DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 By SAMUEL W. McCALL 
 
Class L, JiA_o___ 
 
 Book.__AiL i i «u 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 By SAMUEL W. McCALL 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1902 
 
 *AV 
 
THP IJ8RARY OF 
 CONGRESS. 
 
 Two Copies RscetvED 
 
 MAY. 3 1902 
 
 OOPVTWOHT F.NTRV 
 
 CLASS «- XXo. No 
 COPY A. 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, I902, BY SAMUEL W. MCCALL 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published May, 1902 
 
NOTE. 
 
 Daniel Websteb graduated at Dart- 
 mouth College in the Class of 1801, 
 and in September, 1901, the college 
 celebrated in an elaborate manner at 
 Hanover, 1ST. H., the centennial of that 
 event. In compliance with the invita- 
 tion of a committee of the trustees of 
 the college, Mr. McCall delivered an 
 address, — or, as it is termed in the col- 
 lege official report, — the " Webster 
 Centennial Oration." "With the excep- 
 tion of some revision and the addition 
 of a few sentences, the address is pub- 
 lished here as it was prepared for the 
 occasion. It was somewhat abridged 
 in delivery on account of its length. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTEK 
 
 Nearly half a century has elapsed 
 since the College gave formal expres- 
 sion to its sorrow upon the death of 
 Daniel Webster. The life of that great 
 statesman had just ended. On this very 
 spot Eufus Choate spoke his eulogy. 
 Sympathy in a common political cause 
 and the attachment of a life-long 
 friendship stimulated an almost unri- 
 valed gift of eloquence to the produc- 
 tion of a masterpiece among orations 
 of that nature, a speech of which Mr. 
 Everett expressed the opinion that it 
 was " as magnificent a eulogium as was 
 ever pronounced." It was a time for 
 the eulogy of friends, and for the ex- 
 pression of a sense of desolateness over 
 the departure of so transcendent a 
 figure, but it was no time for a just 
 
 1 
 
DANIEL WEBSTEK 
 
 estimate of Webster either as a man or 
 a statesman. His career had been too 
 great to be comprehended by a near 
 view. It demanded that perspective 
 without which only a distorted outline 
 of vast objects can be obtained. The 
 passion of partisanship was hot and 
 surging. Above the deep tones of 
 praise arose the sharp clamor of de- 
 traction. Across the horizon which 
 shut out the near future could be heard 
 the beating of the drums which he had 
 set throbbing for the Union. The 
 chief work of his life was yet to be 
 tried in the furnace of civil war. It 
 required that most inexorable of all 
 tests, — the test of time. 
 
 Transient movements and the mere 
 noises of unsubstantial reputations have 
 had time to pass into the silence of 
 oblivion. A generation that knew him 
 not has come upon the scene. We can 
 
 2 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 now see something of the proper and 
 ultimate relations of events. We are 
 now able somewhat dispassionately to 
 judge. The observance, amid general 
 approval, of this unique occasion bears 
 its own eloquent tribute. That so many 
 who occupy positions of responsibility 
 and distinction, and to whom Webster 
 is merely a historical personage, should 
 come here to-day, as to a shrine, from 
 all parts of the country, fifty years after 
 he has disappeared from the view of 
 men, is of striking significance. The 
 loadstone that draws you is his fame. 
 Obviously the stupendous events of 
 that half century have not dwarfed him. 
 The distance at which most of us dis- 
 appear hardly serves to bring out his 
 heroic proportions, and we are here to- 
 day to do homage to a statesman who 
 easily takes rank as the foremost figure 
 in our parliamentary history. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 The task of fully reviewing his ca- 
 reer goes far beyond the limits of this 
 occasion. I shall endeavor to set be- 
 fore you some estimate of him as a 
 lawyer, an orator, and a statesman, and 
 shall recall to your minds some of the 
 great principles of government with 
 which he was identified. I shall ask 
 you also to look at him for a moment 
 in the supreme relation in which he 
 stood to his fellow-men; for back of 
 the orator, or statesman, or lawyer 
 there stands the essential thing that is 
 manifested in them, there stands the 
 man. 
 
 And I should fail to perform the 
 most obvious duty if I did not refer 
 to his relations to the College which 
 helped to nurture his genius and to- 
 wards which he bore a filial love. 
 When he entered the College more 
 than one hundred years ago it had at- 
 
 4 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tained a considerable degree of pros- 
 perity. For a quarter of a century 
 after Wheelock planted it in the wil- 
 derness it remained the only college in 
 northern New England, and the rapid 
 settlement of the country about it gave 
 it a constituency respectable in num- 
 bers and still more respectable in char- 
 acter. Webster came from one of the 
 frontier families that crowded into this 
 region. When the smoke first curled 
 from the chimney of his father's log 
 cabin in Salisbury, there was, as the 
 son has said, " no similar evidence of a 
 white man's habitation between it and 
 the settlements on the rivers of Can- 
 ada." Professor Wendell tells us in 
 his scholarly book on American litera- 
 ture that Webster was the "son of a 
 New Hampshire countryman," and 
 again, that " he retained so many traces 
 of his far from eminent New Hamp- 
 
 5 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 shire origin " that he was less typical 
 of the Boston orators than were some 
 other men. It is true that the father 
 was a " New Hampshire countryman/' 
 and he does not appear to have attained 
 any remarkable eminence. But only 
 the most cautious inference should be 
 drawn from a surface or negative fact 
 of that character, in a past necessarily 
 covered for the most part with dark- 
 ness. A great deal is to-day unknown 
 about that sturdy race of men who 
 swarmed over our frontiers more than 
 a century ago, and especially a great 
 deal that was worthy and noble in in- 
 dividuals. And it is hardly useful to 
 turn to a doubtful past in order to 
 learn of a known present, or to judge 
 of a son whom we know well from a 
 father of whom we know but little. It 
 is often more safe to judge of the an- 
 cestor from the descendant than of the 
 
 6 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 descendant from the ancestor. I sup- 
 posed that Daniel Webster had forever 
 settled the essential character of the 
 stock from which he sprung, just as 
 the pure gold of Lincoln's character 
 unerringly points to a mine of unal- 
 loyed metal somewhere, if there is any- 
 thing in the principles of heredity ; and 
 whether the mine is known or un- 
 known, its gold will pass current even 
 at the Boston mint. Perhaps neither 
 of these men in himself or in his origin 
 was wholly typical of any place, but 
 it is enough that they were typical of 
 America. 
 
 But what we know of "Webster's 
 father indicates the origin of some of 
 the great qualities of the son. He was 
 a man of much native strength of in- 
 tellect and of resolute independence of 
 character. He was an officer in the 
 Revolutionary army, and, although 
 
 7 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 never trained to the law, was thought 
 fit to be appointed to a judicial office 
 of considerable importance. He had 
 those magnificent physical qualities 
 which made the son a source of won- 
 der to all who knew him. He had, too, 
 a heart which, to use the words of the 
 son, " he seemed to have borrowed 
 from a lion." "Your face is not so 
 black, Daniel," Stark once said, "as 
 your father's was with gunpowder at 
 the Bennington fight." And on the 
 night after the discovery of Arnold's 
 treason, at that dark moment when 
 even the faithful might be thought 
 faithless, and the safety of the new 
 nation demanded a sure arm to lean 
 upon, it was then, according to the tra- 
 dition, that Webster was put in com- 
 mand of the guard before the head- 
 quarters of his great chief, and George 
 "Washington, another " countryman," 
 
 8 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 said, " Captain Webster, I believe I 
 can trust you' ' 
 
 I have alluded to the prosperity 
 which the College soon attained on 
 account of the rapid settlement of this 
 region. During the ten years imme- 
 diately preceding the year of "Webster's 
 graduation it was second among the 
 colleges of the country in the number 
 of graduates to the degree of Bachelor 
 of Arts. But whatever may have been 
 its relative rank, the one thing most 
 certainly known about it now is that 
 it was a small college. The pathetic 
 statement of Webster in the argument 
 of its cause at the bar of the Supreme 
 Court has settled that fact for all time. 
 It is true that it was a day of small 
 things, but the smallness of contem- 
 porary objects was not immortalized by 
 the touch of genius, which has it in its 
 power to endow with perpetual life any 
 
 9 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 passing condition or mood in the life of 
 a man or an institution. Fifty genera- 
 tions have grown old and died since 
 the Greek artist carved his marble urn, 
 but the maiden and her lover chiseled 
 there are still young, and to the immor- 
 tality conferred by art has been added 
 the immortality of poetry in the noble 
 verse of Keats : — 
 
 u 
 
 Forever wilt thou love and she be fair." 
 
 The College has grown wonderfully in 
 the century since Webster left her. It 
 is our hope that the prosperity of her 
 past may be eclipsed by the prosperity 
 of her future. But however great she 
 may become hereafter, the genius of her 
 son has made it impossible to be for- 
 gotten that she was once a small college. 
 The schooling of Webster before he 
 entered college was of a very limited 
 character. He appears to have been 
 
 10 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 well drilled in Latin, but he possessed 
 only the rudiments of English, and of 
 Greek he knew very little. It must 
 not be overlooked, however, that even 
 at his youthful age he had acquired a 
 fondness for the " Spectator " and for 
 other good English books. "While in 
 college he broadened his reading of 
 English and history until he was said 
 to be at the head of his class in those 
 branches. Perhaps his most positive 
 acquirement was in the Latin language, 
 in which he became a good scholar and 
 which he continued to study in after 
 life. A profound knowledge of a for- 
 eign tongue can hardly be conclusively 
 inferred from frequent quotations from 
 it. In the oratory of the first half of 
 the last century the Latin quotation 
 was an established institution, and for 
 much of it little more than the manual 
 custody of the Latin author was appar- 
 
 11 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 ently necessary. But the drafts upon 
 that language which were made in 
 "Webster's speeches were apt, and usu- 
 ally betrayed an insight into the mean- 
 ing of the author, deep enough often to 
 get a second or poetical meaning. He 
 continued to neglect Greek, probably 
 because he had been so miserably pre- 
 pared in it, and long afterwards he 
 lamented that he had not studied it 
 until he could read and understand 
 Demosthenes in his own tongue. 
 
 The course of study which he fol- 
 lowed was the rigid and unyielding 
 course of that day, where every branch 
 was impartially prescribed for every- 
 body. Mr. Tickaor is authority for 
 the statement that the instruction in 
 the College was meagre. This appears 
 to have been a fault of the times rather 
 than a particular fault of the College; 
 for a dozen years after Webster's 
 
 12 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 graduation, and in Boston, Mr. Ticknor 
 himself succeeded in getting the neces- 
 sary books to study German only with 
 the greatest difficulty. He discovered 
 a text-book in the Boston Athenaeum 
 which appears to have been so much of 
 a curiosity that it was deposited there by 
 John Quincy Adams en going abroad ; 
 and then he was forced to send to New 
 Hampshire for a dictionary. But how- 
 ever narrow the course of study com- 
 pared with that of the modern college, 
 it contained the means of much excel- 
 lent discipline, and the years spent in 
 its pursuit laid the foundation of a broad 
 culture and prepared the way for the 
 development of thinkers and scholars. 
 
 The debating society was an insti- 
 tution to which Webster was devoted 
 and from which he derived great bene- 
 fit. It enabled him to overcome his 
 timidity, which had been so great at 
 
 13 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 Exeter that it was impossible for him 
 to recite his declamations before the 
 school, and he became in college a 
 ready and self-possessed debater. I do 
 not find it easy, however, to detect 
 under the flowers of his early rhetoric 
 the promise of that weighty and con- 
 centrated style which afterwards dis- 
 tinguished him. But his college efforts 
 were a necessary part of his intellectual 
 development. It was better that the 
 inborn desire to utter fine words with- 
 out meaning should be satisfied in 
 youth, when it could be satisfied with 
 comparative safety, than that it should 
 be restrained at the risk of gratifica- 
 tion when he came to perform the sober 
 duties of life. Although not the first 
 in scholarship, he undoubtedly acquired 
 a leadership among his college mates. 
 His popularity was the natural result 
 of the display of his ability and manly 
 
 14 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 qualities in that most just and perfect 
 democracy in the world — a democracy 
 of schoolboys. It lingered in the Col- 
 lege after he left it; and when he re- 
 turned after his graduation with the 
 " shekels," as he expressed it, which 
 he had earned for his brother Ezekiel, 
 he was received as quite a hero. 
 
