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      Webster's Seventh of March Speech, by Herbert Darling Foster
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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
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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

Release Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1663]
Last Updated: January 26, 2013

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEBSTER'S SPEECH ***




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</pre>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h1>
      WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH
    </h1>
    <h2>
      AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      By Herbert Darling Foster
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h3>
      With foreword by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
    </h3>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <h4>
      American Historical Review Vol. XXVII., No. 2 <br /> January, 1922
    </h4>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      Contents
    </h2>
    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH AND THE
            SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850 </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> I. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2H_FOOT"> FOOTNOTES </a>
          </p>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <h2>
      FOREWORD
    </h2>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;so
      bitter was factional suspicion!&mdash;this view gained many adherents. It
      has not lost them all, even now.
    </p>
    <p>
      This false interpretation of Webster turns on two questions&mdash;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,&mdash;that
      destruction or Civil War formed an imminent issue?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;from their point of
      view&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;broadly
      speaking it had not satisfied the Lower South&mdash;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&mdash;and they were the determining factor of the hour&mdash;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850
    </h2>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-1"
      name="linknoteref-1" id="linknoteref-1"><small>1</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cooler and matured judgments of men who knew Webster personally&mdash;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. <a href="#linknote-2" name="linknoteref-2"
      id="linknoteref-2"><small>2</small></a> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      I.
    </h2>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-3"
      name="linknoteref-3" id="linknoteref-3"><small>3</small></a> "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." <a href="#linknote-4"
      name="linknoteref-4" id="linknoteref-4"><small>4</small></a> 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."
      <a href="#linknote-5" name="linknoteref-5" id="linknoteref-5"><small>5</small></a>
      The conclusion of both Blair of Kentucky and Winthrop <a href="#linknote-6"
      name="linknoteref-6" id="linknoteref-6"><small>6</small></a> of
      Massachusetts, that "Calhoun and his instruments are really solicitous to
      break up the Union", was warranted by Calhoun's own statement.
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-7"
      name="linknoteref-7" id="linknoteref-7"><small>7</small></a> 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." <a href="#linknote-8"
      name="linknoteref-8" id="linknoteref-8"><small>8</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-9" name="linknoteref-9"
      id="linknoteref-9"><small>9</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-10" name="linknoteref-10"
      id="linknoteref-10"><small>10</small></a> 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, <a href="#linknote-11" name="linknoteref-11"
      id="linknoteref-11"><small>11</small></a> 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". <a href="#linknote-12"
      name="linknoteref-12" id="linknoteref-12"><small>12</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-13"
      name="linknoteref-13" id="linknoteref-13"><small>13</small></a> These
      actions of Mississippi's legislature one day before Webster's 7th of March
      speech mark approximately the peak of the secession movement.
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-14"
      name="linknoteref-14" id="linknoteref-14"><small>14</small></a> 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. <a href="#linknote-15" name="linknoteref-15"
      id="linknoteref-15"><small>15</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-16" name="linknoteref-16"
      id="linknoteref-16"><small>16</small></a> 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". <a href="#linknote-17" name="linknoteref-17"
      id="linknoteref-17"><small>17</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      "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." <a
      href="#linknote-18" name="linknoteref-18" id="linknoteref-18"><small>18</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-19" name="linknoteref-19"
      id="linknoteref-19"><small>19</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-20" name="linknoteref-20"
      id="linknoteref-20"><small>20</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a href="#linknote-21" name="linknoteref-21"
      id="linknoteref-21"><small>21</small></a> "I see no prospect of a
      continuance of this Union long", wrote Stephens two days later. <a
      href="#linknote-22" name="linknoteref-22" id="linknoteref-22"><small>22</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-23" name="linknoteref-23" id="linknoteref-23"><small>23</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-24" name="linknoteref-24"
      id="linknoteref-24"><small>24</small></a> 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. <a
      href="#linknote-25" name="linknoteref-25" id="linknoteref-25"><small>25</small></a>
