This passage is adapted from Daniel Webster's "The Seventh of March Speech," given on March 7, 1850.

Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard from
every member on this floor declarations of opinion that this
Union could never be dissolved, than the declaration of opinion
by any body, that, in any case, under the pressure of any
(5) circumstances, such a dissolution was possible. I hear with
distress and anguish the word "secession," especially when
it falls from the lips of those who are patriotic, and known to the
country, and known all over the world, for their political services.
Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never
(10) destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast
country without convulsion! The breaking up of the fountains
of the great deep without ruffling the surface! Who is so foolish,
I beg everybody's pardon, as to expect to see any such thing? Sir,
he who sees these States, now revolving in harmony around a
(15) common centre, and expects to see them quit their places and fly
off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see heavenly
bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the
realms of space, without causing the wreck of the universe.

There can be no such thing as peaceable secession. Peaceable
(20) secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under
which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and
melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under
the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run
off? No, Sir! No, Sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption
(25) of the Union; but, Sir, I see as plainly as I see the sun in heaven what
that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and
such a war as I will not describe, in its twofold character.

Peaceable secession! Peaceable secession! The concurrent
agreement of all the members of this great republic to separate!
(30) A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other.
Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn?
What States are to secede? What is to remain American? What
am I now? An American no longer? Am I to become a sectional man,
a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen
(35) who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of Congress?
Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the republic to remain? Where is
the eagle still to tower? Or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the
ground? Why, Sir, our ancestors, our fathers and our grandfathers,
those of them that are yet living amongst us with prolonged lives,
(40) would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren
would cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation should dishonor
these ensigns of the power of the government and the harmony of that
Union which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude...

I know, although the idea has not been stated distinctly, there is
(45) to be, or it is supposed possible that there will be, a Southern
Confederacy. I do not mean, when I allude to this statement, that any
one seriously contemplates such a state of things. I do not mean to say that
it is true, but I have heard it suggested elsewhere, that the idea has been
entertained, that, after the dissolution of this Union, a Southern
(50) Confederacy might be formed. I am sorry, Sir, that it has ever been
thought of, talked of, or dreamed of, in the wildest flights of human
imagination. But the idea, so far as it exists, must be of a separation,
assigning the slave States to one side and the free States to the other.
Sir, I may express myself too strongly, perhaps, but there are impossibilities
(55) in the natural as well as in the physical world, and I hold the idea of a
separation of these States, those that are free to form one government,
and those that are slave-holding to form another, as such an impossibility.
We could not separate the States by any such line, if we were to draw it.
We could not sit down here to-day and draw a line of separation that would
(60) satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep
and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we
could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could...

The Puritans who settled in New England had deemed
theatrical productions a sin, on account of the idea that playing
a character was tantamount to a suspension of one's moral
accountability (that is, you could do all sorts of forbidden or
(5) taboo things if you were supposed to be playing a part).
Although several generations had passed since the European
settlement of North America, the Puritan legacy still resonated
in the slow start of theater as a form of mass entertainment in
the nineteenth century. Yet as urbanization increased, and
(10) standards of living elevated to the point where a large number
of Americans had at least a little spare income to spend on
entertainment, the industry began to thrive, particularly in the
growing cities along the Atlantic coast, in Chicago, and in the
West, especially in San Francisco.

(15) During the first half of the nineteenth century, theaters
were remarkably democratic in terms of class, although they
discriminated against blacks and most women, who were
confined to the gallery (or balcony) section. In the pit of the
theater, a diverse group of people referred to as "the middling
(20) classes" rubbed elbows and tended to be the most rowdy
contingent by far. Only the "dandies" (self-fashioned
respectable people) occupied box seats in the theater. In the
first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, Shakespearean plays
formed the main attraction for theater-going audiences, but the
(25) evening also included an afterpiece (usually a farce), and a
variety of between-act specialties.

The barrier between the audience and the performance
was remarkably porous; the audience freely interacted with the
actors on stage, yelled at them, sometimes mobbed them, and
(30) even pelted them with rotten produce. There was no expectation
of silence from the audience; many theaters left the house lights
on (gas lights, not electric ones, which had not yet been invented)
throughout the show. People came in order to see one another
and to be seen. Most of the audience was made up of men, and few
(35) women were present aside from prostitutes, who were confined to
the gallery along with blacks, apprentices, servants, and other poor
workingmen. The audiences would sing along with the popular
songs, ad-lib responses to the actor's lines, and correct the performers
when they forgot or mis-recited their Shakespearean monologues.
(40) All of this means that in the nineteenth century, you were probably
just as likely to find a person who had memorized soliloquies from
Hamlet or Macbeth in a town saloon as you were in a university.

The most violent conflict in urban America between the
Revolution and the Civil War took place during a production of
(45) Shakespeare's Macbeth. In May 1849, English actor William
Charles Macready was appearing in the title role in New York City.
Edwin Forrest was one of the first great tragedians of the American
theater, and four years prior he had hissed at Macready in Edinburgh.
Macready did not want to engage in the rivalry and tried to avoid
(50) the whole matter, but Forrest and his American followers developed
a vicious antipathy towards the actor; to them, he was the embodiment
of aristocratic snobbery and English debauchery. (The fact that he tried
to ignore them probably made Macready seem that much more snobby).
He also represented the ongoing shift in theater culture, which was
(55) moving away from the working class and towards the strict dress
codes and prohibitive admission prices that catered to the bourgeoisie.
The so-called "Bowery B'hoys" (the hard-scrabble young men of New
York City's working-class Bowery neighborhood) resented this change.

When Macready came to America and was slated to perform
(60) in the high-priced, highbrow Astor Place (a venue resented by the
poorer crowds that it excluded), his very appearance incited a mob.
Partisans of Forrest-working class urbanites and members of the
Democratic political machine known as Tammany Hall-went to
the hated Astor Place Opera House in order to protest Macready
(65) and pelt him with various items. Astor Place itself represented elitism
to the masses, since it had strict dress codes and prohibitive admission
prices; it was, in fact, a sign of things to come. Additionally, by this time
hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants had disembarked at American
ports, primarily in New York City, to seek refuge from the potato famine.
(70) They tended to vote Democratic and support urban political machines;
they also had a long history of oppression at the hands of the English,
so their anti-Anglo resentment mixed nicely with the residual sentiments
of Americans who still remembered the War of 1812 and the American
Revolution, both fought on North American soil against the British.

(75) Though Macready left relatively early on after the mob arrived
and surrounded the theater, the violence continued. Twenty-two people
were killed and over 100 injured in a battle that demonstrated the extent
of ethnic and class rivalries, as well as the intrinsic place of the theater
as a battleground in American culture. The riot became a scandal for all
(80) involved and was an important factor in the increasing influence of
middle-class values and practices over the theater and other forms of
popular entertainment from the mid-nineteenth-century onward. The
Astor Place mob scared local authorities, middle-class families, and
theater managers into believing that they needed to pass legislation
(85) and take action in order to ensure a more composed, civilized, and
"stable" audience of theater-goers. They quickly ran out of patience
for the populist free-for-all that the theater had once represented.