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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the
+Secession Movement, by Herbert Darling Foster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement
+
+Author: Herbert Darling Foster
+
+Commentator: Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
+
+Posting Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1663]
+Release Date: March, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEBSTER'S SPEECH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianne Bean
+
+
+
+
+
+WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH
+
+AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850
+
+By Herbert Darling Foster
+
+With foreword by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
+
+American Historical Review Vol. XXVII., No. 2
+
+January, 1922
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+It is very curious that much of the history of the United States in the
+Forties and Fifties of the last century has vanished from the general
+memory. When a skilled historian reopens the study of Webster's "Seventh
+of March speech" it is more than likely that nine out of ten Americans
+will have to cudgel their wits endeavoring to make quite sure just where
+among our political adventures that famous oration fits in. How many
+of us could pass a satisfactory examination on the antecedent train of
+events--the introduction in Congress of that Wilmot Proviso designed to
+make free soil of all the territory to be acquired in the Mexican War;
+the instant and bitter reaction of the South; the various demands for
+some sort of partition of the conquered area between the sections,
+between slave labor and free labor; the unforeseen intrusion of the gold
+seekers of California in 1849, and their unauthorized formation of a new
+state based on free labor; the flaming up of Southern alarm, due not to
+one cause but to many, chiefly to the obvious fact that the free states
+were acquiring preponderance in Congress; the southern threats of
+secession; the fury of the Abolitionists demanding no concessions to the
+South, come what might; and then, just when a rupture seemed inevitable,
+when Northern extremists and Southern extremists seemed about to snatch
+control of their sections, Webster's bold play to the moderates on both
+sides, his scheme of compromise, announced in that famous speech on the
+seventh of March, 1850?
+
+Most people are still aware that Webster was harshly criticized for
+making that speech. It is dimly remembered that the Abolitionists
+called him "Traitor", refusing to attribute to him any motive except the
+gaining of Southern support which might land him in the Presidency.
+At the time--so bitter was factional suspicion!--this view gained many
+adherents. It has not lost them all, even now.
+
+This false interpretation of Webster turns on two questions--was there
+a real danger of secession in 1850? Was Webster sincere in deriving his
+policy from a sense of national peril, not from self-interest? In the
+study which follows Professor Foster makes an adequate case for Webster,
+answering the latter question. The former he deals with in a general way
+establishing two things, the fact of Southern readiness to secede, the
+attendant fact that the South changed its attitude after the Seventh
+of March. His limits prevent his going on to weigh and appraise the
+sincerity of those fanatics who so furiously maligned Webster, who
+created the tradition that he had cynically sold out to the Southerners.
+Did they believe their own fiction? The question is a large one and
+involves this other, did they know what was going on in the South? Did
+they realize that the Union on March 6, 1850, was actually at a parting
+of the ways,--that destruction or Civil War formed an imminent issue?
+
+Many of those who condemned compromise may be absolved from the charge
+of insincerity on the ground that they did not care whether the Union
+was preserved or riot. Your true blue Abolitionist was very little of
+a materialist. Nor did he have primarily a crusading interest in
+the condition of the blacks. He was introspective. He wanted the
+responsibility for slavery taken off his own soul. As later events were
+to prove, he was also pretty nearly a pacifist; war for the Union, pure
+and simple, made no appeal to him. It was part of Webster's insight that
+he divined this, that he saw there was more pacifism than natural ardor
+in the North of 1850, saw that the precipitation of a war issue might
+spell the end of the United Republic. Therefore, it was to circumvent
+the Northern pacifists quite as much as to undermine the Southern
+expansionists that he offered compromise and avoided war.
+
+But what of those other detractors of Webster, those who were for the
+Union and yet believed he had sold out? Their one slim defense is the
+conviction that the South did not mean what it said, that Webster, had
+he dared offend the South, could have saved the day--from their point of
+view--without making concessions. Professor Foster, always ready to do
+scrupulous justice, points out the dense ignorance in each section of
+the other, and there lets the matter rest. But what shall we say of a
+frame of mind, which in that moment of crisis, either did not read the
+Southern newspapers, or reading them and finding that the whole South
+was netted over by a systematically organized secession propaganda made
+no attempt to gauge its strength, scoffed at it all as buncombe! Even
+later historians have done the same thing. In too many cases they have
+assumed that because the compromise was followed by an apparent collapse
+of the secession propaganda, the propaganda all along was without
+reality. We know today that the propaganda did not collapse. For
+strategic reasons it changed its policy. But it went on steadily growing
+and gaining ground until it triumphed in 1861. Webster, not his foolish
+opponents, gauged its strength correctly in 1850.
+
+The clew to what actually happened in 1850 lies in the course of such an
+ardent Southerner as, for example, Langdon Cheeves. Early in the year,
+he was a leading secessionist, but at the close of the year a leading
+anti-secessionist. His change of front, forced upon him by his own
+thinking about the situation was a bitter disappointment to himself.
+What animated him was a deep desire to take the whole South out of the
+Union. When, at the opening of the year, the North seemed unwilling to
+compromise, he, and many another, thought their time had come. At the
+first Nashville Convention he advised a general secession, assuming that
+Virginia, "our premier state," would lead the movement and when Virginia
+later in the year swung over from secession to anti-secession, Cheeves
+reluctantly changed his policy. The compromise had not altered his
+views--broadly speaking it had not satisfied the Lower South--but it had
+done something still more eventful, it had so affected the Upper South
+that a united secession became for a while impossible. Therefore,
+Cheeves and all like him--and they were the determining factor of the
+hour--resolved to bide their time, to wait until their propaganda had
+done its work, until the entire South should agree to go out together.
+Their argument, all preserved in print, but ignored by historians for
+sixty years thereafter, was perfectly frank. As one of them put it, in
+the face of the changed attitude of Virginia, "to secede now would be to
+secede from the South."
+
+Here is the aspect of Webster's great stroke that was so long ignored.
+He did not satisfy the whole South. He did not make friends for himself
+of Southerners generally. What he did do was to drive a wedge into the
+South, to divide it temporarily against itself. He arrayed the Upper
+South against the Lower and thus because of the ultimate purposes of men
+like Cheeves, with their ambition to weld the South into a genuine unit,
+he forced them all to stand still, and thus to give Northern pacifism a
+chance to ebb, Northern nationalism a chance to develop. A comprehensive
+brief for the defense on this crucial point in the interpretation of
+American history, is Professor Foster's contribution.
+
+NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON
+
+
+
+
+WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850
+
+The moral earnestness and literary skill of Whittier, Lowell, Garrison,
+Phillips, and Parker, have fixed in many minds the antislavery doctrine
+that Webster's 7th of March speech was "scandalous, treachery", and
+Webster a man of little or no "moral sense", courage, or statesmanship.
+That bitter atmosphere, reproduced by Parton and von Holst, was
+perpetuated a generation later by Lodge. [1]
+
+Since 1900, over fifty publications throwing light on Webster and the
+Secession movement of 1850 have appeared, nearly a score
+containing fresh contemporary evidence. These twentieth-century
+historians--Garrison of Texas, Smith of Williams, Stephenson of
+Charleston and Yale, Van Tyne, Phillips, Fisher in his True Daniel
+Webster, or Ames, Hearon, and Cole in their monographs on Southern
+conditions--many of them born in one section and educated in
+another, brought into broadening relations with Northern and Southern
+investigators, trained in the modern historical spirit and freed by the
+mere lapse of time from much of the passion of slavery and civil
+war, have written with less emotion and more knowledge than the
+abolitionists, secessionists, or their disciples who preceded Rhodes.
+
+Under the auspices of the American Historical Association have appeared
+the correspondence of Calhoun, of Chase, of Toombs, Stephens, and
+Cobb, and of Hunter of Virginia. Van Tyne's Letters of Webster (1902),
+including hundreds hitherto unpublished, was further supplemented in
+the sixteenth volume of the "National Edition" of Webster's Writings and
+Speeches (1903). These two editions contain, for 1850 alone, 57 inedited
+letters.
+
+Manuscript collections and newspapers, comparatively unknown to earlier
+writers, have been utilized in monographs dealing with the situation in
+1850 in South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina,
+Louisiana, and Tennessee, published by. universities or historical
+societies.
+
+The cooler and matured judgments of men who knew Webster
+personally--Foote, Stephens, Wilson, Seward, and Whittier, in the last
+century; Hoar, Hale, Fisher, Hosmer, and Wheeler in recent years-modify
+their partizan political judgments of 1850. The new printed evidence
+is confirmed by manuscript material: 2,500 letters of the Greenough
+Collection available since the publication of the recent editions of
+Webster's letters and apparently unused by Webster's biographers;
+and Hundreds of still inedited Webster Papers in the New Hampshire
+Historical Society, and scattered in minor collections. [2] This mass
+of new material makes possible and desirable a re-examination of the
+evidence as to (1) the danger from the secession movement in 1850; (2)
+Webster's change in attitude toward the disunion danger in February,
+1850; (3) the purpose and character of his 7th of March speech; (4) the
+effects of his speech and attitude upon the secession movement.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+During the session of Congress of 1849-1850, the peace of the Union
+was threatened by problems centering around slavery and the territory
+acquired as a result of the Mexican War: California's demand for
+admission with a constitution prohibiting slavery; the Wilmot Proviso
+excluding slavery from the rest of the Mexican acquisitions (Utah and
+New Mexico); the boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico; the
+abolition of slave trade in the District of Columbia; and an effective
+fugitive slave law to replace that of 1793.
