This feeling of anxiety was heightened when he discovered, in the following
winter, while in attendance upon the Supreme Court at Washington, the
intention of the administration to bring about the annexation of Texas, and
spring the scheme suddenly upon the country. This policy, with its
consequence of an enormous extension of slave territory, Mr. Webster had
always vigorously and consistently opposed, and he was now thoroughly
alarmed. He saw what an effect the annexation would produce upon the
anti-slavery movement, and he dreaded the results. He therefore procured
the introduction of a resolution in Congress against annexation; wrote some
articles in the newspapers against it himself; stirred up his friends in
Washington and New York to do the same, and endeavored to start public
meetings in Massachusetts. His friends in Boston and elsewhere, and the
Whigs generally, were disposed to think his alarm ill-founded. They were
absorbed in the coming presidential election, and were too ready to do Mr.
Webster the injustice of supposing that his views upon the probability of
annexation sprang from jealousy of Mr.
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