/.C^^'^^o v^\.i rt' ,-^^ . .'^."^ .>Va^. ^^ A^ .*^1^\ %,,,^*^ ;^55sS£^^. %^^^ - *^ ^h^ V^-rr;-* .«,^' 9^^ • o .5»^rv o a5»^ ^ i» '^o «J* *'t^ *'% I rvV •o "^-^ A' v- <^ ♦-'TV / <,^ ^•^^^ . '9r ^'•* "^o . » * A >^ .^1^\^% ** rP^.C^."^^ ,*^°Xv « ^o %/ .-^"t %/ "**^^'- ^-^-^^ ''^^'' ^^-^ •o "^^ A^ v^ ^'=u. - .^^"-^ - DANIEL WEBSTER. On the Receiving of the Statues of Webster and Stark. SPEECH OP Hon. GEORGE F. HOAR, OF" XIASSACHUSHiXXS, IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. December 20, 1894. WASHINGTON. 1894. < V 6Gf)4 Daniel Webster. SPEECH OF HON. GEORGE E. HOAE, of massachusetts, In the Senate of the United States, Thursday, December SO, 1894, On the receiving of the statues of Webster and Stark. Mr. HOAR said: Mr. President: There are few faithful portraits of human faces or faithful representations of human figures which take their place by the side of the ideal creations of art, such as the Jove of Phidias, or the Apollo Belvidere, or the Venus of Melos, as exam- ples of consummate beauty, or as expressing great moral qualities, or as types of nations or races. The face of George Washington, misrepresented by Stuart; the portrait of the yoiing Augustus, where in the innocent face of unstainedyouth appears already the promise of an imperial cliaracter; some Greek and Roman busts; some representatieas of the youthful Napoleon; the head of Alexander Humboldt; the glorious forehead of Coleridge; the lips of Julius •Caesar — are almost the only examples that I now recall. The figure and head of Daniel Webster I think we shall all agree to include in the same list. No man ever looked upon him and forgot him. His stately per- sonal ijresence was the chief ornament of Boston and of Washing- ton for a generation. When he walked, a stranger, through the streets of London, the draymen turned to gaze after him as he pcissed. Sidney Smith said of him, "He is a cathedral by him- self;" and at another time, in homelier phrase, "A steam engine in breeches." Carlyle wrote to Emerson of him: The tanned complexion; that amorphoiis, crag-like face; the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to bo * blown: the mastiff mouth, accurately closed; I have not traced so much of silent Berserkir rage that I remember of in any man. The qualities of one of the greatest races of men which the world has seen in its greatest age and fullest development appeared in that majestic countenance and looked out in the gaze of those magnificent eyes. Command, courage, steadfastness, intellect, the IV pose of conscious strength, the capacity for tenderness or for burning i^assion, are all there. 2 1703 3 Mr. Webster's family, as is the case with very many of our emi- nent men, both living and dead, is of Scotch origin, though they dwelt for some time in England before they came to this country. That element, whether it came originally from Scotland itself, or indirectly from Ireland or England, has contributed some of the best citizens to New England, as to other parts of the country. The shrewd sense, the active intellect, the undaunted persever- ance, the indomitable courage, the deep religious faith, the ten- derness of family affection, the stanch patriotism for which the Scotch are so distinguished, have never sutfered in the trans- planting. Wherever an\'thing good is to be had or to be done m this country, you are apt to tind a Scotchman on the front seat tr>ang to see ii he can get it ar do it. He touched New England at every point. He was born a frontiersman. He tells us that when the smoke rose from hia father's chimney, there was no similar evidence of a white man a habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. He was bred a farmer. He knew well the history of the growth of every crop, the chemistry of the soil, the procession of the seasons. He knew, too, the simple and tender history of the country fireside, and what the farmer was thinking of as he gtuded his plow in the furrow in April or pitched the hay into the cart m midsummer. He was a fisherman in the mountain brooks and off the shore. He never forgot his origin, and he never was ashamed of it. Amid all the care and honor of his great place here he was homesick for the companv of his old neighbors and friends. Whether he stood in Washington, the unchallenged prince and chief in the Senate, or in foreign lands, the kingliest man of his, time in the presence of kings, his heart was m New England. When the spring came he heard far off the fife bird and the bobo- | link calling him to his New Ham])shire mountains, or the plash- ; ing of the waves on the shtn-e at Marslifield