      "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. <a href="#linknote-26"
      name="linknoteref-26" id="linknoteref-26"><small>26</small></a> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a
      href="#linknote-27" name="linknoteref-27" id="linknoteref-27"><small>27</small></a>
      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". <a href="#linknote-28" name="linknoteref-28"
      id="linknoteref-28"><small>28</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a
      href="#linknote-29" name="linknoteref-29" id="linknoteref-29"><small>29</small></a>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-30" name="linknoteref-30" id="linknoteref-30"><small>30</small></a>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-31" name="linknoteref-31"
      id="linknoteref-31"><small>31</small></a> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the states unrepresented at the Nashville Convention-Missouri,
      Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana&mdash;there was much
      sympathy with the Southern movement. In Louisiana, the governor's proposal
      to send delegates was blocked by the Whigs. <a href="#linknote-32"
      name="linknoteref-32" id="linknoteref-32"><small>32</small></a>
      "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. <a
      href="#linknote-33" name="linknoteref-33" id="linknoteref-33"><small>33</small></a>
      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. <a href="#linknote-34" name="linknoteref-34"
      id="linknoteref-34"><small>34</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      In Kentucky, Crittenden's repeated messages against "disunion" and
      "entangling engagements" reveal the danger seen by a Southern Union
      governor. <a href="#linknote-35" name="linknoteref-35" id="linknoteref-35"><small>35</small></a>
      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". <a href="#linknote-36"
      name="linknoteref-36" id="linknoteref-36"><small>36</small></a>
      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". <a href="#linknote-37"
      name="linknoteref-37" id="linknoteref-37"><small>37</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      In North Carolina, the majority appear to have been loyal to the Union;
      but the extremists&mdash;typified by Clingman, the public meeting at
      Wilmington, and the newspapers like the Wilmington Courier&mdash;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. <a href="#linknote-38"
      name="linknoteref-38" id="linknoteref-38"><small>38</small></a> 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. <a href="#linknote-39" name="linknoteref-39" id="linknoteref-39"><small>39</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-40" name="linknoteref-40" id="linknoteref-40"><small>40</small></a>
      "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." <a href="#linknote-41"
      name="linknoteref-41" id="linknoteref-41"><small>41</small></a> 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. <a href="#linknote-42"
      name="linknoteref-42" id="linknoteref-42"><small>42</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a
      href="#linknote-43" name="linknoteref-43" id="linknoteref-43"><small>43</small></a>
      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. <a href="#linknote-44"
      name="linknoteref-44" id="linknoteref-44"><small>44</small></a> 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. <a href="#linknote-45" name="linknoteref-45"
      id="linknoteref-45"><small>45</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a
      href="#linknote-46" name="linknoteref-46" id="linknoteref-46"><small>46</small></a>
      "The Nashville Convention has been blown by your giant effort to the four
      winds." <a href="#linknote-47" name="linknoteref-47" id="linknoteref-47"><small>47</small></a>
      "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."
      <a href="#linknote-48" name="linknoteref-48" id="linknoteref-48"><small>48</small></a>
      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]." <a href="#linknote-49"
      name="linknoteref-49" id="linknoteref-49"><small>49</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a
      href="#linknote-50" name="linknoteref-50" id="linknoteref-50"><small>50</small></a>
      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. <a href="#linknote-51"
      name="linknoteref-51" id="linknoteref-51"><small>51</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a
      href="#linknote-52" name="linknoteref-52" id="linknoteref-52"><small>52</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a href="#linknote-53" name="linknoteref-53" id="linknoteref-53"><small>53</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-54"
      name="linknoteref-54" id="linknoteref-54"><small>54</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a href="#linknote-55" name="linknoteref-55" id="linknoteref-55"><small>55</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a href="#linknote-56"
      name="linknoteref-56" id="linknoteref-56"><small>56</small></a> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;agreements practically enacted in the
      Compromise. <a href="#linknote-57" name="linknoteref-57"
      id="linknoteref-57"><small>57</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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".
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-58" name="linknoteref-58"
      id="linknoteref-58"><small>58</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;&mdash;
      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&mdash;&mdash; 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." <a href="#linknote-59"
      name="linknoteref-59" id="linknoteref-59"><small>59</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-60"
      name="linknoteref-60" id="linknoteref-60"><small>60</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      "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. <a href="#linknote-61" name="linknoteref-61" id="linknoteref-61"><small>61</small></a>
      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.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      II.
