Topic: "We Stand Towards The United States in The Relation
of Ireland to England"; a Southern Tariff-Nullifier Appeals to Western
"Brothers in Affliction".
Copyright by the editor, Hal Morris, Secaucus, NJ 1997. Permission is
granted to copy, but not for sale, nor in multiple copies, except by permission.
Highlights of the Hayne-Webster Debate:
Introduction
The Hayne-Webster Debate was 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.
The debate cemented the image of Daniel Webster, as a legendary defender
of Constitution and Union. It was the subject of great popular paintings,
showing Webster in the golden glow of the Senate dome, his glowering eyes
fixed on John C. Calhoun, who
besides being a more prominent advocate of Hayne's doctrine, was the president
of the Senate at the time.
Many of the 4-page weekly newspapers of the day for weeks printed little
but excerpts from the debate. Niles Weekly Register, typically around
twenty pages, printed it in its entirity, crowding out most other items
for a month. Some papers apologized for not having printed it sooner than
they did.
"an inquiry into the expediency of abolishing the office of
surveyor general of public lands, and for suspending further surveys until
those already in market shall have been disposed of."
This resolution, proposed by Samuel Foote (or Foot - it appears both
ways) had gone on for several days, during which Thomas
Hart Benton, of Missouri, treated it as a scheme by the northeast to
restrain westward emigration, and retain a poor population who would work
for low factory wages.
What were those in favor of the bill really up to? There were some,
not only in the Northeast, but in the Southeast, who would at least go
so far as to say "let's not subsidize (by distributing an asset of
the government cheaply) a process which labor is made more expensive.
Webster was able to quote Hayne's fellow South Carolinian (and Calhoun
protege) George
McDuffie expounding such a position, characterising it as
[offering] "a bonus of their own impoverishment, to create a
vortex to swallow up our floating population. Look sir, at the present
aspect of the southern states. In no part of Europe will you see the same
indications of decay. Deserted villages -- houses falling to ruin -- impoverished
lands thrown out of cultivation. Sir, I believe that if the public lands
had never been sold, the aggregate amount of the net total wealth would
have been greater at this moment. Our population, if concentrated in the
old states, and not ground down by tariffs, would have been more prosperous
and more wealthy.
(To enter the full text of the debate, click here: {#};
to enter the paragraph summary of the debate, click here: {¶}
.)
A large number of Southerners, particularly South Carolinians,
were bitter towards the Union of the states for putting them in the minority,
and voting for high protective tariffs on imported items that competed
with U.S. produced items. The Southern states were not experiencing, at
the time, any overseas threat to their produce (At one time they were
threatened by the "Calcutta Trade", and so favored protective
tariffs on cotton).
Their inability to fend off tariffs on imported goods signalled a general
loss of power, as the northern states grew and western states proliferated
while they stagnated. Some southerners feared what this loss of power could
mean for the institution of slavery.
At this point in time, much of the working out of traditions surrounding,
and interpretations of, the constitution had yet to be worked out.
In this context, it was very attractive to some southerners to set up
a precedent that said a state could opt out of obeying certain Federal
laws without opting out of the Union. Calhoun had proposed a process by
which a state might register such an "opting out" of a law, and
warned that the current "Tariff of Abominations" would drive
them to set the process in motion.
Initially, southerners had migrated to the west in greater numbers than
had northerners, and the contrary trend that allowed northerners to finally
dominate Kansas, had only just begun.
Robert Hayne was standing up in the belief that westerners were the
south's best potential allies, and so he set out to support the favorite
issue of many westerners -- that they considered the Federal government
stingy with the public lands. Moreover, he wanted to "spin doctor"
the issue; to make it an issue primarily of states rights.
The federal government could provide relief to the states from
their current negative cash flow through distribution -- i.e. continuing
to centralize the sale of public lands, but giving a large portion of the
proceeds to the states physically containing the land. Or they could provide
ad-hoc compensations -- by for instance ceding a large tract of land for
schools, or for the building of a canal. In the latter case, the state
or canal company would not have to buy the land; or the canal company would
buy it from the state. Typically, too, such projects were granted a much
wider swath of land than the needed, and so the canal-building enterprise
could be largely funded from the sales of the excess land -- whose value
was conveniently inflated by its proximity to the canal.
This was precisely what Hayne did not want. He wanted westerners
to eschew federal largesse; to argue that the federal government simply
had no business owning these millions of acres of land that happened to
lie within state boundaries. He knows that a solution to the problem based
on largesse will not help to put a wall around states rights; it may do
just the opposite. He implies that westerners, if they accept largesse,
will be like a pack of fawning begging dogs, quoting a brilliant passage
from John Randolph:
I am rather inclined to think, with the eloquent and sagacious orator
now reposing on his laurels on the banks of the Roanoke that "the
power of conferring favors creates a crowd of dependents," he gave
a forcible illustration of the truth of the remark, when he told us of
the effect of holding up the savory morsel to the eager eyes of the hungry
hounds gathered around his door. "It mattered not whether the gift
was bestowed on Towzer or Sweetlips," Tray, Blanch, or Sweetheart,"while
held in suspense, they were all governed by a nod, and when the morsel
was bestowed, the expectation of the favors of to-morrow kept up the subjection
of to-day." (Web readers: For this passage in the text:{#}
For this passage in the summary: {¶})
Hayne called on westerners to view themselves as he and other southerners
did - as practically enslaved victims of greedy northeastern capitalists:
{o} {¶}
" It is said, sir, that we learn from our own misfortunes how to feel
for the sufferings of others; and perhaps the present condition of the
southern states has served to impress more deeply on my mind the grievious
oppression of a system by which the wealth of a country is drained off
to be expended elsewhere. In that devoted region, sir, in which my lot
has been cast, it is our misfortune to stand in that relation to the federal
government, which subjects us to a taxation, which it requires the utmost
efforts of our industry to meet.
Nearly the whole amount of our contributions is expended abroad -- we
stand towards the United States in the relation of Ireland to England.
The fruits of our labors are drawn from us to enrich other and more favored
sections of the union, while, with one of the finest climates and the richest
products in the world, furnishing, with one-third of the population, two-thirds
of the whole exports of the country, we exhibit the extraordinary, the
wonderful and painful spectacle of a country, enriched by the bounty of
God, but blasted by the cruel policy of man. The rank grass grows in our
streets; our very fields are scathed by the hand of injustice and oppression.
Such, sir, though probably in a less degree, must have been the effects
of a kindred policy on the fortunes of the west. It is not in the nature
of things that it should have been otherwise.
This (above) followed his description of the "effects of a
kindred policy on the fortunes of the west", whom he sees as fellow-sufferers
"though probably in a less degree" of this northeastern "injustice
and oppression".
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