 It is difficult to believe, in view of 
 the majestic proportions of his later 
 years, that he was ever slender and 
 delicate ; but he is spoken of as being 
 in his college days " long, slender, pale, 
 and all eyes." But his slight form 
 supported an enormous mass of head, 
 with its noble brow crowned by hair 
 as black as the wing of a raven. Un- 
 doubtedly his wonderful black eyes 
 were his most striking feature, those 
 eyes which near the end of his life 
 Carlyle spoke of as " dull anthracite 
 furnaces, needing only to be blown," 
 
 15 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 but which were then lighted up with 
 the fire and brilliancy of youth. His 
 nature unfolded itself slowly. Far 
 from being forward, it required a strong 
 effort for him to overcome his bashful- 
 ness. He displayed while in college 
 the qualities of a large, undeveloped 
 nature, and led a careless, happy, and 
 somewhat indolent existence. 
 
 There was that in his appearance at 
 that early day which arrested attention 
 and dispensed with the necessity of the 
 ordinary introduction. Soon after leav- 
 ing college he entered the law office 
 of the accomplished Christopher Gore 
 of Boston, presented by one as un- 
 known as himself, who could not or 
 did not speak his name, — under cir- 
 cumstances surely that would not ordi- 
 narily secure a hearing, much less em- 
 ployment of a confidential character; 
 but the attention of the busy lawyer 
 
 16 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 and man of the world was at once 
 secured, and Webster was told to go 
 to work. His connection with Gore 
 proved of great value, not so much 
 because it gave him an opportunity to 
 study his profession under as favor- 
 able conditions probably as then ex- 
 isted, but because Gore's advice de- 
 terred him from taking a step which 
 might have kept him from his great 
 career. Webster was offered the clerk- 
 ship of a New Hampshire court, with a 
 salary which, in his circumstances, was 
 a tempting one, and he had no other 
 thought than to accept it. Gore clearly 
 saw that he was capable of performing 
 a far higher part in the world, and he 
 doubtless saw, too, the danger that the 
 competency which the place offered 
 might tempt him from making the 
 hard struggle necessary to establish 
 himself at the bar. He strongly urged 
 
 17 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 "Webster to decline the position, and 
 thus rendered him a great service 
 in keeping him upon the arduous 
 road. 
 
 It was a fortunate circumstance, too, 
 in his early career that it fell to his lot 
 to meet often in the courts so great 
 a lawyer as Jeremiah Mason. When 
 Webster came to the Portsmouth bar, 
 he found Mason its unquestioned leader. 
 Mason was a giant mentally and phy- 
 sically, thoroughly trained in his pro- 
 fession, with an absolute contempt for 
 rhetorical ornament, and a way of talk- 
 ing directly at juries in a terse and in- 
 formal style which they could compre- 
 hend, standing, as Webster expressed 
 it, so that he might put his finger on 
 the foreman's nose. Long afterwards, 
 when Webster's fame as a lawyer and 
 statesman extended over the whole 
 country, he wrote it as his deliberate 
 
 18 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 opinion of Mason that if there was a 
 stronger intellect in the country he did 
 not know it. From this estimate he 
 would not even except John Marshall. 
 Webster quickly outstripped his other 
 rivals, and for nine years he maintained 
 the struggle against this formidable 
 antagonist for supremacy at the Ports- 
 mouth bar. He was compelled to over- 
 come his natural tendency to indolence 
 and to make the most careful prepara- 
 tion of his cases. The rivalry called 
 into play the most strenuous exercise 
 of all his faculties. The intellectual 
 vigilance and readiness which became 
 his marked characteristics in debate 
 were especially cultivated. He soon 
 saw the futility of florid declamation 
 against the simple style of Mason, and 
 his own eloquence rapidly passed out 
 of the efflorescent stage and became 
 direct and full of the Saxon quality, 
 
 19 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 although he never affected little words, 
 and would use a strong word of Latin 
 origin when it would better answer his 
 purpose. When his practice at the 
 Portsmouth bar came to an end, he had 
 proved his ability to contend on even 
 terms, at least, with Mason, and he had 
 developed those great qualities which 
 enabled him to take his place as the 
 leader of the Boston bar, almost with- 
 out a struggle, and to step at an early- 
 age into the front rank of the lawyers 
 who contended in the Supreme Court 
 at "Washington. 
 
 This occasion demands more than a 
 passing reference to the cause in which 
 Webster gained a recognized place 
 among the leaders of the bar of the na- 
 tional Supreme Court, for it possesses 
 a double importance to us to-day. It 
 marked an epoch in his professional 
 career and it vitally concerned the exists 
 
 20 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 ence of this College. The Dartmouth 
 College causes grew out of enactments 
 of the New Hampshire legislature, 
 making amendments in the charter 
 which differed little from repeal. 
 These acts did not spring primarily 
 from a desire to improve the charter, 
 but were the outgrowth of a division 
 in the board of trustees, one of the 
 parties endeavoring to secure by legis- 
 lation the control which it had lost in 
 the board itself. In substance the le- 
 gislative acts created a new corporation 
 and transferred to it all the property of 
 the College. There would have been 
 little security in the charters of colleges 
 or of similar establishments in this coun- 
 try if state legislatures generally had 
 possessed the power to pass acts of 
 that sweeping character. 
 
 The trustees made a struggle for 
 self-preservation against great odds. 
 
 21 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 The dominant political forces in the 
 state were hostile ; the legislature was 
 against them; and, as it turned out, the 
 Supreme Court of the state was against 
 them also. The contest was first made 
 in the state court, and it is rare that 
 there has ever been brought together 
 in a trial in any court such an array of 
 lawyers as appeared in the little court- 
 room at Exeter. "Webster appeared for 
 the College. He had with him Jere- 
 miah Mason and Jeremiah Smith. 
 "Webster and Mason formed a combi- 
 nation which could not be surpassed in 
 strength by that of any other two law- 
 yers at the American bar, while Smith, 
 the former chief justice of the state, was 
 probably its most learned lawyer. It 
 is no disparagement of the counsel 
 against the College to say that they 
 were overmatched. They were, how- 
 ever, great lawyers, — Sullivan the at- 
 
 00 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 torney-general, and Ichabod Bartlett, a 
 hard fighter and an ingenious and elo- 
 quent advocate. Both sides were fully 
 prepared in the state court, and it may 
 well be doubted whether New Hamp- 
 shire has ever witnessed such another 
 intellectual contest as took place at Ex- 
 eter over the College charter. Web- 
 ster's speech does not appear in the 
 printed report of the proceedings in the 
 state court. He was the only one of 
 the counsel on either side in the New 
 Hampshire court who took part at 
 "Washington, and he apparently did not 
 wish to be reported twice in the same 
 cause. But at Exeter he closed for 
 his side in a speech of great brilliancy; 
 and his " Caesar in the Senate House " 
 peroration, which is said to have brought 
 tears to the eyes of John Marshall at 
 Washington, was spoken in substance 
 and with thrilling effect. The decision 
 
 23 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 of the New Hampshire court was 
 against the College and disposed of 
 the point which appeared to be the 
 strongest in its case, that the legisla- 
 ture was inherently incapable of passing 
 the acts in question, because vested 
 rights could not be taken away without 
 a judgment which could be rendered 
 only by the judiciary. It also settled 
 the claim that the statutes in question 
 were in contravention of the constitu- 
 tion of New Hampshire. The simple 
 ground of appeal to the federal Su- 
 preme Court lay in the contention that 
 the College charter was a contract and 
 was under the protection of that clause 
 of the federal constitution which pro- 
 hibited states from passing laws impair- 
 ing the obligation of contracts. "Web- 
 ster did indeed state the whole argu- 
 ment before the court at "Washington, 
 but only for the purpose of illustration, 
 
 24 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 and very likely also for collateral effect 
 upon the court. 
 
 The point upon which the court had 
 jurisdiction was regarded by the Col- 
 lege counsel as a forlorn hope and to be 
 more daring and novel than sound. It 
 apparently originated with Mason. It 
 was, however, the only ground open on 
 the appeal, and this was a fortunate cir- 
 cumstance for the fame of the cause. 
 If the whole cause had been subject to 
 review, it might well have been decided 
 upon one of the other grounds, and 
 thus it would not have become one of 
 the great landmarks of constitutional 
 law. Wirt, who was then the attor- 
 ney-general of the United States, 
 and Holmes appeared at Washington 
 against the College, and Hopkinson 
 with Webster in its favor. It must be 
 admitted that Webster possessed an 
 advantage over the other counsel. He 
 
 25 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 had fought over the ground, when it 
 was most stubbornly contested, and knew 
 every inch of it. His whole soul was 
 in his case. He had the briefs of Mason 
 and Smith as well as his own, and had 
 absorbed every point in all the great 
 arguments on his 'side at Exeter. He 
 generously gave all the credit to Smith 
 and Mason. He was interested in pre- 
 venting the printing of the Exeter 
 speeches because, he said, it would show 
 where he got his plumes. This was un- 
 doubtedly too generous, but his debt 
 was a heavy one, and no lawyer was 
 ever better prepared than Webster was 
 when he rose to speak in the College 
 cause. He possessed, too, as thorough 
 a mastery of his opponents' arguments 
 as of his own. With his extraordinary 
 power of eloquence thus armed, it is not 
 strange that the court was to witness a 
 revelation, and that he was destined to 
 
 26 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 a great personal triumph. He took the 
 part of junior counsel and opened the 
 argument, but when he took his seat 
 after five hours of high reason and clear 
 statement, kindled with tremendous pas- 
 sion and delivered with all the force of 
 his wonderful personality, the case had 
 been both opened and closed, and no- 
 thing remained to be said. The spec- 
 tators were astonished and overawed. 
 It is not to be wondered at that Mar- 
 shall sat enchained and that Story for- 
 got to take notes. The counsel against 
 the College were far from being so well 
 prepared. Webster afterwards wrote 
 a letter to "Wirt, complimenting him 
 upon his argument, and "Wirt apparently 
 satisfied himself ; but the tremendous 
 performance by Webster took his an- 
 tagonists by surprise. The personal 
 triumph of the latter was complete, and 
 it was followed by the triumph of his 
 
 27 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 cause. The argument won over Story, 
 who had been counted on by the oppo- 
 nents of the College, as the reading of 
 it afterwards won over Chancellor Kent, 
 who had at first approved the decision 
 of the New Hampshire court. A ma- 
 jority of the court was carried, and car- 
 ried probably by the eloquence of the 
 advocate; the College was saved, and 
 at the same time there was witnessed 
 the birth of a great principle of con- 
 stitutional law and of a great national 
 fame. 
 
 There have been arguments before 
 the same high tribunal more discur- 
 sively eloquent, more witty, and deliv- 
 ered with a greater parade of learning; 
 but in the boldness, novelty, and far- 
 reaching character of the propositions 
 advanced, in the strength with which 
 they were maintained, in the judgment 
 with which the points of argument were 
 
 28 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 selected, and the skill with which they 
 were pressed upon the court, in the nat- 
 ural oratorical passion, so consuming 
 that for five hours the spectators were 
 held spellbound by a discussion of ques- 
 tions of law, no greater speech was ever 
 made before the Supreme Court. No 
 other advocate in that tribunal ever 
 equaled what he himself never sur- 
 passed. The published report of this 
 speech is apparently much condensed 
 and contains only the outlines of what 
 was said. There is no hint of the beau- 
 tiful peroration. Mr. Ticknor says of 
 the printed version, that those who heard 
 him when the speech was delivered " still 
 wonder how such dry bones could ever 
 have lived with the power they there 
 witnessed and felt." But even the 
 printed version is a classic in its severe 
 simplicity and beauty. Although this 
 was not the first cause argued by Web- 
 
 29 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 ster before the national high court, it 
 especially marked the beginning of a 
 career which continued for more than a 
 third of a century, and stamps him on 
 the whole as the most important figure 
 who ever appeared at that august bar. 
 And here at this first high point in 
 his professional career it may be appro- 
 priate to take a view of him as an ad- 
 vocate and a lawyer. His greater fame 
 doubtless was won as a statesman and 
 political orator because it was won in a 
 broader forum, but to him belongs the 
 rare distinction of preeminence both in 
 Congress and in the courts. It is some- 
 times said that there is an incompati- 
 bility in the qualities that make a great 
 advocate and a great parliamentary 
 orator. Certainly there are instances 
 of men who were highly successful in 
 one capacity and who failed in the other. 
 But such instances will usually be found 
 
 30 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 where eminence was gained in one 
 career, and mental habits adjusted to 
 its demands before the other began. 
 Webster entered upon his double career 
 early in life, and his development in 
 each branch of it contributed to his 
 development in the other. He had 
 scarcely become established at the bar 
 before he engaged in the public service, 
 and he pursued both careers concur- 
 rently daring the remainder of his life. 
 His efforts at the bar made him more 
 definite and accurate in the Senate, and 
 his experience as a statesman broadened 
 him as a lawyer. His qualities became 
 equally commanding in both fields. 
 
