Hayne's Reply to Webster (Speech on Foot's Resolution)

Summary

Robert Y. Hayne's speech on Foot's resolution is the South Carolina side of the Webster-Hayne debate, the most celebrated exchange in the history of the United States Senate. In December 1829 Senator Samuel Foot of Connecticut proposed an inquiry into limiting the sale of public lands in the West. Hayne spoke on January 19, 1830, arguing that the land system drained the new states and that the lands should be used to build up flourishing communities rather than hoarded as a federal treasure. Daniel Webster replied the next day, and Hayne answered him on January 21 and 25 in the speech stored here. He begins by complaining that Webster has turned a modest remark about western policy into an attack on the South. He shows from Webster's own speech of 1825 that the Massachusetts Senator once held the views on the lands he now condemned, and contrasts New England's old hostility to western appropriations with its sudden friendliness after 1825. He warns that tying citizens to the federal government by money, through debt, stocks, tariffs and land sales, corrupts free government, and says he would found the Union on the affections of the people. Answering Webster's comparison of free Ohio with slaveholding Kentucky, he defends the South's institutions as an inheritance it met as a practical duty and contrasts the condition of the enslaved with the poverty of free Black communities in Northern cities. He then turns to consolidation, which he calls the worst of evils, traces the National Republicans back to the Federalists of 1798, and mocks Webster's change from free trader in 1824 to supporter of the tariff of 1828. A long middle section compares the records of the sections: South Carolina's sacrifices in the Revolution and its support of the War of 1812, set against New England's resistance to that war, the sermons of its clergy, and the Hartford Convention of 1814. Hayne closes with the constitutional argument. The Union is a compact among sovereign states; where no tribunal stands above the parties, each must judge for itself whether the compact has been broken; and this Carolina doctrine is simply the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and Madison's Report of 1799, which he quotes at length. The 1853 printing ends with notes and extracts on the Hartford Convention. Webster answered on January 26 and 27 with his Second Reply.

Plot or Argument

• Opening: a remark on the lands turned into a quarrel

  Hayne says he questioned no man's motives and charged no section with hostility, yet was answered as if he had; he restates his view that the public lands should build new states rather than serve as a permanent federal fund.

• Webster in 1825 and New England's change of heart

  He reads from Webster's earlier speech to show that Webster once complained of the drain of money from the West, and argues that New England, long cool to western roads and canals, discovered its friendship for the West only in the political realignment of 1824-1825.

• Against government by pecuniary interest

  Responding to Webster's view of the national debt as a bond of union, Hayne argues that a moneyed interest is a base tie, binding men equally to any government, and that a free Union must rest on equal justice and the affections of the people.

• Slavery, Ohio, and the South's institutions

  Hayne takes up Webster's contrast between Ohio and Kentucky, defends Southern slaveholding as an inherited situation met as a practical obligation, disputes the claim that slavery weakens a state in war, and cites Edmund Burke on the high spirit of liberty in the Southern provinces.

• Consolidation, parties, and the tariff

  He calls the consolidation of the government the greatest evil, identifies Webster's National Republicans with the Federalists of 1798, and satirizes Webster's passage from champion of free trade in 1824 to supporter of the tariff of 1828, ending with a plea that the North not refuse the South's earnest remonstrance.

• The sections in the Revolution and the War of 1812

  Honoring New England's part in the Revolution, Hayne claims equal honor for the South and the Carolina partisans under Sumter and Marion, then contrasts South Carolina's support for the War of 1812 with the New England opposition, its sermons, its bank policies, and the Hartford Convention.

• The Carolina doctrine and the Resolutions of 1798

  Hayne defines the true friends of the Union as those who would keep the federal government within its delegated powers, then sets out the compact theory: the states, as sovereign parties to the Constitution, must judge its infraction in the last resort, as the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, Madison's Report, and Jefferson's later letters had taught.

Lessons

• The compact theory of the Union in its own terms

  Hayne argues that the Constitution was made by the states, each acting in its sovereign capacity, and that parties to a compact with no common superior must judge for themselves when it is broken. He presents this not as a novelty but as the doctrine of Jefferson and Madison in 1798. Understanding the argument as its defenders understood it is the necessary first step in weighing Webster's reply.

