Years of Service: 1827-1829; 1829-1837;
1837-1841; 1845-1850
Party: Adams; Anti-Jackson; Whig; Whig
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| Chicago Historical
Society |
WEBSTER, Daniel, a Representative from
New Hampshire and a Representative and a Senator from Massachusetts; born in
Salisbury, N.H., January 18, 1782; attended district schools and Phillips Exeter
Academy, Exeter, N.H.; graduated from Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., in 1801;
principal of an academy at Fryeburg, Maine, in 1802; studied law; was admitted
to the bar in 1805 and commenced practice in Boscawen, near Salisbury, N.H.;
moved to Portsmouth, N.H., in 1807 and continued the practice of law; elected as
a Federalist from New Hampshire to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses
(March 4, 1813-March 3, 1817); not a candidate for reelection in 1816 to the
Fifteenth Congress; moved to Boston, Mass., in 1816; achieved national fame as
counsel representing Dartmouth College before the United States Supreme Court in
the Dartmouth College case 1816-1819; delegate to the Massachusetts State
constitutional convention in 1820; elected from Massachusetts to the Eighteenth,
Nineteenth, and Twentieth Congresses and served from March 4, 1823, to May 30,
1827; chairman, Committee on the Judiciary (Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Congresses); elected June 8, 1827 to the United States Senate for the term
beginning March 4, 1827; reelected as a Whig in 1833 and 1839 and served until
his resignation, effective February 22, 1841; chairman, Committee on Finance
(Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses); Webster’s reply to Senator Robert
Y. Hayne of South Carolina in January 1830 in opposition to the principles of
Nullification won him nation-wide fame, as did his widely-circulated ‘7th of
March’ speech in 1850, in which he argued for excluding slavery from the
territories; unsuccessful Whig candidate for president in 1836; appointed
Secretary of State by President William Henry Harrison and again by President
John Tyler and served from 1841 to 1843; again elected as a Whig to the United
States Senate and served from March 4, 1845, to July 22, 1850, when he resigned;
appointed Secretary of State by President Millard Fillmore and served from July
22, 1850, until his death in Marshfield, Mass., October 24, 1852; interment in
the Winslow Cemetery. -- Biographical
Data courtesy of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
