He spoke for five hours, but in the printed report his speech occupies only three pages more than that of Mr.Mason in the court below.
Both were slow speakers, and thus there is a great difference in time to be accounted for, even after making every allowance for the peroration which we have from another source, and for the wealth of legal and historical illustration with which Mr.Webster amplified his presentation of the question.

"Something was left out," Mr.Webster says, and that something which must have occupied in its delivery nearly an hour was the most conspicuous example of the generalship by which Mr.Webster achieved victory, and which was wholly apart from his law.

This art of management had already been displayed in the treatment of the cases made up for the Circuit Courts, and in the elaborate and irrelevant legal discussion which Mr.Webster introduced before the Supreme Court.

But this management now entered on a much higher stage, where it was destined to win victory, and exhibited in a high degree tact and knowledge of men.

Mr.Webster was fully aware that he could rely, in any aspect of the case, upon the sympathy of Marshall and Washington.