Daniel Webster

On January 18, 1782, in Salisbury, New Hampshire, Daniel Webster was born into a family active in local militia and frontier politics. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1801, taught school, and then established himself as a lawyer in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Courtroom success in commercial and constitutional cases quickly made him one of the most prominent advocates of the Early Republic and Antebellum eras.

Webster argued Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, defended national authority in major Supreme Court litigation, and became one of the era's most celebrated senators. His Reply to Hayne in 1830 attacked nullification and made Union nationalism a central theme of congressional politics. As secretary of state, he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, and in 1850 he backed the Compromise of 1850 in an effort to preserve the Union.

Webster's constitutional nationalism influenced later Commerce Clause doctrine, Civil War unionism, and federal economic development. His speeches and cases remained part of legal education and Senate memory whenever Americans debated the balance between state power, national markets, and the authority of the Constitution.