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Jacksonian Miscellanies, #5: Feb. 11, 1997

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.

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Highlights of the Hayne-Webster Debate:

(for a complete treatment, see http://www.panix.com/~hal/hwdebate.htm)

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".