Webster, Daniel (1782–1852)

US politician and orator. He sat in the US House of Representatives 1813–27 and the Senate 1827–41, 1845–50, at first as a Federalist and later as a Whig. He was secretary of state 1841–43 and 1850–52, and negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty 1842, which fixed the Maine–Canada boundary. In 1850, his ‘seventh of March’ speech in the Senate on the slavery issue helped to secure the Compromise of 1850, in which concessions were made to the slave states.

Webster argued that Congress was powerless under the Constitution to interfere with slavery, and he maintained that the break-up of the Union would produce an even greater evil.

He was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire.