could have separated from the Whigs on a great question of principle, and such a course would have been no stronger evidence of personal disappointment than was afforded by the declaration that the nomination of Taylor was one not fit to be made.  Mr. Webster said that he fully concurred in the main object of the Buffalo Convention, that he was as good a Free-Soiler as any of them, but that the Free-Soil party presented nothing new or valuable, and he did not believe in Mr. Van Buren.  He then said it was not true that General Taylor was nominated by the South, as charged by the Free-Soilers; but he did not confess, what was equally true, that Taylor was nominated through fear of the South, as was shown by his election by Southern votes.  Mr. Webster’s conclusion was, that it was safer to trust a slave-holder, a man without known political opinions, and a party which had not the courage of its convictions, than to run the risk of the election of another Democrat.  Mr. Webster’s place at that moment was at the head of a new party based on the principles which he had himself formulated against the extension of slavery.  Such a change might have destroyed his chances for the presidency, if he had any, but it would have given him one of the greatest places in American history and made him the leader in the new period.  He lost his opportunity.  He did not change his party, but he soon after accepted the other alternative and changed his opinions.

His course once taken, he made the best of it, and delivered a speech in Faneuil Hall, in which it is painful to see the effort to push aside slavery and bring forward the tariff and the sub-treasury.  He scoffed at this absorption in “one idea,” and strove to thrust it away.  It was the cry of “peace, peace,” when there was no peace, and when Daniel Webster knew there could be none until the momentous question had been met and settled.  Like the great composer who heard in the first notes of his symphony “the hand of Fate knocking at the door,” the great New England statesman heard the same warning in the hoarse murmur against slavery, but he shut his ears to the dread sound and passed on.

When Mr. Webster returned to Washington, after the election of General Taylor, the strife had already begun over our Mexican conquests.  The South had got the territory, and the next point was to fasten slavery upon it.  The North was resolved to prevent the further spread of slavery, but was by no means so determined or so clear in its views as its opponent.  President Polk urged in his message that Congress should not legislate on the question of slavery in the territories, but that if they did, the right of slave-holders to carry their slaves with them to the new lands should be recognized, and that the best arrangement was to extend the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific.  For the originator and promoter of the Mexican war this was a very natural solution, and was a fit conclusion to one of the worst