  • What does Hayne mean by calling the Constitution a compact, and who does he say the parties to it are?
  • Why does Hayne rest so much of his case on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and Madison's Report?
  • If the federal government judges the limits of its own power, what protection do the states have, and if each state judges, what holds the Union together?

• Affection or interest as the bond of a nation

  Hayne objects that debt, tariffs, and land policy tie citizens to the government by money, a bond he says would hold them equally to a despot. He wants a Union held by equal justice and the affections of the people. The argument raises a lasting question about what kind of attachment a free government should seek from its citizens.

  • Why does Hayne think a moneyed interest in the government is a base interest?
  • How does his phrase about binding the states together with the cords of affection connect to his complaint about the tariff?
  • Can a government avoid creating financial interests in its own continuation, and should it try?

• History as argument between the sections

  Much of Hayne's speech is a comparison of records: who sacrificed in the Revolution, who supported the War of 1812, who met at Hartford in 1814. He uses this history to show that South Carolina's loyalty cannot be doubted even as it asserts the right of interposition. The speech shows how sectional memory had become a weapon in constitutional debate.

  • Why does Hayne recall the Carolina partisans of the Revolution before he discusses the Hartford Convention?
  • How does he use New England's own earlier language about resisting federal laws against Webster?
  • When is a group's past conduct a fair argument about the merit of its present claims?

Context

The tariff of 1828, which Southerners called the tariff of abominations, raised duties on manufactured imports and fell heavily on the cotton-exporting South. That year John C. Calhoun, then Vice President, secretly drafted the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, which argued that a state could declare a federal law void within its borders. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and Hayne hoped to join the South and West against New England by pairing cheap western lands with low tariffs, and Senator Foot's resolution of December 29, 1829, on restricting land sales gave them an opening.

Composition

Hayne spoke on January 19, 1830; Webster replied on the 20th; Hayne delivered this rejoinder over two days, January 21 and 25, with Calhoun presiding over the Senate. Like most Senate speeches of the period it was reported and revised for print, and the stored text is the version in the 1853 collection Webster and Hayne's Celebrated Speeches in the United States Senate, as proofread on Wikisource, including the collection's footnotes and extracts on the Hartford Convention.

Reception

Southern readers regarded the speech as a full statement of their constitutional position, while Webster's Second Reply of January 26-27 won the larger national audience. Hayne answered briefly again on the 27th. The quarrel moved from the Senate to South Carolina, which adopted an Ordinance of Nullification against the tariffs in November 1832 with Hayne, by then Governor, defending it; President Jackson's proclamation and the compromise tariff of 1833 ended the crisis. Robert Hayne's speech is now read chiefly alongside Webster's, as the clearest Senate statement of the compact theory before Calhoun's own later works.

Comparisons

• webster-second-reply-to-hayne

  The direct answer: Webster takes up Hayne's charges against New England, his compact theory, and his reliance on the Resolutions of 1798, and argues that the Constitution was made by the people, not the states.

• virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions

  Hayne quotes the Virginia Resolution of 1798, Madison's Report, and the Kentucky resolutions of 1798-1799 as the source and authority of the Carolina doctrine.

• the-federalist-papers

  Hayne's case that the states remain sovereign parties to the Constitution can be tested against Madison's account in Federalist No. 39 of a government partly federal and partly national.

• compromise-of-1850-speeches

  Calhoun's speech of March 4, 1850, carries forward the South Carolina position Hayne defended, now joined to the claim that the balance between the sections had been destroyed.

• jefferson-selected-writings

  Hayne closes with Jefferson's later letters warning of consolidation; reading them in Jefferson's own words shows what Hayne drew from the Virginian and how he applied it.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How Hayne answers Webster with Webster's own speech of 1825 on the public lands.
• The argument that a moneyed interest binds men equally to free and arbitrary governments, and the alternative bond Hayne proposes.
• The comic passage on Webster and the tariff, with its mock-heroic giant carrying off the pillars of a temple, the tune of Old Hundred, and Falstaff's plea to Hal.
• The paired portraits of South Carolina in the Revolution and New England in the War of 1812.
• The long quotations from the Virginia Resolutions, Madison's Report, and Jefferson that make up the constitutional conclusion.

Key terms and names

Foot's resolution

Senator Samuel Foot's December 1829 proposal to inquire into limiting public land sales, which Hayne treats as a threat to the growth of the West.

