The Rhode Island case grew out of the troubles known at that period as Dorr’s rebellion.  It involved a discussion not only of the constitutional provisions for suppressing insurrections and securing to every State a republican form of government, but also of the general history and theory of the American governments, both state and national.  There was thus offered to Mr. Webster that full scope and large field in which he delighted, and which were always peculiarly favorable to his talents.  His argument was purely constitutional, and although not so closely reasoned, perhaps, as some of his earlier efforts, is, on the whole, as fine a specimen as we have of his intellectual power as a constitutional lawyer at the bar of the highest national tribunal.  Mr. Webster did not often transcend the proper limits of purely legal discussion in the courts, and yet even when the question was wholly legal, the court-room would be crowded by ladies as well as gentlemen, to hear him speak.  It was so at the hearing of the Girard suit; and during the strictly legal arguments in the Charles River Bridge case, the court-room, Judge Story says, was filled with a brilliant audience, including many ladies, and he adds that “Webster’s closing reply was in his best manner, but with a little too much fierte here and there.”  The ability to attract such audiences gives an idea of the impressiveness of his manner and of the beauty of his voice and delivery better than anything else, for these qualities alone could have drawn the general public and held their attention to the cold and dry discussion of laws and constitutions.

There is a little anecdote told by Mr. Curtis in connection with this Rhode Island case, which illustrates very well two striking qualities in Mr. Webster as a lawyer.  The counsel in the court below had been assisted by a clever young lawyer named Bosworth, who had elaborated a point which he thought very important, but which his seniors rejected.  Mr. Bosworth was sent to Washington to instruct Mr. Webster as to the cause, and, after he had gone through the case, Mr. Webster asked if that was all.  Mr. Bosworth modestly replied that there was another view of his own which his seniors had rejected, and then stated it briefly.  When he concluded, Mr. Webster started up and exclaimed, “Mr. Bosworth, by the blood of all the Bosworths who fell on Bosworth field, that is the point of the case.  Let it be included in the brief by all means.”  This is highly characteristic of one of Mr. Webster’s strongest attributes.  He always saw with an unerring glance “the point” of a case or a debate.  A great surgeon will detect the precise spot where the knife should enter when disease hides it from other eyes, and often with apparent carelessness will make the necessary incision at the exact place when a deflection of a hair’s breadth or a tremor of the hand would bring death to the patient.  Mr. Webster had the same intellectual dexterity, the mingled result of