Congress, amid excitement which the above dispatches indicate, and which was general, remained for several weeks comparatively inactive. Buchanan sent messages, but his suggestions were distrusted by the Republicans, who stood firm in the conviction that when Lincoln took his seat, and the new Congress came in, they could pass measures calculated to restore the property of and protect the integrity of the Union. None of them believed in the right of secession; all had lost faith in compromises, and all of this party repudiated the theory that Congress had no right to coerce a State. The revival of these questions, revived also the logical thoughts of Webster in his great reply to Hayne, and the way in which he then expanded the constitution was now accepted as the proper doctrine of Republicanism on that question. No partisan sophistry could shake the convictions made by Webster, and so apt were his arguments in their application to every new development that they supplied every logical want in the Northern mind. Republican orators and newspapers quoted and endorsed, until nearly every reading mind was imbued with the same sentiments, until in fact the Northern Democrats, and at all times the Douglas Democrats, were ready to stand by the flag of the Union. George W. Curtis, in _Harper’s Weekly_ (a journal which at the time graphically illustrated the best Union thoughts and sentiments), in an issue as late as January 12th, 1872, well described the power of Webster’s grand ability[11] over a crisis which he did not live to see, Mr. Curtis says:—