Yet the worst that can fairly be said against that
speech today is that it lacked moral imagination to visualize, as
Mrs. Stowe was soon to visualize, the human results of slavery.
As a plea for the transcendent necessity of maintaining the old
Union it was consistent with Webster's whole development of
political thought.
What were the secrets of that power that held Webster's hearers
literally spellbound, and made the North think of him, after that
alienation of 1850, as a fallen angel? No one can say fully, for
we touch here the mysteries of personality and of the spoken
word. But enough survives from the Webster legend, from his
correspondence and political and legal oratory, to bring us into
the presence of a superman. The dark Titan face, painted by such
masters as Carlyle, Hawthorne, and Emerson; the magical voice,
remembered now but by a few old men; the bodily presence, with
its leonine suggestion of sleepy power only half put forth--these
aided Webster to awe men or allure them into personal idolatry.
Yet outside of New England he was admired rather than loved.
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