By Charles Cowley, LL.D.
FLETCHER WEBSTER, son of Daniel and Grace (Fletcher) Webster,
was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 23, 1813. He was but three
years old when his father removed to Boston, where he was fitted for
college in the Public Latin School,--the nursery of so many eminent men.
On the seventeenth of June, 1825, when Lafayette laid the cornerstone
of the monument on Bunker Hill, when Daniel Webster delivered one of the
most famous of his orations, Fletcher Webster, then twelve years old,
was present. "The vast procession, impatient of unavoidable delay, broke
the line of march, and, in a tumultuous crowd, rushed towards the
orator's platform," which was in imminent danger of being crushed to the
earth. Fletcher Webster was only saved from being trampled under foot,
by the thoughtful care of George Sullivan, who lifted the boy upon his
own shoulders, shouting, "Don't kill the orator's son!" and bore him
through the crowd, and placed him upon the staging at his father's feet.
It required the utmost efforts of Daniel Webster to control that
multitudinous throng. "Stand back, gentlemen!" he repeatedly shouted
with his double-bass voice; "you must stand back!" "We can't stand back,
Mr. Webster; it is impossible!" cried a voice in the crowd. Mr. Webster
replied, in tones of thunder: "On Bunker Hill nothing is impossible."
And the crowd stood back.
At the age of sixteen, he lost his mother by death. This was the
greatest of all the calamities that happened to his father, and it was
not less unfortunate for himself, for it deprived him of the best
influence that ever contributed to mould his career.
In 1829, Fletcher Webster entered Harvard College, and was graduated in
the class of 1833, when he delivered the class oration, which Charles
Sumner, who was present, said "was characterized by judgment, sense, and
great directness and plainness of speech."
While at college, he was distinguished for his fine social qualities,
for his exquisite humor, and peculiar "Yankee wit." When participating
in amateur theatrical exhibitions, he always preferred to play the role
of the typical Yankee,--a character now extinct,--which he played to
perfection.
As the son of Daniel Webster, he might almost be said to have inherited
the profession of the law, and in 1836 he was admitted to the bar. In
the same year he married the wife who survives him--a grandniece of
Captain White, who was so atrociously murdered at Salem, six years
before, and whose murderers might have escaped the gallows but for the
genius and astuteness of Daniel Webster.
The Western States, which are now Central States, were then attracting
millions of the young and the enterprising from New England; and
Fletcher Webster began the practice of the law at Detroit, Michigan. But
at the close of the year 1837, he removed to Peru, Illinois, where he
remained three years. During that period, he made the acquaintance of
Abraham Lincoln, then a struggling lawyer at the Sangamon County bar. No
man upon this planet had then less thought of becoming President of the
United States than Abraham Lincoln; and no man had greater expectations
of attaining that distinction than Mr. Webster's father; yet a
master-stroke of the irony of destiny lifted the obscure Western
attorney, not into the presidency merely, but into the highest place in
the pantheon of American history, while it balked and mocked all the
aspirations of New England's greatest son. Pondering on events like
these, well did Horace Greeley exclaim: "Fame is a vapor; popularity an
accident; riches take wings: the only thing certain is oblivion."
In 1841, when his father became Secretary of State under President
Harrison, Fletcher Webster relinquished his professional prospects in
the West, and removed to Washington, where he acted as his father's
assistant. From his father's verbal suggestions, he prepared diplomatic
papers of the first importance; and no man could perform that delicate
service more satisfactorily to his father than he. It is understood
that the famous Hulseman Letter, which, more than anything else,
distinguished Daniel Webster's second term of service in the department
of State, was thus prepared.
Whether he or some one else prepared that extraordinary letter which was
to introduce Caleb Cushing to the Emperor of China, which assumed that
the Chinese were a nation of children, and which Chinese scholars
treated as conclusive evidence that the Americans had not emerged from
barbarism,--we know not. But if he did, he doubtless laughed at it
afterward as a childish performance.
On the seventeenth of June, 1843, Fletcher Webster witnessed the laying
of the capstone of the monument on Bunker Hill, and listened, with
affectionate interest, to the oration which was then delivered by his
father,--an oration which, if inferior to that delivered at the laying
of the cornerstone, was nevertheless every way worthy of the man and the
occasion,--simple, massive, and splendid. A few weeks later, he sailed
from Boston for China, and watched, as he tells us, "while light and
eyesight lasted, till the summit of that monument faded, at last, from
view." Many a departing, many a returning, sailor and traveler, has
given his "last, long, lingering look" to that towering obelisk, but
none with deeper feeling than Fletcher Webster.
