The Webster-Hayne Debate: An Inquiry into the Nature of Union

In January 1830, a debate on the nature of sovereignty in the American federal union occurred in the United States Senate between Senators Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Hayne of South Carolina. This debate exposed the critically different understandings of the nature of the American union that, by 1830, had developed between the North and the South and would ultimately lead to civil war in 1861.