“I know, although the idea has not been stated distinctly, there is to be, or it is supposed possible that there will be, a Southern confederacy. I do not mean, when I allude to this statement, that any one seriously contemplates such a state of things. I do not mean to say that it is true, but I have heard it suggested elsewhere that the idea has been entertained that, after the dissolution of this Union a Southern Confederacy might be formed. I am sorry, sir, that it has ever been thought of, talked of or dreamed of, in the wildest flights of human imagination. But the idea, so far as it exists, must be of a separation, assigning the slave States to one side, and the free States to the other. Sir, I may express myself too strongly, perhaps, but there are impossibilities in the moral as well as in the physical world, and I hold the idea of a separation of these States, those that are free to form one government, and those that are slaveholding to form another, as such an impossibility. We could not separate the States by any such line if we were to draw it. We could not sit down here to-day and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could.” In describing the consequences of secession it must be admitted that Mr. Webster spoke like a true prophet. All the evils that he predicted—the war such as the world had never seen—came to pass, but out of it the Union emerged stronger than ever, with its chief burden and reproach thrown overboard. Much as the war cost, we feel to-day that we are the better off that it was fought. Let us not blame Mr. Webster that he could not penetrate the future, and strove so hard to avert it. Probably his speech postponed it, but nothing could avert it. Can we doubt that if the great statesman were living to-day he would thank God that He had solved the great problem that had baffled the wisdom of the wisest, and brought substantial good from fratricidal strife? Among those who listened with rapt attention to Mr. Webster was John C. Calhoun, his great compeer, who had risen with difficulty from the bed where he lay fatally sick, to hear the senator from Massachusetts. “A tall, gaunt figure, wrapped in a long black cloak, with deep, cavernous black eyes, and a thick mass of snow-white hair brushed back from the large brow,” he seemed like a visitant from the next world. It was his last appearance in the Senate. Before March was over he had gone to his rest! CHAPTER XXXVII. CLOSING SCENES.