ï~~DISCOURSE
OCCASIONED BY THE
DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER,
PREACHED AT THE MELODEON
ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1852.
BY
THEODORE PARKER,
MINISTER OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY IN BOSTON.

BOSTON:
BENJAMIN B. MUSSEY & CO.
No. 29, CORNEILL.
1853.




ï~~Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by
THEODORE PARKER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
BO S TO N:
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, SCHOOL STREET.




ï~~PREFACE.

IT is now four months since the delivery of this Sermon. A
phonographic report of it was published the next morning, and
quite extensively circulated in all parts of the country. Since
then, I have taken pains to examine anew the life and actions of
the distinguished man who is the theme of the discourse. I have
carefully read all the criticisms on my estimate of him, which came
to hand; I have diligently read the most important sermons and
other discourses which treat of him, and have conversed with persons who have known Mr. Webster at all the various periods of
his life. The result is embodied in the following pages.
My estimate of Mr. Webster differs from that which seems to
prevail just now in Church and State; differs widely, differs profoundly. I did not suppose that my judgment upon him would
pass unchallenged. I have not been surprised at the swift condemnation which many men have pronounced upon this sermon,
- upon the statements therein, and the motives thereto. I should
be sorry to find that Americans valued a great man so little as to
have nothing to say in defence of one so long and so conspicuously
before the public. The violence and rage directed against me is
not astonishing; it is not even new. I am not vain enough to
fancy that I have never been mistaken in a fact of Mr. Webster's history, or in my judgment pronounced on any of his actions,
words, or motives. I can only say I have done what I could.

259707




ï~~iv                       PREFACE.
If I have committed any errors, I hope they will be pointed out.
Fifty years hence, the character of Mr. Webster and his eminent
contemporaries will be better understood than now; for we have
not yet all the evidence on which the final judgment of posterity
will rest. Thomas Hutchinson and John Adams are better known
now than at the day of their death; five and twenty years hence
they will both be better known than at present.
BOSTON, March 7, 1853.




ï~~INTRODUCTION.

TO THE    YOUNG    MEN   OF AMERICA.
GENTLEMEN, - I address this Discourse to you in particular,
and by way of introduction will say a few words.
We are a young nation, three and twenty millions strong,
rapidly extending in our geographic spread, enlarging rapidly in
numerical power, and greatening our material strength with a swiftness which has no example. Soon we shall spread over the whole
continent, and number a hundred million men. America and
England are but parts of the same nation, - a younger and an
older branch of the same great Anglo-Saxon stem. Our character
will affect that of the mother-country, as her good and evil still
influence us. Considering the important place which the AngloSaxon tribe holds in the world at this day,-occupying one-eighth
part of the earth, and controlling one-sixth part of its inhabitants,
- the national character of England and America becomes one of
the great human forces which is to control the world for some
ages to come.
In the American character there are some commanding and
noble qualities. We have founded some political and ecclesiastical institutions which seem to me the proudest achievements
of mankind in Church and State. But there are other qualities
in the nation's character which are mean and selfish; we have




ï~~VI

INTRODUCTION.

founded other institutions, or confirmed such as we inherited,
which were the weakness of a former and darker age, and are
the shame of this.
The question comes, Which qualities shall prevail in the character and in the institutions of America, - the noble, or the mean
and selfish? Shall America govern herself by the eternal laws,
as they are discerned through the conscience of mankind, or by
the transient appetite of the hour, - the lust for land, for money,
for power, or fame? That is a question for you to settle; and,
as you decide for God or mammon, so follows the weal or woe of
millions of men. Our best institutions are an experiment: shall
it fail?  If so, it will be through your fault. You have the power
to make it succeed. We have nothing to fear from any foreign
foe, much to dread from Wrong at home: will you suffer that to
work our overthrow?
The two chief forms of American action are Business and
Politics, - the commercial and the political form. The two humbler forms of our activity, the Church and the Press, - the
ecclesiastic and the literary form, - are subservient to the others.
Hence it becomes exceedingly important to study carefully our
commercial and political action, criticizing both by the Absolute
Right; for they control the development of the people, and determine our character. The commercial and political forces of the
time culminate in the leading politicians, who represent those
forces in their persons, and direct the energies of the people to
evil or to good.
It is for this reason, young men, that I have spoken so many
times from the pulpit on the great political questions of the day,
and on the great political men; for this reason did I preach, and
now again publish, this Discourse on one of the most eminent
Americans of our day, - that men may be warned of the evil in
our Business and our State, and be guided to the Eternal Justice
which is the foundation of the common weal. There is a Higher
Law of God, written imperishably on the nature of things, and in




ï~~INTRODUCTION.                     Vii
the nature of man; and, if this nation continually violates that
law, then we fall a ruin to the ground.
If there be any truth, any justice, in my counsel, I hope you
will be guided thereby; and, in your commerce and politics, will
practise on the truth which ages confirm, that Righteousness
exalteth a Nation, while Injustice is a reproach to any People.




ï~~"  "




ï~~PISCOIJBJSE.
WHEN Bossuet, who was himself the eagle of eloquence,
preached the funeral discourse on Henrietta Maria, daughter
of Henry the Fourth of France, and wife of Charles the
First of England, he had a task far easier than mine to-day.
She was indeed the queen of misfortunes; the daughter of
a king assassinated in his own capital, and the widow of a
king judicially put to death in front of his own palace. Her
married life was bounded by the murder of her royal sire,
and the execution of her kingly spouse; and she died neglected, far from kith and kin. But for that great man, who
in his youth was called, prophetically, a " Father of the
Church," the sorrows of her birth and her estate made it
easy to gather up the audience in his arms, to moisten the
faces of men with tears, to show them the nothingness of
mortal glory, and the beauty of eternal life. He led his
hearers to his conclusion that day, as the mother lays the
sobbing child to her bosom to still its grief.
To-day it is not so with me. Of all my public trials, this
is my most trying day.  Give me your sympathies, my
friends; remember the difficulty of my position,- its delicacy too.




ï~~2

I am to speak of one of the most conspicuous men that
New England ever bore, - conspicuous, not by accident,
but by the nature of his mind, - one of her ablest intellects.
I am to speak of an eminent man, of great power, in a great
office, one of the landmarks of politics, now laid low. He
seemed so great that some men thought he was himself one
of the institutions of America. I am to speak while his
departure is yet but of yesterday; while the sombre flags
still float in our streets. I am no party man; you know I
am not. No party is responsible for me, nor I to any one.
I am free to commend the good things of all parties, - their
great and good men; free likewise to censure the evil of all
parties. You will not ask me to say what only suits the
public ear: there are a hundred to do that to-day. I do not
follow opinion because popular. I cannot praise a man
because he had great gifts, great station, and great opportunities; I cannot harshly censure a man for trivial mistakes.
You will not ask me to flatter because others flatter; to
condemn because the ruts of condemnation are so deep and
so easy to travel in. It is unjust to be ungenerous, either in
praise or blame: only the truth is beautiful in speech. It is
not reverential to treat a great man like a spoiled child.
Most of you are old enough to know that good and evil are
both to be expected of each man. I hope you are all wise
enough to discriminate between right and wrong.
Give me your sympathies. This I am sure of, - I shall
be as tender in my judgment as a woman's love; I will try
to be as fair as the justice of a man. I shall tax your time
beyond even my usual wont, for I cannot crush Olympus
into a nut. Be not alarmed: if I tax your time the more,
I shall tire your patience less. Such a day as this will never
come again to you or me. There is no DANIEL WEBSTER left
to die, and Nature will not soon give us another such as he.
I will take care by my speech that you sit easy on your bench.
The theme will take care that you remember what I say.




ï~~A great man is the blossom of the world; the individual
and prophetic flower, parent of seeds that will be men. This
is the greatest work of God; far transcending earth and
moon and sun, and all the material magnificence of the universe. It is "a little lower than the angels," and, like the
aloe-tree, it blooms but once an age. So we should value,
love, and cherish it the more. America has not many great
men living now,-scarce one: there have been few in her
history. Fertile in multitudes, she is stingy in great men, -
her works mainly achieved by large bodies of but common
men. At this day, the world has not many natural masters.
There is a dearth of great men. England is no better off
than we her child. Sir Robert Peel has for years been dead.
Wellington's soul has gone home, and left his body awaiting
burial. In France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, few great
men appear. The Revolution of 1848, which found every
thing else, failed because it found not them. A sad Hungarian weeps over the hidden crown of Maria Theresa; and a
sadder countenance drops a tear for the nation of Dante, and
the soil of Virgil and Caesar, Lucretius and Cicero. To me
these two seem the greatest men of Europe now. There
are great chemists, great geologists, great philologians; but
of great men, Christendom has not many. From the highest
places of politics great men recede, and in all Europe no
kingly intellect now throbs beneath a royal crown. Even
Nicholas of Russia is only tall, not great.
But here let us pause a moment, and see what greatness
is, looking at the progressive formation of the idea of a.great
man. In general, greatness is eminence of ability; so there
are as many different forms thereof as there are qualities
wherein a man may be eminent. These various forms of
greatness should be distinctly marked, that, when we say a
man is great, we may know exactly what we mean.
In the rudest ages, when the body is man's only tool for
work or war, eminent strength of body is the thing most




ï~~coveted. Then, and so long as human affairs are controlled
by brute force, the giant is thought to be the great man, -
is had in honor for his eminent brute strength.
When men have a little outgrown that period of force,
cunning is the quality most prized. The nimble brain outwits the heavy arm, and brings the circumvented giant to
the ground. He who can overreach his antagonist, plotting
more subtly, winning with more deceitful skill; who can turn
and double on his unseen track, "can smile and smile, and
be a villain," - he is the great man.
Brute force is merely animal; cunning is the animalism of
the intellect, - the mind's least intellectual element. As
men go on in their development, finding qualities more valuable than the strength of the lion or the subtlety of the fox,
they come to value higher intellectual faculties, - great
understanding, great imagination, great reason. Power to
think is then the faculty men value most; ability to devise
means for attaining ends desired; the power to originate
ideas, to express them in speech, to organize them into institutions; to organize things into a machine, men into an
army, or a state, or a gang of operatives; to administer these
various organizations. He who is eminent in this ability is
thought the great man.
But there are qualities nobler than the mere intellect,
the moral, the affectional, the religious faculties, -the power
of justice, of love, of holiness, of trust in God, and of obedience to his law, - the Eternal Right. These are the
highest qualities of man: whoso is most eminent therein is
the greatest of great men. He is as much above the merely
intellectual great men, as they above the men of mere cunning or of force.
Thus, then, we have four different kinds of greatness. Let
me name them bodily greatness, crafty greatness, intellectual
greatness, religious greatness. Men in different degrees of
development will value the different kinds of greatness.




ï~~Belial cannot yet honor Christ. How can the little girl appreciate Aristotle and Kant? The child thinks as a child.
You must have manhood in you to honor it in others, even
to see it.
Yet how we love to honor men eminent in such modes of
greatness as we can understand! Indeed, we must do so.
Soon as we really see a real great man, his magnetism
draws us, will we or no. Do any of you remember when,
for the first time in adult years, you stood beside the ocean,
or some great mountain of New Hampshire, or Virginia, or
Pennsylvania, or the mighty mounts that rise in Switzerland? Do you remember what emotions came upon you at
the awful presence? But if you were confronted by a man
of vast genius, of colossal history and achievements, immense personal power of wisdom, justice, philanthropy,
religion, of mighty power of will and mighty act; if you
feel him as you feel the mountain and the sea, what grander
emotions spring up! It is like making the acquaintance of
one of the elementary forces of the earth, -like associating
with gravitation itself! The stiffest neck bends over: down
go the democratic knees; human nature is loyal then! A
New England shipmaster, wrecked on an island in the
Indian Sea, was seized by his conquerors, and made their
chief.  Their captive became their king.  After years of
rule, he managed to escape. When he once more visited
his former realm, he found that the savages had carried him
to heaven, and worshipped him as a god greater than their
fancied deities: he had revolutionized divinity, and-was
himself enthroned as a god.  Why so?  In intellectual
qualities, in religious qualities, he was superior to their idea
of God, and so they worshipped him. So loyal is human
nature to its great men.
Talk of Democracy! - we are all looking for a master;
a man manlier than we. We are always looking for a great
man to solve the difficulty too hard for us, to break the




ï~~rock which lies in our way, - to represent the possibility of
human nature as an ideal, and then to realize that ideal in
his life. Little boys in the country, working against time,
with stents to do, long for the passing-by of some tall brother, who in a few minutes shall achieve what the smaller
boy took hours to do. And we are all of us but little boys,
looking for some great brother to come and help us end our
tasks.
But it is not quite so easy to recognize the greatest kind
of greatness. A Nootka-Sound Indian would not see much
in Leibnitz, Newton, Socrates, or Dante; and if a great
man were to come as much before us as we are before the
Nootka-Sounders, what should we say of him? Why, the
worst names we could devise, - Infidel, Atheist, Blasphemer, Hypocrite. Perhaps we should dig up the old cross,
and make a new martyr of the man posterity will worship
as a deity. It is the nen who are up that see the rising sun,
not the sluggards. It takes greatness to see greatness, and
know it at the first; I mean to see greatness of the highest
kind. Bulk, anybody can see; bulk of body or mind. The
loftiest form of greatness is never popular in its time. Men
cannot understand or receive it. Guinea negroes would
think a juggler a greater man than Franklin. What would
be thought of Martin Luther at Rome, of Washington at St.
Petersburg, of Fenelon among the Sacs and Foxes? Herod
and Pilate were popular in their day, - men of property
and standing. They got nominations and honor enough.
Jesus of Nazareth got no nomination, got a crossbetween
two thieves, was crowned with thorns, and, when he died,
eleven Galileans gathered together to lament their Lord.
Any man can measure a walking-stick, - so many hands
long, and so many nails beside; but it takes a mountainintellect to measure the Andes and Altai.
But, now and then, God creates a mighty man, who
greatly influences mankind. Sometimes he reaches far on




ï~~into other ages. Such a man, if he be of the greatest, will,
by and by, unite in himself the four chief forces of society,
- business, politics, literature, and the church. Himself a
stronger force than all of these, he will at last control the
commercial, political, literary, and ecclesiastical action of
mankind. But just as he is greater than other men, in the
highest mood of greatness, will he at first be opposed, and
hated too. The tall house in the street darkens the grocer's
window opposite, and he must strike his light sooner than
before. The inferior great man does not understand the man
of superior modes of eminence. Sullenly the full moon at
morning pales her ineffectual light before the rising day. In
the Greek fable, jealous Saturn devours the new gods whom
he feared, foreseeing the day when the Olympian dynasty
would turn him out of heaven. To the natural man the
excellence of the spiritual is only foolishness. What do you
suppose the best educated Pharisees in Jerusalem thought of
Jesus? They thought him an infidel: " He blasphemeth."
They called him crazy: " he hath a devil."  They mocked
at the daily beauty of his holiness: he had " broken the
sabbath."  They reviled at his philanthropy: it was "eating
with publicans and sinners."
Human nature loves to reverence great men, and often
honors many a little one under the mistake that he is great.
See how nations honor the greatest great men, -Moses,
Zoroaster, Socrates, Jesus - that loftiest of men! But by
how many false men have we been deceived,-men whose
light leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind! If a preacher
is a thousand years before you and me, we cannot understand
him. If only a hundred years of thought shall separate us,
there is a great gulf between the two, whereover neither
Dives nor Abraham, nor yet Moses himself, can pass. It is
a false great man often who gets possession of the pulpit,
vith his lesson for to-day, which is no lesson; and a false
great man who gets a throne, with his lesson for to-day,




ï~~which is also no lesson. Men great in little things are sure
of their pay. It is all ready, subject to their order.
A little man is often mistaken for a great one. The possession of office, of accidental renown, of imposing qualities,
of brilliant eloquence, often dazzles the beholder; and he
reverences a show.
How much a great man of the highest kind can do for us,
and how easy! It is not harder for a cloud to thunder, than
for a chestnut in a farmer's fire to snap. Dull Mr. Jingle
urges along his restive, hardmouthed donkey, besmouched
with mire, and wealed with many a stripe, amid the laughter
of the boys; while, by his proper motion, swan-like Milton
flies before the faces of mankind, which are new lit with
admiration at the poet's rising flight, his garlands and singing robes about him, till the aspiring glory transcends the
sight, yet leaves its track of beauty trailed across the sky.
Intellect and conscience are conversant with ideas, - with
absolute truth and absolute right, as the norm of conduct.
But, with most men, the affections are developed in advance
of the intellect and the conscience; and the affections want
a person. In his actions, a man of great intellect embodies a
principle, good or bad; and, by the affections, men accept
the great intellectual man, bad or good, and with him the
principle he has got.
As the affections are so large in us, how delightful is it for
us to see a great man, honor him, love him, reverence him,
trust him! Crowds of men come to look upon a hero's
face, who are all careless of his actions and heedless of his
thought; they know not his what, nor his whence, nor his
whither; his person passes for reason, justice, and religion.
They say that women have the most of this affection, and
so are most attachable, most swayed by persons, - least by
ideas. Woman's mind and conscience, and her soul, they
say, are easily crushed into her all-embracing heart; and
truth, justice, and holiness are trodden under foot by her




ï~~9

affection, rushing towards its object. " What folly! " say
men. But, when a man of large intellect comes, he is wont
to make women of us all, and take us by the heart. Each
great intellectual man, if let alone, will have an influence in
proportion to his strength of mind and will,-the good great
man, the bad great man; for as each particle of matter has
an attractive force, which affects all other matter, so each
particle of mind has an attractive force, which draws all other
mind.
How pleasant it is to love and reverence! To idle men
how much more delightful is it than to criticize a man, take
him to pieces, weighing each part, and considering every
service done or promised, and then decide! Men are continually led astray by misplaced reverence. Shall we be
governed by the mere instinct of veneration, uncovering to
every man who demands our obeisance? Man is to rule
himself, and not be over-mastered by any instinct subordinating the whole to a special part. We ought to know if
what we follow be real greatness or seeming greatness; and
of the real greatness, of what kind it is, - eminent cunning, eminent intellect, or eminence of religion. For men
ought not to gravitate passively, drawn by the bulk of bigness, but consciously and freely to follow eminent wisdom,
justice, love, and faith in God. Hence it becomes exceedingly important to study the character of all eminent men
for they represent great social forces for good or ill.
It is true, great men ought to be tried by their peers. But
" a cat may look upon a king," and, if she is to enter his
service, will do well to look before she leaps. It is dastardly
in a democrat to take a master with less scrutiny than he
would buy an ox.
Merchants watch the markets: they know   what ship
brings corn, what hemp, what coal; how much cotton there
is at New York or New Orleans; how much gold in the
banks. They learn these things, because they live by the
3




ï~~10

market, and seek to get money by their trade. Politicians
watch the turn of the people and the coming vote, because
they live by the ballot-box, and wish to get honor and office
by their skill. So a minister, who would guide men to
wisdom, justice, love, and piety, to human welfare, - he
must watch the great men, and know what quantity of truth,
of justice, of love, and of faith there is in Calhoun, Webster,
Clay; because he is to live by the word of God, and only
asks, " Thy kingdom come! "
What a great power is a man of large intellect! Aristotle
rode on the neck of science for two thousand years, till
Bacon, charging down from the vantage-ground of twenty
centuries, with giant spear unhorsed the Stagyrite, and
mounted there himself; himself in turn to be unhorsed.
What a profound influence had Frederick in Germany for
half a century! - Napoleon in Europe for the last fifty
years! What an influence Sir Robert Peel and Wellington
have had in England for the last twenty or thirty years!
Jefferson yet leads the democracy of the United States; the
dead hand of Hamilton still consolidates the several States.
Dead men of great intellect speak from the pulpit. Law
is of mortmain. In America it is above all things necessary
to study the men of eminent mind, even the men of eminent
station; for their power is greater here than elsewhere in
Christendom. Money is our only material, greatness our
only personal nobility. In England, the influence of powerful men is checked by the great families, the great classes,
with their ancestral privileges consolidated into institutions,
and the hereditary crown. Here we have no such families;
historical men are not from or for such, seldom had historic fathers, seldom leave historic sons. Tempusferax hominum, edax
hominun. Fruitful of men is time; voracious also of men.
Even while the individual family continues rich, political
unity does not remain in its members, if numerous, more
than a single generation. Nay, it is only in families of remarkable stupidity that it lasts a single age.




ï~~11

in this country the swift decay of powerful families is a
remarkable fact. Nature produces only individuals, not
classes. It is a wonder how many famous Americans leave
no children at all. Hancock, and Samuel Adams, Washington, Madison, Jackson - each was a childless flower, that
broke off the top of the family tree, which after them dwindled down, and at length died out. It has been so with
European stocks of eminent stature. Bacon, Shakspeare,
Leibnitz, Newton, Descartes, and Kant died and left no sign.
With strange self-complaisance said the first of these, " Great
benefactors have been childless men." Here and there an
American family continues to bear famous fruit, generation
after generation. A single New England tree, rooted far
off in the Marches of Wales, is yet green with life, though it
has twice blossomed with Presidents; but in general, if the
great American leave sons, the wonder is what becomes of
them, - so little, they are lost, - a single needle from the
American pine, to strew the forest floor amid the other litter
of the woods.
No great families here hold great men in check. There
is no permanently powerful class. The mechanic is father
of the merchant, who will again be the grandsire of mechanics. In thirty years, half the wealth of Boston will be in
the hands of men now poor; and, where power of money is
of yesterday, it is no great check to any man of large intellect, industry, and will. Here is no hereditary power. So
the personal power of a great mind, for good or evil, is
free from that three-fold check it meets in other lands, and
becomes of immense importance.
Our nation is a great committee of the whole; our State
is a provisional government, riches our only heritable good,
greatness our only personal nobility; office is elective. To
the ambition of a great bad man, or the philanthropy of a
great good man, there is no check but the power of money
or numbers; no check from great families, great classes, or




ï~~12

hereditary privileges. If our man of large intellect runs up
hill, there is nothing to check him but the inertia of mankind;
if he runs down hill, that also is on his side.
With us the great mind is amenable to no conventional
standard measure, as in England or Europe, - only to public
opinion. And that public opinion is controlled by money and
numbers; for these are the two factors of the American
product, the multiplier and the multiplicand, - millions of
money, millions of men.
A great mind is like an elephant in the line of ancient
battle, - the best ally, if you can keep him in the ranks,
fronting the right way; but, if he turn about, he is the fatalest foe, and treads his master underneath his feet. Great
minds have a trick of turning round.
Taking all these things into consideration, you see how
important it is to scrutinize all the great men, - to know
their quantity and quality, - before we allow them to take
our heart. To do this is to measure one of the most powerful popular forces for guiding the present and shaping the
future.  Every office is to be filled by the people's vote, -
that of public president and private cook. Franklin introduced new philanthropy to the law of nations. Washington
changed men's ideas of political greatness. If Napoleon the
Present goes unwhipped of justice, he will change those
ideas again; not for the world, but for the saloons of Paris,
for its journals and its mob.
How different are conspicuous men to different eyes!
The city corporation of Toulouse has just addressed this petition to Napoleon:MONSEIGNIEUR, - The government of the world by Providence is the
most perfect. France and Europe style you the elect of God for the
accomplishment of his designs. It belongs to no Constitution whatever to
assign a term for the divine mission with which you are entrusted. Inspire yourself with this thought, - to restore to the country those tutelar
institutions, which form the stability of power and the dignity of nations."




