Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/375

Rh his duty and accomplished a great work. His mind had not been troubled like Webster's, who, as if he had never been clearly convinced of having followed his true convictions of right, sought in the result a justification of his conduct. On September 10, when the passage of the compromise bills in the House seemed secured, Webster wrote to a friend: “Since the 7th of March there has never been an hour in which I have not felt a crushing weight of anxiety and responsibility. I have gone to sleep at night and waked in the morning with the same feeling of eating care; and I have sat down to no breakfast or dinner to which I have brought an unconcerned or easy mind. It is over. My part is acted, and I am satisfied. It is a day of rejoicing here such as I never witnessed. The face of everything is changed. You would suppose nobody had ever thought of disunion. All say they always meant to stand by the Union to the last.” And two days afterwards: “Truly, it was not till Mr. Eliot's election [the election to Congress of a compromise Whig in Boston] that there was any confidence here that I was not a dead man.”

Not a single moment during the whole struggle did Clay ever fear that he might be a “dead man.” No doubt as to whether he was right had ever disturbed his sleep or clouded his waking. He had remained true to his old convictions as to the methods by which the Union could be preserved. During the progress of the debate he had repeat-