Massachusetts, and delivers it over to Texas to be slave
soil; as Mr Webster says, out of the power of Congress to redeem from that scourge.
2. It does not maintain that Congress has no power to exclude slavery in admitting a new State; whereas, if I understand the President in his message, he considers such an act "An invasion of their rights."[1]
Let us pass by Mr Clay, and come to the other aspirant for the Presidency.
At the Philadelphia Convention, Mr Webster, at the most, could only get one half the votes of New England; several of these not given in earnest, but only as a compliment to the great man from the North. Now, finding his presidential wares not likely to be bought by New England, he takes them to a wider market; with what success we shall one day see.
Something has already been said in the newspapers and elsewhere, about Mr Webster's speech. No speech ever delivered in America has excited such deep and righteous indignation. I know there are influential men in Boston, and in all large towns, who must always have somebody to sustain and applaud. They some time since applauded Mr Webster, for reasons very well known, and now continue their applause of him. His late speech pleases them; its worst parts please them most. All that is as was to be expected; men like what they must like. But, in the country, among the sober men of Massachusetts and New England, who prize right above the political expediency of to-day, I think Mr Webster's speech is read with indignation. I believe no one political act in America, since the treachery of Benedict Arnold, has excited so much moral indignation, as the conduct of Daniel Webster.
But I pass by his speech, to speak of other things connected with that famous man. One of the most influential pro-slavery newspapers of Boston, calls the gentlemen who signed the letter to him, the "Retainers" of Mr Webster. The word is well chosen and quite descriptive. This word is used in a common, a feudal, and a legal sense. In the common sense, it means one who has complete possession of the thing retained; in the feudal sense, it means a
- ↑ Executive Documents: House of Representatives, No. 17, p. 3.
