Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/470

446 saw a possibility for himself ahead. In 1852, the last hope having vanished, he punished his party for having refused him what he thought his due by openly declaring for the opposition. The reasons he gave for this extreme step were neither tenable nor even plausible. It was a wail of utter despair.

His health had for some time been failing, and the shock which his defeat gave him aggravated his ailment. On the morning of October 24, 1852, he died. Henry Clay's death had preceded his by four months. The month following saw the final discomfiture of the Whig party. The very effort of its chiefs to hold it together and to preserve the Union by concessions to slavery disrupted it so thoroughly that it could never again rally. Its very name soon disappeared. Less than two years after Webster's death the whole policy of compromise broke down in total collapse. Massachusetts herself had risen against it, and in Webster's seat in the Senate sat Charles Sumner, the very embodiment of the uncompromising anti-slavery conscience. The “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery rudely swept aside all other politics and filled the stage. The thunder-clouds of the coming civil war loomed darkly above the horizon.

In the turmoils that followed, all of Webster's work sank into temporary oblivion, except his greatest and best. The echoes of the “Reply to Hayne” awoke again. “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever!” became not merely the watchword of a party, but the battlecry of armed hosts. “I still live,” had been his last words on his death-bed. Indeed, he still lived in his noblest achievement, and thus he will long continue to live.

Over Webster's grave there was much heated dispute as to the place he would occupy in the history of his country. Many of those who had idolized him during