If I were required to single out the most prominent political genius in
the history of the United States, after the death of Hamilton, I should
say it was Daniel Webster. He reigned for thirty years as a political
dictator to his party, and at the same time was the acknowledged head of
the American Bar. He occupied two spheres, in each of which he gained
pre-eminence. But for envy, and the enemies he made, he probably would
have reached the highest honor that the nation had to bestow. His
influence was vast, until those discussions arose which provoked one of
the most gigantic wars of modern times. For a generation he was the
object of universal admiration for his eloquence and power. In political
wisdom and experience he had no contemporaneous superior; there was no
public man from 1820 to 1850 who had so great a prestige, and whose name
and labors are so well remembered. His speeches and forensic arguments
are more often quoted than those of any other statesman and lawyer the
country has produced. His works are in every library, and are still
read. His fame has not waned, in spite of the stirring events which have
taken place since his death. Great generals have arisen and passed out
of mind, but the name and memory of Webster are still fresh. Amid the
tumults and parties of the war he foresaw and dreaded, his glory may
have passed through an eclipse, but his name is to-day one of the
proudest connected with our history. Living men, occupying great
official positions, are of course more talked about and thought of than
he; but of those illustrious characters who figured in public affairs a
generation ago, no one has so great a posthumous fame and influence as
the distinguished senator from Massachusetts. No man since the days of
Jefferson is seated on a loftier pedestal; and no one is likely to live
longer, if not in the nation's heart, yet in its admiration for
intellectual superiority and respect for political services. While he
reigned as a political oracle for more than thirty years,--almost an
idol in the eyes of his constituents,--it was his misfortune to be
dethroned and reviled, in the last ten years of his life, by the very
people who had exalted and honored him, and at last to die
broken-hearted, from the loss of his well-earned popularity and the
failure of his ambitious expectations. His life is sad as well as
proud, like that of so many other great men who at one time led, and at
another time opposed, popular sentiments. Their names stand out on every
page of history, examples of the mutability of fortune,--alike joyous
and saddened men, reaping both glory and shame; and sometimes glory for
what is evil, and shame for what is good.
When Daniel Webster was born,--1782, in Salisbury, New Hampshire, near
the close of our Revolutionary struggle,---there were very few prominent
and wealthy families in New England, very few men more respectable than
the village lawyers, doctors, and merchants, or even thrifty and
intelligent farmers. Very few great fortunes had been acquired, and
these chiefly by the merchants of Boston, Salem, Portsmouth, and other
seaports whose ships had penetrated to all parts of the world Webster
sprang from the agricultural class,--larger then in proportion to the
other classes than now at the East,--at a time when manufactures were in
their infancy and needed protection; when travel was limited; when it
was a rare thing for a man to visit Europe; when the people were obliged
to practise the most rigid economy; when everybody went to church; when
religious scepticism sent those who avowed it to Coventry; when
ministers were the leading power; when the press was feeble, and
elections were not controlled by foreign immigrants; when men drank rum
instead of whiskey, and lager beer had never been heard of, nor the
great inventions and scientific wonders which make our age an era had
anywhere appeared. The age of progress had scarcely then set in, and
everybody was obliged to work in some way to get an honest living; for
the Revolutionary War had left the country poor, and had shut up many
channels of industry. The farmers at that time were the most numerous
and powerful class, sharp, but honest and intelligent; who honored
learning, and enjoyed discussions on metaphysical divinity. Their sons
did not then leave the paternal acres to become clerks in distant
cities; nor did their daughters spend their time in reading French
novels, or sneering at rustic duties and labors. This age of progress
had not arisen when everybody looks forward to a millennium of idleness
and luxury, or to a fortune acquired by speculation and gambling rather
than by the sweat of the brow,--an age, in many important respects,
justly extolled, especially for scientific discoveries and mechanical
inventions, yet not remarkable for religious earnestness or moral
elevation.
The life of Daniel Webster is familiar to all intelligent people. His
early days were spent amid the toils and blessedness of a New England
farm-house, favored by the teachings of intelligent, God-fearing
parents, who had the means to send him to Phillips Academy in Exeter,
then recently founded, where he fitted for college, and shortly after
entered Dartmouth, at the age of fifteen. In connection with Webster, I
do not read of any remarkable precocity, at school or college, such as
marked Cicero, Macaulay, and Gladstone; but it seems that he won the
esteem of both teachers and students, and was regarded as a very
promising youth. After his graduation he taught an academy at Fryeburg,
for a time, and then began the study of the law,--first at Salisbury,
and subsequently in Boston, in the office of the celebrated Governor
Gore. He was admitted to the bar in 1805, and established himself in
Boscawen, but soon afterwards removed to Portsmouth, where he entered on
a large practice, encountering such able lawyers as Jeremiah Mason and
Jeremiah Smith, who both became his friends and admirers, for Webster's
legal powers were soon the talk of the State. At the early age of
thirty-one he entered Congress (1813), and took the whole House by
surprise with his remarkable speeches, during the war with Great
Britain,--on such topics as the enlargement of the navy, the repeal of
the embargo, and the complicated financial questions of the day. In 1815
he retired awhile from public life, and removed to Boston, where he
enjoyed a lucrative practice. In 1822 he re-entered Congress. So popular
was he at this time, that, on his re-election to Congress in 1824, he
received four thousand nine hundred and ninety votes out of five
thousand votes cast. In 1827 he entered the Senate, where he was to
reign as one of its greatest chiefs,--the idol of his party in New
England, practising his profession at the same time, a leader of the
American Bar, and an oracle in politics on all constitutional questions.