 He was doubtless excelled in some 
 departments of his profession by other 
 lawyers : Curtis was more deeply versed 
 in the law ; Choate surpassed him, as, 
 indeed, he surpassed all others, in the 
 constant brilliancy of his advocacy be- 
 
 31 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 fore juries, although Webster made one 
 speech to a jury which Choate never 
 equaled. But I think it can be said 
 without exaggeration that, more nearly 
 than any other, "Webster filled the large 
 circle of requirements for that high 
 place, and that he stands at the head of 
 the whole American bar. 
 
 He has often been contrasted with 
 William Pinckney; I suppose because 
 the latter during the first thirty years 
 of the court's history was the most con- 
 spicuous figure at its bar. They were 
 never fairly measured directly against 
 each other. Webster came prominently 
 into view just as Pinckney' s sun was 
 setting. When he argued the Dart- 
 mouth College Case he was only thirty- 
 six years old and had had barely a 
 dozen years of practice, most of it in 
 a small ~New Hampshire town where 
 the causes were neither numerous nor 
 
 32 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 important. Although he would not 
 suffer by the comparison, it would be 
 obviously unfair to take him at this 
 comparatively immature period and 
 place him by the side of a seasoned 
 veteran like Pinckney, who was seven- 
 teen years his senior, and who possessed 
 the great prestige and development 
 which came from having worthily filled 
 the most important offices of the gov- 
 ernment, and from his great practice 
 before the Supreme Court, at the bar 
 of which he was the acknowledged 
 leader. A fairer comparison would be 
 between Pinckney at the summit of his 
 fame when he attempted to press for a 
 re-argument of the College cause and 
 John Marshall turned his " blind eye " 
 towards him, and Webster at the same 
 age and period of his career, after he 
 had argued that long line of important 
 constitutional causes, had delivered the 
 
 33 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 Bunker Hill oration and the Reply to 
 Hayne, had become known abroad and 
 his own country rung with his fame, 
 and when he stood the unchallenged 
 leader of a far larger, if not a more 
 brilliant, bar. Pinckney was a great 
 and learned lawyer, a remarkably elo- 
 quent orator, and capable of close and 
 abstract reasoning. But his style was 
 often balanced and artificial, disfigured 
 by affectation, and displayed much dif- 
 fuse declamation. Its faults as well as 
 its merits are strikingly shown in the 
 famous argument in the Nereide case, 
 of which John Marshall said in the 
 opinion of the court, " "With a pencil 
 dipped in the most vivid colors and 
 guided by the hand of a master a 
 splendid portrait has been drawn." It 
 will appear from the very full report of 
 that argument which survives that the 
 father of American jurisprudence was 
 
 34 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 hardly so safe a judge of literary color- 
 ing as of law. As to Webster's art, if 
 as an advocate he can be credited with 
 art, it was so concealed that the chief 
 justice was not called upon consciously 
 to exercise his faculties as a judge of 
 coloring. Take Pinckney's greatest 
 efforts at the bar, in the Senate, or in 
 diplomacy, and compare them with cor- 
 responding efforts of Webster, and I 
 believe the superiority of the latter will 
 be distinctly seen. 
 
 It is sometimes said of Webster that 
 he was not learned in the law. But in 
 the very best sense of the term he was 
 a learned lawyer. If his mind was not 
 an encyclopaedia of cases, it was a store- 
 house of legal principles. He was not 
 the man to make a pedantic parade and 
 to obscure the essential point under a 
 great mass of quotations from cases. 
 He did not have the habit of irrelevant 
 
 35 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 citation, nor did he throw upon the 
 court the burden of winnowing a little 
 wheat from an enormous quantity of 
 chaff. He had the art of condensa- 
 tion, and would select the genuine 
 points of his case and put them with 
 unsurpassed simplicity and weight. 
 He possessed to a remarkable degree, 
 too, the inborn legal sense, without 
 which there can be no lawyer. From 
 the day when, a mere stripling, he 
 graduated from this College, the law 
 was his chief study. The necessities 
 of his great practice imposed it upon 
 him. Usually acting as senior counsel 
 in important cases, he had the advan- 
 tage of the preparation of learned 
 juniors. He was called upon in court 
 to display a mastery of his own side 
 and to hear and meet all that could be 
 said by great lawyers against it. His 
 memory was prodigious. The result 
 
 36 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 of it all was that with his great natural 
 powers thus disciplined by forty years 
 of practice, one would have been will- 
 ing to back him, not merely as a parlia- 
 mentary Hercules, as Carlyle said, but 
 as a legal Hercules, against the whole 
 extant world. 
 
 A great part of a lawyer's work is 
 ephemeral and perishes with the day 
 that brought it forth. Some of the 
 miracles which Rufus Choate wrought 
 in the courts were a nine days' wonder, 
 passed into splendid traditions, and 
 were then forgotten. This is due to 
 the fact that while there are many 
 causes of vast consequence to individ- 
 uals, there are comparatively few which 
 are of importance to society generally 
 or in the development of the law. But 
 a great mass of Webster's legal work 
 survives, and insures him a permanent 
 fame as a lawyer. Take, for instance, 
 
 37 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 the case of Gibbons and Ogden, where 
 the State of New York had attempted 
 to grant a monopoly of navigation on 
 the waters under its jurisdiction. The 
 doctrine which Webster contended for 
 in that case was sustained by the court. 
 In a time when so much is said of 
 the evils of granting franchises in the 
 public streets, we can appreciate the 
 far-reaching importance of a decision 
 which at one stroke forever rescued 
 our great lakes and harbors and the 
 Mississippi and the Ohio from the 
 grasp of monopolies and left our inland 
 waters open highways for all to navi- 
 gate on equal terms. In the formative 
 period of our institutions, when their 
 limits were explored in the courts and 
 established by judicial construction, 
 there were great judges besides Mar- 
 shall and great lawyers besides Web- 
 ster. But Marshall stands in America 
 
 38 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 unapproached as a jurist, just as Web- 
 ster stands as an advocate without a 
 rival. The former set our constitu- 
 tional landmarks and the latter pointed 
 out where they should be placed. And 
 it is significant of Webster's primacy 
 that in important debates to-day in 
 Congress or elsewhere, upon great 
 questions of a constitutional character 
 or of a political legal character, relating 
 to our systems of government and the 
 nature and limitations of their powers, 
 he is more widely quoted than any 
 other lawyer, whether speaking only 
 with his own voice or ex cathedra as a 
 member of our highest court. 
 
 An important sphere of his profes- 
 sional activity would be neglected if I 
 did not refer to his strength as an ad- 
 vocate before juries. The same simple 
 style which enlightened the courts 
 made him easily understood by the 
 
 39 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 ordinary juryman. But his oratory 
 was less fettered by technical rules and 
 was more varied before juries than be- 
 fore the courts. Only two of his very 
 many speeches to juries are preserved 
 in his published works, and each of 
 these amply demonstrates his enormous 
 capacity in that field. I will refer to 
 the speech delivered in the "White 
 murder case, because it has been pro- 
 nounced by eminent lawyers, who are 
 accustomed to measure their words, to 
 be the greatest argument ever ad- 
 dressed to a jury. Certainly it is a 
 masterpiece of eloquence. A rich old 
 man had been found in his bed mur- 
 dered. The murderer had been hired 
 by two brothers to do the deed, in the 
 hope that one of them might profit 
 from the old man's estate. "It was," 
 said Webster, "a cool, calculating, 
 money-making murder," a murder "for 
 
 40 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 hire and salary, not revenge. It was 
 the weighing of money against life, the 
 counting of so many pieces of silver 
 against so many ounces of blood." 
 This is the description of the deed : 
 " The assassin enters through the win- 
 dow already prepared, into an unoccu- 
 pied apartment. With noiseless foot 
 he paces the lonely hall, half lighted 
 by the moon ; he winds up the ascent 
 of the stairs and reaches the door of 
 the chamber. Of this he moves the 
 lock, by soft and continuous pressure, 
 till it turns on its hinges without noise; 
 and he enters, and beholds his victim 
 before him. The room is uncommonly 
 open to the admission of light. The 
 face of the innocent sleeper is turned 
 from the murderer, and the beams of 
 the moon, resting on the gray locks of 
 his aged temple, show him where to 
 strike. The fatal blow is given ! and 
 
 41 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 the victim passes, without a struggle 
 or a motion, from the repose of sleep 
 to the repose of death. ... To finish 
 the picture, he explores the wrist for 
 the pulse. He feels for it and ascer- 
 tains that it beats no longer. It is 
 accomplished. The deed is done. He 
 retreats, retraces his steps to the win- 
 dow, passes out through it as he came 
 in, and escapes. He has done the mur- 
 der. ]Nb eye has seen him, no ear has 
 heard him. The secret is his own, and 
 it is safe. Ah ! gentlemen, that was a 
 dreadful mistake. Such a secret can 
 be safe nowhere. The whole creation 
 of God has neither nook nor corner 
 where the guilty can bestow it and say 
 it is safe." And then follows the won- 
 derful passage on the power of con- 
 science, which is almost as widely 
 known as the peroration of the Reply to 
 Hayne. It is a striking circumstance 
 
 42 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 that the most powerful part of this 
 speech was upon a point where the fact 
 was against Webster's position, al- 
 though he may not have been aware of 
 it. The fact, however, was an unnat- 
 ural one, as facts sometimes are. The 
 prisoner's counsel had urged that the 
 prisoner's motive, in going to a place 
 near the scene of the murder at the time 
 it was committed, might have been cu- 
 riosity, and not that he might aid the 
 murderer. " Curiosity," exclaimed 
 Webster, "to witness the success of 
 the execution of his own plan of mur- 
 der! The very walls of a court-house 
 ought not to stand, the ploughshare 
 should run through the ground it stands 
 on, where such an argument could find 
 toleration." Rufus Choate, who ap- 
 pears to have heard this speech and 
 who was also a fine Greek scholar, 
 declared it to be in his opinion " a more 
 
 43 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 difficult and higher effort of mind than 
 the Oration on the Crown." 
 
 But prominent as Webster was in 
 the courts, his great fame rests upon his 
 career as a political orator and a states- 
 man. He was first elected to Congress 
 in 1812, and from that time until his 
 death, forty years afterwards, he was, 
 with the exception of a few short inter- 
 vals, constantly in the public service. 
 He was for a brief period a member of 
 the Massachusetts House of Eepresent- 
 atives, for ten years a Representative 
 in Congress, nineteen years a Senator, 
 and five years Secretary of State. He 
 possessed no meteoric qualities to startle 
 and attract attention, but his command- 
 ing talents were certain of recognition 
 the moment they were displayed upon 
 a suitable field. Within one month 
 from the time he first took his seat in 
 the House he made a speech upon the 
 
 44 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 Berlin and Milan decrees, which probed 
 deeply into the causes of the war we 
 were waging against Great Britain, 
 and which the duplicity of Napoleon's 
 government had a considerable share 
 in bringing about. John Marshall, to 
 whom Webster was then a stranger, 
 was so deeply impressed with the speech 
 that he predicted that Webster would 
 become " one of the very first states- 
 men in America, if not the very first." 
 During his first Congress he easily took 
 a place among the very limited number 
 of public men of the first rank at Wash- 
 ington, and he grew in strength and 
 the public esteem until he had no peer 
 among living American statesmen. 
 