As secretary to Commissioner Cushing, he assisted in negotiating the
first treaty between the United States and China, which involved an
absence of eighteen months from the United States. Neither the outward
nor the homeward voyage was made in company with Mr. Cushing. Mr.
Webster left Boston, August 8, 1843, in the brig Antelope, built by
Captain R.B. Forbes, touched at Bombay, November 12, 1843, and arrived
at Canton, February 4, 1844. He returned in the ship Paul Jones, in
January, 1845, the voyage from Canton to New York being made in one
hundred and eleven days. It deserves to be stated, as illustrating the
admiration with which the merchant princes of Boston regarded Daniel
Webster, that the house of Russell and Company, which owned both the
Antelope and the Paul Jones, refused to accept any passage-money from
his son, who was entertained, not as a passenger, but as an honored
guest.
By his voyage to China and by his experiences there, Mr. Webster,
acquired, not only rich stores of curious information and a great
enlargement of his intellectual horizon, but--what is particularly to be
noted--a better appreciation of the splendid destiny of his native land.
Unlike many foolish Americans, who waste their time in foreign capitals,
he never harbored the slightest regret that he had not been born
something other than an American; he never desired to be anything but a
free citizen of the great republic of the West.
He prepared a lecture on China, which he delivered in many of the cities
and large towns. Mr. Cushing had already entered the lecture field with
a discourse on China, and some thought Mr. Webster presumptuous in thus
inviting comparison between his own discourse and Mr. Cushing's. But
competent critics, who heard both these efforts, expressed a preference
for that of Mr. Webster. Vast as was Mr. Cushing's learning, his
oratorical style was never one of the best; while Fletcher Webster's
style, for clearness, simplicity, strength, and majesty, was little
inferior to that of his illustrious father. He afterward expanded this
lecture to the dimensions of a book, but never published it; and, in
1878, this manuscript, and all others left by him, perished by the fire
which destroyed the Webster House at Marshfield. One of the few scraps
which have survived this fire is a Latin epitaph which he wrote for his
father's horse, Steamboat,--a horse of great speed and endurance,--and
which seldom lay down at night unless he had been overdriven. In
English, it ran thus: "Stop, traveler, for a greater traveler than thou
stops here."
On the Fourth of July, 1845, Charles Sumner delivered, before the
municipal authorities of Boston, an oration on Peace, which provoked
much hostile criticism; and on the next succeeding anniversary of
American Independence, Fletcher Webster delivered an oration on War,
which was designed to show that there are cases "where war, with all its
woes, must be endured."
It is probably the only elaborate discourse of his, which has been
preserved entire. It contains many quotable passages; but we must
content ourselves with the following, which are quite in his father's
style:--
"We meet to brighten the memories of a glorious past, to strengthen
ourselves in our onward progress, to remember great enterprises, to look
forward to a great career."
"We celebrate no single triumph, but the result of a long series of
victories; we celebrate the memory of no mere successful battle, but the
great triumph of a people; the victory of liberty over oppression, won
by suffering and struggle and death; the fruit of high sentiment, of
resolute patriotism, of consummate wisdom, of unshaken faith and trust
in God,--a victory and a triumph not for us only, but for all the
oppressed, everywhere, and for every age to come, ... a victory whose
future results to us and to others no imagination can foresee, and which
are yet but commencing to unfold themselves."
"And does any one believe that these results [to wit, the winning of
American independence, and the building of the American nation] could
have been attained in any other method than by arms and successful
physical resistance."
In 1847, he held the only political office to which he was ever elected
by popular suffrage,--that of representative in the Legislature. In
1850, he was appointed surveyor of the port of Boston by President
Taylor, and he was reappointed to the same office by Presidents Pierce
and Buchanan successively. There were many who would have been glad to
see him in a larger sphere, but "the mark which he made upon his times,"
as Mr. Hillard observes, was less than his friends had anticipated.
Occasionally he appeared as an orator in political campaigns, notably in
1856, at Exeter, in his native State, where he spoke with laudable pride
of having "sat at the feet of a great statesman now no more."
