HIS REPLY TO HAYNE.
Those who deny the right of secession are fond of quoting as their authority extracts from Mr. Webster's reply to Mr. Hayne, made in 1830. It is worthy of note that the Capon Springs and Buffalo speeches were made in 1851; and these last are the product of his riper thinking—his profounder reflections. He had evidently learned much about the Constitution in the twenty-one years that had intervened, and in his maturer years, was indeed speaking as a statesman, and not only as an advocate, as he did in 1830.
But it is all-important to remember that Mr. Webster nowhere in this whole speech refers to the right of secession. His whole argument in this connection, is against the right of nullification, another and very different thing; but one which, as we will presently show, was actually being exercised by fourteen out of the sixteen Free States in 1861.
In 1855, Senator Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio (afterwards, as we know, one of the most notorious South-haters), said in a speech delivered in the United States Senate:
"Who is the judge in the last resort of the violation of the Constitution of the United States by the enactment of a law? Who is the final arbiter, the General Government or the States in their sovereignty? Why, sir, to yield that point is to yield up all the rights of the States to protect their own citizens, and to consolidate this government into a miserable despotism."
And he further said on the 18th of December, 1860:
"I do not so much blame the people of the South, because I think they have been led to believe that we to-day, the dominant party, who are about to take the reins of government, are their mortal foes, and stand ready to trample their institutions under foot."
And notwithstanding the expression of these sentiments, we know, as we say, that this man became one of the most ardent supporters of the "miserable despotism" established by Abraham Lincoln, and became the second officer in that "despotism" on the assassination of Mr. Lincoln.