+
+The evidence for the steadily growing danger of secession until March,
+1850, is no longer to be sought in Congressional speeches, but rather
+in the private letters of those men, Northern and Southern, who were the
+shrewdest political advisers of the South, and in the official acts of
+representative bodies of Southerners in local or state meetings, state
+legislatures, and the Nashville Convention. Even after the compromise
+was accepted in the South and the secessionists defeated in 1850-1851,
+the Southern states generally adopted the Georgia platform or its
+equivalent declaring that the Wilmot Proviso or the repeal of the
+fugitive-slave law would lead the South to "resist even (as a last
+resort) to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union".
+Southern disunion sentiment was not sporadic or a party matter; it was
+endemic.
+
+The disunion sentiment in the North was not general; but Garrison,
+publicly proclaiming "I am an abolitionist and therefore for the
+dissolution of the Union", and his followers who pronounced "the
+Constitution a covenant with death and an agreement with hell",
+exercised a twofold effect far in excess of their numbers. In the North,
+abolitionists aroused bitter antagonism to slavery; in the South
+they strengthened the conviction of the lawfulness of slavery and the
+desirability of secession in preference to abolition. "The abolition
+question must soon divide us", a South Carolinian wrote his former
+principal in Vermont. "We are beginning to look upon it [disunion] as
+a relief from incessant insult. I have been myself surprised at the
+unusual prevalence and depth of this feeling." [3] "The abolition
+movement", as Houston has pointed out, "prevented any considerable
+abatement of feeling, and added volume to the current which was to
+sweep the State out of the Union in 1860." [4] South Carolina's ex-governor,
+Hammond, wrote Calhoun in December, 1849, "the conduct of the
+abolitionists in congress is daily giving it [disunion] powerful aid".
+"The sooner we can get rid of it [the union] the better." [5] The
+conclusion of both Blair of Kentucky and Winthrop [6] of Massachusetts,
+that "Calhoun and his instruments are really solicitous to break up the
+Union", was warranted by Calhoun's own statement.
+
+Calhoun, desiring to save the Union if he could, but at all events to
+save the South, and convinced that there was "no time to lose", hoped
+"a decisive issue will be made with the North". In February, 1850, he
+wrote, "Disunion is the only alternative that is left us." [7] At last
+supported by some sort of action in thirteen Southern states, and in
+nine states by appointment of delegates to his Southern Convention,
+he declared in the Senate, March 4, "the South, is united against the
+Wilmot proviso, and has committed itself, by solemn resolutions, to
+resist should it be adopted". "The South will be forced to choose
+between abolition and secession." "The Southern States... cannot remain,
+as things now are, consistently with honor and safety, in the Union."
+[8]
+
+That Beverley Tucker rightly judged that this speech of Calhoun
+expressed what was "in the mind of every man in the State" is confirmed
+by the approval of Hammond and other observers; by their judgment that
+"everyone was ripe for disunion and no one ready to make a speech
+in favor of the union"; by the testimony of the governor, that South
+Carolina "is ready and anxious for an immediate separation"; and by
+the concurrent testimony of even the few "Unionists" like Petigru and
+Lieber, who wrote Webster, "almost everyone is for southern separation",
+"disunion is the... predominant sentiment". "For arming the state
+$350,000 has been put at the disposal of the governor." "Had I convened
+the legislature two or three weeks before the regular meeting," adds the
+governor, "such was the excited state of the public mind at that time,
+I am convinced South Carolina would not now have been a member of the
+Union. The people are very far ahead of their leaders." Ample first-hand
+evidence of South Carolina's determination to secede in 1850 may be
+found in the Correspondence of Calhoun, in Claiborne's Quitman, in the
+acts of the assembly, in the newspapers, in the legislature's vote "to
+resist at any and all hazards", and in the choice of resistance-men
+to the Nashville Convention and the state convention. This has been so
+convincingly set forth in Ames's Calhoun and the Secession Movement of
+1850, and in Hamer's Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852,
+that there is need of very few further illustrations. [9]
+
+That South Carolina postponed secession for ten years was due to the
+Compromise. Alabama and Virginia adopted resolutions accepting the
+compromise in 1850-1851; and the Virginia legislature tactfully urged
+South Carolina to abandon secession. The 1851 elections in Alabama,
+Georgia, and Mississippi showed the South ready to accept the
+Compromise, the crucial test being in Mississippi, where the voters
+followed Webster's supporter, Foote. [10] That Petigru was right in
+maintaining that South, Carolina merely abandoned immediate and separate
+secession is shown by the almost unanimous vote of the South Carolina
+State Convention of 1852, [11] that the state was amply justified "in
+dissolving at once all political connection with her co-States",
+but refrained from this "manifest right of self-government from
+considerations of expediency only". [12]
+
+In Mississippi, a preliminary convention, instigated by Calhoun,
+recommended the holding of a Southern convention at Nashville in June,
+1850, to "adopt some mode of resistance". The "Resolutions" declared the
+Wilmot Proviso "such a breach of the federal compact as... will make it
+the duty... of the slave-holding states to treat the non-slave-holding
+states as enemies". The "Address" recommended "all the assailed
+states to provide in the last resort for their separate welfare by the
+formation of a compact and a Union". "The object of this [Nashville
+Convention] is to familiarize the public mind with the idea of
+dissolution", rightly judged the Richmond Whig and the Lynchburg
+Virginian.
+
+Radical resistance men controlled the legislature and "cordially
+approved" the disunion resolution and address, chose delegates to
+the Nashville Convention, appropriated $20,000 for their expenses and
+$200,000 for "necessary measures for protecting the state.. . in the
+event of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso", etc. [13] These actions of
+Mississippi's legislature one day before Webster's 7th of March speech
+mark approximately the peak of the secession movement.
+
+Governor Quitman, in response to public demand, called the legislature
+and proposed "to recommend the calling of a regular convention...
+with full power to annul the federal compact". "Having no hope of an
+effectual remedy... but in separation from the Northern States, my views
+of state action will look to secession." [14] The legislature supported
+Quitman's and Jefferson Davis's plans for resistance, censured Foote's
+support of the Compromise, and provided for a state convention of
+delegates. [15]
+
+Even the Mississippi "Unionists" adopted the six standard points
+generally accepted in the South which would justify resistance. "And
+this is the Union party", was the significant comment of the New York
+Tribune. This Union Convention, however, believed that Quitman's message
+was treasonable and that there was ample evidence of a plot to dissolve
+the Union and form a Southern confederacy. Their programme was
+adopted by the State Convention the following year. [16] The radical
+Mississippians reiterated Calhoun's constitutional guarantees of
+sectional equality and non-interference with slavery, and declared for
+a Southern convention with power to recommend "secession from the Union
+and the formation of a Southern confederacy". [17]
+
+"The people of Mississippi seemed... determined to defend their equality
+in the Union, or to retire from it by peaceful secession. Had the issue
+been pressed at the moment when the excitement was at its highest point,
+an isolated and very serious movement might have occurred, which South
+Carolina, without doubt, would have promptly responded to." [18]
+
+In Georgia, evidence as to "which way the wind blows" was received
+by the Congressional trio, Alexander Stephens, Toombs, and Cobb, from
+trusted observers at home. "The only safety of the South from abolition
+universal is to be found in an early dissolution of the Union." Only
+one democrat was found justifying Cobb's opposition to Calhoun and the
+Southern Convention. [19]
+
+Stephens himself, anxious to "stick to the Constitutional Union" reveals
+in confidential letters to Southern Unionists the rapidly growing danger
+of disunion. "The feeling among the Southern members for a dissolution
+of the Union... is becoming much more general." "Men are now [December,
+1849] beginning to talk of it seriously who twelve months ago hardly
+permitted themselves to think of it." "Civil war in this country better
+be prevented if it can be." After a month's "farther and broader view",
+he concluded, "the crisis is not far ahead... a dismemberment of this
+Republic I now consider inevitable." [20]
+
+On February 8, 1850, the Georgia legislature appropriated $30,000 for a
+state convention to consider measures of redress, and gave warning that
+anti-slavery aggressions would "induce us to contemplate the possibility
+of a dissolution". [21] "I see no prospect of a continuance of this
+Union long", wrote Stephens two days later. [22]
+
+Speaker Cobb's advisers warned him that "the predominant feeling of
+Georgia" was "equality or disunion", and that "the destructives" were
+trying to drive the South into disunion. "But for your influence,
+Georgia would have been more rampant for dissolution than South Carolina
+ever was." "S. Carolina will secede, but we can and must put a stop to
+it in Georgia." [23]
+
+Public opinion in Georgia, which had been "almost ready for immediate
+secession", was reversed only after the passage of the Compromise and by
+means of a strenuous campaign against the Secessionists which Stephens,
+Toombs, and Cobb were obliged to return to Georgia to conduct to a
+Successful issue. [24] Yet even the Unionist Convention of Georgia,
+elected by this campaign, voted almost unanimously "the Georgia
+platform" already described, of resistance, even to disruption, against
+the Wilmot Proviso, the repeal of the fugitive slave law, and the other
+measures generally selected for reprobation in the South. [25] "Even
+the existence of the Union depended upon the settlement"; "we would
+have resisted by our arms if the wrong [Wilmot Proviso] had been
+perpetuated", were Stephens's later judgments. [26] It is to be
+remembered that the Union victory in Georgia was based upon the
+Compromise and that Webster's share in "strengthening the friends of the
+Union" was recognized by Stephens.
