Old Hickory (1939)

Emmett Vogan: Daniel Webster

Quotes 

• Narrator : This question grew more vital as the tariff controversy raged ever higher. In Washington, Robert Hayno of South Carolina met Daniel Webster of Massachusetts in a debate that has become a classic of its time.

  Robert Hayno : [at a political meeting in the United States Capitol building]  And our brethren of the North turn a deaf ear to the complaints of South Carolina. We are acting on a principle we have always held sacred: resistance to unauthorized taxation. We will set up a government of our own before we bow to such a tariff.

  [the congressmen start to bicker] 

  Vice President John C. Calhoun : Order, order!

  Politician : Mr. Hayno, I fought with Washington for the Federal Government. You're talking treason!

  Daniel Webster : Mr. Speaker...

  Vice President John C. Calhoun : Chair recognizes Mr. Daniel Webster.

  Daniel Webster : I can not regard him as a safe consolate who, in the affairs of his government, should be mainly bent on considering not how the Union may be preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed!

  [many congressmen cheer] 

  Daniel Webster : God grant that, in my day at least, the curtain may not rise on such a scene. And when my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feud; or drenched it may be with fraternal blood. But let the last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the courageous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced; its armies and trophies streaming in their original luster; not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable, interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' - nor those other words of delusion or folly: 'Liberty first and Union afterward'; but everywhere spread all over in the characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind over the whole world, the whole Heavens, that of the sentiment dear to every true American heart, 'Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!'

  [the congressmen cheer verily]