With this rapid sketch, I proceed to enumerate the services of Daniel
Webster to his country, since on these enduring fame and gratitude are
based. And first, I allude to his career as a lawyer,--not a narrow,
technical lawyer, seeking to gain his case any way he can, with an eye
on pecuniary rewards alone, but a lawyer devoting himself to the study
of great constitutional questions and fundamental principles. In his
legal career, when for nearly forty years he discussed almost every
issue that can arise between individuals and communities, some
half-a-dozen cases have become historical, because of the importance of
the principles and interests involved. In the Gibbons and Ogden case he
assumed the broad ground that the grant of power to regulate commerce
was exclusively the right of the General Government. William Wirt, his
distinguished antagonist,--then at the height of his fame,--relied on
the coasting license given by States; but the lucid and luminous
arguments of the young lawyer astonished the court, and made old Judge
Marshall lay down his pen, drop back in his chair, turn up his
coat-cuffs, and stare at the speaker in amazement at his powers.
The first great case which gave Webster a national reputation was that
pertaining to Dartmouth College, his _alma mater_, which he loved as
Newton loved Cambridge. The college was in the hands of politicians, and
Webster recovered the college from their hands and restored it to the
trustees, laying down such broad principles that every literary and
benevolent institution in this land will be grateful to him forever.
This case, which was argued with consummate ability, and with words as
eloquent as they were logical and lucid, melting a cold court into
tears, placed Webster in the front rank of lawyers, which he kept until
he died. In the Ogden and Saunders case he settled the constitutionality
of State bankrupt laws; in that of the United States Bank he maintained
the right of a citizen of one State to perform any legal act in another;
in that which related to the efficacy of Stephen Girard's will, he
demonstrated the vital importance of Christianity to the success of free
institutions,--so that this very college, which excluded clergymen from
being teachers in it, or even visiting it, has since been presided over
by laymen of high religious character, like Judge Jones and Doctor
Allen. In the Rhode Island case he proved the right of a State to modify
its own institutions of government. In the Knapp murder case he brought
out the power of conscience--the voice of God to the soul--with such
terrible forensic eloquence that he was the admiration of all Christian
people. No better sermon was ever preached than this appeal to the
conscience of men.
In these and other cases he settled very difficult and important
questions, so that the courts of law will long be ruled by his wisdom.
He enriched the science of jurisprudence itself by bringing out the
fundamental laws of justice and equity on which the whole science rests.
He was not as learned as he was logical and comprehensive. His greatness
as a lawyer consisted in seeing and seizing some vital point not
obvious, or whose importance was not perceived by his opponent, and then
bringing to bear on this point the whole power of his intellect. His
knowledge was marvellous on those points essential to his argument; but
he was not probably learned, like Kent, in questions outside his
cases,--I mean the details and technicalities of law. He did, however,
know the fundamental principles on which his great cases turned, and
these he enforced with much eloquence and power, so that his ablest
opponents quailed before him. Perhaps his commanding presence and
powerful tones and wonderful eye had something to do with his success at
the Bar as well as in the Senate,--a brow, a voice, and an eye that
meant war when he was fairly aroused; although he appealed generally to
reason, without tricks of rhetoric. If he sometimes intimidated, he
rarely resorted to exaggerations, but confined himself strictly to the
facts, so that he seemed the fairest of men. This moderation had great
weight with an intelligent jury and with learned judges. He always paid
great deference to the court, and was generally courteous to his
opponents. Of all his antagonists at the Bar, perhaps it was Jeremiah
Mason and Rufus Choate whom he most dreaded; yet both of these great men
were his warm friends. Warfare at the Bar does not mean personal
animosity,--it is generally mutual admiration, except in the antagonism
of such rivals as Hamilton and Burr. Webster's admiration for Wirt,
Pinkney, Curtis, and Mason was free from all envy; in fact, Webster was
too great a man for envy, and great lawyers were those whom he loved
best, whom he felt to be his brethren, not secret enemies. His
admiration for Jeremiah Mason was only equalled by that for Judge
Marshall, who was not a rival. Webster praised Marshall as he might have
Erskine or Lyndhurst.
Mr. Webster, again, attained to great eminence in another sphere, in
which lawyers have not always succeeded,--that of popular oratory, in
the shape of speeches and lectures and orations to the people directly.
In this sphere I doubt if he ever had an equal in this country,
although Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, Wendell Phillips, and others were
distinguished for their popular eloquence, and in some respects were the
equals of Webster. But he was a great teacher of the people,
directly,--a sort of lecturer on the principles of government, of
finance, of education, of agriculture, of commerce. He was superbly
eloquent in his eulogies of great men like Adams and Jefferson. His
Bunker Hill and Plymouth addresses are immortal. He lectured
occasionally before lyceums and literary institutions. He spoke to
farmers in their agricultural meetings, and to merchants in marts of
commerce. He did not go into political campaigns to any great extent, as
is now the custom with political leaders on the eve of important
elections. He did not seek to show the people how they should vote, so
much as to teach them elemental principles. He was the oracle, the sage,
the teacher,--not the politician.
In the popular assemblies--whether for the discussion of political
truths or those which bear on literature, education, history, finance,
or industrial pursuits--Mr. Webster was pre-eminent. What audiences were
ever more enthusiastic than those that gathered to hear his wisdom and
eloquence in public halls or in the open air? It is true that in his
later years he lost much of his wonderful personal magnetism, and did
not rise to public expectation except on great occasions; but in middle
life, in the earlier part of his congressional career, he had no peer as
a popular orator. Edward Everett, on some occasions, was his equal, so
far as manner and words were concerned; but, on the whole, even in his
grandest efforts, Everett was cold compared with Webster in his palmy
days. He never touched the heart and reason as did Webster; although it
must be conceded that Everett was a great rhetorician, and was master of
many of the graces of oratory.