+
+The disunion movement manifested also dangerous strength in Virginia and
+Alabama, and showed possibilities of great danger in Tennessee, North
+Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas.
+The majority of the people may not have favored secession in 1850 any
+more than in 1860; but the leaders could and did carry most of the
+Southern legislatures in favor of uniting for resistance.
+
+The "ultras" in Virginia, under the lead of Tucker, and in Alabama under
+Yancey, frankly avowed their desire to stimulate impossible demands
+so that disunion would be inevitable. Tucker at Nashville "ridiculed
+Webster's assertion that the Union could not be dissolved without
+bloodshed". On the eve of Webster's speech, Garnett of Virginia
+published a frank advocacy of a Southern Confederacy, repeatedly
+reprinted, which Clay declared "the most dangerous pamphlet he had
+ever read". [27] Virginia, in providing for delegates to the Nashville
+Convention, announced her readiness to join her "sister slave states"
+for "mutual defence". She later acquiesced in the Compromise, but
+reasserted that anti-slavery aggressions would "defeat restoration of
+peaceful sentiments". [28]
+
+In Texas there was acute danger of collision over the New Mexico
+boundary with Federal troops which President Taylor was preparing to
+send. Stephens frankly repeated Quitman's threats of Southern armed
+support of Texas. [29] Cobb, Henderson of Texas, Duval of Kentucky,
+Anderson of Tennessee, and Goode of Virginia expressed similar views as
+to the "imminent cause of danger to the Union from Texas". The collision
+was avoided because the more statesmanlike attitude of Webster prevailed
+rather than the "soldier's" policy of Taylor.
+
+The border states held a critical position in 1850, as they did in
+1860. "If they go for the Southern movement we shall have disunion."
+"Everything is to depend from this day on the course of Kentucky,
+Tennessee and Missouri." [30] Webster's conciliatory Union policy,
+in harmony with that of border state leaders, like Bell of Tennessee,
+Benton of Missouri, Clay and Crittenden of Kentucky, enabled Maryland,
+Kentucky, and Missouri to stand by the Union and refuse to send
+delegates to the Nashville Convention.
+
+The attitude of the Southern states toward disunion may be followed
+closely in their action as to the Nashville Convention. Nine Southern
+states approved the Convention and appointed delegates before June,
+1850, six during the critical month preceding Webster's speech: Georgia,
+February 6, 8; Texas and Tennessee, February 11; Virginia, February 12;
+Alabama, just before the adjournment of the legislature, February
+13; Mississippi, March 5, 6. [31] Every one of the nine seceded in
+1860-1861; the border states (Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) which kept
+out of the Convention in 1850 likewise kept out of secession in 1861;
+and only two states which seceded in 1861 failed to join the Southern
+movement in 1850 (North Carolina and Louisiana). This significant
+parallel between the action of the Southern states in 1850 and in 1860
+suggests the permanent strength of the secession movement of 1850.
+Moreover, the alignment of leaders was strikingly the same in 1850
+and 1860. Those who headed the secession movement in 1850 in their
+respective states were among the leaders of secession in 1860 and 1861:
+Rhett in South Carolina; Yancey in Alabama; Jefferson Davis and Brown
+in Mississippi Garnett, Goode, and Hunter in Virginia; Johnston in
+Arkansas; Clingman in North Carolina. On the other hand, nearly all the
+men who in 1850 favored the Compromise, in 1860 either remained Union
+men, like Crittenden, Houston of Texas, Sharkey, Lieber, Petigru, and
+Provost Kennedy of Baltimore, or, like Stephens, Morehead, and Foote,
+vainly tried to restrain secession.
+
+In the states unrepresented at the Nashville Convention-Missouri,
+Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana--there was much
+sympathy with the Southern movement. In Louisiana, the governor's
+proposal to send delegates was blocked by the Whigs. [32] "Missouri", in
+case of the Wilmot Proviso, "will be found in hearty co-operation with
+the slave-holding states for mutual protection against... Northern
+fanaticism", her legislature resolved. [33] Missouri's instructions to
+her senators were denounced as "disunion in their object" by her
+own Senator Benton. The Maryland legislature resolved, February 26:
+"Maryland will take her position with her Southern sister states in
+the maintenance of the constitution with all its compromises." The Whig
+senate, however, prevented sanctioning of the convention and sending of
+delegates. Florida's governor wrote the governor of South Carolina
+that Florida would co-operate with Virginia and South Carolina "in any
+measure in defense of our common Constitution and sovereign dignity".
+"Florida has resolved to resist to the extent of revolution", declared
+her representative in Congress, March 5. Though the Whigs did not
+support the movement, five delegates came from Florida to the Nashville
+Convention. [34]
+
+In Kentucky, Crittenden's repeated messages against "disunion" and
+"entangling engagements" reveal the danger seen by a Southern Union
+governor. [35] Crittenden's changing attitude reveals the growing
+peril, and the growing reliance on Webster's and Clay's plans. By April,
+Crittenden recognized that "the Union is endangered", "the case...
+rises above ordinary rules", "circumstances have rather changed". He
+reluctantly swung from Taylor's plan of dealing with California alone,
+to the Clay and Webster idea of settling the "whole controversy".
+[36] Representative Morehead wrote Crittenden, "The extreme Southern
+gentlemen would secretly deplore the settlement of this question. The
+magnificence of a Southern Confederacy... is a dazzling allurement."
+Clay like Webster, saw "the alternative, civil war". [37]
+
+In North Carolina, the majority appear to have been loyal to the
+Union; but the extremists--typified by Clingman, the public meeting at
+Wilmington, and the newspapers like the Wilmington Courier--reveal the
+presence of a dangerously aggressive body "with a settled determination
+to dissolve the Union" and frankly "calculating the advantages of a
+Southern Confederacy." Southern observers in this state reported that
+"the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law or the abolition of slavery in
+the District will dissolve the Union". The North Carolina legislature
+acquiesced in the Compromise but counselled retaliation in case of
+anti-slavery aggressions. [38] Before the assembling of the Southern
+convention in June, every one of the Southern states, save Kentucky,
+had given some encouragement to the Southern movement, and Kentucky had
+given warning and proposed a compromise through Clay. [39]
+
+Nine Southern states-Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
+Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee sent about 176
+delegates to the Nashville Convention. The comparatively harmless
+outcome of this convention, in June, led earlier historians to
+underestimate the danger of the resistance movement in February and
+March when backed by legislatures, newspapers, and public opinion,
+before the effect was felt of the death of Calhoun and Taylor, and of
+Webster's support of conciliation. Stephens and the Southern Unionists
+rightly recognized that the Nashville Convention "will be the nucleus of
+another sectional assembly". "A fixed alienation of feeling will be the
+result." "The game of the destructives is to use the Missouri Compromise
+principle [as demanded by the Nashville Convention] as a medium of
+defeating all adjustments and then to... infuriate the South and
+drive her into measures that must end in disunion." "All who go to the
+Nashville Convention are ultimately to fall into that position." This
+view is confirmed by Judge Warner and other observers in Georgia and by
+the unpublished letters of Tucker. [40] "Let the Nashville Convention
+be held", said the Columbus, Georgia, Sentinel, "and let the undivided
+voice of the South go forth... declaring our determination to resist
+even to civil war." [41] The speech of Rhett of South Carolina, author
+of the convention's "Address", "frankly and boldly unfurled the flag of
+disunion". "If every Southern State should quail... South Carolina alone
+should make the issue." "The opinion of the [Nashville] address is, and
+I believe the opinion of a large portion of the Southern people is, that
+the Union cannot be made to endure", was delegate Barnwell's admission
+to Webster. [42]
+
+The influence of the Compromise is brought out in the striking change in
+the attitude of Senator Foote, and of judge Sharkey of Mississippi,
+the author of the radical "Address" of the preliminary Mississippi
+Convention, and chairman of both this and the Nashville Convention.