ï~~13

That is a prayer addressed to the Prince President of
France, whose private vices are equalled only by his public
sins. How different he looks to different men! To me he
is Napoleon the Little; to the Mayor and Aldermen of Toulouse, he is the Elect of God, with irresponsible power to
rule as long and as badly as likes him best. Well said Sir
Philip Sidney, " Spite of the ancients, there is not a piece
of wood in the world out of which a Mercury may not be
made."
It is this importance of great men which has led me to
speak of them so often; not only of men great by nature,
but great by position on money or office, or by reputation;
men substantially great, and men great by accident. Hence
I spoke of Dr. Channing, whose word went like morning
over the continents. Hence I spoke of John Quincy Adams,
and did not fear to point out every error I thought I discovered in the great man's track, which ended so proudly in
the right; and I did homage to all the excellence I found,
though it was the most unpopular excellence. Hence I
spoke of General Taylor; yes, even of General Harrison, a
very ordinary man, but available, and accidentally in a great
station. You see why this ought to be done. We are a
young nation; a great man easily gives us the impression of
his hand; we shall harden in the fire of centuries, and keep
the mark. Stamp a letter on Chaldean clay, and how very
frail it seems! but burn that clay in the fire, - and, though
Nineveh shall perish, and Babylon become a heap of ruins,
that brick keeps the arrow-headed letter to this day. As
with bricks, so with nations.
Ere long, these three and twenty millions will become a
hundred millions; then perhaps a thousand millions, spread
over all the continent, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Sea.
It is a good thing to start with men of great religion for our
guides. The difference between a Moses and a Maximian
will be felt by many millions of men, and for many an age,




ï~~14

after death has effaced both from the earth. The dead
hand of Moses yet circumcises every Hebrew boy; that of
mediaeval doctors of divinity still clutches the clergyman by
the throat; the dead barons of Runnymede even now keep
watch, and vindicate for us all a trial by the law of the land,
administerel by our peers.
A man of eminent abilities may do one of two things in
influencing men: either he may extend himself at right
angles with the axis of the human march, lateralize himself,
spreading widely, and have a great power in his own age,
putting his opinion into men's heads, his will into their
action, and yet may never reach far onward into the future.
In America, he will gain power in his time, by having the
common sentiments and ideas, and an extraordinary power
to express and show their value; great power of comprehension, of statement, and of will. Such a man differs from
others in quantity, not quality. Where all men have considerable, he has a great deal. His power may be represented by two parallel lines, the one beginning where his
influence begins, the other where his influence ends. His
power will be measured by the length of the lines laterally,
and the distance betwixt the parallels. That is one thing.
Or a great man may extend himself forward, in the line of
the human march, himself a prolongation of the axis of mankind: not reaching far sideways in his own time, he reaches
forward immensely, his influence widening as it goes. He
will do this by superiority in sentiments, ideas, and actions;
by eminence of justice and of affection; by eminence of
religion: he will differ in quality as well as quantity, and
have much where the crowd has nothing at all. His power
also may be represented by two lines, both beginning at his
birth, pointing forwards, diverging from a point, reaching far
into the future, widening as they extend, containing time by
their stretch, and space by their spread. Jesus of Nazareth
was of this class: he spread laterally in his life-time, and




ï~~15

took in twelve -Galilean peasants and a few obscure women;
now his diverging lines reach over tvo thousand years in
their stretch, and contain two hundred and sixty millions
of men within their spread.
So much, my friends, and so long, as preface to this
estimate of a great man. DANIEL WEBSTER was a man of
eminent abilities: for many years the favored son of New
England. He was seventy years old; nearly forty years in
the councils of the nation; held high office in times of peril
and doubt; had a commanding eloquence - there were two
million readers for every speech he spoke; and for the last
two years he has had a vast influence on the opinion of
the North. He has done service; spoken noble words that
will endure so long as English lasts. He has largely held
the nation's eye. His public office made his personal character conspicuous. Great men have no privacy; their bed
and their board are both spread in front of the sun, and their
private character is a public force. Let us see what he did,
and what he was; what is the result for the present, what
for the future.
Daniel Webster was born at Salisbury, N. H. on the
borders of civilization, on the 18th of January, 1782. He
was the son of Capt. Ebenezer and Abigail Eastman Webster.
The mother of Capt. Webster was a Miss Bachelder, of
Hampton, where Thomas Webster, the American founder
of the family, settled in 1636. She was descended from the
Rev. Stephen Bachiller, formerly of Lynn in Massachusetts,
a noted man in his time, unjustly, or otherwise, driven out
of the colony by the Puritans. Ebenezer Webster, in his
early days, lived as "boy ".in the service of Col. Ebenezer
Stevens, of Kingston, from whom he received a " lot of
land " in Stevenstown, now Salisbury. In 1764 Mr. Web



ï~~16

ster built himself a log-cabin on the premises, and lighted
his fire. His land "lapped on" to the wilderness; no New
Englander being so near the North Star, it is said. The
family was any thing but rich, living first in a log-cabin, then
in a frame-house, and some time keeping tavern.
The father was a soldier of the French wvar, and in the.Revolution; a great, brave, big, brawny man, " highbreasted and broad-shouldered," " with heavy eyebrows,"
and "a heart which he seemed to have borrowed from a
lion;" "a dark man," so black that "you could not tell
when his face was covered with gunpowder; " six feet high,
and both in look and manners " uncommon rough." He
was a shifty man of many functions, - a farmer, a sawmiller, " something of a blacksmith," a captain in the early
part of the Revolutionary War, a colonel of militia, representative and senator in the New Hampshire legislature, and
finally Judge of the Court of Common Pleas; yet " he never
saw the inside of a school-house." In his early married life,
food sometimes failed on the rough farm: then the stout
man and his neighbors took to the woods, and brought
home many a fat buck in their day.
The mother, one of the " black Eastmans," was a quite
superior woman.  It is often so. When virtue leaps high
in the public fountain, you seek for the lofty spring of
nobleness, and find it far off in the dear breast of some
mother, who melted the snows of winter, and condensed the
summer's dew into fair, sweet humanity, which now gladdens the face of man in all the city streets. Bulk is bearded
and masculine; niceness is of woman's gendering.
Daniel Webster was fortunate in the outward circumstances of his birth and breeding. He came from that class
in society whence almost all the great men of America have
come, - the two Adamses, Washington, Hancock, Jefferson,
Jackson, Clay, and almost every living notable of our time.
New Hampshire herself has furnished a large number of self



ï~~17

reliant and able-headed men, who have fought their way in
the world with their own fist, and won eminent stations at
the last. The little, rough State breeds professors and senators, merchants and hardy lawyers, in.singular profusion.
Our Hercules was also cradled on the ground. When he
visited the West, a few years ago, an emigrant from New
Hampshire met him in Ohio, recognized him, and asked,
" Is this the son of Capt. Webster? "  "It is, indeed," said
the great man. " What! " said he, " is this the little black
Dan that used to water the horses?"  And the great Daniel
Webster said, " It is the little black Dan that used to water
the horses."  He was proud of his history. If a man finds
the way alone, should he not be proud of having found the
way, and got out of the woods?
He had small opportunities for academical education.
The schoolmaster was " abroad" in New Hampshire; he
was seldom at home in Salisbury. Only two or three
months in the year was there a school; often only a movable school, that ark of the Lord, shifting from place to
place. Sometimes it was two or three miles from Capt.
Webster's. Once it was stationary in a log-house. Thither
went Daniel Webster, "carrying his dinner in a tin pail," a
brave, bright boy: "The child is father of the man."  The
common-school of America is the cradle of all her greatness.
How many Presidents has she therein rocked to vigorous
manhood! But Mr. Webster's school-time was much interrupted: there were " chores to be done" at home; the
saw-mill to be tended in winter; and, in summer, Daniel
"must ride horse to plough; " and in planting-time, and'haytime, and harvest, have many a day stolen from his scanty
seed-time of learning.  In his father's tavern-barn, the
future Secretary gave a rough currying, " after the fashion
of the times," to the sorry horse of many a traveller, and in
the yard of the inn yoked the oxen of many a New Hampshire teamster. " Cast the bantling on the rocks."
4




ï~~18

When fourteen years old, he went to Phillips Academy *
at Exeter for a few months; then to study with Rev. Mr.
Wood at Boscawen, paying a "dollar a week" for the
food of the body.and for the food of the mind. In the
warm weather, " Daniel went barefoot, and wore tow trousers and a tow shirt, his only garments at that season,"
spun, woven, and made up by his diligent mother. " He
helped do the things " about Mr. Wood's barn and woodpile, and so diminished the pecuniary burthen of his father.
But Mr. Wood had small Latin and less Greek, and only
taught what he knew. Daniel was an ambitious boy, and
apt to learn. Men wonder that some men can do so much
with so little outward furniture. The wonder is the other
way. He was more college than the college itself, and
had a university in his head. It takes time, and the sweat
of oxen, and the shouting of drivers, goading and whipping, to get a cart-load of cider to the top of Mount
Washington; but the eagle flies there on his own wide
wings, and asks no help. Daniel Webster had little academic furniture to help him. He had the mountains of
New Hampshire, and his own great mountain of a head.
Was that a bad outfit?  No millionnaire can bry it for a
booby-son.
There was a British sailor, with a wife but no child, an old
" man-of-war's-man" living hard by Capt. Webster's, fond of
fishing and hunting, of hearing the newspapers read, and of
telling his stories to all comers. He had, considerable inflitence on the young boy, and never wore out of his memory.
There was a small social library at Salisbury, whence a
bright boy could easily draw the water of life for his intel* At the commemoration of Mr. Abbott's fiftieth anniversary as Preceptor
of Phillips Academy, a time when " English was of no more account at Exeter
than silver at Jerusalem in the days of King Solomon," Mr. Abbott sat
between Mr. Webster and Mr. Everett, both of them his former pupils. Mr.
John P. Hale, in his neat speech, said, '" If you had done nothing else but
instruct these two, you might say, EXEGI MONUMENTUM LMRE PERENNIUS.




ï~~19

lect; at home was the Farmers' Almanac, with its riddles
and "poetry," Watts's Hymns and the Bible, the inseparable companion of the New England man. Daniel was
fond of poetry, and, before he was ten years old, knew dear
old Isaac Watts all by heart. He thought all books were to
be got by heart. I said he loved to learn. One day his
father said to him, " I shall send you to college, Daniel; "
and Daniel laid his head on his father's shoulder, and wept
right out. In reading and spelling he surpassed his teacher;
but his hard hands did not take kindly to writing, and the
schoolmaster told him his " fingers were destined to the
plough-tail."
He was not a strong boy, was " a crying baby " that wor.
ried his mother; but a neighbor " prophesied," "You will take
great comfort in him one day." As he grew up, he was " the
slimmest of the family," a farmer's youngest boy, and " not
good for much."  He did not love work. It was these
peculiarities which decided Capt. Webster to send Daniel to
college.
The time came for him to go to college. His father
once carried him to Dartmouth in a wagon. On the way
thither, they passed a spot which Capt. Webster remembered
right well. " When you were a little baby," said he, " in
the winter we were out of provisions, I went into the woods
with the gun to find something to eat. In that spot yonder, then all covered with woods, I found a herd of deer.
The snow was very deep, and they had made themselves a
pen, and were crowded together in great numbers. As they
could not get out, I took my choice, and picked out a fine,
fat stag. I walked round and looked at him, with my knife
in my hand. As I looked the noble fellow in the face, the
great tears rolled down his cheeks, and I could not touch
him. But I thought of you, Daniel, and your mother, and
the rest of the little ones, and carried home the deer."
He can hardly be said to have "entered college:" he only




ï~~20

"broke in," so slenderly was he furnished with elementary
knowledge.  This deficiency of elementary instruction in
the classic tongues and in mathematics was a sad misfortune in his later life.
At college, like so many other New Hampshire boys, he
" paid his own way," keeping school in the vacation. One
year he paid his board by "doing the literature" for a
weekly newspaper. He graduated at Dartmouth in his
twentieth year, largely distinguished, though he scorned his
degree; and, when the faculty gave him his diploma, he tore
it to pieces in the college-yard, in presence of some of his
mates, it is said, and trod it under foot.
When he graduated, he was apparently of a feeble constitution, " long, slender, pale, and all eyes," with " teeth as
white as a hound's; " thick, black hair clustered about his
ample forehead. At first he designed to study theology, but
his father's better judgment overruled the thought.
After graduating, he continued to fight for his education,
studying law with one hand, keeping school with the other,
and yet finding a third hand -this Yankee Briareus to
serve as Register of Deeds. This he did at Fryeburg in
Maine, borrowing a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries,
which he was too poor to buy. In a long winter-evening, by
copying two deeds, he could earn fifty cents. He used his
money, thus severely earned, to help his older brother,
Ezekiel, " Black Zeke," as he was called, to college. Both
were " heinously unprovided."
Then he came to Boston, with no letters of introduction,
raw, awkward, and shabby in his dress, his rough trousers
ceasing a long distance above his feet. He sought admittance as a clerk to. more than one office before he found a
place; an eminent lawyer, rudely turning him off, "would
not have such a fellow in the office! " Mr. Gore, a man of
large reputation, took in the unprotected youth, who " came
to work, not to play." Here he struggled with poverty and




ï~~21
the law. Ezekiel, not yet graduated, came also and took
a school in Short-street. Daniel helped his brother in the
school. Edward Everett was one of the pupils, a "marvellous boy," with no equal, it was thought, in all New
England, making the promise he has since fulfilled.
Mr. Webster was admitted to the bar in 1805, with a
prophecy of eminence from Mr. Gore, -a prophecy which
might easily be made: such a head was its own fortuneteller. His legal studies over, refusing a lucrative office, he
settled down as a lawyer at Boscawen, in New Hampshire.
Thence went to Portsmouth in 1807, a lawyer of large
talents, getting rapidly into practice; " known all over the
State of New Hampshire," known also in Massachusetts.
He attended to literature, wrote papers in the Monthly Anthology, a periodical published in the " Athens of America"
- so Boston was then called. He printed a rhymed version
of some of the odes of Horace, and wrote largely for the
" Portsmouth Oracle."
In 1808 he married Miss Grace Fletcher, an attractive
and beautiful woman, one year older than himself, the daughter of the worthy minister of Hopkinton, N. H. By this
marriage he was the father of two daughters and two sons.
But, alas for him! this amiable and beloved woman ceased
to be mortal in 1828.
In 1812, when thirty years of age, he was elected to the
House of Representatives. In 1814 his house was burned,
- a great loss to the young man, never thrifty, and then
struggling for an estate. He determined to quit New Hampshire, and seek a place in some more congenial spot. New
Hampshire breeds great lawyers, but not great fortunes.
He hesitated for a while between Boston and Albany. " He
doubted; " so he wrote to a friend, if he "could make a
living in Boston."  But he concluded to try; and in 1816
he removed to Boston, in the State which had required his
ancestor, Rev. Stephen Bachiller, "to forbeare exercising




ï~~22

his gifts as a pastor or teacher publiquely in the Pattent,"
" for his contempt of authority, and till some scandles be
removed."*
In 1820, then thirty-eight years old, he is a member of
the Massachusetts Convention, and is one of the leading
members there; provoking the jealousy, but at the same time
distancing the rivalry, of young men Boston born and Cambridge bred. His light, taken from under the New Hampshire
bushel at Portsmouth, could not be hid in Boston. It gives
light to all that enter the house. In 1822 he was elected to
Congress from Boston; in 1827, to the Senate of the United
States. In 1841 he was Secretary of State; again a private
citizen in 1843; in the Senate in 1845, and Secretary of
State in 1850, where he continued, until, " on the 24th of
October, 1852, all that was mortal of Daniel Webster was
no more!"
He was ten days in the General Court of Massachusetts;
a few weeks in her Convention; eight years Representative
in Congress; nineteen, Senator; five, Secretary of State.
Such is a condensed map of his outward history.
Look next at the Headlands of his life. Here I shall
speak of his deeds and words as a citizen and public officer.
He was a great lawyer, engaged in many of the most important cases during the last forty years; but, in the briefness
of a sermon, I must pass by his labors in the law.
I know that much of his present reputation depends on
his achievements as a lawyer; as an " expounder of the Constitution." Unfortunately, it is not possible for me to say
how much credit belongs to Mr. Webster for his constitutional arguments, and how much to the late Judge Story.
The publication of the correspondence between these gentle
* Records of Mass. General Court, Oct. 3, 1632.




ï~~23

men will perhaps help settle the matter; but still much
exact legal information was often given by word of mouth,
during personal interviews, and that must for ever remain
hidden from all but him who gave and him who took. However, from 1816 to 1842, Mr. Webster was in the habit of
drawing from that deep and copious well of legal knowledge, whenever his own bucket was dry. Mr. Justice
Story was the Jupiter Pluvius from whom Mr. Webster often
sought to elicit peculiar thunder for his speeches, and private
rain for his own public tanks of law. The statesman got the
lawyer to draft bills, to make suggestions, to furnish facts,
precedents, law, and ideas. He went on this aquilician
business, asking aid, now in a " bankruptcy bill," in 1816
and 1825; then in questions of the law of nations, in
1827; next in matters of criminal law in 1830; then of constitutional law in 1832; then in relation to the Northeastern boundary in 1838; in matters of international law
again, in his negotiations with Lord Ashburton, in 1842.
" You can do more for me than all the rest of the world,"
wrote the Secretary of State, April 9, 1842, " because you
can give me the lights I most want; and, if you furnish
them, I shall be confident that they will be true lights. I
shall trouble you greatly the next three months."  And
again, July 16, 1842, he writes, "Nobody but yourself can do
this." But, alas! in his later years the beneficiary sought to
conceal the source of his supplies. Jupiter Pluvius had himself been summoned before the court of the Higher Law.
Much of Mr. Webster's fame as a Constitutional lawyer
rests on his celebrated argument in the Dartmouth College
case. But it is easy to see that the facts, the law, the precedents, the ideas, and the conclusions of that argument, had
almost all of them been presented by Messrs. Mason and
Smith in the previous trial of the case.*
* See the Report of the Case of the Trustees of Dartmouth College, &c.
Portsmouth, N. H. [1819.]




ï~~24

Let me speak of the public acts of Mr. Webster in his
capacity as a private citizen. Here I shall speak of him
chiefly as a public orator.
Two juvenile orations of his are still preserved, delivered
while he was yet a lad in college.* One is a fourth of July
oration, - a performance good enough for a lad of eighteen,
but hardly indicating the talents of its author. The sentiments probably belong to the neighborhood, and the diction
to the authorities of the college: -
" Fair Science, too, holds her 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,
towering majestic above the groves which encircle her, now inscribes her
glory on the registers of fame!  Oxford and Cambridge, those oriental
stars of literature, shall now be lost, while the bright sun of American
science displays his broad circumference in uneclipsed radiance." -p. 10.
Here is an opinion which he seems to have entertained at
the end of his life. He speaks of the formation of the Constitution: -
" We then saw the people of these States engaged in a transaction,
which is undoubtedly the greatest approximation towards human perfection the political world ever yet experienced; and which will perhaps
for ever stand, in the history of mankind, without a parallel." -p. 8, 9.
* "An Oration pronounced at Hanover, N. H. the 4th day of July, 1800,
being the Twenty-fourth Anniversary of Independence, by Daniel Webster,
member of the Junior Class, Dartmouth University.
" Do thou, great Liberty, inspire our souls,
And make our lives in thy possession happy,
Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence," &c.
" Hanover, 1800."  8vo. pp. 15.
" Funeral Oration, occasioned by the Death of Ephraim Simonds, of
Templeton, Mass., a Member of the Senior Class in Dartmouth College, who
died at Hanover (N. H.), on the 18th of June, 1801, vet. 26. By Daniel
Webster, a class-mate of the deceased. Et vix sentiunt dicere lingua. Vale.
Hanover, 1801."  8vo. pp. 13.




