Daniel Webster Quotes
The hand that destroys the Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.
Fortunately he was wrong, but the threat of a breakup of the American Union intimidated most members of Congress to avoid anything that would offend a state or group of states. Thus slavery became more and more entrenched till it exploded into the Civil War. At the time the issues of contention included the fact that Louisiana was primarily Roman Catholic and ALL other states were majority Protestant. The territory functioned under French Law—the Napoleonic Code, while all the other states operated under the English Common Law (even today this is so), and there was concern with the French and Creole language and whether the Creoles would fit into American Culture.
Daniel Webster was an American lawyer and statesman who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress and served as the U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Millard Fillmore. As one of the most prominent American lawyers of the 19th century, he argued over 200 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court between 1814 and his death in 1852. During his life, he was a member of the Federalist Party, the National Republican Party, and the Whig Party.
