This is of course the view of a Jacksonian leader, but it is none the less full of keen analysis and comprehension of Mr. Webster, and in some respects embodies very well the conditions of the situation. Mr. Benton naturally did not see that an alliance with Jackson was utterly impossible for Mr. Webster, whose proper course was therefore much less simple than it appeared to the Senator from Missouri. There was in reality no common ground possible between Webster and Jackson except defence of the national integrity. Mr. Webster was a great orator, a splendid advocate, a trained statesman and economist, a remarkable constitutional lawyer, and a man of immense dignity, not headstrong in temper and without peculiar force of will. Jackson, on the other hand, was a rude soldier, unlettered, intractable, arbitrary, with a violent temper and a most despotic will. Two men more utterly incompatible it would have been difficult to find, and nothing could have been more wildly fantastic than to suppose an alliance between them, or to imagine that Mr. Webster could ever have done anything but oppose utterly those mad gyrations of personal government which the President called his "policy."
Yet at the same time it is perfectly true that just after the passage of the tariff bill Mr. Webster was at a great crisis in his life. He could not act with Jackson. That way was shut to him by nature, if by nothing else. But he could have maintained his position as the independent and unbending defender of nationality and as the foe of compromise. He might then have brought Mr. Clay to his side, and remained himself the undisputed head of the Whig party. The coalition between Clay and Calhoun was a hollow, ill-omened thing, certain to go violently to pieces, as, in fact, it did, within a few years, and then Mr. Clay, if he had held out so long, would have been helpless without Mr. Webster. But such a course required a very strong will and great tenacity of purpose, and it was on this side that Mr. Webster was weak, as Mr. Benton points out. Instead of waiting for Mr. Clay to come to him, Mr. Webster went over to Clay and Calhoun, and formed for a time the third in that ill-assorted partnership. There was no reason for his doing so. In fact every good reason was against it. Mr. Clay had come to Mr. Webster with his compromise, and had been met with the reply "that it would be yielding great principles to faction; and that the time had come to test the strength of the Constitution and the government." This was a brave, manly answer, but Mr. Clay, nationalist as he was, had straightway deserted his friend and ally, and gone over to the separatists for support. Then a sharp contest had occurred between Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay in the debate on the tariff; and when it was all over, the latter wrote with frank vanity and a slight tinge of contempt: "Mr. Webster and I came in conflict, and I have the satisfaction to tell you that he gained nothing. My friends flatter me with my having completely triumphed. There is no permanent breach between us. I think he begins already to repent his course." Mr. Clay was intensely national, but his theory of preserving the Union was by continual compromise, or, in other words, by constant yielding to the aggressive South. Mr. Webster's plan was to maintain a firm attitude, enforce absolute submission to all constitutional laws, and prove that agitation against the Union could lead only to defeat. This policy would not have resulted in rebellion, but, if it had, the hanging of Calhoun and a few like him, and the military government of South Carolina, by the hero of New Orleans, would have taught slave-holders such a lesson that we should probably have been spared four years of civil war. Peaceful submission, however, would have been the sure outcome of Mr. Webster's policy. But a compromise appealed as it always does to the timid, balance-of-power party. Mr. Clay prevailed, and the manufacturers of New England, as well as elsewhere, finding that he had secured for them the benefit of time and of the chapter of accidents, rapidly came over to his support. The pressure was too much for Mr. Webster. Mr. Clay thought that if Mr. Webster "had to go over the work of the last few weeks he would have been for the compromise, which commands the approbation of a great majority." Whether Mr. Webster repented his opposition to the compromise no one can say, but the change of opinion in New England, the general assent of the Whig party, and the dazzling temptations of presidential candidacy prevailed with him. He fell in behind Mr. Clay, and remained there in a party sense and as a party man for the rest of his life.