The home changed first, and then the public career. The reply which, as
John Quincy Adams said, "utterly demolished the fabric of Hayne's speech
and left scarcely a wreck to be seen," went straight home to the people of
the North. It gave eloquent expression to the strong but undefined feeling
in the popular mind. It found its way into every house and was read
everywhere; it took its place in the school books, to be repeated by shrill
boy voices, and became part of the literature and of the intellectual life
of the country. In those solemn sentences men read the description of what
the United States had come to be under the Constitution, and what American
nationality meant in 1830. The leaders of the young war party in 1812 were
the first to arouse the national sentiment, but no one struck the chord
with such a master hand as Mr. Webster, or drew forth such long and deep
vibrations. There is no single utterance in our history which has done so
much by mere force of words to strengthen the love of nationality and
implant it deeply in the popular heart, as the reply to Hayne.

Before the delivery of that speech Mr. Webster was a distinguished
statesman, but the day after he awoke to a national fame which made all his
other triumphs pale. Such fame brought with it, of course, as it always
does in this country, talk of the presidency. The reply to Hayne made Mr.
Webster a presidential candidate, and from that moment he was never free
from the gnawing, haunting ambition to win the grand prize of American
public life. There was a new force in his career, and in all the years to
come the influence of that force must be reckoned and remembered.

Mr. Webster was anxious that the party of opposition to General Jackson,
which then passed by the name of National Republicans, should be in some
way strengthened, solidified, and placed on a broad platform of distinct
principles. He saw with great regret the ruin which was threatened by the
anti-masonic schism, and it would seem that he was not indisposed to take