the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every
college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary
institution throughout our country--of all those great charities founded
by the piety of our ancestors, to alleviate human misery and scatter
blessings along the pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense,
the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be
stripped, for the question is simply this: Shall our State Legislatures
be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its
original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they in their
discretion shall see fit? Sir, you may destroy this little institution;
it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights
in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But, if you
do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after
another, all those greater lights of science which, for more than a
century, have thrown their radiance over our land!
"It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those
who love it--"
Here Mr. Webster broke down, overcome by the recollections of those
early days of poverty, and the self-sacrifice of the dead father. The
eyes of Chief Justice Marshall were suffused with tears, as were those
of nearly all present. When Mr. Webster sat down, for some moments the
silence was death-like, and then the people roused themselves as though
awaking from a dream. Nearly seventy years after this, when the Hon.
Mellen Chamberlain, Librarian of the Boston Public Library, gave his
eloquent address at the dedication of Wilson Hall, the library building
of Dartmouth College, he held in his hand the very copy of Blackstone
from which Webster quoted in his great argument, with his autograph on
the fly-leaf. Of Webster he said, "His imagination transformed the
soulless body corporate--the fiction of the king's prerogative--into a
living personality, the object of his filial devotion, the beloved
mother whose protection called forth all his powers, and enkindled in
his bosom a quenchless love."
Several years later, Webster won the great case of Gibbons vs. Ogden,
which settled that the State of New York had no right, under the
Constitution, to grant a monopoly of steam navigation, on its waters, to
Fulton and Livingston.
He now took an active part in the revision of the Constitution of
Massachusetts, helping to do away with the religious test, that a person
holding office must declare his belief in the Christian religion. A
believer himself, he was unwilling to force his views upon others.
December 22, 1820, he delivered an oration at Plymouth, commemorating
the two-hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. It was a
grand theme, and the theme had a master to handle it. He began simply,
"Let us rejoice that we behold this day. Let us be thankful that we have
lived to see the bright and happy breaking of the auspicious morn which
commences the third century of the history of New England.... Forever
honored be this, the place of our fathers' refuge! Forever remembered
the day which saw them, weary and distressed, broken in everything but
spirit, poor in all but faith and courage, at last secure from the
danger of wintry seas, and impressing this shore with the first
footsteps of civilized man!"
Then the picture was sketched on a glowing canvas;--the noble Pilgrims;
the progress of New England during the century; the grand government
under which we live and develop, with the Christian religion for our
comfort and our hope. In closing he said, "The hours of this day are
rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon be passed. Neither we nor
our children can expect to behold its return. They are in the distant
regions of futurity, they exist only in the all-creating power of God,
who shall stand here, a hundred years hence, to trace through us their
descent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as we have now surveyed, the
progress of their country during the lapse of a century. We would
anticipate their concurrence with us in our sentiments of deep regard
for our common ancestors. We would anticipate and partake the pleasure
with which they will then recount the steps of New England's
advancement. On the morning of that day, although it will not disturb us
in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, commencing on the
Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through millions of the sons of
the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas."
The people heard the oration as though entranced. Said Mr. Ticknor, a
man of remarkable culture, "I was never so excited by public speaking
before in my life. Three or four times I thought my temples would burst
with the gush of blood; for, after all, you must know that I am aware it
is no connected and compacted whole, but a collection of wonderful
fragments of burning eloquence, to which his whole manner gave tenfold
force. When I came out I was almost afraid to come near to him. It
seemed to me as if he was like the mount that might not be touched, and
that burned with fire."
John Adams wrote him, "If there be an American who can read it without
tears, I am not that American.... Mr. Burke is no longer entitled to the
praise--the most consummate orator of modern times.... This oration will
be read five hundred years hence with as much rapture as it was heard.
It ought to be read at the end of every century, and indeed at the end
of every year, forever and ever."
From the day he delivered that oration, Mr. Webster was the leading
orator of America. From that day he belonged not to Grace Webster
alone, not to Massachusetts, not to one political party, but to the
people of the United States. Five years after that, he delivered the
address at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill monument. Who
does not remember the impassioned words to the survivors of the
Revolution, "Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former
generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives that you
might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years
ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to
shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! The same
heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet;
but all else, how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you
see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown.
The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge;
the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault,
the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand
bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror
there may be in war and death,--all these you have witnessed, but you
witness them no more.... All is peace; and God has granted you this
sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave forever.
He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic
toils, and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you
here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your
country, in the name of liberty, to thank you!
"But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your
ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes
seek for you in vain amidst this broken band. You are gathered to your
fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and
your own bright example."
