a severe personal denunciation of Ingersoll and Dickinson.
Although he did not employ personal invective in his oratory, it was a
weapon which he was capable of using with most terrible effect, and his
blows fell with crushing force upon Ingersoll, who writhed under the
strokes. Through some inferior officers of the State Department Ingersoll
got what he considered proofs, and then introduced resolutions calling for
an account of all payments from the secret service fund; for communications
made by Mr. Webster to Messrs. Adams and Gushing of the Committee on
Foreign Affairs; for all papers relating to McLeod, and for the minutes of
the committee on Foreign Affairs, to show that Mr. Webster had expressed an
opinion adverse to our claim in the Oregon dispute. Mr. Ingersoll closed
his speech by a threat of impeachment as the result and reward of all this
evil-doing, and an angry debate followed, in which Mr. Webster was attacked
and defended with equal violence. President Polk replied to the call of the
House by saying that he could not feel justified, either morally or
legally, in revealing the uses of the secret service fund. Meantime a
similar resolution was defeated in the Senate by a vote of forty-four to
one, Mr. Webster remarking that he was glad that the President had refused
the request of the House; that he should have been sorry to have seen an
important principle violated, and that he was not in the least concerned at
being thus left without an explanation; he needed no defence, he said,
against such attacks.

Mr. Ingersoll, rebuffed by the President, then made a personal explanation,
alleging specifically that Mr. Webster had made an unlawful use of the
secret service money, that he had employed it to corrupt the press, and
that he was a defaulter. Mr. Ashmun of Massachusetts replied with great
bitterness, and the charges were referred to a committee. It appeared, on
investigation, that Mr. Webster had been extremely careless in his
accounts, and had delayed in making them up and in rendering vouchers,
faults to which he was naturally prone; but it also appeared that the money
had been properly spent, that the accounts had ultimately been made up, and
that there was no evidence of improper use. The committee's report was
laid upon the table, the charges came to nothing, and Mr. Ingersoll was
left in a very unpleasant position with regard to the manner in which he
had obtained his information from the State Depar