alluring hira with a. sweeter than siren's voice to Ids home by the summer sea. That Mr. Webster w^s the foremost American lawyer of hisf time, as well in the capacity to conduct jury trials as to argue questions of law before the full court, will not, I think, be seriously questioned by anybody who has read the reports of his legal argu- ments, or who has studied the history of his encounters before juries ^^^th antagonists like Choate or Pinckney. That he was foremost in that field which is almost peculiar to this country, where the orator utters the emotions of the people on great occasions of joy or sorrow, or of national pride, the reader of the orations at Plymouth Rock and on the occasion of the foundation and completion of the monument at Bunker Hill, the eulogies on Adams and Jefferson, on Story and Mason, will not question. There has been nothing of the kind to surpass them or to equal them since the funeral oration of Pericles. That he was a great diplomatist, able to conduct difficult nego- tiations to successful issue or to debate with the representatives of foreign governments questions in dispute between nations, was abundantly shown in his brief terms of service in the Department of State. But the place of his achievement and renown was here in the \ Senate Chamber. He was every inch a Senator— an American Senator. He needed no robe, no gilded chair, no pageant, no cere- / 1702 Anony, no fasces, no herald making proclamation to add to the /dignity and to the authority with which his majestic presence, his / consummate reason, his weighty eloquence, his lofty bearing in- l^vested the Senatorial character. His statue will stand in yonder chamber to be the first object of admiration to every visitor for centuries to come. But no work of art can do justice to the image of Webster which dwells in the hearts of his countr\^nen and there shall abide when the walls of this Capitol shall have crumbled and the columns of the Memorial Hall shall lie pros- trate. That image will abide, one and inseparable, with the Union which he defended and the liberty which he loved. I do not think Mr. Webster's style is maintained at its highest excellence throughout his speeches, as they come down to us in print. The thought is never tame or mean. You never doubt that a great mind is at work. But it often seems to be working sluggishly. The expression sometimes seems that of a man half asleep. This may largely be due to the imperfection of reporting. His masterpieces of English are a few passages where his faculties seem to have been at a white heat. It is a common mistake to speak of Mr. Webster's as a nervous Saxon style. Except in a few sen- tences, the characteristic of Mr. Webster's style is a somewhat pon- derous Latinity. There is more of Dr. Johnson than of Shakespeare in it. I think that for his purposes he was discreet in the choice of a vehicle for his thoughts, for which the resources of that part of our language which is of Saxon origin would often have been in- adequate. The Saxon is tough, sinewy, racy. It is the fittest speech for common life. It is not without resources for the utterance of lofty emotion, as witness many passages in the Bible Avhich we know by heart. But still there is something lacking in it. When the intellect would express its profoundest meaning, or clothe itself in state or splendor, it seeks in the Latin what it does not find elsewhere. If we were to endow the animals with the gift of speech, we should give the Saxon to the otter, to the ferret, to the bull dog, and even to the eagle. But I think we would need something else for the lion. Indeed, in Campbell's matchless couplet, even in describing the eagle's flight, with what a fine in- stinct he touches both chords. The Saxon will do for the swift flight, like a bullet to its mark. But the lofty, unapproachable solitude must be described in the majestic Latin: Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding he rode, Compauionless, bearing destruction abroad. The Saxon is a safe tongue for persons who are in danger of spoiling their English style by the use of little pomposities. The attempt to give dignity to a mean or common thought, or to a thought which should be uttered simply, directly, and plainly, by clothing it in a certain affected stateliness of phrase, is the ^ruin of many writers and of more speakers. The Saxon is not likely to be used by a writer who has no thought at all. But on every occasion he knew liow to convev his weighty mean- ing to any tribunal he had to address, whether court or Senate, alike to the understanding of the