g the country was to have confined the discussion to the one
question of the admission of California. Unhappily, Clay, truly
representing a State which halted in its choice between freedom and
slavery, proposed a combination of measures. Further, the representation
of the Free States had steadily increased from the origin of the
Government; the admission of California threatened, at last, to open the
way for a corresponding disproportion in the Senate. The country,
remembering how Webster, on a great occasion, had greatly resisted the
heresy of Nullification, looked to him now to clear away the mists of
artful misrepresentations of the Constitution, and show that neither in
that Constitution nor in the history of the country at the time of its
formation had there been any justification of the demand for such
equality of representation. But this time the great orator failed; the
passionate desire for being President led him to make a speech intended
to conciliate the support of the South. In that he failed miserably at
the moment; a few days later, Calhoun, on his death-bed, avowed himself
the adviser of a secession of the whole body of the slaveholding States.
Still blinded by ambition, Webster, on a tour through New York, as a
candidate, formally proposed the establishment of a party representing
the property of the country, crystallizing round the slaveholders, and
including the commercial and corporate industrial wealth of the North.
The effect on his own advancement was absolutely nothing. In due time,
as a candidate, he fell stone dead; and it is to his credit that he did
so. The South knew that he was a Union man, and would not answer their
purpose. As he heard of the slight given by those whom he had courted,
his large head fell on his breast, his voice faltered, and big tears
trickled down his cheeks. His cheerfulness never returned; he languished
and died; but the evil that lived after him was, that the great party to
which he had belonged was no more able to stem the rising fury of the
South, and broke to pieces.

Thus, by untoward circumstances, the truth that could alone confirm the
Union, and which heretofore had been substantially supported by both the
great traditional parties of the country, no longer had a clear and
commanding exponent in either of them. The result of the next election
showed that the old Whig party had lost all power over the public mind.
The strife went on, and hope centred in the supr