<\/p>\n

The Devil, in this case, being politics as we know it today, practiced yesterday.<\/p>\n

In 1842, Daniel Webster was John Tyler’s Secretary of State.\u00a0 Among the issues he had to deal with was a lingering dispute – since the Revolutionary War – between the US and Britain over the border between Maine and Canada.\u00a0 One obstacle to a settlement was the maximalist demands of Maine itself, whose senators would be voting on the treaty, and whose people would have to be relied on not to make trouble by trying to settle territory ceded to Britain and precipitating a war.<\/p>\n

Parallel to the negotiations, Webster helped arrange for federal funds to secretly underwrite a public relations campaign in Maine in support of the proposed settlement.\u00a0 The treaty was eventually approved by the Senate by a vote of 39-9.<\/p>\n

However, later, in 1846, Charles Jared Ingersoll, a Democratic congressman from Philadelphia, went on a tirade in the House against the treaty.\u00a0 He was particularly incensed that Webster had settled the Maine boundary without also settling the Oregon boundary.\u00a0 He also revived some old charges from years before.\u00a0 Webster, back in the Senate and rising to the bait, fired back ferociously.\u00a0 “He was not known for his invective, but here, it was reported, the invective exceeded that of Cicero, Burke, and Sheridan, to say nothing of Randolph, Clay, and Benton.”<\/p>\n

Ingersoll figured he had hit a nerve.<\/p>\n

“Where there was so much wrath, there must be guilt, so he now pursued his investigation into the State Department.\u00a0 There he discovered the expenditures from the secret service fund [this is not the Secret Service we know today, founded in 1865 -ed.]. Returning to the House, he charged Webster with misappropriation of funds and corruption of the press, and demanded an investigation.\u00a0 The refusal of President James K. Polk to break the seal of secrecy on the contingency fund, combined with Tyler’s\u00a0 testimony defending Webster and assuming full responsibility for the expenditures, doomed the project.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It doomed Ingersoll, but in fact, Webster had been using clandestine taxpayer funds to run a domestic PR campaign in support of a treaty he negotiated.\u00a0 This may not rise quite to the level of leaking information to the press in order to use press stories to obtain surveillance warrants, but it is kinda of deep-statish.<\/p>\n

Back in 1842, Webster was fighting off another kind of allegation all too familiar.<\/p>\n

“In January 1842, George Prentice had published in the Louisville\u00a0Daily Journal<\/em> an editorial, ‘Anecdote of Daniel Webster,’ that gave a lurid account of [Webster’s] seduction of the wife of a poor clerk in his department.\u00a0 She had come to him asking employment as a secretary.\u00a0 After sending her to an adjoining room to provide a specimen of her handwriting, Webster came in, closed the door, and pounced on her…\u00a0 She screamed and clerks rushed in, thus forestalling ‘the old debauchee.’\u00a0 Affidavits from Washington, one of them filed by Webster himself with a local magistrate, forced Prentice to retract the story…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story never found any real audience then or now, and he always blamed Clay for having planted it.\u00a0 But the fact that he was forced to deny it seemed to stain him all by itself.<\/p>\n

Plus\u00a0\u00e7a change.
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