the general memory.  When a skilled historian reopens the study of
Webster's "Seventh of March speech" it is more than likely that
nine out of ten Americans will have to cudgel their wits
endeavoring to make quite sure just where among our political
adventures that famous oration fits in.  How many of us could pass
a satisfactory examination on the antecedent train of events--the
introduction in Congress of that Wilmot Proviso designed to make
free soil of all the territory to be acquired in the Mexican War;
the instant and bitter reaction of the South; the various demands
for some sort of partition of the conquered area between the
sections, between slave labor and free labor; the unforeseen
intrusion of the gold seekers of California in 1849, and their
unauthorized formation of a new state based on free labor; the
flaming up of Southern alarm, due not to one cause but to many,
chiefly to the obvious fact that the free states were acquiring
preponderance in Congress; the southern threats of secession; the
fury of the Abolitionists demanding no concessions to the South,
come what might; and then, just when a rupture seemed inevitable,
when Northern extremists and Southern extremists seemed about to
snatch control of their sections, Webster's bold play to the