Calhoun's attempt to have his doctrine set forth on the floor of the Senate Chamber met a crushing blow. When the hour came, he chose, to present his view, Hayne of South Carolina, who defended the doctrine of nullification with great brilliancy and energy. Hayne took the ground that nullification was the old view always held by Virginia, that it was the doctrine of Thomas Jefferson, and had been urged by Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts itself. He was a most gifted orator. After a century of preparation, at length slavery had chosen its strategic position and drawn the battle line. From that moment it was certain that slavery must go, or that the Union must go. A feeling of apprehension spread over the land. Fear fell upon the hearts of the people. The one question of the hour was whether Webster could answer the Southern orator and sweep away the fog with which Hayne had enveloped the discussion, and make the old Constitution stand out as firm as a mountain, with principles as bright as the stars. By universal consent Webster's reply is our finest example of forensic eloquence. The essence of the argument was the right of the majority to control the minority. That one State could nullify and secede whenever the majority outvoted it, practically destroyed the jury system which is embedded in Saxon history, destroyed the right of the majority of the aldermen to control the great city, destroyed the right of the majority of the supreme justices to make their decision. Webster's argument crushed the doctrine of secession, and made the Republic a nation. Thus Calhoun and Webster marked out the line of battle, for when the men in gray and the men in blue met at Gettysburg and Appomattox it was to determine whether Calhoun or Webster was right. Grant's final victory simply stamped with a seal of blood the great charter that Webster's genius had formulated. In retrospect the wonderful thing about Webster's reply is that his notes were confined to a sheet of letter paper. Afterwards Webster said that it had been carefully prepared, for while there is such a thing as extemporaneous delivery, there is "no extemporaneous acquisition." Not until he entered the Senate Chamber and saw the crowds did he feel the slightest trepidation. "A strange sensation came. My brain was free. All that I had ever read or thought or acted, in literature, in history, in law, in politics, seemed to unroll before me in glowing panorama, and then it was easy, if I wanted a thunderbolt, to reach out and take it, as it went smoking by." When Lyman Beecher had read Webster's reply to Hayne, he turned to a friend and exclaimed, "It makes me think of a red-hot cannon-ball going through a bucket of empty egg-shells."