Consolidation

Hayne's word for the gathering of power into the federal government at the expense of the states, which he calls the greatest of evils.

Carolina doctrine

The position of South Carolina's 1828 Exposition that a state may judge and resist a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous violation of the Constitution.

Interposition

The act of a state placing its authority between its citizens and a federal law it judges unconstitutional, the remedy named in the Virginia Resolution of 1798.

Tariff of 1828

The high protective tariff Hayne calls the bill of abominations, which Webster had voted for after opposing protection in 1824.

Hartford Convention

The 1814-1815 meeting of New England delegates opposed to the War of 1812, which Hayne cites to show that New England had once asserted state resistance.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What policy for the public lands does Hayne defend, and why does he say Webster once agreed with it?
2. Comprehension According to Hayne, who are the true friends of the Union and who are its enemies?
3. Interpretation Why does Hayne connect the public debt, the tariff, and the land system as forms of pecuniary dependence?
4. Interpretation What does Hayne gain by tracing Webster's party back to the Federalists of 1798?
5. Interpretation How does the account of the Hartford Convention prepare Hayne's claim that the Carolina doctrine is neither new nor peculiar to the South?
6. Interpretation Hayne says that parties to a compact with no superior tribunal must judge for themselves. How strong is this argument from the nature of compacts?
7. Big Question Is a union held together by shared interests weaker or stronger than one held together by affection, and can either last without the other?

Faith Connections

• 1 Kings 12:1-19 (Scripture)

  Rehoboam refused the northern tribes' plea to lighten their burden, and Israel divided. Hayne's plea that the North relieve the South of the tariff and bind the states with the cords of affection rests on a similar warning about rulers who will not yield to an earnest remonstrance.

• Proverbs 22:28 (Scripture)

  Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set. Hayne presents the doctrine of 1798 as the landmark set by Jefferson and Madison, and consolidation as its removal.

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.20.31 (Great Conversation)

  Calvin taught that where magistrates have been appointed to restrain the willfulness of kings, like the ancient ephors and tribunes, they may not wink at abuses. Later writers developed from this a doctrine of lesser magistrates, a line of thought the Virginia idea of state interposition resembles in structure, though Hayne argues from compact, not from Calvin.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The Constitution was formed by the states, each acting in its sovereign capacity; parties to a compact with no tribunal above them must judge in the last resort whether it has been violated; therefore a state may interpose against a deliberate and dangerous violation, and the Union is best preserved by confining the federal government to its delegated powers and binding the states by justice and affection rather than money.

Rhetorical device: tu quoque (turning an opponent's record against him). In the sections on the public lands and the tariff Hayne reads Webster's speeches of 1824 and 1825 to show that Webster once held the positions he now attacks, and later uses New England's resistance to the War of 1812 to answer the charge that the Carolina doctrine is disloyal.

Debate: Resolved: that Hayne was right that the states, as parties to the constitutional compact, must judge in the last resort whether the federal government has exceeded its powers.

Memory Work

Sir, I would lay the foundation of this government in the affections of the people—I would teach them to cling to it by dispensing equal justice, and above all, by securing the “blessings of liberty” to “themselves and to their posterity.”

Writing Prompts

Essay: Hayne claims to be a truer friend of the Union than Webster. Explain how he defines friendship to the Union, how he supports the claim from the Resolutions of 1798 and the history of the sections, and whether his definition is consistent with his defense of interposition.

Comparison with Second Reply to Hayne: Compare Hayne's answer to the question who made the Constitution with Webster's answer a few days later. Which of Hayne's arguments does Webster answer directly, and which does he pass over?

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Divide the class into the four sections of 1830, New England, the South, the West, and the Middle States, and have each group decide, from Hayne's speech alone, what it would gain or lose by his land and tariff policy, before reading Webster.

• Essay

  Explain how Hayne uses the Revolution and the War of 1812 to support his constitutional argument, and whether the historical comparison strengthens or distracts from it.

• Dialogue

  Write a letter from a South Carolina planter in the Senate gallery on January 25, 1830, to a cousin in Ohio, describing Hayne's speech and asking whether the West will stand with the South.

Further Reading

• The Webster-Hayne Debate on the Nature of the Union: Selected Documents, Herman Belz (ed.)

• Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836, William W. Freehling

• The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, Merrill D. Peterson

• What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, Daniel Walker Howe