In pursuance of this object, during the winter of 1850 and
the summer of the following year, he wrote several public letters on the
compromise measures, and he addressed great meetings on various occasions,
in New England, New York, and as far south as Virginia. We are at once
struck by a marked change in the character and tone of these speeches,
which produced a great effect in establishing the compromise policy. It had
never been Mr. Webster's habit to misrepresent or abuse his opponents. Now
he confounded the extreme separatism of the abolitionists and the
constitutional opposition of the Free-Soil party, and involved all
opponents of slavery in a common condemnation. It was wilful
misrepresentation to talk of the Free-Soilers as if they were identical
with the abolitionists, and no one knew better than Mr. Webster the
distinction between the two, one being ready to secede to get rid of
slavery, the other offering only a constitutional resistance to its
extension. His tone toward his opponents was correspondingly bitter. When
he first arrived in Boston, after his speech, and spoke to the great crowd
in front of the Revere House, he said, "I shall support no agitations
having their foundations in unreal, ghostly abstractions.
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