people and the apprehension of any antagonist. Thegi-andeur of Mr. Webster's speech was alwaA's mingled with moral tenderness and beauty. But his passion is a restrained and contained passion. He belonged to a race, he spako ir(i-3 to auditors of a race, not in the habit of uncovering the springs of emotion to everv observer. The few incidents where he gave way and seemed to have lost command of himself in deep personal feeling, as in liis Dartmouth College argument, are handed dow^n to us by tradition onlv. He did not prepare them beforehand, and he has left no record of them himself. There is in all Mr. Web- ster's speeches the appearance of reserved power, of avoidance of extremes, which adds so much to their impressiveness. Half his strength he put not forth. It was said of him by a gi-eat philosopher of New England, the only man of his time whose influence as a great public teacher equaled his own: His weight was like the falling of a planet, his discretion the return of its due and perfect curve. He was not more distinguished from other public speakers by his severe reason, his sound sense, and his lofty eloquence than by his moderation and restraint. He was master of every emotion but one— love of country. That alone he allowed to obtain mas- tery of him. It was hard for him to argue the wrong side. His genius was less the genius of the advocate than of the judge. His style was the fit vehicle for truth onlv. His clear logic could never be at the command of error. Calhoun, in his dying hours, said, when Mr. Webster's name was mentioned to him: Mr. Webster has as high a standard of truth as any statesman I have met in debate. Convince him, and he can not reply; he is silenced; he can not look truth in the face and oppose it by argiiment. I think that it could be readUy perceived when he felt the force of an unanswerable reply. /" It is scarcely too much to say that Daniel Webster first taught /Jiis country her ovn\ greatness" There can be found no utterance of his, whether he speak of his country or in behalf of his coun- try, which is not in a manner befitting a first-class power among the nations of the world. There is no vanity or pettiness or boast- ing. There is no deference or beseeching in his tone. The con- trast in this particular between Mr. Webster's state papers and many of those that preceded his time and some, I am sorry to say, of a time later than his is quite marked. This lofty and dignified tone marks all his speeches from his first entrance upon public view. No Englishman, no Greek, no Roman ever felt a loftier pride in the character of his country, in his country's proudest dav. than Daniel Webster felt in his. , From the time of his first public speech which arrested the atten- tion of his countr^-men until to-dav. his speeches are the literature 1 of American nationalitv. No other orator or statesman divides I with him this honor. Mothers teach their children the love of ^country in his words. The schoolboy knows them by heart. On every patriotic anniversarv the orators repeat them. They are inscribed on the walls of banquet halls and on triumphal banners. They wiU never be forgotten. Thev are to the American what the Psalms of David were to the Hebrew, what the songs of Burns are to the Scotchman. If Mr. Webster had died when General Taylor was nominated for the Presidency in 1848 he would have gone down in our history as its chief historical figure, save Washington and Lincoln alone. The estimate in which the people of New England would have 1703 6 held him would, I think, have been accepted by the whole country, and would have scarcely fallen short of idolatry. There would have been perhaps a little complaint that in his last years he had been slow and unready in taking his place as the foremost leader and champion of liberty and in marshaling her liosts for the great striTggle for dominion over the vast territory between the Missis- sippi and the Pacific. But the judgment of the countrj^ would have been that such hesitation was only the deliberation due to the gravity of the question and the importance of his own rela- tion to it. Until the 7th of March, 1850, he was the oracle of New Eng- land. His portrait was upon the farmers' walls. He seemed to dwell at every fireside, not so much a guest, as at home, in an almost bodily presence, mingling with every discussion where the power, the giory, or the autliority of the country was in question. Before 1850 Daniel Webster had never come off defeated from any intellectual encounter or lowered his spear before any antagonist. In the strifes of party politics his side