Daniel Webster and Jacksonian Democracy

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

THIS ESSAY SEEKS TO SURVEY the materials that are most pertinent to the study of Daniel Webster in the Jackson era. For the most complete compendia of the vast secondary literature of the Jackson period, see the bibliographical essays in Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Jacksonian Era, 1828–1848 (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1959), and Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Homewood, Ill.: The Dorsey Press, 1969).

Manuscript Collections

Because the most up-to-date guides to manuscript collections in the United States list collections only by name and fail to index depositories, collections are here grouped by archives for the convenience of the reader. Despite their limitations as sources for the systematic study of political behavior, these manuscript collections have provided indispensable information on Webster and the party conflict of the Jackson period.

The Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston contains invaluable material on Webster and the Whig party in Massachusetts. Most of the important letters in the society’s various groupings of Webster papers have been published, but one must check the printed letters against the originals for occasional deletions of text that early editors thought superfluous or unfavorable to Webster. Edward Everett’s voluminous papers are the best source for Webster’s relations with the Whigs of his state and, as well, for Webster’s reflections on the difficulties of the Tyler years. Slightly less valuable for state politics, though no less voluminous, are the letters of Robert C. Winthrop. Among the other collections containing valuable material on Webster and the activities of other Massachusetts leaders are the George F. Hoar Collection of Webster papers and the papers of John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, Nathan Appleton, John Bailey, Amos A. Lawrence, Amos Lawrence, Alexander H. Everett, Levi Lincoln, J. O. Sargent, William Schouler, and James W. Paige. The letters of Thomas W. Ward and Harrison Gray Otis illuminate Webster’s financial and political straits of the late 1830s and early 1840s. The papers of Joseph Story, Webster’s close friend and adviser, proved disappointing. For an account of Boston’s response to Webster’s politics of 1842–44, see the manuscript journal of Richard Frothingham. Valuable material on Democratic politics in Massachusetts can be found in the letters of George Bancroft and to a lesser extent in the society’s small holdings of Martin Van Buren Papers.

Important papers held at the Houghton Library of Harvard University include small collections of letters of Daniel Webster, Abbott Lawrence, John P. Bigelow, and Joseph Story.

On file at the Boston Public Library is the correspondence of William Lloyd Garrison and of Theophilus Parsons, Jr., who guided the nomination of Webster through the Massachusetts Whig caucus in 1835.

The papers of John Davis, rich in material on Massachusetts politics in the 1830s and 1840s, are assembled in bound volumes at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass.

The Dartmouth College collection of Webster Papers proved thin for the period from 1830 to 1844, but, among the letters it does have, one setting out Webster’s political strategy in 1837 and a handful of others are invaluable.

Useful on Webster and Whig frustrations in New Hampshire politics are the Samuel Dana Bell, John P. Hale, Levi Woodbury, and Daniel Webster papers of the New Hampshire Historical Society, and the William Plumer Family Papers at the New Hampshire State Library. Both archives are located in Concord, N.H.

The New York Historical Society in New York City has a small and marginally useful body of Webster Papers. More valuable on Webster and the Whigs is the correspondence contained in the Luther Bradish and Daniel Ullmann collections. Useful on banking and Democratic politics are the society’s holdings of Nicholas Biddle, Albert Gallatin, George Newbold, and Gulian C. Verplanck letters.

The New York City Public Library contains fragmentary holdings of occasional assistance, including the manuscript diary of James Gordon Bennett and a small number of letters of Henry Clay, Virgil Maxcy, Azariah C. Flagg, and Webster. The extensive papers of New York businessmen Arthur and Issac Bronson contain little on politics.

Extremely helpful at the Columbia University collection are the letters of Azariah C. Flagg, a leading Democratic editor from New York. Flagg often received informative missives from colleagues in Washington. Less useful are the John A. Dix Papers. Columbia’s cache of Webster Papers concerns personal matters, and its most pertinent letters have been published.

Most useful of the limited material on this period in the New York State Library at Albany are the unsorted letters of William L. Marcy and the papers of Whig Congressman Daniel Dewey Barnard.