+After the Compromise measures were reported in May by Clay and Webster's
+committee, Sharkey became convinced that the Compromise should be
+accepted and so advised Foote. Sharkey also visited Washington and
+helped to pacify the rising storm by "suggestions to individual
+Congressmen". [43] In the Nashville Convention, Sharkey therefore
+exercised a moderating influence as chairman and refused to sign its
+disunion address. Convinced that the Compromise met essential Southern
+demands, Sharkey urged that "to resist it would be to dismember the
+Union". He therefore refused to call a second meeting of the Nashville
+Convention. For this change in position he was bitterly criticized by
+Jefferson Davis. [44] Foote recognized the "emergency" at the same time
+that Webster did, and on February 25, proposed his committee of thirteen
+to report some "scheme of compromise". Parting company with Calhoun,
+March 5, on the thesis that the South could not safely remain without
+new "constitutional guarantees", Foote regarded Webster's speech as
+"unanswerable", and in April came to an understanding with him as to
+Foote's committee and their common desire for prompt consideration of
+California. The importance of Foote's influence in turning the tide
+in Mississippi, through his pugnacious election campaign, and the
+significance of his judgment of the influence of Webster and his
+speech have been somewhat overlooked, partly perhaps because of Foote's
+swashbuckling characteristics. [45]
+
+That the Southern convention movement proved comparatively innocuous in
+June is due in part to confidence inspired by the conciliatory policy of
+one outstanding Northerner, Webster. "Webster's speech", said Winthrop,
+"has knocked the Nashville Convention into a cocked hat." [46] "The
+Nashville Convention has been blown by your giant effort to the four
+winds." [47] "Had you spoken out before this, I verily believe the
+Nashville Convention had not been thought of. Your speech has disarmed
+and quieted the South." [48] Webster's speech caused hesitation in the
+South. "This has given courage to all who wavered in their resolution or
+who were secretly opposed to the measure [Nashville Convention]." [49]
+
+Ames cites nearly a store of issues of newspapers in Mississippi, South
+Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia reflecting
+the change in public opinion in March. Even some of the radical papers
+referred to the favorable effect of Webster's speech and "spirit" in
+checking excitement. "The Jackson (Mississippi) Southron had at first
+supported the movement [for a Southern Convention], but by March it had
+grown lukewarm and before the Convention assembled, decidedly opposed
+it. The last of May it said, 'not a Whig paper in the State approves'."
+In the latter part of March, not more than a quarter of sixty papers
+from ten slave-holding states took decided ground for a Southern
+Convention. [50] The Mississippi Free Trader tried to check the growing
+support of the Compromise, by claiming that Webster's speech lacked
+Northern backing. A South Carolina pamphlet cited the Massachusetts
+opposition to Webster as proof of the political strength of abolition.
+[51]
+
+The newer, day by day, first-hand evidence, in print and manuscript,
+shows the Union in serious danger, with the culmination during the three
+weeks preceding Webster's speech; with a moderation during March; a
+growing readiness during the summer to await Congressional action; and
+slow, acquiescence in the Compromise measures of September, but with
+frank assertion on the part of various Southern states of the right and
+duty of resistance if the compromise measures were violated. Even
+in December, 1850, Dr. Alexander of Princeton found sober Virginians
+fearful that repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act would throw Virginia info
+the Southern movement and that South Carolina "by some rash act"
+would precipitate "the crisis". "All seem to regard bloodshed as the
+inevitable result." [52]
+
+To the judgments and legislative acts of Southerners already quoted,
+may be added some of the opinions of men from the North. Erving, the
+diplomat, wrote from New York, "The real danger is in the fanatics
+and disunionists of the North". "I see no salvation but in the total
+abandonment of the Wilmot Proviso." Edward Everett, on the contrary,
+felt that "unless some southern men of influence have courage enough
+to take grounds against the extension of slavery and in favor of
+abolition... we shall infallibly separate". [53]
+
+A Philadelphia editor who went to Washington to learn the real
+sentiments of the Southern members, reported February 1, that if the
+Wilmot Proviso were not given up, ample provision made for fugitive
+slaves and avoidance of interference with slavery in the District of
+Columbia, the South would secede, though this was not generally believed
+in the North. "The North must decide whether she would have the Wilmot
+Proviso without the Union or the Union without the Wilmot Proviso." [54]
+
+In answer to inquiries from the Massachusetts legislature as to whether
+the Southern attitude was "bluster" or "firm Resolve", Winthrop wrote,
+"the country has never been in more serious exigency than at present".
+"The South is angry, mad." "The Union must be saved... by prudence and
+forbearance." "Most sober men here are apprehensive that the end of the
+Union is nearer than they have ever before imagined." Winthrop's own
+view on February 19 had been corroborated by General Scott, who wrote
+him four days earlier, "God preserve the Union is my daily prayer, in
+and out of church". [55]
+
+Webster however, as late as February 14, believed that there was no
+"serious danger". February 16, he still felt that "if, on our side, we
+keep cool, things will come to no dangerous pass". [56] But within the
+next week, three acts in Washington modified Webster's optimism:
+the filibuster of Southern members, February 18; their triumph in
+conference, February 19; their interview with Taylor about February 23.
+
+On February 18, under the leadership of Stephens, the Southern
+representatives mustered two-thirds of the Southern Whigs and a majority
+from every Southern state save Maryland for a successful series of over
+thirty filibustering votes against the admission of California without
+consideration of the question of slavery in New Mexico and Utah. So
+indisputable was the demonstration of Southern power to block not
+only the President's plan but all Congressional legislation, that the
+Northern leaders next day in conference with. Southern representatives
+agreed that California should be admitted with her free constitution,
+but that in New Mexico and Utah government should be organized with no
+prohibition of slavery and with power to form, in respect to slavery,
+such constitutions as the people pleased--agreements practically enacted
+in the Compromise. [57]
+
+The filibuster of the 18th of February, Mann described as "a
+revolutionary proceeding". Its alarming effect on the members of the
+Cabinet was commented upon by the Boston Advertiser, February 19. The
+New York Tribune, February 20, recognized the determination of the
+South to secede unless the Missouri Compromise line were extended to the
+Pacific. February 22, the Springfield Republican declared that "if the
+Union cannot be preserved" without the extension of slavery, "we allow
+the tie of Union to be severed". It was on this day, that Webster
+decided "to make a Union speech and discharge a clear conscience".
+
+That same week (apparently February 23) occurred the famous interview of
+Stephens and Toombs with Taylor which convinced the President that the
+Southern movement "means disunion". This was Taylor's judgment expressed
+to Weed and Hamlin, "ten minutes after the interview". A week later the
+President seemed to Horace Mann to be talking like a child about his
+plans to levy an embargo and blockade the Southern harbors and "save the
+Union". Taylor was ready to appeal to arms against "these Southern men
+in Congress [who] are trying to bring on civil war" in connection with
+the critical Texas boundary question. [58]
+
+On this 23d of February, Greeley, converted from his earlier and
+characteristic optimism, wrote in his leading editorial: "instead of
+scouting or ridiculing as chimerical the idea of a Dissolution of the
+Union, we firmly believe that there are sixty members of Congress who
+this day desire it and are plotting to effect it. We have no doubt the
+Nashville Convention will be held and that the leading purpose of its
+authors is the separation of the slave states... with the formation of
+an independent Confederacy." "This plot... is formidable." He warned
+against "needless provocation which would supply weapons to the
+Disunionists". A private letter to Greeley from Washington, the same
+day, says: "H---- is alarmed and confident that blood will be spilt on
+the floor of the House. Many members go to the House armed every
+day. W---- is confident that Disunionism is now inevitable. He knows
+intimately nearly all the Southern members, is familiar with their views
+and sees the letters that reach them from their constituents. He says
+the most ultra are well backed up in their advices from home." [59]
+
+The same February 23, the Boston Advertiser quoted the Washington
+correspondence of the Journal of Commerce: "excitement pervades the
+whole South, and Southern members say that it has gone beyond their
+control, that their tone is moderate in comparison with that of their
+people". "Persons who condemn Mr. Clay's resolutions now trust to some
+vague idea that Mr. Webster can do something better." "If Mr. Webster
+has any charm by the magic influence of which he can control the
+ultraism, of the North and of the South, he cannot too soon try
+its effects." "If Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri go for the Southern
+movement, we shall have disunion and as much of war as may answer the
+purposes either of Northern or Southern fanaticism." On this Saturday,
+February 23, also, "several Southern members of Congress had a long
+and interesting interview with Mr. Webster". "The whole subject was
+discussed and the result is, that the limitations of a compromise have
+been examined, which are satisfactory to our Southern brethren. This
+is good news, and will surround Mr. Webster's position with an uncommon
+interest." [60]
+
+"Webster is the only man in the Senate who has a position which would
+enable him to present a plan which would be carried", said Pratt of
+Maryland. [61] The National Intelligencer, which had hitherto maintained
+the safety of the Union, confessed by February 21 that "the integrity
+of the Union is at some hazard", quoting Southern evidence of this. On
+February 25, Foote, in proposing to the Senate a committee of thirteen
+to report some scheme of compromise, gave it as his conclusion from
+consultation with both houses, that unless something were done at once,
+power would pass from Congress.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+It was under these highly critical circumstances that Webster, on
+Sunday, February 24, the day on which he was accustomed to dine with his
+unusually well-informed friends, Stephens, Toombs, Clay and Hale, wrote
+to his only surviving son:
+
+I am nearly broken down with labor and anxiety. I know not how to meet
+the present emergency, or with what weapons to beat down the Northern
+and Southern follies, now raging in equal extremes. If you can possibly
+leave home, I want you to be here, a day or two before I speak... I have
+poor spirits and little courage. Non sum qualis eram. [62]
+
+Mr. Lodge's account of this critical February period shows ignorance not
+only of the letter of February 24, but of the real situation. He relies
+upon von Holst instead of the documents, then misquotes him on a point
+of essential chronology, and from unwarranted assumptions and erroneous
+and incomplete data draws unreliable conclusions. Before this letter of
+February 24 and the new cumulative evidence of the crisis, there falls
+to the ground the sneer in Mr. Lodge's question, "if [Webster's] anxiety
+was solely of a public nature, why did it date from March 7 when, prior
+to that time, there was much greater cause for alarm than afterwards?"
