It is only necessary, therefore, to examine very briefly
the grounds of this adverse judgment, and the pleas put in against it by
Mr. Webster and by his most devoted partisans.
From the sketch which has been given of Mr. Webster's course on the slavery
question, we see that in 1819 and 1820 he denounced in the strongest terms
slavery and every form of slave-trade; that while he fully admitted that
Congress had no power to touch slavery in the States, he asserted that it
was their right and their paramount duty absolutely to stop any further
extension of slave territory. In 1820 he was opposed to any compromise on
this question. Ten years later he stood out to the last, unaffected by
defeat, against the principle of compromise which sacrificed the rights and
the dignity of the general government to the resistance and threatened
secession of a State.
After the reply to Hayne in 1830, Mr. Webster became a standing candidate
for the presidency, or for the Whig nomination to that office. From that
time forth, the sharp denunciation of slavery and traffic in slaves
disappears, although there is no indication that he ever altered his
original opinion on these points; but he never ceased, sometimes mildly,
sometimes in the most vigorous and sweeping manner, to attack and oppose
the extension of slavery to new regions, and the increase of slave
territory.
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