30, the Senate
chamber was overflowing into the rotunda, and people were offering
prices for a few inches of breathing room in the charmed enclosure.
Senator Dixon H. Lewis, from Alabama, who weighed nearly four hundred,
became wedged in behind the Vice President's chair, unable to move, and
became imbedded in the crowd like a broad-bottomed schooner settled at
low tide into the mud. Being unable to see, he drew out his knife and
cut a hole through the stained glass screens that flanked the presiding
officer's chair. That aperture long remained as a memorial of Lewis's
curiosity to witness the greatest of American orators deliver the
greatest of American orations. The place was worthy of the hour and of
the combatants. It was the old Senate chamber, now occupied by the
United States Supreme Court, the same hall which had once resounded to
the eloquence of Rufus King, as it afterwards did to the eloquence of
Rufus Choate, and which had echoed the bursts of applause that once
greeted Henry Clay of Kentucky. On that memorable morning the
Vice-President's chair was occupied by that intellectual giant of the
South, John C. Calhoun. Before him were Van Buren, Forsyth, Hayne,
Clayton, the omniverous Benton, the sturdy John Quincy Adams, and, in
the seething crowd, was the gaunt skeleton form of John Randolph of
Roanoke. Mr. Condit told me that when Webster exclaimed: "The world
knows the history of Massachusetts by heart. There is Lexington, and
there is Bunker Hill and there they will remain forever,"--the group of
Bostonians seated in the gallery before him, broke down, and wept like
little children. Quite as effective as his eulogy of the "Old Bay
State," was his sudden and awful assault upon Senator Levi Woodbury, of
New Hampshire. This representative of Webster's native State had
supplied Colonel Hayne with a quantity of party pamphlets and documents
to be used as ammunition. Webster knew this fact and determined to
punish him. Turning suddenly towards Woodbury, he thundered out in a
tone of indignant scorn, as he shook his fist over his head: "I employ
no scavengers;" and the poor New Hampshire Senator ducked his bald head
as if struck by a bombshell. The closing passage of that memorable
speech could not have been extemporized. No mortal man could have thrown
off that magnificent piece of Miltonic prose at the heat, without some
deep premeditation. It is well known now that Mr. Webster afterwards
pruned, amended and deco