A Comparatively Unknown Incident in the Life of Daniel Webster
By George L. Christian
We have recently been loaned by a valued friend a copy of a very rare book entitled A Notable Libel Case, reported by Josiah H. Benton, Jr., giving the facts and circumstances of the trial of a case of alleged criminal libel against one Theodore Lyman, Jr., a gentleman of standing and high character, in which Daniel Webster, then a United States senator from Massachusetts, was the prosecutor.
It is indeed a curious fact that, notwithstanding the prominence of both Mr. Webster, the prosecutor, and the defendant, and the further fact that the case caused great excitement at the time, none of Mr. Webster's biographers, except Mr. Curtis, refers to this incident at all, nor is it even mentioned in any of the published or unpublished papers of Mr. Webster that we have seen. Although Mr. Curtis refers briefly to the case itself, for some reason he fails to give the name of the defendant.
It was probably necessary (at all events Mr. Webster felt it to be so) to argue that the Constitution at the outset was not a compact between the States, but a national instrument, and to distinguish between the cases of Virginia and Kentucky in 1799) and New England in 1814 from that of South Carolina in 1830. The former point he touched upon lightly, the latter he discussed ably, eloquently and at length. Unfortunately the facts were against him in both instances.
Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, one of his biographers, has this to say of Mr. Webster in referring to his famous speech in reply to Mr. Hayne: 'The weak places in his (Webster's) armour were historical in their nature."
Mr. Webster was in many respects a great man and certainly he had a great intellect. He is called by his Northern admirers "The Great Expounder" of the Constitution. We think, however, that he distorted, not expounded it. Certainly the construction of the Constitution contended for by him in his reply to Mr. Hayne
