Van Buren's nomination
was rejected. It is no doubt true that the rejection was a political
mistake, and that, as was commonly said at the time, it created sympathy
for Mr. Van Buren and insured his succession to the presidency. Yet no one
would now think as well of Mr. Webster if, to avoid awakening popular
sympathy and party enthusiasm in behalf of Mr. Van Buren, he had silently
voted for that gentleman's confirmation. To do so was to approve the
despicable tone adopted in the instructions to McLane. As a patriotic
American, above all as a man of intense national feelings, Mr. Webster
could not have done otherwise than resist with all the force of his
eloquence the confirmation of a man who had made such an undignified and
unworthy exhibition of partisanship. Politically he may have been wrong,
but morally he was wholly right, and his rebuke stands in our history as a
reproach which Mr. Van Buren's subsequent success can neither mitigate nor
impair.
There was another measure, however, which had a far different effect from
those which tended to build up the opposition to Jackson and his followers.
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