 The chief source of his success as a 
 statesman is found in his transcendent 
 power of speech. When his public 
 career began, a highly decorated fash- 
 ion of oratory, which has been termed 
 
 45 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 the Corinthian style, flourished in this 
 country. Our orators were justly con- 
 scious of the fact that we had won our 
 independence from the greatest power 
 in the world and had become a nation. 
 Every one was inspired to talk eloquently 
 about Liberty, and as a consequence a 
 vast number of literary crimes were 
 committed in her name. It was an ex- 
 cessively oratorical era. Whether the 
 thought was great or little, the grand 
 manner was imperatively demanded. 
 The contemporary accounts of the 
 speeches of that time were as highly 
 wrought as the speeches themselves, 
 and one might infer that orators of the 
 grade of Demosthenes existed in every 
 considerable village ; although it will be 
 observed that they gradually diminished 
 in number as the cold art of stenogra- 
 phy became more commonly and suc- 
 cessfully practised. The simple art of 
 
 46 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 speaking with reference to the exact 
 truth was held in contempt, and the art 
 of extravagant expression was carefully 
 cultivated. It is not difficult to detect 
 in this extravagance the influence of Ed- 
 mund Burke. He was chiefly respon- 
 sible, however, only because he stood 
 in a class by himself and could defy 
 successful imitation. There is nothing 
 more gorgeous in English literature 
 than the best of his speeches or essays, 
 for his speeches and essays were the 
 same sort of composition. His know- 
 ledge was varied and prodigious, and 
 even his conversation, well compared 
 by Moore to a Roman triumph, was 
 enriched with the spoils of all learning. 
 In depth and intensity of feeling and 
 a noble sympathy for the oppressed 
 of every race he was surpassed by no 
 orator, ancient or modern. He had the 
 glowing and exuberant imagination that 
 
 47 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 " Kicks at earth with a disdainful heel 
 And beats at Heaven's gates with her bright 
 hoofs." 
 
 Imitation of Burke, thus royally en- 
 dowed and blazing with indignation at 
 some great public wrong, would easily 
 lend itself to extravagance and pro- 
 duce the empty form of colossal speech 
 without its substance. I think Burke's 
 influence can be clearly seen in our 
 orators- from his own day to the end 
 of Charles Sumner's time. A few of 
 Webster's speeches show not merely the 
 inspiration due to an appreciative un- 
 derstanding of Burke, which was legit- 
 imate, and might be wholesome, but 
 a somewhat close and dispiriting imi- 
 tation of Burke's manner. This is 
 true particularly of the much admired 
 Plymouth oration, which substituted 
 John Adams for the Lord Bathurst of 
 Burke's celebrated passage, and ex- 
 
 48 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 torted from that venerable patriot, who 
 had come under the spell of the Corin- 
 thian era, the declaration that Burke 
 could no longer be called the most con- 
 summate orator of modern times. But 
 it is Webster's glory that at his best 
 he had a style that was all his own, 
 simple, massive, and full of grandeur; 
 and compared with some of his noble 
 passages Burke's sublimity sometimes 
 seems as unsubstantial as banks of cloud 
 by the side of a granite mountain. 
 
 While Webster was slow in reaching 
 his full mental stature, how rapidly his 
 style developed and simplicity took the 
 place of the flowery exaggeration that 
 was then thought to be fine may be 
 seen by contrasting passages from two 
 of his speeches. In his Fourth of July 
 address delivered at Hanover a year 
 before his graduation occurs this pas- 
 sage : " Fair science, too, holds her 
 
 49 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 gentle empire amongst us, and almost 
 innumerable altars are raised to her 
 divinity from Brunswick to Florida. 
 Yale, Providence, and Harvard now 
 grace our land, and Dartmouth, tower- 
 ing majestic above the groves which 
 encircle her, now inscribes her glory on 
 the registers of fame. Oxford and 
 Cambridge, those Oriental stars of liter- 
 ature, shall now be lost, while the bright 
 sun of American science displays his 
 broad circumference in uneclipsed ra- 
 diance." The other is from a speech 
 early in his Congressional career against 
 the policy of forcing the growth of 
 manufactures, or rearing them, as he 
 expressed it, " in hotbeds." " I am 
 not anxious to accelerate the approach 
 of the period when the great mass of 
 American labor shall not find its em- 
 ployment in the field ; when the young 
 men of the country shall be obliged to 
 
 50 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 shut their eyes upon external nature, 
 upon the heavens and the earth, and im- 
 merse themselves in close and unwhole- 
 some workshops; when they shall be 
 obliged to shut their ears to the bleat- 
 ings of their own flocks upon their own 
 hills, and to the voice of the lark that 
 cheers them at the plough." The one 
 passage is probably little above or below 
 the style then prevailing among school- 
 boys ; the other possesses a simple and 
 lyric beauty, and might have been writ- 
 ten by a master of English prose in its 
 golden age. 
 
 In his speech upon the Greek revo- 
 lution, delivered while he was still a 
 member of the House, his style may be 
 said to have become fixed in its sim- 
 plicity. Upon such a subject there 
 was every temptation to indulge in 
 passionate declamation about freedom 
 and to make a tremendous display of 
 
 51 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 classical learning, and snch a treatment 
 seemed to be demanded by the prevail- 
 ing taste of the time ; but the generous 
 sympathy he held out to the Greeks, 
 he extended in a speech of severe and 
 restrained beauty, and the greater part 
 of his effort was devoted to a profound 
 study of the principles of the Holy 
 Alliance as a conspiracy against pop- 
 ular freedom. Jeremiah Mason pro- 
 nounced this speech the best example 
 of parliamentary eloquence and states- 
 manlike reasoning which our country 
 had seen. The Plymouth speech 
 greatly extended his reputation as an 
 orator and was most impressive in its 
 immediate effect. George Ticknor, 
 who was disposed to be critical, and 
 usually admired with difficulty, some- 
 what hysterically wrote in a letter on 
 the day of its delivery : " I warn you 
 beforehand that I have not the least 
 
 52 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 confidence in my own opinion. His 
 manner carried me away completely. 
 ... It seems to me incredible. ... I 
 was never so excited by public speak- 
 ing before in my life. Three or four 
 times I thought my temples would 
 burst with the gush of blood." This 
 speech was received everywhere with 
 the most extravagant praise and may 
 fairly be said to have established Web- 
 ster's position as the first orator of the 
 nation. "While it contains noble pas- 
 sages, it sometimes expresses the plati- 
 tude of the day in a style that suggests 
 the grandiose, and it shows more 
 strongly than any other of his impor- 
 tant speeches the literary faults of the 
 time. The first Bunker Hill speech 
 and the eulogy on Adams and Jeffer- 
 son are distinctly superior to it. That 
 splendid piece of historical fiction, the 
 speech which he puts in the mouth of 
 
 53 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 Adams, is an excellent exhibition of his 
 ability to reproduce the spirit of a great 
 event and endow it with life. It was 
 precisely such a speech as the most 
 impassioned and strongest advocate of 
 the Declaration of Independence might 
 have made on the floor of the Conti- 
 nental Congress. If Webster's under- 
 standing had been less powerful, he 
 would have been credited with a very 
 great imagination. That faculty, how- 
 ever, was strictly subordinated to his 
 reason, and instead of producing any- 
 thing unusual and fantastic, the crea- 
 ture of a disordered rather than a 
 creative imagination, he summoned the 
 event out of the past, and so invested 
 it with its appropriate coloring and 
 rational and proper setting, that it 
 seemed to be a fact rather than a 
 fancy. 
 
 We shall fall far short of doing jus- 
 
 54 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tice to his power as an orator if we fail 
 to take into account his physical en- 
 dowments for speaking. There can 
 be no donbt abont the majesty of his 
 personal presence. Business wonld be 
 temporarily suspended when he walked 
 down State Street, while people rushed 
 to the doors and windows to see him 
 pass. To the popular imagination he 
 seemed to take up half the street. He 
 stood nearly six feet, and seemed taller, 
 and he had an enormous measurement 
 around the chest. His head was one 
 of the largest and noblest ever borne 
 upon human shoulders. He had a dark 
 complexion, a gunpowder complexion 
 it was called, a broad and lofty brow, 
 and large black eyes, usually full of 
 repose, but in moments of excitement, 
 blazing with terrible intensity. One of 
 his severest critics, Theodore Parker, 
 declared his belief that since Charle- 
 
 55 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 magne there had not been such a grand 
 figure in all Christendom. 
 
 It might be suspected that the re- 
 ports were somewhat colored by pride 
 in such an American product ; but he 
 went abroad, and his personality pro- 
 duced as deep an impression there as 
 at home. Sydney Smith called him " a 
 steam engine in trousers" and "a small 
 cathedral all by himself." To Carlyle 
 he seemed a "magnificent specimen." 
 The historian Hallam wrote of him that 
 he approached as nearly the ideal of a 
 Republican Senator as any man he had 
 ever seen, one worthy of Home. This 
 enormous personality was not sluggish, 
 but in time of excitement it was full of 
 animation and dramatic fire. Jeremiah 
 Mason said that in him a great actor 
 was lost to the stage. He would rise 
 easily to the tragic force required in a 
 murder trial and overwhelm the listener 
 
 56 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 by his dramatic description of the deed, 
 or he would entertain his college friends 
 with a perfect imitation of the manner- 
 isms and falsetto tones of President 
 "Wheelock. He possessed as noble a 
 voice as ever broke upon the human 
 ear — a voice of great compass, usually 
 high and clear, but capable of sinking 
 into deep tones that thrilled the listener. 
 He made himself heard by nearly fifty 
 thousand people at Bunker Hill. What 
 Mr. Lodge says may easily be believed, 
 that no one ever came into the world so 
 physically equipped for speech. 
 
 Undoubtedly his oratorical master- 
 piece is the Eeply to Hayne. When he 
 delivered it he was in his physical and 
 intellectual prime. The occasion was 
 the most important in our congressional 
 history. The time had come when, if 
 ever, the doctrine of the supremacy of 
 the federal Constitution should be pro- 
 
 57 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 claimed, and the truth impressed upon 
 the minds and hearts of the people that 
 the United States was not a confeder- 
 acy, loosely knit together and continu- 
 ing its existence only at the pleasure of 
 each one of the sovereign states which 
 composed it, but that it was a nation, 
 and that its laws, enacted in conformity 
 with the Constitution, as declared by 
 the Supreme Court, were the supreme 
 law of the land. This g^eat argument 
 over the meaning of the Constitution 
 had begun almost on the day when it 
 was put in operation. The states-rights 
 school of interpretation found much to 
 support it in the construction put upon 
 the Constitution by those who had 
 borne an important part in framing it. 
 It had been steadily growing, and its 
 doctrines had reached their full devel- 
 opment. The term " sovereign state " 
 was a very attractive one to the popu- 
 
 58 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 lar mind and demanded a proper limi- 
 tation upon its meaning. Hayne, too, 
 spoke for a state which was about to 
 * attempt to put his theory into practical 
 force. That theory had never received 
 so captivating a presentation as he gave 
 it. The work of formulating the creed 
 of union so that it might become a 
 popular force and not merely check the 
 further advance of the doctrines of nul- 
 lification, but put them on the defensive 
 and turn them upon a retreat, naturally 
 fell to Webster. Calhoun, with his 
 great industry, his high personal char- 
 acter, and his enormous power of logic, 
 was the leading advocate of states- 
 rights. Clay did not at that time hap- 
 pen to be a member of the Senate. But 
 Clay, who was a successful party leader, 
 a masterful debater, and an impassioned 
 orator, did not possess the legal training 
 and the grasp upon principles which the 
 
 59 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 occasion demanded, and orator as he 
 was, he did not possess the choice gift 
 of uttering the literature of genuine 
 eloquence, of speaking the words that 
 should wing their flight to the fireside 
 of the farmer and artisan and to the 
 study of the scholar, and set their hearts 
 on fire for the Union. The occasion 
 called for a rare combination of quali- 
 ties, for one who was at the same time 
 a great lawyer, a great orator, and a 
 great statesman. The one man for the 
 work was the man to whom it fell. 
 
 With much that was strong and bril- 
 liant in Hayne's speech, there was a 
 great deal that was paltry and personal 
 and had no place in a great constitu- 
 tional argument. There was an ingen- 
 ious attempt to set one section of the 
 Union against the other. New Eng- 
 land was held up to ridicule. Hayne 
 imitated Homer's heroes, who began 
 
 60 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 their fights with taunts and boasts. A 
 personal attack was made upon Web- 
 ster, and he was taunted with fearing 
 that Benton might be an overmatch for 
 him in debate. I am not sure that this 
 did not greatly add to the interest of 
 the reply. It introduced the personal, 
 human element, and served to call 
 Webster's enormous combative powers 
 fully into play. One can imagine this 
 Titan with his whole nature aroused, 
 thoroughly informed upon his great 
 subject, profoundly impressed with the 
 justice of his cause, but unhampered 
 by any written speech, rising in the 
 Senate, and for nearly seven hours 
 pouring forth that mighty torrent of 
 argument, fact, irony, and eloquence 
 found in the reply. To say that the 
 speech fully met the occasion is to 
 give it the highest possible praise. 
 The advantage was with Webster upon 
 
 61 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 every point. When he took his seat, 
 he had triumphantly vindicated New 
 England, he had crushed his antago- 
 nist in the personal controversy, al- 
 though with a majestic scorn he had 
 barely stooped to engage in it ; and, far 
 more important than anything else, he 
 had reduced the doctrine of nullification 
 to an absurdity, by demonstrating that 
 its application would mean the disrup- 
 tion of the central government, would 
 make the Union a mere " rope of sand,'' 
 and organize governmental chaos into 
 a system. In that portion of his speech 
 he did as much to create as to expound 
 the Constitution, and he held up to the 
 country the image of a government 
 limited, indeed, in its powers, but in its 
 sphere perfect, and beyond the control 
 of the state government. Among the 
 many ties that bind men together, there 
 is no stronger tie than the spirit of 
 
 62 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 nationality. It was to that spirit that 
 he so fervently appealed in that splen- 
 did piece of rhetoric in the printed 
 peroration of the speech, a peroration 
 not indeed spoken in all its important 
 parts to the few scores of people in the 
 Senate chamber, but spoken to the mil- 
 lions of his countrymen outside of it. 
 
