Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/72

 58 Colonel Fletcher Webster.

career, rather than countenance any ear, they heard again the deep music measure calculated to excite ill-will at of that voice which had so oftea the South, now prompted him to advo- charmed and instructed them." cate military coercion for the preserva- Colonel Webster said : " He whose tion of the Union. Notwithstanding name I bear had the good fortune to President Lincoln had just deprived defend the Union and the Constitution him of the office upon which he de- in the forum. That I cannot do, but pended for the maintenance of his I am ready to defend them in the family, he did not hesitate to tender to field." Like other national men, he the administration his personal support refused to listen to the " sixty-day " in the field. prattle by which others were deceived. In the oration already quoted, he He saw that by no " summer excursion had said : " There are certain ultimate to Moscow " could the Southern Con- rights which must be maintained ; and federacy be suppressed ; that im- when force is brought to overthrow mense forces would be marshalled in them, it must be resisted by force." aid of that Confederacy; and that the Among the rights which must thus be war for the Union, like the war for maintained, in his view, was the right Independence, would be won only of the United States to maintain, for- by suffering, and struggle, and death, ever, the union of these States. The Ten years earlier, it seemed to Rufus policy of coercion, bitterly as he be- Choate as if the hoarded-up resent- wailed its necessity, was not new to ments and revenges of a thousand him. His father had advocated the years were about to unsheath the sword Force Bill almost thirty years before, for a conflict, "in which the blood The time had come, when, in the words should flow, as in the Apocalyptic of Jefferson (words spoken when only vision, to the bridles of the horses ; in the Articles of Confederation held the which a whole age of men should pass States in union) : " Some of the States away ; in which the great bell of time must see the rod ; perhaps some of should sound out another hour ; in them must feel it." Accordingly, on which society itself should be tried by the twentieth of April, 1861, while the fire and steel, whether it were of bombardment of Fort Sumter and the Nature and of Nature's God, or not." attack on the Sixth Regiment were Such a conflict was indeed impend- firing the Northern heart, Fletcher ing, and Fletcher Webster appreciated Webster called that memorable Sun- its extreme gravity, when, from the day-morning meeting in State Street, balcony of the Old State House, on which resulted in the organization of that Sunday morning, he made his the Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts stirring appeal : " Let us show the Infantry. Referring to that occasion, world that the patriotism of '61 is not George S. Hillard said it recalled to less than that of '76 ; that the noble the minds of those present. Colonel impulses of those patriot hearts have Webster's father, who had then been descended to us." but nine years in the grave. "To the On the eighteenth of July, 1861, mind's eye, that majestic form and Edward Everett presented to Colonel grand countenance seemed standing by Webster a splendid regimental flag, the the side of his son ; and in the mind's gift of the ladies of Boston to the

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