+Webster was anxious before the 7th of March, as so many others were,
+North and South, and his extreme anxiety appears in the letter of
+February 24, as well as in repeated later utterances. No one can read
+through the letters of Webster without recognizing that he had a genuine
+anxiety for the safety of the Union; and that neither in his letters nor
+elsewhere is there evidence that in his conscience he was "ill at ease"
+or "his mind not at peace". Here as elsewhere, Mr. Lodge's biography,
+written over forty years ago, reproduces anti-slavery bitterness and
+ignorance of facts (pardonable in 1850) and seriously misrepresents
+Webster's character and the situation in that year. [63]
+
+By the last week in February and the first in March, the peak of the
+secession movement was reached. Never an alarmist, Webster, like others
+who loved the Union, become convinced during this critical last week in
+February of an "emergency". He determined "to make a Union Speech and
+discharge a clear conscience." "I made up my mind to risk myself on a
+proposition for a general pacification. I resolved to push my skiff
+from the shore alone." "We are in a crisis," he wrote June 2, "if
+conciliation makes no progress." "It is a great emergency, a great
+exigency, that the country is placed in", he said in the Senate, June
+17. "We have," he wrote in October, "gone through the most important
+crisis which has occurred since the foundation of the government." A
+year later he added at Buffalo, "if we had not settled these agitating
+questions [by the Compromise]... in my opinion, there would have been
+civil war". In Virginia, where he had known the situation even better,
+he declared, "I believed in my conscience that a crisis was at hand, a
+dangerous, a fearful crisis." [64]
+
+Rhodes's conclusion that there was "little danger of an overt act of
+secession while General Taylor was in the presidential chair" was based
+on evidence then incomplete and is abandoned by more recent historians.
+It is moreover significant that, of the speeches cited by Rhodes,
+ridiculing the danger of secession, not one was delivered before
+Webster's speech. All were uttered after the danger had been lessened
+by the speeches and attitude of Clay and Webster. Even such Northern
+anti-slavery speeches illustrated danger of another sort. Hale of
+New Hampshire "would let them go" rather than surrender the rights
+threatened by the fugitive slave bill. [65] Giddings in the very speech
+ridiculing the danger of disunion said, "when they see fit to leave the
+Union, I would say to them 'Go in peace'". [66] Such utterances played
+into the hands of secessionists, strengthening their convictions that
+the North despised the South and would not fight to keep her in the
+Union.
+
+It is now clear that in 1850 as in 1860 the average Northern senator
+or anti-slavery minister or poet was ill-informed or careless as to the
+danger of secession, and that Webster and the Southern Unionists were
+well-informed and rightly anxious. Theodore Parker illustrated the
+bitterness that befogs the mind. He concluded that there was no danger
+of dissolution because "the public funds of the United States did not
+go down one mill." The stock market might, of course, change from many
+causes, but Parker was wrong as to the facts. An examination of the
+daily sales of United States bonds in New York, 1849-1850, shows that
+the change, instead of being, "not one mill," as Parker asserted, was
+four or five dollars during this period; and what change there was, was
+downward before Webster's speech and upward thereafter. [67]
+
+We now realize what Webster knew and feared in 1849-1850. "If this
+strife between the South and the North goes on, we shall have war,
+and who is ready for that?" "There would have been a Civil War if the
+Compromise had not passed." The evidence confirms Thurlow Weed's mature
+judgment: "the country had every appearance of being on the eve of a
+Revolution." [68] On February 28, Everett recognized that "the radicals
+at the South have made up their minds to separate, the catastrophe seems
+to be inevitable". [69]
+
+On March 1, Webster recorded his determination "to make an honest,
+truth-telling speech, and a Union speech" [691] The Washington
+correspondent of the Advertiser, March 4, reported that Webster will
+"take a large view of the state of things and advocate a straightforward
+course of legislation essentially such as the President has
+recommended". "To this point public sentiment has been gradually
+converging." "It will tend greatly to confirm opinion in favor of this
+course should it meet with the decided concurrence of Mr. Webster."
+The attitude of the plain citizen is expressed by Barker, of Beaver,
+Pennsylvania, on the same day: "do it, Mr. Webster, as you can, do it as
+a bold and gifted statesman and patriot; reconcile the North and South
+and PRESERVE the UNION". "Offer, Mr. Webster, a liberal compromise to
+the South." On March 4 and 5, Calhoun's Senate speech reasserted that
+the South, no longer safe in the Union, possessed the right of peaceable
+secession. On the 6th of March, Webster went over the proposed speech
+of the next morning with his son, Fletcher, Edward Curtis, and Peter
+Harvey. [70]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+It was under the cumulative stress of such convincing evidence, public
+and private utterances, and acts in Southern legislatures and in
+Congress, that Webster made his Union speech on the 7th of March. The
+purpose and character of the speech are rightly indicated by its title,
+"The Constitution and the Union", and by the significant dedication to
+the people of Massachusetts: "Necessity compels me to speak true rather
+than pleasing things." "I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer
+to save you, whatever be your attitude toward me." [71] The malignant
+charge that this speech was "a bid for the presidency" was long ago
+discarded, even by Lodge. It unfortunately survives in text-books more
+concerned with "atmosphere" than with truth. The modern investigator
+finds no evidence for it and every evidence against it. Webster was
+both too proud and too familiar with the political situation, North
+and South, to make such a monstrous mistake. The printed or manuscript
+letters to or from Webster in 1850 and 1851 show him and his friends
+deeply concerned over the danger to the Union, but not about the
+presidency. There is rarest mention of the matter in letters by
+personal or political friends; none by Webster, so far as the writer has
+observed.
+
+If one comes to the speech familiar with both the situation in 1850 as
+now known, and with Webster's earlier and later speeches and private
+letters, one finds his position and arguments on the 7th of March in
+harmony with his attitude toward Union and slavery, and with the law and
+the facts. Frankly reiterating both his earlier view of slavery "as a
+great moral, political and social evil" and his lifelong devotion to
+the Union and its constitutional obligations, Webster took national,
+practical, courageous grounds. On the fugitive slave bill and the Wilmot
+Proviso, where cautious Whigs like Winthrop and Everett were inclined
+to keep quiet in view of Northern popular feeling, Webster "took a large
+view of things" and resolved, as Foote saw, to risk his reputation
+in advocating the only practicable solution. Not only was Webster
+thoroughly familiar with the facts, but he was pre-eminently logical
+and, as Calhoun had admitted, once convinced, "he cannot look truth in
+the face and oppose it by arguments". [72] He therefore boldly faced
+the truth that the Wilmot Proviso (as it proved later) was needless, and
+would irritate Southern Union men and play into hands of disunionists
+who frankly desired to exploit this "insult" to excite secession
+sentiment. In a like case ten years later, "the Republican party took
+precisely the same ground held by Mr. Webster in 1850 and acted from the
+motives that inspired the 7th of March speech". [73]
+
+Webster's anxiety for a conciliatory settlement of the highly dangerous
+Texas boundary situation (which incidentally narrowed slave territory)
+was as consistent with his national Union policy, as his desires for
+California's admission as a free state and for prohibition of the
+slave-trade in the District of Columbia were in accord with his
+opposition to slavery. Seeing both abolitionists and secessionists
+threatening the Union, he rebuked both severely for disloyalty to their
+"constitutional obligations", while he pleaded for a more conciliatory
+attitude, for faith and charity rather than "heated imaginations". The
+only logical alternative to the union policy was disunion, advocated
+alike by Garrisonian abolitionists and Southern secessionists. "The
+Union... was thought to be in danger, and devotion to the Union
+rightfully inclined men to yield... where nothing else could have so
+inclined them", was Lincoln's luminous defense of the Compromise in his
+debate with Douglas. [74]
+
+Webster's support of the constitutional provision for "return of persons
+held to service" was not merely that of a lawyer. It was in accord
+with a deep and statesmanlike conviction that "obedience to established
+government... is a Christian duty", the seat of law is "the bosom of
+God, her voice the harmony of the universe". [75] Offensive as this law
+was to the North, the only logical alternatives were to fulfil or
+to annul the Constitution. Webster chose to risk his reputation; the
+extreme abolitionists, to risk the Union. Webster felt, as his opponents
+later recognized, that "the habitual cherishing of the principle",
+"resistance to unjust laws is obedience to God", threatened the
+Constitution. "He... addressed himself, therefore, to the duty of
+calling the American people back from revolutionary theories to...
