The Devil and Daniel Webster

“The Devil and Daniel Webster” draws on a long tradition of “deal with the devil’ stories—in particular, the Faust myth. While most additions to the canon of Faust myths originated in Europe, like Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1592) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust (1808), the direct predecessor of Benét’s is American: Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker.” Unlike the protagonists of the European tales, Irving’s “Faust” character is not aristocratic or well-educated; rather, he is poor and sells his soul to become rich, becoming a cautionary tale about the dangers of avarice. Benét takes this one step further. Where Tom Walker is a miser even before he is wealthy, Stone is not especially greedy at the story’s outset; he simply wants to provide a comfortable life for his family, and Scratch provides him with a way of doing so.

This rags-to-riches story is at the heart of the American mythos, though those who aspire to the American Dream are of course meant to better their position through their own hard work rather than collusion with evil forces. Benét’s story plays on these parallels to suggest that for those who succeed in American society, the line between hard work and moral corruption may be a distinction without a difference. When Scratch returns to Stone’s farm for the first time, he commends the fruits of Stone’s labor: “[N]o need to decry your industry! […] After all, we know what’s been done, and it’s been according to contract and specifications” (2). The remark conflates Stone’s contract with his “industry,” implying that whatever work has enabled him to rise in society is equivalent to a deal with the Devil (here symbolically figured as a wealthy man issuing “mortgages”). With this, the story builds on a critique established in its introduction of Stone as a hard-working but perpetually impoverished farmer. In Benét’s story, patience and industry alone are not enough to ensure stability, much less prosperity.

This economic critique is key to the story’s exploration of The Devil in America—that is, the particular form that evil takes in the US. Another notable facet of this theme is the story’s sympathy with the plights of Indigenous Americans and enslaved African people. Though the story itself at times exhibits colonialist thinking—Prince Phillip, for example, is depicted as damned for his resistance to colonial rule—it also associates slavery and genocide with the Devil when Scratch uses these practices to claim American citizenship.

In Webster’s speech to the jury, he acknowledges these sins but argues that they do not alter America’s fundamental virtues; he laments “the sorrows of slavery” but also extols the value of “freedom” (6), implying that the failure to extend liberty to all is a flaw in a fundamentally moral system. However, the story is less certain that the good and bad of America can be so easily disentangled, and even Webster admits that the actions of “traitors” like those on the jury are part of the fabric of American history and culture.

As the story’s climax and the event that most separates Benét’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster” from its European predecessors, the jury trial renders these questions particularly acute. The idea of a trial by jury speaks directly to American democratic ideals, as Webster alludes to in his request for one: “I stand on the Constitution! I demand a trial for my client!” (6). That the trial produces the desired result seemingly endorses Webster’s faith in the system, yet its details raise questions about The Nature of Justice in the US. For one, Stone is the guilty party. He entered willingly into the deal with Scratch, knowing the consequences of his participation, and only tries to renege on the bargain once he has reaped its rewards. Indeed, the jurors admit that their verdict has nothing to do with legality: “Perhaps ‘tis not strictly in accordance with the evidence […] but even the damned may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster” (8). The most sympathetic reading of the trial would seem to be that a rigged system—the kind that drove Stone to his deal in the first place—demands an equally underhanded response.

Moreover, it is noteworthy that the “eloquence” that moves the jury is Webster’s patriotic defense of the history and future of the American nation. This jury, which consists of figures whom Americans of Webster’s time would have deemed enemies of the state, would not seem the audience for such an appeal; many of the jurors are either British or Indigenous and would therefore not even have considered themselves American. That Webster’s appeal to their American virtue weighs in Stone and Webster’s favor raises questions about what that “virtue” is.