ï~~25

In 1806, he delivered another Fourth-of-July address at
Concord, N. H.,* containing many noble and generous opinions:"Patriotism," said he, "hath a source of consolation that cheers the
heart in these unhappy times, when good men are rendered odious, and
bad men popular; when great men are made little, and little men are
made great. A genuine patriot, above the reach of personal considerations,
with his eye and his heart on the honor and the happiness of his country,
is a character as easy and as satisfactory to himself as venerable in the
eyes of the world. While his country enjoys freedom and peace, he will
rejoice and be thankful; and, if it be in the councils of Heaven to send the
storm and the tempest, he meets the tumult of the political elements with
composure and dignity. Above fear, above danger, above reproach, he
feels that the last end which can happen to any man never comes too soon,
if he fall in defence of the law and the liberty of his country." - p. 21.
In 1812, he delivered a third Fourth-of-July address at
Portsmouth.j The political storm is felt in the little harbor
of Portsmouth, and the speaker swells with the tumult of the
sea. He is hostile to France; averse to the war with England, then waging, yet ready to fight and pay taxes for it.
He wants a navy. He comes " to take counsel of the dead,"
with whom he finds an. " infallible criterion." But, alas!
" dead men tell no tales," and give no counsel. There was
no witch at Portsmouth to bring up Washington quickly.
His subsequent deference to the money-power begins to
appear: " The Federal Constitution was adopted for no single
reason so much as for the protection of commerce." " Commerce has paid the price of independence." It has been
committed to the care of the general government, but " not
as a convict to the safe keeping of a jailor," " not for close
confinement."    He wants a navy to protect it.     Such were
the opinions of Federalists around him.
* " An Anniversary Address, delivered before the Federal Gentlemen of
Concord and its Vicinity, July 4, 1806. By Daniel Webster. Concord,
N. H., 1806." 8vo. pp. 21.
t " An Address delivered before the Washington Benevolent Society at
Portsmouth, July 4, 1812. By Daniel Webster. Portsm. N. H." 8vo. pp. 27.
He delivered also other Fourth-of-July addresses, which I have not seen.
5




ï~~26

But these speeches of his youth and early manhood were
but commonplace productions. In his capacity as public
orator, in the vigorous period of his faculties, he made three
celebrated speeches, not at all political, - at Plymouth Rock,
to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of New England's birth; at Bunker Hill, in memory of the chief battle of
New England; and at Faneuil Hall, to honor the two great
men who died when the nation was fifty years old, and they
fourscore.   Each of these orations was a great and noble
effort of patriotic eloquence.
Standing on Plymouth Rock, with the graves of the forefathers around him, how proudly could he say," Our ancestors established their system of government on morality
and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be
trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits. Living under
the heavenly light of revelation, they hoped to find all the social dispositiois, all the duties which men owe to each other and to society, enforced
and performed. Whatever makes men good Christians makes them good
citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion free and unmolested; and, at the end of two centuries, there is nothing upon which we
can pronounce more confidently, nothing of which we can express a more
deep and earnest conviction, than of the inestimable importance of that
religion to man, both in regard to this life and that which is to come."
At Bunker Hill, there were before him the men of the
Revolution, -venerable men who drew swords at Lexington and Concord, and faced the fight in many a fray. There
was the French nobleman, - would to God that France had
many such to-day! - who perilled his fortune, life, and
reputation, for freedom in America, and never sheathed the
sword he drew at Yorktown till France also was a republic,
-  Fayette was there; the Fayette of two revolutions; the
Fayette of Yorktown and Olmutz. How well could he
say, -
" Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us
extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to




ï~~27

act. Let our object be, OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING
BUT OUR COUNTRY. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself
become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but
of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with
admiration for ever! "
On another occasion, when two great men, who, in the
time that tried men's souls, were of the earliest to peril
"their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,"-men
who, having been one in the Declaration of Independence,
were again made one in death,-then the people returned to
the cradle wherein the elder Adams and Hancock had rocked
Liberty when young; and Webster chaunted the psalm
of commemoration to the younger Adams and Jefferson,
who had helped that new-born child to walk. He brought
before the living the mighty dead; in his words they fought
their battles o'er again; we heard them resolve, that, "sink
or swim, live or die, survive or perish," they gave their hand
and their heart for liberty; and Adams and Jefferson grew
greater before the eyes of the people, as he brought them
up, and showed the massive services of those men, and
pointed out the huge structure of that human fabric which
had gone to the grave:" Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. As human beings,
indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as at subsequent periods, the
head of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged
and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They
are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die!
To their country they yet live, and live for ever. They live in all that
perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded poofs of
their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deepengraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will
live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and
opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of
men, not only in their own country, but throughout the civilized world."

How loftily did he say: -




ï~~28

" If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven
will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness.
Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own
firmament now shines brightly upon our path. Washington is in the
clear, upper sky. These other stars have now joined the American constellation. They circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with
new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, and,
at its close, devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent
of us all, to the Divine Benignity."
As a political officer, I shall speak of him as a legislator
and executor of the law, a maker and administrator of
laws.
In November, 1812, Mr. Webster was chosen as Representative to the Thirteenth Congress. At that time the
country was at war with Great Britain; and the well-known
restraints still fettered the commerce of the country. The
people were divided into two great parties,- the Federalists,
who opposed the embargo and the war; and the Democrats, who favored both. Mr. Madison, then President, had
been forced into the war, contrary to his own convictions
of expediency and of right. The most bitter hatred prevailed between the two parties: "party politics were inexpressibly violent." An eminent lawyer of Salem, afterwards
one of the most distinguished jurists in the world, a Democrat, was, on account of his political opinions, knocked down
in the street, beaten, and forced to take shelter in the house
of a friend, whither he fled, bleeding, and covered with the
mud of the streets.   Political rancor invaded private life;
it occupied the pulpit; it blinded men's eyes to a degree
almost exceeding belief: were it not now a fact, we should
not believe it possible at a former time.
Mr. Webster was a Federalist, earnest and devoted, with
the convictions of a Federalist, and the prejudices and the
blindness of a Federalist; and, of course, hated by men
who had the convictions of a Democrat, and the prejudices




ï~~29

and blindness thereof. It is difficult to understand the
wilfulness of thorough partisans. In New Hampshire the
Judges were Democrats; the Federalists, having a majority
in the Legislature, wished to be rid of them, and, for that
purpose, abolished all the Courts in the State, and appointed
others in their place (1813). I mention this only to show
the temper of the times.
There was no great principle of political morals on which
the two parties differed, only on measures of expediency.
The Federalists demanded freedom of the seas and protection for commerce; but they repeatedly, solemnly, and
officially scorned to extend this protection to sailors. They
justly complained of the embargo that kept their ships from
the sea, but found little fault with the British for impressing sailors from American ships. The Democrats professed
the greatest regard for "sailors' rights; " but, in 1814, the
government forbade its officers to grant protection to "colored
sailors," though Massachusetts had more than a thousand
able seamen of that class. Said a leading Federal organ," The Union is dear; Commerce is still more dear." " The
Eastern States agreed to the Union for the sake of their
Commerce."*
With the Federalists there was a great veneration for
England. Said Mr. Fisher Ames,-" The immortal spirit
of the wood-nymph Liberty dwells only in the British oak."
" Our country," quoth he, " is too big for union, too sordid
for patriotism, and too democratic for liberty." " England,"
said another, "is the bulwark of our religion," and the "shield
of afflicted humanity." A Federalist newspaper at Boston
censured Americans as " enemies of England and monarchy," and accused the Democrats of " antipathy to kingly
power." Did Democrats complain that our prisoners were
ill-treated by the British, it was declared " foolish and wicked
to throw the blame on the British government"! Americans
* "tColumbian Centinel" for July 25, 1812.




ï~~30

expressed indignation at the British outrages at Hampton,burning houses and violating the women. Said the Federal
newspapers, it is " impossible that their (the British) military
or naval men should be other than magnanimous and humane." Mr. Clay accused the Federalists of " plots that
aim at the dismemberment of the Union," and denounced the
party as " conspirators against the integrity of the nation."
In general, the Federalists maintained that England had
a right to visit American vessels to search for and take her
own subjects, if found there; and, if she sometimes took
an American citizen, that was only an "incidental evil."
Great Britain, said the Massachusetts Legislature, has done
us "no essential injury:" she "was fighting the battles
of the world." They denied that she had impressed " any
considerable number of American seamen." Such was the
language of Mr. Webster and the party he served. But even
at that time the " Edinburgh Review" declared, " Every
American seaman might be said to hold his liberty, and ultimately his life, at the discretion of a foreign commander.
In many cases, accordingly, native-born Americans were
dragged on board British ships of war: they were dispersed
in the remotest quarters of the globe, and not only exposed
to the perils of service, but shut out by their situation from
all hope of ever being reclaimed. The right of reclaiming
runaway seamen was exercised, in short, without either
moderation or justice."
Over six thousand cases of impressment were recorded in
the American Department of State. In Parliament, Lord
Castlereagh admitted that there were three thousand five
hundred men in the British fleet claiming to be American
citizens, and sixteen hundred of them actually citizens.
At the beginning of the war, two thousand five hundred
American citizens, impressed into the British navy, refused to
fight against their native land, and were shut up in Dartmoor prison. When the Guerriere was captured, there were




ï~~31

ten American sailors on board who refused to fight. In
Parliament, in 1808, Mr. Baring (Lord Ashburton) defended
the rights of Americans against the British orders in council, while in 1812-13 the Federalists could not find out
the cases of impressment, - such was the influence of party
spirit.
The party out of power is commonly the friend of freedom. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts declared that
unconstitutional acts of Congress were void; the Legislature
declared it the duty of the State Courts to prevent usurped
and unconstitutional powers from being exercised: " It is
the duty of the present generation to stand between the
next and despotism." " Whenever the national compact is
violated, and the citizens of this State oppressed by cruel and
unauthorized enactments, this Legislature is bound to interpose its power to wrest from the oppressor his victim."
After the Federal party had taken strong ground, Mr.
Webster opposed the administration, opposed the war, took
the part of England in the matter of impressment. He
drew up the Brentwood Memorial, once so famous all over
New England, now forgotten and faded out of all men's
memory.*
On the 24th of May, 1813, Mr. Webster first took his
seat in the House of Representatives, at the extra session of
the thirteenth Congress. He was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and industriously opposed the
administration. In the three sessions of this Congress, he
closely followed the leaders of the Federal party; voting
with Mr. Pickering a hundred and ninety-one times, and
against him only four times, in the two years. Sometimes
he "avoided the question; " but voted against thanking
Commodore Perry for his naval conduct, against the purchase of Mr. Jefferson's library, against naval supplies, direct
taxes, and internal duties.
* I purposely pass over other political writings and speeches of his.




ï~~32

He opposed the government scheme of a National Bank.#
No adequate reports of his speeches against the war t are
preserved; but, to judge from the testimony of an eminent
man, they contained prophetic indications of that oratorical
power which was one day so mightily to thunder and lighten
in the nation's eyes. Yet his influence in Congress does not
appear to have been great. In later years he defended the
United States Bank; but that question, like others, had then
become a party question; and a horse in the party-team
must go on with his fellows, or be flayed by the driver's
lash.
But though his labors were not followed by any very
marked influence at Washington, at home he drew on himself the wrath of the Democratic party. Mr. Isaac Hill, the
editor of the leading Democratic paper in New Hampshire,
pursued him with intense personal hatred. He sneeringly
says, and falsely, " The great Mr. Webster, so extremely
flippant in arguing petty suits in the courts of law, cuts but
a sorry figure at Washington: his overweening confidence
and zeal cannot there supply the place of knowledge."t
He was sneeringly called the " great," the " eloquent," the
" pre-eminent" Daniel Webster. His deeds, his words, his
silence, all were represented as coming from the basest motives, and serving the meanest ends. His journal at Portsmouth was called the " lying oracle." Listen to this: "Mr.
Webster spoke much and often when he was in Congress;
and, if he had studied the Wisdom of Solomon (as some of
his colleagues probably did), he would have discovered that
a fool is known by his much speaking."
Mr. Webster, in common with his party, refused to take
part in the war. "I honor," said he, "the people that
* Speech in the House of Representatives, Jan. 2, 1815. Works, vol. iii.
p. 35, et seq.
f See his Speech in House of Representatives, Jan. 14, 1814, on the Army
Bill. Alexandria, 1814. 8vo. pp. 14.
1 " New Hampshire Patriot" of July 27, 1813.




ï~~33

shrink from such a contest as this. I applaud their sentiments: they are such as religion and humanity dictate, and
such as none but cannibals would wish to eradicate from the
human heart." Whereupon the editor asks, Will not the
federal soldiers call the man who made the speech " a coldblooded wretch, whose heart is callous to every patriotic
feeling? " # and then, " We do not wonder at Mr. Webster's
reluctance again to appear at the city of Washington " (he
was attending cases at court): " even his native brass must
be abashed at his own conduct, at his own speeches." f
Flattery "has spoiled him; for application might have made
him something a dozen years hence. It has given him
confidence, a face of brass, which and his native volubility
are mistaken for 'pre-eminent talent.' Of all men in the
State, he is the fittest to be the tool of the enemy." 1  He
was one of the men that bring the " nation to the verge of
ruin; " a " Thompsonian intriguer;" a "Macfarland admirer." " The self-importance and gross egotism he displays
are disgusting." " You would suppose him a great merchant, living in a maritime city, and not a man reared in
the woods of Salisbury, or educated in the wilds of Hanover." Â~
Before he was elected to Congress, Mr. Hill accused him
of " deliberate falsehood," of "telling bold untruths to justify
the enormities of the enemy." 11 The cry was raised, " The
Union is in danger." Mr. Webster was to bring about " a
dissolution of the Union."  T " The few conspirators in Boston, who aim at the division of the Union, and the English
Government, who support them in their rebellion, appeir to
play into each other's hands with remarkable adroitness."
The Patriot speaks of " the mad measures of the Boston
junto; the hateful, hypocritical scheme of its canting, disaf* "New Hampshire Patriot," Aug. 27, 1814.
t Id., Oct. 4, 1814.  + Id., Aug. 2, 1814.  Â~ Id., Aug. 9, 1814.
Id., Oct. 29, 1812.     Id., Oct. 13, 1812.
6




ï~~34

fected chief, and the audacious tone of its public prints." *
The language of Washington was quoted against political
foes; his Farewell Address reprinted. Mr. Webster was
charged with " setting the North against the South."  The
Essex junto was accused of " a plot to destroy the Union,"
in order " to be under the glorious shelter of British protection." j  The Federalists were a "British faction; " the
country members of the Massachusetts Legislature were
" wooden members; " distinguished characters were " exciting hostility against the Union; " one of these " ought to
be tied to the tail of a Congreve rocket, and offered up a
burnt sacrifice." It was " moral treason " not to rejoice at
the victories of the nation - it was not then " levying war."
The Legislature of New Jersey called the acts of the Massachusetts Legislature " the ravings of an infuriated faction,"
and Gov. Strong a "Maniac Governor."       The "Boston
Patriot" * called Mr. Webster "the poor fallen Webster,"
who "curses heartily his setters on: " "the poor creature
is confoundedly mortified." Mr. Clay, in Congress, could
speak of "the howlings of the whole British pack, let loose
from the Essex junto: " the Federalists were attempting
" to familiarize the public mind with the horrid scheme of
disunion." Â~ And Isaac Hill charges the Federalists with
continually "threatening a separation of the States; striving
to stir up the passions of the North against the South, -in
clear defiance of the dying injunctions of Washington." 11 I
mention these things that all may understand the temper
of those times.
In 1814, Mr. Webster sought for the office of Attorney
General of New Hampshire, but, failing thereof, was reelected to the House of Representatives. In the fourteenth
* March 30, 1813, quoted from the " Baltimore Patriot."
t "Boston Patriot," No. 1.
I July 21, 1813.
Â~ Speech in House of Representatives, Jan. 8, 1813.
I " New Hampshire Patriot" for June 7, 1814.




ï~~35

Congress, two important measures came up amongst others,
- the Bank and the Tariff. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay favored 'the establishment of a national bank, with a capital of
$ 35,000,000. Mr. Webster opposed it by votes and speech,
reaffirming the sound doctrines of his former speech: the
founders of the Constitution were " hard-money men;"
government must not receive the paper of banks which do
not pay specie; but "the taxes must be paid in the legal
money of the country." # Such was the doctrine of the
leading Federalists of the time, and the practice of New
England. He introduced a resolution, that all revenues of
the United States should be paid in the legal currency of the
nation.  It met scarce any opposition, and was passed
the same day. I think this was the greatest service he ever
performed in relation to our national currency or national
finance. He was himself proud of it in his later years.The protective tariff was supported by Messrs. Calhoun,
Clay, and Lowndes. Mr. Webster opposed it; for the
capitalists of the North, then deeply engaged in commerce,
looked on it as hostile to their shipping, and talked of the
" dangers of manufactories." Was it for this reason that the
South, always jealous of the Northern thrifty toil, proposed
it?  So it was alleged. t  Mr. Webster declared that Congress has no constitutional right to levy duties for protection;
only for revenue. Revenue is the constitutional substance;
protection, only the accidental shadow. Â~
In 1816, Mr. Webster removed to Boston. In 1819,
while he was a private citizen, a most important question
came before the nation, - Shall slavery be extended into the.
Missouri Territory? Here, too, Mr. Webster was on the
* Speech in House of Representatives, Feb. 28, 1816 (in "National Intelligencer for March 2, 1816). See also Works, vol. iii. p. 35, et seq.
t It passed April 26, 1816. Yeas, 79; nays, 35.
+ But see Mr. Calhoun's defence of his course, Life and Speeches, p. 329.
Â~ Speech in House of Representatives.




ï~~36
side of freedom. He was one of a committee appointed by
a meeting of the citizens of Boston to call a general meeting
of the citizens to oppose the extension of slavery. The
United States Marshal was chairman of the meeting.            Mr.
Webster was one of the committee to report resolutions at a
subsequent meeting. Said the preamble: -
" The extirpation of slavery has never ceased to be a measure deeply
concerning the honor and safety of the United States." "In whatever
tends to diminish the evil of slavery, or to check its growth, all parts of the
confederacy are alike interested." "If slavery is established in Missouri,
then it will be burthened with all the mischiefs which are too well known
to be the sure results of slavery; an evil, which has long been deplored,
would be incalculably augmented; the whole confederacy would be
weakened, and our free institutions disgraced, by the voluntary extension
of a practice repugnant to all the principles of a free government, the continuance of which in any part of our country necessity alone has justified."
It was Resolved, that Congress "possesses the constitutional power,
upon the admission of any new State created beyond the limits of the
original territory of the United States, to make the prohibition of the further extension of slavery or involuntary servitude in such new State, a
condition of its admission."  " It is just and expedient that this power
should be exercised by Congress, upon the admission of all new States
created beyond the limits of the original territory of the United States."
In a speech, Mr. Webster "showed incontrovertibly that
Congress had this power; that they were called upon by
all the principles of sound policy, humanity, and morality,
to enact it, and, by prohibiting slavery in the new State of
Missouri, oppose a barrier to the further progress of slavery,
which else - and this was the last time the opportunity
would happen to fix its limits - would roll on desolating
the vast expanse of continent to the Pacific Ocean.'
Mr. Webster was appointed chairman of a committee to
prepare a memorial to Congress on this matter.t        Said he:
* Account of a Meeting at the State House in Boston, Dec. 3, 1819, to
consider the Extension of Slavery by the United States (in " Boston Daily
Advertiser" for Dec.4, 1819).
t "A Memorial to the Congress of the United States, on the Subject
of Restraining the Increase of Slavery in the New States to be admitted into
the Union," &c. &c. Boston, 1819. pp. 22.




ï~~37

"We have a strong feeling of the injustice of any toleration of slavery."
But, " to permit it in a new country, what is it but to encourage that
rapacity, and fraud, and violence, against which we have so long pointed
the denunciations of our penal code? What is it but to tarnish the proud
fame of our country? What is it but to throw suspicion on its good faith,
and to render questionable all its professions of regard for the rights of
humanity and the liberties of mankind? "- p. 21.
At that time, such was the general opinion of the Northern
men.#    Said  a writer in the leading journal of Boston:
" Other calamities are trifles compared to this (slavery).
War has alleviations; if it does much evil, it does some
good: at least, it has an end. But negro-slavery is misery
without mixture; it is Pandora's box, but no Hope at the
bottom; it is evil, and only evil, and that continually." t
A meeting of the most respectable citizens of Worcester
resolved against " any further extension of slavery," as
"rendering our boasted Land of Liberty pre-eminent only
as a mart for Human Flesh."
" Sad prospects," said the " Boston Daily Advertiser,"
" indeed for emancipators and colonizers, that, faster than
the wit or the means of men can devise a method even for
keeping stationary the frightful propagation of slavery, other
men, members of the same community, sometimes colleagues of the same deliberative assembly, will be compassing, with all their force, the widest possible extension of
slavery." t
The South uttered its threat of " dissolving the Union,"
if slavery were not extended west of the Mississippi. " The
* See a valuable series of papers in the " Boston Daily Advertiser," No. I.
to VI., on this subject, from Nov. 20 to Dec. 28, 1819. Charge- of Judge Story
to the Grand Juries, &c.; ibid. Dec. 7 and 8, 1819. Article on the Missouri
Compromise, in " North American Review," Jan. 1820. Mr. King's speech
in Senate of United States, in " Columbian Centinel " for Jan. 19 and 22,
1820. See also the comments of the "Daily Advertiser " on the treachery
of Mr. Mason, the Boston representative, March 28 and 29, 1820.
t " L. M." in " Columbian Centinel " for Dec. 8, 1819.
+ "{ Boston Daily Advertiser" for Nov. 20, 1819.




ï~~38

threat," said a writer, " when we consider from whence it
comes, raises at once wonder and pity, but has never been
thought worth a serious answer here. Even the academicians of Laputa never imagined such a nation as these
seceding States would form."  " We have lost much; our
national honor has received a stain in the eyes of the world;
we have enlarged the sphere of human misery and crime."*
Only four New Englanders voted for the Missouri Compromise, - Hill and Holmes of Maine, Mason and Shaw of
Massachusetts.
Mr. Webster held no public office in this State, until he
was chosen a member of the Convention for amending the
Constitution of the Commonwealth.
It appears that he had a large influence in the Massachusetts Convention. His speeches, however, do not show any
remarkable depth of philosophy, or width of historic view;
but they show the strength of a great mind not fully master
of his theme. They are not always fair; they sometimes
show the specious arguments of the advocate, and do not
always indicate the soundness of the judge. He developed
no new ideas; looked back more than forward. He stated
his opinions with clearness and energy. His leaning was
then, as it always was, towards the concentration of power;
not to its diffusion. It was the Federal leaning of New
England at the time. He had no philosophical objection to
a technical religious test as the qualification for office, but
did not think it expedient to found a measure on that principle. He wanted property, and not population, as the
basis of representation in the Senate. It was "ithe true
basis and measure of power." " Political power," said he,
" naturally and necessarily goes into the hands which hold
the property." The House might rest on men, the Senate
on money. Said he, " It would seem to be the part of
political wisdom to found government on property; " yet
* "44Boston Daily Advertiser" of March 16, 1820.




