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Born on January 18, 1782, in Salisbury, New Hampshire, Daniel Webster was the son of a Revolutionary War officer. At fourteen he went off to Phillips Exeter Academy, a preparatory school; a year later he entered Dartmouth College, graduating near the top of his class in 1801. Admitted to the bar in 1805, Webster soon embarked on a career in politics as a member of the Federalist Party, which advocated a strong central government and a diverse, integrated economy. Elected to Congress from New Hampshire in 1812, Webster opposed the decision by James Madison's administration to go to war against Great Britain that year, saying that it would damage New England economically. Federalists risked being portrayed as unpatriotic for opposing the war; when Americans believed that they had prevailed in the conflict owing to Andrew Jackson's astonishing victory in New Orleans, most Federalists found themselves struggling to survive in public life. As for Webster, after moving to Boston in 1816, he would win election to Congress as a representative from Massachusetts in 1822.

Webster first gained renown as a lawyer. Admitted to practice before the Supreme Court in 1814, he played important roles in two critical cases five years later. Representing his alma mater in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, he successfully argued for the sanctity of public contracts from subsequent unilateral modification by the state. Representing the Second Bank of the United States in McCulloch v. Maryland, he effectively fended off the state's attempt to tax the federally chartered bank, building upon established notions of national supremacy. In 1824, in Gibbons v. Ogden, he successfully argued that the Constitution gave the authority to regulate interstate commerce, broadly defined to include transportation, exclusively to the federal government through Congress.

In 1827 Webster was elected a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. On the Senate floor three years later, he offered a celebrated attack upon the doctrine of nullification, by which states were held to have the right to defy federal legislation that they deemed unconstitutional. However, Webster failed in 1832 to secure the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, and his showing in the 1836 presidential contest, which pitted four different Whig candidates against Martin Van Buren, proved an embarrassing failure. By 1840 he found himself committed to supporting the presidential ambitions of William Henry Harrison, and he was rewarded by being appointed Harrison's secretary of state in 1841. As a diplomat, he is perhaps best remembered for his role in negotiating the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which demarcated the border between the United States and Canada west to the territory of Oregon, provided for use of the Great Lakes by American and British shipping, and moved to end the international slave trade.

Retiring from the cabinet in 1843, Webster returned to public life two years later when he was again elected to the Senate. He opposed the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848; in 1850 he found himself in the middle of a political debate occasioned in part by the legacy of that conflict, over issues including the future of slavery in the United States. Once more Webster took up the cause of Union and Constitution, most notably in what became known as his seventh of March speech. His disparagements of antislavery and abolitionist northerners on this occasion subjected him to much criticism from former supporters and admirers. Joining the cabinet again as secretary of state under Millard Fillmore, Webster made one more bid for his party's presidential nomination in 1852; after falling short once more, he returned to his home in Massachusetts, where he died on October 24, 1852.

References:

1. Bartlett, Irving H. Daniel Webster. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.

2. Baxter, Maurice G. One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.

3. Current, Richard Nelson. Daniel Webster and the Rise of National Conservatism. Boston: Little, Brown, 1955.

4. Dalzell, Robert F., Jr. Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism, 1843-1852. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

5. Nathans, Sydney. Daniel Webster and Jacksonian Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.

6. Peterson, Merrill D. The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

7. Remini, Robert V. Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

8. Shewmaker, Kenneth E., ed. Daniel Webster: "The Completest Man." Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1990.

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