oppose it by arguments".[72] He therefore boldly faced the truth
that the Wilmot Proviso (as it proved later) was needless, and
would irritate Southern Union men and play into hands of
disunionists who frankly desired to exploit this "insult" to
excite secession sentiment. In a like case ten years later, "the
Republican party took precisely the same ground held by Mr.
Webster in 1850 and acted from the motives that inspired the 7th
of March speech".[73]

[72] Writings and Speeches, XVIII. 371-372.

[73] Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, I. 269-271.


Webster's anxiety for a conciliatory settlement of the highly
dangerous Texas boundary situation (which incidentally narrowed
slave territory) was as consistent with his national Union
policy, as his desires for California's admission as a free state
and for prohibition of the slave-trade in the District of
Columbia were in accord with his opposition to slavery. Seeing
both abolitionists and secessionists threatening the Union, he
rebuked both severely for disloyalty to their "constitutional
obligations", while he pleaded for a more conciliatory attitude,
for faith and charity rather than "heated imaginations". The
only logical alternative to the union policy was disunion,
advocated alike by Garrisonian abolitionists and Southern
secessionists. "The Union . . . was thought to be in danger, and
devotion to the Union rightfully inclined men to yield . . .
where nothing else could have so inclined them", was Lincoln's
luminous defense of the Compromise in his debate with