sage was referred to a select committee without a division. The interest
to us in all this is the spirit in which Mr. Webster spoke. He loved the
Union as intensely then as at any period of his life, but he was still far
distant from the frame of mind which induced him to think that his devotion
to the Union would be best expressed and the cause of the Union best served
by mildness toward the South and rebuke to the North. He believed in 1826
that dignified courage and firm language were the surest means of keeping
the peace. He was quite right then, and he would have been always right if
he had adhered to the plain words and determined manner to which he treated
Mr. Forsyth and his friends.

This session was crowded with work of varying importance, but the close of
Mr. Webster's career in the lower House was near at hand. The failing
health of Mr. E.H. Mills made it certain that Massachusetts would soon have
a vacant seat in the Senate, and every one turned to Mr. Webster as the
person above all others entitled to this high office. He himself was by no
means so quick in determining to accept the position. He would not even
think of it until the impossibility of Mr. Mills's return was assured, and
then he had to meet the opposition of the administration and all its
friends, who regarded with alarm the prospect of losing such a tower of
strength in the House. Mr. Webster, indeed, felt that he could render the
best service in the lower branch, and urged the senatorship upon Governor
Lincoln, who was elected, but declined. After this there seemed to be no
escape from a manifest destiny. Despite the opposition of his friends in
Washington, and his own reluctance, he finally accepted the office of
United States senator, which was conferred upon him by the Legislature of
Massachusetts in June, 1827.

In tracing the labors of Mr. Webster during three years spent in the lower
House, no allusion has been made to the purely political side of his career
at this time, nor to his relations with the public men of the day. The
period was important, generally speaking, because it showed the first signs
of the development of new parties, and to Mr. Webster in particular,
because it brought him gradually toward the political and party position
which he was to occupy during the rest of his life. When he took his seat
in Congress, in the autumn of 1823, the intrigues for the presidential
succession were at their height. Mr. Webster was then