If any
living American could answer Hayne and his fellow partizans, Webster
was the man to do it.
Forty-eight in the total of seventy-three pages of print filled by
this speech are taken up with a defense of New England against the
Southern charges of sectionalism and disloyalty. Few utterances of the
time are more familiar than the sentences bringing this part of the
oration to a close: "Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium of
Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for
yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart....
There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and
there they will remain forever." If this had been all, the speech
would have been only a spirited defense of the good name of a section
and would hardly have gained immortality. It was the Union, however,
that most needed defense; and for that service the orator reserved his
grandest efforts.
From the opening of the discussion Webster's object had been to "force
from Hayne or his supporters a full, frank, clear-cut statement of
what nullification meant; and then, by opposing to this doctrine the
Constitution as he understood it, to show its utter inadequacy and
fallaciousness either as constitutional law or as a practical working
scheme.
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