    </h2>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-62"
      name="linknoteref-62" id="linknoteref-62"><small>62</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-63" name="linknoteref-63"
      id="linknoteref-63"><small>63</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a
      href="#linknote-64" name="linknoteref-64" id="linknoteref-64"><small>64</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-65" name="linknoteref-65" id="linknoteref-65"><small>65</small></a>
      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'". <a
      href="#linknote-66" name="linknoteref-66" id="linknoteref-66"><small>66</small></a>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-67"
      name="linknoteref-67" id="linknoteref-67"><small>67</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a
      href="#linknote-68" name="linknoteref-68" id="linknoteref-68"><small>68</small></a>
      On February 28, Everett recognized that "the radicals at the South have
      made up their minds to separate, the catastrophe seems to be inevitable".
      <a href="#linknote-69" name="linknoteref-69" id="linknoteref-69"><small>69</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      On March 1, Webster recorded his determination "to make an honest,
      truth-telling speech, and a Union speech" <a href="#linknote-691"
      name="linknoteref-691" id="linknoteref-691"><small>691</small></a> 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.
      <a href="#linknote-70" name="linknoteref-70" id="linknoteref-70"><small>70</small></a>
    </p>
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    <h2>
      III.
    </h2>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-71"
      name="linknoteref-71" id="linknoteref-71"><small>71</small></a> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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".
      <a href="#linknote-72" name="linknoteref-72" id="linknoteref-72"><small>72</small></a>
      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". <a
      href="#linknote-73" name="linknoteref-73" id="linknoteref-73"><small>73</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a
      href="#linknote-74" name="linknoteref-74" id="linknoteref-74"><small>74</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a href="#linknote-75"
      name="linknoteref-75" id="linknoteref-75"><small>75</small></a> 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." <a href="#linknote-76" name="linknoteref-76"
      id="linknoteref-76"><small>76</small></a> 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". <a
      href="#linknote-77" name="linknoteref-77" id="linknoteref-77"><small>77</small></a>
      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,&mdash;"the effect of moral causes, though sure is
      slow." <a href="#linknote-78" name="linknoteref-78" id="linknoteref-78"><small>78</small></a>
    </p>
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    <h2>
      IV.
    </h2>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-781" name="linknoteref-781"
      id="linknoteref-781"><small>781</small></a> 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". <a
      href="#linknote-79" name="linknoteref-79" id="linknoteref-79"><small>79</small></a>
      "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. <a
      href="#linknote-80" name="linknoteref-80" id="linknoteref-80"><small>80</small></a>
      "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. <a
      href="#linknote-81" name="linknoteref-81" id="linknoteref-81"><small>81</small></a>
      "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. <a
      href="#linknote-82" name="linknoteref-82" id="linknoteref-82"><small>82</small></a>
      Poinsett and Francis Lieber, South Carolina Unionists, expressed like
      views. <a href="#linknote-83" name="linknoteref-83" id="linknoteref-83"><small>83</small></a>
      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". <a
      href="#linknote-84" name="linknoteref-84" id="linknoteref-84"><small>84</small></a>
      "Upon sober second thought, our people will generally coincide with your
      views", wrote ex-Governor and ex-Mayor Armstrong of Boston. <a
      href="#linknote-85" name="linknoteref-85" id="linknoteref-85"><small>85</small></a>
      "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. <a href="#linknote-86" name="linknoteref-86" id="linknoteref-86"><small>86</small></a>
      "The effect of your speech begins to be felt", wrote ex-Mayor Eliot of
      Boston. <a href="#linknote-87" name="linknoteref-87" id="linknoteref-87"><small>87</small></a>
      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." <a href="#linknote-88"
      name="linknoteref-88" id="linknoteref-88"><small>88</small></a> This
      significant inedited letter is but a specimen of the change of attitude
      manifested in hundreds of letters from "slow and cautious Whigs". <a
      href="#linknote-89" name="linknoteref-89" id="linknoteref-89"><small>89</small></a>
      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". <a href="#linknote-90" name="linknoteref-90" id="linknoteref-90"><small>90</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
      <a href="#linknote-93" name="linknoteref-93" id="linknoteref-93"><small>93</small></a>
      In Cincinnati, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsfield (with
      only one exception) the speech was found "wise and patriotic". <a
      href="#linknote-94" name="linknoteref-94" id="linknoteref-94"><small>94</small></a>
      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.
