onstitution which should create a
dual presidency in which each section was always to have a veto over the
legislation of Congress. Permanent deadlock was thus proposed as the
remedy for the ills of sectional conflict. Resolute as the old
nationalist was, he could not bring himself in these closing days of his
life to pronounce to his party the word "secession." It was pathetic to
see the disappointed and broken leader of the South as he literally wore
his life away trying to defeat Clay, his lifelong antagonist, or to
conciliate Webster, for whom he had always entertained a hearty respect.

Upon Webster and his conservative Eastern support depended the outcome.
He had never been a democrat, and as he had grown older, he had come to
sympathize more than formerly with the great property interests of the
South, which were not unlike the industrial interests of the East, for
which he had broken many a lance. He, too, had been a rival of Clay
since 1832, and three times a disappointed candidate for the Whig
nomination for the Presidency. But both he and Clay had been brushed
aside in 1848 by Thurlow Weed and the young William H. Seward with
rather scant ceremony. And the abolitionists of New England were as
noisome to him as were the radical secessionists to Henry Clay. Charles
Sumner and his friends were already waging incessant war upon him. He
took his stand on March 7, and he made the day famous. He spoke for the
Union, and the effect of the speech was probably the postponement of the
Civil War. Although he was again the follower of Clay, he was henceforth
"the Godlike Webster" to Northern conservatives, and the large business
interests of his section applauded him more heartily than they had ever
done before. But the price which he paid for this epoch-making speech
was fearful. The Massachusetts abolitionists groaned at the mention of
his name, and the poet Whittier pilloried him in the famous lines:--

"So fallen! So lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forever more!
Revile him not--the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall."

Clay had won. The President, resisting to the last and following the
counsels of Seward, saw the majority of Congress yield slowly to
influences which favored compromise. Calhoun died early in April,