The University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y., holds the invaluable correspondence of William Henry Seward and Thurlow Weed. Their own letters and those of their correspondents detail the search of New York Whigs for a winning presidential candidate through the 1830s, and the determined but fruitless efforts of Webster and Clay to win the aid of New York for their ambitions. The papers demonstrate the impact of New York Whigs on national Whig politics.

At the Buffalo Historical Society, Buffalo, N.Y., is assembled the correspondence between Peter B. Porter and Henry Clay. Though many of the letters have been published, the collection must be consulted for the light it sheds on Clay’s plans and opinions throughout the period.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, houses material especially useful for investigating the Whigs and the Bank of the United States. Best of the sources are the Nicholas Biddle Papers and the correspondence found in the Thomas Cadwalader-Richard Peters Collection. The papers of Roswell Colt, James Buchanan, George Mifflin Dallas, Henry Carey, and Lewis Coryell proved less rewarding. Also helpful on the Whigs were the Josiah S. Johnston, John Sergeant, Thaddeus Stevens, and especially the John B. Wallace letters.

The exceptional manuscript collection of the Library of Congress is, of course, indispensable for any study of the politics of the period. Of material pertaining to Webster, his correspondence is vital. Unpublished items include such critical documents as his private “Memorandum” on the bank crises of the Tyler administration. Next in importance on Webster and on his state party and the Tyler years are the papers of Caleb Cushing. The records of Cushing’s remarkable and varied life are preserved in more than 171 boxes of manuscript, to which there is a reliable index. The material found in the Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson Clay collections is adequate; as in the case of the important John Jordan Crittenden Papers, many important items have been published. The John M. Clayton Papers contain valuable exchanges between Clayton and Clay, especially for 1841. For data on the Bank of the United States, finance in the 1830s, the intrigues of Whig politics, and the personal tragedy of an extraordinary gentleman-financier who hastened the end of his caste, the correspondence of Nicholas Biddle is without peer. The William C. Rives Papers are exceptional, both for the internal split in the Democratic party after 1837 and for the first six months of the Tyler administration. Letters of Whigs also of value include the Hale Family Papers and the Thomas Ewing, James Kent, Hamilton Fish, James F. Simmons, Thomas Corwin, Edward Curtis, Thaddeus Stevens, Joseph Story, John McLean, and James Watson Webb correspondence. The library’s holdings of William Henry Harrison Papers are thin; most of the John Tyler Papers have been published. Among Democrats, easily the most valuable for an understanding of the political system and many of the personalities of the period is the collection of Martin Van Buren. Andrew Jackson’s Papers are full of more heat than light; more illuminating are the letters of Levi Woodbury. The small collections of Duff Green and John C. Calhoun letters are of great value.

Material on the Whig party in the 1830s at the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, is understandably skimpy. The James Barbour, Robert M. T. Hunter, Benjamin W. Leigh, and David McCord papers, as well as the Morris Family and Tayloe Family papers, yielded some information.

At the Virginia State Library, Richmond, the Alexander H. H. Stuart Papers cast no light on the Virginia congressman’s role in the Tyler-Whig bank negotiations of August, 1841. More helpful were the insights into the mood of Virginia politicians offered by the Littleton W. Tazewell Papers and the material on Anti-Masonry found in the William Wirt Correspondence.

The correspondence assembled at the Duke University Library, Durham, N.C., ranges widely. The important papers of John Jordan Crittenden, Kentucky senator and protégé of Clay, have been published only in part; the originals of Crittenden’s letters, memoranda, and drafts of speeches must supplement the printed correspondence. David Campbell’s Papers reveal much about the views of a Virginia Whig who was often in Washington. The manuscript diary of Phillip R. Fendall throws much light on the mood of Webster and the Whigs in the fateful winter of 1841. The papers of James Martin Bell, John R. Mulvany, and John Rutherford yield more information about business than about politics.

In the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the Duff Green Papers proved disappointing; for the 1840–44 period, his day-by-day letters held at the Library of Congress seem complete.

The South Caroliniana Collection of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, contains originals or copies of all the manuscripts of John C. Calhoun. Calhoun’s correspondence casts much light on his motives and hopes in the period, but must be supplemented by the smaller but revealing collection of his letters at the Library of Congress. The Waddy Thompson Papers proved disappointing for information about the California and Texas maneuvers of the Tyler administration. Of limited use were the James Henry Hammond and William Campbell Preston papers.

