speech was received with enthusiastic approval. But in New
England, the loss of whose good opinion could not be compensated
to Mr. Webster by the applause of a world outside, he never regained
his hold upon the popular affection. New friends came to him, but
they did not supply the place of the old friends, who for a lifetime
had stood by him with unswerving principle and with ever-increasing
pride.

Excitement and passion do not, however, always issue decrees and
pronounce judgments of absolute right. In the zeal of that hour,
Northern anti-slavery opinion failed to appreciate the influence
which wrought so powerfully on the mind of Mr. Webster. He belonged
with those who could remember the first President, who personally
knew much of the hardships and sorrows of the Revolutionary period,
who were born to poverty and reared in privation. To these, the
formation of the Federal Government had come as a gift from Heaven,
and they had heard from the lips of the living Washington in his
farewell words, that "the Union is the edifice of our real
independence, the support of our tranquillity at home, our peace
abroad, our prosperity, our safety, and of the very liberty which
we so highly prize, that for this Union we should cherish a cordial,
habitual, immovable attachment, and should discountenance whatever
may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned."
Mr. Webster had in his own lifetime seen the thirteen colonies grow
into thirty powerful States. He had seen three millions of people,
enfeebled and impoverished by a long struggle, increased eightfold
in number, surrounded by all the comforts, charms, and securities
of life. All this spoke to him of the Union and of its priceless
blessings. He now heard its advantages discussed, its perpetuity
doubted, its existence threatened. A convention of slave-holding
States had been called, to meet at Nashville, for the purpose of
considering the possible separation of the sections. Mr. Webster
felt that a generation had been born who were undervaluing their
inheritance, and who might, by temerity, destroy it. Under motives
inspired by these surroundings, he spoke for the preservation of
the Union. He believed it to be seriously endangered. His
apprehensions were ridiculed by many who, ten years after Mr.
Webster was in his grave, saw for the first time how real and how
terrible were the perils upon which those apprehensions were
founded.

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