had often been defeated. But his arguments of fundamental questions had sunk deep into the heart and had convinced the reason of the vast majority of his countrymen of all parties. But in 1850, for the first time, he encountered quite another antagonist. He put himself in opposition to the conscience of the North. The voice of law, as he interpreted it, and the voice of God, speaking to the individual soul, for the first time in our na- tional history seemed to be in conflict. I suppose the time has not yet come for a sound and dispassionate judgment of Mr. Web- ster's motives in choosing his side. It is possible that, like so many other and ordinary men, he hardly knew them himself. A man conscious of great powers, the object of a worship amount- ing almost to idolatry, not merely from common men but from the ablest, wisest, and most illustrious of his contemporaries, know- ing well his own fitness for the highest public service, and know- ing also his own purpose to employ supreme power, if intrusted with it, solely for the public advantage, can hardly measure the influence of ambition as afi:ecting his judgment. Mr. Webster was doubtless sincere when he stated his appre- hension of a dissolution of the Union and of the vast mischief to hiamanity if that dissolution should be accomplished. Subseqr.ent events and calmer reflection have shown that in this respect it was he, and not his opponents, who was right. But no language can fitly describe the condition of mind with which the report of Mr. Webster's speech of the 7th of March, 1850, was heard. Noth- ing could have resisted the dominion of Daniel Webster over New England until he provoked an encounter with the inexorable conscience of the Puritan. The shock of amazement, of con- sternation, and of grief which went through the North has had no parallel save that which attended the assassination of Lincoln. Is it you, Daniel Webster, that are giving iis this counsel? _ Do you tell us that when the fugitive slave girl lays her suppliant hands on the horns of the altar, that it is oiir duty to send her back to be scourged, to be outraged, to be denied the right to read her Bible, to be the mother of a progeny for whom, for count- less generations, these things shall be the connnon and relentless doom? Is it you, the orator of Plymouth Rock, of Bunker Hill, 1702 •7 defender of the Constitution, from whose volcanic lips came those words of molten lava. '• Lilaerty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable"'? Has the intellect that wrought out the mas- sive logic of the reply to Hayne descended to this pitiful argu- ment? Do we — Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves? Is it slavery and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable? Do you, who erected in imperishable granite the eternal monument of Nathan Dane, amcyig the massive columns of your great argu- ment, tell us now that natural conditions are to determine the question of slavery, and that an ordinance of freedom is an affront to the South, and that we must not reenact the law of God? Is the great territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific to be left to its fate? Do you. who came to the side of Andrew Jackson in 1832, counsel that the lawful authority of this nation shall yield to the threats of revolution and secession? Is it from you that we hear that there is no higher law? Even if you are right m yoiir interpretation of the Constitution, when did you discover that it was greater than the law of God? . Were not the mandates of Laud, which the Puritans resisted and from which they fled, founded upon English law? Was not the revocation of the edict of Nantes from the same lawful authority as that which enacted it? Were not the doings of St. Bartholo- mew's Eve by command of a lawful king? Did not the Enghsh judges determine the question of the right to impose ship money in the King's favor? Were Hampden and Russell mere traitors and agitators? Your doctrine condemns in one breath the cham- pions and the martyrs of English liberty and of our own. Mr. Webster, for the first time in his life, failed to comprehend the temper of the people among whom he was born and bred. He met this expostulation with arrogance and contempt. It was perhaps not unnatural. He was grov/ing old. He had been ted on adulation. He had found no antagonists fit to cope with him, or who dared to cope with him. He had failed — Onlv when he tried The adamant of the righteous side. He had an old man's dread of a new order of things. He had a not ungenerous ambition. He was right in his estimate of public