Public Documents

Congressional debates can be found in the Register of Debates in the Congress of the United States and in the Congressional Globe. The official Journals of the House and Senate record the votes on bills and amendments as well as their text. The House and Senate Documents for these years contain valuable information from executive department reports, committee reports, and committee hearings. The official communications of the executive are found in James D. Richardson, com., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1905, 11 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1907).

Useful material on the foreign policy of the Tyler administration is found in the records of the Department of State at the National Archives, Washington, D.C. The most important diplomatic correspondence is contained in State Department Instructions, Great Britain, vol. 15; State Department Dispatches, Great Britain, vol. 50; State Department Instructions, Mexico, vol. 15; and State Department Dispatches, Mexico, vol. 11. Almost all of the significant material on relations between the United States and Mexico is published in William R. Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Inter-American Affairs, 1831–1860, 12 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1937). Valuable on the negotiations over Oregon is the volume British and Foreign State Papers, 1845–1846 (London: Harrison & Sons, 1860). Indispensable for understanding Anglo-American negotiations over the Maine and Oregon boundaries are the Foreign Office files of the British Public Records Office. The most pertinent of these, Files 5 and 115, have been photostated, and copies are on deposit at the Library of Congress.

Published Correspondence: Diaries and Memoirs

Superseding all other collections of Webster’s speeches and letters is Charles M. Wiltse, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster, on microfilm (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1971), which became available too late for use in this study. The best published edition of Webster’s works is J. W. McIntyre, ed., The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 18 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown &: Co., 1903). Though important letters not available to McIntyre were left out, and portions deleted from Webster’s letters by Fletcher Webster, supervisor of the first edition of his father’s correspondence, were not restored, McIntyre’s volumes are otherwise remarkably complete. The correspondence should be supplemented, however, by Claude H. Van Tyne, ed., The Letters of Daniel Webster, from Documents Owned Principally by the New Hampshire Historical Society (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902). Still useful are Fletcher Webster, ed., The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1857), and Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster, 6 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1851).

Memoirs about Webster abound, and were compiled largely by men who knew him near the end of his life. Peter Harvey, Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1882), is the most reliable. Surprisingly valuable, too, are the recollections of Webster’s friends assembled in Severty-second Anniversary of the Birthday of Daniel Webster, Celebrated by a Number of His Personal Friends, at the Astor House, in the City of New York, January 18, 1854 (New York: McSpeden & Baker, 1854). Caroline LeRoy Webster’s Mr. W. & I (Binghamton, N.Y.: Ives Washburn, 1942) is merely a travelogue of Webster’s trip to England in 1839.

Calvin Colton, ed., The Works of Henry Clay, Comprising His Life, Correspondence, and Speeches, 10 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), is the most complete extant collection of Clay’s works, but will be superseded when James S. Hopkins and Mary W. M. Hargreaves, eds., complete their Papers of Henry Clay (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1959–).

The speeches of John C. Calhoun are reproduced in Richard K. Cralle, ed., The Works of John C. Calhoun, 6 vols. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1853–55). Calhoun’s letters are admirably edited by J. Franklin Jameson, “Correspondence of John C. Calhoun,” American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1899 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), vol. 2. Both will be replaced when the new edition of Calhoun’s speeches and correspondence, Robert L. Meriwether and W. Edwin Hemphill, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959–), is completed.

Valuable as a source on Webster, the Whigs, and Massachusetts politics is Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, 12 vols. (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott & Co., 1874–77). Adams loathed Webster, and his diary must be used with care. Other material pertaining to Webster and Massachusetts politics and be found in “The Rufus Choate-Warwick Palfrey Correspondence,” Essex Institute Historial Collections, 69 (January, 1933): 81–87; William E. Lawrence, ed., Extracts from the Diary and Correspondence of the Late Amos Lawrence (Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1855); and Samuel Eliot Morison, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913).

