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reply the hotels of Washington were filled with visitors who had hurried to the capital to hear the "Lion of the North" respond to the challenge of the "Achilles of the South"-the popular epithets describing the contestants were more appropriate taken singly than in mutual relation-and early next morning crowds poured into the capitol. C. W. March, a contemporary journalist, thus describes the scene:

At twelve o'clock, the hour of meeting, the Senate Chamber -its galleries, floor and even lobbies-was filled to the utmost capacity. The very stairways were dark with men who hung to one another like bees in a swarm.

The House of Representatives was early deserted; an adjournment would have hardly made it emptier. The Speaker, it is true, retained his chair, but no business of moment was or could be attended to; members all rushed in to hear Mr. Webster, and no call of the House or other parliamentary proceedings could compel them back. The floor of the Senate was so densely crowded that persons once in could not get out nor change their positions.

...

The courtesy of Senators accorded to the fair sex room on the floor-the most gallant of them their own seats. The gay bonnets and brilliant dresses threw a varied and picturesque beauty over the scene, softening and embellishing it.

Says Senator Thomas H. Benton [Mo.] in his notes of this debate in his "Debates of Congress":

Mr. Hayne deprecated the sale of the public lands for money to accumulate in the treasury as leading to corruption and consolidation. Mr. Webster argued that consolidation was not the danger, but, on the contrary, disunion, and referred to language and proceedings in South Carolina uncivic in their import and tending to this dire extremity. Mr. Webster formally exonerated Mr. Hayne from complicity in any of this language or conduct, but implicated others, one of whom was present, his position forbidding him to engage in senatorial discussion [Mr. Calhoun, Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate]. The generous spirit of Mr. Hayne came to the defence of friends who could not speak for themselves and that brought on the great debate on nullification and disunion.

CONSOLIDATION

SENATE, JANUARY 19-20, 1830

SENATOR HAYNE.-I distrust the policy of creating a great permanent national treasury, whether to be derived from public lands or from any other source. If I had, sir, the power of a magician, and could, by a wave of my hand, convert this Capitol into gold for such a purpose, I would not do it. If I could, by a mere act of my will, put at the disposal of the Federal Government any amount of treasure which I might think proper to name, I should limit the amount to the means necessary for the legitimate purposes of the Government. Sir, an immense national treasury would be a fund for corruption. It would enable Congress and the Executive to exercise a control over States, as well as over great interests in the country, nay, even over corporations and individuals—utterly destructive to the purity and fatal to the duration of our institutions. It would be equally fatal to the sovereignty and independence of the States. Sir, I am one of those who believe that the very life of our system is the independence of the States, and that there is no evil more to be deprecated than the consolidation of this Government. It is only by a strict adherence to the limitations imposed by the Constitution on the Federal Government that this system works well and can answer the great ends for which it was instituted. I am opposed, therefore, in any shape, to all unnecessary extension of the powers or the influence of the legislature or Executive of the Union over the States or the people of the States; and, most of all, I am opposed to those partial distributions of favors, whether by legislation or appropriation, which have a direct and powerful tendency to spread corruption through the land; to create an abject spirit of dependence; to sow the seeds of dissolution; to produce jealousy among the different portions of the Union, and finally to sap the very foundations of the Government itself.

Would it not be sound policy and true wisdom to adopt a system of measures looking to the final relinquishment of these lands on the part of the United States to the States in which they lie, on such terms and conditions as may fully indemnify us for the cost of the original purchase and all the trouble and expense to which we may have been put on their account? Giving up the plan of using these lands forever as a fund either for revenue or distribution, ceasing to hug them as a great treasure, renouncing the idea of administering them with

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