      <a href="#linknote-95" name="linknoteref-95" id="linknoteref-95"><small>95</small></a>
      "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. <a href="#linknote-96"
      name="linknoteref-96" id="linknoteref-96"><small>96</small></a> "Your
      speech has disarmed-has, quieted the South; <a href="#linknote-97"
      name="linknoteref-97" id="linknoteref-97"><small>97</small></a> has
      rendered invaluable service to the harmony and union of the South and the
      North". <a href="#linknote-98" name="linknoteref-98" id="linknoteref-98"><small>98</small></a>
      "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. <a
      href="#linknote-99" name="linknoteref-99" id="linknoteref-99"><small>99</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      The influence of Webster in checking the radical purposes of the Nashville
      Convention has been shown above. <a href="#linknote-100"
      name="linknoteref-100" id="linknoteref-100"><small>100</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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. <a href="#linknote-101"
      name="linknoteref-101" id="linknoteref-101"><small>101</small></a> 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. <a
      href="#linknote-102" name="linknoteref-102" id="linknoteref-102"><small>102</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
      <a href="#linknote-103" name="linknoteref-103" id="linknoteref-103"><small>103</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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." <a href="#linknote-104" name="linknoteref-104"
      id="linknoteref-104"><small>104</small></a> 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." <a href="#linknote-105"
      name="linknoteref-105" id="linknoteref-105"><small>105</small></a> "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. <a
      href="#linknote-106" name="linknoteref-106" id="linknoteref-106"><small>106</small></a>
      "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." <a href="#linknote-107"
      name="linknoteref-107" id="linknoteref-107"><small>107</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      Modern writers, North and South-Garrison, Chadwick, T. C. Smith, Merriam,
      for instance <a href="#linknote-108" name="linknoteref-108"
      id="linknoteref-108"><small>108</small></a>&mdash;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." <a href="#linknote-109" name="linknoteref-109"
      id="linknoteref-109"><small>109</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a
      href="#linknote-110" name="linknoteref-110" id="linknoteref-110"><small>110</small></a>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a href="#linknote-111"
      name="linknoteref-111" id="linknoteref-111"><small>111</small></a>
      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&mdash;from
      his reply to Hayne to his seventh of March speech&mdash;had developed a
      spirit capable of making economic and political power effective.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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". <a href="#linknote-112"
      name="linknoteref-112" id="linknoteref-112"><small>112</small></a> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Lincoln, born in a border state, coming to manhood in the Northwest,
      and bred on Webster's doctrine,&mdash;"the Union is paramount",&mdash;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. <a href="#linknote-113" name="linknoteref-113"
      id="linknoteref-113"><small>113</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      HERBERT DARLING FOSTER. <a name="link2H_FOOT" id="link2H_FOOT">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      FOOTNOTES:
    </h2>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-1" id="linknote-1">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      1 (<a href="#linknoteref-1">return</a>)<br /> [ Cf. Parton with Lodge on
      intellect, morals, indolence, drinking, 7th of March speech, Webster's
      favorite things in England; references, note 63, below.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-2" id="linknote-2">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      2 (<a href="#linknoteref-2">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-3" id="linknote-3">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      3 (<a href="#linknoteref-3">return</a>)<br /> [ Bennett, Dec. 1, 1848, to
      Partridge, Norwich University. MS. Dartmouth.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-4" id="linknote-4">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      4 (<a href="#linknoteref-4">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-5" id="linknote-5">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      5 (<a href="#linknoteref-5">return</a>)<br /> [ Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist.
      Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol 11.), pp. 1193-1194.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-6" id="linknote-6">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      6 (<a href="#linknoteref-6">return</a>)<br /> [ To Crittenden, Dec. 20,
      1849, Smith, polit. Hist. Slavery, I. 122; Winthrop MSS., Jan. 6, 1850.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-7" id="linknote-7">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      7 (<a href="#linknoteref-7">return</a>)<br /> [ Calhoun, Corr., p. 781; cf.