Illuminating with respect to the interplay of Whig politics and the affairs of the Bank of the United States is Reginald C. McGrane, ed., The Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle Dealing with National Affairs, 1807–1844 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919). McGrane’s edition contains only a fraction of the voluminous Biddle Papers. An understanding of John Tyler and his administration is enhanced by careful use of Lyon G. Tyler, ed., The Letters and Times of the Tylers, 3 vols. (Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1885). The letters are accurately reproduced and include correspondence and memoranda by all the parties to the Tyler-Whig conflict; the “times,” as interpreted by Tyler’s son, must be read with caution. The activities and thinking of Tyler’s first cabinet are brilliantly illuminated by “The Diary of Thomas Ewing, August and September, 1841,” American Historical Review, 18 (October, 1912): 97–112.

Valuable sources for Whig politics in New York, so important to both Webster and his party, are Harriet Weed, ed., Autobiography of Thurlow Weed (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1883); Jabez D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York from the Ratification of the Federal Constitution to December, 1840, 2 vols. (Syracuse, N.Y.: Hall, Mills & Co., 1842); and Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1927).

Among the published sources on Democrats, the most important works include John Spencer Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, 7 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1926–35); and John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., “The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren,” American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920), vol. 2.

Newspapers and Periodicals

Whig and Democratic newspapers of the period are especially good guides to the changing tone and themes of party politics. Among the Whigs, in particular, the press had great power to bless or to veto the ambitions of party leaders. Among Boston newspapers, the Boston Courier consistently took the side, and often published the thoughts, of Webster. The Whig Boston Atlas and Boston Daily Advertiser were faithful partisans of Webster through 1836, but the pro-Harrison Atlas broke with Webster in 1838, as did the pro-Clay Advertiser shortly thereafter. The Boston Daily Evening Transcript, Whiggish in sentiment but less political than the other papers, is a good source for straightforward reports of meetings. The Anti-Masonic paper in the city was the Boston Daily Advocate. The two major Democratic newspapers of the state were the Boston Morning Post and the [Boston] Bay State Democrat.

The Whig organ in the District of Columbia, the Washington National Intelligencer, almost always held its columns open to Webster, who often used them, but it was largely neutral with regard to Webster’s Whig rivals. Filled with material on Webster’s effort to establish a Unionist party in 1833–34 is the Washington Examiner, whose life was as short as the abortive movement for fusion. Tyler’s views in the conflict with the Whigs between 1841 and 1844 were represented by the Washington Daily Madisonian.

Among New York papers, the New York Journal of Commerce and the New York Commercial Advertiser were often friendly to Webster, while the New York Star favored Clay, and the New York Courier and Enquirer vacillated between them. The New York Evening Post spoke for radical New York Democrats, and the New York Herald, sympathetic to all who avowed laissez-faire policies, ran a critical and independent course. The Albany Evening Journal reflected the thoughts of New York Whig leaders Thurlow Weed and William Henry Seward.

The Niles National Register is an exceptional source for summaries of editorials from both the Whig and the Democratic press, as well as for excerpts from the proceedings of Congress and the meetings of party groups throughout the country.

The North American Review, published in Boston, occasionally contained articles by Webster, as well as other favorable pieces about him.

General Histories

Still astonishing for its breadth and detail is Frederick Jackson Turner, The United States, 1830–1850: The Nation and Its Sections (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1935), which argues that the Jackson era was dominated by sectional rivalry and mounting Western influence. Countering with an interpretation of Jackson as the representative of the Eastern workingman is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1945). Stimulating and controversial, Schlesinger’s account shows persuasively the rising influence in the Democratic party of men and ideas hostile to the vicissitudes of a market economy. Leonard D. White provides a thoughtful rendering of the period in The Jacksonians: A Study of Administrative History, 1829–1861 (New York: Macmillan, 1954). Balanced and comprehensive one-volume treatments of the period include Charles M. Wiltse, The New Nation, 1800–1845 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1961); and Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Jacksonian Era, 1828–1848 (New York: Harper & Row, 1959). Recent interpretative overviews which downgrade the importance of politics and which doubt significant divisions between Whigs and Democrats are Edward Pessen Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Homewood, Ill.: The Dorsey Press, 1969); and Douglas T. Miller, The Birth of Modern America, 1820–1850 (New York: Pegasus-Western Publishing Co., 1970). The best recent studies of American party conflict are found in William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), and especially in the essay by Richard P. McCormick, “Political Development and the Second Party System.”

