ed army of
South Carolina under General Hayne on the one side, and the officers of
the United States on the other, nettled his opponent even more than his
severe satire, it seemed so ridiculously true.

With his true Southern blood Hayne inquired with some degree of emotion
if the gentleman from Massachusetts intended any _personal_ imputation
by such remarks? To which Mr. Webster replied with perfect good humor,
"Assuredly not, just the reverse!" The variety of incident during the
speech, and the rapid fluctuation of passions, kept the audience in
continual expectation and ceaseless agitation. The speech was a complete
drama of serious comic and pathetic scenes, and though a large portion
of it was argumentative--an exposition of constitutional law--yet grave
as such portion necessarily must be, severely logical and abounding in
no fancy or episode, it engrossed throughout undivided attention. The
swell of his voice and its solemn roll struck upon the ears of the
enraptured hearers in deep and thrilling cadence as waves upon the
shore of the far-resounding sea.

The Miltonic grandeur of his words was the fit expression of his great
thoughts and raised his hearers up to his theme, and his voice exerted
to its utmost power penetrated every recess or corner of the
Senate--penetrated even the ante-rooms and stairways, as in closing he
pronounced in deepest tones of pathos these words of solemn
significance: "When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time
the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and
dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered,
discordant, belligerent, on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched,
it may be, in fraternal blood.

"Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous
ensign of the Republic now known and honored throughout the earth; still
full, high, advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original
lustre, not a stripe erased nor polluted, not a single star obscured,
bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all
this worth?' nor those other words of folly and delusion: 'Liberty first
and Union afterwards,' but everywhere spread all over it characters of
living light blazing on all of its ample folds as they float over the
sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens that
other sentiment dear to every American heart: 'LIBERTY AND UNION NOW AND
FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARAB