all like him--and they were the determining factor of the
hour--resolved to bide their time, to wait until their propaganda
had done its work, until the entire South should agree to go out
together. Their argument, all preserved in print, but ignored by
historians for sixty years thereafter, was perfectly frank. As
one of them put it, in the face of the changed attitude of
Virginia, "to secede now would be to secede from the South."

Here is the aspect of Webster's great stroke that was so long
ignored. He did not satisfy the whole South. He did not make
friends for himself of Southerners generally. What he did do was
to drive a wedge into the South, to divide it temporarily against
itself. He arrayed the Upper South against the Lower and thus
because of the ultimate purposes of men like Cheeves, with their
ambition to weld the South into a genuine unit, he forced them
all to stand still, and thus to give Northern pacifism a chance
to ebb, Northern nationalism a chance to develop. A comprehensive
brief for the defense on this crucial point in the interpretation
of American history, is Professor Foster's contribution.

NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON




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

The moral earnestness and literary skill of Whittier, Lowell,
Garrison, Phillips, and Parker, have fixed in many minds the