Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for he saw that secession was incompatable with national existence, and if the nation must suffer its integrity to be shaken and disunion played with, the whole had better go and disruption and dismemberment be accepted as the death of the Republic. Only on this view can we understand the great statesman's attitude in making the "Seventh of March speech;" since to him conciliation and the Clay Compromise were the only acceptable overtures to silence Abolitionism, and sectional animosities, obviate war, and thus save and perpetuate the Nation. But it is time to return to the chief incidents in Mr. Webster's career, and to note, after some months' sojourn in England in 1838, his appointment, in 1841, as Secretary of State in President Harrison's Cabinet. Mr. Webster's management of the affairs of this important office was characterized by ability and good sense. The chief feature of his administration of the post was the adjustment with England, by the Ashburton Treaty, of boundary matters on the line dividing the United States from the British American provinces, or, more specifically, between Canada and Maine. (The more complicated Oregon boundary question, it may here be said, was for the time settled four years later, viz., in 1846). Arbitration as a mode of settlement in the matter of the Maine boundary had previously been tried and had failed, until the appearance at Washington of the English plenipotentiary, Lord Ashburton, who jointly with Mr. Webster brought the question happily to a settlement. Other provisions of this treaty included an agreement for the suppression of the slave trade on the coast of Africa, and also for the mutual extradition of fugitivesfrom justice. Meanwhile, Mr. Harrison, who held the Presidency for one month only, died in April, 1841, and was su...