Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/462

438 down the doctrine of the legality of State resistance and of secession with blows so crushing, and maintained the supremacy of the Federal authority in its sphere and the indissolubility of the Union with an eloquence so grand and triumphant, that as his words went over the land the National heart bounded with joy, and broke out in enthusiastic acclamations. At that moment Webster stood before the world as the first of living Americans. Nor was this the mere sensation of a day. His “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever!” remained the watchword of American patriotism, and still reverberated thirty years later in the thunders of the civil war. That glorious epoch continues to hold the first place among the monuments of American oratory.

In the contest against the nullification movement in South Carolina, Webster firmly maintained, against Henry Clay's compromise policy, that, wherever the National authority was lawlessly set at defiance, peace should never be purchased by concession to the challengers, and that it was time to “test the strength of the government.” He therefore sturdily supported President Jackson's “force bill,” although the Administration of that doughty warrior was otherwise most uncongenial to him. But when the compromise had actually been adopted, he dropped back into the party line behind Clay's leadership, which he thenceforth never again forsook. There was an element of indolence in his nature, which it needed strong impulses to overcome so as to set the vast machinery of his mind in full motion. Such an impulse was furnished again by Jackson's attack on the United States Bank, and by other somewhat autocratic financial measures. Webster opposed this policy in a series of speeches on currency and banking, which deserve very high rank in the literature of that branch of economics. They were not free from partisan bias in the specific