+submission to authority." [76] As in 1830 against Haynes, so in 1850
+against Calhoun and disunion, Webster stood not as "a Massachusetts man,
+but as an American", for "the preservation of the Union". [77] In both
+speeches he held that he was acting not for Massachusetts, but for the
+"whole country" (1830), "the good of the whole" (1850). His devotion to
+the Union and his intellectual balance led him to reject the impatience,
+bitterness, and disunion sentiments of abolitionists and secessionists,
+and to work on longer lines. "We must wait for the slow progress of
+moral causes", a doctrine already announced in 1840, he reiterated in
+1850,--"the effect of moral causes, though sure is slow." [78]
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The earlier accounts of Webster's losing his friends as a result of his
+speech are at variance with the facts. Cautious Northerners naturally
+hesitated to support him and face both the popular convictions on
+fugitive slaves and the rasping vituperation that exhausted sacred
+and profane history in the epithets current in that "era of warm
+journalistic manners"; Abolitionists and Free Soilers congratulated one
+another that they had "killed Webster". In Congress no Northern man save
+Ashmun of Massachusetts supported him in any speech for months. On the
+other hand, Webster did retain the friendship and confidence of leaders
+and common men North and South, and the tremendous influence of his
+personality and "unanswerable" arguments eventually swung the North
+for the Compromise. From Boston came prompt expressions of "entire
+concurrence" in his speech by 800 representative men, including George
+Ticknor, William H. Prescott, Rufus Choate, Josiah Quincy, President
+Sparks and Professor Felton of Harvard, Professors Woods, Stuart,
+and Emerson of Andover, and other leading professional, literary, and
+business men. Similar addresses were sent to him from about the same
+number of men in New York, from supporters in Newburyport, Medford,
+Kennebeck River, Philadelphia, the Detroit Common Council, Manchester,
+New Hampshire, and "the neighbors" in Salisbury. His old Boston
+Congressional district triumphantly elected Eliot, one of Webster's most
+loyal supporters, by a vote of 2,355 against 473 for Charles Sumner.
+[781] The Massachusetts legislature overwhelmingly defeated a
+proposal to instruct Webster to vote for the Wilmot Proviso. Scores
+of unpublished letters in the New Hampshire Historical Society and the
+Library of Congress reveal hearty approval from both parties and all
+sections. Winthrop of Massachusetts, too cautious to endorse Webster's
+entire position, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts that as a result
+of the speech, "disunion stock is already below par". [79] "You have
+performed the responsible duties of, a national Senator", wrote General
+Dearborn. "I thank you because you did not speak upon the subject as
+a Massachusetts man", said Reverend Thomas Worcester of Boston, an
+overseer of Harvard. "Your speech has saved the Union", was the verdict
+of Barker of Pennsylvania, a man not of Webster's party. [80] "The Union
+threatened... you have come to the rescue, and all disinterested lovers
+of that Union must rally round you", wrote Wainwright of New York.
+In Alabama, Reverend J. W. Allen recognized the "comprehensive and
+self-forgetting spirit of patriotism" in Webster, "which, if followed,
+would save the Union, unite the country and prevent the danger in the
+Nashville Convention". Like approval of Webster's "patriotic stand for
+the preservation of the Union" was sent from Green County and Greensboro
+in Alabama and from Tennessee and Virginia. [81] "The preservation of
+the Union is the only safety-valve. On Webster depends the tranquility
+of the country", says an anonymous writer from Charleston, a native of
+Massachusetts and former pupil of Webster. [82] Poinsett and Francis
+Lieber, South Carolina Unionists, expressed like views. [83] The growing
+influence of the speech is testified to in letters from all sections.
+Linus Child of Lowell finds it modifying his own previous opinions and
+believes that "shortly if not at this moment, it will be approved by a
+large majority of the people of Massachusetts". [84] "Upon sober second
+thought, our people will generally coincide with your views", wrote
+ex-Governor and ex-Mayor Armstrong of Boston. [85] "Every day adds to
+the number of those who agree with you", is the confirmatory testimony
+of Dana, trustee of Andover and former president of Dartmouth. [86]
+"The effect of your speech begins to be felt", wrote ex-Mayor Eliot of
+Boston. [87] Mayor Huntington of Salem at first felt the speech to be
+too Southern; but "subsequent events at North and South have entirely
+satisfied me that you were right... and vast numbers of others here in
+Massachusetts were wrong." "The change going on in me has been going on
+all around me." "You saw farther ahead than the rest or most of us and
+had the courage and patriotism to stand upon the true ground." [88] This
+significant inedited letter is but a specimen of the change of attitude
+manifested in hundreds of letters from "slow and cautious Whigs". [89]
+One of these, Edward Everett, unable to accept Webster's attitude on
+Texas and the fugitive slave bill, could not "entirely concur" in the
+Boston letter of approval. "I think our friend will be able to carry
+the weight of it at home, but as much as ever." "It would, as you justly
+said," he wrote Winthrop, "have ruined any other man." This probably
+gives the position taken at first by a good many moderate anti-slavery
+then. Everett's later attitude is likewise typical of a change in New
+England. He wrote in 1851 that Webster's speech "more than any other
+cause, contributed to avert the catastrophe", and was "a practical
+basis for the adjustment of controversies, which had already gone far to
+dissolve the Union". [90]
+
+Isaac Hill, a bitter New Hampshire political opponent, confesses that
+Webster's "kindly answer" to Calhoun was wiser than his own might have
+been. Hill, an experienced political observer, had feared in the month
+preceding Webster's speech a "disruption of the Union" with "no chance
+of escaping a conflict of blood". He felt that the censures of Webster
+were undeserved, that Webster was not merely right, but had "power he
+can exercise at the North, beyond any other man", and that "all that
+is of value will declare in favor of the great principles of your late
+Union speech". "Its tranquilizing effect upon public opinion
+has been wonderful"; "it has almost the unanimous support of this
+community", wrote the New York philanthropist Minturn. "The speech
+made a powerful impression in this state... Men feel they can stand
+on it with security." [93] In Cincinnati, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New
+York, and Pittsfield (with only one exception) the speech was found
+"wise and patriotic". [94] The sender of a resolution of approval from
+the grand jury of the United States court at Indianapolis says that
+such judgment is almost universal. [95] "It is thought you may save the
+country.. . you may keep us still united", wrote Thornton of Memphis,
+who soberly records the feeling of thoughtful men that the Southern
+purpose of disunion was stronger than appeared in either newspapers or
+political gatherings. [96] "Your speech has disarmed-has, quieted the
+South; [97] has rendered invaluable service to the harmony and union
+of the South and the North". [98] "I am confident of the higher
+approbation, not of a single section of the Union, but of all sections",
+wrote a political opponent in Washington. [99]
+
+The influence of Webster in checking the radical purposes of the
+Nashville Convention has been shown above. [100]
+
+All classes of men from all sections show a substantial and growing
+backing of Webster's 7th of March speech as "the only statesmanlike
+and practicable way to save the Union". "To you, more than to any other
+statesman of modern times, do the people of this country owe their
+national feeling which we trust is to save this Union in this its hour
+of trial", was the judgment of "the neighbors", the plain farmers of
+Webster's old New Hampshire home. [101] Outside of the Abolition and
+Free Soil press, the growing tendency in newspapers, like that of their
+readers, was to support Webster's logical position. [102]
+
+Exaggerated though some of these expressions of approval may have been,
+they balance the exaggerated vituperation of Webster in the anti-slavery
+press; and the extremes of approval and disapproval both concur in
+recognizing the widespread effect of the speech. "No speech ever
+delivered in Congress produced... so beneficial a change of opinion. The
+change of, feeling and temperament wrought in Congress by this speech is
+miraculous." [103]
+
+The contemporary testimony to Webster's checking of disunion is
+substantiated by the conclusions of Petigru of South Carolina, Cobb of
+Georgia in 1852, Allen of Pennsylvania in 1853, and by Stephens's mature
+judgment of "the profound sensation upon the public mind throughout the
+Union made by Webster's 7th of March speech. The friends of the Union
+under the Constitution were strengthened in their hopes and inspired
+with renewed energies." [104] In 1866 Foote wrote, "The speech produced
+beneficial effects everywhere." "His statement of facts was generally
+looked upon as unanswerable; his argumentative conclusions appeared to
+be inevitable; his conciliatory tone.. . softened the sensibilities
+of all patriots." [105] "He seems to have gauged more accurately [than
+most] the grave dangers which threatened the republic and... the fearful
+consequences which must follow its disruption", was Henry Wilson's later
+and wiser judgment. [106] "The general judgment," said Senator Hoar in
+1899, "seems to be coming to the conclusion that Webster differed from
+the friends of freedom of his time not in a weaker moral sense, but only
+in a larger, and profounder prophetic vision." "He saw what no other man
+saw, the certainty of civil war. I was one of those who... judged him
+severely, but I have learned better." "I think of him now... as the
+orator who bound fast with indissoluble strength the bonds of union."
