osed, and he was now thoroughly
alarmed. He saw what an effect the annexation would produce upon the
anti-slavery movement, and he dreaded the results. He therefore procured
the introduction of a resolution in Congress against annexation; wrote some
articles in the newspapers against it himself; stirred up his friends in
Washington and New York to do the same, and endeavored to start public
meetings in Massachusetts. His friends in Boston and elsewhere, and the
Whigs generally, were disposed to think his alarm ill-founded. They were
absorbed in the coming presidential election, and were too ready to do Mr.
Webster the injustice of supposing that his views upon the probability of
annexation sprang from jealousy of Mr. Clay. The suspicion was unfounded
and unfair. Mr. Webster was wholly right and perfectly sincere. He did a
good deal in an attempt to rouse the North. The only criticism to be made
is that he did not do more. One public meeting would have been enough, if
he had spoken frankly, declared that he knew, no matter how, that
annexation was contemplated, and had then denounced it as he did at Niblo's
Garden. "One blast upon his bugle-horn were worth a thousand men." Such a
speech would have been listened to throughout the length and breadth of the
land; but perhaps it was too much to expect this of him in view of his
delicate relations with Mr. Clay. At a later period, in the course of the
campaign, he denounced annexation and the increase of slave territory, but
unfortunately it was then too late. The Whigs had preserved silence on the
subject at their convention, and it was difficult to deal with it without
reflecting on their candidate. Mr. Webster vindicated his own position and
his own wisdom, but the mischief could not then be averted. The annexation
of Texas after the rejection of the treaty in 1844 was carried through,
nearly a year later, by a mixture of trickery and audacity in the last
hours of the Tyler administration.

Four days after the consummation of this project Mr. Webster took his seat
in the Senate, and on March 11 wrote to his son that, "while we feel as we
ought about the annexation of Texas, we ought to keep in view the true
grounds of objection to that measure. Those grounds are,--want of
constitutional power,--danger of too great an extent of territory, and
opposition to the increase of slavery and slave representation. It was
properly considered, also, as a measure tending to produce war."