The speeches and orations of Webster were not only weighty in matter,
but were wonderful for their style,--so clear, so simple, so direct,
that everybody could understand him. He rarely attempted to express more
than one thought in a single sentence; so that his sentences never
wearied an audience, being always logical and precise, not involved and
long and complicated, like the periods of Chalmers and Choate and so
many of the English orators. It was only in his grand perorations that
he was Ciceronian. He despised purely extemporary efforts; he did not
believe in them. He admits somewhere that he never could make a good
speech without careful preparation. The principles embodied in his
famous reply to Colonel Hayne of South Carolina, in the debate in the
Senate on the right of "nullification," had lain brooding in his mind
for eighteen months. To a young minister he said, There is no such
thing as extemporaneous acquisition.
Webster's speeches are likely to live for their style alone, outside
their truths, like those of Cicero and Demosthenes, like the histories
of Voltaire and Macaulay, like the essays of Pascal and Rousseau; and
they will live, not only for both style and matter, but for the exalted
patriotism which burns in them from first to last, for those sentiments
which consecrate cherished institutions. How nobly he recognizes
Christianity as the bulwark of national prosperity! How delightfully he
presents the endearments of home, the certitudes of friendship, the
peace of agricultural life, the repose of all industrial pursuits,
however humble and obscure! It was this fervid patriotism, this public
recognition of what is purest in human life, and exalted in aspirations,
and profound in experience,--teaching the value of our privileges and
the glory of our institutions,--which gave such effect to his eloquence,
and endeared him to the hearts of the people until he opposed their
passions. If we read any of these speeches, extending over thirty years,
we shall find everywhere the same consistent spirit of liberty, of
union, of conciliation, the same moral wisdom, the same insight into
great truths, the same recognition of what is sacred, the same repose on
what is permanent, the same faith in the expanding glories of this great
nation which he loved with all his heart. In all his speeches one
cannot find a sentence which insults the consecrated sentiments of
religion or patriotism. He never casts a fling at Christianity; he never
utters a sarcasm in reference to revealed truths; he never flippantly
aspires to be wiser than Moses or Paul in reference to theological
dogmas. "Ah, my friends," said he, in 1825, "let us remember that it is
only religion and morals and knowledge that can make men respectable and
happy under any form of government; that no government is respectable
which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith,
without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere form of
government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society."
Thus did he discourse in those proud days when he was accepted as a
national idol and a national benefactor,--those days of triumph and of
victory, when the people gathered around him as they gather around a
successful general. Ah! how they thronged to the spot where he was
expected to speak,--as the Scotch people thronged to Edinboro' and
Glasgow to hear Gladstone:--
"And when they saw his chariot but appear,
Did they not make an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
To hear the replication of their sounds
Made in her concave shores?"
But it is time that I allude to those great services which Webster
rendered to his country when he was a member of Congress,--services that
can never be forgotten, and which made him a national benefactor.
There were three classes of subjects on which his genius pre-eminently
shone,--questions of finance, the development of American industries,
and the defence of the Constitution.
As early as 1815, Mr. Webster acquired a national reputation by his
speech on the proposition to establish a national bank, which he
opposed, since it was to be relieved from the necessity of redeeming its
notes in specie. This was at the close of the war with Great Britain,
when the country was poor, business prostrated, and the finances
disordered. To relieve this pressure, many wanted an inflated paper
currency, which should stimulate trade. But all this Mr. Webster
opposed, as certain to add to the evils it was designed to cure. He
would have a bank, indeed, but he insisted it should be established on
sound financial principles, with notes redeemable in gold and silver.
And he brought a great array of facts to show the certain and utter
failure of a system of banking operations which disregarded the
fundamental financial laws. He maintained that an inflated currency
produced only temporary and illusive benefits. Nor did he believe in
hopes which were not sustained by experience. "Banks," said he, "are
not revenue. They may afford facilities for its collection and
distribution, but they cannot be sources of national income, which must
flow from deeper fountains. Whatever bank-notes are not convertible into
gold and silver, at the will of the holder, become of less value than
gold and silver. No solidity of funds, no confidence in banking
operations, has ever enabled them to keep up their paper to the value of
gold and silver any longer than they paid gold and silver on demand."
Similar sentiments he advanced, in 1816, in his speech on the legal
currency, and also in 1832, when he said that a disordered currency is
one of the greatest of political evils,--fatal to industry, frugality,
and economy. "It fosters the spirit of speculation and extravagance. It
is the most effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man's field by
the sweat of the poor man's brow." In these days, when principles of
finance are better understood, these remarks may seem like platitudes;
but they were not so fifty or sixty years ago, for then they had the
force of new truth, although even then they were the result of political
wisdom, based on knowledge and experience; and his views were adopted,
for he appealed to reason.