 It was this speech more than any 
 other single event, from the adoption 
 of the Constitution to the Civil War, 
 which compacted the states into a na- 
 tion. There were comparatively few 
 people in the country able to read and 
 to follow public affairs who did not 
 read the more important portions of it. 
 The leading newspapers published it 
 in full. Vast numbers of copies were 
 sent out in the form of pamphlets. It 
 was declaimed by schoolboys in every 
 schoolhouse. It gave the nation a defi- 
 nite impulse towards nationality, and 
 
 63 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 it laid down the battle line for those 
 splendid armies which fought and tri- 
 umphed in the cause of the Union. 
 
 The speech in itself is worthy of the 
 tremendous part it has played in his- 
 tory. It was unstudied and sponta- 
 neous, and it displayed in a sublime 
 degree that fusion of reason and pas- 
 sion which Macaulay pronounces ne- 
 cessary to true eloquence. It is ener- 
 getic, direct, simple, weighty in its 
 magnificent irony, and it has that ra- 
 pidity of movement which is the first 
 test of intellectual vigor. It probably 
 received less revision than speeches at 
 that time usually received, and I be- 
 lieve that no great speech of similar 
 length which occupies a place near it 
 in literature was ever the object of less 
 verbal polishing before and after de- 
 livery. It was extemporaneous; and if 
 we bear in mind that the art of short- 
 
 64 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 hand writing was at that time by no 
 means perfectly developed, a compari- 
 son of the stenographer's report with 
 the accepted version shows that the 
 form was not greatly changed except 
 in a few passages. The printed pero- 
 ration has been pronounced by good 
 judges, and I think rightly, artificial. 
 It is hardly conceivable that after 
 speaking more than six hours his ex- 
 temporaneous speech should have taken 
 that finished and balanced form. That 
 there was little of the artificial in the 
 spoken peroration is made evident from 
 the shorthand report : — 
 
 " "While the nation lasts, we have a 
 great prospect of prosperity; and, when 
 this Union breaks up, there is nothing 
 in prospect for us to look at, but what 
 I regard with horror and despair. God 
 forbid; yes, sir, God forbid, that I 
 should live to see this cord broken ; to 
 
 65 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 behold the state of things which carries 
 us back to disunion, calamity, and civil 
 war ! When my eyes shall be turned 
 for the last time on the meridian sun, 
 I hope I may see him shining bright, 
 upon my united, free, and happy 
 country. I hope I shall not live to see 
 his beams falling upon the dispersed 
 fragments of the structure of this once 
 glorious Union. I hope I may not see 
 the flag of my country, with its stars 
 separated or obliterated, torn by com- 
 motion, smoking with the blood of civil 
 war. I hope I may not see the standard 
 raised of separate state rights, star 
 against star and stripe against stripe; 
 but that the flag of the Union may keep 
 its stars and its stripes corded and 
 bound together in indissoluble ties. I 
 hope I shall not see written, as its 
 motto, first Liberty, and then Union. 
 I hope I shall see no such delusive and 
 
 66 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 deluded motto on the flag of that 
 country. I hope to see spread all over 
 it, blazoned in letters of light, and 
 proudly floating over land and sea, that 
 other sentiment, dear to my heart, 
 ' Union and Liberty, now and forever, 
 one and inseparable/ " 
 
 As a piece of composition the printed 
 report is doubtless the better one, but 
 as the conclusion of a great speech, in 
 which a powerful mind under great ex- 
 citement sought at the moment its ap- 
 propriate form of expression, it seems 
 to me the spoken peroration is to be 
 preferred. Instead of moving along 
 upon symmetrical lines, beautiful and 
 majestic, throwing the spray evenly 
 upon either side, like a painted ship 
 upon a painted ocean, we see him 
 rather like a mighty battleship plun- 
 ging madly through the waves, dashing 
 the spray above its turrets, with en- 
 
 67 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 gines throbbing irregularly and hard, 
 the incarnation of terrible power 
 mastering the power of the sea. 
 
 While the Eeply to Hayne shows 
 Webster on the whole at his best, some 
 of his highest qualities were more con- 
 spicuously displayed in other speeches. 
 In the debate with Calhoun three years 
 afterwards, he made an argument 
 against nullification which was more 
 complete and elaborately wrought out, 
 and which dealt that doctrine a finish- 
 ing blow so far as any constitutional 
 basis was concerned. But it was se- 
 verely argumentative and did not have 
 the popular qualities of his first great 
 Union speech. His seventh of March 
 speech, famous for other reasons than 
 its rhetoric, is conversational in tone, 
 rising naturally to the heights of elo- 
 quence, and in its speaking style it ap- 
 pears to me to be the equal of the best 
 
 68 
 
 ;> 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 of his speeches. It lacked any degree 
 of the hard rhetorical form at that time 
 deemed necessary to good oratory, and 
 which imparted to much of it, compared 
 with the more direct modern method, 
 the appearance of an unknown tongue. 
 The speech on the presidential protest 
 is more studied than the Reply to Hayne, 
 and in it his imagination mounts on an 
 easy wing in the celebrated passage on 
 the military greatness of England. If 
 any of the orators of that nation has 
 ever given a nobler picture of her power, 
 I do not know where it can be found : 
 " On this question of principle, while 
 actual suffering was yet afar off, they 
 raised their flag against a power, to 
 which, for purposes of foreign conquest 
 and subjugation, Rome, in the height 
 of her glory, is not to be compared ; a 
 power which has dotted over the sur- 
 face of the whole globe with her posses- 
 
 69 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 sions and military posts, whose morning 
 drum-beat, following the sun and keep- 
 ing company with the hours, circles the 
 earth with one continuous and unbroken 
 strain of the martial airs of Eng- 
 land." 
 
 What is the relative position of Web- 
 ster among the great orators of the 
 world ? All would not agree upon his 
 exact place, although all would doubt- 
 less place him very high among them. 
 The two preeminent orators of ancient 
 times must, I think, be left out of the 
 account. There is little more common 
 ground for a comparison between Web- 
 ster and Demosthenes than there would 
 be for a comparison between a speech 
 of Webster and a book of Homer. 
 What common standard can be set up 
 between the Greek who spoke to a 
 fickle and marvelously ingenious people, 
 whose verdict when he obtained it would 
 
 70 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 often only be written on water, and 
 Webster, speaking in a different 
 tongue, to an altogether different peo- 
 ple, and shaping in their minds the prin- 
 ciples of practical government to endure 
 for generations? How many English- 
 speaking people know enough Greek to 
 understand a speech of Demosthenes 
 as they would one spoken in their own 
 language ? Those who do not cannot 
 form an exact judgment, and the few, 
 if any, who do, are prone to find virtues 
 in particles and, like Shakespeare's crit- 
 ics, to bring to view in the text things 
 of which the orator was abjectly igno- 
 rant. A great deal has been swept away 
 in the twenty centuries since Cicero and 
 Demosthenes spoke, and it is easy to 
 praise those orators too little or too 
 much. Separated from us by the bar- 
 riers of distance, of language, and of 
 race, the most that can safely be ven- 
 
 71 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tured is that in literary form they prob- 
 ably surpassed any of the moderns. 
 
 The orators with whom "Webster can 
 most profitably be compared are those 
 who employed the same language and 
 spoke to the same race. Surely it is 
 not a narrow field. It is a race that 
 has practiced the art of government by 
 speaking for centuries, and has far out- 
 stripped any other people of ancient or 
 modern times in the development of the 
 parliamentary system. The result of 
 that system has been to produce ora- 
 tory which is not simply literature nor 
 merely spectacular, but which at its 
 best is especially adapted to the practi- 
 cal purpose of influencing the judgment 
 of those who listen upon some momen- 
 tous public question. Where, as is the 
 case among the English-speaking peo- 
 ples, the fate of a government or an ad- 
 ministration often turns upon the result 
 
 72 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 of a single debate, where again the ver- 
 dict of the parliamentary body is liable 
 to be set aside by the people who are 
 the sources of political power and be- 
 fore whom the discussion must be ulti- 
 mately carried, there is a field for the 
 development of oratory such as has 
 never existed in any other race. Among 
 the orators of his own country there 
 may be individuals who in some particu- 
 lars surpass him, although no one of 
 them in the sum of all the attributes 
 of the orator can fairly be placed by 
 his side. Everett carried the elaborate 
 oratory at that time in vogue to a 
 greater perfection of finish and form. 
 "Webster does not show the surprises 
 and felicities to be found in the style 
 of Choate, who is as rapid, pure, and 
 winding as a mountain stream, and who 
 in brilliancy of imagination easily out- 
 ranks all other American orators. The 
 
 73 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 • 
 
 only Englishmen who stand in a class 
 with Webster are Burke, the most phi- 
 losophic of orators and statesmen, and 
 Fox, who of all the characters of his- 
 tory is one of the most easily loved. 
 In comparing Webster with them, it 
 must be borne in mind that his most im- 
 portant speeches were made in constru- 
 ing the terms of a written constitution 
 which, however beneficial it may be to 
 individual liberty, is not a nurse of 
 political eloquence. It imposes rigid 
 artificial limits, and, to the extent that 
 it requires statesmen to be the expound- 
 ers of written political scriptures rather 
 than of broad natural principles, it 
 hampers the freedom of the mind. 
 
 Rogers said that he never heard any- 
 thing equal to Fox's speeches in reply, 
 and Burke with generous enthusiasm 
 called him the most brilliant debater the 
 world ever saw. That was Webster's 
 
 74 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 characteristic quality. He was pre- 
 eminently a debater. He did not have 
 Fox's celerity, but he possessed far 
 greater weight. Fox would lay down 
 a proposition and repeat it again and 
 again. He was often stormy in manner 
 and would sometimes magnify trifles. 
 His vehemence was so great that one 
 occasionally suspects him of diverting 
 attention from the weakness of an argu- 
 ment. But he had no affectations. He 
 was animated by noble ideas of politi- 
 cal freedom, which comprehended not 
 merely his own race or neighborhood, 
 but embraced the peoples of distant 
 lands ; and, regardless of literary form, 
 he would press those ideas home and 
 strike by the most direct lines at the 
 judgment of the listener. There was 
 little quickness or mere dexterity about 
 "Webster, but it seemed impossible to 
 impose upon his understanding, and his 
 
 75 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 great guns would open upon the weak 
 points of his adversary, however art- 
 fully covered up. No man could excel 
 him in the power to destroy utterly the 
 sham structures of sophistry. He 
 would never set up a man of straw, but 
 would resolutely grapple with his oppo- 
 nent's argument in its full force. His 
 vigilance was extraordinary, and when 
 surprised, as he sometimes was in run- 
 ning debate, it is not difficult to detect 
 in his tone the martial note, as he rushes 
 upon and captures the threatening posi- 
 tion by a display of force simply por- 
 tentous. It is not easy to compare 
 "Webster and Fox in the immediate 
 effect produced by their speeches, but 
 there can be no doubt that the person- 
 ality of the former was more impres- 
 sive ; and if we are to trust at all to 
 the contemporary accounts, it is entirely 
 safe to say that Fox never surpassed, if 
 
 76 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 indeed he ever equaled, the tremendous 
 effect produced by Webster in his 
 greatest efforts. Between the speeches 
 of the two men there can be no com- 
 parison in point of substance and lit- 
 erary form. Fox's speeches certainly 
 contain one characteristic that he 
 claimed was essential to good speeches, 
 they do not read well. It is not diffi- 
 cult to see in the best of them the evi- 
 dence of his brilliant talents, but they 
 do not strongly impress one with weight 
 of matter or with the literary quality. 
 In the half dozen large volumes of 
 "Webster's speeches which have been 
 collected together, there is doubtless 
 a great deal that is prosy. An orator 
 who speaks often, and always makes an 
 eloquent speech, is usually one who will 
 never make a great one. Only on ex- 
 ceptional occasions was Webster thor- 
 oughly aroused. But those volumes 
 
 77 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 contain a mine of information and of 
 reason for political students ; they con- 
 tain much literature of the first rank, 
 and I doubt that in all of them a sen- 
 tence can be found that is flippant, or 
 petty, or mean. 
 
