Compiled by Russell Bastedo
NH State Curator
1998/1999

Daniel Webster (1782 - 1852)
Born near Franklin (NH); died at Marshfield (MA).
Teacher, lawyer, national legislator.
Portrait by Albert Gallatin Hoyt, 1863.
Purchased by the State and by individual contributions, 1861.

Webster graduated from Dartmouth College (801). He spent the 1802/03 school year as Preceptor of Fryeburg Academy (ME), an English-type grammar school where Webster taught English, French, Latin, and Greek to more than thirty students. (A year later the new Preceptor, a Mr. Cook, taught music as an additional academic requirement.) Webster went on to study law after his year as a teacher, however, and he was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar in 1805.

Webster began law practice at Boscawen and Portsmouth (NH), where his clients were for the most part Federalist merchants involved in the shipping and exports economies of New England. He was elected as a Federalist to the United States House of Representatives (served 1813/17, 1823/27).

In 1816 Webster moved south to Boston, and it was as a Massachusetts resident that he took part in two important Supreme Court cases, Dartmouth College and McCullough v. Maryland (both decided in 1819). Webster gained a reputation as a lawyer in these cases, and his skills as an orator were further publicized when he delivered a powerful oration on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth (1820). The oration was reported widely in the American and British press.

A great political issue of the 1820s was how to protect new American industries from foreign competition. As a United States Senator (served 1827/41), Webster supported Andrew Jackson's calls for a protective tariff. The tariff was passed by the United States Congress in 1828, despite the fears of the South that it would hurt sales of their exports, and fears of northern merchants that too high a tariff would invite European retaliation. The "Tariff of Abominations" became law nonetheless.

In opposition to the tariff, U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun developed his doctrine of "Nullification", advocating the right of American states to resist a too-powerful central government. Calhoun's doctrine of "States' Rights" has played a powerful role in American politics ever since. Webster stayed with Jackson on the tariff issue, but he disagreed with Jackson on many other fiscal initiatives. During the 1830s Webster and Henry Clay, of Kentucky, formed a new political party, the Whigs, in opposition to Jackson. The Whigs nominated Webster for the presidency in 1836, and he was seriously considered for the Whig nomination in succeeding elections, but Webster never gained the presidency.

Whig Party presidential candidate William Henry Harrison won election in 1840, and named Webster Secretary of State. A year later Harrison was dead and the new president, John Tyler, repudiated Harrison's Whig policies. Harrison's cabinet appointees resigned in protest - except for Webster, who was in the midst of writing a treaty resolving boundary disputes with British Canada over lands in northern New England and around the Great lakes. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty was signed in late 1842, and Webster resigned his cabinet post in early 1843.

Massachusetts voters returned Webster to the United States Senate in 1845 (served 1845/50). Senator Webster opposed the annexation of Texas and The War With Mexico. He also continued to hold that slavery was evil but that the United States should not split into rival republics over the issue. This was a view that Webster had held for almost twenty years - he had had a great debate with Senator Hayne of South Carolina in 1830 over whether slavery was morally defensible - but Webster's position of "live and let live" was increasingly unpopular during the 1840s. In 1850 Webster supported the Compromise of 1850, favoring popular votes in new states and territories to determine whether they would be "slave" or "free"; he lost the 1848 presidential nomination of his party to Zachary Taylor, but served as Secretary of State for President Millard Fillmore (1850/2) before his death.

Reference: William Bridgwater and Elizabeth Sherwood, eds., The Columbia Encyclopedia (1950).