On the subsequent day, March 15th, the committee appointed for that purpose met Mr. Webster at Amboy, and accompanied him to the city, where he was met, on landing, by a very numerous assemblage of citizens, who thronged to see the distinguished Senator, and give him a warm welcome; after landing, he was attended by the committee and a numerous cavalcade through Broadway, which was crowded with the most respectable citizens, to lodgings provided for him at the American Hotel. Here he made a short address to the assembled citizens, and in the evening was accompanied by the committee to Niblo’s Saloon. One of the largest meetings ever held in the city of New York assembled in the Saloon, and at half past six o’clock was called to order by Aaron Clark; David B. Ogden was called to the chair as President of the meeting; 342 Robert C. Cornell, Jonathan Goodhue, Joseph Tucker, and Nathaniel Weed were nominated Vice-Presidents; and Joseph Hoxie and George S. Robbins, Secretaries.
After the meeting was organized, Philip Hone introduced Mr. Webster with a few appropriate remarks, and he was received with the most enthusiastic greetings. Mr. Ogden then addressed him as follows:—
“On behalf of a committee, appointed at a meeting of a number of your personal and political friends in this city, I have now the honor of addressing you.
“It has afforded the committee, and, I may add, all your political friends, unmingled pleasure to learn that you have, at least for the present, relinquished the intention which I know you had formed of resigning your seat in the Senate of the United States. While expressing their feelings upon this change in your determination, the committee cannot avoid congratulating the country that your public services are not yet to be lost to it and that the great champion of the Constitution and of the Union is still to continue in the field upon which he has earned so many laurels, and has so nobly asserted and defended the rights and liberties of the people.
“The effort made by you, and the honorable men with whom you have acted in the Senate, to resist executive encroachments upon the other departments of the government, will ever be remembered with gratitude by the friends of American liberty. That these efforts were not more successful, we shall long have reason to remember and regret. The administration of General Jackson is fortunately at an end. Its effects upon the Constitution and upon the commercial prosperity of the country are not at an end. Without attempting to review the leading measures of his administration, every man engaged in business in New York feels, most sensibly, that his experiment upon the currency has produced the evils which you foretold it would produce. It has brought distress, to an extent never before experienced, upon the men of enterprise and of small capital, and has put all the primary power in the hands of a few great capitalists.
“Upon the Senate our eyes and our hopes are fixed; we know that you and your political friends are in a minority in that body, but we know that in that minority are to be found great talents, great experience, great patriotism, and we look for great and continued exertions to maintain the Constitution, the Union, and the liberties of this people. And we take this opportunity of expressing our entire confidence, that whatever men can do in a minority will be done in the Senate to relieve the country from the evils under which she is now laboring, and to save her from being sacrificed by folly, corruption, or usurpation.
“It gives me, Sir, pleasure to be the organ of the committee to express to you their great respect for your talents, their deep sense of the importance of your public services, and their gratification to learn that you will still continue in the Senate.”
To this address Mr. Webster replied in the following speech.
RECEPTION AT NEW YORK.[106]
Mr. Chairman, and Fellow-Citizens:—It would be idle in me to affect to be indifferent to the circumstances under which I have now the honor of addressing you.