ranted in the most express,
explicit, and undoubted terms. It declared that Congress should
have "exclusive jurisdiction over all subjects whatsoever in the
District of Columbia." Mr. Webster said that he had searched and
listened for some argument or some law to controvert this position.
he had read and studied carefully the act of cession of the ten
miles square from Maryland and Virginia, and he could find nothing
there, and nowhere else, to gainsay the plain and express letter
of the Constitution. This inspired the Abolitionists with hope
that Mr. Webster would become the leader of the crusade against
slavery that they had decided to inaugurate. At that time he
unquestionably leaned toward emancipation, not only in the District
of Columbia, but everywhere in the United States. This was noticed
by the Southern leaders, who began to tempt him--with promises of
support for the Presidency--promises which were subsequently broken
again and again that a more subservient and available tool might
be placed in power.

Before allying himself with the South, Mr. Webster endeavored to
identify himself with the West by investing largely in a city laid
out on paper in a township in Rock Island County, Illinois. It
was at the mouth of Rock River, and it was to have borne the name
of Rock Island City. Fletcher Webster went out there and remained
for a time, I think, accompanied by his friend, George Curson.
Caleb Cushing was also interested in the embryo city, but somehow
it was not a success.

Mr. Webster had, however, a very vague idea of the "Great West" of
his day. On one occasion when he was in the Senate a proposition
was before it to establish a mail-route from Independence, Mo., to
the mouth of the Columbia River, some three thousand miles, across
plains and mountains, about the extent of which the public then
knew no more than they did of the interior of Tibet. Mr. Webster,
after denouncing the measure generally, closed with a few remarks
concerning the country at large. "What do we want?" he exclaimed,
"with this vast, worthless area? This region of savages and wild
beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of
cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put
these great deserts, of those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable
and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever
hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles,
rock-bound, che