I have met in debate.  Convince him, and he cannot reply; he is silenced; he cannot look truth in the face and oppose it by argument.  I think that it can be readily perceived by his manner when he felt the unanswerable force of a reply.’  He often spoke of you in my presence, and always kindly and most respectfully.”  Now it must be considered that, in debate, the minds of Webster and Calhoun had come into actual contact and collision.  Each really felt the force of the other.  An ordinary duel might be ranked among idle pastimes when compared with the stress and strain and pain of their encounters in the duel of debate.  A sword-cut or pistol-bullet, maiming the body, was as nothing in comparison with the wounds they mutually inflicted on that substance which was immortal in both.  It was a duel, or series of duels, in which mind was opposed to mind, and will to will, and where the object appeared to be to inflict moral and mental annihilation on one of the combatants.  There never passed a word between them on which the most ingenious Southern jurists, in their interpretations of the “code” of honor, could have found matter for a personal quarrel; and yet these two proud and strong personalities knew that they were engaged in a mortal contest, in which neither gave quarter nor expected quarter.  Mr. Calhoun’s intellectual egotism was as great as his intellectual ability.  He always supposed that he was the victor in every close logical wrestle with any mind to which his own was opposed.  He never wrestled with a mind, until he met Webster’s, which in tenacity, grasp, and power was a match for his own.  He, of course, thought his antagonist was beaten by his superior strength and amplitude of argumentation; but it is still to be noted that he, the most redoubtable opponent that Webster ever encountered, testified, though in equivocal terms, to Webster’s intellectual honesty.  When he crept, half dead, into the Senate-Chamber to hear Webster’s speech of the 7th of March, 1850, he objected emphatically at the end to Webster’s declaration that the Union could not be dissolved.  After declaring that Calhoun’s supposed case of justifiable resistance came within the definition of the ultimate right of revolution, which is lodged in all oppressed communities, Webster added that he did not at that time wish to go into a discussion of the nature of the United States government.  “The honorable gentleman and myself,” he said, “have broken lances sufficiently often before on that subject.”  “I have no desire to do it now,” replied Calhoun; and Webster blandly retorted, “I presume the gentleman has not, and I have quite as little.”  One is reminded here of Dr. Johnson’s remark, when he was stretched on a sick-bed, with his gladiatorial powers of argument suspended by physical exhaustion.  “If that fellow Burke were now present,” the Doctor humorously murmured, “he would certainly kill me.”