The papers of Daniel Webster (1782-1852) span the years from 1800 to 1900 with the bulk concentrated in the period 1824-1852. They include correspondence, memoranda, notes and drafts of speeches, legal papers, invitations, typewritten transcripts of letters, and a few newspaper clippings and other types of printed matter. Correspondence constitutes the bulk of the collection. Letters received predominate, but there are more than one hundred and fifty items in the hand of Webster including letters, retained drafts, memoranda, and notes. Invitations and typewritten transcripts of selected letters follow the general correspondence. Webster's correspondence principally documents his legal and political career. Although he was the most famous orator of his time, only a few speeches and notes are included in this collection.

Among the numerous subjects documented in the Webster Papers are cabinet affairs of John Tyler's and Millard Fillmore's administrations, national and state politics, controversies during John Quincy Adams's and Andrew Jackson's administrations, tariff legislation, the Bank of the United States, negotiations related to the Northeast Boundary Dispute, Latin American relations, opposition to the war with Mexico, the slavery question, the Compromise of 1850, the practice of law and cases argued before the Supreme Court, and presidential aspirations. Webster's early years are described in handwritten copies of fifteen lengthy letters (about one hundred pages) written by Charles Archer to James Watson Webb, editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer. They are filed among the correspondence dated from August to September 1849.

Correspondents represented in the Webster Papers include Lord Ashburton (Alexander Baring), George Edmund Badger, Daniel D. Barnard, Nicholas Biddle, Lewis Cass, Rufus Choate, Henry Clay, Charles Pelham Curtis, Lord Dalling and Bulwer (Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer), John Davis, Edward Everett, Millard Fillmore, Joseph Hopkinson, James Kent, Abbott Lawrence, James K. Mills, Viscount Ossington (John Evelyn Denison), Isaac Parker, Josiah Quincy, Richard Rush, Jared Sparks, Ambrose Spencer, Andrew Stevenson, John Tyler, James Watson Webb, Fletcher Webster, Noah Webster, and Henry Wheaton.

A card index of correspondents among the general correspondence and invitations is available for consultation in the Manuscript Division Reading Room. It is also included in the Library's microfilm edition of the papers.

Approximately seven hundred typewritten transcripts, primarily of Webster's correspondence held by the New Hampshire Historical Society, are placed at the end of the Correspondence series. They were the gift of Charles Halstead Van Tyne who published The Letters of Daniel Webster in 1902. A card index of this transcribed correspondence is available in the Manuscript Division Reading Room. The transcripts and index have not been microfilmed.

An Addition series of the Webster Papers was created in 1978 and expanded in 1997. It consists of original material acquired by the Library since 1968 and miscellaneous items which were not included in the Library's microfilm edition of 1967, such as facsimiles, copies of letters, an engraving, and printed matter. The original material consists of approximately fifteen items of correspondence, principally by Webster, and notes for his speech of March 7, 1850, on the Compromise of 1850.