#46: The Devil and Daniel Webster
A seminal work in American folklore — and in American self-deception
This review was originally posted to Twitter on January 28th, 2019
Initial release: 1936
Author: Steven Vincent Benét
It’s interesting to me how much of Important American Literature is short stories and novellas. Perhaps it’s the nature of the format, allowing for ideas and themes to be dispersed in a quicker, more readily-readable fashion. Or maybe it’s just how we naturally tell stories. It’s worth pointing out that a lot of 19th century writers released their work serially, as well — serialized literature was essentially the TV serial of yesteryear. As can be seen with the Dracula Daily phenomenon, there’s still a ready audience for that kind of drip-feed storytelling. Whatever the case, The Devil and Daniel Webster, despite being less than a century old, certainly feels older, as if it were contemporary with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, or perhaps even the tale of Faust. It’s a period drama set in the early 19th century (exactly when is unknown, but probably 1819 or so,) pitting the legendary New England statesman and later US Secretary of State Daniel Webster against the Devil himself for a man’s soul.
At the time, Webster was still a lawyer, though with the prestige of arguing before the Supreme Court. But never one to turn down a chance to help his fellow New Hampshirite, he takes on a most unusual mortgage case, one that would prove to be the toughest case he ever had. It’s the old Faustian deal; farmer Jabez Stone, sick of his rotten luck in life, winds up selling his soul to “a stranger” in exchange for seven (later ten) years of good luck, strictly because he was too proud to retract an oath he’d said in the heat of the moment. As the final year begins to wane, he goes to see Daniel Webster, who is still managing his own farm in between making speeches in Washington. Webster agrees to see the case, and they return to Stone’s farmhouse. At the appointed time, the stranger arrives. Webster talks “Scratch” (as he’s called around these parts) into convening a proper jury trial as indicated in the Constitution itself.
The judge and jury are all men of terrible power who in one way or another shaped American history: loyalists, pirates, a Wampanoag chief, etc. The judge himself is the infamous Hanging Judge Hathorne of Salem. Webster knows he has a tough case, but in the end he appeals to their sense of humanity — these men were, of course, men once, and they still remember the fineness of life. Webster wins the case.
The story is told in a folksy, down-home manner, befitting the style of some old man who sits on a porch at the general store spinning stories. A lot of American folklore is told that way, an oral tradition handed down through generations. The whole idea of “Americanness” is a central theme of the story; Webster cites the Constitution and appeals to patriotism; the judge and jury are declared “American” by the devil by the standards of their having shaped the nation in its infancy. Even the devil himself declares himself an American by rights, describing his presence at every wrong thing ever done in American history: the genocide of the Native populations, the evil of slavery.
Webster’s characterization is somewhat ahistorical. The real Webster was willing to compromise on slavery, and likely wouldn’t have accepted the chief King Philip as “American.” The story is thus more a projection of modern values on a legendary figure in American history. And that’s really sort the crux of the story: it’s folklore. It borrows heavily from a much older story, Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker,” but the whole thing comes off as affected and hokey, aping the folklore of 18th and 19th century America but without any subtlety.
It’s a good yarn for what it’s worth, but it’s still an update on an update on Faust. Its insistent patriotic and anti-slavery themes might have been a response to European fascism, but while it pays lip service to historical atrocities, it’s still a bit of a papering over. I feel like that’s an issue with a lot of the American high school English canon: a bloodless, shallow examination of how this country was built on slavery and the specter of racism that haunted America ever after, always with the subtle suggestion that racism ended in the 1960s. No wonder some people refuse to see racism when it’s staring them right in the face. It’s the same reason transphobes misappropriate high school biology. It’s like people who peaked in high school stop learning after graduation, as if there’s no point when high school’s so great.
As a short story about a Faustian deal, it’s an entertaining read, though its folksy charm can be irritatingly twee after a while. But as Important Literature, I think it’s another brick in the wall of bullshit we’ve built. It’s revisionist propaganda, plain and simple.