ï~~39

he wished to have the property diffused as widely as possible. He was not singular in this preference of money to
men. Others thought, that, to put the Senate on the basis
of population, and not property, was a change of "an
alarming character."
He had small confidence in the people; apparently little
sympathy with the multitude of men. He was jealous of
the Legislature; afraid of its encroachment on the Judiciary, - New Hampshire had shown him examples of legislative injustice, - but contended ably for the independence
of Judges. He had great veneration for the existing Constitution, and thought there would " never be any occasion
for great changes" in it, and that " no revision of its general
'principles would be necessary."    Others of the same party
thought also that the Constitution was " the most perfect
system that human wisdom had ever devised." To judge
from the record, Mr. Webster found abler heads than his
own in that Convention. Indeed it would have been surprising if a young man, only eight and thirty years of age,
should surpass the "assembled wisdom of the State."*
On the 2d of December, 1823, Mr. Webster took his seat
in the House of Representatives, as member for Boston.
He defended the cause of the Greeks " with the power of a
great mind applied to a great subject," denounced the " Holy
Alliance," and recommended interference to prevent oppression.  Public opinion set strongly in that direction.-  " The
* Some valuable passages of Mr. Webster's speeches are omitted from the
edition of his Works. (Compare vol. iii. pp. 15 and 17, with the "4Jofirnal
of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates," &c. Boston,
1821. pp. 143, 144, and 145, 146.) A reason for the omission will be
obvious to any one who reads the original, and remembers the position and
expectations of the author in 1851.
t Meetings had been held in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other
important towns, and considerable sums of money raised on behalf of the
Greeks. Even the educated men were filled with enthusiasm for the descendants of Anacreon and Pericles. The leading journals of England were
on the same side. See the letters of John Q. Adams to Mr. Rich and




ï~~40

policy of our Government," said he, "is on the side of
liberal and enlightened sentiments."   " The civilized world
has done with ' the erroneous faith of many made for
one.' " * /
In 1816 he had opposed a tariff which levied a heavy duty
on imports; in 1824 he opposed it again, with vigorous
arguments. His speech at that time is a work of large
labor, of some nice research, and still of value. t1 "Like a
mighty giant," says Mr. Hayne, " he bore away upon his
shoulders the pillars of the temple of error and delusion,
escaping himself unhurt, and leaving his adversaries overwhelmed in its ruins." He thought, "the authority of Congress to exercise the revenue-power with direct reference to
the protection of manufactures is a questionable authority." j.
He represented the opinion of New England, which " discountenanced the progress of this policy " of high duties.
The Federalists of the North inclined to free trade; in 1807
Mr. Dexter thought it " an unalienable right," Â~ and in 1820
Judge Story asked why should " the laboring classes be
taxed for the necessaries of life?"II The tariff of 1824. got
but one vote from   Massachusetts.   As the public opinion
of Northern capitalists changed, it brought over the opinion of Mr. Webster, who seems to have had no serious
and sober convictions on this subject. At one time the protective system is ruinous to the laboring man, but again
" it is aimed point-blank at the protection of labor; " and
the duty on coal must not be diminished, lest coal grow
Mr. Luriottis, Dec. 18, 1823; and of John Adams, Dec. 29, 1823.' Mr. Clay
was on the same side with Mr. Webster. But Mr. Randolph, in his speech
in House of Representatives, Jan. 20, 1824, tartly asked, " Why have we
never sent an envoy to our sister republic Hayti? "
* See the just and beautiful remarks of Mr. Webster in this speech.
Works, vol. iii. pp. 77, 78, and 92 and 93. Oh si sic semper!
t Vol. iii. p. 94, et seq. See Speech in Faneuil Hall, Oct. 2, 1820.
4 Speech in reply to Hayne, vol. iii. p. 305.
Â~ Argument in District Court of Massachusetts against the Embargo.
(1 Memorial of the Citizens of Salem.




ï~~41

scarce and dear.      Non-importation was " an     American
instinct." f
In 1828 he voted for " the bill of abominations," as that
tariff was called, which levied "thirty-two millions of duties
on sixty-four millions of imports," "not because he was in
favor of the measure, but as the least of two evils."
In 1816 the South wanted a protective tariff: the commercial North hated it. It was Mr. Calhount who introduced
the measure first.  Mr. Clay gave it the support of his large
talents and immense personal influence, and built up the
" American System."     Pennsylvania and New York were on
that side.  Gen. Jackson voted for the tariff of 1824.   Mr.
Clay was jealous of foreign commerce: it was "the great
source of foreign wars." " The predilection of the school
of the Essex junto," said he, " for foreign trade and British
fabrics is unconquerable."    Yet he correctly said, "1New
England will have the first and richest fruits of the tariff." Â~
After the system of protection got footing, the Northern
capitalists set about manufacturing in good earnest, and then
Mr. Webster became the advocate of a high tariff of protective duties. Here he has been blamed for his change of
opinion; but to him it was an easy change.     He was not a
scientific legislator: he had no great and comprehensive
ideas of that part of legislation which belongs to political
economy. He looked only at the fleeting interest of his
constituents, and took their transient opinions of the hour
for his norm of conduct. As these altered, his own views
also changed. Sometimes the change was a revolution.       It
Works, vol. iv. p. 309.   f Works, vol. ii. p. 352.
See Mr. Calhoun's reason for this. Life and Speeches, p. 70, et seq.
Speech in House of Rep., April 26, 1820. Works, vol. i. p. 150.
1 Compare his speeches on the tariff in 1824 and 1828 (Works, vol. iii.
p. 94, et seq.; and 228, et seq.) with his subsequent speeches thereon in 1837,
1846. Works, vol. iv. p. 304, et seq.; vol. v. p. 361, et seq.; and vol. ii. p. 130,
et seq. and 349, et seq. Compare vol. iii. p. 118, et seq. and 124, et seq. with
vol. ii. p. 357. See his reasons for the change of opinion in vol. v. p. 186 and
240. All of these speeches are marked by great ability of statement.
7




ï~~42

seems to me his first opinion was right, and his last a fatal
mistake, that he never answered his first great speech of
1824: but it seems to me that he was honest in the change;
for he only looked at the pecuniary interest of his employers,
and took their opinions for his guide. But he had other
fluctuations on this matter of the tariff, which do not seem
capable of so honorable an explanation.*
In the days of nullification, Mr. Webster denied the right
of South Carolina to secede from the Union, or to give a
final interpretation of the Constitution. She maintained that
the Federal Government had violated the Constitution; that
she, the aggrieved State of South Carolina, was the judge in
that matter, and had a constitutional right to " nullify " the
Constitution, and withdraw from the Union.
The question is a deep one. It is the old question of
Federal and Democrat, - the question between the constitutional power of the whole, and the power of the parts, -
Federal power and State power. Mr. Webster was always
in favor of a strong central government; honestly in favor of
it, I doubt not. His speeches on that subject were most masterly speeches. I refer, in particular, to that in 1830 against
Mr. Hayne, and the speech in 1833 against Mr. Calhoun.
The first of these is the great political speech of Daniel
Webster. I do not mean to say that it is just in its political
ethics, or deep in the metaphysics of politics, or far-sighted
in its political providence. I only mean to say that it surpasses all his other speeches in the massive intellectual power
of statement. Mr. Webster was then eight and forty years
old. He defended New England against Mr. Hayne; he
defended the Constitution of the United States against South
Carolina.  His speech is full of splendid eloquence; he
* Compare his speech in Faneuil Hall, Sept. 30, 1842, with his tariff
speeches in 1846. Works, vol. ii. p. 130, et seq. with vol. v. p. 161, et seq. and
vol. ii. p. 349, et seq.




ï~~43

reached high, and put the capstone upon his fame, whose
triple foundation he had laid at Plymouth, at Bunker Hill,
and at Faneuil Hall. The " republican members of the
Massachusetts Legislature " unanimously thanked him for
his able vindication of their State. A Virginian, who heard
the speech, declared he felt " as if looking at a mammoth
treading his native canebrake, and, without apparent consciousness, crushing obstacles which nature had never
designed as impediments to him."
He loved concentrated power, and seems to have thought
the American Government was exclusively national, and not
Federal.*  The Constitution was " not a compact."   He
was seldom averse to sacrificing the claims of the individual
States to the claim of the central authority. He favored
consolidation of power, while the South Carolinians and
others favored local self-government. It was no doctrine of
his "that unconstitutional laws bind the people;" but it was
his doctrine that such laws bind the people until the Supreme
Court declared them unconstitutional; thus making, not the
Constitution, but the discretion of the rulers, the measure of
its powers.
It is customary at the North to think Mr. Webster wholly
in the right, and South Carolina wholly in the wrong, on that
question; but it should be remembered, that some of the
ablest men whom the South ever sent to Washington thought
otherwise. There was a good deal of truth in the speech of
Mr. Hayne: he was alarmed at the increase of the central
power, which seemed to invade the rights of the States. Mr.
Calhoun defended the Carolinian idea; t and Calhoun was a
man of great mind, a sagacious man, a man of unimpeach* Last remarks on Foote's Resolution, and speech in Senate, 13th Feb.
1833.  Works, vol. iii. p. 343, et seq.; 448, et seq.
t See Mr. Calhoun's Disquisition on Government, and his Discourse
on the Constitution and Government of the United States, in his Works,
vol. i. (Charleston, 1851); Life and Speeches (New York, 1843), No. iii. -
vi. See, too, Life and Speeches, No. ix. xix. xxii.




ï~~44

able integrity in private. Mr. Clay was certainly a man
of very large intellect, wise and subtle and far-sighted.
But, in 1833, he introduced his " Compromise Measure,"
to avoid the necessity of enforcing the opinions of Mr.
Webster.
I must pass over many things in Mr. Webster's congressional career.
While Secretary of State, he performed the great act of
his public life, - the one deed on which his reputation as a
political administrator seems to settle down and rest. He
negotiated the Treaty of Washington in 1842. The matter
was difficult, the claims intricate. There were four parties
to pacify, - England, the United States, Massachusetts, and
Maine. The difficulty was almost sixty years old. Many
political doctors had laid their hands on the immedicable
wound, which only smarted sorer under their touch. The
British Government sent over a minister to negotiate a treaty
with the American Secretary. The two eminent statesmen
settled the difficulty. It has been said that no other man in
America could have done so well, and drawn the thunder out
of the gathered cloud. Perhaps I am no judge of that;
yet I do not see why any sensible and honest man could
not have done the work. You all remember the anxiety
of America and of England; the apprehension of war; and
the delight when these two countries shook hands, as the
work was done. Then we all felt that there was only
one English nation, - the English Briton and the English
American; that Webster and Ashburton were fellow-citizens, yea, were brothers of the same great Anglo-Saxon
tribe.
His letters on the Right of Search, and the British claim to
impress seamen from American ships, would have done honor
to any statesman in the world.* He refused to England
* Works, vol. vi. p. 318, et seq.




ï~~45

the right to visit and search our ships, on the plea of their
being engaged in the slave-trade. Some of my anti-slavery
brethren have censured him for this. I always thought he
was right in the matter. But, on the other side, his celebrated letter to Lord Ashburton, in the Creole case, seems to
me most eminently unjust, false in law, and wicked in morality.* It is the greatest stain on that negotiation; and it is
wonderful to me, that, in 1846, Mr. Webster could himself
declare that he thought that letter was the most triumphant
production from his pen in all the correspondence.
But let us pause a moment, and see how much praise is
really due to Mr. Webster for negotiating the treaty. I
limit my remarks to the north-eastern boundary. The main
question was, Where is the north-west angle of Nova Scotia,
mentioned in the treaty of 1783? for a line, drawn due north
from the source of the river St. Croix to the summit of the
highlands dividing the waters of the Atlantic from those of the
St. Lawrence, was to terminate at that point. The American claim was most abundantly substantiated; but it left the
British Provinces, New Brunswick and Canada, in an embarrassed position. No military road could be maintained
between them; and, besides, the American border came very
near to Quebec. Accordingly, the British Government, on
the flimsiest pretext, refused to draw the lines and erect the
monuments contemplated by the treaty of 1794; perverted
the language of the treaty of 1783, which was too plain to
be misunderstood; and gradually extended its claim further
and further to the west. By the treaty of Ghent (1814), it
was provided that certain questions should be left out Lo a
friendly power for arbitration. In 1827, this matter was
referred to the King of the Netherlands: he was to determine where the line of the treaty ran. He did not determine
that question, but, in 1831, proposed a new conventional
line. His award ceded to the British about 4,119 square
* Works, vol. vi. p. 303, et seq.




ï~~46
miles of land in Maine. The English assented to it; but the
Americans refused to accept the award, Mr. Webster opposing it. He was entirely convinced that the American
claim was just and sound, and the American interpretation
of the treaty of 1783 the only correct one. On a memorable occasion, in the Senate of the United States, Mr. Webster declared -" that Great Britain ought forthwith to be
told, that, unless she would agree to settle the question by the
4th of July next, according to the treaty of 1783, we would
then take possession of that line, and let her drive us off if
she can! "
The day before, and in all soberness, he declared that he
" never entertained a doubt that the right to this disputed
territory was in the United States." This was "perfectly
clear, - so clear that the controversy never seemed to him
hardly to reach to the dignity of a debatable question."
But, in 1842, the British minister came to negotiate a
treaty. Maine and Massachusetts were asked to appoint
commissioners to help in the matter; for it seemed determined on that those States were to relinquish some territory
to which they had a lawful claim. Those States could not
convey the territory to England, but might authorize the
Federal Government to make the transfer. The treaty was
made, and accepted by Maine and Massachusetts. But it
ceded to Great Britain all the land which the award had
given, and 893 square miles in addition. Thus the treaty
conveyed to Great Britain more than five thousand square
miles (upwards of 3,000,000 acres) of American territory,
to which, by the terms of the treaty, the Americaf title was
perfectly good. Rouse's Point was ceded to the United
States, with a narrow strip of land on the north of Vermont
and New Hampshire; but the king's award gave us Rouse's
Point at less cost. The rights which the Americans gained
* Evening Debate of Senate, Feb. 27, 1839 (in " Boston Atlas8" of
March 1).




ï~~47

with the navigation of a part of the St. John's River were
only a fair exchange for the similar right conceded to the
British. As a compensation to Maine and Massachusetts
for the loss of the land and the jurisdiction over it, the United
States paid these two States $300,000, and indemnified
Maine for the expenses occasioned by the troubles which had
grown out of the contested claims, - about $300,000 more.
Great Britain gained all that was essential to the welfare of
her colonies. All her communications, civil and military,
were for ever placed beyond hostile reach; and all the military positions claimed by America, with the exception of
Rouse's Point, were for ever secured to Great Britain. What
did England concede? It was fortunate that the controversy was settled; it was wise in America to be liberal. A
tract of wild land, though half as large as Massachusetts, is
nothing compared to a war. It is as well for mankind that
the jurisdiction over that spot belongs to the Lion of England
as to the Eagle of America. But I fear a man who makes
such a bargain is not entitled to any great glory among
diplomatists. In 1832, Maine refused to accept the award
of the king, even when the Federal Government offered her
a million acres of good land in Michigan, of her own selection, valued at a million and a quarter of dollars. Had it
been a question of the south-western boundary, and not
the north-eastern, Mexico would have had an answer to
her claim very different from that which England received.
Mr. Webster was determined on negotiating the treaty at all
hazards, and was not very courteous to those who expoytulated and stood out for the just rights of Maine and Massachusetts; * nay, he was indignant at the presumption of
* For the facts of this controversy, see, I. The Definitive Treaty of Peace,
&c. 1783. Public Statutes of the United States of America (Boston, 1846),
vol. viii. p. 80. Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, &c. 1794.
ibid. p. 116. Treaty of Peace and Amity, 1814, ibid. p. 218. -II. Act of
Twentieth Congress, stat. i. chap. xxx. id. vol. iv. p. 262. Act of Twenty-sixth




ï~~48

these States asking for compensation when their land was
ceded away!     Was there any real danger of a war.?        If
England had claimed clear down to the Connecticut,.I
think the Southern masters of the North would have given
up Bunker Hill and Plymouth Rock, rather than risk to the
chances of a British war the twelve hundred million dollars
invested in slaves. Men who live in straw houses think
twice before they    scatter fire-brands   abroad.    England
knew well with whom she had to deal, and authorized her
representative to treat only for a " conventional line," not to
accept the line of the treaty! Mr. Webster succeeded in
negotiating, because he gave up more American territory
than any one would yield before, -more than the king of
the Netherlands had proposed.     Still, we may all rejoice in
the settlement of the question; and if Great Britain had
admitted our claim by the plain terms of the treaty, and
then asked for the land so valuable and necessary to her,
who in New England would have found fault?
After the conclusion of the treaty, Mr. Webster came to
Boston. You remember his speech in 1842, in Faneuil
Hall.   He was then sixty years old.    He had done the great
deed of his life.  He still held a high station.  He scorned,
or affected to scorn, the littleness of party and its narrow
platform, and claimed to represent the people of the United
Congress, stat. i. chap. lii, ibid. vol. v. p. 402; and stat. ii. chap. ii. p. 413.
III. Statement, on the part of the United States, of the Case referred in
pursuance of the Convention of 29th Sept. 1827, between the said States
and Great Britain, to his Majesty the King of the Netherlands, for his
decision thereon (Washington, 1829). North American Boundary, A.:
Correspondence relating to the Boundary, &c. &c. (London, 1838). North
American Boundary, part I.: Correspondence relating to the Boundary, &c.
(London, 1840). The Right of the United States of America to the NorthEastern Boundary claimed by them, &c. &c., by Albert Gallatin, &c. (New
York, 1840). Documents of the Senate of Massachusetts, 1839, No. 45;
1841, No. 9. Documents of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1842, No. 44. - IV. Congressional Globe, &c.
(Washington, 1843), vol. xii. and Appendix. Mr. Webster's Defence of the
Treaty; Works, vol. v. p. 18, et seq.




ï~~49

States.  Everybody knew the importance of his speech.       I
counted sixteen reporters of the New England and Northern
press at that meeting. It was a proud day for him, and
also a stormy day.   Other than friends were about him.    It
was thought.that he had just scattered the thunder which
impended over the nation: a sullen cloud still hung over
his own expectations of the Presidency. He thundered his
eloquence into that cloud, - the great ground-lightning of
his Olympian power.
I come now to speak of his relation to slavery. Up to
1850, with occasional fluctuations, much of his conduct had
been just and honorable. As a private citizen, in 1819, he
opposed the Missouri Compromise. Said he, at the meeting
of the citizens of Boston to prevent that iniquity, " We are
acting for unborn millions, who lie along before us in the
track of time." # The extension of slavery would demoralize the people, and endanger the welfare of the nation.
" Nor can the laws derive support from the manners of the
people, if the power of moral sentiment be weakened by
enjoying, under the permission of the government, great
facilities to commit offences." t
A few months after the deed was done, on Forefathers'
Day in 1820, standing on Plymouth Rock, he could say: -
" I deem it my duty, on this occasion, to suggest, that the land is not
yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at which every feeling
of humanity must for ever revolt, - I mean the African slave-trade.
Neither public sentiment nor the law has hitherto been able entirely to
put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the momenfwhen
God in his mercy has blessed the Christian world with a universal peace,
there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and
character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade by
subjects and citizens of Christian states, in whose hearts there dwell no
sentiments of humanity or of justice, and over whom neither the fear of
* Reported in the Â~"Columbian Centinel " for Dec. 8, 1819.
t Memorial to Congress, ut supra.




ï~~50
God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law,
the African slave-trader is a pirate and a felon; and, in the sight of
Heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There
is no brighter page of our history than that which records the measures
which have been adopted by the government at an early day, and at
different times since, for the suppression of this traffic; and I would call
on all the true sons of New England to cooperate with the laws of man
and the justice of Heaven. If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves
here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not
fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear
the sound of the hammer; I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of
those who, by stealth and at midnight, labor in this work of hell, foul
and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and
torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England.
Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world. Let it
be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards; and
let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it."
In 1830, he honored Nathan Dane for the Ordinance which
makes the difference between Ohio and Kentucky, and
honorably vindicated that man who lived " too near the
north star " for Southern eyes to see. " I regard domestic
slavery," said Mr. Webster to Mr. Hayne, " as one of the
greatest evils, both moral and political." *
In 1837, at Niblo's Garden, he avowed his entire unwillingness to do any thing that should extend the slavery of
the African race on this continent. Said he:" On the general question of slavery, a great portion of the community is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted
attention as a question of politics, but it has struck a far deeper-toned
chord. It has arrested the religious feeling of the country; it has taken
strong hold on the consciences of men. He is a rash man, indeed, and
little conversant with human nature, - and especially has he a very
erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, -who
supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised. It
will assuredly cause itself to be respected. It may be reasoned with; it
may be made willing-I believe it is entirely willing - to fulfil all existing
* Works, vol. iii. p. 279; see also p. 263, et seq.




ï~~51
engagements, and all existing duties; to uphold and defend the Constitution as it is established, with whatever regrets about some provisions
which it does actually contain. But to coerce it into silence, to restrain
its free expression, to seek to compress and confine it, warm as it is, and
more heated as such endeavors would inevitably render it,-sshould this
be attempted, I know nothing, even in the Constitution or in the Union
itself, which would not be endangered by the explosion which might
foll1o w."''
He always declared that slavery was a local matter of the
South; sectional, not national.     In 1830 he took the ground
that the general government had nothing to do with it. In
1840, standing " beneath an October sun " at Richmond, he
declared again that there was no power, direct or indirect, in
Congress or the general government, to interfere in the
smallest degree with the "institutions" of the South. t
At first he opposed the annexation of Texas; he warned
men against it in 1837.    He went so far as to declare:" I do say that the annexation of Texas would tend to prolong the
duration and increase the extent of African slavery on this continent. I
have long held that opinioin and I would not now suppress it for any consideration on earth! and because it does increase the evils of slavery,
because it will increase the number of slaves and prolong the duration of
their bondage,-because it does all this, I oppose it without condition
and without qualification, at this time and all times, now and for ever." Â~+

He prepared some portions of the Address of the Massachusetts Anti-Texas Convention in 1845. But, as some
of the leading Whigs of the North opposed that meeting
and favored annexation, he did not appear at the Convention, but went off to New York. In 1845 he voted
against annexation. He said that he had felt it to be his
duty steadily, uniformly, and zealously to oppose it. He
did not wish Amcrica to be possessed by. the spirit of
aggrandizement. He objected to annexation principally
because Texas was a Slave State.Â~ Here he stood with John
* Works, vol. i. p. 356-7.  $ Works, vol. ii. p. 270.
t Works, vol. ii. 93, et seq.  ( See Works, Pol. ii. p. 652, et seg.




ï~~52

Quincy Adams, but, alas! did too little to oppose that annexation. Against him were Mr. Calhoun, the South, almost
all the Democratic party of the North; Mr. Van Buren
losing his nomination on account of his hostility to new
slave-soil; and many of the capitalists of the North wished
a thing that Mr. Webster wanted not.
He objected to the Constitution of Texas. Why?    Because it tied up the hands of the Legislature against the
abolition of slavery. He said so on Forefathers' Day, two
hundred and twenty-five years after the landing of the
Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. Then he could not forget his
own proud words, uttered a quarter of a century before. I
thought him honest then; I think so still. But he said that
New England might have prevented annexation; that Massachusetts might have prevented annexation, only " she could
not be roused." If he had labored then for freedom with as
much vigor and earnestness as he wrought for slavery in 1850
and 1851, Massachusetts would have been roused, New
England would have risen as a single man, and annexation
of new slave-soil have been put off till the Greek Kalends, a
day beyond eternity. Yet he did some service in this work.
After the outbreak of the Mexican war, the northern men
sought to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the new territory
gained from Mexico. The celebrated " Wilmot proviso "
came up. Mr. Webster also wished to prohibit slavery in
the new territory. In March, 1847, he presented to Congress the resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature against
the extension of slavery, - which had been passed unanimously, - and he endorsed them all.
"I thank her for it, and am proud of her; for she has denounced the
whole object for which our armies are now traversing the mountains of
Mexico." "If any thing is certain, it is that the sentiment of the whole
North is utterly opposed to the acquisition of territory to be formed into
new Slave-holding States."
* "Congressional Globe," March, 1847, p. 555.