Specialized Histories

The political, economic, and social ferment of the Jackson era has lured hundreds of historians and fostered an impressive array of monographs. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in American: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1955), argues for a fundamental consensus of Whigs, Democrats, and, indeed, almost all citizens on political democracy and capitalistic enterprise. Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics & Belief (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), finds differences between Whigs and Democrats. Meyer’s intensive analysis of Jacksonian rhetoric reveals Democratic spokesmen yearning for the safety of an arcadian past and the sweets of a capitalistic future, while Whigs faced and favored the world of the marketplace with candid confidence. Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), finds more limited differences among politicians. Career-line analysis led Benson to conclude that leaders and followers of both parties differed little in background and shared a common egalitarianism. But parties did divide on whether state activity or state neutrality could best promote equality. Restating the case that men of wealth gravitated overwhelmingly toward the Whigs during the 1830s are Frank Otto Gatell, “Money and Party in Jacksonian America: A Quantitative Look at New York City’s Men of Quality,” Political Science Quarterly, 82 (June, 1967): 235–52; and Robert Rich, “ ‘A Wilderness of Whigs’: The Wealthy Men of Boston,” Journal of Social History, 4 (Spring, 1971): 263–76.

More recent studies of party conflict in the Jackson years stress the organizational imperatives which created and sustained the two-party system of the period. Focusing on the legislative behavior of congressmen and showing to different degrees the growth of party discipline are Joel H. Silbey, The Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841–1852 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967); and Thomas P. Alexander, Sectional Stress and Party Strength: A Study of Roll-Call Patterns in the United States House of Representatives, 1836–1860 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967). Election returns and state-by-state analysis of party techniques led Richard P. McCormick, in his The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), to judge that competition to win the presidency revived the two-party system between 1824 and 1840. McCormick developed the same thesis in “Suffrage Classes and Party Alignments: A Study in Voter Behavior,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 46 (December, 1959): 397–410; and “New Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics,” American Historical Review, 65 (January, 1960): 288–301. Silbey, Alexander, and McCormick suggest that the organizational need to win the presidency and the organizational need to maintain discipline created unity within parties and division between parties quite apart from the sway of issues or the pull of common values.

The debate over differences between Whigs and Democrats, however, is by no means settled. David Hackett Fischer, in The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), suggests that the use of common techniques by two parties may belie basic differences in preference and values between them, and that, quite probably, the Whigs’ reluctance to accept the changes of style and organization that winning required reflected a view that elites, and not the masses, should rule public affairs. Other studies similarly find significance in Federalist and Whig resistance to party organization; these works argue that, for many leaders, to accept party conflict was to deny social harmony, and to condone party loyalty was to violate individual conscience. See, especially, Michael Wallace, “Changing Concepts of Party in the United States: New York, 1815–1828,” American Historical Review, 74 (December, 1968): 453–91; Ronald P. Formisano, “Political Character, Antipartyism, and the Second Party System,” American Quarterly, 21 (Winter, 1969): 683–709; Lynn Marshall, “The Strange Stillbirth of the Whig Party,” American Historical Review, 72 (January, 1967): 455–68; Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969); and James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, 1800–1828 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). It is doubtful that citizens shared these anxieties as much as party leaders did; for a thoughtful appraisal of the concept of deference in historical analysis, see John B. Kirby, “Early American Politics—The Search for Ideology: An Historiographical Analysis and Critique of the Concept of Deference,” Journal of Politics, 32 (November, 1970): 808–38.

There is no recent general history of the Whig party, but older studies of the Whigs are able. E. Malcolm Carroll, Origins of the Whig Party (Durham: Duke University Press, 1924), is firmly rooted in archival and newspaper sources, and is a judicious work. Arthur C. Cole, The Whig Party in the South (Washington, D.C.: The American Historical Association, 1914), is a path-breaking study of the Whigs in that section. The best general study of the Whigs after 1840 is George Rawlings Poage, Henry Clay and the Whig Party (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936). Necessary to any understanding of the Whigs in the North is Charles McCarthy, “The Antimasonic Party,” in American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1901 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902).

