with Kossuth as governor. The movement excited general sympathy in the United States, and an agent was sent by General Taylor to examine the situation. The suppression of the revolt by the forces of the Czar Nicholas caused this agent, Mr. Dudley Mann, to report that the Magyars had failed to establish a government such as was entitled to the recognition of the United States. This report and all the documents were published, and the President stated openly to Congress that if it had appeared to Mr. Mann 1 that the Magyars had established a de facto government, he should have recognized it.

The Austrian Minister, Mr. Hülsemann, immediately entered upon an angry discussion with Mr. Clayton, General Taylor's Secretary of State, and a letter containing his instructions from Vienna to protest against the whole transaction, as an unwarranted interference in the concerns of a friendly State, arrived about the time when General Taylor's death had closed Mr. Clayton's service as Secretary and placed Mr. Webster in his stead. The latter, however, in conformity with the strictest diplomatic traditions, took up the correspondence on his own account. His health was so infirm at this period, that he appears to have distrusted his own sufficiency to prepare such a reply as the exigency demanded. He gave Mr. Hunter, the chief clerk of the Department of State, some of the important points to be embodied in a draft, and further engaged the author of the former part of this memoir to prepare a more elaborate draft on the entire question. This paper very largely met Mr. Webster's views, and formed the basis of the letter which was sent to the Austrian minister towards the end of 1850, not without considerable excisions, additions, and revisions of Mr. Webster's own, not the least of which consisted in a vigorous rebuke administered to Mr. Hülsemann for his failure to recognize duly the position of the United States as a nation whose precedents and practice in international law were entitled to the highest respect in Europe. This letter fully re-established Mr. Webster in the confidence of all American patriots, if indeed he had ever lost it. A translation of the correspondence into German was furtively published on the continent of Europe, and circulated throughout the Austrian Empire.

1 It is a significant fact that in 1861 Mr. Dudley Mann was an agent of the Southern Confederacy to obtain its recognition in Europe. -[W. E.]

fine, and the audience was immense, but as might be expected in Washington at that time of year, largely composed of Virginians and Marylanders. Mr. Webster's closest friends were anxious for his success. He was still much fatigued from his Northern trip; his voice seemed not unlikely to break down, and he had not for some years delivered an "occasional" address. But he rose to the occasion in a speech worthy of his prime. His text was the duty incumbent upon all Americans to uphold the Union, and the audience being what it was he appealed to all the South, but more especially to Virginians, not in madness to throw away the inestimable blessings secured under the Constitution and the laws. He considered the whole of the Commonwealth of Virginia, every section of it, and at length uttered these words, of which probably not one hearer felt the force at the time: :

"Ye men of Western Virginia, who occupy the great slope from the top of the Alleghanies to Ohio and Kentucky, what benefit do you propose to yourselves by disunion? If you 'secede,' what do you 'secede' from, and what do you 'accede' to? Do you look for the current of the Ohio to change, and to bring you and your commerce to the tidewaters of Eastern rivers? What man in his senses can suppose that you would remain part and parcel of Virginia a month after Virginia should have ceased to be part and parcel of the United States?"

Virginia was declared by the vote of the Eastern counties to be "out of the Union" on the 23d of May, 1861. The legislature of the State of West Virginia was organized on the 2d of July in the same year. A more amazingly exact literal prophecy never was uttered.

It must not, however, be supposed that because the first year of Mr. Webster's connection with the State Department was so largely occupied with national questions there was any lack of international. Several very delicate problems presented themselves early, and engaged his painful attention.

Perhaps the most important of these arose out of the Hungarian insurrection against the imperial Government of Austria in the great revolution year of 1848. The Magyars, or dominant race of the Kingdom of Hungary, asserted that the Emperor and his ministers had violated the compact by which he held St. Stephen's crown, and declared the Hungarian republic,

with Kossuth as governor. The movement excited general sympathy in the United States, and an agent was sent by General Taylor to examine the situation. The suppression of the revolt by the forces of the Czar Nicholas caused this agent, Mr. Dudley Mann, to report that the Magyars had failed to establish a government such as was entitled to the recognition of the United States. This report and all the documents were published, and the President stated openly to Congress that if it had appeared to Mr. Mann 1 that the Magyars had established a de facto government, he should have recognized it.