Webster's financial speeches are very calm, like the papers of Hamilton
and Jay in "The Federalist," but as interesting and persuasive as those
of Gladstone, the greatest finance-minister of modern times. They are
plain, simple, direct, without much attempt at rhetoric. He spoke like a
great lawyer to a bench of judges. The solidity and soundness of his
views made him greatly respected, and were remarkable in a young man of
thirty-four. The subsequent financial history of the country shows that
he was prophetic. All his predictions have come to pass. What is more
marked in our history than the extravagance and speculation attending
the expansion of paper money irredeemable in gold and silver? What
misery and disappointment have resulted from inflated values! It was
doubtless necessary to do without gold and silver in our life-and-death
struggle with the South; but it was nevertheless a misfortune, seen in
the gambling operations and the wild fever of speculation which attended
the immense issue of paper money after the war. The bubble was sure to
burst, sooner or later, like John Law's Mississippi scheme in the time
of Louis XV. How many thousands thought themselves rich, in New York and
Chicago, in fact everywhere, when they were really poor,--as any man is
poor when his house or farm is not worth the mortgage. As soon as we
returned to gold and silver, or it was known we should return to them,
then all values shrunk, and even many a successful merchant found he was
really no richer than he was before the war. It had been easy to secure
heavy mortgages on inflated values, and also to get a great interest on
investments; but when these mortgages and investments shrank to what
they were really worth, the holders of them became embarrassed and
impoverished. The fit of commercial intoxication was succeeded by
depression and unhappiness, and the moral evils of inflated values were
greater than the financial, since of all demoralizing things the spirit
of speculation and gambling brings, at last, the most dismal train of
disappointments and miseries. Inflation and uncertainty in values,
whether in stocks or real estate, alternating with the return of
prosperity, seem to have marked the commercial and financial history of
this country during the last fifty years, more than that of any other
nation under the sun, and given rise to the spirit of extravagant
speculations, both disgraceful and ruinous.
Equally remarkable were Mr. Webster's speeches on tariffs and protective
industries. He here seemed to borrow from Alexander Hamilton, who is the
father of our protective system. Here he co-operated with Henry Clay;
and the result of his eloquence and wisdom on those great principles of
political economy was the adherence to a policy--against great
opposition--which built up New England and did not impoverish the West.
Where would the towns of Lowell, Manchester, and Lawrence have been
without the aid extended to manufacturing interests? They made the
nation comparatively independent of other nations; they enriched the
country, even as manufactures enriched Great Britain and France. What
would England be if it were only an agricultural country? It would have
been impossible to establish manufactures of textile fabrics, without
protection. Without aid from governments, this branch of American
industry would have had no chance to contend with the cheap labor of
European artisans. I do not believe in cheap labor. I do not believe in
reducing intelligent people to the condition of animals. I would give
them the chance to rise; and they cannot rise if they are doomed to
labor for a mere pittance. The more wages men can get for honest labor,
the better is the condition of the whole country. Withdraw protection
from infant industries, and either they perish, or those who work in
them sink to the condition of the laboring classes of Europe. Nor do I
believe it is a good thing for a nation to have all its eggs in one
basket. I would not make this country exclusively agricultural because
we have boundless fields and can raise corn cheap, any more than I would
recommend a Minnesota farmer to raise nothing but wheat. Insects and
mildews and unexpected heats may blast a whole harvest, and the farmer
has nothing to fall back upon. He may make more money, for a time, by
raising wheat exclusively; but he impoverishes his farm. He should raise
cattle and sheep and grass and vegetables, as well as wheat or corn.
Then he is more independent and more intelligent, even as a nation is by
various industries, which call out all kinds of talent.
I know that this is a controverted point. Everything _is_ controverted
in political economy. There is scarcely a question which is settled in
its whole range of subjects; and I know that many intellectual and
enlightened men are in favor of what they call free-trade, especially
professors in colleges. But there is no such thing as free-trade,
strictly, in any nation, or in the history of nations. No nation
legislates for universal humanity on philanthropic principles; it
legislates for itself. There is no country where there are not high
duties on some things, not even England. No nation can be governed on
abstract principles and in disregard of its necessities. When it was for
the interest of England to remove duties on corn, in order that
manufactures might be stimulated, they took off duties on corn, because
the laboring-classes in the mills had to be fed. Agricultural interests
gave way, for a time, to manufacturing interests, because the wealth of
the country was based on them rather than on lands, and because
landlords did not anticipate that bread-stuffs brought from this country
would interfere with the value of their rents. But England, with all
her proud and selfish boasts about free-trade, may yet have to take a
retrograde course, like France and Prussia, or her landed interests may
be imperilled. The English aristocracy, who rule the country, cannot
afford to have the value of their lands reduced one-half, for those
lands are so heavily mortgaged that such a reduction of value would ruin
them; nor will they like to be forced to raise vegetables rather than
wheat, and turn themselves into market-gardeners instead of great
proprietors. The landlords of Great Britain may yet demand protection
for themselves, and, as they control Parliament, they will look out for
themselves by enacting measures of protection, unless they are
intimidated by the people who demand cheap bread, or unless they submit
to revolution. It is eternal equity and wisdom that the weak should be
protected. There may be industries strong enough now to dispense with
protection; but unless they are assisted when they are feeble, they will
cease to exist at all. Take our shipping, for instance, with foreign
ports,--it is not merely crippled, it is almost annihilated. Is it
desirable to cut off that great arm of national strength? Shall we march
on to our destiny, blind and lame and halt? What will we do if England
and other countries shall find it necessary to protect themselves from
impoverishment, and reintroduce duties on bread-stuffs high enough to
make the culture of wheat profitable? Where then will our farmers find a
market for their superfluous corn, except to those engaged in industries
which we should crush by removing protection?
I maintain that Mr. Webster, in defending our various industries with so
much ability, for the benefit of the nation on the whole, rendered very
important services, even as Hamilton and Clay did; although the solid
South, wishing cheap labor, and engaged exclusively in agriculture, was
opposed to him. The independent South would have established
free-trade,--as Mr. Calhoun advocated, and as any enlightened statesman
would advocate, when any interest can stand alone and defy competition,
as was the case with the manufactures of Great Britain fifty years ago.
The interests of the South and those of the North, under the institution
of slavery, were not identical; indeed, they had been in fierce
opposition for more than fifty years. Mr. Webster was, in his arguments
on tariffs and cognate questions, the champion of the North, as Mr.
