This was very apparent when Mr. Webster came back to Washington for the extra session called in September, 1814.  Although he had made previously but two set speeches, and had taken comparatively little part in every-day debate, he was now acknowledged, after his few months of service, to be one of the foremost men in the House, and the strongest leader in his party.  He differed somewhat at this time from the prevailing sentiment of the Federalists in New England, for the guiding principle of his life, his love of nationality, overrode all other influences.  He discountenanced the measures which led to the Hartford Convention, and he helped to keep New Hampshire out of that movement; but it is an entire mistake to represent him as an independent Federalist at this period.  The days of Mr. Webster’s independent politics came later, when the Federalists had ceased to exist as a party and when no new ties had been formed.  In the winter of 1814 and 1815, although, like many of the moderate Federalists, he disapproved of the separatist movement in New England, on all other party questions he acted consistently with the straitest of the sect.  Sensibly enough, he did not consider the convention at Hartford, although he had nothing to do with it, either treasonable or seditious; and yet, much as he disliked its supposed purposes, he did not hesitate, in a speech on the Enlistment Bill, to use them as a threat to deter the administration from war measures.  This was a favorite Federalist practice, gloomily to point out at this time the gathering clouds of domestic strife, in order to turn the administration back from war, that poor frightened administration of Mr. Madison, which had for months been clutching frantically at every straw which seemed to promise a chance of peace.

But although Mr. Webster went as steadily and even more strongly with his party in this session, he did more and better service than ever before, partly, perhaps, because on the questions which arose, his party was, in the main, entirely right.  The strength of his party feeling is shown by his attitude in regard to the war taxes, upon which he made a quiet but effective speech.  He took the ground that, as a member of the minority, he could not prevent the taxes nor stop hostilities, but he could protest against the war, its conduct, and its authors, by voting against the taxes.  There is a nice question of political ethics here as to how far an opposition ought to go in time of national war and distress, but it is certainly impossible to give a more extreme expression to parliamentary opposition than to refuse the supplies at a most critical moment in a severe conflict.  To this last extreme of party opposition to the administration, Mr. Webster went.  It was as far as he could go and remain loyal to the Union.  But there he stopped absolutely.  With the next step, which went outside the Union, and which his friends at home were considering, he would have nothing to do, and he would not countenance any separatist schemes.  In the national Congress, however, he was prepared to advance as far as the boldest and bitterest in opposition, and he either voted against the war taxes or abstained from voting on them, in company with the strictest partisans of the Pickering type.