Who has not read that address delivered at Faneuil Hall, Boston, in
commemoration of the lives and services of John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson, who died July 4, 1826. Who does not remember that imaginary
speech of John Adams, "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I
give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the
beginning we aimed not at independence. But there's a Divinity which
shapes our ends.... Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I
see, I see clearly through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may
rue it. We may not live to see the time when this declaration shall be
made good. We may die,--die colonists,--die slaves;--die, it may be,
ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the
pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my
life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come
when that hour may. But, while I do live, let me have a country, or at
least the hope of a country, and that a free country."
Concerning this speech of John Adams, beginning, "Sink or swim, live or
die," Mr. Webster said, "I wrote that speech one morning before
breakfast, in my library, and when it was finished my paper was wet with
my tears." In delivering this oration, his manuscript lay near him on a
small table, but he did not once refer to it. As far as possible in his
addresses, he preferred Anglo-Saxon words to those with Latin origin;
therefore, this great speech is so simple that school-boys the country
over can declaim it and understand it.
In 1823, when Webster was forty-one, Boston elected him to Congress. He
was, of course, widely known and observed; courtly in physique,
impassioned yet calm, easy yet dignified, comprehensive in thought, a
lover of and expounder of the Constitution.
The following year he visited Marshfield, on the south-east shore of
Massachusetts, and saw the home which he afterward purchased, and which,
with its eighteen hundred acres, became the joy of his later years. Here
he planted flowers and trees. He would often say to others, "Plant
trees, adorn your grounds, live for the benefit of those who shall come
after you." Here he watched every sunrise and sunset, every moonrise
from new to full, and grew rested and refreshed by these ever recurring
glimpses of divine power. He said, "I know the morning; I am acquainted
with it, and I love it, fresh and sweet as it is, a daily creation,
breaking forth and calling all that have life, and breath, and being,
to new adoration, new enjoyments, and new gratitude."
Here he enjoyed the ocean as he had enjoyed it in his boyhood, and years
later, when his brain was tired from overwork, he would exclaim,
plaintively, "Oh, Marshfield! the Sea! the Sea!"
This year also Webster paid a visit to Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.
In his conversation with the ex-President, he told this story of
himself, which well illustrates the fact that all the knowledge which we
can acquire becomes of use to us at one time or another in life. When a
young lawyer in Portsmouth, a blacksmith brought him a case under a
will. As the case was a difficult one, he spent one month in the study
of it, buying fifty dollars' worth of books to help him in the matter.
He argued the case, won it, and received a fee of fifteen dollars. Years
after, Aaron Burr sent for him to consult with him on a legal question
of consequence. The case was so similar to that of the blacksmith that
Webster could cite all the points bearing upon it from the time of
Charles II. Mr. Burr was astonished, and suspected he was the counsel
for the opposite side. Webster received enough compensation from Burr to
cover the loss of time and money in the former case, and gained,
besides, Burr's admiration and respect.
In the winter of 1824, Webster's youngest child, Charles, died, at the
age of two years. Mrs. Webster wrote her absent husband, "I have dreaded
the hour which should destroy your hopes, but trust you will not let
this event afflict you too much, and that we both shall be able to
resign him without a murmur, happy in the reflection that he has
returned to his Heavenly Father pure as I received him.... Do not, my
dear husband, talk of your own 'final abode;' that is a subject I never
can dwell on for a moment. With you here, my dear, I can never be
desolate. Oh, may Heaven, in its mercy, long preserve you!"
Four years later, "the blessed wife," as he called her, went to her
"final abode." Mr. Webster watched by her side till death took her. Then
at the funeral, in the wet and cold of that January day, he walked close
behind the hearse, holding Julia and Fletcher, his two children, by the
hand. Her body was placed beneath St. Paul's Church, Boston, beside her
children. All were removed afterward to Marshfield.
Webster went back to Washington, having been made United States senator,
but he seemed broken-hearted, and unable to perform his duties. He wrote
to a friend, "Like an angel of God, indeed. I hope she is in purity, in
happiness, and in immortality; but I would fain hope that, in kind
remembrance of those she has left, in a lingering human sympathy and
human love, she may yet be, as God originally created her, a 'little
lower than the angels.' I cannot pursue these thoughts, nor turn back to
see what I have written." Again he wrote, "I feel a vacuum, an
indifference, a want of motive, which I cannot describe. I hope my
children, and the society of my best friends, may rouse me; but I can
never see such days as I have seen. Yet I should not repine; I have
enjoyed much, very much; and, if I were to die to-night, I should bless
God most fervently that I have lived."
Judge Story spoke of Mrs. Webster as a sister with "her kindness of
heart, her generous feelings, her mild and conciliatory temper, her warm
and elevated affections, her constancy, purity, and piety, her noble
disinterestedness, and her excellent sense."
Later, Mr. Webster married Caroline Le Roy, the daughter of a New York
merchant, but no affection ever effaced from his heart the memory of
Grace Webster, whom he always spoke of as "the mother of his children."