danger" His constitutional arguments remained unanswered. Webster died wliile the storm of this mighty conflict was still raging. He was disappointed in the hope that it would be given to him to compose it. The compromises which he had hoped would settle forever the questions growing out of slavery were never ob- served by either side. In the national convention of his own party, as its candidate for the Presidency in 1853, out of 293 votes he received but 30. He counseled his friends to cast their votes tor the candidate of the Democracy, and went home to Marshfield to die prematurely, and — Foiled in aim and hope, bereaved Of old friends, by the new deceived, Beside the lonely Northern sea, Where long and low the marsh lands spread, Laid wearily down his august head. iro2 8 It would have been fortunate for Mr. Webster's happiness and for his fame if he had died before 1850. Bnt what would have been his fame and what would have been his happiness if his life could have been spared till 18(15? He would have seen the tran- scendent issue on which the fate of the country hung made up as he had framed it in 1830. Union and liberty, the law of man and the law of God, the Constitution and natiiral justice, the aiigust voice of patriotism and the august voices of the men who settled the country and of the men who framed the Constitution are all speak- ing on the same side. He would have lived to see the time for con- cession all gone by; the flag falling from Sumter's walls caught as it fell liy the splendid youth of 1861 ; the armed hosts pressing upon the Capitol beaten back, everj-thing which he had loved, everything wLich he had worked for in the prime of his years and in the strength of his manhood, ralhnng upon one side — patriotism, national au- thority, law, conscience, duty, all speaking together and all speak- ing through his lips and repeating his maxims. He would have seen his great arguments in the reply to Hayne, in the debates with Calhoun, inspiring, guiding, commanding, strengthening. The judge in the court is citing them. The orator in the Senate is repeating them. The soldier by the camp fire is meditating them. The Union cannon is shotted with them. They are flashing from the muzzle of the rifle. They are gleaming in the stroke of the saber. They are heard in the roar of the artil- lery. They shine on the advancing banner. They mingle with the shoiit of victory. They conquer in the surrender of Appo- mattox. They abide forever and forever in the returning reason of an estranged section and the returning loj-alty of a united people. Oh, if he could but have lived — if he could but have lived, how the hearts of his countrymtrii would have come back to him! What will be the final verdict of mankind upon the last three years of the life of Daniel Webster it would be arrogance and pre- sumption here to declare. But whether, as manj^ men think, they will be held to have been but another instance of human frailty, giving way before a supreme temptation, to be pitied, to be par- doned, to be forgotten; or whether those years Avill be held to have been years of a supreme and noble sacrifice of self to patriotism and for the safety of the country — it is too early, although nearly half a century has gone by, to pronounce with confidence. May none of us in our humbler public career be subjected to such a test or be brought to the bar of history to receive its sentence after such a trial. The bitterest enemy, the most austere judge, must grant to Dan- iel Webster a place with the great intellects of the world. He was among the greatest. Of all the men who have rendered great serv- ices to America and to the cause of constitiitional liberty, there are Init two or three names worthy to be placed by the side of his. Of all the lovers of his country, no man ever loved her with a greater love. In all the attributes of a mighty and splendid man- hood he never had a superior on earth. Master of English speech, master of the loftiest emotions that stirred the hearts of his couu; trymen, comprehending better than any other man^^save Marshall) the principles of lier Constitution, he is tlie one foremost figure ill our history between the day when Washington died and the day when Lincoln took the oath of office. 1702 O '^i^ 39 W -^^^^ -^oV '^^*"^* n^ ." ^ """"" \^* I H a ,0- -o^--^V^ \/W^\o^" ^^'-i^^^;^^ -o • * O M • O »• s '%<>■'' ' .♦ o - • - "^^ ^.* ^ ^ » ►^ .L^'.^ /.•i.;/^-\ c°*.5^^.,% /.-i-^^-^ ^° •' V"^""/ V*^'^*/ V^^\*^ "°-^ • • ii o » o o " a • I '< ^,* 4-^ '^ " • » •» ' .0^ '^o, *. ... e N ' -^..^^ WBftTBOOKBfNOJ^O* ?aie. »»^ °* e M < t • o.