Daniel Webster was an American politician and lawyer. He was born in 1782 at Salisbury, New Hampshire and died in 1852. Educated at Phillips (Exeter) Academy and at Dartmouth, where he graduated in 1801, he taught school at Fryeburg, in Maine, studied law, was called to the bar in 1805, and began the practice of law in Boscawen, New Hampshire. In 1807 he removed to Portsmouth. He was soon a leader of the bar, and from 1813 to 1817 was Congressman. In views he was then a moderate Federalist. He now settled in Boston, and in 1818 rose to the front rank of lawyers by his plea before the US Supreme Court in the famous 'Dartmouth College case', which involved the obligation of contracts and the powers of the Government.
From 1823 to 1827 he was Congressman from Massachusetts, was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and had attracted attention by his speeches on Greece and on free trade. He had become widely known as an orator. Among his great speeches were : at Plymouth, 1820, on the bi-centennial; at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, 1825; the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, 1826. In 1827 Daniel Webster entered the US Senate, and ranked chief among the orators, of the giants in Congress; Clay, Calhoun, Benton, were among his contemporaries.
He favoured the protective tariff of 1828. Two years later he reached his highest point, in the debate on the Foote resolution, where his reply to Hayne won for him the title of 'Expounder of the Constitution'. Daniel Webster opposed Nullification, was often pitted against Calhoun took an active part in the Bank controversy, and was, with Clay, highest in the Whig party. He came within reach of the nomination for President.
In 1836 he received the electoral vote of Massachusetts. President Harrison chose him for Secretary of State in 1841, and he alone of the members of Tyler's Cabinet refused to resign in September, 1841. He negotiated the Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain in 1842, and resigned in 1843. In 1845 he re-entered the Senate. He spoke on the Oregon question, gave a lame support to Taylor in 1848, and in 1850 in the Compromise excitement he alienated many former friends by his famous 'seventh of March speech'. He was again Secretary of State in 1850 until 1852. He received a few votes in the Convention of 1852, refused to support Scott, and died soon after at his home in Marshfield, Massachusetts Research Daniel Webster
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