"Law is uncertain and politics are utterly
vain." The dispassionate judgment of the present hour frees him
from the charge of conscious treachery to principle. He was
rather a martyr to his own conception of the obligations imposed
by nationality. When these obligations run counter to human
realities, the theories of statesmen must give way. Emerson could
not refute that logic of Webster's argument for the Fugitive
Slave Law, but he could at least record in his private Journal:
"I WILL NOT OBEY IT, BY GOD!" So said hundreds of thousands of
obscure men in the North, but Webster did not or could not hear
them.
While no other orator of that period was so richly endowed as
Daniel Webster, the struggle for Union and Liberty enlisted on
both sides many eloquent men. John C. Calhoun's acute, ingenious,
masterly political theorizing can still be studied in speeches
that have lost little of their effectiveness through the lapse of
time. The years have dealt roughly with Edward Everett, once
thought to be the pattern of oratorical gifts and graces.
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