opposition to the national Government that his State now proposed to take, both relying upon the arguments of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 179899. This, sir, is General Washingtons consolidation. . Sir, there exists, moreover, a deep and settled conviction of the benefits, which result from a close connection of all the states, for purposes of mutual protection and defense. The people were not satisfied with it, and undertook to establish a better. 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 Webster's articulation of the concept of the Union went on to shape American attitudes about the federal government. We had no other general government. Such interference has never been supposed to be within the power of government; nor has it been, in any way, attempted. By the time it ended nine days later, the focus had shifted to the vastly more cosmic concerns of slavery and the nature of the federal Union. . 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 interest, asks he, has South Carolina in a canal in Ohio? Sir, this very question is full of significance. Sir, when the gentleman provokes me to such a conflict, I meet him at the threshold. 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. . . It cannot be doubted, and is not denied, that before the formation of the constitution, each state was an independent sovereignty, possessing all the rights and powers appertaining to independent nations; nor can it be denied that, after the Constitution was formed, they remained equally sovereign and independent, as to all powers, not expressly delegated to the federal government. Why? . 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. State governments were in control of their own affairs and expected little intervention from the federal government. . Get unlimited access to over 88,000 lessons. . In coming to the consideration of the next great question, what ought to be the future policy of the government in relation to the public lands? 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? . The Confederation was, in strictness, a compact; the states, as states, were parties to it. . 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. The Virginia Resolution asserted that when the federal government undertook the deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of powers not granted to it in the constitution, states had the right and duty to interpose their authority to prevent this evil. . . Hayne argued that the sovereign and independent states had created the Union to promote their particular interests. . . . Sir, I deprecate and deplore this tone of thinking and acting. But, sir, the task has been forced upon me, and I proceed right onward to the performance of my duty; be the consequences what they may, the responsibility is with those who have imposed upon me this necessity.