and business men. Similar addresses were sent to him from about
the same number of men in New York, from supporters in
Newburyport, Medford, Kennebeck River, Philadelphia, the Detroit
Common Council, Manchester, New Hampshire, and "the neighbors" in
Salisbury. His old Boston Congressional district triumphantly
elected Eliot, one of Webster's most loyal supporters, by a vote
of 2,355 against 473 for Charles Sumner.[78a] The Massachusetts
legislature overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to instruct
Webster to vote for the Wilmot Proviso. Scores of unpublished
letters in the New Hampshire Historical Society and the Library
of Congress reveal hearty approval from both parties and all
sections. Winthrop of Massachusetts, too cautious to endorse
Webster's entire position, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts
that as a result of the speech, "disunion stock is already below
par".[79] "You have performed the responsible duties of, a
national Senator", wrote General Dearborn. "I thank you because
you did not speak upon the subject as a Massachusetts man", said
Reverend Thomas Worcester of Boston, an overseer of Harvard.
"Your speech has saved the Union", was the verdict of Barker of
Pennsylvania, a man not of Webster's party.[80] "The Union
threatened . . . you have come to the rescue, and all
disinterested lovers of that Union must rally round you", wrote
Wainwright of New York. In Alabama, Reverend J. W. Allen
recognized the "comprehensive and self-forgetting spirit of
patriotism" in Webster, "which, if followed, would save the
Union, unite the country and prevent the danger in the Nashville
Convention". Like approval of Webster's "patriotic stand for the
preservation of the Union" was sent from Green County and
Greensboro in Alabama and from Tennessee and Virginia.[81] "The
preservation of the Union is the only safety-valve. On Webster