sees these States now revolving in harmony around a common centre, and expects them to quit their places, and fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, without causing the wreck of the universe." But he had defended the Fugitive Slave Law!--Therefore Abolitionists burned Webster in effigy. Wendell Phillips called him a second Judas Iscariot. Whittier wrote "Ichabod" across his forehead. Horace Mann described him as a "fallen star--Lucifer descending from heaven!" Every arrow was barbed and poisoned. Webster suffered like a great eagle with a dart through its heart, beating its bloody wings upward through the pathless air. But now that long time has passed, thoughtful men realize that Webster had studied the fundamental question more deeply, knew the facts better, and saw clearer than his detractors. It is true that he erred when he criticized the Abolitionists on the ground that in the last twenty years they had "produced nothing good or valuable,"--that his words were chosen in a way that irritated the North unduly,--and, more important still, that in his remarks on the Fugitive Slave Law he swerved from the broad statesmanship which distinguished the rest of the speech. But twelve years later Abraham Lincoln read Daniel Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and said Webster was right and Boston was wrong. Lincoln put Webster's position into his letter to Greeley: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save the Union by freeing some, and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." And to-day, after sixty years, our foremost writers are agreeing that "from the historical view-point Webster's position was one of the highest statesmanship." But the recognition of Webster unfortunately came too late.