+[107]
+
+Modern writers, North and South-Garrison, Chadwick, T. C. Smith,
+Merriam, for instance [108]--now recognize the menace of disunion in
+1850 and the service of Webster in defending the Union. Rhodes, though
+condemning Webster's support of the fugitive slave bill, recognizes that
+the speech was one of the few that really altered public opinion and won
+necessary Northern support for the Compromise. "We see now that in
+the War of the Rebellion his principles were mightier than those of
+Garrison." "It was not the Liberty or Abolitionist party, but the Union
+party that won." [109]
+
+Postponement of secession for ten years gave the North preponderance
+in population, voting power, production, and transportation; new
+party organization; and convictions which made man-power and economic
+resources effective. The Northern lead of four million people in 1850
+had increased to seven millions by 1860. In 1850, each section had
+thirty votes in the Senate; in 1860, the North had a majority of six,
+due to the admission of California, Oregon, and Minnesota. In the House
+of Representatives, the North had added seven to her majority. The Union
+states and territories built during the decade 15,000 miles of railroad,
+to 7,000 or 8,000 in the eleven seceding states. In shipping, the North
+in 1860 built about 800 vessels to the seceding states' 200. In 1860,
+in the eleven most important industries for war, Chadwick estimates that
+the Union states produced $735,500,000; the seceding states $75,250,000,
+"a manufacturing productivity eleven times as great for the North as for
+the South". [110] In general, during the decade, the census figures
+for 1860 show that since 1850 the North had increased its man-power,
+transportation, and economic production from two to fifty times as fast
+as the South, and that in 1860 the Union states were from two to twelve
+times as powerful as the seceding states.
+
+Possibly Southern secessionists and Northern abolitionists had some
+basis for thinking that the North would let the "erring sisters depart
+in peace" in 1850. Within the next ten years, however, there came a
+decisive change. The North, exasperated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of
+1854, the high-handed acts of Southerners in Kansas in 1856, and the
+Dred Scott dictum of the Supreme Court in 1857, felt that these things
+amounted to a repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the opening up of
+the territory to slavery. In 1860 Northern conviction, backed by an
+effective, thorough party platform on a Union basis, swept the free
+states. In 1850, it was a "Constitutional Union" party that accepted the
+Compromise and arrested secession in the South; and Webster, foreseeing
+a "remodelling of parties", had prophesied that "there must be a Union
+party". [111] Webster's spirit and speeches and his strengthening of
+federal power through Supreme Court cases won by his arguments had
+helped to furnish the conviction which underlay the Union Party of 1860
+and 1964. His consistent opposition to nullification and secession,
+and his appeal to the Union and to the Constitution during twenty years
+preceding the Civil War--from his reply to Hayne to his seventh of March
+speech--had developed a spirit capable of making economic and political
+power effective.
+
+Men inclined to sneer at Webster for his interest in manufacturing,
+farming, and material prosperity, may well remember that in his mind,
+and more slowly in the minds of the North, economic progress went hand
+in hand with the development of union and of liberty secured by law.
+
+Misunderstandings regarding both the political crisis and the personal
+character of the man are already disappearing as fact replaces fiction,
+as "truth gets a hearing", in the fine phrase of Wendell Phillips. There
+is nothing about Daniel Webster to be hidden. Not moral blindness but
+moral insight and sound political principles reveal themselves to the
+reader of Webster's own words in public speech and unguarded private
+letter. One of those great men who disdained to vindicate himself,
+he does not need us but we need him and his vision that Liberty comes
+through Union, and healing through cooperation, not through hate.
+
+Whether we look to the material progress of the North from 1850 to 1860
+or to its development in "imponderables", Webster's policy and his power
+over men's thoughts and deeds were essential factors in the ultimate
+triumph of the Union, which would have been at least dubious had
+secession been attempted in 1850. It was a soldier, not the modern
+orator, who first said that "Webster shotted our guns". A letter to
+Senator Hoar from another Union soldier says that he kept up his heart
+as he paced up and down as sentinel in an exposed place by repeating
+over and over, "Liberty and Union now and forever, one and inseparable".
+[112] Hosmer tells us that he and his boyhood friends of the North in
+1861 "did not argue much the question of the right of secession", but
+that it was the words of Webster's speeches, "as familiar to us as the
+sentences of the Lord's prayer and scarcely less consecrated,... with
+which we sprang to battle". Those boys were not ready in 1850. The
+decisive human factors in the Civil War were the men bred on the
+profound devotion to the Union which Webster shared with others equally
+patriotic, but less profoundly logical, less able to mould public
+opinion. Webster not only saw the vision himself; he had the genius
+to make the plain American citizen see that liberty could come through
+union and not through disunion. Moreover, there was in Webster and the
+Compromise of 1850 a spirit of conciliation, and therefore there was on
+the part of the North a belief that they had given the South a "square
+deal", and a corresponding indignation at the attempts in the next
+decade to expand slavery by violating the Compromises of 1820 and 1850.
+So, by 1860, the decisive border states and Northwest were ready to
+stand behind the Union.
+
+When Lincoln, born in a border state, coming to manhood in
+the Northwest, and bred on Webster's doctrine,--"the Union is
+paramount",--accepted for the second time the Republican nomination and
+platform, he summed up the issues of the war, as he had done before,
+in Webster's words. Lincoln, who had grown as masterly in his choice of
+words as he had become profound in his vision of issues, used in 1864
+not the more familiar and rhetorical phrases of the reply to Hayne,
+but the briefer, more incisive form, "Liberty and Union", of Webster's
+"honest, truth-telling, Union speech" on the 7th of March, 1850. [113]
+
+HERBERT DARLING FOSTER.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Cf. Parton with Lodge on intellect, morals, indolence,
+drinking, 7th of March speech, Webster's favorite things in England;
+references, note 63, below.]
+
+[Footnote 2: In the preparation of this article, manuscripts have been
+used from the following collections: the Greenough, Hammond, and
+Clayton (Library of Congress); Winthrop and Appleton (Mass. Hist. Soc.);
+Garrison (Boston Public Library); N.H. Hist. Soc.; Dartmouth College;
+Middletown (Conn.) Hist. Soc.; Mrs. Alfred E. Wyman.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Bennett, Dec. 1, 1848, to Partridge, Norwich University.
+MS. Dartmouth.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, p. 141. Further
+evidence of Webster's thesis that abolitionists had developed Southern
+reaction in Phillips, South in the Building of the Nation, IV, 401-403;
+and unpublished letters approving Webster's speech.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899,
+vol 11.), pp. 1193-1194.]
+
+[Footnote 6: To Crittenden, Dec. 20, 1849, Smith, polit. Hist. Slavery,
+I. 122; Winthrop MSS., Jan. 6, 1850.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Calhoun, Corr., p. 781; cf. 764-766, 778, 780, 783-784.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Cong. Globe, XXI. 451-455, 463; Corr., p. 784. On Calhoun's
+attitude, Ames, Calhoun, pp. 6-7; Stephenson, in Yale Review, 1919,
+p. 216; Newbury in South Atlantic Quarterly, XI. 259; Hamer, Secession
+Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852, pp. 49-54.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899,
+vol. II), pp. 1210-1212; Toombs, Corr., (id., 1911, vol. II), pp. 188,
+217; Coleman, Crittenden, I. 363; Hamer, pp. 55-56, 46-48, 54, 82-83;
+Ames, Calhoun, pp. 21-22, 29; Claiborne, Quitman, H. 36-39.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Hearon, Miss. and the Compromise of 1850, p. 209.]
+
+[Footnote 11: A letter to Webster, Oct. 22, 1851, Greenough MSS., shows
+the strength of Calhoun's secession ideas. Hamer, p. 125, quotes part.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Hamer, p. 142; Hearon, p. 220.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Mar. 6, 1850. Laws (Miss.), pp. 521-526.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Claiborne, Quitman, IL 37; Hearon, p. 161 n.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Hearon, pp. 180-181; Claiborne, Quitman, II. 51-52.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Nov. 10, 1850, Hearon, pp. 178-180; 1851, pp. 209-212.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Dec. 10, Southern Rights Assoc. Hearon, pp. 183-187.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Claiborne, Quitman, II. 52.]
+
+[Footnote 19: July 1, 1849. Corr., p. 170 (Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual
+Report, 1911, vol. II.).]
