"Webster Replying to Hayne": The Speech and the Painting in Faneuil Hall

"Webster Replying to Hayne," by George P. A. Healy. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

On January 26, 1830, hundreds crowded the Old Senate Chamber in Washington to hear Daniel Webster of Massachusetts answer Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina. His "Second Reply to Hayne" took apart nullification — the idea that a state could ignore a federal law — and called for national unity, helping settle a constitutional crisis. It closed: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

The speech made Webster one of the century's great orators and fed a new nationalism. George P. A. Healy's 1851 painting of it hangs today in the Great Hall of Faneuil Hall in Boston. But under the talk of Union lay deeper conflicts: Webster fought for federal power that protected the North's industrial interests, while his Southern opponents backed nullification to protect slavery. Those tensions ended his career, and a generation later exploded into civil war.

The tariff

The speech ended months of struggle between Northeast, West and South. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri tried to ally West and South as victims of federal tariff and land policy; the "Great Debate" that followed lasted five months.

The Tariff of 1828 protected Northern factories from cheaper, mostly British, imports. It was also politics: ahead of the 1828 election, supporters of Andrew Jackson and President John Quincy Adams amended the bill mainly to make the other side look bad. The final law raised rates on imports upwards of 50 percent, pushing up prices for consumers. With most factories in the North, Southerners called it the "Tariff of Abominations."

John C. Calhoun, painted by George Healy. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Vice President John C. Calhoun, voice of the slaveholding planter class, wrote a 35,000-word attack on it — the Exposition — calling it "unconstitutional, unequal and oppressive." A state convention, he argued, could declare a federal law "null and void." That theory threatened the federal government itself.

The speech

In January 1830, Senator Samuel Foot of Connecticut proposed reviewing how the government surveyed and sold Western land. Hayne attacked the proposal, the tariff and the whole Northeast. Webster's first reply turned the debate to nationalism, slavery, nullification and federal power. Hayne answered by attacking Webster for raising slavery and ended with a strong defense of nullification. Webster held his reply overnight, and Washington buzzed.

Daniel Webster. Library of Congress.

The next day the gallery was full. Over several hours Webster demolished Hayne's case, warning that nullification in practice meant civil war, and ended with his famous rejection of "Liberty first, and Union afterwards." The crowd sat in stunned silence; as historian Robert Remini put it, "as if 'in a trance, all motion paralyzed.'" Webster had won — but sectionalism and slavery would bring him down.

1850: the Seventh of March

Over the next two decades the country expanded by forcing out Indigenous nations, and the fight over slavery deepened. California, taken from Mexico in 1848 and flooded by the gold rush, asked in 1850 to join as a free state, which would tip the balance in Congress. Southerners threatened secession.

Henry Clay of Kentucky, "the Great Compromiser," came out of retirement with the Compromise of 1850: California admitted free, offset by a tougher Fugitive Slave Law. The North was outraged. Clay needed Webster.

Henry Clay speaks for the Compromise of 1850 in the Old Senate Chamber. Library of Congress.

Webster had called slavery "one of the greatest evils, both moral and political," but never joined the abolitionists; in 1830 he said he left Southern slavery "where I find it." On March 7, 1850, he spoke "not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American," backed the compromise, and told the North to do "all that is necessary for the recapture of fugitive slaves."

The South cheered. New England felt betrayed, many believing he had sold out for a presidential run in 1852. Theodore Parker compared him to Benedict Arnold. Webster lost the 1852 nomination and died a few weeks later, on October 24, of complications from a carriage accident.

A broadside warning Boston's Black residents of kidnappers and slave catchers. Boston Public Library.

The painting

Born in Boston, George Healy found success in Paris, where King Louis Philippe commissioned his portraits of Jackson, Webster, Calhoun, Clay and John Quincy Adams. Healy then set out to paint a vast history scene, choosing Webster's reply partly because Webster's wealthy, devoted friends suggested a Boston market for it.

George Healy. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

• 1846–1851: Healy worked on it, off and on, in America and Paris. The 1848 revolution that toppled Louis Philippe left him worried about money.
• Summer 1851: finished, it went on show at the Boston Athenaeum, meant as the start of a paying national tour. Reviews were mixed, and the canvas proved too huge to move and hang cheaply.
• June 1852: the council let it hang in Faneuil Hall's Great Hall.
• December 1852: after Webster's death, Boston's Common Council voted to match private subscriptions, up to twenty-five hundred dollars, to buy it.

"Webster Replying to Hayne" in the Great Hall at Faneuil Hall today. NPS photo.

Except for conservation, it has hung there since 1852. Debates about federal, state and local government still happen on the stage beneath it. What is good government, and how do we keep it of, by and for the people?

Sources

Based on "Webster Replying to Hayne," Boston National Historical Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. It cites Robert Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (1997); Harlow Sheidley, "The Webster-Hayne Debate," New England Quarterly (1994); H. W. Brands, Heirs of the Founders (2018); Calhoun's Exposition and Protest (1829); Webster's Speeches (Ginn, 1897); Frederick Voss, "Webster Replying to Hayne: George Healy and the Economics of History Painting," American Art (2001); and the Boston Common Council records. The source spells some names "Benson," "Healey," "Shiedley" and "Phillippe."