Publisher's Synopsis
The author, Mr. Curtis, in this volume, has undertaken the task of rescuing Mr. Webster's name from the obloquy which for a quarter of a century has been heaped upon it for his alleged desertion of the antislavery cause in 1850. The charge made against him was that, in the support of the "compromise measures" of that year, he sacrificed the interests of liberty, and did so with a base and selfish motive-that of securing the presidency for himself by the aid of Southern votes. The accusation, therefore, divides itself into two parts, and as to the latter half of it Mr. Curtis has comparatively easy work. He shows that there is not a particle of evidence of its truth, except the well-known desire of Mr. Webster for the presidency; but if such evidence as this is to be admitted in the case of public men, then all active support by them of measures about which there is a difference of opinion on the eve of important elections, they being candidates, must be considered evidence of interested motives. In the case of a man of such eminence as Mr. Webster it is at least fair to assume-in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary- that his view of public questions is dictated by a desire for the general good rather than the petty pursuit of personal ends. Mistaken as his ideas on the subject of the extension of slavery may have been, we have little doubt that they were honest ideas. Indeed, they were the views generally taken by the profession of which he was at the time the most distinguished leader; and it would not be difficult, had we space at our command, to justify from a professional point of view the bias of mind which led almost all the eminent lawyers of that time to distrust the Antislavery party; to regard it, equally with that of States rights, as a party of disunion, and to hope-even against hope-that some "modus vivendi" might be found for the Union on terms of toleration for slavery. They saw clearly that the alternative was a bloody war, and possibly a perpetual dissolution of the political bond which was the foundation of the prosperity of the country. They may certainly be excused for not having seen that the war, with all its risks, was inevitable.
When Mr. Curtis undertakes to show that Mr. Webster was in the right, however, and that, if his advice bad been followed, North and South, the Union would have been preserved without a war, he fails-to our mind he comes nowhere near proving his case. He seems to be impressed with the idea that the principal cause of the war was the abolition agitation, and that if the abolitionists could only have been kept quiet there would have been no trouble. But the difficulty was, that the abolition agitation was part of the disease, and could not be arrested so long as the abolitionists believed that slavery was growing in power. Mr. Curtis endeavors to show that the "compromise measures" of 1850 were in reality in the interest of abolition; but this is contrary to the belief of all those most interested in the matter at the time. These measures were regarded as, and actually were, a distinct Southern triumph; they were a concession to the South in the interest of peace. They were, we have no doubt history will adjudge, a profound mistake, and, so far from retarding secession, they hastened it by convincing the South that no demands it could make would at the last be resisted. That it was an honest mistake on the part of Mr. Webster we do not question. So far as his fame is concerned, it rests on other foundations than the "compromise measures" of 1850-foundations which are in no danger of crumbling away, and will long outlast the quicksands of partisan passion on which that of many of his detractors was erected.