+
+[Footnote 20: Johnston, Stephens, pp. 238-239, 244; Smith, Political
+History of Slavery, 1. 121.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Laws (Ga.), 1850, pp. 122, 405-410.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Johnston, Stephens, p. 247.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Corr., pp. 184,193-195, 206-208, July 21. Newspapers, see
+Brooks, in Miss. Valley Hist. Review, IX. 289.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, pp. 163-166.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Ames, Documents, pp. 271-272; Hearon, p. 190.]
+
+[Footnote 26: 1854, Amer. Hist. Review, VIII. 92-97; 1857, Johnston,
+Stephens, pp. 321-322; infra, pp. 267, 268.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8; Virginia Resolves, Feb. 12;
+Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia, p. 246; N. Y. Tribune, June 14; M. R.
+H. Garnett, Union Past and Future, published between Jan. 24 and Mar. 7.
+Alabama: Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, p. 281; Dubose, Yancey, pp.
+247-249, 481; Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 13;
+Cobb, Corr., pp. 193-195, 207. President Tyler of the College of William
+and Mary kindly furnished evidence of Garnett's authorship; see J. M.
+Garnett, in Southern Literary Messenger, I. 255.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Resolutions, Feb. 12, 1850; Acts, 1850, pp. 223-224; 1851,
+p. 201.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Stephens, Corr., p. 192; Globe, XXII. II. 1208.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 23.]
+
+[Footnote 31: South Carolina, Acts, 1849, p, 240, and the following Laws
+or Acts, all 1850: Georgia, pp. 418, 405-410, 122; Texas, pp. 93-94,
+171; Tennessee, p. 572 (Globe, XXI. I. 417. Cole, Whig Party in the
+South, p. 161); Mississippi, pp. 526-528; Virginia, p. 233; Alabama,
+Weekly Tribune, Feb. 23, Daily, Feb. 25.]
+
+[Footnote 32: White, Miss. Valley Hist. Assoc., III. 283.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Senate Miscellaneous, 1849-1850, no. 24.]
+
+[Footnote 34: Hamer, p. 40; cf. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 162;
+Cong. Globe, Mar. 5.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Coleman, Crittenden, I. 333, 350.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf. Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Smith, History of Slavery, 1. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851,
+letter, in Curtis, Webster, II, 584-585.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Clingman, and Wilmington Resolutions, Globe, XXI. I.
+200-205, 311; National Intelligencer, Feb. 25; Cobb, Corr., pp. 217-218;
+Boyd, "North Carolina on the Eve of Secession," in Amer. Hist. Assoc.,
+Annual Report (1910), pp. 167-177.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Hearndon, Nashville Convention, p. 283.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Johnston, Stephens, p. 247; Corr., pp. 186, 193, 194,
+206-207; Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Ames, Calhoun, p. 26.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Webster, Writings and Speeches, X. 161-162.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Cyclopedia Miss. Hist., art. "Sharkey."]
+
+[Footnote 44: Hearon, pp. 124, 171-174. Davis to Clayton (Clayton MSS.),
+Nov. 22, 1851.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Globe, XXI. I. 418, 124, 712; infra, p. 268.]
+
+[Footnote 46: MSS., Mar. 10. AM. HIST. REV., voL. xxvii.--18.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Anstell, Bethlehem, May 21, Greenough Collection.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8, ibid.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Goode, Hunter Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report
+(1916, vol. II.), p. 111.]
+
+[Footnote 50: Ames, Calhoun, pp. 24-27.]
+
+[Footnote 51: Hearon, pp. 120-123; Anonymous, Letter on Southern Wrongs.
+.. in Reply to Grayson (Charleston, 1850).]
+
+[Footnote 52: Letters, II. 111, 121, 127.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Winthrop MSS., Jan. 16, Feb. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Philadelphia Bulletin, in McMaster, VIII. 15.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Winthrop MSS., Feb. 10, 6.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Writings and Speeches, XVI. 533; XVIII. 355.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Stephens, War between the States, II. 201-205, 232; Cong.
+Globe, XXI. I. 375-384.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Thurlow Weed, Life, II. 177-178, 180-181 (Gen.
+Pleasanton's confirmatory letter). Wilson, Slave Power, II. 249. Both
+corroborated by Hamline letter Rhodes, I. 134. Stephens's letters, N.
+Y. Herald, July 13, Aug, 8, 1876, denying threatening language used by
+Taylor "in my presence," do not nullify evidence of Taylor's attitude.
+Mann, Life, p. 292. Private Washington letter, Feb. 23, reporting
+interview, N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 25.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Weekly Tribune, Mar. 2, reprinted from Daily, Feb. 27. Cf.
+Washington National Intelligencer, Feb. 21, quoting: Richmond Enquirer;
+Wilmington Commercial; Columbia Telegraph.]
+
+[Footnote 60: New York Herald, Feb. 25; Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb.
+26.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Tribune, Feb. 25.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Writings and Speeches, XVI. 534.]
+
+[Footnote 63: Lodge's reproduction of Parton, pp. 16-17, 98, 195,
+325-326, 349, 353, 356, 360. Other errors in Lodge's Webster, pp. 45,
+314, 322, 328, 329-330, 352.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 356, 387; XVI. 542, W; X.
+116; Curtis, Life II. 596; XIII. 434.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Mar. 19, Cong. Globe, XXII. II. 1063.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Aug. 12, ibid., p. 1562.]
+
+[Footnote 67: U. S. Bonds (1867). About 112-113, Dec., Jan., Feb., 1850;
+"inactive" before Webster's speech; "firmer," Mar. 8; advanced to 117,
+119, May; 116-117 after Compromise.]
+
+[Footnote 68: E. P. Wheeler, Sixty Years of American Life, p. 6; cf.
+Webster's Buffalo Speech, Curtis, Life, II. 576; Weed, Autobiography, p.
+596.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Winthrop MSS.]
+
+[Footnote 691: Writings and Speeches, XVI. 534-5.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Webster to Harvey, Apr. 7, MS. Middletown (Conn.) Hist.
+Soc., adds Fletcher's name. Received through the kindness of Professor
+George M. Dutcher.]
+
+[Footnote 71: Writings and Speeches, X. 57; "Notes for the Speech,"
+281-291; Winthrop MSS., Apr. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 72: Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 371-372.]
+
+[Footnote 73: Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, I. 269-271.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Works, II. 202-203.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Writings and Speeches, XVI. 580-581.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Seward, Works, III. 111-116.]
+
+[Footnote 77: Writings and Speeches, X. 57, 97.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Ibid., XIII. 595; X. 65.]
+
+[Footnote 781: Garrison childishly printed Eliot's name upside down, and
+between black lines, Liberator, Sept. 20.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Mar. 10. MS., "Private," to Governor Clifford.]
+
+[Footnote 80: Mar 11, Apr. 13. Webster papers, N.H. Hist. Soc., cited
+hereafter as "N.H.".]
+
+[Footnote 81: Mar. 11, 25, 22, 17, 26, 28, Greenough Collection,
+hereafter as "Greenough."]
+
+[Footnote 82: May 20. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Apr. 19, May 4. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Apr. 1. Greenough.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 357.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Apr. 19. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 87: June 12. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 88: Dec. 13. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Writings and SPeeches, XVI. 582.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Winthrop MSS., Mar. 21 and Apr. 10, 1850, Nov. 1951;
+Curtis, Life, II. 580; Everett's Memoir; Webster's Works (1851), I.
+clvii.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Barnard, Albany, Apr. 19. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Mar. 15, 28. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 95: June 10. Greenough. ]
+
+[Footnote 96: Mar. 28. Greenough.]
+
+[Footnote 97: H. L Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8. Greenough. ]
+
+[Footnote 98: Nelson, Va., May 2. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Mar. 8. Greenough.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Pp. 17-20.]
+
+[Footnote 101: August, 1850; 127 signatures. N.H.]
+
+[Footnote 102: Ogg, Webster, p. 379; Rhodes, I. 157-58.]
+
+[Footnote 103: New York Journal of Commerce, Boston Advertiser, Richmond
+Whig Mar. 12; Baltimore Sun, Mar. 18; Ames, Calhoun, p. 25; Boston
+Watchman and Reflector, in Liberator, Apr. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 104: War between the States, II. 211.]
+
+[Footnote 105: War of the Rebellion (1866), pp. 130-131.]
+
+[Footnote 106: Slave Power, II. 246.]
+
+[Footnote 107: Scribner's Magazine XXVI. 84.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Garrison, Westward Expansion, pp. 327-332; Chadwick, The
+Causes of the Civil War, pp. 49-51; Smith, Parties and Slavery, p. 9;
+Merriam, Life of Bowles, I. 81.]
+
+[Footnote 109: Rhodes, I. 157, 161.]
+
+[Footnote 110: Preliminary Report, Eighth Census, 1860; Chadwick, Causes
+of the Civil War, p. 28.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Oct. 2, 1950. Writings and Speeches, XVI. 568-569.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Scribner, XXVI. 84; American Law Review, XXXV. 804.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Nicolay and Hay, IX. 76.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and
+the Secession Movement, by Herbert Darling Foster
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