Daniel Webster

1782 - 1852

Titles on this disk:

• author: Daniel Webster on the Draft: Text of a Speech delivered in Congress, December 9, 1814
• author: State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff
• author: The Webster-Hayne Debate on the Nature of the Constitution: Selected Documents

Quotation:

• (25 May, 2009) Daniel Webster thunders that the introduction of conscription would be a violation of the constitution, an affront to individual liberty, and an act of unrivaled despotism (1814)

About this person:

Daniel Webster was elected to Congress as a Federalist and served in the House of Representatives from 1813 to 1817. He was a prominent opponent of the Republican embargo and the War of 1812 and was elected to the House of Representatives from Boston, serving from 1823 to 1827, and then to the Senate in 1827. He opposed the protective tariff from 1816 to 1824 but voted for the tariff act of 1828. Webster supported Andrew Jackson in the nullification crisis, and opposed him on policy toward the Bank of the United States. As a critic of Jackson’s exercise of the executive power, he became a leading Whig politician when that party came into existence in 1834. He was reelected to the Senate in 1833 and 1839, resigning in 1841 to become Secretary of State under William Henry Harrison and John Tyler. Elected to the Senate in 1844, Webster supported the Compromise of 1850. He served in the administration of Millard Fillmore as Secretary of State from 1850 until his death in 1852.