Students of the Whig party must rely heavily on the biographies of its leaders. After Poage, the best treatment of Clay is Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Henry Clay (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1937). Clement Eaton, Henry Clay and the Art of American Politics (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1957), is a thoughtful, brief treatment. Albert Kirwan, John J. Crittenden: The Struggle for the Union (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1962), is outstanding, as is Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956). Glyndon G. Van Deusen has written able biographies of three New York Whig leaders: Thurlow Weed: Wizard of the Lobby (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1947); Horace Greeley: Nineteenth Century Crusader (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953); and William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). No student of the Whigs can overlook Thomas Payne Govan, Nicholas Biddle: Nationalist and Public Banker, 1786–1844 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959). Though John C. Calhoun’s link with the Whig party was always reluctant and tenuous, his career casts much light on the type of man and the kind of organization the Whigs had to hold together. Calhoun’s thought and politics are luminously chronicled in Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, 3 vols. (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1944–51). For new reflections on Calhoun’s ideas and his troubled relationship with the States’-Rights party of South Carolina, see William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Francis P. Weisenberger, The Life of John McLean: A Politician of the United States Supreme Court (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1937), is standard. Old but useful biographies of the first Whig president are Dorothy Goebel, William Henry Harrison: A Political Biography (Indianapolis: Historical Bureau of Indiana, 1924); and Freeman Cleaves, Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939). The best biography of the ill-fated John Tyler is Oliver Perry Chitwood, John Tyler: Champion of the Old South (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1939). For Tyler’s presidency the student should also see Robert J. Morgan, A Whig Embattled: The Presidency under John Tyler (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1954); and Robert Seager II, And Tyler Too: A Biography of John & Julia Gardiner Tyler (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).

Biographies of Democrats contain important material on the history of the Whig party. Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1966), ably synthesizes the latest scholarship on Jackson, though the student must consult the older James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 3 vols. (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860); John Spencer Bassett, The Life of Andrew Jackson (New York: Macmillan, 1928); and Marquis James, Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1937), for the details and color of the president’s life. Important for understanding both Jackson’s appeal and the public standards which required the Whigs finally to find their own military hero is John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955). Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), stops before 1830. But James C. Curtis, The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837–1841 (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1970), superbly analyzes the career of Jackson’s harassed successor and illuminates all of national politics during the 1830s. Crucial for the tortuous route by which the Texas and slavery issues were formally intertwined in the last year of the Tyler administration is Charles Grier Sellers, Jr., James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843–46 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).

Studies of Daniel Webster

The career of Daniel Webster has tempted many biographers, including more than Webster’s share of debunkers. George Ticknor Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1872), is old in age and style, but the material it assembles and the perspicacity of the judgments it renders make it far superior to the usual official biography. Best among the biographies that rely almost entirely on Curtis are Henry Cabot Lodge, Daniel Webster (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1883); and John Bach McMaster, Daniel Webster (New York: The Century Co., 1902). McMaster’s narrative, though not adulatory, is pro-Webster. Lodge, one conservative senator writing about the life of another, offers genuine insights into Webster’s philosophy and rhetoric. Claude Moore Fuess’s Life of Daniel Webster, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1930), is an able though eulogistic account of Webster’s triumphs and trials. Richard N. Current’s Daniel Webster and the Rise of National Conservatism (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1955) is analytical and interprets Webster’s thought and career largely in terms of his efforts to serve New England economic interests.

Useful studies on special aspects of Webster’s career include Robert Lincoln Carey, Daniel Webster as an Economist (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929); Everett Pepperrell Wheeler, Daniel Webster: The Expounder of the Constitution (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903); and the major work on Webster as an advocate, Maurice G. Baxter, Daniel Webster & the Supreme Court (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1966). Persuasive on Webster’s far-sighted understanding of the convergence of Western and New England interests is Peter J. Parish, “Daniel Webster, New England, and the West.” Journal of American History, 54 (December, 1967): 524–49. Excellent on Webster, Jackson, and the nullification crisis are Norman D. Brown’s “Webster-Jackson Movement for a Constitution and Union Party in 1833,” Mid-America, 46 (July, 1964): 147–71; and Daniel Webster and the Politics of Availability (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969). Richard N. Current, “Webster’s Propaganda and the Ashburton Treaty,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 24 (September, 1947): 187–200, examines Webster’s secret manuevers to win passage of the Treaty of Washington. A more comprehensive treatment of the same subject, based on the papers of Webster’s secret agent in the Maine boundary negotiations, is Frederick Merk and Lois Banner Merk, Fruits of Propoganda in the Tyler Administration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971). Webster’s abortive efforts to negotiate the Oregon boundary are traced in Frederick Merk, “The Oregon Question in the Webster-Ashburton Negotiations,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 43 (December, 1956), reprinted in Frederick Merk, The Oregon Question: Essays in Anglo-American Diplomacy and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967). Sydney Nathans, “Daniel Webster, Massachusetts Man,” The New England Quarterly, 39 (June, 1966): 161–81, and Kinley J. Brauer, “The Webster-Lawrence Feud: A Study in Politics and Ambitions,” The Historian, 29 (November, 1966): 34–59, examine Webster’s trials as a sectional leader seeking to broaden his political base.

