The Rhode Island case grew out of the troubles known at that period as
Dorr's rebellion. It involved a discussion not only of the constitutional
provisions for suppressing insurrections and securing to every State a
republican form of government, but also of the general history and theory
of the American governments, both state and national. There was thus
offered to Mr. Webster that full scope and large field in which he
delighted, and which were always peculiarly favorable to his talents. His
argument was purely constitutional, and although not so closely reasoned,
perhaps, as some of his earlier efforts, is, on the whole, as fine a
specimen as we have of his intellectual power as a constitutional lawyer at
the bar of the highest national tribunal. Mr. Webster did not often
transcend the proper limits of purely legal discussion in the courts, and
yet even when the question was wholly legal, the court-room would be
crowded by ladies as well as gentlemen, to hear him speak. It was so at the
hearing of the Girard suit; and during the strictly legal arguments in the
Charles River Bridge case, the court-room, Judge Story says, was filled
with a brilliant audience, including many ladies, and he adds that
"Webster's closing reply was in his best manner, but with a little too much
_fierte_ here and there.
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