d
some influence upon the speech of the 7th of March. But it is unjust to say
that it did more. It certainly was far removed from being a controlling
motive. His friends, on the other hand, declare that he was governed solely
by the highest and most disinterested patriotism, by the truest wisdom.
This explanation, like that of his foes, fails by going too far and being
too simple. His motives were mixed. His chief desire was to preserve and
maintain the Union. He wished to stand forth as the great saviour and
pacificator. On the one side was the South, compact, aggressive, bound
together by slavery, the greatest political force in the country. On the
other was a weak Free-Soil party, and a widely diffused and earnest moral
sentiment without organization or tangible political power. Mr. Webster
concluded that the way to save the Union and the Constitution, and to
achieve the success which he desired, was to go with the heaviest
battalions. He therefore espoused the Southern side, for the compromise was
in the Southern interest, and smote the anti-slavery movement with all his
strength. He reasoned correctly that peace could come only by administering
a severe check to one of the two contending parties. He erred in attempting
to arrest the one which all modern history showed was irresistible. It is
no doubt true, as appears by his cabinet opinion recently printed, that he
stood ready to meet the first overt act on the part of the South with
force. Mr. Webster would not have hesitated to have struck hard at any body
of men or any State which ventured to assail the Union. But he also
believed that the true way to prevent any overt act on the part of the
South was by concession, and that was precisely the object which the
Southern leaders sought to obtain. We may grant all the patriotism and all
the sincere devotion to the cause of the Constitution which is claimed for
him, but nothing can acquit Mr. Webster of error in the methods which he
chose to adopt for the maintenance of peace and the preservation of the
Union. If the 7th of March speech was right, then all that had gone before
was false and wrong. In that speech he broke from his past, from his own
principles and from the principles of New England, and closed his splendid
public career with a terrible mistake.

CHAPTER X.

THE LAST YEARS.

The story of the remainder of Mr. Webster's public life, outside of and
apart from the slavery question, can be quickly