Hayne was a very bright and able speaker.  He had argued the right of a State to dissent from, or nullify, a law passed by the House of Representatives and Senate, making such law inoperative within its borders.  His claim was that the framers of the Constitution did not expect or intend that a law could be passed that was binding on a State when the people of that State did not wish it so.  Mr. Hayne had the best end of the argument, and the opinion is now general among jurists that his logic was right and just, and that those who thought otherwise were wrong.  New England had practically nullified United States law in Eighteen Hundred Twelve, the Hartford Convention of Eighteen Hundred Fourteen had declared the right; Josiah Quincy had advocated the privilege of any State to nullify an obnoxious law, quite as a matter of course.

The framers of the Constitution had merely said that we “had better” hang together, not that we “must.”  But with the years had come a feeling that the Nation’s life was unsafe if any State should pull away.

Once, on the plains of Colorado, I was with a party when there was danger of an attack from Indians.  Two of the party wished to go back; but the leader drew his revolver and threatened to shoot the first man who tried to seek safety.  “We must hang together or hang separately.”  Logically, each man had the right to secede, and go off on his own account, but expediency made a law and we declared that any man who tried to leave did so at his peril.

To Webster was given the task of putting a new construction on the Constitution, and to make of the Constitution a Law instead of a mere compact.  Webster’s speech was not an argument; it was a plea.  And so mightily did he point out the dangers of separation; review the splendid past; and prophesy the greatness of the future—­a future that could only be ours through absolute union and loyalty to the good of the whole—­that he won his cause.

After that speech, if Calhoun had allowed South Carolina to nullify a United States law, President Jackson would have made good his threat and hanged both him and Hayne on one tree, and the people would have approved the act.  But Webster did not get the case quashed:  he got only a postponement.  In Eighteen Hundred Sixty, South Carolina moved the case again; she opened the argument in another way this time, and a million lives were required, and millions upon millions in treasure expended to put a construction on the Constitution that the framers did not intend; but which was necessary in order that the Nation might exist.

In the battle of Bull Run, almost the first battle of the war, fell Colonel Fletcher Webster, the only surviving son of Daniel Webster, and with him died the name and race.

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The cunning of Webster’s intellect was not creative.  In his argument there is little ingenuity; but he had the power of taking an old truth and presenting it in a way that moved men to tears.  When aroused, all he knew was within his reach; he had the faculty of getting all his goods in the front window.  And he himself confessed that he often pushed out a masked battery, when behind there was not a single gun.