At this session the resolution to expunge the vote of censure of 1833 was again brought forward by Mr. Benton.  The Senate had at last come under the sway of the President, and it was clear that the resolution would pass.  This precious scheme belongs to the same category of absurdities as the placing Oliver Cromwell’s skull on Temple Bar, and throwing Robert Blake’s body on a dung-hill by Charles Stuart and his friends.  It was not such a mean and cowardly performance as that of the heroes of the Restoration, but it was far more “childish-foolish.”  The miserable and ludicrous nature of such a proceeding disgusted Mr. Webster beyond measure.  Before the vote was taken he made a brief speech that is a perfect model of dignified and severe protest against a silly outrage upon the Constitution and upon the rights of senators, which he was totally unable to prevent.  The original censure is part of history.  No “black lines” can take it out.  The expunging resolution, which Mr. Curtis justly calls “fantastic and theatrical,” is also part of history, and carries with it the ineffaceable stigma affixed by Mr. Webster’s indignant protest.

Before the close of the session Mr. Webster made up his mind to resign his seat in the Senate.  He had private interests which demanded his attention, and he wished to travel both in the United States and in Europe.  He may well have thought, also, that he could add nothing to his fame by remaining longer in the Senate.  But besides the natural craving for rest, it is quite possible that he believed that a withdrawal from active and official participation in politics was the best preparation for a successful candidacy for the presidency in 1840.  This certainly was in his mind in the following year (1838), when the rumor was abroad that he was again contemplating retirement from the Senate; and it is highly probable that the same motive was at bottom the controlling one in 1837.  But whatever the cause of his wish to resign, the opposition of his friends everywhere, and of the Legislature of Massachusetts, formally and strongly expressed, led him to forego his purpose.  He consented to hold his seat for the present, at least, and in the summer of 1837 made an extended tour through the West, where he was received as before with the greatest admiration and enthusiasm.

The distracted condition of the still inchoate Whig party in 1836, and the extraordinary popularity of Jackson, resulted in the complete victory of Mr. Van Buren.  But the General’s chosen successor and political heir found the great office to which he had been called, and which he so eagerly desired, anything but a bed of roses.  The ruin which Jackson’s wild policy had prepared was close at hand, and three months after the inauguration the storm burst with full fury.  The banks suspended specie payments and universal bankruptcy reigned throughout the country.  Our business interests were in the violent throes of the worst financial panic which had ever been known