t. I
have utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of national blasts and
mildews and pestilence and famine, than hear gentlemen talk about
secession. To break up this great government! To dismember this glorious
country! To astonish Europe with an act of folly, such as Europe for two
centuries has never beheld in any government! No, sir; such talk is
enough to make the bones of Andrew Jackson turn round in his coffin."

Now, what are we to think of these sentiments, drawn from the 7th of
March speech, so disgracefully misrepresented by the politicians and
the fanatics? Do they sound like bidding for Southern votes? Can any
Union sentiments be stronger? Can anything be more decided or more
patriotic? He warns, he entreats, he predicts like a prophet. He proves
that secession is incompatible with national existence; he sees nothing
in it but war. And of all things he dreaded and hated, it was war. He
knew what war meant. He knew that a civil war would be the direst
calamity. He would ward it off. He would be conciliating. He would take
away the excuse of war, by adhering to the Constitution,--the written
Constitution which our fathers framed, and which has been the admiration
of the world, under which we have advanced to prosperity and glory as no
nation ever before advanced.

But a large class regarded the Constitution as unsound, in some respects
a wicked Constitution, since it recognized slavery as an institution. By
"the higher law," they would sweep slavery away, perhaps by moral means,
but by endless agitations, until it was destroyed. Mr. Webster, I
confess, did not like those agitations, since he knew they would end in
war. He had a great insight, such as few people had at that time. But
his prophetic insight was just what a large class of people did not
like, especially in his own State. He uttered disagreeable truths,--as
all prophets do,--and they took up stones to stone him,--to stone him
for the bravest act of his whole life, in which a transcendent wisdom
appeared, and which will be duly honored when the truth shall be seen.

The fact was, at that time Mr. Webster seemed to be a croaker, a
Jeremiah, as Burke at one time seemed to his generation, when he
denounced the recklessness of the French Revolution. Very few people at
the North dreamed of war. It was never supposed that the Southern
leaders would actually become rebels. And they, on the other hand, never
dreamed that the North would rise up solidly