unauthorized formation of a new state based on free labor; the
flaming up of Southern alarm, due not to one cause but to many,
chiefly to the obvious fact that the free states were acquiring
preponderance in Congress; the southern threats of secession; the
fury of the Abolitionists demanding no concessions to the South,
come what might; and then, just when a rupture seemed inevitable,
when Northern extremists and Southern extremists seemed about to
snatch control of their sections, Webster's bold play to the
moderates on both sides, his scheme of compromise, announced in
that famous speech on the seventh of March, 1850?

Most people are still aware that Webster was harshly criticized
for making that speech. It is dimly remembered that the
Abolitionists called him "Traitor", refusing to attribute to him
any motive except the gaining of Southern support which might
land him in the Presidency. At the time--so bitter was factional
suspicion!--this view gained many adherents. It has not lost them
all, even now.

This false interpretation of Webster turns on two questions--was
there a real danger of secession in 1850? Was Webster sincere in
deriving his policy from a sense of national peril, not from
self-interest? In the study which follows Professor Foster makes
an adequate case for Webster, answering the latter question. The
former he deals with in a general way establishing two things,
the fact of Southern readiness to secede, the attendant fact that
the South changed its attitude after the Seventh of March. His
limits prevent his going on to weigh and appraise the sincerity
of those fanatics who so furiously maligned Webster, who created
the tradition that he had cynically sold out to the Southerners.