I.

Introduction

Daniel Webster (1782-1852), American statesman, famed for his oratorical skills.

Webster was born on January 18, 1782, in Salisbury (now Franklin), New Hampshire, and educated at Dartmouth College. He studied law in Salisbury and Boston and was admitted to the bar in 1805. Two years later he established a law practice in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There he became active in politics and joined the Federalist Party. As did many New Englanders, Webster resented the predominance of Virginians in the national government and opposed the War of 1812. From 1813 to 1817 he served in the U.S. House of Representatives and eloquently defended Federalist principles.

In 1816 Webster moved to Boston, and the following year he returned to the practice of law. Between 1817 and 1823 he won several famous constitutional cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, notably the Dartmouth College case (1819), which established the precedent that no legislature has the right to impair the obligations imposed by a contract, and McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), which denied the right of the states to tax an institution established by the federal government. Thereafter Webster was generally regarded as one of the leading lawyers of the country.