though the sentences were really few and commonplace. What must he
have been in his prime! What sentences in the whole history of oratory
have more swayed men than those he uttered! I recall that in 1861 we
young men of the North did not much argue the question of the right
of secession. The Constitution was obscure about it, and one easily
became befogged if he sought to weigh the right and the wrong of it.
But Webster had replied to Hayne. Those were the days when schoolboys
"spoke pieces," and in thousands of schoolhouses the favourite piece
was his matchless peroration. From its opening, "When my eyes shall
be turned to behold for the last time the sun in the heavens," to
the final outburst, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable!" it was all as familiar to us as the sentences of the
Lord's Prayer, and scarcely less consecrated. No logical unravelling
of the tangle, but that burning expression of devotion to the Union,
lay behind the enthusiasm with which we sprang to arms. The ghost of
Webster hovered in the battle-smoke, and it was his call more than any
other that rallied and kept us at the firing-line.

I think my mother told me once that on the canal-boat as we went West
in the thirties, we had Webster for a time as a fellow-passenger, who
good-naturedly patted the heads of the two little boys who then made
up her brood. I wish I could be sure that the hand of Webster had once
rested on my head. His early utterances as to slavery are warm with
humane feeling. I have come to feel that his humanity did not cool,
but he grew into the belief that agitation at the time would make sure
the destruction of the country, in his eyes the supreme calamity. The
injustice, hoary from antiquity, not recognised as injustice until
within a generation or two, might wait a generation or two longer
before we dealt with it. Let the evil be endured a while that the
greater evil might not come. I neither defend nor denounce him. I am