Volume 7 Completes Letters Portion of Webster Papers

THE PAPERS OF DANIEL WEBSTER: Correspondence Volume 7, 1850-1852, edited by Charles M. Wiltse and Michael J. Birkner (University Press of New England, 1986, 729 pp., illustrated, $70.00).

With the October publication of the seventh volume of the correspondence of Daniel Webster, the largest segment of an immense scholarly project that began at Dartmouth back in 1967 was brought to completion.

Three other series legal papers, diplomatic papers, and speeches and formal writings are scheduled to be completed by the end of 1987. Only a single volume remains to be published in each series, and when that is accomplished, the full collection of Papers will consist of 14 volumes and a cumulative index.

The final volume of Webster's correspondence covers the period from Webster's controversial speech favoring the Compromise of 1850 to his death in October 1852. Early in the period the Massachusetts senator became convinced that the widening breach between North and South threatened the very existence of the Union, and he entered the debate with his famous 7th of March speech for compromise. When President Taylor died in July 1850, Webster left the Senate to become Secretary of State under President Fillmore, a post he had held previously under President Tyler. This second tour in the state department is covered in Diplomatic Papers (1986), but his correspondence shows the important role he continued to play in domestic affairs. Before leaving the Senate he had charted the course Congress would follow, and his state department office became the focus for enforcing the compromise.

Aside from his official duties, Webster continued his legal practice. The correspondence throws light on his arguing for clients before the Mexican Claims Commission, representing Charles Goodyear in what came to be known as "the great India rubber case," and supervising the preparation by Edward Everett of a collected edition of his works. Webster had great disappointments in failing to secure a canal route across Central America and in being badly beaten in his bid for the Whig presidential nomination in 1852.

Although the seven volumes of correspondence run to more than 4,000 pages of text, they contain only the most important and representative letters by Webster, less than 15 percent of the 16,000 pieces of correspondence extant. AH the letters, however, were photographed for a microfilm edition released in 1971 as part of the Webster Papers project.

Charles M. Wiltse, Professor of History Emeritus, has been editor-in-chief of the Webster Papers project since it began in 1967. He has had a special responsibility for the correspondence series, serving as editor for six of the seven volumes. His associate editor for Volume 7, Michael J. Birkner, is editorial page editor of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor and author of Samuel L. Southard:Jeffersonian Whig (1984). Professor Wiltse was chief historian of the Army Medical Service, 1960-67. He is the author of TheJeffersonian Tradition in American Democracy (1935), a three-volume Life of John C. Calhoun (1944-51), and The New Nation: 1800-1845 (1962).