But if I am
asked whether I will advise the convention at Philadelphia
to nominate, or if nominated I will recommend the people to
support for the office of President of the United States,
a swearing, fighting, frontier colonel, I only say that I
shall not do it."
Many people think that if Mr. Webster would have supported
General Taylor's policy of dealing with the questions relating
to slavery it would have prevailed, and that the country would
have been pacified and the Civil War avoided. I do not think
so. The forces on both sides who were bringing on that conflict
were too powerful to be subdued by the influence of any individual
statesman. The irrepressible conflict had to be fought out.
But Mr. Webster's attitude not only estranged him from the
supporters of General Taylor in his own party, but, of course,
made an irreparable breach between him and the anti-slavery
men who had founded the Free Soil Party. He was the chief
target for all anti-slavery arrows from March 7, 1850, to his
death.
When I was in the Harvard Law School, Mr. Webster was counsel
in a very interesting divorce case where Choate was upon the
other side.
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