n his senatorial chair; the tall form bowed by age and
weakness, the gaunt, impressive face furrowed by the long strife for a
doomed cause, but the old fire still alight in the dark eyes and in the
resolute spirit. He recognized that the strife of the sections was
radical, and that the proposed compromises and palliatives were weak and
temporary. He declared that the South had been thwarted in its rights
from the ordinance of 1787 until now; that the equilibrium would be
destroyed past hope if California and New Mexico were to become free
States; and that the only effective resource lay in some constitutional
amendment to safeguard the rights of the South. What amendment could
effect this, he did not say. But it transpired later that he had in mind
the election of two Presidents, one from each section,--a fantastic and
impossible scheme. In truth, Calhoun in this last utterance was less a
statesman aiming to guide events than a prophet predicting an inevitable
woe. He was too wise to share the elation with which hot-heads talked of
an independent South, and it was with sad forebodings that he sank to
his grave.

When on the 7th of March Webster rose to speak, the Senate and the
country hung on his words. He too was drawing toward the end, but his
powers were unabated. Hope was strong that in him would be found the
champion of freedom. But the key of his speech was a view of the
situation, not as a contest between freedom and slavery, but as an
opposition of geographical sections, inflamed by extremists on both
sides. The mischief, he declared, was due to Southern disunionists and
Northern Abolitionists. The remedy was a calm, patriotic temper; the
rebuke of fanaticism of both kinds, and the acceptance of reasonable
accommodations and adjustments. He approved substantially the scheme
proposed by Clay. The formal exclusion of slavery from New Mexico was an
unnecessary affront to the South; natural conditions would prevent
slavery there. A fugitive slave law was fairly required by the
Constitution and the South had a right to claim it. He, like Clay,
declared peaceable secession an impossibility, and his speech,
impressive throughout by the power of a lucid and massive intellect,
rose at its close to lofty eloquence in a plea for the maintenance of
the Union and a warning of the catastrophe which secession would
precipitate.

The defect of the speech was its complete failure to recognize the wrong
and mischief of slavery