March 7, 1850

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture, Performing Arts

4.4 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Washington, District of Columbia
March 7, 1850

Daniel Webster — the most celebrated orator in American history — rose in a packed Senate chamber to deliver the speech that would save the Union and destroy his reputation. With the nation tearing itself apart over slavery, and a dying John C. Calhoun having just issued an ultimatum for Southern secession three days earlier, Webster endorsed Henry Clay's Compromise of 1850 in its entirety, including the despised Fugitive Slave Law. The speech bought the country a decade of peace. It also turned Webster from "Godlike Daniel" into a pariah overnight. Emerson compared him to a courtesan. Whittier wrote his poetic obituary while he was still breathing. Not a single New England colleague would publicly support him. Was it the greatest act of political courage in Senate history, or the most consequential moral surrender? The answer depends on which side of the Fugitive Slave Law you were standing on.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Dark History Today, Washington District of Columbia, March 7, 1850.
0:11.0	The greatest orator in American history stood up to speak, and when he sat down three and a half hours later, he was a dead man walking.
0:19.0	The old Senate chamber on Capitol Hill was built for 62
0:23.2	senators, but it held considerably more than that on the morning of March 7, 1850. The visitors'
0:30.1	galleries were packed shoulder to shoulder with men and women who had lined up since dawn,
0:35.6	jostling for position beneath the portrait of George Washington.
0:39.3	Congressman from the House had abandoned their own chamber and crowded in among the Senator's mahogany desks.
0:46.3	People stood against the walls. The air was close and warm for early March, thick with wool and wood smoke,
0:53.3	and the particular electricity that precedes
0:55.7	a spectacle. They had come to see Daniel Webster. They called him Godlike Daniel in the newspapers.
1:02.9	They also called him Black Dan, a nickname he'd carried since boyhood in the taverns of Salisbury,
1:08.8	New Hampshire, on account of his dark complexion,
1:11.6	his jet black hair, and his eyes, which one contemporary described as black as death.
1:17.5	He had a massive dome-shaped head, a voice that a witness once compared to an African lion,
1:23.3	and a physical presence that made him appear taller than his five feet, ten inches. At 68, he was
1:29.9	portly and passed his prime, but Daniel Webster on his feet in the well of the United States Senate
1:35.3	was still the most dangerous thing in American public life. Three days earlier, the chamber had
1:41.2	witnessed something more ghastly. On March 4th, Senator John C. Calhoun of
1:46.9	South Carolina, the third member of the Great Triumvirate, alongside Webster and Kentucky's Henry Clay,
1:53.5	had been carried to his desk by two colleagues. Calhoun was dying of tuberculosis. He was emaciated,
2:00.3	spectral, wrapped in a black cloak that made him look like an almanac woodcut of the Grim Reaper. He was too weak to read his own speech. Senator James Murray Mason of Virginia read it for him, while Calhoun sat hunched at his desk, his hollow eyes scanning the chamber. The speech was an ultimatum. The South would leave
2:19.5	the Union if the North did not permanently accept slavery and its expansion into every new
	...

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