The disapprobation and disappointment which were manifested in the North after the 7th of March speech could not be overlooked.  Men thought and said that Mr. Webster had spoken in behalf of the South and of slavery.  Whatever his intentions may have been, this was what the speech seemed to mean and this was its effect, and the North saw it more and more clearly as time went on.  Mr. Webster never indulged in personal attacks, but at the same time he was too haughty a man ever to engage in an exchange of compliments in debate.  He never was in the habit of saying pleasant things to his opponents in the Senate merely as a matter of agreeable courtesy.  In this direction, as in its opposite, he usually maintained a cold silence.  But on the 7th of March he elaborately complimented Calhoun, and went out of his way to flatter Virginia and Mr. Mason personally.  This struck close observers with surprise, but it was the real purpose of the speech which went home to the people of the North.  He had advocated measures which with slight exceptions were altogether what the South wanted, and the South so understood it.  On the 30th of March Mr. Morehead wrote to Mr. Crittenden that Mr. Webster’s appointment as Secretary of State would now be very acceptable to the South.  No more bitter commentary could have been made.  The people were blinded and dazzled at first, but they gradually awoke and perceived the error that had been committed.

Mr. Webster, however, needed nothing from outside to inform him as to his conduct and its results.  At the bottom of his heart and in the depths of his conscience he knew that he had made a dreadful mistake.  He did not flinch.  He went on in his new path without apparent faltering.  His speech on the compromise measures went farther than that of the 7th of March.  But if we study his speeches and letters between 1850 and the day of his death, we can detect changes in them, which show plainly enough that the writer was not at ease, that he was not master of that real conscience of which he boasted.

His friends, after the first shock of surprise, rallied to his support, and he spoke frequently at union meetings, and undertook, by making immense efforts, to convince the country that the compromise measures were right and necessary, and that the doctrines of the 7th of March speech ought to be sustained.  In pursuance of this object, during the winter of 1850 and the summer of the following year, he wrote several public letters on the compromise measures, and he addressed great meetings on various occasions, in New England, New York, and as far south as Virginia.  We are at once struck by a marked change in the character and tone of these speeches, which produced a great effect in establishing the compromise policy.  It had never been Mr. Webster’s habit to misrepresent or abuse his opponents.  Now he confounded the extreme separatism of the abolitionists and the constitutional opposition of the Free-Soil party, and involved all