ching slaves, and by
his vote would open every sanctuary to the bloodhound. The prestige of
his great name and the power of his great intellect were turned over to
slavery, and the friends of freedom deplored and trembled for the
result.

There was some general knowledge through the country of the immorality
of Southern men in our national capital. Serious charges had been made
by abolitionists against Henry Clay, but Webster was supposed to be a
moral as well as an intellectual giant. Brought up in Puritan New
England, he was accredited with all the New England virtues; and when a
Southern woman said to me, in answer to my strictures on Southern men:

"Oh, you need not say anything! Look at your own Daniel Webster!" I
wondered and began to look at and inquire about him, and soon discovered
that his whole panoply of moral power was a shell--that his life was
full of rottenness. Then I knew why I had come to Washington. I gathered
the principal facts of his life at the Capitol, stated them to Dr.
Snodgrass, a prominent Washington correspondent, whose anti-slavery
paper had been suppressed in Baltimore by a mob, to Joshua R. Giddings
and Gamaliel Bailey. They assured me of the truth of what had been told
me, but advised me to keep quiet, as other people had done. I took the
whole question into careful consideration; wrote a paragraph in a letter
to the _Visiter_, stating the facts briefly, strongly; and went to read
it to my friend, Mrs. George W. Julian.

I found her and her husband together, and read the letter to them. They
sat dumb for a moment, then he exclaimed:

"You must not publish that!"

"Is it true?"

"Oh, yes! It is true! But none the less you must not publish it!"

"Can I prove it?"

"No one will dare deny it. We have all known that for years, but no one
would dare to make it public. No good can come of its publication; it
would ruin you, ruin your influence, ruin your work. You would lose
your _Tribune_ engagement, by which you are now doing so much good. We
all feel the help you are to the good cause. Do not throw away your
influence!"

"Does not the cause of the slave hang on the issue in Congress?"

"I think it does."

"Is not Mr. Webster's influence all against it?"

"Yes, of course!"

"Would not that influence be very much less if the public knew just what
he is?"

"Of course it would, but you cannot afford to tell them. You have no
idea what his friends would say, what they would do