Daniel Webster, 1782-1852. This celebrated American statesman and orator
was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire. His father, Ebenezer Webster, was a
pioneer settler, a soldier in the Old French War and the Revolution, and a
man of ability and strict integrity, Daniel attended the common school in
his youth, and fitted for college under Rev. Samuel Wood, of Boseawen,
graduating at Dartmouth in 1801. He spent a few months of his boyhood at
"Phillips Academy," Exeter, where he attained distinction as a student,
but was so diffident that he could never give a declamation before his
class. During his college course, and later, he taught school several
terms in order to increase his slender finances. He was admitted to the
bar in Boston in 1805. For the next eleven years, he practiced his
profession in his native state. In 1812 he was elected to the United
States House of Representatives, and at once took his place as one of the
most prominent men of that body. In 1816 he removed to Boston; and in 1827
he was elected to the United States Senate, where he continued for twelve
years. In 1841 he was made Secretary of State, and soon after negotiated
the famous "Ashburton Treaty" with England, settling the northern boundary
of the United States. In 1845 he returned to the Senate; and in 1850 he
was re-appointed Secretary of State, and continued in office till his
death. He died at his country residence in Marshfield, Massachusetts.
Mr. Webster's fame rests chiefly on his state papers and his speeches in
Congress; but he took a prominent part in some of the most famous law
cases of the present century. Several of his public addresses on
occasional themes are well known, also. As a speaker, he was dignified and
stately, using clear, straightforward, pure English. He had none of the
tricks of oratory. He was large of person, with a massive head, a swarthy
complexion, and deep-set, keen, and lustrous eyes. His grand presence
added much to his power as a speaker.
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The eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South Carolina by
the honorable gentleman, for her Revolutionary and other merits, meets my
hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes
before me, in regard for whatever of distinguished talent or distinguished
character South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor; I
partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one
and all--the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the
Marions--Americans all--whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by state
lines than their talents and patriotism were capable of being
circumscribed within the same narrow limits.
In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, and the
whole country, and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country.
Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,--does he suppose me
less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his
suffering, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in
Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his
power to exhibit in Carolina a name so bright as to produce envy in my
bosom? No, sir,--increased gratification and delight rather. Sir, I thank
God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be
able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that
other spirit which would drag angels down.
When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere,
to sneer at public merit because it happened to spring up beyond the
little limits of my own state or neighborhood; when I refuse for any such
cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated
patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or if I see an
uncommon endowment of Heaven; if I see extraordinary capacity or virtue in
any son of the South; and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by
state jealousy, I get up here to abate a tithe of a hair from his just
character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!
Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts. She needs
none. There she is; behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her
history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There
is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they
will remain forever. And, sir, where American Liberty raised its first
voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still
lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If
discord and disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition
shall hawk at and tear it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness under
salutary restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that Union, by which
alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side
of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its
arm, with whatever of vigor it may still retain, over the friends who
gathered around it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amid the
proudest monuments of its glory and on the very spot of its origin.
NOTES.--The Laurenses were of French descent. Henry Laurens was appointed
on the commission with Franklin and Jay to negotiate the treaty of peace
at Paris at the close of the Revolution. His son, John Laurens, was an aid
and secretary of Washington, who was greatly attached to him.
The Rutledges were of Irish descent. John Rutledge was a celebrated
statesman and lawyer. He was appointed Chief Justice of the United States,
but the Senate, for political reasons, refused to confirm his appointment.
Edward Rutledge, brother of the preceding, was Governor of South Carolina
during the last two years of his life.
The Pinckneys were an old English family who emigrated to Charleston in
1687. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and his brother Thomas were both active
participants in the Revolution. The former was an unsuccessful candidate
for the presidency of the United States, in 1800.
Thomas was elected governor of South Carolina in 1789. In the war of 1812
he served as major-general.
Charles Pinckney, a second cousin of the two already mentioned, was four
times elected governor of his state.