statesmanlike and practicable way to save the Union". "To you,
more than to any other statesman of modern times, do the people
of this country owe their national feeling which we trust is to
save this Union in this its hour of trial", was the judgment of
"the neighbors", the plain farmers of Webster's old New Hampshire
home.[101] Outside of the Abolition and Free Soil press, the
growing tendency in newspapers, like that of their readers, was
to support Webster's logical position.[102]

[101] August, 1850; 127 signatures. N.H.

[102] Ogg, Webster, p. 379; Rhodes, I. 157-58.


Exaggerated though some of these expressions of approval may have
been, they balance the exaggerated vituperation of Webster in the
anti-slavery press; and the extremes of approval and disapproval
both concur in recognizing the widespread effect of the speech.
"No speech ever delivered in Congress produced . . . so
beneficial a change of opinion. The change of, feeling and
temperament wrought in Congress by this speech is
miraculous."[103]

[103] New York Journal of Commerce, Boston Advertiser, Richmond
Whig Mar. 12; Baltimore Sun, Mar. 18; Ames, Calhoun, p. 25;
Boston Watchman and Reflector, in Liberator, Apr. 1.


The contemporary testimony to Webster's checking of disunion is
substantiated by the conclusions of Petigru of South Carolina,