Calhoun was of the South; and this opposition and antagonism gave great
force to Webster's eloquence at this time. His sentences are short,
interrogative, idiomatic. He is intensely in earnest. He grapples with
sophistries and scatters them to the winds; both reason and passion
vivify him.
This was the period of Webster's greatest popularity, as the defender
of Northern industries. This made him the idol of the merchants and
manufacturers of New England. He made them rich; no wonder they made him
presents. They ought, in gratitude, to have paid his debts over and over
again. What if he did, in straitened circumstances, accept their aid?
They owed to him more than he owed to them; and with all their favor and
bounty Webster remained poor. He was never a rich man, but always an
embarrassed man, because he had expensive tastes, like Cicero at Rome
and Bacon in England. This, truly, was not to his credit; it was a flaw
in his character; it involved him in debt, created enemies, and injured
his reputation. It may have lessened his independence, and it certainly
impaired his dignity. But there were also patriotic motives which
prompted him, and which kept him poor. Had he devoted his great talents
exclusively to the law, he might have been rich; but he gave his time to
his country.
His greatest services to his country, however, were as the defender of
the Constitution. Here he soared to the highest rank of political fame.
Here he was a statesman, having in view the interests of the whole
country. He never was what we call a politician. He never was such a
miserable creature as that. I mean a mere politician, whose calling is
the meanest a man can follow, since it seeks only spoils, and is a
perpetual deception, incompatible with all dignity and independence,
whose only watchword is success.
Not such was Webster. He was too proud and too dignified for that form
of degradation; and he perhaps sacrificed his popularity to his
intellectual dignity, and the glorious consciousness of being a national
benefactor,--as a real statesman seeks to be, and is, when he falls back
on the elemental principles of justice and morality, like a late Premier
of England, one of the most conscientious statesmen that ever controlled
the destinies of a nation. Webster, like Burke, was haughty, austere,
and brave; but such a man is not likely to remain the favorite of the
people, who prefer an Alcibiades to a Cato, except in great crises, when
they look to a man who can save them, and whom they can forget.
I cannot enumerate the magnificent bursts of eloquence which electrified
the whole country when Webster stood out as the defender of the
Constitution, when he combated secession and defended the Union. How
noble and gigantic he was when he answered the aspersions of the
Southern orators,--great men as they were,--and elaborately showed that
the Union meant something more than a league of sovereign States! The
great leaders of secession were overthrown in a contest which they
courted, and in which they expected victory. His reply to Hayne is,
perhaps, the most masterly speech in American political history. It is
one of the immortal orations of the world, extorting praise and
admiration from Americans and foreigners alike. In his various
encounters with Hayne, McDuffee, and Calhoun, he taught the principles
of political union to the rising generation. He produced those
convictions which sustained the North in its subsequent contest to
preserve the integrity of the Nation. There can be no estimate of the
services he rendered to the country by those grand and patriotic
efforts. But for these, the people might have succumbed to the
sophistries of Calhoun; for he was almost as great a giant as Webster,
and was more faultless in his private life. He had an immense influence;
he ruled the whole South; he made it solid. The speeches of Webster in
the Senate made him the oracle of the North. He was not only the great
champion of the North, and of Northern interests, but he was the teacher
of the whole country. He expounded the principles of the
Constitution,--that this great country is one, to be forever united in
all its parts; that its stars and stripes were to float over every city
and fortress in the land, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the
river St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and "bearing for their motto
no such miserable interrogatory as, What are all these worth? nor those
other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and Union afterwards;
but that other sentiment, dear to every American heart, Liberty and
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"
It was after his memorable speech in reply to Hayne that I saw Webster
for the first time. I was a boy in college, and he had come to visit it;
and well do I remember the unbounded admiration, yea, the veneration,
felt for him by every young man in that college and throughout the
town,--indeed, throughout the whole North, for he was the pride and
glory of the land. It was then that they called him godlike, looking
like an Olympian statue, or one of the creations of Michael Angelo when
he wished to represent majesty and dignity and power in repose,--the
most commanding human presence ever seen in the Capitol at Washington.
When we recall those patriotic and noble speeches which were read and
admired by every merchant and farmer and lawyer in the country, and by
which he produced great convictions and taught great lessons, we cannot
but wonder why his glory was dimmed, and he was pulled down from his
pedestal, and became no longer an idol. It is affirmed by many that it
was his famous 7th of March speech which killed him, which disappointed
his friends and alienated his constituents. I am therefore compelled to
say something about that speech, and of his history at that time.
Mr. Webster was doubtless an ambitious man. He aspired to the
presidency. And why not? It is and will be a great dignity, such as
ought to be conferred on great ability and patriotism. Was he not able
and patriotic? Had he not rendered great services? Was he not
universally admired for his genius and experience and wisdom? Who was
more prominent than he, among the statesmen of the country, or more
thoroughly fitted to fulfil the duties of that high office? Was it not
natural that he should have aspired to be one of the successors of
Washington and Adams and Jefferson? He comprehended the honor and the
dignity of that office. He did not seek it in order to divide its
spoils, or to reward his friends; but he did wish to secure the highest
prize that could be won by political services; he did desire to receive
the highest honor in the gift of the people, even as Cicero sought the
consulate at Rome; he did believe himself capable of representing the
country in its most exacting position. It is nothing against a man that
he is ambitious, provided his ambition is lofty. Most of the illustrious
men of history have been ambitious,--Cromwell, Pitt, Thiers, Guizot,
Bismarck,--but ambitious to be useful to their country, as well as to
receive its highest rewards. Webster failed to reach the position he
desired, because of his enemies, and, possibly, from jealousy of his
towering height,--just as Clay failed, and Aaron Burr, and Alexander
Hamilton, and Stephen Douglas, and William H. Seward. The politicians,
who control the people, prefer men in the presidential chair whom they
think they can manage and use, not those to whom they will be forced to
succumb. Webster was not a man to be controlled or used, and so the
politicians rejected him. This he deeply felt, and even resented. His
failure saddened his latter days and embittered his soul, although he
was too proud to make loud complaints.