ï~~53

At the Whig Convention at Springfield, in 1847, he maintained that the Wilmot Proviso was his " thunder."
" Did I not commit myself in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely? " " I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim
the merit and take out a patent. We are to use the first and the last and
every occasion which offers to oppose the extension of slave power."*
On the 10th of August, 1848, in the Senate of the United
States, he said:" My opposition to the increase of slavery in this country, or to the
increase of slave-representation, is general and universal. It has no reference to the lines of latitude or points of the compass. I shall oppose
all such extension at all times and under all circumstances, even against all
inducements, against all supposed limitations of great interests, against
all combinations, against all compromises."
He sought to gain the support of the Free Soilers in Massachusetts, and encouraged their enterprise. Even when he
denounced the nomination of General Taylor as " not fit to
be made," he declared that he could stand on the Buffalo
Platform; its Anti-Slavery planks were good sound Whig
timber; he himself had had some agency in getting them
out, and did not see the necessity of a new organization.
But, alas! all this was to pass away. Was he sincere in
his opposition to the extension of slavery? I always thought
so.  I think so still.  But how inconsistent his conduct!
Yet, after all, on the 7th of March, 1850, he could make
that speech - you know it too well. He refused to exclude
slavery by law from California and New Mexico. It would
" irritate " the South, would " re-enact the law of God." He
declared Congress was bound to make four new Slave
States out of Texas; to allow all the territory below 36Â~
30' to become Slave States; he declared that he would
give Texas fifty thousand square miles of land for slaveterritory, and ten millions of dollars; would refund to Virginia two hundred millions of dollars derived from the sales
* Remarks in Convention at Springfield, Sept. 10, 1847; reported in
"Boston Daily Advertiser."




ï~~54

of the public lands, to expatriate the free colored people from
her soil; that he would support the Fugitive Slave Bill,
with all its amendments, " with all its provisions," " to the
fullest extent."
You know the Fugitive Slave Bill too well. It is bad
enough now; but when he first volunteered his support
thereto, it was far worse, for then every one of the seventeen thousand postmasters of America might be a legal
kidnapper by that Bill. He pledged our own Massachusetts
to support it, and that " with alacrity."
My friends, you all know the speech of the 7th of March:
you know how men felt when the telegraph brought the first
news, they thought there must be some mistake! They
could not believe the lightning. You know how the Whig
party, and the Democratic party, and the newspapers, treated
the report. When the speech came in full, you know the
effect. One of the most conspicuous men of the State, then
in high office, declared that Mr. Webster " seemed inspired
by the devil to the extent of his intellect." You know the
indignation men felt, the sorrow and anguish. I think not a
hundred prominent men in all New England acceded to the
speech. But such was the power of that gigantic intellect,
that, eighteen days after his speech, nine hundred and eightyseven men of Boston sent him a letter, telling him that he
had pointed out " the path of duty, convinced the understanding and touched the conscience of a nation; " and
they expressed to him their " entire concurrence in the sentiments of that speech," and their "heartfelt thanks for the
inestimable aid it afforded to the preservation " of the Union.
You remember the return of Mr. Webster to Boston; the
speech at the Revere House; his word that " discussion" on
the subject of slavery must "in some way be suppressed; "
you remember the "disagreeable duty; " the question if
Massachusetts "will be just against temptation; " whether
" she will conquer her prejudices " in favor of the trial by




ï~~55

jury, of the unalienable rights of man, in favor of the
Christian religion, and "those thoughts which wander through
eternity."
You remember the agony of our colored men. The Son
of man came to Jerusalem to seek and to save that which
was lost; but Daniel Webster came to Boston to crush the
poorest and most lost of men into the ground with the hoof
of American power.
At the moment of making that speech, Mr. Webster was
a member of a French Abolition Society, which has for its
object to protect, enlighten, and emancipate the African
race!
You all know what followed. The Fugitive Slave Law
Bill passed. It was enforced. You remember the consternation of the colored people in Boston, New York, Buffalo,
Philadelphia, - all over the land. You remember the
speeches of Mr. Webster at Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany,
- his industry, never equalled before; his violence, his indignation, his denunciations. You remember the threat at
Syracuse, that out of the bosom of the next Anti-slavery
Convention should a fugitive slave be seized. You remember the scorn that he poured out on men who pledged " their
lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor," for the welfare
of men.
You remember the letters to Mr. Webster from Newburyport, Kennebec, Medford, and his " Neighbors in New
Hampshire." You have not forgotten the "Union Meetings: " "Blue-light Federalists," and " Genuine Democrats
dyed in the wool," united into one phalanx of Hunkerism
and became his " retainers," lay and clerical, -the laymen
maintaining that his political opinions were an amendment
to the Constitution; and the clergymen, that his public and
* Institut d'Afrique pour 1'Abolition de la Traite et de 1'Esclavage. Art. ii.
** II a pour but egalement de proteger, d'eclairer et d'6manciper la race
Africaine."




ï~~56

private practice was one of the evidences of Christianity.
You remember the sermons of Doctors of Divinity, proving
that slavery was Christian, good Old Testament Christian, at
the very least.. You remember the offer of a man to deliver
up his own brother. Andover went for kidnapping. The
loftiest pulpits, - I mean those highest bottomed on the dollar, -they went also for kidnapping.  There went up a
shout against the fugitive from the metropolitan pulpits,
" Away with such a fellow from the earth! -Kidnap him,
kidnap him! " And when we said, mildly remonstrating,
"Why, what evil has the poor black man done? " the
answer was,-"We have a law, and by that law he ought
to be a slave! "
You remember the first kidnappers which came here to
Boston. Hughes was one of them, an ugly-looking fellow,
that went back to die in a street-brawl in his own Georgia.
He thirsted for the blood of Ellen Craft.
You remember the seizure of Shadrach; you remember
his deliverance out of his fiery furnace. Of course it was an
Angel who let him out; for that court, - the kidnappers'
court, -thirsting for human blood, spite of the " enlargement of the testimony," after six trials, I think, has not found
a man, who, at noonday and in the centre of the town, did
the deed. So I suppose it was an Angel that did the deed,
and miracles are not over yet. I hope you have not forgotten Caphart, the creature which " whips women," the
great ally of the Boston kidnappers.
You remember the kidnapping of Thomas Sims; Faneuil Hall shut against the convention of the people; the
court-house in chains; the police drilled in the square; soldiers in arms; Faneuil Hall a barrack. You remember
Fast Day, 1851, - at least I do. You remember the
" Acorn" and Boston on the 12th of April. You have not
forgotten the dreadful scenes at New York, Philadelphia,
and Buffalo; the tragedy at Christiana.




ï~~57

You have not forgotten Mr. Webster's definition of the
object of government. In 1845, standing over the grave of
Judge Story, he said, - "Justice is the great interest of
mankind."     I think he thought so too; but at New         York,
on the 18th of November, 1850, he said, -" The great
object of government is the protection of property at home,
and respect and renown abroad."
He went to Annapolis, and made a speech complimenting
a series of ultra-resolutions in favor of slavery and slavecatching. One of the resolutions made the execution of the
Fugitive Slave Law the sole bond of the Union. The orator
of Bunker Hill replied: -
"Gentlemen, I concur in the sentiments expressed by you all - and I
thank God they were expressed by you all - in the resolutions passed
here on the 10th of December. And allow me to say, that any State,
North or South, which departs one iota from the sentiment of that resolution, is disloyal to this Union.
" Further, - so far as any act of that sort has been committed, - sucu
A STATE HAS NO PORTION OF MY REGARD. I do not sympathize with it. I
rebuke it wherever I speak, and on all occasions where it is proper for me
to express my sentiments.. If there are States -and I am afraid there
are - which have sought, by ingenious contrivances of State legislation,
to thwart the fair exercise and fulfilment of the laws of Congress passed
to carry into effect the compacts of the Constitution, - THAT STATE, so
FAR, IS ENTITLED TO NO REGARD FROM ME. AT THE NORTH THERE HAVE
BEEN CERTAINLY SOME INTIMATIONS IN CERTAIN STATES OF SUCH A POLICY."
"I hold the importance of maintaining these measures to be of the highest
character and nature, every one of them out and out, and through and
through. I have no confidence in anybody who seeks the repeal, in anybody
who wishes to alter or modify these constitutional provisions. There they
are. Many of these great measures are irrepealable. The settlement
with Texas is as irrepealable as the admission of California. Other important objects of legislation, if not in themselves in the nature of grants,
and therefore not so irrepealable, are just as important; and we are to
hear no parleying upon it. We are to listen to no modification or qualification. They were passed in conformity with the provisions of the Constitution; and they must be performed and abided by, IN WHATEVER EVENT,
AND AT WHATEVER COST.
Surrounded by the Federalists of New England, when a
9




ï~~58

young man, fresh in Congress, he stood out nobly for the
right to discuss all matters. Every boy knows his brave
words by heart:" Important as I deem it, sir, to discuss, on all proper occasions, the
policy of the measures at present pursued, it is still more important to
maintain the right of such discussion in its full and just extent. Sentiments
lately sprung up, and now growing popular, render it necessary to be
explicit on this point. It is the ancient and constitutional right of this
people to canvass public measures, and the merits of public men. It is a
homebred right, a fireside privilege. It has ever been enjoyed in every
house, cottage, and cabin in the nation. It is not to be drawn into controversy. It is as undoubted as the right of breathing the air, and walking
on the earth. Belonging to private life as a right, it belongs to public life
as a duty; and it is the last duty which those whose representative I am
shall find me to abandon. This high constitutional privilege I shall
defend and exercise within this house and without this house, and in all
places; in time of war, in time of peace, and at all times.
"Living, I will assert it; dying, I will assert it; and should I leave
no other inheritance to my children, by the blessing of God I will leave
them the inheritance of Free Principles, and the example of a manly,
independent, and constitutional defence of them."
Then, in 1850, when vast questions, so intimately affecting
the welfare of millions of men, were before the country, he
told us to suppress agitation!
" Neither you nor I shall see the legislation of the country proceed in
the old harmonious way, until the discussions in Congress and out of
Congress upon the subject [of slavery] shall be in some way suppressed.
Take that truth home with you, and take it as truth."
"I shall support no agitations having their foundation in unreal and
ghostly abstractions."
The opponents of Mr. Webster, contending for the freedom of all Americans, of all men, appealed from the Fugitive Slave Bill to "the element of all laws, out of which
they are derived, to the end of all laws, for which they are
designed and in which they are perfected." How did he
resist the appeal? You have not forgotten the speech at
Capron Springs, on the 26th of June, 1851. " When noth* Speech at the Revere House in Boston, April 29, 1850, in "Daily
Advertiser" of April 30.




ï~~59

ing else will answer," says he, "they," the abolitionists,
" invoke religion, and speak of the ' higher law! ' " He of
the granite hills of New Hampshire, looking on the mountains of Virginia, blue with loftiness and distance, said,
" Gentlemen, this North Mountain is high, the Blue Ridge
higher still, the Alleghanies higher than either, and yet this
higher law' ranges further than an eagle's flight above the
highest peaks of the Alleghanies! No common vision can
discern it; no common and unsophisticated conscience can
feel it; the hearing of common men never learns its high
behests; and, therefore, one would think it is not a safe law
to be acted upon in matters of the highest practical moment.
It is the code, however, of the abolitionists of the North."
This speech was made at dinner. The next " sentiment"
given after his was this: -
The Fugitive Slave Law - Upon its faithful execution depends the
perpetuity of the Union."
Mr. Webster made a speech in reply, and distinctly
declared, -
"You of the South have as much right to secure your fugitive slaves,
as the North has to any of its, rights and privileges of navigation and
commerce."
Do you think he believed that? Daniel Webster knew
better. In 1844, only seven years before, he had said, -
" What,! when all the civilized world is opposed to slavery; when
morality denounces it; when Christianity denounces it; when every
thing respected, every thing good, bears one united witness against it, is
it for America - America, the land of Washington, the model republic of
the world - is it for America to come to its assistance, and to insist that
the maintenance of slavery is necessary to the support of her institutions? "
How do you think the audience answered then? With
six and twenty cheers.  It was in Faneuil Hall.   Said Mr.
Webster, " These are Whig principles; " and, with these,
"F aneuil Hall may laugh a siege to scorn."    That speech




ï~~60

is not printed in his collection! How could it stand side
by side with the speech of the 7th of March?
In 1846, a Whig Convention voted to do its possible to
" defeat all measures calculated to uphold slavery, and promote all constitutional measures for its overthrow;" to
" oppose any further addition of Slaveholding States to this
Union; " and to have "free institutions for all, chains and
fetters for none."
Then Mr. Webster declared he had a heart which beat
for every thing favorable to the progress of human liberty,
either here or abroad; then, when in "the dark and troubled
night" he saw only the Whig party as his Bethlehem Star,
he rejoiced in " the hope of obtaining the power to resist
whatever threatens to extend slavery." * Yet after New
York had kidnapped Christians, and with civic pomp sent
her own sons into slavery, he could go to that city and say,
" It is an air which for the last few months I love to inhale.
It is a patriotic atmosphere: constitutional breezes fan it
every day." t
To accomplish a bad purpose, he resorted to mean artifice,
to the low tricks of vulgar adventurers in politics. He used
the same weapons once wielded against him, - misrepresentation, denunciation, invective. Like his old enemy of New
Hampshire, he carried his political quarrel into private life.
He cast off the acquaintance of men intimate with him for
twenty or thirty years. The malignity of his conduct, as
it was once said of a great apostate, " was hugely aggravated
by those rare abilities whereof God had given him the use."
Time had not in America bred a man before bold enough
to consummate such aims as his. In this New Hampshire
Strafford, " despotism had at length obtained an instrument
with mind to comprehend, and resolution to act upon, its
principles in their length and breadth; and enough of his
* Speech at Faneuil Hall, Sept. 23, 1846, reported in the "Daily Advertiser," Sept. 24.
t Speech at New York, May 12, 1851, in "4Boston Atlas " of May 14.




ï~~61

purposes were effected by him to enable mankind to see as
from a tower the end of all."
What was the design of all this?  It was to " save the
Union."  Such was the cry. Was the Union in danger?
Here were a few non-resistants at the North, who said, We
will have " no union with slaveholders." There was a party
of seceders at the South, who periodically blustered about
disunion. Could these men bring the Union into peril?
Did Daniel Webster think so? I shall never insult that
giant intellect by the thought. He knew South Carolina,
he knew Georgia, very well.# Mr. Benton knew of no " distress," even at the time when it was alleged that the nation
was bleeding at " five gaping wounds," so that it would take
the whole Omnibus full of compromises to stanch the blood:
" All the political distress is among the politicians." t I
think Mr. Webster knew there was no danger of a dissolution of the Union. But here is a proof that he knew it. In
18.50, on the 22d of December, he declared, " There is no
longer imminent danger of the dissolution of the United
States. We shall live, and not die."  But, soon after, he
went about saving the Union again, and again, and again,
saved it at Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, at Annapolis, and
then at Capron Springs.
I say there was no real danger; but my opinion is a mere
opinion, and nothing more. Look at a fact. We have the
most delicate test of public opinion, - the state of the public
funds; the barometer which indicates any change in the political weather. If the winds blow down the Tiber, Rojnan
funds fall. Talk of war between France and England, the
stocks go down at Paris and London. The foolish talk about
the fisheries last summer lowered American stocks in the
market, to the great gain of prudent and far-sighted brokers,
who knew there was no danger. But all this time, when Mr.
* See his description in 1830 of the process and conclusion of nullification.
Works, vol. iii. p. 337, et seq.
f Speech in Senate, Sept. 10, 1850.




ï~~62

Webster was telling us the ship of state was going to pieces,
and required undergirding by the Fugitive Slave Bill, and
needed the kidnapper's hand at the helm; while he was advising Massachusetts to " conquer her prejudices" in favor of
the unalienable rights of man; while he was denouncing the
friends of freedom, and calling on us to throw over to Texas
- the monster of the deep that threatened to devour the
ship of state - fifty thousand square miles of territory, and
ten millions of dollars; and to the other monster of secession to cast over the trial by jury, the dearest principles of
the Constitution, of manhood, of justice, and of religion,
" those thoughts that wander through eternity; " while he
himself revoked the noblest words of his whole life, throwing over his interpretation of the Constitution, his respect
for State rights, for the common law, his own morality, his
own religion, and his own God, - the funds of the United
States did not go down one mill. You asked the capitalist,
" Is the Union in danger? " He answered, " 0 yes! it is in
the greatest peril."  " Then will you sell me your stocks
lower than before? " " Not a mill; not one mill - not the
ten hundredth part of a dollar in a hundred! " To ask men
to make such a sacrifice, at such a time, from such a motive,
is as if you should ask the captain of the steamer " Niagara,"
in Boston harbor, in fair weather, to throw over all his cargo,
because a dandy in the cabin was blowing the fire with his
breath. No, my friends, I shall not insult the majesty of
that intellect with the thought that he believed there was
danger to the Union. There was not any danger of a storm;
not a single cat's-paw in the sky; not a capful of bad weather
between Cape Sable and the Lake of the Woods!
But suppose the worst came to the worst, are there no
other things as bad as disunion? The Constitution - does
it " establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity," and " secure the blessings of liberty " to all the citizens?  Nobody
pretends it, - with every sixth man made merchandise, and
not an inch of free soil covered by the Declaration of Inde



ï~~63

pendence, save the five thousand miles which Mr. Webster
ceded away. Is disunion worse than slavery? Perhaps not
even to commerce, which the Federalists thought " still
more dear " than Union. But what if the South seceded
next year, and the younger son took the portion of goods
that falleth to him, when America divides her living? Imagine the condition of the new nation, - the United States
South; a nation without schools, or the desire for them;
without commerce, without manufactures; with six million
white men and three million slaves; working with that
barbarous tool, slave-labor, an instrument as ill-suited to
these times as a sickle of stone to cut grain with! How
would that new democracy appear in the eyes of the world,
when the public opinion of the nations looks hard at tyranny?
It would not be long before this younger son, having spent
all with riotous living, and devoured his substance with
slavery, brought down to the husks that the swine do eat, -
would arise, and go to his father, and say, "Father, forgive
me; I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am
no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of
thy hired servants." The Southern men know well, that, if
the Union were dissolved, their riches would take to itself
legs, and run away,-or firebrands, and make a St. Domingo
out of Carolina! They cast off the North! they set up for
themselves! " Tush! tush! Fear boys with bugs! "
Here is the reason. He wanted to be President. That
was all of it. Before this he had intrigued, - always in a
clumsy sort, for he was organized for honesty, and cunning
never throve in his keeping,-had stormed and blustered
and bullied. " Gen. Taylor the second choice of Massachusetts for the President," quoth he: "1I tell you I am to be the
first, and Massachusetts has no second choice."  Mr. Clay
must not be nominated in '44; in '48 Gen. Taylor's was a
" nomination not fit to be made." He wanted the office
himself. This time he must storm the North, and conciliate
the South. This was his bid for the Presidency, - fifty




ï~~64
thousand square miles of territory and ten millions of dollars
to Texas; four new Slave States; slavery in Utah and New
Mexico; the Fugitive Slave Bill; and two hundred millions
of dollars offered to Virginia to carry free men of color to
Africa.
He never labored so before, and he had been a hardworking man. What speeches he made at Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Annapolis!
What letters he wrote! His intellect was never so active,
nor gave such proofs of Herculean power. The hottest
headed Carolinian did not put his feet faster or further on
in the support of slavery. He
" Stood up the strongest and the fiercest spirit
That fought 'gainst Heaven, now fiercer by despair."
Once he could say," By general instruction, we seek as far as possible to purify the whole
moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the
strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law,
and the denunciations of religion, against immorality and crime. We
hope for a security beyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence
of enlightened and well-principled moral sentiment." *
In 1820 he could say, " All conscience ought to be
respected; " in 1850 it is only a fanatic who heeds his conscience, and there is no higher law. In scorn of the higher
law, he far outwent his transatlantic prototype. Even
Strafford, in his devotion to "Thorough," had some respect
for the fundamental law of nature, and said,-" Tf I must
be a traitor to man or perjured to God, I will be faithful to
my Creator."
The fountains of his great deep were broken up - it rained
forty days and forty nights, and brought a flood of slavery
over this whole land; it covered the market, and the factory,
* Debate in the Mass. Convention, Dec. 5, 1820. " Journal," ubi sup.
p. 145; erroneously printed 245.




ï~~65

and the court-house, and the warehouse, and the college,
and rose up high over the tops of the tallest steeples!    But
the Ark of Freedom went on the face of the waters, -     above
the market, above the factory, above the court-house, over
the college, higher than the tops of the tallest steeples, it
floated secure; for it bore the Religion that is to save the
world, and the Lord God of Hosts had shut it in.
What flattery was there from Mr. Webster! What flattery to the South! what respect for Southern nullifiers!
" The Secessionists of the South take a different course of
remark; " they appeal to no higher law!     " They are learned
and eloquent; they are animated and full of spirit; they are
high-minded and chivalrous; they state their supposed injuries and causes of complaint in elegant phrases and exalted
tones of speech."
He derided the instructions of his adopted State.
" It has been said that I have, by the course that I have thought proper
to pursue, displeased a portion of the people of Massachusetts. Well,
suppose I did. Suppose I displeased all the people of that State, - what
of that?
" What had I to do with instructions from Massachusetts upon a question affecting the whole nation! " 1I assure you, gentlemen, I cared no
more for the instructions of Massachusetts than I did for those of any
other State! " t
What scorn against the " fanatics " of the North, against
the Higher Law, and the God thereof!
" New England, it is well known, is the chosen seat of the Abolition
presses and the Abolition Societies. There it is principally that the former cheer the morning by full columns of lamentation over the fa&eof
human beings free by nature and by a law above the Constitution,-but
sent back, nevertheless, chained and manacled to slavery and to stripes;
and the latter refresh themselves from daily toil by orgies of the night
devoted to the same outpourings of philanthropy, mingling all the while
their anathemas at what they call ' men-catching' with the most horrid
and profane abjuration of the Christian Sabbath, and indeed of the whole
* Speech at Capron Springs.  t Ibid.
10




ï~~66

Divine Revelation: they sanctify their philanthropy by irreligion and
profanity; they manifest their charity by contempt of God and his commandments."
"Depend upon it, the law [the Fugitive Slave Bill] will be executed in
its spirit and to its letter. It will be executed in all the great cities, -
here in Syracuse, - in the midst of the next Anti-slavery Convention, if
the occasion shall arise; then we shall see what becomes of their ' lives
and their sacred honor '!" *
How he mocked at the "higher law," " that exists somewhere between us and the third heaven, I never knew exactly
where."
The anti-slavery men were "insane persons," "some small
bodies of fanatics," "not fit for a lunatic asylum."f
To secure his purposes, he lcft no stone unturned; he
abandoned his old friends, treating them with rage and insolence.   fle revolutionized   his own morals, and his own
religion. The strong advocate of liberty, of justice to all
men, the opponent of slavery, turned round and went square
over. But his old speeches did not follow him: a speech
is a fact; a printed word becomes immovable as the Alps.
His former speeches, all the way from Hanover to Washington, were a line of fortresses grim with cannon each levelled
at his new position.
How low he stooped to supplicate the South, to cringe
before the Catholics, to fawn upon the Methodists at Faneuil Hall!   Oh, what a prostitution of what a kingly power
of thought, of speech, of will!
The effect of Mr. Webster's speech was amazing: at first
Northern men abhorred it; next they accepted it.          Why
was this? He himself has perhaps helped us understand the
mystery: -
" The enormity of some crimes so astonishes men as to subdue their
minds, and they lose the desire for justice in a morbid admiration of the
great criminal and the strangeness of the crime."
* Speech at Syracuse (New York, 1851).
t See speech at Buffalo, 22d May, 1851. Vol. ii. p. 544, et seq.