The Austrian Minister, Mr. Hülsemann, immediately entered upon an angry discussion with Mr. Clayton, General Taylor's Secretary of State, and a letter containing his instructions from Vienna to protest against the whole transaction, as an unwarranted interference in the concerns of a friendly State, arrived about the time when General Taylor's death had closed Mr. Clayton's service as Secretary and placed Mr. Webster in his stead. The latter, however, in conformity with the strictest diplomatic traditions, took up the correspondence on his own account. His health was so infirm at this period, that he appears to have distrusted his own sufficiency to prepare such a reply as the exigency demanded. He gave Mr. Hunter, the chief clerk of the Department of State, some of the important points to be embodied in a draft, and further engaged the author of the former part of this memoir to prepare a more elaborate draft on the entire question. This paper very largely met Mr. Webster's views, and formed the basis of the letter which was sent to the Austrian minister towards the end of 1850, not without considerable excisions, additions, and revisions of Mr. Webster's own, not the least of which consisted in a vigorous rebuke administered to Mr. Hülsemann for his failure to recognize duly the position of the United States as a nation whose precedents and practice in international law were entitled to the highest respect in Europe. This letter fully re-established Mr. Webster in the confidence of all American patriots, -if indeed he had ever lost it. A translation of the correspondence into German was furtively published on the continent of Europe, and circulated throughout the Austrian Empire.

1 It is a significant fact that in 1861 Mr. Dudley Mann was an agent of the Southern Confederacy to obtain its recognition in Europe. [W. E.]

Another question which required the utmost firmness of handling was that involved in the invasion of Cuba by the filibuster Antonio Lopez, aided by certain adventurers from the United States. The idea of seizing on the island by a sudden onslaught had found great favor in the southwestern States of the Union, and had been supported by some persons high in the national councils. It was doubtless connected with the discussions about slavery, the hope being that the forcible annexation of Cuba would be a gain to the slaveholding interest which might balance even the weight of California. The expedition failed contemptibly; Lopez and several of his party, both Spaniards and Americans, were executed, and others sent as prisoners to Spain. These steps taken by the Cuban Government caused a riot in New Orleans, and various acts extremely offensive to the punctilious Spaniards were perpetrated. Moreover, as soon as the attack was reported in Europe, orders were given by the Governments of England and France to their fleets in the West Indian waters, which might have resulted in critical collision with American vessels. To adjust all the various problems arising out of this situation, with due regard alike to the dignity of the United States and the rights of American citizens, and to the just claims of a friendly nation which had been insulted, required the exercise of diplomatic firmness and tact in no small degree; but Mr. Webster's handling of it gave entire satisfaction to every one directly and indirectly concerned - except perhaps some "fire-eaters" of the South, who would have liked to enlist the National government in a general buccaneering expedition against the whole of Spanish America.

In another delicate case, arising out of the first of the treaties between the United States and Nicaragua, looking to the construction of a ship canal, the Clayton-Bulwer treaty negotiated with Mr. Webster's immediate predecessor, and the unrelinquished claim of Great Britain to exercise some control over the "Mosquito Shore," Mr. Webster's skill was conspicuous for the influence he obtained over Sir Henry Bulwer, a diplomatist of more experience perhaps than talent, but who had the good sense to perceive that the new secretary was a man whose probity might be unhesitatingly trusted, but whose intelligence and patriotism would never sleep.

That his own countrymen should hold this view was one of Mr. Webster's dearest ambitions, and the close of the year 1851 seemed to put it beyond a question. Each successive problem which had presented itself to the Secretary of State had been disposed of with entire regard to the rights of foreign nations, and to those claims for courteous and friendly treatment which are deserving of even greater regard than the maxims of Grotius and Wheaton, but at the same time with the most dignified and emphatic assertion of the position of the United States as an integral and co-ordinate member of the great commonwealth of nations, never to be treated with haughtiness or flippancy. At this time Kossuth and his friends were visiting the United States and were received with a passionate effusion of popular sympathy, difficult to conceive by those who were not witnesses of it. It had led the distinguished Hungarian to entertain the wild hope that he might look for very extensive contributions of money from the people, and not impossibly for government support in prosecuting his views for the overthrow of the Austrian domination. At a dinner given to him in Washington, Mr. Webster spoke in the most emphatic and eloquent terms of the rights of oppressed nations to vindicate their liberty and independence; but neither then nor in his management of the State Department did he utter a word which could be construed into a pledge of assistance, direct or indirect, to Kossuth's revolutionary plans. His enemies, who were hanging on his lips night and day to catch him in his talk, were forced to admit that at this critical time, when many of his fellow-citizens were ready to hurry the country into they knew not what, he had spoken as became a friend of human rights and a statesman at the helm of the nation.

At an even earlier date, Mr. Webster had delivered his sentiments in no uncertain strain, namely, at a dinner of the association called the "Sons of New Hampshire," held in Boston on the 7th of November, 1849. After declaring in the most unmistakable way his detestation of despotism, his sympathy with the popular rising in Europe, he asserted the impossibility of checking by violence the spread of free thought, and went on :