PROGRESS OF ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT 131

question. Most of the writings have little or no literary merit; but even the least of them is worthy of note as part of a movement producing Webster's, Lincoln's, and Calhoun's speeches, and some of the most truly inspired poems that Timrod, Hayne, and Whittier wrote.

Early Attacks on Slavery. The struggle did not begin in the nineteenth century. As early as 1700, there appeared in New England a small book protesting against slavery, The Selling of Joseph, by Samuel Sewall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. For nearly half of the century a continuous crusade against slavery was made by John Woolman, discussed in the preceding chapter. In 1778 Virginia prohibited the slave trade, and the next year Jefferson advocated, unsuccessfully, of course, emancipation for Virginia. A strong presentation of the abuses of slavery appeared in 1782 in Crèvecœur's Letters of an American Farmer, where an account is given of the death by torture of a slave assassin in the South, and a statement is quoted from a Southerner that such treatment was essential to their very existence.

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Progress of Antislavery Movement. Periodical literature opposed to slavery begins about 1821, with William Goodell's Investigator in Rhode Island and Benjamin Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation in Ohio. Far more influential than either of these was the Liberator, edited by William Lloyd Garrison, who had for a short time been associated with Lundy's journal. Garrison continued the Liberator from 1831 to 1865, retiring when the fight was won. In the same year with this paper Whittier entered the struggle with a poem addressed to Garrison. Two years later came Webster's reply to Calhoun's nullification speech, which clinched for the New Englander the title of "Defender of the Constitution." Webster was not interested in the abolition of slavery for itself, but was forced into the aboli

tionist ranks by his championship of Constitutional government as opposed to state sovereignty. Longfellow wrote seven rather mild poems against slavery in 1842; but the next year came Lowell with his Stanzas on Freedom, and began an abolition campaign in verse which is second only to Whittier's in intensity and vigor.

The greatest of all the opponents of slavery, however, did not take a prominent place in national affairs until 1856, when he aided in organizing the Republican party, — made up of the antislavery element in all the old parties. This was Abraham Lincoln, who, nominated four years later for the presidency "for his availability, that is, because he had no history," says Lowell, is now ranked, as the same writer predicted he would be, "among the most prudent of statesmen and the most successful of rulers." Lincoln, like Webster, did not believe in the right of the government to abolish slavery, but insisted on its right to prohibit the extension of slavery into new territory.

Of these we select for study in this period Webster and Lincoln, reserving Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell for the next chapter.

DANIEL WEBSTER, 1782-1852

Life to 1830. Webster was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, on January 18, 1782. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Dartmouth College, graduat ing from the last named institution in 1801. He studied law, and in 1807 began to practice in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1816 he removed to Boston, and soon took his place among the leaders in his profession. Two years later he conducted a case for his Alma Mater before the United States Supreme Court, and laid the foundation of his fame as an interpreter of the Constitution. In 1822 he was elected to Congress from Boston, and was twice re

elected.

Three famous non political occasional addresses (i. e., prepared for special occasions) belong to this period: First Settlement of New England, on the two hundredth anniversary of the landing at Plymouth Rock; the first Bunker Hill Oration, on laying the cornerstone of the monument; and Adams and Jefferson, a eulogy on the two ex-presidents, who died on July 4, 1826. Webster versus Hayne. From 1827 to 1841, and from 1845 to 1850, Webster was United States Senator from Massachusetts, serving for two years between these terms as Secretary of State. During the first of these periods he was in the midst of the antislavery struggle, and made the two notable speeches which established his fame.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

Looking at this picture, one has little difficulty in believing Webster to be the original of "Old Stony Phiz," in Hawthorne's The Great Stone Face.

The first of these great speeches was the Reply to Hayne in 1830. Robert Y. Hayne, Senator from South Carolina, had spoken at length in defense of his state's decision that she could "judge of the violation of the Constitution by the Federal Government and protect her citizens from the operations of unconstitutional laws." The speech was the first outspoken championing of nullification, the parent of seces

sion. Webster's reply set forth what he believed to be "the true principles of the Constitution under which we are here assembled." He contended that the Constitution emanates "immediately from the people," and "is not the creature of the state governments." As a consequence no state can pass "on constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the laws"; this is left to the Supreme Court by an act of the first Congress. On the subject of slavery Webster took the position that it was in the hands of the states, and he would not interfere with it. "I go for the Constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is." Returning to this in a wonderful and unprepared conclusion, he ended with these words: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." The speech had a tremendous effect, and in the words of Senator Lodge, one of Webster's biographers, it "marks the highest point attained by Mr. Webster as a public man."

Webster versus Calhoun. The second great speech referred to was the reply three years later to Calhoun, who had taken Hayne's place in the Senate. In this Webster elaborated the doctrine of the Constitution laid down in the Reply to Hayne. Calhoun's theory was that "the Constitution is a compact between sovereign states," and that any state can break the compact whenever, in its judgment, Congress has violated the Constitution. Webster denied these propositions, asserting that "by the Constitution, we mean the fundamental law"; that nullification, the South Carolina doctrine, is revolution and anarchy; that "all power is with the people," not the states, and "they alone are sovereign"; and finally, that by "the first great principle of all republican liberty . . the majority must govern." Of Webster's speech G. T. Curtis says: "Whoever would understand that theory of the Constitution of the United States which regards it as the enactment of a

fundamental law must go to this speech to find the best and clearest exposition." Of Webster's method of debate Calhoun, after years of verbal conflict with him, said that Webster stated an opponent's arguments more fairly than anybody he had ever seen.

The Seventh of March" Speech. -Webster's last notable speech in the Senate was in 1850 in favor of Clay's compromise, which both hoped would give a basis on which the North and the South could remain united. This effort, known as the Seventh of March Speech, was received by many in the North as an act almost of treason. He seemed to give his sanction to slavery; but it should be remembered that he had never advocated abolition, and that throughout his public career the preservation of the Union had been his controlling motive. Public opinion of his time is well represented by Whittier's lament, Ichabod; and the change in opinion which time and the return of reason brought, in the same poet's The Lost Occasion, written thirty years afterwards.

In 1850 Webster left the Senate to become for the second time Secretary of State. He returned to his home in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in September, 1852, and died there on October 24, after a short illness. The antagonism aroused by his Seventh of March Speech did not long continue; and most Americans now will probably say with Professor Richardson that the maintenance of the Union "was due to the long, patient work of Daniel Webster more than to that of any other American statesman." Surely this is no small accomplishment for the lifetime of even "a parliamentary Hercules," as Thomas Carlyle called him.