ï~~67

Slavery, the most hideous snake which Southern regions
breed, with fifteen unequal feet, came crawling North;fold
on fold, and ring on ring, and coil on coil, the venomed
monster came: then Avarice, the foulest worm which Northern cities gender in their heat, went crawling South; with
many a wriggling curl, it wound along its way. At length
they met, and, twisting up in their obscene embrace, the twain
became one monster, Hunkerism; theme unattempted yet in,
prose or song: there was no North, no South; they were
one poison! The dragon wormed its way along, - crawled
into the church of commerce, wherein the minister baptized
the beast, " Salvation." From the ten commandments the
dragon's breath effaced those which forbid to kill and covet,
with the three between; then, with malignant tooth, gnawed
out the chief commandments whereon the law and prophets
hang. This amphisbeena of the Western World then swallowed down the holiest words of Hebrew or of Christian
speech, and in their place it left a hissing at the higher law
of God. Northward and Southward wormed the thing along
its track, leaving the stain of its breath in the people's face;
and its hissing against the Lord rings yet in many a speech:
"Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And, unawares, morality expires."
Then what a shrinking was there of great consciences, and
hearts, and minds! So Milton, fabling, sings of angels
fallen from their first estate, seeking to enter Pandemonium: -
"Â~They  but now  who  seemed
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant-sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless,.................  to smallest forms
Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large,
Though without number still, amidst the hall
Of that infernal court."




ï~~68

Mr. Webster stamped his foot, and broke through into
the great hollow of practical atheism, which undergulfs the
state and church. Then what a caving in was there! The
firm-set base of northern cities quaked and yawned with
gaping rents. " Penn's sandy foundation " shook again, and
black men fled from the city of brotherly love, as doves flee
from a farmer's barn when summer lightning stabs the roof.
There was a twist in Faneuil Hall, and the doors could not
open wide enough for Liberty to regain her ancient Cradle;
only soldiers, greedy to steal a man, themselves stole out
and in. Ecclesiastic quicksand ran down the hole amain.
Metropolitan churches toppled, and pitched, and canted,
and cracked, their bowing walls all out of plumb. Colleges,
broken from the chain which held them in the stream of time,
rushed towards the abysmal rent. Harvard led the way,
Christo et Ecclesice in its hand. Down plunged Andover,
" Conscience and the Constitution " clutched in its ancient,
failing arm. New  Haven began to cave in. Doctors of
Divinity, orthodox, heterodox with only a doxy of doubt,
" no settled opinion," had great alacrity in sinking, and
went down quick, as live as ever, into the pit of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the bottomless pit of lower law, - one
with his mother, cloaked by a surplice, hid neath his sinister
arm, and an acknowledged brother grasped by his remaining
limb. Fossils of theology, dead as Ezekiel's bones, took
to their feet again, and stood up for most arrant wrong.
" There is no higher law of God," quoth they, as they
went down; " no golden rule, only the statutes of m;en." A
man with mythologic ear might fancy that he heard a snickering laugh run round the world below, snorting, whinnying,
and neighing, as it echoed from the infernal spot pressed
by the fallen monsters of ill-fame, who, thousands of years
ago, on the same errand, plunged down the self-same way.
What tidings the echo bore, Dante nor Milton could not tell.
Let us leave that to darkness, and to silence, and to death.




ï~~69

But spite of all this, in every city, in every town, in every
college, and in each capsizing church, there were found faithful men, who feared not the monster, heeded not the stamping, -nay, Doctors of Divinity were found living, -in all
their houses there was light, and the destroying angel shook
them not. The word of the Lord came in open vision to their
eye; they had their lamps trimmed and burning, their loins
girt; they stood road-ready. Liberty and Religion turned in
thither, and the slave found bread and wings. "When my
father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will hold
me up!"
After the 7th of March, Mr. Webster became the ally of
the worst of men, the forefront of kidnapping. The orator
of Plymouth Rock was the advocate of slavery; the hero of
Bunker Hill put chains around Boston Court-house; the
applauder of Adams and Jefferson was a tool of the slaveholder, and a keeper of slavery's dogs, the associate of the
kidnapper, and the mocker of men who loved the right.
Two years he lived with that rabble rout for company, his
name the boast of every vilest thing. " Oh, how unlike the
place from whence he fell!"  In early life, Mr. Hill, of New
Hampshire, pursued him with unrelenting bitterness. Of
late years Mr. Webster had complained of this, declaring
that "\Ir. Hill had done more than any other man to debauch the character of New Hampshire, bringing the bitterness of politics into private life." After that day of St.
Judas, Mr. Webster pursued the same course which Mr.
Hill had followed forty years before, and the two enemies
were reconciled.* The Herod of the Democrats and the
Pilate of Federalism were made friends by the Fugitive
Slave Bill, and rode in the same "Omnibus,"- " a blue-light
Federalist " and " a genuine Democrat dyed in the wool."
Think of him! - the Daniel Webster of Plymouth Rock
* See Letter of Hon. Isaac Hill (April 17, 1850), and Mr. Webster's
Reply.




ï~~70

advocating the Compromise Measures! the Daniel Webster
of Faneuil Hall, who spoke with the inspiration of Samuel
Adams and the tongue of James Otis, honoring the holy dead
with his praise! - think of him at Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse,
scoffing at modern men, who "perilled their lives,vtheir fortunes, and their sacred honor," to visit the fatherless and the
widows in their affliction, and to keep themselves unspotted
from the world! - think of him threatening with the gallows
such as clothed the naked, fed the hungry, visited the prisoner, and gave a cup of cold water to him that was ready
to perish! Think of Daniel Webster become the assassin of
Liberty in the Capitol! Think of him, full of the Old Testament and dear Isaac Watts, scoffing at the higher law of
God, while the mountains of Virginia looked him in the
face!                         *
But what was the recompense? Ask Massachusetts, -
ask the North. Let the Baltimore Convention tell. He
was the greatest candidate before it. General Scott is a
little man when the feathers are gone. Fillmore, you know
him. Both of these, for greatness of intellect, compared to
Webster, were as a single magpie measured by an eagle.
Look at his speeches; look at his forehead; look at his
face! The two hundred and ninety-three delegates came
together and voted. They gave him thirty-three votes, and
that only once! Where were the men of the "lower law,"
who made denial of God the first principle of their politics?
Where were they who in Faneuil Hall scoffed and jeered
at the " higher law; " or at Capron Springs, who "1laughed"
when he mocked at the law higher than the Virginia hills?
Where were the kidnappers?
The " lower law " men and the kidnappers strained themselves to the utmost, and he had thirty-three votes.
Where was the South? Fifty-three times did the Convention ballot, and the South never gave him a vote, -
not a vote; no, not one! Northern friends -I honor their




ï~~71

affection for the great man-- went to the South, and begged
for the poor and paltry pittance of a seeming vote, in order
to break the bitterness of the fall! They went " with tears in
their eyes," and in mercy's name, and asked that crumb from
the Southern board. But the cruel South, treacherous to
him whom she beguiled to treason against God, she answered, "Not a vote! "  It was the old fate of men who
betray. Southern politicians "did not dare dispense with
the services thrust on him, but revenged themselves by
withdrawing his well-merited reward." It was the fate of
Strafford, the fate of Wolsey. When Lasthenes and Euthycrates betrayed Olynthus to Macedonian Philip, fighting
against the liberties of Greece, they were distinguished -
if Demosthenes be right - only by the cruelty of their fate.
Mr. Webster himself had a forefeeling that it might be so;
for, on the morning of his fatal speech, he told a brother
Senator, "1I have my doubts that the speech I am going to
make will ruin me." But he played the card with a heavy,
a rash, and not a skilful hand. It was only the playing
of a card, - his last card. Mr. Calhoun had said, " The farthest Southerner is nearer to us than the nearest Northern
man." They could trust him with their work, - not with its
covenanted pay!
Oh! Cardinal Wolsey! there was never such a fall.
" He fell, like Lucifer, never to hope again! " The telegraph which brought him tidings of his fate was a thunderstroke out of the clear sky. No wonder that he wept, and
said, " I am a disgraced man, a ruined man! "  His early,
his last, his fondest dream of ambition broke, and only ruin
filled his hand! What a spectacle to move pity in the stones
of the street!
But it seemed as if nothing could be spared him. His cup
of bitterness, already full, was made to run over; for joyous
men, full of wine and the nomination, called him up at midnight out of his bed -the poor, disappointed old man! -to




ï~~72

" congratulate him on the nomination of Scott! " And they
forced the great man, falling back on his self-respect, to say
that the next morning he should 1' rise with the lark, as
jocund and as gay."
Was not that enough? Oh, there is no pity in the hearts
of men! Even that was not enough!     Northern friends
went to him, and asked him to advise men to vote for Gen.
Scott!
Gen. Scott is said to be an anti-slavery man; but soon as
the political carpenters put the " planks " together at Baltimore, he scrambled upon the platform, and stands there on
all-fours to this day, looking for "fellow-citizens, native and
adopted," listening for " that brogue," and declaring that,
after all, he is " only a common man." Did you ever read
Gen. Scott's speeches? Then think of asking Daniel Webster to recommend him for President, - Scott in the chair,
and Webster out! That was gall after the wormwood!
They say that Daniel Webster did write a letter advocating
the election of Scott, and afterwards said, " I still live." If
he did so, attribute it to the wanderings of a great mind,
shattered by sickness; and be assured he would have taken
it back, if he had ever set his firm foot on the ground
again!
Daniel Webster went down to Marshfield'- to die! He
died of his 7th of March speech! That word endorsed on
Mason's Bill drove thousands of fugitives from America to
Canada. It put chains round our court-house; it led men
to violate the majesty of law all over the North. I violated
it, and so did you. It sent Thomas Sims in fetters to his
jail and his scourging at Savannah; it caused practical
atheism to be preached in many churches of New York,
Philadelphia, Washington, and, worst of all, Boston itself!
and then, with its own recoil, it sent Daniel Webster to
his grave, giving him such a reputation as a man would
not wish for his utterest foe.




ï~~73

No event in the American Revolution was half so terrible
as his speeches in defence of slavery and kidnapping, his
abrogation of the right to discuss all measures of the government. We lost battles again and again, lost campaignsour honor we never lost. The army was without powder at
Cambridge, in '76; without shoes and blankets in '78; and
the bare feet of New England valor marked the ice with blood
when they crossed the Delaware. But we were never without conscience, never without morality. Powder might fail,
and shoes drop, old and rotten, from soldiers' feet. But the
love of God was in the American heart, and no American
general said, " There is no law higher than the Blue
Ridge! "   Nay, they appealed to God's higher law, not
thinking that in politics religion makes men mad.
While the Philip of slavery was thundering at our gate,
the American Demosthenes advised us to " conquer our prejudices " against letting him in; to throw down the wall
" with alacrity," and bid him come: it was a constitutional
Philip.  How silver dims the edge of steel! When the
tongue of freedom was cut out of the mouth of Europe by
the sabres of tyrants, and only in the British Isles and in
Saxon speech could liberty be said or sung, the greatest
orator who ever spoke the language of Milton and Burke
told us to suppress discussion! In the dark and troubled
night of American politics, our tallest Pharo on the shore
hung out a false beacon.
Said Mr. Webster once, "There will always be some perverse minds who will vote the wrong way, let the justice of
the case be ever so apparent."*  Did he know what he was
doing? Too well. In the winter of 1850, he partially prepared a speech in defence of freedom. Was his own
amendment to Mason's Bill designed to be its text? t
Some say so. I know not. He wrote to an intimate and
* "Columbian Centinel," March 11, 1820.
f Works, vol. v. p. 373-4.
11




ï~~74

sagacious friend in Boston, asking, How far can I go in
defence of freedom, and have Massachusetts sustain me?
The friend repaid the confidence and said, Far as you
like! Mr. Webster went as far as New Orleans, as far as
Texas and the Del Norte, in support of slavery! When
that speech came, - the rawest wind of March, - the friend
declared: It seldom happens to any man to be able to
disgrace the generation he is born in. But the opportunity
has presented itself to Mr. Webster, and he has done the
deed!
Cardinal Wolsey fell, and lost nothing but his place.
Bacon fell; the " wisest, brightest," lived long enough to
prove himself the " meanest of mankind." Strafford came
down. But it was nothing to the fall of Webster. The
Anglo-Saxon race never knew such a terrible and calamitous ruin. His downfall shook the continent.  Truth fell
prostrate in the street. Since then, the court-house has a
twist in its walls, and equity cannot enter its door; the steeples point awry, and the " higher law " is hurled down from
the pulpit. One priest would enslave all the " posterity of
Ham," and another would drive a fugitive from his own
door; a third is certain that Paul was a kidnapper; and a
fourth has the assurance of his consciousness that Christ
Jesus would have sold and bought slaves. Practical atheism
became common in the pulpits of America; they forgot that
there was a God. In the hard winter of 1780, if Fayette
had copied Arnold, and Washington gone over to the enemy,
the fall could not have been worse. Benedict Arnold fell,
but fell through,-- so low that no man quotes him Tor precedent. Aaron Burr is only a warning. Webster fell, and he
lay there " not less than archangel ruined," and enticed the
nation in his fall. Shame on us! - all those three are of
New England blood!
My friends, it is hard for me to say these things. My




ï~~75

mother's love is warm in my own bosom still, and I hate to
say these words. But God is just; and, in the presence of
God, I stand here to tell the truth.
Did men honor Daniel Webster? So did I. I was a boy
ten years old when he stood at Plymouth Rock, and never
shall I forget how his clarion-words rang in my boyish heart.
I was but a little boy when he spoke those brave words in
behalf of Greece. I learned to hate slavery from the lips of
that great intellect; and now that he takes back his word,
and comes himself to be Slavery's slave, I hate it ten-fold
harder than before, because it made a bondman out of that
proud, powerful nature.
Did men love him? So did I. Not blindly, but as I loved
a great mind, as the defender of the Constitution and the
unalienable rights of man.
Sober and religious men of Boston yet mourn that their
brothers were kidnapped in the city of Hancock and Adams
- it was Daniel Webster who kidnapped them. Massachusetts has wept at the deep iniquity which was wrought in her
capital-it was done by the man whom she welcomed to
her bosom, and long had loved to honor. Let history, as
"Sad as angels at the good man's sin,
Blush to record, and weep to give it in! "
Do men mourn for him?    See how they mourn! The
streets are hung with black. The newspapers are sad colored. The shops are put in mourning. The Mayor and
Aldermen wear crape. Wherever his death is made known,
the public business stops, and flags drop half-mast down.
The courts adjourn.  The courts of Massachusetts - at
Boston, at Dedham, at Lowell, all adjourn; the courts of
New Hampshire, of Maine, of New York; even at Baltimore and Washington, the courts adjourn; for the great
lawyer is dead, and Justice must wait another day. Only
the United States Court, in Boston, trying a man for helping




ï~~Shadrach out of the furnace of the kidnappers, -the court
that executes the Fugitive Slave Law, - that does not
adjourn; that keeps on; its worm dies not, and the fire of
its persecution is not quenched, when death puts out the
lamp of life. Injustice is hungry for its prey, and must not
be balked. It was very proper! Symbolical court of the
Fugitive Slave Bill-it does not respect life, why should it
death? and, scorning liberty, why should it heed decorum?
Did the judges deem that Webster's spirit, on its way to
God, would look at Plymouth Rock, then pause on the
spots made more classic by his eloquence, and gaze at Bunker Hill, and tarry his hour in the august company of noble
men at Faneuil Hall, and be glad to know that injustice was
chanting his requiem in that court? They greatly misjudge
the man. I know Daniel Webster better, and I appeal for
him against his idly judging friends.#
Do men now mourn for him, the great man eloquent? I
put on sackcloth long ago; I mourned for him when he wrote
the Creole letter, which surprised Ashburton, Briton that he
was. I mourned when he spoke the speech of the 7th of
March. I mourned when the Fugitive Slave Bill passed
Congress, and the same cannons which have fired minuteguns for him fired also one hundred rounds of joy for the
forging of a new fetter for the fugitive's foot. I mourned
for him when the kidnappers first came to Boston,- hated
then, now " respectable men," " the companions of princes,"
enlarging their testimony in the court. I mourned when my
own parishioners fled from the " stripes " of New England to
the "stars" of Old England. I mourned when Ellen Craft
fled to my house for shelter and for succor, and for the first
* I am told that there was some technicalreason why that court continued its session. I know nothing of the motive; but I believe it was the fact
that the only court in the United States which did not adjourn at the intelligence of the death of Mr. Webster, was the court which was seeking to
punish a man for rescuing Shadrach from the fiery furnace made ready for
him.




ï~~77
time in all my life I armed this hand. I mourned when I
married William and Ellen Craft, and gave them a Bible
for their soul, and a sword to keep that soul living in a
living frame. I mourned when the court-house was hung in
chains; when Thomas Sims, from his dungeon, sent out his
petition for prayers, and the churches did not dare to pray.
I mourned when that poor outcast in yonder dungeon sent
for me to visit him, and when I took him by the hand which
Daniel Webster was chaining in that hour. I mourned for
Webster when we prayed our prayer and sang our psalm
on Long Wharf in the morning's gray. I mourned then:
I shall not cease to mourn. The flags will be removed
from the streets, the cannon will sound their other notes of
joy; but, for me, I shall go mourning all my days; I shall
refuse to be comforted; and at last I shall lay down my
gray hairs with weeping and with sorrow in the grave. 0
Webster! Webster! would God that I had died for thee
He was a powerful man physically, a man of a large
mould, - a great body and a great brain: he seemed made
to last a hundred years. Since Socrates, there has seldom
been a head so massive huge, save the stormy features of
Michael Angelo, -
"The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome; "
he who sculptured Day and Night into such beautiful forms,
-looked them in his face before he chiselled them in stone.
The cubic capacity of his head surpassed all former measurements of mind. Since Charlemagne, I think there has not
been such a grand figure in all Christendom. A large man,
decorous in dress, dignified in deportment, he walked as if
he felt himself a king. Men from the country, who knew
him not, stared at him as he passed through our streets.
The coal-heavers and porters of London looked on him.s




ï~~78

one of the great forces of the globe: they recognized a
native king. In the Senate of the United States, he looked
an emperor in that council. Even the majestic Calhoun
seemed common compared with him. Clay looked vulgar,
and Van Buren but a fox. His countenance,like Strafford's,
was " manly black." His mind -
" Was lodged in a fair and lofty room.
On his brow
Sat terror, mixed with wisdom; and, at once,
Saturn and Hermes in his countenance."
What a mouth he had! It was a lion's mouth; yet there
was a sweet grandeur in his smile, and a woman's softness
when he would. What a brow it was! what eyes! like
charcoal fires in the bottom of a deep, dark well. His face
was rugged with volcanic fires, - great passions and great
thoughts.
"The front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars to threaten and command."
Let me examine the elements of Mr. Webster's character
in some detail. Divide the faculties, not bodily, into intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious, and see what he had
of each, beginning with the highest.
I. His latter life shows that he had no large development
of the religious powers, which join men consciously to the
infinite God. He had little religion in the higher meaning
of that word, much in the lower. He had the conventional
form  of religion, - the formality of outward apd visible
prayer; reverence for the Bible and the name of Christ;
attendance at meeting on Sundays and at the " ordinances
of religion." He was a " devout man," in the ecclesiastic
sense of the word. But it is easy to be devout, hard to be
moral. Of the two men, in the parable, who " went up to
the temple to pray," only the Pharisee was " devout" in
the common sense. Devoutness took the Priest and the




ï~~79
Levite to the temple: morality took the good Samaritan to
the man fallen among thieves.
His reputation for religion seems to rest on these facts, -
that he read the Bible, and knew more passages from it
than most political editors, more than some clergymen; he
thought Job " a great epic poem," and quoted Habbakuk
by rote; - that he knew many hymns by heart; attended
what is called " divine service; " agreed with a New Hampshire divine "in all the doctrines of a Christian life; " and,
in the " Girard case," praised the popular theology, with the
ministers thereof, - the latter as." appointed by the Author
of the Christian religion himself."
He seems by nature to have had a religious turn of mind;
was full of devout and reverential feelings; took a deep
delight in religious emotions; was fond of religious books
of a sentimental cast; loved Watts's tender and delicious
hymns, with the devotional parts of the Bible; his memory
was stored with the poetry of hymn-books; he was fond of
attendance at church. He had no particle of religious
bigotry; joining an Orthodox Church at Boscawen, an
Episcopal at Washington, a Unitarian at Boston, and attending religious services without much regard for the theology
of the minister. He loved religious forms, and could not
see a child baptized without dropping a tear. Psalms and
hymns also brought the woman into those great eyes. He
was never known to swear, or use any profanity of speech.
Considering the habits of his political company, that is a fact
worth notice. But I do not find that his religious emotjons
had any influence on his latter life, either public or private.
He read religion out of politics with haughty scorn, -"It
makes men mad "! It appeared neither to check him from ill,
nor urge to good: though he loved " to have religion made
a personal matter," he forsook the church which made it personal in the form of temperance. His " religious character "
was what the churches tend to form, and love to praise.