      764-766, 778, 780, 783-784.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-8" id="linknote-8">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      8 (<a href="#linknoteref-8">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-9" id="linknote-9">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      9 (<a href="#linknoteref-9">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-10" id="linknote-10">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      10 (<a href="#linknoteref-10">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearon, Miss. and the
      Compromise of 1850, p. 209.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-11" id="linknote-11">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      11 (<a href="#linknoteref-11">return</a>)<br /> [ A letter to Webster, Oct.
      22, 1851, Greenough MSS., shows the strength of Calhoun's secession ideas.
      Hamer, p. 125, quotes part.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-12" id="linknote-12">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      12 (<a href="#linknoteref-12">return</a>)<br /> [ Hamer, p. 142; Hearon, p.
      220.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-13" id="linknote-13">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      13 (<a href="#linknoteref-13">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 6, 1850. Laws
      (Miss.), pp. 521-526.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-14" id="linknote-14">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      14 (<a href="#linknoteref-14">return</a>)<br /> [ Claiborne, Quitman, IL
      37; Hearon, p. 161 n.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-15" id="linknote-15">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      15 (<a href="#linknoteref-15">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearon, pp. 180-181;
      Claiborne, Quitman, II. 51-52.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-16" id="linknote-16">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      16 (<a href="#linknoteref-16">return</a>)<br /> [ Nov. 10, 1850, Hearon,
      pp. 178-180; 1851, pp. 209-212.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-17" id="linknote-17">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      17 (<a href="#linknoteref-17">return</a>)<br /> [ Dec. 10, Southern Rights
      Assoc. Hearon, pp. 183-187.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-18" id="linknote-18">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      18 (<a href="#linknoteref-18">return</a>)<br /> [ Claiborne, Quitman, II.
      52.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-19" id="linknote-19">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      19 (<a href="#linknoteref-19">return</a>)<br /> [ July 1, 1849. Corr., p.
      170 (Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report, 1911, vol. II.).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-20" id="linknote-20">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      20 (<a href="#linknoteref-20">return</a>)<br /> [ Johnston, Stephens, pp.
      238-239, 244; Smith, Political History of Slavery, 1. 121.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-21" id="linknote-21">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      21 (<a href="#linknoteref-21">return</a>)<br /> [ Laws (Ga.), 1850, pp.
      122, 405-410.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-22" id="linknote-22">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      22 (<a href="#linknoteref-22">return</a>)<br /> [ Johnston, Stephens, p.
      247.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-23" id="linknote-23">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      23 (<a href="#linknoteref-23">return</a>)<br /> [ Corr., pp. 184,193-195,
      206-208, July 21. Newspapers, see Brooks, in Miss. Valley Hist. Review,
      IX. 289.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-24" id="linknote-24">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      24 (<a href="#linknoteref-24">return</a>)<br /> [ Phillips, Georgia and
      State Rights, pp. 163-166.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-25" id="linknote-25">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      25 (<a href="#linknoteref-25">return</a>)<br /> [ Ames, Documents, pp.
      271-272; Hearon, p. 190.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-26" id="linknote-26">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      26 (<a href="#linknoteref-26">return</a>)<br /> [ 1854, Amer. Hist. Review,
      VIII. 92-97; 1857, Johnston, Stephens, pp. 321-322; infra, pp. 267, 268.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-27" id="linknote-27">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      27 (<a href="#linknoteref-27">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-28" id="linknote-28">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      28 (<a href="#linknoteref-28">return</a>)<br /> [ Resolutions, Feb. 12,
      1850; Acts, 1850, pp. 223-224; 1851, p. 201.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-29" id="linknote-29">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      29 (<a href="#linknoteref-29">return</a>)<br /> [ Stephens, Corr., p. 192;
      Globe, XXII. II. 1208.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-30" id="linknote-30">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      30 (<a href="#linknoteref-30">return</a>)<br /> [ Boston Daily Advertiser,
      Feb. 23.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-31" id="linknote-31">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      31 (<a href="#linknoteref-31">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-32" id="linknote-32">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      32 (<a href="#linknoteref-32">return</a>)<br /> [ White, Miss. Valley Hist.