 I have already spoken of Burke. He 
 is, I think, superior to Webster as a 
 political philosopher, and also in breadth 
 of information and imaginative power, 
 but in the excellence of the great mass 
 of oratorical work which he left behind 
 him he does not much surpass Webster, 
 if at all. He presents more gorgeous 
 passages, but even his most glittering 
 fabrics do not imply the intellectual 
 strength shown in the simple solidity 
 of Webster. But if it be admitted that 
 he precedes Webster in the permanent 
 value of his speeches, in their tempo- 
 rary effect I do not think he can be 
 classed with him. He often shot over 
 
 78 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 the heads of his audience, and some of 
 his most famous speeches emptied the 
 House of Commons. It was said of him 
 that he always seemed to be in a passion. 
 "Webster never permitted himself to be 
 in a frenzy, fine or otherwise. On the 
 whole, I think it safe to say that Web- 
 ster is not surpassed by Burke, and if he 
 is equaled by any other English-speak- 
 ing orator he is equaled by Burke alone. 
 But whether or not Webster was the 
 foremost of all men in power of speech, 
 he deserves a place among the half 
 dozen greatest orators of the world. 
 To take rank in that chosen circle is 
 indeed glory. For the transcendently 
 great orator, who has kindled his own 
 time and nation to action, and who also 
 speaks to foreign nations and distant 
 ages, must divide with great poets the 
 affectionate homage of mankind. While 
 the stirring history of the Greek people 
 
 79 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 and its noble literature shall continue 
 to have charm and interest for men, 
 the wonderfully chiseled periods of 
 Demosthenes and the simple yet lofty 
 speech of Pericles will be no less im- 
 mortal than the odes of Pindar or the 
 tragedies of Sophocles or ^Eschylus. 
 The light that glows upon the pages of 
 Virgil shines with no brighter radiance 
 than that seen in those glorious speeches 
 with which Cicero moved that imperial 
 race that dominated the world. The 
 glowing oratory of Edmund Burke will 
 live until sensibility to beauty and the 
 generous love of liberty shall die. And 
 I believe the words of "Webster, nobly 
 voicing the possibilities of a mighty na- 
 tion as yet only dimly conscious of its 
 destiny, will continue to roll upon the 
 ears of men while the nation he helped 
 to fashion shall endure, or indeed while 
 government founded upon popular free- 
 
 80 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 dom shall remain an instrument of civ- 
 ilization. 
 
 It is sometimes said of Webster that 
 as a statesman he was not creative and 
 that no conspicuous legislative acts 
 are identified with his name ; that he 
 was the unrivaled advocate of policies, 
 but not their originator. It must be 
 remembered that during most of his 
 congressional career his party was in 
 a minority and he had only a limited 
 opportunity to fashion political legis- 
 lation. He did not, it is true, pass any 
 considerable portion of his time in draw- 
 ing bills, embodying more or less fan- 
 ciful theories of government. But he 
 displayed in a prominent degree the 
 qualities of statesmanship most loudly 
 called for by his time. He was highly 
 successful in adapting to the needs of a 
 nation the provisions of a written con- 
 stitution, by applying to its construction 
 
 81 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 the soundest principles of government. 
 It was beyond human foresight for the 
 framers of the Constitution to compre- 
 hend the unknown demands of the fu- 
 ture. The application of that frame of 
 government to new needs and condi- 
 tions demanded as high and as original 
 an order of statesmanship as was re- 
 quired in the first instance to write it. 
 It might easily have supported a greatly 
 different structure of government if it 
 had been less wisely expounded. If 
 our highest court has been able to re- 
 cognize supposed national exigencies 
 and apply contradictory judicial con- 
 structions to the same clause of the 
 Constitution, we can easily see that it 
 might indeed be a flexible instrument 
 in the hands of statesmen whose prime 
 function is political and not judicial. 
 But there was no paltry expediency in 
 Webster's expounding. His recogni- 
 
 82 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tion of sound principles, his profound 
 sympathy with the genius of our system, 
 and his true political sense enabled him 
 to display the most difficult art of 
 statesmanship, the practical application 
 of theory to the government of a nation. 
 The principles of government are de- 
 rived from a long series of experiments, 
 and the statesman who produces some- 
 thing novel produces something which 
 experience will usually show it is well 
 to avoid. Originality of statesmanship 
 does not alone consist in bringing forth 
 something unheard of in government, 
 or in keeping on hand, as Si eyes was 
 said to have done, a large assortment 
 of constitutions ready made. Neither 
 can I see originality or even a high or- 
 der of statesmanship in patching up a 
 truce by some temporary device, which, 
 after it shall have lost its effect, will 
 leave the body politic in a worse condi- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tion than when it found it. Webster 
 aided in making the Constitution work 
 among conditions that its founders did 
 not foresee. He contributed to pro- 
 tect it from danger, against which they 
 made no provision, and to endow it with 
 perpetuity. His adherence to sound 
 principles was as resolute as his recog- 
 nition of them was instinctive. He 
 would not be swerved from them by 
 considerations of temporary expedi- 
 ency. This unbending quality and an 
 indisposition to appeal to a pseudo-pa- 
 triotism prevented him in the conditions 
 then existing from becoming a great 
 party leader, and in that respect he 
 strikingly resembled Fox. After a ca- 
 reer unexampled among statesmen, in 
 its constant treatment of liberty as a 
 birthright of all men, and not as a pe- 
 culiar prerogative of Englishmen, it was 
 said of Fox's following in Parliament 
 
 84 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 that they could all be put in a hackney 
 coach. The reason is obvious. The 
 British Parliament has usually been 
 jealous for British freedom; but when 
 British demands come in conflict with 
 the freedom of foreign peoples, liberty 
 then becomes a much less influential 
 sentiment than what on such occasions 
 is sometimes conveniently termed hu- 
 manity and sometimes civilization. 
 
 Let us follow Webster's course upon 
 some of the more important issues of 
 his time, in order to gain a practical in- 
 sight into his statesmanship. He was 
 a friend of commerce, which, he de- 
 clared, had paid the price of independ- 
 ence, and he was in favor of encour- 
 aging it both with foreign nations and 
 among the states themselves. He was, 
 therefore, strenuously opposed to the 
 embargo which preceded and attended 
 the war with Great Britain. He was 
 
 85 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 so hostile to the war itself that he re- 
 fused to vote supplies to carry it on. 
 Even that much quoted passage, so 
 frequently employed against those who 
 would question proposed aggressions 
 upon other peoples, " Our party divi- 
 sions, acrimonious as they are, cease at 
 the water's edge," was uttered by him 
 in a speech against a bill to encourage 
 enlistment. He was opposed to the 
 war because he thought it inexpedient 
 and wrong. The question of peace or 
 war he declared was " not to be com- 
 pressed into the compass that would fit 
 a small litigation." It was a great 
 question of right and expediency. 
 " Considerations which go back to the 
 origin of our institutions and other 
 considerations which look forward to 
 our hopeful progress in future times, 
 all belong, in their just proportions and 
 graduations, to a question in the deter- 
 
 86 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 mination of which the happiness of the 
 present and of future generations may 
 be so much concerned. Utterly as- 
 tonished at the declaration of war, I 
 have been surprised at nothing since. 
 Unless all history deceived me, I saw 
 how it would be prosecuted when I 
 saw how it was begun. There is in 
 the nature of things an unchangeable 
 relation between rash counsels and 
 feeble execution." The struggle itself, 
 whether just or unjust at its inception, 
 became almost a war of self-preserva- 
 tion, and Webster's attitude was an 
 extreme one in refusing to vote the 
 necessary means to carry it on. At a 
 much later period of his life he voted 
 for supplies for the war with Mexico, 
 to which he had also been opposed. 
 But his position was unassailable when 
 during the war with Great Britain he 
 declined to be badgered out of the 
 
 87 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 right of public discussion, for he did 
 not escape the fury of the small pa- 
 triots of his time. " It is," he said, " a 
 home-bred right, a fireside privilege. 
 . . . It is not to be drawn in contro- 
 versy. . . . Belonging to private life 
 as a right, it belongs to public life as 
 a duty. . . . This high constitutional 
 privilege I shall defend and exercise 
 within this House and without this 
 House, and in all places, in time of 
 peace, in time of war." 
 
 His earlier speeches in Congress on 
 the tariff were upon free trade lines 
 and against the exercise of the taxing 
 power of the Constitution for the pur- 
 pose of protection. During his term 
 of service in the House he voted 
 against tariff bills that were protective 
 in their nature, but after he became a 
 member of the Senate he voted for 
 such bills, and he has often been ac- 
 
 88 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 cused of inconsistency on account of 
 these apparently contradictory votes. 
 But his answer was simple and appar- 
 ently conclusive. He had opposed the 
 policy of artificially calling manufac- 
 tures into being, but it had been 
 adopted. New England had acqui- 
 esced in a system which had been 
 forced upon her against the votes of 
 her representatives. Manufactures had 
 been built up, and he would not vote to 
 strike them down. 
 
 During the early years of his service 
 in the House he began his advocacy 
 of a sound money system, and he con- 
 tinued to support it, while the currency 
 was an issue, to the end of his career. 
 The delusive arguments in favor of a 
 money which the art of printing made 
 cheap of production did not impose 
 upon him. No man of his time set 
 
 forth more clearly the principles of a 
 
 89 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER * 
 
 sound system of finance or the disaster 
 which would follow a deviation from it. 
 He had been so conspicuous in the 
 debates upon financial measures that 
 President Harrison requested him to 
 accept the Secretaryship of the Trea- 
 sury at the time he became Secretary 
 of State. 
 
 He was too firm a friend of civil 
 justice not to make an indignant pro- 
 test against the bill proposing to take 
 the trial of certain cases of treason 
 from the courts and give them to mili- 
 tary tribunals. 
 
 The Force Bill of 1833, which gave 
 Jackson the authority to cope with the 
 nullification movement in South Caro- 
 lina, would probably have failed of 
 passage without Webster's support. 
 That measure, however, became of 
 little consequence after the substantial 
 concession to that State made in the 
 
 90 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tariff propositions brought forward by 
 Mr. Clay, who was usually ready to 
 apply temporary devices to any threat- 
 ening situation. Webster austerely 
 declined to surrender to the threats of 
 South Carolina, and voted against the 
 tariff bill. 
 
 He jealously upheld the prerogatives 
 of the Senate, and resolutely severed 
 the growing friendship between him- 
 self and Jackson, when the latter 
 showed a disposition towards personal 
 government and an autocratic admin- 
 istration of the laws. But first of all 
 he was attached to the principles of 
 popular government, and while a Sena- 
 tor he favored a broad construction of 
 the power which the Constitution gave 
 to the Representatives to originate 
 revenue bills. In a running debate in 
 the Senate he took the position that 
 territories were not a part of the 
 
 91 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 United States, within the meaning of 
 the Constitution, and he referred for 
 authority to a class of decisions of the 
 Supreme Court. It so happened that 
 the court had decided but a single case 
 of the class he mentioned, and that he 
 himself had been of counsel. It showed 
 his remarkable memory and command 
 of his resources that thirty years after- 
 wards he was able, apparently upon 
 the spur of the moment, to urge in all 
 its force the argument he had prepared 
 in the law case. The court, however, 
 although it had decided the case in his 
 favor, had not put its decision upon 
 the ground he urged. In the same 
 debate in the Senate he made it clear, 
 whatever he may have meant in claim- 
 ing that the Constitution did not ex- 
 tend to the territories, that the oath of 
 members of Congress bound them to 
 observe its limitations even when legis- 
 
 92 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 lating for the territories, which is an 
 essential point in the great controversy 
 in which he has recently been so often 
 cited as an authority. 
 
