itical system to secure its abolition, and his
belief that the whole matter must be left with Divine Providence. It is
clear from this letter that he had dismissed any thought of assuming an
aggressive attitude toward slavery, but there is nothing to indicate that
he thought the Union could be saved from wreck only by substantial
concessions to the South. Between the date of the letter to Harvey and
March 7, Mr. Curtis says that the aspect of affairs had materially changed,
and that the Union was in serious peril. There is nothing to show that Mr.
Webster thought so, or that he had altered the opinion which he had
expressed on February 14. In fact, Mr. Curtis's view is the exact reverse
of the true state of affairs. If there was any real and immediate danger to
the Union, it existed on February 14, and ceased immediately afterwards, on
February 16, as Dr. Von Holst correctly says, when the House of
Representatives laid on the table the resolution of Mr. Root of Ohio,
prohibiting the extension of slavery to the territories. By that vote, the
victory was won by the slave-power, and the peril of speedy disunion
vanished. Nothing remained but to determine how much the South would get
from their victory, and how hard a bargain they could drive. The admission
of California was no more of a concession than a resolution not to
introduce slavery in Massachusetts would have been. All the rest of the
compromise plan, with the single exception of the prohibition of the
slave-trade in the District of Columbia, was made up of concessions to the
Southern and slave-holding interest. That Henry Clay should have
originated and advocated this scheme was perfectly natural. However wrong
or mistaken, this had been his steady and unbroken policy from the outset,
as the best method of preserving the Union and advancing the cause of
nationality. Mr. Clay was consistent and sincere, and, however much he may
have erred in his general theory, he never swerved from it. But with Mr.
Webster the case was totally different. He had opposed the principle of
compromise from the beginning, and in 1833, when concession was more
reasonable than in 1850, he had offered the most strenuous and unbending
resistance. Now he advocated a compromise which was in reality little less
than a complete surrender on the part of the North. On the general question
of compromise he was, of course, grossly inconsistent, and the history of
the time, as it appears in the cold li