WEBSTER'S SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH
AND THE SECESSION MOVEMENT, 1850

By Herbert Darling Foster

With foreword by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

American Historical Review Vol. XXVII., No. 2

January, 1922




FOREWORD

It is very curious that much of the history of the United States
in the Forties and Fifties of the last century has vanished from
the general memory. When a skilled historian reopens the study of
Webster's "Seventh of March speech" it is more than likely that
nine out of ten Americans will have to cudgel their wits
endeavoring to make quite sure just where among our political
adventures that famous oration fits in. How many of us could pass
a satisfactory examination on the antecedent train of events--the
introduction in Congress of that Wilmot Proviso designed to make
free soil of all the territory to be acquired in the Mexican War;
the instant and bitter reaction of the South; the various demands
for some sort of partition of the conquered area between the
sections, between slave labor and free labor; the unforeseen
intrusion of the gold seekers of California in 1849, and their