 So far from admitting that a denial 
 of congressional absolutism in dealing 
 with human rights anywhere would 
 make our government an incomplete or 
 crippled government, he saw in tenden- 
 cies of an opposite character the danger 
 that our Constitution would be converted 
 " into a deformed monster," into a great 
 " frame of unequal government," and 
 " into a curse rather than a blessing." 
 He also gave weighty expression to the 
 opinion that while arbitrary govern- 
 ments could govern distant possessions 
 by different laws and different systems, 
 we could do no such thing. He pro- 
 tested against the policy of admitting 
 new and small states into the Union, be- 
 cause of its tendency to destroy the 
 
 93 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 balance established by the Constitution 
 and convert the Senate into an oligar- 
 chy, a policy which has been pursued 
 until at last states having less than a 
 sixth of the population of the country 
 elect a majority of the entire Senate. 
 He took a leading part in the codifica- 
 tion of the criminal laws of the nation 
 and in the enlargement of its judicial 
 system. He profoundly deplored the 
 existence of slavery, and many striking 
 utterances against it may be found in 
 his speeches ; but he held to the opinion, 
 which indeed appears to have prevailed 
 everywhere at that time, that the na- 
 tional government had no authority 
 under the Constitution to interfere with 
 slavery in the states where it was estab- 
 lished. He believed that the non-po- 
 litical offices of the government should 
 not be used as party spoils ; and a gen- 
 eration before civil service reform made 
 
 94 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 its appearance on this continent, he gave 
 luminous expression to its most essen- 
 tial principles. His public career was 
 singularly free from demagoguery, and 
 his speeches will be explored in vain 
 for catch-penny appeals to the passing 
 popular fancy. 
 
 One of the most notable achievements 
 of his career, as well as one of the most 
 definite and honorable triumphs of 
 American diplomacy, is found in the 
 negotiation of the Webster- Ashburton 
 treaty. The dispute over the north- 
 eastern boundary had for years been a 
 source of irritation between this coun- 
 try and Great Britain, and had baffled 
 such earnest attempts at solution that it 
 promised to continue a menace to the 
 peace of the two nations. It had defied 
 the good offices of arbitration. It was 
 complicated with domestic difficulties, 
 and the American negotiations had been 
 
 95 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 hampered by the rights of one of the 
 states of the Union. The British gov- 
 ernment had finally dispatched a large 
 number of soldiers to Canada, and our 
 minister at London expressed the opin- 
 ion that war appeared inevitable. There 
 were also other annoying sources of 
 dispute aside from that relating to the 
 boundary. "Webster triumphantly over- 
 came all obstacles, and he could proudly 
 appeal, as he subsequently did in the 
 Senate, " to the public men of the age 
 whether, in 1842, and in the city of 
 "Washington, something was not done 
 for the suppression of crime, for the 
 true exposition of the principles of pub- 
 lic law, for the freedom and security of 
 commerce on the ocean, and for the 
 peace of the world." 
 
 The qualities which he displayed in 
 these negotiations attracted attention 
 in the British Parliament. Macaulay 
 
 96 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 commented on his " firm, resolute, vigi- 
 lant, and unyielding " manner. Diplo- 
 matic writing has a peculiar rhetoric, a 
 rhetoric which Webster had the good 
 sense to refuse to adopt in preference 
 to his own. Compared with his con- 
 densed and weighty letter upon im- 
 pressment, for instance, the ordinary 
 fawning or threatening diplomatic per- 
 formance seems a flimsy structure in- 
 deed. The claim, on the part of the 
 British government, of the right to im- 
 press British-born sailors from the 
 decks of American ships could not sur- 
 vive the conclusive arguments which 
 he crowded into the brief letter to 
 Ashburton, and which without any 
 pretense led to the conclusion that " the 
 American government then is prepared 
 to say that the practice of impressing 
 seamen from American vessels cannot 
 be hereafter allowed to take place." 
 
 97 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 And then he ran up the flag, not for 
 rhetorical purposes, but over the solid 
 foundation of reason, from which it can 
 never be hauled down without over- 
 turning established principles : " In 
 every regularly documented American 
 vessel the crew who navigate it will 
 find their protection in the flag that is 
 over them." ~No one could mistake the 
 meaning of what was so simply stated 
 after its justice had been so conclusively 
 shown. It is impossible for an Ameri- 
 can to read the diplomatic correspond- 
 ence of "Webster while Secretary of 
 State and not feel a new pride in his 
 country. The absolute absence of any- 
 thing petty or meretricious, the simple 
 dignity and the sublime and conscious 
 power, cause one to feel that it enno- 
 bled the nation to have such a defender. 
 It may be said, too, that the manner in 
 which he conducted the State Depart- 
 
 98 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 ment proved that he possessed the high- 
 est qualities of executive statesmanship. 
 But the overshadowing work of his 
 public life is to be found in the part he 
 performed in maintaining the suprem- 
 acy of the laws of the national govern- 
 ment enacted in conformity with the 
 Constitution. In the great controversy 
 over the relations between the central 
 and state governments, which began 
 soon after the adoption of the Constitu- 
 tion and continued until it was removed 
 from the forum of debate to be settled 
 by the arbitrament of arms, Webster 
 was the colossal figure. From the high 
 ground he took in the Reply to Hayne 
 he never wavered. If he erred at all in 
 his devotion to the national idea, it was 
 in the sacrifices he was willing to make 
 for it. Twenty years after his first 
 great discussion upon the Union, he 
 
 made a speech on that subject which 
 
 99 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 excited fiercer controversy than has ever 
 been kindled by any other utterance of 
 an American statesman. I refer to the 
 speech which, whatever it might be ap- 
 propriately called from its theme, will 
 probably always retain the name of the 
 Seventh of March Speech. It gave 
 rise to more criticism, to employ no 
 harsher term, than grew out of all the 
 rest of his public career. The aliena- 
 tion which it occasioned from many of 
 his former friends, who were grieved to 
 the heart and regarded him after the 
 seventh of March as a fallen archangel, 
 the relentless abuse it drew forth from 
 others who had never been his friends, 
 embittered the last days of his life. A 
 half century after it was spoken we 
 should be able to hear something of 
 those permanent voices which are 
 drowned in the fleeting tumult of the 
 times, but which speak to after ages. 
 
 100 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 I do not agree that that speech must be 
 passed by in silence out of regard for 
 Webster's fame. Twenty years ago 
 the poet Whittier made noble repara- 
 tion for " Ichabod" in the " Lost Occa- 
 sion," and even more ample reparation 
 would be his due if in judging him one 
 applied the same tests that are appar- 
 ently applied to his critics. 
 
 When he replied to Hayne, the 
 danger to the Union was chiefly theo- 
 retical, except for the attitude of a 
 single State, but on the 7th of March 
 the controversy had become more 
 angry and practical. Only a few 
 weeks before he spoke, an anti-slavery 
 society, most respectable in numbers 
 and the character of its members, had 
 met in his own State, and in Faneuil 
 Hall, and had resolved that they were 
 the enemies of the Constitution and 
 Union and proclaimed their purpose to 
 
 101 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 " live and labor for a dissolution of the 
 present Union." These resolutions 
 were but the echo of what had come 
 from a similar society in the State of 
 Ohio. They emanated not from the 
 home of nullification doctrines, but 
 from that portion of the country where 
 the hopes of the Union lay. There 
 was an equally uncompromising and a 
 more resentful feeling upon the other 
 side of the slavery questions, and a 
 convention had been called at the city 
 of Nashville to give it voice. That 
 convention subsequently put forth an 
 address in favor of disunion. The an- 
 nexation of Texas, the war with Mex- 
 ico and the treaty of peace had pro- 
 duced practical and pressing questions, 
 and "Webster had come reluctantly to 
 believe that their solution, without de- 
 triment to the Union, was most dif- 
 ficult in the inflamed condition of the 
 
 102 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 public mind. More than a year after 
 he made the speech he declared that 
 " in a very alarming crisis " he felt it 
 his "duty to come out." "If," he 
 said at that time, "I had seen the 
 stake, if I had heard the fagots al- 
 ready crackling, by the blessing of 
 Almighty God, I would have gone on 
 and discharged the duty which I 
 thought my country called upon me to 
 perform." 
 
 That a similar opinion of the impor- 
 tance of the crisis was entertained by 
 those two great men whose names 
 stand perhaps next to his own and for- 
 ever to be associated with it in our 
 congressional annals, there can be no 
 doubt. There is something pathetic 
 in the spectacle of those three states- 
 men, then almost at the end of their 
 careers, who had often radically dif- 
 fered with each other upon public 
 
 103 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 questions, bending their energies to 
 the support of a common cause and 
 struggling to avert a common danger. 
 Clay put forth a last effort of his 
 statesmanship and brought forward his 
 compromise measure. For the mo- 
 ment he forgot his differences with 
 "Webster and earnestly besought the 
 latter for his support. Calhoun, too 
 weak to utter his own words, spoke 
 through the mouth of another, in his 
 last speech in the Senate, his sense of 
 the gravity of the crisis. 
 
 It was said, and has been so often 
 repeated that it is accepted in some 
 quarters as an article of political faith, 
 that Webster made his speech as a bid 
 for the presidency. The imputation 
 of an unworthy motive to a public man 
 is easy to make and difficult to dis- 
 prove. But on this point it is perti- 
 nent to remember that he threw away 
 
 104 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 his fairest chance for the presidency 
 by patriotically refusing, at the dic- 
 tates of his own party in his own State 
 and of its leaders in the country, to re- 
 tire from Tyler's cabinet until our dif- 
 ferences with Great Britain should be 
 composed; that he had many times re- 
 signed or refused to accept important 
 public office ; that the great position of 
 Senator from Massachusetts had more 
 than once to be forced upon him, and 
 that, before the 7th of March at least, 
 he had fully lived up to his own im- 
 pressive declaration that solicitations 
 for high public office were " inconsist- 
 ent with personal dignity and deroga- 
 tory to the character of the institutions 
 of the country." Solicitude for the 
 Union was no new thing with him, 
 that an ignoble motive should be as- 
 cribed. But it was not the first time, 
 as it doubtless will not be the last, 
 
 105 
 
DANIEL WEBSTEK 
 
 when those having in view the accom- 
 plishment of some great public object 
 to the exclusion of everything else, 
 have imputed evil motives to those 
 who have not sanctioned their particu- 
 lar course of procedure, especially 
 when they threatened to pull down the 
 pillars of the state itself, if thereby the 
 evil might be destroyed in the common 
 calamity. Reform draws to itself not 
 only the single-minded who have no 
 sordid aims, but it is attractive also to 
 those censorious spirits who delight 
 not so much in battering down the 
 ramparts of wrong as in abusing those 
 hapless individuals who will not agree 
 that evil methods are to be sanctified 
 by noble ends. In the speeches of 
 some of the leaders of the anti-slavery 
 movement, denunciation of slavery had 
 the second place and denunciation of 
 
 Webster the first; and when the time 
 
 106 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 of consummation came, even Lincoln 
 did not escape their acrimony. 
 
 The high moral purpose and the in- 
 dispensable practical value of the aboli- 
 tion movement cannot be questioned. 
 But it also cannot be questioned that a 
 good deal of the agitation was disrup- 
 tive, and, in the conditions then exist- 
 ing, tended less towards freedom than 
 to disunion and war. They might have 
 broken the " compact with hell," which 
 was the favorite epithet of some of its 
 supporters for the Constitution of their 
 country, but it is not easy to see how 
 this programme could have broken a 
 single chain, with a free and a slave 
 republic side by side and hostile to 
 each other. In the light of to-day it 
 can be clearly seen that to accomplish 
 freedom the concurrence of other 
 forces was demanded. The truth will 
 often ultimately spring from apparently 
 
 107 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 contradictory forces. Agitation was 
 necessary to educate and arouse the 
 people, but it needed also to be checked 
 before it should become swollen be- 
 yond constitutional limits and form the 
 basis of a revolution; for with any 
 important body of opinion at the 
 North cooperating with disunion at the 
 South, the nation would have been 
 rent asunder. 
 
 But look a little more closely at the 
 matter. I presume no one would now 
 criticise the willingness of Webster, as 
 the foremost advocate of constitutional 
 supremacy, to accord to the South 
 whatever it had a right according to 
 the terms of the Constitution to de- 
 mand. The specific thing in the speech 
 criticised, with the nearest approach to 
 justice, was the position with regard 
 to New Mexico. He declared that 
 natural law had effectively banished 
 
 108 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 slavery from that territory, because of 
 its sterile and mountainous character, 
 and that he would not vote uselessly 
 to reenact the will of God and banish 
 slavery by a statute. He therefore 
 accepted that feature of Clay's com- 
 promise with the declaration that he 
 would favor the application of the so- 
 called Wilmot proviso to any territory 
 in which there was any danger that 
 slavery might be established. This 
 was certainly a technical if not a prac- 
 tical concession to the Southern de- 
 mands. For accepting this policy with 
 regard to New Mexico, he was accused 
 by Mr. Seward, who undoubtedly spoke 
 the sentiments of the Free Soil leaders, 
 with having "derided the proviso of 
 freedom, the principle of the ordinance 
 of 1787." 
 
