Note 39 — THE REPLY TO HAYNE (continued 2)

Interesting examples of Webster’s revision of important passages in this speech may be found by comparing the present standard text with the original versions as preserved in the Boston Public Library. The eulogium of Massachusetts, beginning “Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium” and ending with “the very spot of its origin,” was spoken thus:

“Sir, I shall be led on this occasion into no eulogium on Massachusetts. I shall paint no portraiture of her merits, original, ancient or modern. Yet, Sir, I cannot but remember that Boston was the cradle of liberty, that in Massachusetts (the parent of this accursed policy so eternally narrow to the West), etc., etc., etc. I cannot forget that Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill are in Massachusetts, and that in men and means and money she did contribute more than any other State to carry on the Revolutionary war. There was not a State in the Union whose soil was not wetted with Massachusetts blood in the Revolutionary war, and it is to be remembered that of the army to which Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown a majority consisted of New England troops. It is painful to me to recur to these recollections even for the purpose of self-defence, and even to that end, Sir, I will not extol the intelligence, the character and the virtue of the people of New England. I leave the theme to itself, here and everywhere, now and forever.”

The first form of the famous concluding passage was as follows:

“When my eyes shall be turned for the last time on the meridian sun, I hope I may see him shining bright upon my united, free, and happy country. I hope I shall not live to see his beams falling upon the dispersed fragments of the structure of this once glorious Union. I hope I may not see the flag of my country with its stars separated or obliterated; torn by commotions, smoking with the blood of civil war. I hope I may not see the standard raised of separate State rights, star against star, and stripe against stripe; but that the flag of the Union may keep its stars and its stripes corded and bound together in indissoluble ties. I hope I shall not see written as its motto, ‘First liberty, and then Union.’ I hope I shall see no such delusive and deluded motto on the flag of that country. I hope to see, spread all over it, blazoned in letters of light and proudly floating over land and sea, that other sentiment, dear to my heart, ‘Union and Liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable.’”