      Assoc., III. 283.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-33" id="linknote-33">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      33 (<a href="#linknoteref-33">return</a>)<br /> [ Senate Miscellaneous,
      1849-1850, no. 24.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-34" id="linknote-34">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      34 (<a href="#linknoteref-34">return</a>)<br /> [ Hamer, p. 40; cf. Cole,
      Whig Party in the South, p. 162; Cong. Globe, Mar. 5.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-35" id="linknote-35">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      35 (<a href="#linknoteref-35">return</a>)<br /> [ Coleman, Crittenden, I.
      333, 350.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-36" id="linknote-36">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      36 (<a href="#linknoteref-36">return</a>)<br /> [ Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf.
      Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-37" id="linknote-37">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      37 (<a href="#linknoteref-37">return</a>)<br /> [ Smith, History of
      Slavery, 1. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851, letter, in Curtis, Webster, II,
      584-585.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-38" id="linknote-38">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      38 (<a href="#linknoteref-38">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-39" id="linknote-39">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      39 (<a href="#linknoteref-39">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearndon, Nashville
      Convention, p. 283.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-40" id="linknote-40">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      40 (<a href="#linknoteref-40">return</a>)<br /> [ Johnston, Stephens, p.
      247; Corr., pp. 186, 193, 194, 206-207; Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-41" id="linknote-41">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      41 (<a href="#linknoteref-41">return</a>)<br /> [ Ames, Calhoun, p. 26.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-42" id="linknote-42">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      42 (<a href="#linknoteref-42">return</a>)<br /> [ Webster, Writings and
      Speeches, X. 161-162.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-43" id="linknote-43">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      43 (<a href="#linknoteref-43">return</a>)<br /> [ Cyclopedia Miss. Hist.,
      art. "Sharkey."]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-44" id="linknote-44">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      44 (<a href="#linknoteref-44">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearon, pp. 124, 171-174.
      Davis to Clayton (Clayton MSS.), Nov. 22, 1851.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-45" id="linknote-45">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      45 (<a href="#linknoteref-45">return</a>)<br /> [ Globe, XXI. I. 418, 124,
      712; infra, p. 268.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-46" id="linknote-46">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      46 (<a href="#linknoteref-46">return</a>)<br /> [ MSS., Mar. 10. AM. HIST.
      REV., voL. xxvii.&mdash;18.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-47" id="linknote-47">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      47 (<a href="#linknoteref-47">return</a>)<br /> [ Anstell, Bethlehem, May
      21, Greenough Collection.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-48" id="linknote-48">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      48 (<a href="#linknoteref-48">return</a>)<br /> [ Anderson, Tenn., Apr. 8,
      ibid.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-49" id="linknote-49">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      49 (<a href="#linknoteref-49">return</a>)<br /> [ Goode, Hunter Corr.,
      Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1916, vol. II.), p. 111.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-50" id="linknote-50">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      50 (<a href="#linknoteref-50">return</a>)<br /> [ Ames, Calhoun, pp.
      24-27.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-51" id="linknote-51">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      51 (<a href="#linknoteref-51">return</a>)<br /> [ Hearon, pp. 120-123;
      Anonymous, Letter on Southern Wrongs. .. in Reply to Grayson (Charleston,
      1850).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-52" id="linknote-52">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      52 (<a href="#linknoteref-52">return</a>)<br /> [ Letters, II. 111, 121,
      127.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-53" id="linknote-53">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      53 (<a href="#linknoteref-53">return</a>)<br /> [ Winthrop MSS., Jan. 16,
      Feb. 7.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-54" id="linknote-54">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      54 (<a href="#linknoteref-54">return</a>)<br /> [ Philadelphia Bulletin, in
      McMaster, VIII. 15.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-55" id="linknote-55">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      55 (<a href="#linknoteref-55">return</a>)<br /> [ Winthrop MSS., Feb. 10,
      6.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-56" id="linknote-56">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      56 (<a href="#linknoteref-56">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches,
      XVI. 533; XVIII. 355.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-57" id="linknote-57">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      57 (<a href="#linknoteref-57">return</a>)<br /> [ Stephens, War between the
      States, II. 201-205, 232; Cong. Globe, XXI. I. 375-384.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-58" id="linknote-58">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      58 (<a href="#linknoteref-58">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-59" id="linknote-59">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      59 (<a href="#linknoteref-59">return</a>)<br /> [ Weekly Tribune, Mar. 2,
      reprinted from Daily, Feb. 27. Cf. Washington National Intelligencer, Feb.
