citizen, 'riding over the plundered ploughmen and beggared yeomanry,' the union will not be worth preserving. Sir, it is because South Carolina loves the union, and would preserve it forever, that she is opposing now, while there is hope, those usurpations of the federal government which, once established, will, sooner or later, tear this union into fragments.
"The gentleman is for marching under a banner, studded all over with stars, and bearing the inscription, Liberty and Union. I had thought, sir, the gentleman would have borne a standard, displaying in its ample folds a brilliant sun, extending its golden rays from the center to the extremities, in the brightness of whose beams the 'little stars hide their diminished heads.' Ours, sir, is the banner of the constitution; the twenty-four stars are there, in all their undiminished lustre; on it is inscribed, Liberty—the constitution—union. We offer up our fervent prayers to the Father of all Mercies that it may continue to wave, for ages yet to come, over a free, a happy, and a united people."
Hayne has been criticised as having violated a cardinal rule of oratory and having attempted to equal Webster's peroration in his own. (36) But another view may be urged. The ablest generals—such as Lee, Jackson and Napoleon—are often those who, on occasions, transgress fundamental canons of strategy; success as a result being their only justification. Hayne, at once orator, patriot and logician, both felt the power of Webster's closing plea and its glowing imagery as it would appeal to men, and perceived its basic fallacy as applied. He proceeded, boldly and deliberately, to borrow his great antagonist's own figure of speech and turn it against him. In the brief space of the closing four sentences of the peroration just quoted, Hayne reproduces in outline the picture drawn so fully and so masterfully by Webster, dissects it, suggests a more fitting one to accord with his opponent's expressed principles, appropriates the original as properly illustrating his own position, and ends with the "fervent" and pertinent invocation that it may long be suffered to remain the true emblem of a people free and happy as well as united.
