preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be
broken asunder"; already they were hanging over the precipice of
disunion, to see whether they could "fathom the depth of the abyss
below." The last powerful words of the speech were, therefore, a
glorification of the Union:

"While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects
spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not
to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that
curtain may not rise.... 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 or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto
no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those
other words of delusion and folly 'Liberty first and Union afterward';
but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing
on all 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
inseparable!'"

Undaunted by the flood of eloquence that for four hours held the
Senate spellbound, Hayne replied in a long speech that touched the
zenith of his own masterful powers of argumentation. He conceded
nothing. Each State, he still maintained, is "an independent