      21, quoting: Richmond Enquirer; Wilmington Commercial; Columbia
      Telegraph.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-60" id="linknote-60">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      60 (<a href="#linknoteref-60">return</a>)<br /> [ New York Herald, Feb. 25;
      Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 26.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-61" id="linknote-61">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      61 (<a href="#linknoteref-61">return</a>)<br /> [ Tribune, Feb. 25.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-62" id="linknote-62">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      62 (<a href="#linknoteref-62">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches,
      XVI. 534.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-63" id="linknote-63">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      63 (<a href="#linknoteref-63">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-64" id="linknote-64">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      64 (<a href="#linknoteref-64">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches,
      XVIII. 356, 387; XVI. 542, W; X. 116; Curtis, Life II. 596; XIII. 434.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-65" id="linknote-65">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      65 (<a href="#linknoteref-65">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 19, Cong. Globe,
      XXII. II. 1063.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-66" id="linknote-66">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      66 (<a href="#linknoteref-66">return</a>)<br /> [ Aug. 12, ibid., p. 1562.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-67" id="linknote-67">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      67 (<a href="#linknoteref-67">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-68" id="linknote-68">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      68 (<a href="#linknoteref-68">return</a>)<br /> [ E. P. Wheeler, Sixty
      Years of American Life, p. 6; cf. Webster's Buffalo Speech, Curtis, Life,
      II. 576; Weed, Autobiography, p. 596.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-69" id="linknote-69">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      69 (<a href="#linknoteref-69">return</a>)<br /> [ Winthrop MSS.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-691" id="linknote-691">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      691 (<a href="#linknoteref-691">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches,
      XVI. 534-5.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-70" id="linknote-70">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      70 (<a href="#linknoteref-70">return</a>)<br /> [ Webster to Harvey, Apr.
      7, MS. Middletown (Conn.) Hist. Soc., adds Fletcher's name. Received
      through the kindness of Professor George M. Dutcher.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-71" id="linknote-71">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      71 (<a href="#linknoteref-71">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, X.
      57; "Notes for the Speech," 281-291; Winthrop MSS., Apr. 3.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-72" id="linknote-72">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      72 (<a href="#linknoteref-72">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches,
      XVIII. 371-372.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-73" id="linknote-73">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      73 (<a href="#linknoteref-73">return</a>)<br /> [ Blaine, Twenty Years of
      Congress, I. 269-271.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-74" id="linknote-74">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      74 (<a href="#linknoteref-74">return</a>)<br /> [ Works, II. 202-203.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-75" id="linknote-75">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      75 (<a href="#linknoteref-75">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches,
      XVI. 580-581.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-76" id="linknote-76">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      76 (<a href="#linknoteref-76">return</a>)<br /> [ Seward, Works, III.
      111-116.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-77" id="linknote-77">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      77 (<a href="#linknoteref-77">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches, X.