 Ten years later, when it did not re- 
 quire a statesman's eye to see the dan- 
 
 109 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 ger, nor a statesman's ear to hear the 
 thunders of the approaching storm, 
 Congress consented to apply the very 
 principle which Webster was willing to 
 concede to New Mexico, to the whole 
 of that vast domain out of which the 
 Dakotas and Nevada and Colorado have 
 since been carved; and neither Seward 
 nor Sumner, nor any other leader in 
 Congress of the great new anti-slavery 
 party, was heard to raise his voice or 
 vote against it. Surely, if "Webster 
 was a traitor to the cause of freedom, 
 they must keep him company. If he 
 was a traitor, their guilt was not less 
 deep than his, for they were the special 
 guardians of freedom while he was 
 only the champion of the Union; and 
 the scornful repeal by the South of 
 the settlement of 1850 shed a brighter 
 light for them than was given to him, 
 upon the futility of all compromise. 
 
 110 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 The truth is, none of them was a traitor. 
 They were true-hearted, patriotic men, 
 solicitous for the preservation of the 
 Republic which they loved. But when 
 the most responsible of Webster's ac- 
 cusers saw the danger, as he saw it, they 
 were willing to make concessions to 
 slavery far more hateful than any of 
 which he had ever dreamed. 
 
 "What I have just said bears chiefly 
 upon his motive. It is of far less 
 consequence whether, using his judg- 
 ment unselfishly and honestly, he made 
 a mistake. But upon this point we 
 may learn something from the event. 
 In the great conflict of arms in which 
 the debate finally culminated, it was 
 the sentiment of Union that banded 
 those invincible armies together, and 
 it was through the triumph of that sen- 
 timent that we enjoy the blessings of 
 a restored government and that the 
 
 111 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 slave secured his freedom. And had 
 that great statesman on the 7th of 
 March shown any less anxiety for the 
 Union, had that great centripetal force 
 become centrifugal or weakened in the 
 attraction which it exerted to hold the 
 states in their orbits, who shall say that 
 our magnificent and now united domain 
 might not be covered by two hostile 
 flags, one of which would float over a 
 republic founded upon slavery ! 
 
 And then there is that ill-omened 
 thing which, wherever else it may be 
 found, is sure to attend greatness. The 
 baleful goddess of Detraction sits ever 
 at the elbow of Fame unsweetening 
 what is written upon the record. 
 "Whether it springs from the envy of 
 rivals or from the tendency in human 
 nature to identify the material of great- 
 ness with common clay, it is true, as 
 Burke says, that obloquy is an essential 
 
 112 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 ingredient in the composition of all true 
 glory. This proof of greatness, such 
 as it is, exists in ample measure in the 
 history of Webster. No man since 
 "Washington has had more of it. The 
 pity of it all is that when an unsup- 
 ported charge is disproved, people will 
 shake their heads and say it is very 
 unfortunate that it should have been 
 necessary to establish innocence, as if 
 reproof belonged rather to the inno- 
 cent victim than to the author of the 
 calumny. 
 
 I have alluded to the Seventh of 
 March Speech, which has been ac- 
 counted one of his crimes. One other 
 matter I shall notice, because it bears 
 upon a point which has often been con- 
 ceded to be the weak place in his char- 
 acter. It so happens that in this case 
 a slander was tested and the evidence 
 upon it carefully marshaled before a 
 
 113 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 congressional investigating committee. 
 He was charged in Congress with a 
 misuse of the Secret Service Fund 
 while Secretary of State. A resolution 
 of inquiry upon the subject was pre- 
 sented in the Senate while he was a 
 member of that body. He opposed it. 
 Rather a singular course, it might be 
 said, for an innocent man to take. It 
 would ordinarily be regarded as an evi- 
 dence of guilt. It might also show an 
 extraordinary degree of public virtue 
 and indicate one of the rare men to 
 whom the interests of their country 
 were dearer than their own, even than 
 their own reputations. "What it implied 
 in this instance may be inferred from 
 the event. 
 
 A law had been framed evidently on 
 the theory that in conducting the gov- 
 ernment it would sometimes be neces- 
 sary to employ secret agents for confi- 
 
 114 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 dential purposes, and a fund was created 
 to be expended upon the sole responsi- 
 bility of the President. A publication 
 of the special disbursements would 
 violate the spirit of the law, and, to say 
 nothing of the bad faith with reference 
 to the past, might cripple the govern- 
 ment in its future operations. Webster 
 declared in the Senate that every dollar 
 had been spent for a proper public pur- 
 pose, but that he could not wish to see 
 an important principle and law violated 
 for any personal convenience to himself. 
 The Senate refused to make the inquiry. 
 The author of the charges, writhing 
 under the lashing which Webster had 
 administered to him in a speech in the 
 Senate, again pressed them in the House, 
 and a committee of investigation was 
 appointed. That committee was politi- 
 cally hostile to Webster and was created 
 with a view to his impeachment, if the 
 
 115 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 charges were sustained. It made a 
 thorough investigation, and it appeared, 
 as the outcome of it all, that Webster 
 had not indeed displayed the highest 
 skill as an accountant, but it appeared 
 also that he himself had advanced the 
 amount of certain lost vouchers out of 
 his own pocket. The report concluded 
 that there was no proof " to impeach 
 Mr. "Webster's integrity or the purity 
 of his motives in the discharge of the 
 duties of his office." And that report, 
 exonerating the defender of the Union, 
 will not lose weight from the fact that 
 it bears the name of Jefferson Davis. 
 
 It is true that his friends contributed 
 considerable sums of money to his sup- 
 port, and he was severely criticised for 
 accepting such assistance. Burke re- 
 ceived from his friends during his life 
 gifts, or loans that were never repaid, 
 to an enormous amount for those days. 
 
 116 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 Fox's friends gave him an annuity of 
 fifteen thousand dollars. I do not 
 know that it has occurred to any one 
 to accuse either of them of impro- 
 priety. Can it be doubted that Web- 
 ster's friends were as much attached 
 to him, or that they gave from pure 
 personal loyalty mingled with a patri- 
 otic desire to maintain in the service 
 of their country talents as splendid 
 as ever Fox or Burke possessed, and 
 that were even more successfully em- 
 ployed ? It is to be regretted from the 
 abuse to which his example may give 
 rise that he found it necessary to re- 
 ceive this aid. The danger is that a far 
 lesser man than Webster in a high pub- 
 lic place might receive a more calculat- 
 ing homage. However, each case must 
 be judged on its own merits. It is very 
 true that he was not a bookkeeper. 
 But if accounts had been carefully kept, 
 
 117 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 it may be doubted whether even from 
 the money standpoint he did not give 
 more than he received. Instead of neg- 
 lecting his profession and eking out his 
 expenses by the aid of friends, he might 
 have remained out of the public service 
 and enjoyed the most lucrative practice 
 at the American bar. His father and 
 his brother made great sacrifices to edu- 
 cate him, but it must also not be forgot- 
 ten that he taught school, and at the 
 same time copied two large volumes of 
 deeds at night and generously gave the 
 proceeds of it all to his brother ; and 
 that he assumed and paid his father's 
 debts. He certainly was not a man 
 "who much receives but nothing gives." 
 He had a regal nature and men would 
 give him their all because he was as free 
 and generous as he was receptive. 
 
 There is a strong light thrown upon 
 this trait of his character by an inci- 
 
 118 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 dent which among great speeches and 
 public policies may seem an unimport- 
 ant incident, and yet, as showing the 
 real character of the man, is a great 
 one. A young man who had been em- 
 ployed by him in connection with his 
 farms in the West came to Washing- 
 ton, where he fell ill. Webster was 
 at that time nearly sixty years old, at 
 the summit of his fame and engrossed 
 in his public duties. But he saw this 
 farmer's boy sick in the city among 
 strangers. He took care of him with 
 his own hands. For a week he was 
 with him almost constantly day and 
 night. 
 
 Critics have applied to this generous 
 nature the little standards for little 
 men. They have told us that he ought 
 not to have been extravagant; that he 
 did not closely calculate his expenses; 
 that he did not carefully keep his ac- 
 
 119 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 counts; and as they would arraign a 
 petty criminal before a police court, 
 they have harried this transcendent fig- 
 ure at history's bar. They demanded 
 too much of Nature. If she had tried 
 to do more for him upon whom she 
 had lavished so many gifts, she might 
 indeed have made him a great clerk or 
 bookkeeper, but she might also have 
 spoiled him as a statesman. Careless 
 he may have been, but anything like 
 conscious corruption was utterly alien 
 to his nature. 
 
 And now, having spoken to you, I 
 fear much too long, of those things in 
 his career which I thought best suited 
 for bringing out my idea of him, let us 
 look back at him for a moment before 
 we leave him. We have seen him the 
 greatest lawyer of his time and one of 
 the greatest orators of all times. "We 
 have seen him, too, the resolute and 
 
 120 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 masterful statesman, not swayed by 
 trifles, but aiming to govern according 
 to far-sighted policies a nation domi- 
 nated by immortal principles and of 
 chief consequence to itself or mankind 
 only as it faithfully adhered to them; 
 a statesman who shed a white light far 
 across the future pathway of his own 
 country, and who illuminated, also, the 
 courses of self-governing nations, 
 wherever they might exist. He never 
 outgrew the simple loves of his youth. 
 At Marshfield it was his habit to rise 
 before daybreak to watch the coming 
 of the dawn. It was said that his 
 cattle knew him, and, even more than 
 his open hospitality, his herds of fine 
 oxen kept him poor. It was one of his 
 pleasures to feed them with ears of 
 corn out of his own hand, and only a 
 few days before he died he had some 
 of the noblest of them brought before 
 
 121 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 his window that he might get comfort 
 from looking out upon their broad 
 brows and their great mild eyes. The 
 passion for fishing never left him. He 
 delighted to wade in some brook for 
 trout, but of all things he loved to go 
 out in a little skiff upon the sea. 
 " Marshfield and the sea, the sea," he 
 would cry when the burdens of politi- 
 cal life grew heavy upon him. The 
 farmers about his home loved him, and 
 it so happened that they gathered to- 
 gether from miles around and went out 
 in a great procession to meet him when 
 he returned to Marshfield the last sum- 
 mer of his fife. Those who knew him 
 best, his family and his near friends, 
 were devoted to him. What he was 
 as a statesman and an orator, he was 
 as a man. 
 
 To the College which, now well into 
 the second century of her life, still has 
 
 122 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 upon her the freshness of the morn- 
 ing, those early years of struggle, no 
 less narrow and straitened for her than 
 for him, take on an air of romance. 
 No other part of his career seems 
 to me so much to be reverenced as 
 when that matchless youth in all the 
 innocence and perfection of nature, 
 with those infinite possibilities in his 
 soul, received here the first of the 
 lessons which taught him how to use 
 his superb gifts for the benefit of man- 
 kind. The campus hedged with elms, 
 yonder venerable hall, these encircling 
 hills, whether clad with the green of 
 springtime or, as now, flaming with the 
 gold of autumn, became a part of his 
 life and all speak to us of him. Men 
 die, but the College is immortal. A 
 hundred classes have followed him and 
 hundreds more I doubt not will yet 
 prolong the line. Her sons will con- 
 
 123 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 tinue to bear their part where the in- 
 tellectual strife is the fiercest and 
 where shape is given to the destinies 
 of their times. But whatever the fu- 
 ture may bring to the College, how- 
 ever she may hereafter "teem with 
 new prodigies," she will always 
 proudly cherish and, as the succeeding 
 centuries roll around, will reverently 
 commemorate, the fame of Daniel 
 "Webster. Massive even upon the he- 
 roic stage of history, easily seen across 
 its vast distances, and untroubled by 
 its cold and searching light, it would 
 be difficult, among all its towering 
 forms of statesmen, to find a more vital 
 or a more majestic figure. 
 
 124 
 
Electrotyfied and printed by H. O. Houghton &* Co. 
 Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. 
 
MAY " 3 1902 
 
 1C0P> Utl. U) u\T, DiV. 
 MAY 3 1902