ï~~80

II. Of the affections he was well provided by nature,
though they were little cultivated, - attachable to a few
who knew him, and loved him tenderly; and, if he hated
like a giant, he loved also like a king.
He had small respect for the mass of men, - a contempt
for the judgment and the feelings of the millions who make
up the people. Many women loved him; some from pure
affection, others fascinated and overborne by the immense
masculineness of the man. Some are still left who knew
him in early life, before political ambition set its mark on his
forehead, and drove him forth into the world: they love him
with the tenderest of woman's affection. This is no small
praise. In his earlier life he was fond of children, loved their
prattle and their play. They, too, were fond of him, came
to him as dust of iron to a loadstone, climbed on his back,
or, when he lay down, lay on his limbs and also slept.
Of unimpassioned and unrelated love, there are two modes,
- friendship for a few; philanthropy for all. Friendship
he surely had, especially in earlier life. All along the shore,
men loved him; men in Boston loved him to the last;
Washington held loving hearts which worshipped him. But,
of late years, he turned round to smite and crush his early
friends who kept the higher law; ambition tore the friendship
out of him, and he became unkind and cruel. The companions of his later years were chiefly low men, with large
animal appetites, servants of his body's baser parts, or tidewaiters of his ambition,-vulgar men in Boston and New
York, who bask in the habitations of cruelty, wlhereof the
dark places of the earth are full, seeking to enslave their
brother-men. These barnacles clove to the great man's
unprotected parts, and hastened his decay. When kidnappers made their loathsome lair of his bosom, what was his
friendship worth?
Of philanthropy, I claim not much for him. The noble
plea for Greece is the most I can put in for argument. He




ï~~81

cared little for the poor; charity seldom invaded his open
purse; he trod down the poorest and most friendless of
perishing men. His name was never connected with the
humanities of the age. soon as the American Government
seemed fixed on the side of cruelty, he marched all his
dreadful artillery over, and levelled his breaching cannons
against men ready to perish without his shot. In later
years, his face was the visage of a tyrant.
III. Of conscience it seemed to me he had little; in
his later life, exceeding little: his moral sense seemed long
besotted; almost, though not wholly, gone. Hence, though
he was often generous, he was not just. Free to give as to
grasp, he was lavish by instinct, not charitable on principle.
He had little courage, and rarely spoke a Northern word
to a Southern audience, save his official words in Congress.
In Charleston he was the "schoolmaster that gives us no
lessons." He quailed before the Southern men who would
" dissolve the Union," when he stood before their eye.
They were " high-minded and chivalrous: " it was only the
non-resistants of the North he meant to ban!
He was indeed eminently selfish, joining the instinctive
egotism of passion with the self-conscious, voluntary, deliberate, calculating egotism of ambition. He borrowed
money of rich young men - ay, and of poor ones - in the
generosity of their youth, and never paid. He sought to
make his colleagues in office the tools of his ambition, and,
that failing, pursued them with the intensest hate. Thus he
sought to ruin the venerable John Quincy Adams, when the
President became a Representative. By secret hands he
scattered circulars in Mr. Adams's district to work his overthrow; got other men to oppose him. With different men he
succeeded better. He used his party as he used his friends,
- as tools. He coquetted with the Democrats in '42, with
the Free Soilers in '48; but, the suit miscarrying, turned to
the Slave Power in '50, and negotiated an espousal which
12




ï~~82

was cruelly broke off in '52. Men, parties, the law,* and the
nation, he did not hesitate to sacrifice to the colossal selfishness of his egotistic ambition.
His strength lay not in the religious, nor in the affectional,
nor in the moral part of man.
IV. But his intellect was immense. His power of comprehension was vast. He methodized swiftly. If you look
at the forms of intellectual action, you may distribute them
into three great modes; the Understanding, the Imagination, and the Reason; - the Understanding dealing with
details and methods, the practical power; Imagination, with
beauty, the power to create; Reason, with first principles
and universal laws, the philosophic power.
We must deny to Mr. Webster the great Reason. He
does not belong at all to the chief men of that department,
- with Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Leibnitz, Newton, Des
Cartes, and the other mighties. Nay, he has no place with
humbler men of reason, with common philosophers; he bad
no philosophical system of politics, few philosophical ideas of
politics, whereof to make a system. He seldom grasps a
universal law. His measures of expediency for to-day are
seldom bottomed on universal principles of right, which last
for ever.
I cannot assign to him large Imagination. He was not
creative of new forms of thought or of beauty; so he lacks
the poetic charm which gladdens the loftiest eloquence.
But his Understanding was exceedingly great. He acquired readily and retained well; arranged with ease and
skill, and fluently reproduced. As a scholar, he passed for
learned in the American Senate, where scholars are few; for
a universal man, with editors of political and commercial
prints. But his learning was narrow in its range, and not
very nice in its accuracy. His reach in history and literature was very small for a man seventy years of age, always
* Leges invalide prius; imo nocere coactee.




ï~~83

associating with able men. To science he seems to have
paid scarce any attention at all. It is a short radius that
measures the arc of his historic realm. A few Latin authors, whom he loved to quote, made up his meagre classic
store. He was not a scholar, and it is idle to claim great
scholarship for him.  Compare him   with the prominent
statesmen of Europe, or with the popular orators of England, you see continually the narrow range of his culture.
As a statesman, his lack of what I call the higher Reason
and Imagination continually appears. He invented nothing.
To the national stock he added no new idea, created out
of new thought; no new maxim, formed by induction out of
human history and old thought. The great ideas of the time
were not borne in his bosom.
He organized nothing. There were great ideas of immense practical value seeking lodgment in a body: he aided
them not. None of the great measures of our time were
his - not one of them. His best bill was the Specie Bill of
1815, which caused payments to be made in national currency.
His lack of conscience is painfully evident. As Secretary
of State, he did not administer eminently well. When Secretary of State under Mr. Tyler, he knew how to be unjust
to poor, maltreated Mexico. His letters in reply to the just
complaints of Mr. Bocanegra, the Mexican Secretary of
State, are painful to read: it is the old story of the Wolf and
the Lamb.#
The appointments made under his administration hac better not be looked at too closely. The affairs of Cuba last
year and this, the affairs of the Fisheries and the Lobos
Islands, are little to his credit.
* See these letters - to Mr. Thompson, Works, vol. vi. p. 445, et seq.;
and those of Mr. Bocanegra to Mr. Webster, p. 442, et seq. 457, et seq. How
different is the tone of America to powerful England! Whom men wrong
they hate.




ï~~84
He was sometimes ignorant of the affairs he had to treat;
he neglected the public business,-left grave matters all
unattended to. Nay, he did worse. Early in August last,
Mr. Lawrence had an interview with the British Foreign
Secretary, in which explanations were made calculated to
remove all anxiety as to the Fishery Question. He wrote
a paper detailing the result of the interview. It was designed to be communicated to the American Senate. Mr.
Lawrence sent it to Mr. Webster. It reached the Department at Washington on the 24th of August.    But Mr.
Webster did not communicate it to the Senate; even the
President knew nothing of its existence till after the Secretary's death. Now, it is not "compatible with the public
interest to publish it," as its production would reveal the
negligence of the Department. You remember the letter he
published on his own account relating to the Fisheries! No
man, it was said, could get office under his administration,
"unless bathed in negro's blood:" support of the Fugitive
Slave Bill, "like the path of righteous devotion, led to a
blessed preferment."
Lacking both moral principle and intellectual ideas, political ethics and political economy, it must needs be that his
course in politics was crooked. He opposed the Mexican
war, but invested a son in it, and praised the soldiers who
fought in it, as surpassing our fathers who stood behind
bulwarks on Bunker Hill! He called on the nation to
uphold the stars of America on the fields of Mexico, though
he knew it was the stripes that they held up. Now he is for
free trade, then for protection; now for specie, then for
bills; first for a bank, then it is " an obsolete idea; " now
for freedom and against slavery, then for slavery and
against freedom; now Justice is the object of government,
now Money. Now what makes men Christians makes them
good citizens; next, religion is good "everywhere but in
politics,-there it makes men mad."  Now religion is the




ï~~85

only ground of government, and all conscience is to be
respected; next, there is no law higher than the act of Congress, and he hoots at conscience, and would not re-enact the
law of God.
He began his career as the friend of free trade and hard
money; he would restrict the government to the strait line of
the Constitution rigidly defined; he would resist the Bank,
the protective tariff, the extension of slavery, they exceeded
the limits of the Constitution; he became the pensioned advocate of restricted trade and of paper money; he interpreted
the Constitution to oppress the several States and the citizens; brought the force of the government against private
right, and lent all his might to the extension of slavery.
Once he stood out boldly for the right of all men " to canvass public measures and the merits of public men; " then
he tells us that discussion " must be suppressed "! Several
years ago, he called a private meeting of the principal
manufacturers of Boston, and advised them to abandon the
protective tariff; but they would not, and so he defended it
as warmly as ever! His course was crooked as the Missouri.
The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were, like him,
without a philosophical scheme of political conduct, or any
great ideas whereby to shape the future into fairer forms:
but the principle of duty was the thread which joined all
parts of their public ministration. Thereon each strung his
victories. But selfish egotism is the only continuous thread
I find thus running through the crooked life of the famous
American.
With such a lack of ideas and of honesty, with a dread of
taking the responsibility in advance of public opinion, lacking confidence in the people, and confidence in himself, he
did not readily understand the public opinion on which he
depended. He thought himself " a favorite with the people,".-" sure of election if nominated; " it was " only the
politicians " who stood between him and the nation. He




ï~~86

thought the Fugitive Slave Bill would be popular in the
North; that it could be executed in Syracuse, and Massachusetts would conquer her prejudices with alacrity. So he
had little value as a permanent guide: he changed often, but
at the unlucky moment.
He tacked and wore ship many a time in his life, always
in bad weather, and never came round but he fell off from
the popular wind. Perseverance makes the saints: he always
forsook his idea just as that was about to make its fortune.
In his voyaging for the Presidency, he was always too late
for the tide; embarked on the ebb, and was left as the
stream run dry. The Fugitive Slave Law has done the
South no good, save to reveal the secrets of her prison-house,
the cabin of Uncle Tom, and make the North hate slavery
with a tenfold hate. So far as he "Websterized " the Whig
party, he has done so to its ruin.
He was a great advocate, a great orator; it is said, the
greatest in the land, - and I do not doubt that this was true.
Surely he was immensely great. When he spoke, he was a
grand spectacle. His noble form, so dignified and masculine;
his massive head; the mighty brow, Olympian in its majesty;
the great, deep, dark eye, which, like a lion's, seemed fixed
on objects far off, looking beyond what lay in easy range;
the mouth so full of strength and determination, -these all
became the instruments of such eloquence as few men ever
hear. He magnetized men by his presence; he subdued
them by his will more than by his argument. Many have
surpassed him in written words; for he could not embody
the sunshine in such flowers of thought as Burge, Milton,
and Cicero wrought into mosaic oratory. But. since the
great Athenians, Demosthenes and Pericles, who ever thundered out such spoken eloquence as he?
Yet he has left no perfect specimen of a great oration. He
had not the instinctive genius which creates a beautiful whole
by nature, as a mother bears a living son; nor the wide




ï~~87

knowledge, the deep philosophy, the plastic industry, which
forms a beautiful whole by art, as a sculptor chisels a marble
boy. So his greatest and most deliberate efforts of oratory
will not bear comparison with the great eloquence of nature
that is born, nor the great eloquence of art that is made.
Compared therewith, his mighty works are as Hercules compared with Apollo. It is an old world, and excellence in
oratory is difficult; yet he has sentences and paragraphs that
I think unsurpassed and unequalled, and I do not see how
they can ever fade. He was not a Nile of eloquence,
cascading into poetic beauty now, then watering whole provinces with the drainage of tropic mountains: he was a
Niagara, pouring a world of clear waters adown a single
ledge.
His style was simple, the business-style of a strong man.
Now and then it swelled into beauty, though it was often
dull. In later years, he seldom touched the conscience,
the affections, or the soul, except, alas! to smite our sense
of justice, our philanthropy, and trust in God. He always
addressed the understanding, not the reason, - Calhoun did
that the more, - not the imagination: in his speech there
was little wit, little beauty, little poetry. He laid siege to
the understanding. Here lay his strength - he could make
a statement better than any man in America; had immense
power of argumentation, building a causeway from his will
to the hearer's mind. He was skilful in devising " middle
terms," in making steps whereby to lead the audience to his
determination. No man managed the elements of his argument with more practical effect.
Perhaps he did this better when contending for a wrong,
than when battling for the right. His most ingenious arguments are pleas for injustice.# Part of the effect came from
the physical bulk of the man; part from the bulk of will,
* See examples of this in the Creole letter, and that to Mr. Thompson
(Works, vol. vi.), and in many a speech.




ï~~88

which marked all his speech, and writing too; but much
from his power of statement. He gathered a great mass of
material, bound it together, swung it about his head, fixed
his eye on the mark, then let the ruin fly. If you want a
word suddenly shot from Dover to Calais, you send it by
lightning; if a ball of a ton weight, you get a steam-cannon
to pitch it across. Webster was the steam-gun of eloquence.
He hit the mark less by gunnery than strength. His shot
seemed big as his target.
There is a great difference in the weapons which speakers
use. This orator brings down his quarry with a single subtle
shot, of sixty to the pound.  He carries death without
weight in his gun, as sure as fate.
Here is another, the tin-pedlar of American speech. He
is a snake in the grass, slippery, shining, with a baleful crest
on his head, cunning in his crazy eye, and the poison of the
old serpent in his heart, and on his slimy jaw, and about the
fang at the bottom of his smooth and forked and nimble
tongue.  He conquers by bewitching; he fascinates his
game to death.
Commonly, Mr. Webster was open and honest in his oratory. He had no masked batteries, no Quaker guns. He
had " that rapid and vehement declamation which fixes the
hearer's attention on the subject, making the speaker forgotten, and leaving his art concealed." He wheeled his forces
into line, column after column, with the quickness of Hannibal and the masterly arrangement of Cesar, and, like
Napoleon, broke the centre of his opponent's lute by the
superior weight of his own column and the sudden heaviness
of his fire. Thus he laid siege to the understanding, and
carried it by dint of cannonade. This was his strategy,
* " Tu quoque, Piso,
Judicis affectum, possessaque pectora ducis
Victor; sponte sua sequitur, quocunque vocasti:
Et to dante capit judex, quam non habet iram."




ï~~89

in the court-house, in the senate, and in the public hall.
There were no ambuscades, no pitfalls, or treacherous Indian subtlety. It was the tactics of a great and naturally
honest-minded man.
In his oratory there was but one trick, -the trick of selfdepreciation. That came on him in his later years, and it
always failed. He was too big to make any one believe he
thought himself little; so obviously proud, we knew he
valued his services high when he rated them so low. That
comprehensive eye could not overlook so great an object
as himself. He was not organized to cheat, to deceive; and
did not prosper when he tried. 'Tis ill the lion apes the
fox.
He was ambitious.    Cardinal Wolsey's " unbounded
stomach " was also the stomach of Webster. Yet his ambition mostly failed. In forty years of public life, he rose no
higher than Secretary of State; and held that post but five
years. He was continually out-generalled by subtler men.
He had little political foresight: for he had not the allconquering Religion which meekly executes the Law of
God, all fearless of its consequence; nor yet the wide
Philanthropy, the deep sympathy with all that is human,
which gives a man the public heart, and so the control of
the issues of life, which thence proceed; nor the great Justice
which sees the everlasting right, and journeys thitherward
through good or ill; nor the mighty Reason, which, reflecting, beholds the principles of human nature, the constant
mode of operation of the forces of God in the forms of men;
nor the poetic Imagination, which in its political sphere
creates great schemes of law; and hence he was not popular.
He longed for the Presidency; but Harrison kept him
from the nomination in '40, Clay in '44, Taylor in '48, and
Scott in '52. He never had a wide and original influence
in the politics of the nation; for he had no elemental thun13




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der of his own - the Tariff was Mr. Calhoun's at first;
the Force Bill was from another hand; the Fugitive Slave
Bill was Mr. Mason's; " the Omnibus" had many fathers,
whereof Webster was not one. He was not a blood-relation
to any of the great measures, - to free-trade or protection, to paper money or hard coin, to freedom or slavery; he
was of their kindred only by adoption. He has been on all
sides of most questions, save on the winning side.
In the case of the Fugitive Slave Law, he stood betwixt
the living and the dead, and blessed the plague. But, even
here, he faltered when he came North again, - " The South
will get no concessions from  me."  Mr. Webster commended the first draught of the Fugitive Slave Bill, with
Mr. Mason's amendments thereto, volunteering his support
thereof "to the fullest extent." But he afterwards and
repeatedly declared, " The Fugitive Slave Bill was not such
a measure as I had prepared before I left the Senate, and
which I should have supported if I had remained in the
Senate."   "I was of opinion," said he, "that a summary
trial by jury might be had, which would satisfy the prejudices of the people, and produce no harm to those who
claimed the services of fugitives." f Nay, he went so far
as to introduce a bill to the Senate providing a trial by
jury for all fugitives claiming a trial for their freedom. j He
thought the whole business of delivering up such as owed
service or labor, belonged to the State whither the fugitive
fled, and not to the general government. Â~ Of course he
must have considered it constitutional and expedient to
secure for the fugitive a trial before an impartial jury of
" twelve good and lawful men," who should pass upon the
* Mr. Webster's letter to the Union Committee. Works, vol. vi. p. 578,
et al.
t Speech at Syracuse (New York, 1851), p. 17.
( See it in Works, vol. v. p. 373-4
Â~ Ibid. p. 354.




ï~~91

whole matter at issue. But, with that conviction, and with
that bill ready drafted, as he says, in his desk, he could
volunteer his support to a bill which took away from the
States all jurisdiction in the matter, and from the fugitive all
" due process of law," all trial by jury, and left him in the
hands of a creature of the court, who was to be paid twice
as much for enslaving his victim as for acquitting a man!
He had almost no self-reliant independence of character.
It was his surroundings, not his will, that shaped his course,
-" driven by the wind and tossed."
Mr. Webster's political career began with generous promise. He contended for the rights of the people against the
government, of the minority against the majority; he defended
the right of each man to discuss all public measures, and the
conduct of public men; he wished commerce to be unrestricted, payments to be made in hard coin. He spoke noble
words against oppression, - the despotism of the " Holy
Alliance" in Europe, the cruelty of the Slave Trade in
America. Generously and nobly he contended against the
extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi. Not philanthropic by instinct or moral principle, averse to democratic
institutions both by nature and conviction, he yet, by instinctive generosity, hated tyranny, hated injustice, hated despotism. He appealed to moral power against physical force.
He sympathized with the republics of South America. His
great powers taking such a direction certainly promised a
brilliant future, large services for mankind. But, alas! he
fell on evil times: who ever fell on any other? He.was
intensely ambitious; not ambitious to serve mankind, but to
hold office, have power and fame. Is this the " last infirmity
of noble mind"? It was not a very noble object he proposed
as the end of his life; the means to it became successively
more and more unworthy. " Ye cannot serve God and
mammon."
For some years, no large body of men has had much




ï~~92

trust in him, - admiration, but not confidence. In Massachusetts, off the pavements, for the last three years, he has
had but little power. After the speech of March 7, he
said, " I WILL be maintained in Massachusetts." Massachusetts said No! Only in the cities that bought him was he
omnipotent. Even the South would not trust him. Gen.
Jackson was the most popular man of our time. Calhoun
was popular throughout the South; Clay, in all quarters of
the land; and, at this day, Seward wields the forces of the
Whigs. With all his talent, Webster never had the influence on America of the least of these.
Yet Daniel Webster had many popular qualities.  He
loved out-door and manly sports, -boating, fishing, fowling.  He was fond of nature, loving New Hampshire's
mountain scenery. He had started small and poor, had
risen great and high, and honorably had fought his way
alone. He rose early in the morning. He loved gardening,
" the purest of human pleasures." lie was a farmer, and
took a countryman's delight in country things, - in loads of
hay, in trees, in turnips and the noble Indian corn, in monstrous swine. He had a patriarch's love of sheep, - choice
breeds thereof he had. He took delight in cows, - short
horned Durhams, Herefordshires, Ayrshires, Alderneys.
He tilled paternal acres with his own oxen. He loved to
give the kine fodder. It was pleasant to hear his talk of
oxen. And but three days before he left the earth, too ill to
visit them, his cattle, lowing, came to see their sick lord; and,
as he stood in his door, his great oxen were driven up, that
he might smell their healthy breath, and look his last on
those broad, generous faces, that were never false to him.
He loved birds, and would not have them shot on his
premises; and so his farm twittered all over with their " sweet
jargonings." Though in public his dress was more uniformly new than is common with acknowledged gentlemen,
at home and on his estate he wore his old and homely




ï~~93

clothes, and had kind words for all, and hospitality besides.
He loved his father and brother with great tenderness, which
easily broke into tears when he spoke of them. He was
kind to his obscurer and poor relations. He had no money
to bestow; they could not share his intellect, or the renown it
gave. But he gave them his affection, and they loved him
with veneration. He was a friendly man: all along the
shore there were plain men that loved him, - whom he also
loved; "a good neighbor, a good townsman:"
" Lofty and sour to those that loved him not;
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer."
His influence on the development of America has not been
great. He had large gifts, large opportunities also for their
use, -the two greatest things which great men ask. Yet he
has brought little to pass. No great ideas, no great organizations, will bind him to the coming age. His life has been
a long vacillation. Ere long, men will ask for the historic
proof to verify the reputation of his power. It will not
appear. For the present, his career is a failure: he was
balked of his aim. How will it be for the future? Posterity
will vainly ask for proof of his intellectual power, to invent,
to organize, to administer. The historian must write that he
aimed to increase the executive power, the central government, and to weaken the local power of the States; that he
preferred the Federal authority to State rights, the judiciary
to the legislature, the government to the people, the claims
of money to the rights of man. Calhoun will stand as the
representative of State rights and free trade; Clay, of the
American system of protection; Benton, of payment in sound
coin; some other, of the revenue tariff. And in the greatest
question of the age, the question of Human Rights, as
champions of mankind, there will appear Adams, Giddings,
Chase, Palfrey, Mann, Hale, Rantoul, and Sumner; yes, one




ï~~94

other name, which on.the historian's page will shade all
these, -the name of GARRISON.    Menw ill recount the
words of Webster at Plymouth Rock, at Bunker Hill, at
Faneuil Hall, at Niblo's Garden; they will also recollect
that he declared "protection of property " to be the great
domestic object of government; that he said, " Liberty first
and Union afterwards " was delusion and folly; " that he
called on Massachusetts to conquer her " prejudices " in
favor of -unalienable right, and with alacrity give up a man
to be a slave; turned all the North into a hunting-field for
the blood-hound; that he made the negation of God the first
principle of government; that our New England elephant
turned round, tore Freedom's standard down, and trod her
armies under foot. They will see that he did not settle the
greatest questions by Justice and the Law of God. His
parallel lines of power are indeed long lines, - a nation
reads his word: they are not far apart, you cannot get many
centuries between; for there are no great ideas of Right, no
mighty acts of Love, to keep them wide.
'There are brave words which Mr. Webster has spoken
that will last while English is a speech; yea, will journey
with the Anglo-Saxon race, and one day be classic in either
hemisphere, in every zone. But what will posterity say of
his efforts to chain the fugitive, to extend the area of human
bondage; of his haughty scorn of any law higher than what
trading politicians enact in the Capitol?  "There is a law
above all the enactments of human codes, the same throughout the world, the same in all time; " " it is the law written
by the finger of God upon the heart of man; and by that
law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud,
and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they will reject with
indignation the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold
property in man." #
* Lord Brougham's speech on Negro Slavery, in the House of Commons,
July 13, 1830.