The son of Martin Van Buren and the son of Levi Woodbury united their
voices on that occasion with the voice of the son of Webster. A striking
remark then made by him is well remembered. Referring to the speech of
Senator Sumner, which excited the assault of Mr. Brooks, Mr. Webster
said, "If I had been going to make such a speech, I should have worn an
iron pot upon my head."
In 1857, he published two volumes of the Private Correspondence of
Daniel Webster. In editing the papers of such a man, it is not difficult
to make a "spicy" book. Witness McVey Napier's Edinburgh Review
correspondence and Mr. Fronde's Carlyle correspondence. They have spared
no one's feelings. They have paraded hasty expressions of transient
spleen, which the authors would blush to read, except, perhaps, at the
moment of writing. Mr. Webster has shown us a more excellent way, though
it may be less profitable. "With charity for all, with malice for none,"
he carefully excised from his father's correspondence every passage
tending to rekindle the fire of any former personal controversy in which
his father had engaged. In this, perhaps, he followed the behests of his
father, who evinced, as he approached the tomb, an earnest desire for
reconciliation with all with whom he had had differences, illustrating
the Scottish proverb, "The evening brings all home."
When the disruption of the Union came to be attempted, none of us who
knew Fletcher Webster doubted for a moment what position he would take.
The same "passionate and exultant nationality," which had nerved him to
bear the loss of friends at the North, and to forego the chance of a
public career, rather than countenance any measure calculated to excite
ill-will at the South, now prompted him to advocate military coercion
for the preservation of the Union. Notwithstanding President Lincoln had
just deprived him of the office upon which he depended for the
maintenance of his family, he did not hesitate to tender to the
administration his personal support in the field.
In the oration already quoted, he had said: "There are certain ultimate
rights which must be maintained; and when force is brought to overthrow
them, it must be resisted by force." Among the rights which must thus be
maintained, in his view, was the right of the United States to maintain,
forever, the union of these States. The policy of coercion, bitterly as
he bewailed its necessity, was not new to him. His father had advocated
the Force Bill almost thirty years before. The time had come, when, in
the words of Jefferson (words spoken when only the Articles of
Confederation held the States in union): "Some of the States must see
the rod; perhaps some of them must feel it." Accordingly, on the
twentieth of April, 1861, while the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the
attack on the Sixth Regiment were firing the Northern heart, Fletcher
Webster called that memorable Sunday-morning meeting in State Street,
which resulted in the organization of the Twelfth Regiment of
Massachusetts Infantry. Referring to that occasion, George S, Hillard
said it recalled to the minds of those present, Colonel Webster's
father, who had then been but nine years in the grave. "To the mind's
eye, that majestic form and grand countenance seemed standing by the
side of his son; and in the mind's ear, they heard again the deep music
of that voice which had so often charmed and instructed them."
Colonel Webster said: "He whose name I bear had the good fortune to
defend the Union and the Constitution in the forum. That I cannot do,
but I am ready to defend them in the field." Like other national men, he
refused to listen to the "sixty-day" prattle by which others were
deceived. He saw that by no "summer excursion to Moscow" could the
Southern Confederacy be suppressed; that immense forces would be
marshalled in aid of that Confederacy; and that the war for the Union,
like the war for Independence, would be won only by 'suffering, and
struggle, and death.
Ten years earlier, it seemed to Rufus Choate as if the hoarded-up
resentments and revenges of a thousand years were about to unsheath the
sword for a conflict, "in which the blood should flow, as in the
Apocalyptic vision, to the bridles of the horses; in which a whole age
of men should pass away; in which the great bell of time should sound
out another hour; in which society itself should be tried by fire and
steel, whether it were of Nature and of Nature's God, or not."
Such a conflict was indeed impending, and Fletcher Webster appreciated
its extreme gravity, when, from the balcony of the Old State House, on
that Sunday morning, he made his stirring appeal: "Let us show the world
that the patriotism of '61 is not less than that of '76; that the noble
impulses of those patriot hearts have descended to us."
On the eighteenth of July, 1861, Edward Everett presented to Colonel
Webster a splendid regimental flag, the gift of the ladies of Boston to
the Twelfth Regiment.[1] It need not be said that the presentation
speech of Mr. Everett, and the reception speech of Colonel Webster, were
of the first order. But not even the words of a Webster or an Everett
could adequately express the profound emotion of the vast concourse of
people then assembled. For it was one of those occasions when, as the
elder Webster said, "Words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and
all elaborate oratory contemptible."
