"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterwards'; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"
The family of one of Mr. Webster's colleagues have a story which has been repeated to me several times, but, so far as I know, has never been published, that the delegation were somewhat anxious lest Mr. Webster did not fully appreciate the strength of Hayne's attack, and the grave responsibility he had to bear in the reply. One of them at the request of his associates called on Mr. Webster that morning at his boarding-house, to communicate to him their great anxiety. He found him alone in the parlor of his dwelling, walking up and down, and humming to himself the refrain of the old English hunting-song:
Tantivy, tantivy,
This day a stag must die.
He concluded there was no occasion for any further alarm.
When Mr. Webster went to the Senate next morning, as he made his way through the crowded chamber to his seat, John M. Clayton, of Delaware, said to him: "Mr. Webster, I hope you are primed and loaded this morning." "Five fingers, sir," was the reply, with a gesture as if pointing to a gun-barrel.
Mr. Winthrop says: "Of his emotions he said himself not long afterward, 'I felt as if every thing I had ever seen or read or heard was floating before me in one grand panorama, and I had little else to do than to reach up and cull a thunderbolt and hurl it at him.'"
What he said to Hiram Ketcham, of the Reply to Hayne, is true of nearly all his great speeches:
"In one sense I had no preparation whatever, but in another sense I was fully prepared. I did not know what words I should use when I rose to my feet, nor the order of argument in which I should proceed. These came to me under the excitement of debate. But I understood the subject as well as I was capable of understanding it. I had studied it; I had often urged similar arguments before other tribunals, and in this sense of the term I was thoroughly prepared."
It is clear that there was absolutely no time for the preparation of the language of Webster's Reply to Hayne. He had made an extemporaneous reply to Hayne—to an elaborate speech of Hayne's—the morning after it was delivered. Hayne replied to him, and Webster, after a single night's interval, made in two successive days the most famous speech in American history.