To insist upon the necessity of submitting to the hard and repulsive duty imposed by the Constitution was one thing.

To urge submission without a word of sorrow or regret was another.

The North felt, and felt rightly, that while Mr.Webster could not avoid admitting the force of the constitutional provisions about fugitive slaves, and was obliged to bow to their behest, yet to defend them without reservation, to attack those who opposed them, and to urge the rigid enforcement of a Fugitive Slave Law, was not in consonance with his past, his conscience, and his duty to his constituents.

The constitutionality of a Fugitive Slave Law may be urged and admitted over and over again, but this could not make the North believe that advocacy of slave-catching was a task suited to Daniel Webster.

The simple fact was that he did not treat the general question of slavery as he always had treated it.