spoke, in a letter to a friend, of “Seward's late abolition speech” as likely to cut him off from all intercourse with the administration, as it had “eradicated the respect of almost all men from him.” Webster mentioned it sneeringly as Governor Seward's “great and glorious speech,” and complained to his friends of the slavery discussion obstructing the consideration of the tariff and other important measures, adding that he thought no history showed “a case of such mischief arising from angry debates and disputes, both in the government and the country, on questions of so very little real importance.” This appears amazingly short-sighted by the lights of to-day. But it was by no means surprising that the old statesmen should have recoiled from the startling predictions of Seward and Chase. They had all their lives moved in a circle of ideas in which the alternative of speedy emancipation by a peaceable process, or speedy, violent, and complete emancipation as a result of civil war, had hardly been thought of. That alternative had always appeared to them as a choice between an impossibility on one side and a horror on the other; and when now in their old age they were told that the choice must be made, and that without much delay, it was but natural that they should struggle against the new idea with desperation, determined that the dreaded final crisis should at least not be permitted to come while they were alive, and that they should fall back once more upon the statesmanship of