      57, 97.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-78" id="linknote-78">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      78 (<a href="#linknoteref-78">return</a>)<br /> [ Ibid., XIII. 595; X. 65.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-781" id="linknote-781">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      781 (<a href="#linknoteref-781">return</a>)<br /> [ Garrison childishly
      printed Eliot's name upside down, and between black lines, Liberator,
      Sept. 20.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-79" id="linknote-79">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      79 (<a href="#linknoteref-79">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 10. MS., "Private,"
      to Governor Clifford.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-80" id="linknote-80">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      80 (<a href="#linknoteref-80">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar 11, Apr. 13. Webster
      papers, N.H. Hist. Soc., cited hereafter as "N.H.".]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-81" id="linknote-81">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      81 (<a href="#linknoteref-81">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 11, 25, 22, 17, 26,
      28, Greenough Collection, hereafter as "Greenough."]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-82" id="linknote-82">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      82 (<a href="#linknoteref-82">return</a>)<br /> [ May 20. N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-83" id="linknote-83">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      83 (<a href="#linknoteref-83">return</a>)<br /> [ Apr. 19, May 4. N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-84" id="linknote-84">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      84 (<a href="#linknoteref-84">return</a>)<br /> [ Apr. 1. Greenough.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-85" id="linknote-85">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      85 (<a href="#linknoteref-85">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and Speeches,
      XVIII. 357.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-86" id="linknote-86">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      86 (<a href="#linknoteref-86">return</a>)<br /> [ Apr. 19. N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-87" id="linknote-87">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      87 (<a href="#linknoteref-87">return</a>)<br /> [ June 12. N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-88" id="linknote-88">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      88 (<a href="#linknoteref-88">return</a>)<br /> [ Dec. 13. N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-89" id="linknote-89">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      89 (<a href="#linknoteref-89">return</a>)<br /> [ Writings and SPeeches,
      XVI. 582.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-90" id="linknote-90">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      90 (<a href="#linknoteref-90">return</a>)<br /> [ Winthrop MSS., Mar. 21
      and Apr. 10, 1850, Nov. 1951; Curtis, Life, II. 580; Everett's Memoir;
      Webster's Works (1851), I. clvii.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-93" id="linknote-93">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      93 (<a href="#linknoteref-93">return</a>)<br /> [ Barnard, Albany, Apr. 19.
      N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-94" id="linknote-94">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      94 (<a href="#linknoteref-94">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 15, 28. N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-95" id="linknote-95">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      95 (<a href="#linknoteref-95">return</a>)<br /> [ June 10. Greenough. ]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-96" id="linknote-96">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      96 (<a href="#linknoteref-96">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 28. Greenough.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-97" id="linknote-97">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      97 (<a href="#linknoteref-97">return</a>)<br /> [ H. L Anderson, Tenn.,
      Apr. 8. Greenough. ]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-98" id="linknote-98">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      98 (<a href="#linknoteref-98">return</a>)<br /> [ Nelson, Va., May 2. N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-99" id="linknote-99">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      99 (<a href="#linknoteref-99">return</a>)<br /> [ Mar. 8. Greenough.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-100" id="linknote-100">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      100 (<a href="#linknoteref-100">return</a>)<br /> [ Pp. 17-20.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-101" id="linknote-101">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      101 (<a href="#linknoteref-101">return</a>)<br /> [ August, 1850; 127
      signatures. N.H.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-102" id="linknote-102">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      102 (<a href="#linknoteref-102">return</a>)<br /> [ Ogg, Webster, p. 379;
      Rhodes, I. 157-58.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-103" id="linknote-103">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      103 (<a href="#linknoteref-103">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-104" id="linknote-104">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      104 (<a href="#linknoteref-104">return</a>)<br /> [ War between the States,
      II. 211.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-105" id="linknote-105">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      105 (<a href="#linknoteref-105">return</a>)<br /> [ War of the Rebellion
      (1866), pp. 130-131.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-106" id="linknote-106">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      106 (<a href="#linknoteref-106">return</a>)<br /> [ Slave Power, II. 246.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-107" id="linknote-107">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      107 (<a href="#linknoteref-107">return</a>)<br /> [ Scribner's Magazine
      XXVI. 84.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-108" id="linknote-108">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      108 (<a href="#linknoteref-108">return</a>)<br /> [ 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-109" id="linknote-109">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      109 (<a href="#linknoteref-109">return</a>)<br /> [ Rhodes, I. 157, 161.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-110" id="linknote-110">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      110 (<a href="#linknoteref-110">return</a>)<br /> [ Preliminary Report,
      Eighth Census, 1860; Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, p. 28.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-111" id="linknote-111">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      111 (<a href="#linknoteref-111">return</a>)<br /> [ Oct. 2, 1950. Writings
      and Speeches, XVI. 568-569.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-112" id="linknote-112">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      112 (<a href="#linknoteref-112">return</a>)<br /> [ Scribner, XXVI. 84;
      American Law Review, XXXV. 804.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="linknote-113" id="linknote-113">
      <!-- Note --></a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      113 (<a href="#linknoteref-113">return</a>)<br /> [ Nicolay and Hay, IX.
      76.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">





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