Webster, Daniel 1782-1852
US lawyer and politician

Born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, he was called to the Bar in 1805 and served in the US House of Representatives (1813-17). Settling in Boston as an advocate in 1816, he distinguished himself in the Dartmouth College case, and became famous as an orator by his speech on the bicentenary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. He returned to Congress in 1823 as a Massachusetts Representative and in 1827 was trasferred to the Senate. Having previously favoured free trade, he defended the new protective tariff in 1828. His career was marked by a reverence for established institutions and for the principle of nationality. When the Whig Party triumphed in 1840, he was called into Benjamin Harrison's Cabinet as Secretary of State (1841-43). Under President John Tyler he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842) with Great Britain, but resigned in 1843. In 1844 he refused his party's nomination for President and supported Henry Clay. He opposed the Mexican War. In 1850 he voiced his abhorrence of slavery, and unwilling to break up the Union to abolish it, supported compromise measures. Under President Millard Fillmore, he was recalled as Secretary of State (1850-52) to settle differences with England. One of the greatest US orators, his speeches were published in 1851.