with the facts. Cautious Northerners naturally
hesitated to support him and face both the popular convictions on
fugitive slaves and the rasping vituperation that exhausted sacred
and profane history in the epithets current in that "era of warm
journalistic manners"; Abolitionists and Free Soilers congratulated one
another that they had "killed Webster". In Congress no Northern man save
Ashmun of Massachusetts supported him in any speech for months. On the
other hand, Webster did retain the friendship and confidence of leaders
and common men North and South, and the tremendous influence of his
personality and "unanswerable" arguments eventually swung the North
for the Compromise. From Boston came prompt expressions of "entire
concurrence" in his speech by 800 representative men, including George
Ticknor, William H. Prescott, Rufus Choate, Josiah Quincy, President
Sparks and Professor Felton of Harvard, Professors Woods, Stuart,
and Emerson of Andover, and other leading professional, literary, and
business men. Similar addresses were sent to him from about the same
number of men in New York, from supporters in Newburyport, Medford,
Kennebeck River, Philadelphia, the Detroit Common Council, Manchester,
New Hampshire, and "the neighbors" in Salisbury. His old Boston
Congressional district triumphantly elected Eliot, one of Webster's most
loyal supporters, by a vote of 2,355 against 473 for Charles Sumner.
[781] The Massachusetts legislature overwhelmingly defeated a
proposal to instruct Webster to vote for the Wilmot Proviso. Scores
of unpublished letters in the New Hampshire Historical Society and the
Library of Congress reveal hearty approval from both parties and all
sections. Winthrop of Massachusetts, too cautious to endorse Webster's
entire position, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts that as a result
of the speech, "disunion stock is already below par". [79] "You have
performed the responsible duties of, a national Senator", wrote General
Dearborn. "I thank you because you did not speak upon the subject as
a Massachusetts man", said Reverend Thomas Worcester of Boston, an
overseer of Harvard. "Your speech has saved the Union", was the verdict
of Barker of Pennsylvania, a man not of Webster's party. [80] "The Union
threatened... you have come to the rescue, and all disinterested lovers
of that Union must rally round you", wrote Wainwright of New York.
In Alabama, Reverend J. W. Allen recognized the "comprehensive a