The Project Gutenberg EBook of Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the
Secession Movement, by Herbert Darling Foster

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Title: Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement

Author: Herbert Darling Foster

Commentator: Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

Posting Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1663]
Release Date: March, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEBSTER'S SPEECH ***

Produced by Dianne Bean

WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH

AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850

By Herbert Darling Foster

With foreword by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

American Historical Review Vol. XXVII., No. 2

January, 1922

FOREWORD

It is very curious that much of the history of the United States in the
Forties and Fifties of the last century has vanished from the general
memory. When a skilled historian reopens the study of Webster's "Seventh
of March speech" it is more than likely that nine out of ten Americans
will have to cudgel their wits endeavoring to make quite sure just where
among our political adventures that famous oration fits in. How many
of us could pass a satisfactory examination on the antecedent train of
events--the introduction in Congress of that Wilmot Proviso designed to
make free soil of all the territory to be acquired in the Mexican War;
the instant and bitter reaction of the South; the various demands for
some sort of partition of the conquered area between the sections,
between slave labor and free labor; the unforeseen intrusion of the gold
seekers of California in 1849, and their unauthorized formation of a new
state based on free labor; the flaming up of Southern alarm, due not to
one cause but to many, chiefly to the obvious fact that the free states
were acquiring preponderance in Congress; the southern threats of
secession; the fury of the Abolitionists demanding no concessions to the
South, come what might; and then, just when a rupture seemed inevitable,
when Northern extremists and Southern extremists seemed about to snatch
control of their sections, Webster's bold play to the moderates on both
sides, his scheme of compromise, announced in that fa