Renewal

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Pages: 91-100

91

Chapter 12

Renewal

Go to war, and the fair f‌ields of the ate of New York may be deluged in

blood. The ate of New York may be ransacked by foreign enemies, and

irreparable injury done to its people.

—    1  18411

T   administration left oce in March 1841, and

President William Henry Harrison appointed Daniel Web-

ster as the new secretary of state on 6 March 1841. The New

Englander was cut from a dif‌ferent cloth than his predecessor at the

state department. By this point, a renowned lawyer— one of the

most highly paid in the country — and a politician, Webster was a

diplomatic novice. But he had developed f‌irm ideas on international

relations. He was hostile to war, considering it an instrument of

policy inconsistent with the spirit of the age — as a young lawyer and

then congressman, he had opposed the American entry in the War

of 1812.2 He preferred conciliation as a means of settling dif‌ferences,

and worried about the economic consequences of war, and especially

the danger to the United States’ material progress risked by wars

of territorial expansion.3 And the “ardent, indeed rabid” anglophile

Webster assumed oce with important social and business ties to

the British — he had many English friends and correspondents, and

had been legal counsel to the House of Barings bank in London.4

Webster assumed oce anxious to resolve the McLeod and lin-

gering Caroline disputes, as well as border boundary disagreements