This tariff of 1828 soon furnished an occasion for the display of Mr. Webster's strong Federalist spirit in a way that was most serviceable for his country and has earned for him undying fame as an orator and statesman. It led to the distinct announcement of the principles of nullification by the public men of South Carolina, with Mr. Calhoun at their head. During President Jackson's first term the question as to nullification seemed to occupy everybody's thoughts and had a way of intruding upon the discussion of all other questions. In December, 1829, Samuel A. Foote, of Connecticut, presented to the senate a resolution inquiring into the expediency of limiting the sales of the public lands to those already in the market, besides suspending the surveys of the public lands and abolishing the office of surveyor-general. The resolution was quite naturally resented by the western senators as having a tendency to check the growth of their section of the country. The debate was opened by Mr. Benton, and lasted several weeks, with increasing bitterness. The belief in the hostility of the New England states toward the west was shared by many southern senators, who desired to unite south and west in opposition to the tariff. On 19 Jan., 1830, Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, attacked the New England states, accusing them of aiming by their protective policy at aggrandizing themselves at the expense of all the rest of the Union. On the next day Mr. Webster delivered his “first speech on Foote's resolution,” in which he took up Mr. Hayne's accusations and answered them with great power. This retort provoked a long and able reply from Mr. Hayne, in which he not only assailed Mr. Webster and Massachusetts and New England, but set forth quite ingeniously and elaborately the doctrines of nullification. In view of the political agitation then going on in South Carolina, it was felt that this speech would work practical mischief unless it should meet with instant refutation. It was finished on 25 Jan., and on the next two days Mr. Webster delivered his “second speech on Foote's resolution,” better known in history as the “Reply to Hayne.” The debate had now lasted so long that people had come from different parts of the country to Washington to hear it, and on 26 Jan. the crowd not only filled the galleries and invaded the floor of the senate-chamber, but occupied all the lobbies and entries within hearing and even beyond. In the first part of his speech Mr. Webster replied to the aspersions upon himself and New England; in the second part he attacked with weighty argument and keen-edged sarcasm the doctrine of nullification. He did not undertake to deny the right of revolution as a last resort in cases with which legal and constitutional methods are found inadequate to deal; but he assailed the theory of the constitution maintained by Calhoun and his followers, according to which nullification was a right, the exercise of which was compatible with loyal adherence to the constitution. His course of argument was twofold; he sought to show, first, that the theory of the constitution as a terminable league or compact between sovereign states was unsupported by the history of its origin, and, secondly, that the attempt on the part of any state to act upon that theory must necessarily entail civil war or the disruption of the Union. As to the sufficiency of his historical argument there has been much difference of opinion. The question is difficult to deal with in such a way as to reach an unassailable conclusion, and the difficulty is largely due to the fact that in the various ratifying conventions of 1787-'9 the men who advocated the adoption of the constitution did not all hold the same opinions as to the significance of what they were doing. There was great divergence of opinion, and plenty of room for antagonisms of interpretation to grow up as irreconcilable as those of Webster and Calhoun. If the South Carolina doctrine distorted history in one direction, that of Mr. Webster probably departed somewhat from the record in the other; but the latter was fully in harmony with the actual course of our national development, and with the increased and increasing strength of the sentiment of union at the time when it was propounded with such powerful reasoning and such magnificent eloquence in the “Reply to Hayne.” As an appeal to the common sense of the American people, nothing could be more masterly than Mr. Webster's demonstration that nullification practically meant revolution, and their unalterable opinion of the soundness of his argument was amply illustrated when at length the crisis came which he deprecated with such, intensity of emotion in his concluding sentences. To some of the senators who listened to the speech, as, for instance, Thomas H. Benton, it seemed as if the passionate eloquence of its close concerned itself with imaginary dangers never likely to be realized; but the event showed that Mr. Webster estimated correctly the perilousness of the doctrine against which he was contending. For genuine oratorical power, the “Reply to Hayne” is probably the greatest speech that has been delivered since the oration of Demosthenes on the crown. The comparison is natural, as there are points in the American orator that forcibly remind one of the Athenian. There is the fine sense of proportion and fitness, the massive weight of argument due to transparent clearness and matchless symmetry of statement, and along with the rest a truly Attic simplicity of diction. Mr. Webster never indulged in mere rhetorical flights; his sentences, simple in structure and weighted with meaning, went straight to the mark, and his arguments were so skilfully framed that while his most learned and critical hearers were impressed with a sense of their conclusiveness, no man of ordinary intelligence could fail to understand them. To these high qualifications of the orator was added such a physical presence as but few men have been endowed with. Mr. Webster's appearance was one of unequalled dignity and power, his voice was rich and musical, and the impressiveness of his delivery was enhanced by the depth of genuine manly feeling with which he spoke. Yet while his great speeches owed so much of their overpowering effect to the look and manner of the man, they were at the same time masterpieces of literature. Like the speeches of Demosthenes, they were capable of swaying the reader as well as the hearer, and their effects went far beyond the audience and far beyond the occasion of their delivery. In all these respects the “Reply to Hayne” marks the culmination of Mr. Webster's power as an orator. Of all the occasions of his life, this encounter with the doctrine of nullification on its first bold announcement in the senate was certainly the greatest, and the speech was equal to the occasion. It struck a chord in the heart of the American people which had not ceased to vibrate when the crisis came thirty years later. It gave articulate expression to a sentiment of loyalty to the Union that went on growing until the American citizen was as prompt to fight for the Union as the Mussulman for his prophet or the cavalier for his king. It furnished, moreover, a clear and comprehensive statement of
