It had never been Mr.Webster's habit to misrepresent or abuse his opponents.

Now he confounded the extreme separatism of the abolitionists and the constitutional opposition of the Free-Soil party, and involved all opponents of slavery in a common condemnation.

It was wilful misrepresentation to talk of the Free-Soilers as if they were identical with the abolitionists, and no one knew better than Mr.Webster the distinction between the two, one being ready to secede to get rid of slavery, the other offering only a constitutional resistance to its extension.

His tone toward his opponents was correspondingly bitter.

When he first arrived in Boston, after his speech, and spoke to the great crowd in front of the Revere House, he said, "I shall support no agitations having their foundations in unreal, ghostly abstractions." Slavery had now become "an unreal, ghostly abstraction," although it must still have appeared to the negroes something very like a hard fact.