“While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children.  Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil.  God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise....  When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!  Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as ‘What is all this worth?’ nor those other words of delusion and folly ‘Liberty first and Union afterward’; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every American heart—­’Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!’”

Undaunted by the flood of eloquence that for four hours held the Senate spellbound, Hayne replied in a long speech that touched the zenith of his own masterful powers of argumentation.  He conceded nothing.  Each State, he still maintained, is “an independent sovereignty”; the Union is based upon a compact; and every party to the compact has a right to interpret for itself the terms of the agreement by which all are bound together.  In a short, crisp speech, traversing the main ground which he had already gone over.

Webster exposed the inconsistencies and dangers involved in this argument; and the debate was over.  The Foote resolution, long since forgotten, remained on the Senate calendar four months and was then tabled.  Webster went back to his cases; the politicians turned again to their immediate concerns; the humdrum of congressional business was resumed; and popular interest drifted to other things.

Both sides were well satisfied with the presentation of their views.  Certainly neither was converted to the position of the other.  The debate served, however, to set before the country with greater clearness than ever before the two great systems of constitutional interpretation that were struggling for mastery, and large numbers of men whose ideas had been hazy were now led to adopt thoughtfully either the one body of opinions or the other.  The country was not yet ready to follow the controversy to the end which Webster clearly foresaw—­civil war.  But each side treasured its vitalized and enriched arguments for use in a more strenuous day.