There beamed from every countenance a pleased satisfaction, as the members of the Senate and the House came up to express their delight, and their determination to support the measure proposed, and so ably advocated.  There was oil upon the waters, and the turbulent waves went down.  Men who had been estranged and angered for many months, met, and with friendly smiles greeted each other again.  The ladies in the gallery above rose up as if by a common impulse, to look down, with smiles, upon the great commoner.  One whose silvered hair, parted smoothly and modestly upon her aged forehead, fell in two massy folds behind her ears, clasped her hands, and audibly uttered:  “God bless him.”

The reconciliation seemed to be effected, and the confidence and affection between the sections to be renewed with increased fervor and intensity.  There was rejoicing throughout the land.  Dissatisfaction only spake from the pulpits of New England, and there only from those of the Puritan Congregationalists.  But the public heart had received a shock, and though it beat on, it was not with the healthful tone of former days.

The men of the Revolution were rapidly passing to eternity.  The cement of blood which bound these as one was dissolving, and the fabric of their creation was undermined in the hearts of the people, with corroding prejudices, actively fomented by the bigotry of a selfish superstition.  A sectional struggle for supremacy had commenced.  The control of the Government was the aim, and patriotism was consuming in the flame of ambition.  The Government’s security, the Government’s perpetuity, and the common good, were no longer prime considerations.  All its demonstrated blessings had remained as ever the same.  Stimulated by the same motives and the same ambitions, the new world and the new Government were moving in the old groove; and the old world saw repeating here the history of all the Governments which had arisen, lived, and passed away, in her own borders.  The mighty genius of Clay and Webster, of Jackson and Calhoun, had, for a time, stayed the rapid progress of ruin which had begun to show itself, but only for a time.  They have been gathered to their fathers, and the controlling influence of their mighty minds being removed, confusion, war, and ruin have followed.

The men conspicuous in the debates on the Missouri question were giants in intellect, and perhaps few deliberative assemblies of the world ever contained more talent, or more public virtue.  At the head of these stood Henry Clay, Pinkney, Rufus King, William Lowndes, Harrison Gray Otis, William Smith, Louis McLean, the two Barbours, John Randolph, Freeman Walker, Thomas W. Cobb, and John Holmes, of Maine.

James Barbour was a member of the Senate; Philip P. Barbour, of the House.  They were brothers, and both from Virginia.  They were both men of great abilities, but their style and manner were very different.  James was a verbose and ornate declaimer; Philip was a close, cogent reasoner, without any attempt at elegance or display.  He labored to convince the mind; James, to control and direct the feelings.  A wag wrote upon the wall of the House, at the conclusion of a masterly argument of Philip P. Barbour,