"No. 3. Is the measure suited to the condition of the country?"
"No. 4. Is it a just exercise of our powers?"
"No. 5. Mr. C.'s speech, September 19."
"No. 6. Mr. C.'s letter, November 3."
"No. 7. Mr. C.'s speech, February 15."
"No. 8. Identity of commerce."
Besides this, Mr. Webster wrote out the concluding part of the speech in twenty-one pages of a rather small letter-paper, of which I have the last eight, which correspond to about three of the seventy-six pages which the whole speech occupies in the printed report. This part seems to have been corrected again and again. A fac-simile of a part of one of these pages is here given, showing how careful was Mr. Webster's revision and correction. The whole page runs:
"Sir, the spirit of Union is particularly liable to temptation, & seduction, in moments of peace & prosperity. In war, this spirit is strengthened, by a sense of common danger, & by a thousand recollections of ancient efforts, & ancient glory, in a common cause.
"In the calms of a long peace, & the absence of all apparent causes of great alarm, things near gain an ascendancy over things remote. Local interests & feelings overshadow national sentiments. Our attention, our regard, & our attachment, are ever more solicited to what touches us closest, feel less and less the attraction of a distant orb. Such tendencies, we are bound by true patriotism, & by our love of union, to resist."
Mr. Calhoun replied to this speech of Webster, March 22, 1838, in a speech reported in his Works, vol. 3, pages 279-330. Calhoun had both Webster and Clay on his hands in this debate. He certainly bore himself with great courage and ability. The South had no reason to be ashamed of her champion, so far as this was a struggle of pure intellect. When Calhoun got through, Webster instantly rose and answered him in the speech beginning with the famous passage about carrying the war into Africa, reported in Webster's Works, vol. 4, page 500, but not found in the Globe. The Globe at that time was a weekly paper, containing very imperfect reports of the daily debates in the Senate. An appendix was published at the end of the session, which had some of the more important speeches written out from the reporters' notes or from other sources, probably under the supervision of their authors. This speech ended the discussion between Calhoun and Webster on this particular measure, although the debates on financial and other questions for several preceding and succeeding years make, in substance, but one long debate between these two famous champions, in which the whole issue between North and South, slavery and freedom, State rights and national powers, was under discussion.