History will transmit the fact that on that day the simple, homely,
stirring, and inspiring melody of Old John Brown was heard for the first
time by the people of Boston. It was a surprising and a gladsome
spectacle--a regiment bearing Daniel Webster's talismanic name,
commanded by his only surviving son, carrying a banner prepared by the
fairest daughters of Massachusetts, carrying also the benediction of
Edward Everett, and of "the solid men of Boston," and marching to the
tune of Old John Brown! Did the weird prophet-orator who spoke of
"carrying the flag and keeping step to the music of the Union" ever
dream of such a strange combination?
On the seventeenth of June, 1861, by invitation of Governor Andrew,
Colonel Webster spoke on Bunker Hill: "From this spot I take my
departure, like the mariner commencing his voyage, and wherever my eyes
close, they will be turned hitherward towards this North; and, in
whatever event, grateful will be the reflection, that this monument
still stands--still, still is glided by the earliest beams of the rising
sun, and that still departing day lingers and plays upon its summit."
After referring to the two former occasions when he had visited that
historic shaft, when his father had spoken there, he added, "I now stand
again at its base, and renew once more, on this national altar, vows,
not for the first time made, of devotion to my country, its Constitution
and Union."
With these words upon his lips, with these sentiments in his heart, and
in the hearts of the thousand brave men of his command, Colonel Webster
went forth, the dauntless champion and willing martyr of the Union.
Except that the death of a beloved daughter brought him back for a few
days to his family in the following summer, the people of Massachusetts
saw his living face no more.
On the thirtieth of August, 1862, the second day of the second battle of
Bull Run, late in the afternoon, while gallantly directing the movements
of his regiment, and giving his orders in those clear, firm, ringing
tones, which, in the tumult of battle, fall so gratefully on the
soldier's ear, Colonel Webster was shot through the body; and the
Federal forces being closely pressed at the time, he was left to die on
the field in Confederate hands. As the event became known through the
country, thousands of generous hearts, in the South as well as in the
North, recalled the peroration of his father's reply to Hayne, and
bitterly regretted that, when his eyes were turned to behold for the
last time the sun in heaven, it had been his unhappy lot to "see him
shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union,
on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent, on a land rent with
internal feuds, and drenched [as then it was] with fraternal blood."
In the time-honored song of Roland, we are told, "Count Roland lay under
a pine-tree dying, and many things came to his remembrance." As it was
with Count Roland in Spain, so it was with Colonel Webster in Virginia.
In the multitude of memories which rushed upon him as he lay dying on
that ill-starred battle-field, we may be sure that Boston, Bunker Hill,
and the home and grave of Marshfield, were not forgotten.
The body of Colonel Webster was willingly given up by the Confederates,
and after lying in state in Faneuil Hall, and adding another to the
immortal recollections which ennoble "the cradle of liberty," it was
buried near his father's grave by the sea.
The Grand Army Post at Brockton, containing survivors of the Webster
Regiment, has adopted Colonel Webster's name; and on each Memorial Day,
members of this Post make a pilgrimage to Marshfield to decorate his
grave. His life is remarkable for its apparent possibilities rather than
for its actual achievements,--for the capabilities which were recognized
in him, rather than for what he accomplished, either in public or
professional life. His military career was cut short by a Confederate
bullet before opportunity demonstrated that capacity for high command,
which his superior officers, as well as his soldiers, believed him to
possess. The instincts of the soldier are often as trustworthy as the
judgment of the commander. All his soldiers loved him,--
--"honored him, followed him,
Dwelt in his mild and magnificent eye,
Heard his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him their pattern to do and to die."
While the regret still lingers, that he was not permitted to witness,
and to contribute further effort to secure, the triumph, which he
predicted, of the cause for which he died--that regret is mitigated by
the reflection, that he could never have died more honorably than in a
war which could only have been avoided by the sacrifice of the
Constitution and the Union.
[Footnote 1: This banner now hangs in the Doric Hall at the State House,
where its mute eloquence has often started tears, and "thoughts too deep
for tears," in many a casual visitor.]
* * * * *