Ch. 4.1. Primary Source: The Webster-Hayne Debate, 1830, part 1
An acrimonious debate erupted in the U.S. Senate after Robert Hayne of South Carolina, as part of a strategy to forge an alliance between southern and western states, expressed support for the idea of granting western public lands freely or at very low prices to new settlers–a policy that later received support in the Homestead Act of 1862. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts objected strongly to Hayne’s claim that revenues from the public lands, like those earned from high tariffs, gave excessive power to the federal government. Most importantly, the debate between Senators Webster and Hayne revealed a deepening divide between the views of Northern and Southern states on slavery, the Constitution, and the Union among the states.
Questions: What are the two rival theories of the founding of the U.S. that the two senators express here? Why does Webster consider the states north of the Ohio River to have developed better than Kentucky? How does Hayne defend southern slavery?
Speech of Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, January 19, 1830
…What ought to be the future policy of the Government in relation to the Public Lands? We find the most opposite and irreconcilable opinions between the two parties which I have before described. 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…
Sir, an immense national treasury would be a fund for corruption… The very life of our system is the independence of the States, and… there is no evil more to be deprecated than the consolidation of this Government…
Speech of Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, January 20, 1830
…The gentleman from South Carolina… said, he wanted no permanent sources of income… The administration of a fixed revenue, [he said] only consolidates the Government, and corrupts the people! Sir, I confess I heard these sentiments uttered on this floor not without deep regret and pain…
Consolidation! — that perpetual cry, both of terror and delusion — consolidation! Sir, when gentlemen speak of the effects of a common fund, belonging to all the States…, this, sir, is General Washington’s consolidation. This is the true constitutional consolidation. I wish to see no new powers drawn to the General Government…
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 am a Unionist, and in this sense a National Republican. I would strengthen the ties that hold us together…
I come now to that part of the gentleman’s speech which has been the main occasion of my addressing the Senate. … He tells us we [that is, New England] are charged with the crime of a narrow and selfish policy; of endeavoring to restrain emigration to the West… And the cause of all this narrow and selfish policy, the gentleman finds in the tariff. … I deny that… New England has manifested such hostility as is charged upon her…
At the foundation of the constitution of these new Northwestern States…, the ordinance of ’87 [i.e., the Northwest Ordinance of 1787]… was drawn by Nathan Dane, then, and now, a citizen of Massachusetts… It fixed, forever, the character of the population in the vast regions Northwest of the Ohio, by excluding from them involuntary servitude… I look upon this original and seasonable provision, as a real good attained. We see its consequences at this moment, and we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow. It was a great and salutary measure of prevention.
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? …
Speech of Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, January 25, 1830
The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, after deliberating a whole night upon his course, comes into this chamber to vindicate New England, and; instead of making up his issue with the gentleman from Missouri…, selects me as his adversary… When I find a gentleman… declining the contest offered from the West, and making war upon the unoffending South, I must believe… that he has some object in view that he has not ventured to disclose…
When, however, the gentleman proceeded to contrast the State of Ohio with Kentucky, to the disadvantage of the latter, I listened to him with regret. … In contrasting the State of Ohio with Kentucky, for the purpose of pointing out the superiority of the former, and of attributing that superiority to the existence of slavery, in the one State, and its absence in the other, I thought I could discern the very spirit of the Missouri question [i.e., the debate that ended in the Missouri Compromise of 1820] intruded into this debate…
Sir, when arraigned before the bar of public opinion, on this charge of slavery, we can stand up with conscious rectitude, plead not guilty, and put ourselves upon God and our country. 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. We deal in no abstractions. We will not look back to inquire whether our fathers were guiltless in introducing slaves into this country. If an inquiry should ever be instituted in these matters, however, it will be found that the profits of the slave trade were not confined to the South. 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, sir, we will pass over all this. If slavery, as it now exists in this country, be an evil, we of the present day found it ready made to our hands. Finding our lot cast among a people, whom God had manifestly committed to our care, we did not sit down to speculate on abstract questions of theoretical liberty. We met it as a practical question of obligation and duty. We resolved to make the best of the situation in which Providence had placed us, and to fulfill the high trust which had developed upon us as the owners of slaves…
We found that we had to deal with a people whose physical, moral, and intellectual habits and character, totally disqualified them from the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. We could not send them back to the shores from whence their fathers had been taken; their numbers forbade the thought, even if we did not know that their condition here is infinitely preferable to what it possibly could be among the barren sands and savage tribes of Africa…
Certain benevolent associations and charitable individuals [i.e., those opposed to slavery]…, shedding weak tears over sufferings which had existence only in their own sickly imaginations, these “friends of humanity” set themselves systematically to work to seduce the slaves of the South from their masters…
Thousands of these deluded victims of fanaticism were seduced into the enjoyment of freedom in our Northern cities. And what has been the consequence? Go to these cities now, and ask the question. Visit the dark and narrow lanes, and obscure recesses, which have been assigned by common consent as the abodes of those outcasts of the world — the free people of color. Sir, there does not exist, on the face of the whole earth, a population so poor, so wretched, so vile, so loathsome, so utterly destitute of all the comforts, conveniences, and decencies of life, as the unfortunate blacks of Philadelphia, and New York, and Boston. Liberty has been to them the greatest of calamities, the heaviest of curses…
On this subject, as in all others, we ask nothing of our Northern brethren but to “let us alone;” leave us to the undisturbed management of our domestic concerns… Sir, all our difficulties on this subject have arisen from interference from abroad, which has disturbed, and may again disturb, our domestic tranquility…
In the course of my former remarks, I took occasion to deprecate, as one of the greatest of evils, the consolidation of this Government…
Who, then… are the true friends of the Union? Those who would confine the federal government strictly within the limits prescribed by the constitution — who would preserve to the States and the people all powers not expressly delegated — who would make this a federal and not a national Union… And who are its enemies? Those who are in favor of consolidation; who are constantly stealing power from the States and adding strength to the federal government…
The Senator from Massachusetts, in denouncing what he is pleased to call the Carolina doctrine, has attempted to throw ridicule upon the idea that a State has any constitutional remedy by the exercise of its sovereign authority [i.e., nullification] against “a gross, palpable, and deliberate violation of the Constitution.” He called it “an idle” or “a ridiculous notion,” or something to that effect; and added, that it would make the Union “a mere rope of sand”. …
Sir, as to the doctrine that the Federal Government is the exclusive judge of the extent as well as the limitations of its powers, it seems to be utterly subversive of the sovereignty and independence of the States…; this is practically “a Government without limitation of powers;” the States are at once reduced to mere petty corporations, and the people are entirely at your mercy…
In all the efforts that have been made by South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional laws which Congress has extended over them, she has kept steadily in view the preservation of the Union, by the only means by which she believes it can be long preserved — a firm, manly, and steady resistance against usurpation…
Source: Teaching American History.org, under the “Webster-Hayne Debate.”