The Mexican war, however, cost Mr. Webster far more than the anxiety and
disappointment which it brought to him as a public man. His second son,
Major Edward Webster, died near the City of Mexico, from disease contracted
by exposure on the march. This melancholy news reached Mr. Webster when
important matters which demanded his attention were pending in Congress.
Measures to continue the war were before the Senate even after they had
ratified the peace. These measures Mr. Webster strongly resisted, and he
also opposed, in a speech of great power, the acquisition of new
territories by conquest, as threatening the very existence of the nation,
the principles of the Constitution, and the Constitution itself. The
increase of senators, which was, of course, the object of the South in
annexing Texas and in the proposed additions from Mexico, he regarded as
destroying the balance of the government, and therefore he denounced the
plan of acquisition by conquest in the strongest terms. The course about to
be adopted, he said, will turn the Constitution into a deformity, into a
curse rather than a blessing; it will make a frame of government founded on
the grossest inequality, and will imperil the existence of the Union.
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