“As Webster was traveling to and fro past me, the thought occurred to me that, as he was ‘a liberal constructionist,’ he was just the man to rectify all the damage that Gen. Dix was doing. But it was a small matter for so great a man. Besides, I knew that his colleague, Senator John Davis, was taking the side of Gen. Dix. As Webster would pass me I would resolve that the next time he would come I would speak to him. But my courage would forsake me when I reflected that he was a Whig and I was a Democrat. I wanted some excuse to speak to him. He had known my father. He was a son of New Hampshire, and a graduate of the same college with myself. But my heart failed me; and yet it was all the while sighing, ‘Webster, Webster, do but speak to me.’ “At length came his voice, in deep, sepulchral tone, ‘Wentworth, what is Dix making all this ado about?’ “Promptly the answer came: ‘Mr. Webster, since your trip around the lakes from Chicago, in 1837, we have had but few appropriations for old harbors and none for new ones. This place is half way between Chicago and Milwaukee, and we want a harbor of refuge there.’ “‘I see the point, I see the point,’ says Webster, and at once went to his seat upon the Senate floor. “When Gen. Dix had concluded, Mr. Webster observed that he could add nothing to the conclusive argument of the senator from New York in favor of the appropriation. He thought he had satisfied all the senators that there was no harbor at the place, and so the House must have thought when it made the appropriation to construct one there. Upon what did the senator from New York found his doctrine that, when God created the world, or even Lake Michigan, He left nothing for man to do? The curse pronounced upon our first parents for their transgression was in entire conflict with any such doctrine. He did not believe that the Constitution of the United States was such a narrowly contracted instrument that it would not permit the construction of a harbor where the necessities of commerce required it. He then foreshadowed the growth of the West, its abundant products, its gigantic commerce, its numerous people. He started a steamer from Chicago laden to the guards with freight and passengers. He then described a storm in a manner that no man but Webster could describe. His flight of eloquence equaled his best at Bunker Hill or Plymouth Rock. You could hear the dashing waves, the whistling winds, the creaking timbers, and the shrieking passengers, and, as he sent the vessel to the bottom with all on board, he exclaimed: ‘What but a merciful Providence saved me from such a catastrophe when I passed over Lake Michigan in 1837?’ At such a dire disaster could the senator from New York derive any consolation from the reflection that his narrow interpretation of the Constitution had been maintained?