I grant he did not here show magnanimity. He thought that the presidency
should be given to the ablest and most experienced statesman. He did not
appear to see that this proud position is too commanding to be bestowed
except for the most exalted services, and such services as attract the
common eye, especially in war. Presidents in so great a country as this
reign, like the old feudal kings, by the grace of God. They are selected
by divine Providence, as David was from the sheepfold. No American,
however great his genius, except the successful warrior, can ever hope
to climb to this dizzy height, unless personal ambition is lost sight of
in public services. This is wisely ordered, to defeat unscrupulous
ambition. It is only in England that a man can rise to supreme power by
force of genius, since he is selected virtually by his peers, and not by
the popular voice. He who leads Parliament is the real king of England
for the time, since Parliament is omnipotent. Had Webster been an
Englishman, and as powerful in the House of Commons as he was in
Congress at one time, he might have been prime minister. But he could
not be president of the United States, although the presidential power
is much inferior to that exercised by an English premier. It is the
dignity of the office, not its power, which constitutes the value of the
presidency. And Webster loved dignity even more than power.
In order to arrive at this coveted office,--although its duties probably
would have been irksome,--it is possible that he sought to conciliate
the South and win the favor of Southern leaders. But I do not believe he
ever sought to win their favor by any abandonment of his former
principles, or by any treachery to the cause he had espoused. Yet it is
this of which he has been accused by his enemies,--many of those enemies
his former friends. The real cause of this estrangement, and of all the
accusations against him, was this,--he did not sympathize with the
Abolition party; he was not prepared to embark in a crusade against
slavery, the basal institution of the South. He did not like slavery;
but he knew it to be an institution which the Constitution, of which he
was the great defender, had accepted,--accepted as a compromise, in
those dark days which tried men's souls. Many of the famous statesmen
who deliberated in that venerated hall in Philadelphia also disliked and
detested slavery; but they could not have had a constitution, they could
not have had a united country, unless that institution was acknowledged
and guaranteed. So they accepted it as the lesser evil. They made a
compromise, and the Constitution was signed. Now, everybody knows that
the Abolitionists of the North, about the year 1833, attacked slavery,
although it was guaranteed by the Constitution; attacked it, not as an
evil merely, but as a sin; attacked it, by virtue of a higher law than
constitutional provision. And as an evil, as a stain on our country, as
an insult to the virtue and intelligence of the age, as a crime against
humanity, these people of the North declared that slavery ought to be
swept away. Mr. Webster, as well as Mr. Fillmore, Mr. Lincoln, Mr.
Everett, and many other acknowledged patriots, was for letting slavery
alone, as an evil too great to be removed without war; which, moreover,
could not be removed without an infringement on what the South
considered as its rights. He was for conciliation, in order to preserve
the Constitution as well as the Union. The Abolitionists were violent in
their denunciations. And although it took many years to permeate the
North with their leaven, they were in earnest; and under persecutions
and mobs and ostracism and contempt they persevered until they created
a terrible public opinion. The South had early taken the alarm, and in
order to protect their peculiar and favorite institution, had at various
times attempted to extend it into newly acquired territories where it
did not exist, claiming the protection of the Constitution. Mr. Webster
was one of their foremost opponents in this, contesting their right to
do it under the Constitution. But in 1848 the Antislavery opinion at the
North crystallized in a political organization,--the Free-Soil Party;
and on the other hand the South proposed to abrogate the Missouri
Compromise of 1820 as an offset to the admission of California as a free
State, and at the same time asked in further concession the passage of
the Fugitive Slave Bill; and, in anticipation of failing to get these,
threatened secession, which of course meant war.
It was at this crisis that Mr. Webster delivered his celebrated 7th of
March speech,--in many respects his greatest,--in which he advocated
conciliation and adherence to the Constitution, but which was
represented to support Southern interests, which all his life he had
opposed; and more, to advocate these interests, in order to secure
Southern votes for the presidency. Some of the rich and influential men
of Boston who disliked Webster for other reasons,--for he used to snub
them, even after they had lent him money,--made the most they could of
that speech, to alienate the people. The Abolitionists, at last hostile
to Mr. Webster, who stood in their way and would not adopt their
dictation or advice, also bitterly denounced this speech, until it
finally came to be regarded by the common people, few of whom ever read
it, as a very unpatriotic production, entirely at variance with the
views that Webster formerly advanced; and they forsook him.
Now, what is the real gist and spirit of that speech? The passions which
agitated the country when it was delivered have passed away, and not
only can we now calmly criticise it, but people will listen to the
criticism with all the attention it deserves.
It is my opinion, shared by Peter Harvey and other friends of Mr.
Webster, that in no speech he ever made are patriotic and Union
sentiments more fully avowed. Said he, with fiery emphasis:--
"I hear with distress and anguish the word 'secession.' Secession!
peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see
that miracle. The dismemberment of this great country without
convulsion! The breaking up the fountains of the great deep without
ruffling the surface! There can be no such thing as peaceable secession.
It is an utter impossibility. Is this great Constitution, under which we
live, to be melted and thawed away by secession, as the snows on the
mountains are melted away under the influence of the vernal sun? No,
sir; I see as plainly as the sun in the heavens what that disruption
must produce. I see it must produce war."
"Peaceable secession! peaceable secession! What would be the result?
Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede? What is to
remain American? What am I to be? Am I to be an American no longer,--a
sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common?
Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the Union to remain? Where is the
eagle still to tower? What is to become of the army? What is to become
of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is each of the
thirty States to defend itself? Will you cut the Mississippi in two,
leaving free States on its branches and slave States at its mouth? Can
any one suppose that this population on its banks can be severed by a
line that divides them from the territory of a foreign and alien
government, down somewhere,--the Lord knows where,--upon the lower
branches of the Mississippi? Sir, I dislike to pursue this subject. I
have utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of national blasts and
mildews and pestilence and famine, than hear gentlemen talk about
secession. To break up this great government! To dismember this glorious
country! To astonish Europe with an act of folly, such as Europe for two
centuries has never beheld in any government! No, sir; such talk is
enough to make the bones of Andrew Jackson turn round in his coffin."
Now, what are we to think of these sentiments, drawn from the 7th of
March speech, so disgracefully misrepresented by the politicians and
the fanatics? Do they sound like bidding for Southern votes? Can any
Union sentiments be stronger? Can anything be more decided or more
patriotic? He warns, he entreats, he predicts like a prophet. He proves
that secession is incompatible with national existence; he sees nothing
in it but war. And of all things he dreaded and hated, it was war. He
knew what war meant. He knew that a civil war would be the direst
calamity. He would ward it off. He would be conciliating. He would take
away the excuse of war, by adhering to the Constitution,--the written
Constitution which our fathers framed, and which has been the admiration
of the world, under which we have advanced to prosperity and glory as no
nation ever before advanced.
But a large class regarded the Constitution as unsound, in some respects
a wicked Constitution, since it recognized slavery as an institution. By
"the higher law," they would sweep slavery away, perhaps by moral means,
but by endless agitations, until it was destroyed. Mr. Webster, I
confess, did not like those agitations, since he knew they would end in
war. He had a great insight, such as few people had at that time. But
his prophetic insight was just what a large class of people did not
like, especially in his own State. He uttered disagreeable truths,--as
all prophets do,--and they took up stones to stone him,--to stone him
for the bravest act of his whole life, in which a transcendent wisdom
appeared, and which will be duly honored when the truth shall be seen.
The fact was, at that time Mr. Webster seemed to be a croaker, a
Jeremiah, as Burke at one time seemed to his generation, when he
denounced the recklessness of the French Revolution. Very few people at
the North dreamed of war. It was never supposed that the Southern
leaders would actually become rebels. And they, on the other hand, never
dreamed that the North would rise up solidly and put them down. And if
war were to happen, it was supposed that it would be brief. Even so
great and sagacious a statesman as Seward thought this. The South
thought that it could easily whip the Yankees; and the North thought
that it could suppress a Southern rebellion in six weeks. Both sides
miscalculated. And so, in spite of warnings, the nation drifted into
war; but as it turned out in the end it seems a providential event,
--the way God took to break up slavery, the root and source of all our
sectional animosities; a terrible but apparently necessary catastrophe,
since more than a million of brave men perished, and more than five
thousand millions of dollars were spent. Had the North been wise, it
would have compensated the South for its slaves. Had the South been
wise, it would have accepted the compensation and set them free, But it
was not to be. That issue could only be settled by the most terrible
contest of modern times.
I will not dwell on that war, which Webster predicted and dreaded. I
only wish to show that it was not for want of patriotism that he became
unpopular, but because he did not fall in with the prevailing passions
of the day, or with the public sentiment of the North in reference to
slavery, not as to its evils and wickedness, but as to the way in which
it was to be opposed. The great reforms of England, since the accession
of William III., have been effected by using constitutional means,--not
violence, not revolution, not war; but by an appeal to reason and
intelligence and justice. No reforms in any nation have been greater and
more glorious than those of the nineteenth century,--all effected by
constitutional methods. Mr. Webster vainly attempted constitutional
means. He was a lawyer. He reverenced the Constitution, with all its
compromises. He would observe the law of contracts. Yet no man in the
nation was more impatient than he at the threats of secession. He
foretold that secession would lead to war. And if Mr. Webster had lived
to see the war of which he had such anxious prescience, I firmly believe
that he would have marched under the banner of the North with patriotism
equal to any man. He would have been where Mr. Everett was. One of his
own sons was slain in that war. He was not a Northern man with Southern
principles; his whole life attested his Northern principles. There never
was a time when he was not hated and mistrusted by the Southern leaders.
It is not a proof that he was Southern in his sympathies because he was
not an Abolitionist; and by an Abolitionist I mean what was meant thirty
years ago,--one who was unscrupulously bent on removing slavery by any
means, good or bad; since slavery, in his eyes, was a _malum per se_,
not a misfortune, an evil, a sin, but a crime to be washed out by the
besom of destruction.
Mr. Webster did not sympathize with these extreme views. He was not a
reformer; but that does not show that he was unpatriotic, or a Southern
man in his heart. "The higher law," to him, was the fulfilment of a
contract; the maintenance of promises made in good faith, whether those
promises were wise or foolish; the observance of laws so long as they
were laws. There was, undeniably, a great evil and shame to be removed,
but he was not responsible for it; and he left that evil in the hands of
Him who said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay,"--as He did repay in
four years' devastations, miseries, and calamities, and these so awful,
so unexpected, so ill-prepared for, that a thoughtful and kind-hearted
person, in view of them, will weep rather than rejoice; for it is not
pleasant to witness chastisements and punishments, even if necessary
and just, unless the people who suffer are fiends and incarnate devils,
as very few men are. Human nature is about the same everywhere, and
individuals and nations peculiarly sinful are generally made so by their
surroundings and circumstances. The reckless people of frontier mining
districts are not naturally worse than adventurers in New York or
Philadelphia; nor is any vulgar and ignorant man, in any part of the
country, suddenly made rich, probably any coarser in his pleasures, or
more sensual in his appearance, or more profane in his language, than
was Vitellius, or Heliogabalus, or Otho, on an imperial throne.
