The home changed first, and then the public career. The reply which, as John Quincy Adams said, "utterly demolished the fabric of Hayne's speech and left scarcely a wreck to be seen," went straight home to the people of the North. It gave eloquent expression to the strong but undefined feeling in the popular mind. It found its way into every house and was read everywhere; it took its place in the school books, to be repeated by shrill boy voices, and became part of the literature and of the intellectual life of the country. In those solemn sentences men read the description of what the United States had come to be under the Constitution, and what American nationality meant in 1830. The leaders of the young war party in 1812 were the first to arouse the national sentiment, but no one struck the chord with such a master hand as Mr. Webster, or drew forth such long and deep vibrations. There is no single utterance in our history which has done so much by mere force of words to strengthen the love of nationality and implant it deeply in the popular heart, as the reply to Hayne. Before the delivery of that speech Mr. Webster was a distinguished statesman, but the day after he awoke to a national fame which made all his other triumphs pale. Such fame brought with it, of course, as it always does in this country, talk of the presidency. The reply to Hayne made Mr. Webster a presidential candidate, and from that moment he was never free from the gnawing, haunting ambition to win the grand prize of American public life. There was a new force in his career, and in all the years to come the influence of that force must be reckoned and remembered. Mr. Webster was anxious that the party of opposition to General Jackson, which then passed by the name of National Republicans, should be in some way strengthened, solidified, and placed on a broad platform of distinct principles. He saw with great regret the ruin which was threatened by the anti-masonic schism, and it would seem that he was not indisposed to take advantage of this to stop the nomination of Mr. Clay, who was peculiarly objectionable to the opponents of masonry. He earnestly desired the nomination himself, but even his own friends in the party told him that this was out of the question, and he acquiesced in their decision. Mr. Clay's personal popularity, moreover, among the National Republicans was, in truth, invincible, and he was unanimously nominated by the convention at Baltimore. The action of the anti-masonic element in the country doomed Clay to defeat, which he was likely enough to encounter in any event; but the consolidation of the party so ardently desired by Mr. Webster was brought about by acts of the administration, which completely overcame any intestine divisions among its opponents.