The thing that Hayne had in mind to do primarily was to draw the West to the side of the South, in common opposition to the East.  He therefore vigorously attacked the Foote resolution, agreeing with Benton that it was an expression of Eastern jealousy and that its adoption would greatly retard the development of the West.  He laid much stress upon the common interests of the Western and Southern people and openly invited the one to an alliance with the other.  He deprecated the tendencies of the Federal Government to consolidation and declared himself “opposed, in any shape, to all unnecessary extension of the powers or the influence of the Legislature or Executive of the Union over the States, or the people of the States.”  Throughout the speech ran side by side the twin ideas of strict construction and state rights; in every sentence breathed the protest of South Carolina against the protective tariff.

Just as the South Carolinian began speaking, a shadow darkened the doorway of the Senate chamber, and Daniel Webster stepped casually inside.  The Massachusetts member was at the time absorbed in the preparation of certain cases that were coming up before the Supreme Court, and he had given little attention either to Foote’s resolution or to the debate upon it.  What he now heard, however, quickly drove Carver’s Lessee vs. John Jacob Astor quite out of his mind.  Aspersions were being cast upon his beloved New England; the Constitution was under attack; the Union itself was being called in question.  Webster’s decision was instantaneous:  Hayne must be answered—­and answered while his arguments were still hot.

“Seeing the true grounds of the Constitution thus attacked,” the New Englander subsequently explained at a public dinner in New York, “I raised my voice in its favor, I must confess, with no preparation or previous intention.  I can hardly say that I embarked in the contest from a sense of duty.  It was an instantaneous impulse of inclination, not acting against duty, I trust, but hardly waiting for its suggestions.  I felt it to be a contest for the integrity of the Constitution, and I was ready to enter into it, not thinking, or caring, personally, how I came out.”  In a speech characterized by Henry Cabot Lodge as “one of the most effective retorts, one of the strongest pieces of destructive criticism, ever uttered in the Senate,” Webster now defended his section against the charges of selfishness, jealousy, and snobbishness that had been brought against it, and urged that the Senate and the people be made to hear no more utterances, such as those of Hayne, tending “to bring the Union into discussion, as a mere question of present and temporary expediency.”