"The house agreed to insert these resolutions in its journal, and, from that day to this, it has never been maintained or contended that Congress had any authority to regulate, or interfere with, the condition of slaves in the several States. No northern gentleman, to my knowledge, has moved any such question in either house of Congress.
"The fears of the South, whatever fears they might have entertained, were allayed and quieted by this early decision; and so remained, till they were excited afresh, without cause, but for collateral and indirect purposes. When it became necessary, or was thought so, by some political persons, to find an unvarying ground for the exclusion of northern men from confidence and from lead in the affairs of the republic, then, and not till then, the cry was raised, and the feeling industriously excited, that the influence of northern men in the public councils would endanger the relation of master and slave. For myself I claim no other merit than that this gross and enormous injustice towards the whole North, has not wrought upon me to change my opinions, or my political conduct. I hope I am above violating my principles, even under the smart of injury and false imputations. Unjust suspicions and undeserved reproach, whatever pain I may experience from them, will not induce me, I trust, nevertheless, to overstep the limits of constitutional duty, or to encroach on the rights of others. The domestic slavery of the South I leave where I find it – in the hands of their own governments. It is their affair, not mine. Nor do I complain of the peculiar effect which the magnitude of that population has had in the distribution of power under this federal government. We know, sir, that the representation of the states in the other house is not equal. We know that great advantage, in that respect, is enjoyed by the slaveholding States; and we know, too, that the intended equivalent for that advantage, that is to say, the imposition of direct taxes in the same ratio, has become merely nominal; the habit of the government being almost invariably to collect its revenues from other sources, and in other modes. Nevertheless, I do not complain: nor would I countenance any movement to alter this arrangement of representation. It is the original bargain, the compact – let it stand: let the advantage of it be fully enjoyed. The Union itself is too full of benefit to be hazarded in propositions for changing its original basis. I go for the constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is. But I am resolved not to submit, in silence, to accusations, either against myself individually, or against the North, wholly unfounded and unjust; accusations which impute to us a disposition to evade the constitutional compact, and to extend the power of the government over the internal laws and domestic condition of the States. All such accusations, wherever and whenever made, all insinuations of the existence of any such purposes, I know, and feel to be groundless and injurious. And we must confide in southern gentlemen themselves; we must trust to those whose integrity of heart and magnanimity of feeling will lead them to a desire to maintain and disseminate truth, and who possess the means of its diffusion with the southern public; we must leave it to them to disabuse that public of its prejudices. But, in the mean time, for my own part, I shall continue to act justly, whether those towards whom justice is exercised, receive it with candor or with contumely."
This is what Mr. Webster said on the subject of slavery; and although it was in reply to an invective of my own, excited by the recent agitation of the Missouri question, I made no answer impugning its correctness; and must add that I never saw any thing in Mr. Webster inconsistent with what he then said; and believe that the same resolves could have been passed in the same way at any time during the thirty years that I was in Congress.
But the topic which became the leading feature of the whole debate; and gave it an interest which cannot die, was that of nullification – the assumed right of a state to annul an act of Congress – then first broached in our national legislature – and in the discussion of which Mr. Webster and Mr. Hayne were the champion speakers on opposite sides – the latter understood to be speaking the sentiments of the Vice-President, Mr. Calhoun. This new turn in the debate was thus brought about: Mr. Hayne, in the sectional nature of the discussion which had grown up, made allusions to the conduct of New England during the war of 1812; and especially to the assemblage known as the Hartford Convention, and to which designs unfriendly to the Union had been attributed. This gave Mr. Webster the rights both of defence and of retaliation; and he found material for the first in the character of the assemblage, and for the second in the public meetings which had taken place in South Carolina on the subject of the tariff – and at which resolves were passed, and propositions adopted significant of resistance to the act; and, consequently, of disloyalty to the Union. He, in his turn, made allusions to these resolves and propositions, until he drew out Mr. Hayne into their defence, and into an avowal of what has since obtained the current name of "Nullification;" although at the time (during the debate) it did not at all strike me as going the length which it afterwards avowed; nor have I ever believed that Mr. Hayne contemplated disunion, in any contingency, as one of its results. In entering upon the argument, Mr. Webster first summed up the doctrine, as he conceived it to be avowed, thus:
"I understand the honorable gentleman from South Carolina to maintain, that it is a right of the State legislature to interfere, whenever, in their judgment, this government transcends its constitutional limits, and to arrest the operation of its laws.
"I understand him to maintain this right, as a right existing under the constitution; not as a right to overthrow it, on the ground of extreme necessity, such as would justify violent revolution.
"I understand him to maintain an authority, on the part of the States, thus to interfere, for the purpose of correcting the exercise of power by the general government, of checking it, and of compelling it to conform to their opinion of the extent of its powers.
"I understand him to maintain that the ultimate power of judging of the constitutional extent of its own authority is not lodged exclusively in the general government, or any branch of it; but that, on the contrary, the States may lawfully decide for themselves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given case, the act of the general government transcends its power.
"I understand him to insist that, if the exigency of the case, in the opinion of any State government, require it, such State government may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an act of the general government, which it deems plainly and palpably unconstitutional."
Mr. Hayne, evidently unprepared to admit, or fully deny, the propositions as broadly laid down, had recourse to a statement of his own; and, adopted for that purpose, the third resolve of the Virginia resolutions of the year 1798 – reaffirmed in 1799. He rose immediately and said that, for the purpose of being clearly understood, he would state that his proposition was in the words of the Virginia resolution; and read it —
"That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as no farther valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them."
Thus were the propositions stated, and argued – each speaker taking his own proposition for his text; which in the end, (and as the Virginia resolutions turned out to be understood in the South Carolina sense) came to be identical. Mr. Webster, at one point, giving to his argument a practical form, and showing what the South Carolina doctrine would have accomplished in New England if it had been acted upon by the Hartford Convention, said:
"Let me here say, sir, that, if the gentleman's doctrine had been received and acted upon in New England, in the times of the embargo and non-intercourse, we should probably not now have been here. The government would, very likely, have gone to pieces, and crumbled into dust. No stronger case can ever arise than existed under those laws; no States can ever entertain a clearer conviction than the New England States then entertained; and if they had been under the influence of that heresy of opinion, as I must call it which the honorable member espouses, this Union would, in all probability, have been scattered to the four winds. I ask the gentleman, therefore,