During the later stages of the discussion people of prominence from adjoining States filled the hotels of the city and bombarded the senators with requests for tickets of admission to the senate galleries.  Lines were formed, and when the doors were thrown open in the morning every available inch of space was instantly filled with interested and excited spectators.  So great was the pressure that all rules governing the admission of the public were waived.  On the day of Webster’s greatest effort ladies were admitted to the seats of the members, and the throng overflowed through the lobbies and down the long stairways, quite beyond hearing distance.  In the House of Representatives the Speaker remained at his post, but the attendance was so scant that no business could be transacted.

Hayne’s speech—­begun on the 21st and continued on the 25th of January—­was the fullest and most forceful exposition of the doctrines of strict construction, state rights, and nullification that had ever fallen upon the ear of Congress.  It was no mere piece of abstract argumentation.  Hayne was not the man to shrink from personalities, and he boldly accused the New England Federalists of disloyalty and Webster himself of complicity in “bargain and corruption.”  Thrusting and parrying, he stirred his supporters to wild enthusiasm and moved even the solemn-visaged Vice President to smiles of approval.  The nationalists winced and wondered whether their champion would be able to measure up with so keen an antagonist.  Webster sat staring into space, breaking his reverie only now and then to make a few notes.

The debate reached a climax in Webster’s powerful Second Reply, on the 26th and 27th of January.  Everything was favorable for a magnificent effort:  the hearing was brilliant, the theme was vital, the speaker was in the prime of his matchless powers.  On the desk before the New Englander as he arose were only five small letter-paper pages of notes.  He spoke with such immediate preparation merely as the labors of a single evening made possible.  But it may be doubted whether any forensic effort in our history was ever more thoroughly prepared for, because Webster lived his speech before he spoke it.  The origins of the Federal Union, the theories and applications of the Constitution, the history and bearings of nullification—­these were matters with which years of study, observation, professional activity, and association with men had made him absolutely familiar.  If any living American could answer Hayne and his fellow partizans, Webster was the man to do it.