But even suppose Mr. Webster, in the decline of his life, intoxicated by
his magnificent position or led astray by ambition, made serious
political errors. What then? All great men have made errors, both in
judgment and in morals,--Caesar, when he crossed the Rubicon;
Theodosius, when he slaughtered the citizens of Thessalonica; Luther,
when he quarrelled with Zwingli; Henry IV., when he stooped at Canossa;
Elizabeth, when she executed Mary Stuart; Cromwell, when he bequeathed
absolute power to his son; Bacon, when he took bribes; Napoleon, when he
divorced Josephine; Hamilton, when he fought Burr. The sun itself passes
through eclipses, as it gives light to the bodies which revolve around
it. Even David and Peter stumbled. Because Webster professed to know as
much of the interests of the country as the shoemakers of Lynn, and
refused to be instructed in his political duties by Garrison and Wendell
Phillips, does he deserve eternal reprobation? Because he opposed the
public sentiments of his constituents on one point, when perhaps they
were right, is he to be hurled from his lofty pedestal? Are all his
services to be forgotten because he did not lift up his trumpet voice in
favor of immediate emancipation? And even suppose he sought to
conciliate the South when the South was preparing for rebellion,--is
peace-making such a dreadful thing? Go still farther: suppose he wished
to conciliate the South in order to get Southern support for the
presidency--which I grant he wanted, and possibly sought,--is he to be
unforgiven, and his name to be blasted, and he held up to the rising
generation as a fallen man? Does a man fall hopelessly because he
stumbles? Is a man to be dethroned because he is not perfect? When was
Webster's vote ever bought and sold? Who ever sat with more dignity in
the councils of the nation? Would he have voted for "back pay"? Would he
have bought a seat in the Senate, even if he had been as rich as a
bonanza king?
Consider how few errors Webster really committed in a public career of
nearly forty years. Consider the beneficence and wisdom of the measures
which he generally advocated, and which would have been lost but for
his eloquence and power. Consider the greatness and lustre of his
congressional career on the whole. Who has proved a greater benefactor
to this nation, on the floor of Congress, than he? I do not wish to
eulogize, still less to whitewash, so great a man, but only to render
simple justice to his memory and deeds. The time has come to lift the
veil which for thirty years has concealed his noble political services.
The time has come to cry shame on those boys who mocked a prophet, and
said, "Go up, thou bald-head!"--although no bears were found to devour
them. The time has come for this nation to bury the old slanders of an
exciting political warfare, and render thanks for the services performed
by the greatest intellectual giant of the past generation,--services
rendered not on the floor of the Senate alone, not in the national
legislature for thirty years, but in one of the great offices of State,
when he made a treaty with England which saved us from an entangling
war. The Ashburton treaty is the brightest gem in the coronet with which
he should be crowned. It was the proudest day in Webster's life when
Rufus Choate announced to him one evening that the Senate had confirmed
the treaty. It was not when he closed his magnificent argument in behalf
of Dartmouth College, not when he addressed the intelligence of New
England at Bunker Hill, not when he demolished Governor Hayne, not when
he sat on the woolsack with Lord Brougham, not when he was entertained
by Louis Philippe, that the proudest emotions swelled in his bosom, but
when he learned that he had prevented a war with England,--for he knew
that England and America could not afford to fight; that it would be a
fight where gain is loss and glory is shame.
At last, worn out with labor and disease, and perhaps embittered by
disappointment, and saddened to see the increasing tendency to elevate
little men to power,--the "grasshoppers, who make the field ring with
their importunate chinks, while the great cattle chew the cud and are
silent,"--Webster died at Marshfield, Oct. 24, 1852, at seventy years of
age. At the time he was Secretary of State. He died in the consolations
of a religion in which he believed, surrounded with loving friends; and
even his enemies felt that a great man in Israel had fallen. Nothing
then was said of his defects, for great defects he had,--a towering
intellectual pride like Chatham, an austerity like Gladstone, passions
like those of Mirabeau, extravagance like that of Cicero, indifference
to pecuniary obligations, like Pitt and Fox and Sheridan; but these were
overbalanced by the warmth of his affections for his faithful friends,
simplicity of manners and taste, courteous treatment of opponents,
dignity of character, kindness to the poor, hospitality, enjoyment of
rural scenes and sports, profound religious instincts, devotion to what
he deemed the welfare of his country, independence of opinions and
boldness in asserting them at any hazard and against all opposition, and
unbounded contempt of all lies and shams and tricks. These traits will
make his memory dear to all who knew him. And as Florence, too late,
repented of her ingratitude to Dante, and appointed her most learned men
to expound the "Divine Comedy" when he was dead, so will the writings of
Webster be more and more a study among lawyers and statesmen. His fame
will spread, and grow wider and greater, like that of Bacon and Burke,
and of other benefactors of mankind; and his ideas will not pass away
until the glorious fabric of American institutions, whose foundations
were laid by God-fearing people, shall be utterly destroyed, and the
Capitol, where his noblest efforts were made, shall become a mass of
broken and prostrate columns beneath the débris of the nation's ruin!
No, not then shall they perish, even if such gloomy changes are
possible, any more than the genius of Cicero has faded among the ruins
of the Eternal City; but they shall shine upon the most distant works of
man, since they are drawn from the wisdom of all preceding generations,
and are based on those principles which underlie all possible
civilizations!