Seward And Webster: An Argumentative Analysis

William Seward, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster all served as legislator as either
Senator or Congressman and then took positions in the executive branch of the government.
William Seward and Daniel Webster were both members of the Whig Party, while John Calhoun was a member of the Republican Party. The Whig Party was a political party established during the time of President Jackson to oppose the policies of President Andrew Jackson and the
Democratic Party. Members of the Whig Party supported the power of Congress over the executive branch, and pursued a program of economic protectionism and modernization. All three of them established themselves for nationalist causes, but they had different views on slavery. Seward opposed
Seward rose on the Senate floor to deliver a speech that he called "Freedom in the New Territories." The new senator spent several intense weeks on the preparation of his statement, realizing that it could be taken as the North's answer to Calhoun. Seward acknowledged that the Constitution's framer had recognized the being of slavery and protected it where it existed, but the new territory was governed by a "higher law than the Constitution" -- a moral law established by the creator or god. The New York senator, was against all legislative compromise as "radically wrong and essentially vicious," demanded that California be considered as a free state. He warned the South that slavery was doomed and that a rebellion from the Union would happen. The speech hastened the
Whig party's division into proslavery and antislavery perspectives and shrunk many of his natural allies. A decade later, in 1860 and 1861, as southern states began to rebel, Seward became more passive in his attitude toward the South, seeking peaceful methods of resolving the conflict and avoiding
Calhoun had seen in his own state how the spread of slavery into the back country improved morals by limiting the countryside of the wrong doing poor whites who had once terrorized the law abiding middle class. Calhoun believed that “slavery instilled in the white who remained a code of honor that blunted the disruptive potential of private gain and fostered the civic-mindedness that lay near the core of the republican creed.” From this standpoint, the expansion of slavery into the backcountry decreased the likelihood for social conflict and stopped the problems when money would become the only measure of self worth, like what happened in New England. Calhoun was convinced that slavery was the key to the success of American dreams. Webster viewed slavery as a matter of reality rather than moral principle. He argued that the issue of its existence in the territories had been settled long ago when Congress prohibited slavery in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and split regions into slave and free in the 1820 Missouri Compromise. He believed that slaveries existence could not