cure the permanent welfare of posterity and to promote
harmony among the constituent States, could not, without changing its
character, survive such alienation as rendered its parts hostile to the
security, prosperity, and happiness of one another.

It was reasonably argued that, as the Legislatures of fourteen of the
States had enacted what were termed "personal liberty laws," which
forbade the cooeperation of State officials in the rendition of fugitives
from service and labor, it became necessary that the General Government
should provide the requisite machinery for the execution of the law. The
result proved what might have been anticipated--that those communities
which had repudiated their constitutional obligations, which had
nullified a previous law of Congress for the execution of a provision of
the Constitution, and had murdered men who came peacefully to recover
their property, would evade or obstruct, so as to render practically
worthless, _any_ law that could be enacted for that purpose. In the
exceptional cases in which it might be executed, the event would be
attended with such conflict between the State and Federal authorities as
to produce consequent evils greater than those it was intended to
correct.

It was during the progress of these memorable controversies that the
South lost its most trusted leader, and the Senate its greatest and
purest statesman. He was taken from us--

"Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest;"--

when his intellectual power, his administrative talent, his love of
peace, and his devotion to the Constitution, might have averted
collision; or, failing in that, he might have been to the South the
Palinurus to steer the bark in safety over the perilous sea. Truly did
Mr. Webster--his personal friend, although his greatest political
rival--say of him in his obituary address, "There was nothing groveling,
or low, or meanly selfish, that came near the head or the heart of Mr.
Calhoun." His prophetic warnings speak from the grave with the wisdom of
inspiration. Would that they could have been appreciated by his
countrymen while he yet lived!

Note.--While the compromise measures of 1850 were pending, and
the excitement concerning them was at its highest, I one day
overtook Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, and Mr. Berrien, of Georgia, in
the Capitol grounds. They were in earnest conversation. It was
the 7th of March--the day on which Mr. Webster ha