The Whig Party was already divided into two sections, one known as "Cotton Whigs," and the other as "Conscience Whigs." These names had been suggested in a debate in the State Senate in which Mr.Thomas G.Carey, an eminent Boston merchant, had deprecated some proposed anti- slavery resolutions by saying that they were likely to make an unfavorable impression in the South, and to be an injury to business interests; to which Mr.E.R.Hoar of Middlesex answered, that "he thought it quite as desirable that the Legislature should represent the conscience as the cotton of the Commonwealth." Both parties struggled for the possession of the Whig organization, and both parties hoped for the powerful support of Mr.Webster.
The leader of the manufacturing interest was Mr.Abbott Lawrence, a successful, wealthy manufacturer of great business capacity, large generosity, and princely fortune.

He had for some years chafed under Mr.Webster's imperious and arrogant bearing.
He was on terms of personal intimacy with Henry Clay, and was understood to have inspired the resolutions of the Whig State Convention, a few years before, which by implication condemned Mr.Webster for remaining in President Tyler's Cabinet when his Whig colleagues resigned.

But the people of Massachusetts stood by Webster.

After the ratification of the Ashburton Treaty, he came home to reassert his old title to leadership and to receive an ovation in Faneuil Hall.
In his speech he declared with a significant glance at Mr.
Lawrence, then sitting upon the platform: "I am a Whig, a Massachusetts Whig, a Boston Whig, a Faneuil Hall Whig.
If any man wishes to read me out of the pale of that communion, let him begin, here, now, on the spot, and we will see who goes out first." The first time I remember seeing Daniel Webster was June 17, 1843, at Bunker Hill.

The students of Harvard, where I was a freshman, had a place in the procession.