ï~~95

Calhoun, Clay, Webster - they were all able men, -
long in politics, all ambitious, grasping at the Presidency,
all failing of what they sought. All three called themselves
Democrats," taking their stand on the unalienable rights of
man. But all three conjoined to keep every sixth man in
the nation a chattel slave; all three at last united in deadly
war against the unalienable rights of men whom swarthy
mothers bore. 0 democratic America!
Was Mr. Webster's private life good?  There are many
depraved things done without depravity of heart. I am here
to chronicle, and not invent. I cannot praise a man for
virtues that he did not have. This day, such praise sounds
empty and impertinent as the chattering of a caged canary
amid the sadness of a funeral prayer. Spite of womanly
tenderness, it is not for me to renounce my manhood and my
God. I shall
"Â~Naught extenuate and nothing add,
Nor set down aught in malice."
Before he left New Hampshire, I find no stain upon his
conduct there, save recklessness of expense. But in Boston,
when he removed here, there were men in vogue worse than
any since as conspicuous, - open debauchees. He fell in
with them, and became over-fond of animal delights, of the
joys of the body's baser parts; fond of sensual luxury, the
victim of low appetites. He loved power, loved pleasure,
loved wine. Let me turn off my face, and say no moroeof
this sad theme: others were as bad as he.*
He was intensely proud. Careless of money, he was
often in trouble on its account. He contracted debts, and
did not settle; borrowed of rich and poor, and young and
old, and rendered not again. Private money often clove

* Hoc sat viator: reliqua non sinit pudor;
Ta suspicare et ambula.




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to his hands; yet in his nature there was no taint of avarice.
He lavished money on luxuries, while his washerwoman was
left unpaid; few Americans have spent so much as he. Rapacious to get, he was prodigal of his own. I wish the charges
brought against his public administration may be disproved,
whereof the stain rests on him to this day. When he entered on a lawyer's life, Mr. Gore advised him, " Whatever
bread you eat, let it be the bread of independence! " Oh
that the great mind could have kept that counsel! But, even
at Portsmouth, luxury brought debt, and many an evil on its
back. He collected money, and did not pay! "Bread of
independence," when did he eat it last? Rich men paid his
debts of money when he came to Massachusetts; they took
a dead-pledge on the man; only death redeemed that mortgage. In 1827 he solicited the Senatorship of Massachusetts; it " would put down the calumnies of Isaac Hill"!
He obtained the office, not without management. Then he
refused to take his seat until ten thousand dollars was raised
for him. The money came clandestinely, and he went into
the Senate -a pensioner!  His reputation demanded a
speech against the tariff of '28; his pension required his
vote for that " bill of abominations." He spoke one way,
and voted the opposite. Was that the first dotation?  He
was forestalled before he left New Hampshire. The next
gift was twenty thousand, it is said.  Then the sums increased. What great "gifts" have been privately raised
for him by contributions, subscriptions, donations, and the
like! Is it honest to buy up a man? honest for a man to sell
himself? Is it just for a judge who administers the law to
take a secret bribe of a party at his court? Is it just for a
party to offer such gifts? Answer Lord Bacon who tried
it; answer Thomas More who tried it not. It is worse for
a Maker of laws to be bought and sold. New England
men, I hope not meaning wrong, bought the great senator in
'27, and long held him in their pay. They gave him all his




ï~~97

services were worth, - gave more. His commercial and
financial policy has been the bane of New England and the
North. In 1S50 the South bought him, but never paid!
A Senator of the United States, he was pensioned by
the capitalists of Boston. Their " gifts " in his hand, how
could he dare be just! His later speeches smell of bribes.
Could not Francis Bacon warn him, nor either Adams
guide? Three or four hundred years ago, Thomas More,
when "under Sheriff of London," would not accept a pension from the king, lest it might swerve him from his duty to
the town; when chancellor, he would not accept five thousand pounds which the English clergy publicly offered him,
for public service done as chancellor. But Webster in
private took - how much I cannot tell! Considering all
things, his buyers' wealth and his unthriftiness, it was as
dishonorable in them to bribe, as in him to take their gift
To gain his point, alas! he sometimes treated facts, law,
constitution, morality and religion, as an advocate treats
matters at the bar. Was he certain South Carolina had no
constitutional right to nullify?  I make no doubt he felt so;
but in his language he is just as strong when he declares the
Fugitive Slave Bill is perfectly constitutional; that slavery
cannot be in California and New IMexico; just as confident
in his dreadful mock at conscience, and the dear God's unchanging law. He heeded not "the delegated voice of God"
which speaks in the conscience of the faithful man.
No living man has done so much to debauch the conscience of the nation; to debauch the press, the pulpit., the
forum, and the bar! There is no higher law, quoth he; and
how much of the pulpit, the press, the forum, and the bar,
* "Sed lateri nullus comitem circumdare qunrit,
Quem dat purus amor, sed quem tulit impia merces,
Nec quisquam vero pretium largitur amico,
Quem regat ex requo, vicibusque regatur ab illo:
Sed miserum parva stipe munerat, ut pudibundos
Exercere sales inter consilia possit."
14




ï~~98

denies its God! Read the journals of the last week for proof
of what I say; and read our history since March of '50.
He poisoned the moral wells of society with his lower law,
and men's consciences died of the murrain of beasts, which
came because they drank thereat.
In an age which prizes money as the greatest good, and
counts the understanding as the highest human faculty, the
man who is to lead and bless the world must indeed be
great in intellect, but also great in conscience, greater in
affection, and greatest of all things in his soul. In his later
years, Webster was intellect, and little more. If he did not
regard the eternal Right, how could he guide a nation to
what is useful for to-day? If he scorned the law of God,
how  could he bless the world of men?      It was by this
fault he fell. " Those who murdered Banquo, what did they
win by it? "
" A barren sceptre in their gripe,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of theirs succeeding."
He knew the cause of his defeat, and in the last weeks of
his life confessed that he was deceived; that, before his fatal
speech, he had assurance from the North and South, that, if
he supported slavery, it would lead him into place and
power; but now he saw the mistake, and that a few of the
" fanatics " had more influence in America than he and all
the South! He sinned against his own conscience, and so
he fell!
He made him wings of slavery to gain a lofty ejninence.
Those wings unfeathered in his flight. For one and thirty
months he fell, until at last he reached the tomb. There,
on the sullen shore, a mighty wreck, great Webster lies.
" Is this the man in Freedom's cause approved,
The man so great, so honored, so beloved?
Where is the heartfelt worth and weight of soul,
Which labor could not stoop, nor fear control?




ï~~99

Where the known dignity, the stamp of awe,
Which, half abashed, the proud and venal saw?
Where the calm triumphs of an honest cause? -
Where the delightful taste of just applause?
Oh, lost alike to action and repose,
Unwept, unpitied in the worst of woes;
With all that conscious, undissembled pride,
Sold to the insults of a foe defied;
With all that habit of familiar fame,
Doomed to exhaust the dregs of life in shame! "
Oh, what a warning was his fall!
" To dash corruption in her proud career,
And teach her slaves that vice was born to fear."
"Oh dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night."
Had he been faithful to his own best words, so oft repeated, how he would have stood! How different would have
been the aspect of the North and the South; of the press,
the pulpit, the forum, and the court!
Had he died after the treaty of 1842, how different would
have been his fame!
Since the Revolution, no American has had so noble an
opportunity as Mr. Webster to speak a word for the advancement of mankind.      There was a great occasion: slavery
was clamorous for new power, new territory; was invading
the State Rights of the North. Earnest men in the North,
getting aroused and hostile to slavery, were looking round
for some able man to take the political guidance of the antislavery feeling, to check the great national crime, and help
end it; they were asking -
" Who is the honest man, -
He that doth still and strongly good pursue,
To God, his neighbor, and himself, most true;
Whom neither fear nor fawning can
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due?"




ï~~100

Some circumstances seemed to point to Mr. Webster as the
man;his immense oratorical abilities, his long acquaintance
with public affairs, his conspicuous position, his noble words
in behalf of freedom, beginning with his college days and
extending over many a.year,-all these were powerful
arguments in his behalf. The people had always been indulgent to his faults, allowing him a wide margin of public and
private oscillation; the North was ready to sustain him in all
generous efforts for the unalienable rights of man. But he
threw away the great moment of his life, used all his abilities
to destroy those rights of man, and builded the materials of
honorable fame into a monument of infamy for the warning
of mankind. Declaring that "the protection of property "
was " the great object of government," he sought to unite
the Money power of the North and the Slave power of the
South into one great instrument to stifle discussion, and withstand religion, and the Higher Law of God.
Had he lived and labored for freedom as for slavery, -
nay, with half the diligence and half the power,-to-morrow, all the North would rise to make him their President,
and put on that Olympian brow the wreath of honor from
a people's hand. Then he would have left a name like
Adams, Jefferson, and Washington; and the tears of every
good man would have dropped upon his tomb! Had he
served his God with half the zeal that he served the South,
He would not, in his age, have left him naked to his enemies!
If Mr. Webster had cultivated the moral, the affectional,
the religious part of his nature with half the diligence he
nursed his power of speech, what a man there would have
been! With his great ability as an advocate, with his eloquence, his magnetic power, in his position,-a Senator for
twenty years,-if he could have attained the justice, the
philanthropy, the religion of Channing or of Follen, or of
many a modest woman in all the Christian sects, what a
noble spectacle should we have seen! Then the nation




ï~~101

would long since have made him President, and he also
would have revolutionized men's ideas of political greatness; " the bigot would have ceased to persecute, the despot to vex, the desolate poor to suffer, the slave to groan and
tremble, the ignorant to commit crimes, and the ill-contrived
law to engender criminality."
But he did not fall all at once. No man ever does. Apostasy is not a sudden sin. Little by little he came to the
ground. Long leaning, he leaned over and fell down. This
was his great error - he sold himself to the money power
to do service against mankind. The form of service became
continually worse. Was he conscious of this corruption? -
at first?  But shall he bear the blame alone? Oh, no! Part
of it belongs to this city, which corrupted him, tempted him
with a price, bought him with its gold! Daniel Webster
had not thrift. " Poor Richard " was no saint of his. He
loved luxury, and was careless of wealth. Boston caught
him by the purse; by that she led him to his mortal doom.
With her much fair speech she caused him to yield; with
the flattery of her lips she deceived him. Boston was the
Delilah that allured him; but oft he broke the withes of
gold, until at last, with a pension, she shore off the seven
locks of his head, his strength went from him, and the Philistines took him and put out his eyes, brought him down to
Washington, and bound him with fetters of brass. And he
did grind in their prison-house; and they said, " Our God,
which is slavery, hath delivered into our hands our enemy,
the destroyer of our institutions, who slew many of,us."
Then, having used him for their need, they thrust the man
away, deceived and broken-hearted!
No man can resist infinite temptation. There came a
peril greater than he could bear. Condemn the sin - pity
the offending man. The tone of political morality is pitiably low. It lowered him, and then he debased the morals
of politics.




ï~~102

Part of the blame belongs to the New England church,
which honors "devoutness," and sneers at every noble, manly
life, calling men saints who only pray, all careless of the
dead men's bones which glut the whited sepulchre. The
churches of New England were waiting to proclaim slavery,
and renounce the law of God. His is not all the blame.
We must blame Mr. Webster as we blame few men.
Society takes swift vengeance on the petty thief, the small
swindler, and rogues in rags: the gallows kills the murderer.
But for men in high office, with great abilities, who enact
iniquity into law; who enslave thousands, and sow a continent with thraldom, to bear want and shame and misery and
sin; who teach as political ethics the theory of crime, -for
them there is often no earthly outward punishment, but the
indignation with which mankind scourges the memory of the
oppressor. From the judgment of men, the appeal lies to
the judgment of God: He only knows who sins, and how
much. How much Mr. Webster is to be pitied, we know
right well. Had he been a clergyman, as once he wished,
he might have passed through life with none of the outward
blemishes which now deform his memory; famed for his gifts
and graces too, for eloquence, and " soundness in the faith,"
" his praise in all the churches." Had he been a politician
in a better age, - when it is not thought just for capitalists
to hiv up statesmen in secret, for politicians clandestinely to
sell their services for private gold, or for clergymen, in the
name of God, to sanctify all popular crimes, - he might have
lifted up that noble voice continually for Truth and Right.
Who could not in such a time? The straw blows with the
wind. But, alas! he was not firm enough for his place; too
weak in conscience to be the champion of justice while she
needs a champion. Let us be just against the wrong he
wrought, charitable to the man who wrought the wrong.
Conscience compels our formidable blame; the affections
weep their pity too.




ï~~103

Like Bacon, whom Mr. Webster resembles in many things,
save industry and the philosophic mind, he had "no moral
courage, no power of self-sacrifice or self-denial; " with
strong passions, with love of luxury in all its forms, with
much pride, great fondness of applause, and the intensest
love of power; coming to Boston poor, a lawyer, without
thrift, embarking in politics with such companions for his
private and his public life, with such public opinion in the
State, - that honesty is to serve the present purposes of your
party, or the wealthy men who control it; in the Church,
that religion consists in belief without evidence, in ritual sacraments, in verbal prayer, - is it wonderful that this great intellect went astray? See how corrupt the churches are,
the leading clergy of America are the anointed defenders of
man-stealing; see how corrupt is the State, betraying the red
men, enslaving the black, pillaging Mexico; see how corrupt
is trade, which rules the State and Church, dealing in men.
Connecticut makes whips for the negro-driver. New Hampshire rears the negro-drivers themselves. Ships of Maine
and Rhode Island are in the domestic slave-trade.  The
millionaires of Massachusetts own men in Virginia, Alabama,
Missouri! The leading men in Trade, in Church and State,
think justice is not much more needed in a statesman than
it is needed in an ox, or in the steel which shoes his hoof!
Remember these things, and pity Daniel Webster, ambitious,
passionate, unthrifty; and see the circumstances which
weighed him down. We judge the deeds: God only can
judge the man. If you and I have not met the temptation
which can overmaster us, let us have mercy on such as come
bleeding from that battle.
His calling as a lawyer was somewhat dangerous, leading
him "to make the worse appear the better reason; " to seek
"not verity, but verisimilitude; " to look at the expedient end,
not to inquire if his means be also just; to look too much at
measures, not enough at principles. Yet his own brother




ï~~104

Ezekiel went safely through that peril, - no smell of that fire
on his garment.
His intercourse with politicians was full of moral peril.
How few touch pplitics, and are thenceforward clean!
Boston now mourns for him! She is too late in her weeping. She should have wept her warning when her capitalists filled his right hand with bribes. She ought to have put
on sackcloth when the speech of March 7th first came here.
She should have hung her flags at half-mast when the Fugitive Slave Bill became a law; then she only fired cannons,
and thanked her representative. Webster fell prostrate, but
was Boston more innocent than he? Remember the nine
hundred and eighty-seven men that thanked him for the
speech which touched their " conscience," and pointed out
the path of " duty "! It was she that ruined him.
She bribed him in 1827, and often since. He regarded
the sums thus paid as a retaining fee, and at the last maintained that the Boston manufacturers were still in his debt;
for the services he had rendered them by defending the tariff
in his place as Senator were worth more than all the money
he received. Could a man be honest in such a position?
Alas that the great orator had not the conscience to remember at first that man shall not live by bread alone!
What a sad life was his! His wife died, - a loving woman, beautiful, and tenderly beloved! Of several children,
all save one have gone before him to the tomb. Sad man,
he lived to build his children's monument! Do you remember the melancholy spectacle in the street, when Major Webster, a victim of the Mexican war, was by his father laid
down in yonder tomb? - a daughter, too, but recently laid
low! How poor seemed then the ghastly pageant in the
street, empty and hollow as the muffled drum!
What a sad face he wore, - furrowed by passion, by am



ï~~105

bition, that noble brow scarred all over with the records of
a hard, sad life. Look at the prints and pictures of him in
the street. I do not wonder his early friends abhor the
sight. It is a face of sorrows, - private, public, secret woes.
But there are pictures of that face in earlier years, full of
power, but full of tenderness; the mouth feminine, and innocent as a girl's.  What a life of passion, of dark sorrow,
rolled betwixt the two!  In that ambition-stricken face
his mother would not have known her child!
For years to me, he has seemed like one of the tragic
heroes of the Grecian tale, pursued by fate; and latterly, the
saddest sight in all the Western World, -widowed of so
much he loved, and grasping at what was not only vanity,
but the saddest vexation of the heart. I have long mourned
for him, as for no living or departed man. He blasted us
with scornful lightning: him, if I could, I would not blast,
but only bless continually and evermore.
You remember the last time he spoke in Boston; the procession, last summer, you remember it well. What a sad
and care-worn countenance was that of the old man, welcomed with the mockery of applause! You remember,
when the orator, wise-headed and friendly-hearted, came
to thank him for his services, he said not a word of saving
the Union; of the compromise measures, not a word. That
farce was played out - it was only the tragic facts that were
left; but for his great services he thanked him.
And when Webster replied, he said, " Here in Boston I
am not disowned; at least, here I am not disowned." "No,
Daniel Webster, you are not disowned in Boston. So long
as I have a tongue to teach, a heart to feel, you shall never
be disowned. I must be just. I must be tender too!
It was partly by Boston's sin that the great man.fell!
I pity his victims; you pity them, too. But I pity him more,
oh, far more! Pity the oppressed, will you? Will you not
also pity the oppressor in his sin? Look there! See that
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face, so manly strong, so maiden meek! Hear that voice!
"Neither do I condemn thee! Go, and sin no more! "
Listen to the last words of the Crucified: " Father, forgive
them; for they know not what they do."
The last time he was in Faneuil Hall,-it was "Faneuil
Hall open; " once it had been shut - it was last May -
the sick old man - you remember the feeble look and the
sad face, the tremulous voice. He came to solicit the vote
of the Methodists, a vain errand. I felt then that it was his
last time, and forbore to look upon that saddened countenance.
The last time he was in the Senate, it was to hear his successor speak. He stayed an hour, and heard Charles Sumner demonstrate that the Fugitive Slave Bill was not good
religion, nor good Constitution, nor good law. The old and
the new stood face to face, - the Fugitive Slave Bill and
Justice. What an hour! What a sight! What thoughts
ran through the great man's mind, mingled with what regrets! For slavery never set well on him. It was a Nessus'
shirt on our Hercules, and the poison of his own arrows
rankled now in his own bones. Had Mr. Webster been true
to his history, true to his heart, true to his intention and his
promises, he would himself have occupied that ground two
years before.  Then there would have been no Fugitive
Slave Bill, no chain round the court-house, no man-stealing
in Boston; but the " Defender of the Constitution," become
the " Defender of the unalienable rights of man," would
have been the President of the United States!  Buit he had
not the courage to deliver the speech he made; no man can
serve two masters, - Justice and Ambition.  The mill of
God grinds slow but dreadful fine!
He came home to Boston, and went down to Marshfield
to die. An old man, broken with the storms of State, went
home - to die! His neighbors came to ease the fall, to look
upon the disappointment, and give him what cheer they




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could.  To him, to die was gain; life was the only loss.
Yet he did not wish to die: he surrendered, - he did not
yield.
At the last end, his friends were about him; his dear ones
- his wife, his son (the last of six children he had loved).
Name by name he bade them all farewell, and all his friends,
man by man. Two colored servants of his were there, -
whom he had helped purchase out of slavery, and bless
with freedom's life. They watched over the bedside of the
dying man. The kindly doctor sought to sweeten the bitterness of death with medicated skill; and, when that failed,
he gave the great man a little manna which fell down from
heaven three thousand years ago, and shepherd David gathered up and kept it in a psalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd:
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
will fear no evil; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."
And the great man faltered out his last words, " That is
what I want - thy rod, thy rod; thy staff, thy staff." That
heart had never wholly renounced its God.  Oh, no! it had
scoffed at His " higher law; " but, in the heart of hearts,
there was religious feeling still!
Just four years after his great speech, on the 24th of
October, all that was mortal of Daniel Webster went down
to the dust, and the soul to the motherly bosom of God!
Men mourn for him: he heeds it not. The great man has
gone where the servant is free from his master, where the
weary are at rest, where the wicked cease from troubling.
" No further seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode;
There they alike in trembling hop-. repose,
The bosom of his Father and his God! "
Massachusetts has lost her great adopted son. Has lost?
Oh, no! "I still live" is truer than the sick man knew:"He lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging God."




ï~~108

His memory  vill long live with us, still dear to many a
loving heart. What honor shall we pay? Let the State go
out mindful of his noblest services, yet tearful for his fall;
sad that he would fain have filled him with the husks the
swine do eat, and no man gave to him. Sad and tearful, let
her remember the force of circumstances, and dark temptation's secret power. Let her remember that while we know
what he yielded to, and what is sin, God knows what also
is resisted, and HE alone knows who the sinner is. Massachusetts, the dear old mother of us all!  Oh! let her warn
her children to fling away ambition, and let her charge them,
every one, that there is a God who must indeed be worshipped, and a higher law of God which must be kept, though
Gold and Union fail. Then let her say to them, " Ye have
dwelt long enough in this mountain; turn ye, and take your
journey into the land of FREEDOM, which the Lord your God
giveth you! "
Then let her lift her eyes to Heaven, and pray -
"Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven
This statesman lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavor,
And memory of earth's bitter leaven,
Effaced for ever!
But
- why to him confine the prayer,
While kindred thoughts and yearnings bear,
On the frail heart, the purest share
With all that live?
The best of what we do and are,
Great God, forgive! "