Thoughtful discussions of Webster’s rhetoric are found in Wilbur Samuel Howell and Hoyt Hopewell Hudson, “Daniel Webster,” in A History and Criticism of American Public Address, ed. Marie Kathryn Hochmuth, W. Norwood Brigance, and Donald Bryant, 3 vols. (New York: Longman’s Green & Co., 1943–55), vol. 2; Clarence Mondale, “Daniel Webster and Technology,” American Quarterly, 14 (Spring, 1962): 37–47; and Raymond A. Berner, “A Practical Look at ‘Webster’s Reply to Hayne,’ ” Pennsylvania Speech Annual, 16 (September, 1959): 22–28.

The best analyses of Webster’s political and social thought are found in Major L. Wilson, “ ‘Liberty and Union’: An Analysis of Three Concepts Involved in the Nullification Controversy,” Journal of Southern History, 33 (August, 1967): 331–55; Major L. Wilson, “The Concept of Time and the Political Dialogue in the United States, 1828–48, “American Quarterly, 19 (Winter, 1967): 619–44; William R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (New York: George Braziller, 1961); and Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).

No understanding of Webster or the Whig party is possible without use of the valuable studies on politics and social change in Massachusetts. Though it focuses largely on the Democrats, Arthur B. Darling’s Political Changes in Massachusetts, 1824–1848: A Study of Liberal Movements in Politics Yale Historical Publications, no. 15 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925), is invaluable. A useful overview of Massachusetts Whig politics is James Schouler, “The Whig Party in Massachusetts,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 50 (1916–17). The best study of Massachusetts politics before 1820 is James M. Banner, Jr., To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970). Banner’s work should be supplemented by William A. Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England, Yale Historical Publications, no. 3 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916); and Paul Goodman, The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts: Politics in a Young Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964).

Outstanding on the fundamental economic and ideological changes in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and in early nineteenth century America is Oscar Handlin and Mary Flug Handlin, Commonwealth: A Study in the Role of Government in the American Economy, Massachusetts, 1774–1861 (New York: New York University Press, 1947). Suggestive too are Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Orestes Brownson: A Pilgrim’s Progress (Boston: Little, Brown &: Co., 1939); David B. Tyack, George Ticknor and the Boston Brahmins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967); and Martin B. Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961). Useful both on Webster and on New England Federalism is Lynn W. Turner, William Plumer of New Hampshire, 1759–1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962). David Van Tassel, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Compromise Sentiment in Boston in 1850,” The New England Quarterly, 23 (September, 1950): 307–319; Paul Goodman, “Ethics and Enterprise: The Values of Boston Elite, 1800–1860,” American Quarterly, 18 (Fall, 1966): 437–51; and Robert Rich, “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’: The Wealthy Men of Boston,” Journal of Social History, 4 (Spring, 1971): 263–76, seek to fathom the deeds and motives of wealthy, largely Whiggish Bostonians.

Indispensable as sources on Webster and the Massachusetts Whigs from 1844 on are David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960); Kinley J. Brauer, Cotton versus Conscience; Massachusetts Whig Politics and Southwestern Expansion, 1843–1848 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967); Thomas H. O’Connor, Lords of the Loom: The Cotton Whigs and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968); Frank Otto Gatell, John Gorham Palfrey and the New England Conscience (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963); and Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).