The ordinary answer to this question was, of course, expressed in the behavior of public opinion during the Middle Period.  The thing to do was to shut your eyes to the inconsistency, denounce anybody who insisted on it as unpatriotic, and then hold on tight to both horns of the dilemma.  Men of high intelligence, who really loved their country, and believed in the democratic idea, persisted in this attitude, whose ablest and most distinguished representative was Daniel Webster.  He is usually considered as the most eloquent and effective expositor of American nationalism who played an important part during the Middle Period; and unquestionably he came nearer to thinking nationally than did any American statesman of his generation.  He defended the Union against the Nullifiers as decisively in one way as Jackson did in another.  Jackson flourished his sword, while Webster taught American public opinion to consider the Union as the core and the crown of the American political system.  His services in giving the Union a more impressive place in the American political imagination can scarcely be over-estimated.  Had the other Whig leaders joined him in refusing to compromise with the Nullifiers and in strengthening by legislation the Federal government as an expression of an indestructible American national unity, a precedent might have been established which would have increased the difficulty of a subsequent secessionist outbreak.  But Henry Clay believed in compromises (particularly when his own name was attached to them) as the very substance of a national American policy; and Webster was too much of a Presidential candidate to travel very far on a lonely path.  Moreover, there was a fundamental weakness in Webster’s own position, which was gradually revealed as the slavery crisis became acute.  He could be bold and resolute, when defending a nationalistic interpretation of the Constitution against the Nullifiers or the Abolitionists; but when the slaveholders themselves became aggressive in policy and separatist in spirit, the courage of his convictions deserted him.  If an indubitably Constitutional institution, such as slavery, could be used as an ax with which to hew at the trunk of the Constitutional tree, his whole theory of the American system was undermined, and he could speak only halting and dubious words.  He was as much terrorized by the possible consequences of any candid and courageous dealing with the question as were the prosperous business men of the North; and his luminous intelligence shed no light upon a question, which evaded his Constitutional theories, terrified his will, and clouded the radiance of his patriotic visions.