The next year, 1829, his idolized brother Ezekiel died suddenly at
forty-nine, while he was addressing a jury in the court-house at
Concord, New Hampshire.
Daniel Webster said of this shock, "I have felt but one such in life;
and this follows so soon that it requires more fortitude than I possess
to bear it with firmness, and, perhaps, as I ought. I am aware that the
case admits no remedy, nor any present relief; and endeavor to console
myself with reflecting that I have had much happiness with lost
connections, and that they must expect to lose beloved objects in this
world who have beloved objects to lose."
Recently, at the home of Kate Sanborn in New York, the grand-niece of
Daniel Webster, I met the sweet-faced wife of Ezekiel, young in her
feelings and young in face despite her four-score years. Here I saw a
picture of the great orator in his youth, the desk on which he wrote,
and scores of mementos of Marshfield and "Elms Farms," treasured by the
cultivated woman who bears token of her renowned kinship.
With all these sorrows crowded into Mr. Webster's life, he could not
cease his pressing work in Congress. Andrew Jackson had become
President, and John C. Calhoun had preached his Nullification doctrines
till South Carolina was ready to separate herself from the Union,
because of her dissatisfaction with the tariff laws. Webster had
somewhat changed his views, and had become a supporter of the "American
System" of Henry Clay, the system of "protection," because he thought
the interests of his constituents demanded it. For himself, he loved
agriculture, but he saw the need of fostering manufactures if we would
have a great and prosperous country.
On December 29, 1829, Mr. Foote, a senator from Connecticut, introduced
a resolution to inquire respecting the sales and surveys of western
lands. In a long debate which followed, General Hayne of South Carolina
took occasion to chastise New England, in no tender words, for her
desire to build up herself in wealth at the expense of the West and
South. On January 20, Webster made his first reply to the General,
having only a night in which to prepare his speech. The notes filled
three pages of ordinary letter paper, while the speech, as reported,
filled twenty pages.
Again General Hayne spoke in an able yet personal manner, asserting the
doctrines of nullification, and attempting to justify the position of
his State in seceding. Mr. Webster took notes while he was speaking,
but, as the Senate adjourned, his speech did not come till the following
day. Again he had but a night in which to prepare.
When the morning of January 26 came, the galleries, floor, and staircase
were crowded with eager men and women. "It is a critical moment," said
Mr. Bell, of New Hampshire, to Mr. Webster, "and it is time, it is high
time, that the people of this country should know what this Constitution
_is_." "Then," answered Webster, "by the blessing of Heaven they shall
learn, this day, before the sun goes down, what I understand it to be."
When Webster began speaking his words were slowly uttered. "Mr.
President,--When the mariner has been tossed, for many days, in thick
weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first
pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his
latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his
true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float farther
on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed,
that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are. I ask for
the reading of the resolution."
And then with trenchant sarcasm, unanswerable logic, and the intense
feeling which belongs to true oratory, Mr. Webster taught the American
people the strength and holding power of the Constitution, which a civil
war, thirty years later, was to prove unalterably. The speech, which
filled seventy printed pages, came from only five pages of notes. When
asked how long he was in preparation for the reply to Hayne, he
answered, his "whole life."
How often his loving defence of Massachusetts has been quoted! "Mr.
President, I shall enter on no encomiums 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. The bones of her sons, falling in the great
struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State,
from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie 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 and necessary
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
gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the
proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.
"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments
of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent;
on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal
blood!--Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the
gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in
their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single
star obscured--bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as
_What is all this worth_? Nor those other words of delusion and folly,
_Liberty first_, and _Union_ afterwards--but everywhere, spread all over
in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they
float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole
heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American
heart--Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"
Of course, this reply to Hayne electrified the country, and Webster
began to be mentioned for the presidential chair. No one who ever heard
him speak, with his wonderful magnetism, his majestic enthusiasm, his
rich, full voice, and his unsurpassed physique, could ever forget the
man, his words, or his presence. When he visited Europe, some said,
"There goes a king." When Sydney Smith saw him, he exclaimed, "Good
Heavens! he is a small cathedral by himself."
Through Jackson's administration Webster was his courteous opponent in
most measures, but in the nullification scheme he was heart and hand
with the fearless, self-willed general. When Henry Clay brought forward
his compromise tariff bill, which pacified the nullifiers, Webster
opposed it, believing that, in the face of this opposition to the
Constitution, concession was unwise.
In 1833, the famous statesman made an extended journey through the West,
and was everywhere honored and feted. Church-bells were rung, cannon
fired, and houses decorated at his coming. Great crowds gathered
everywhere to hear him speak.
By this time a party was developing in opposition to the unusual powers
exercised by General Jackson, whose great victory at New Orleans had
made him the idol of the people. The party was the more easily formed
from the financial troubles under Van Buren, he having reaped the
harvest of which Jackson had sown the seed. Naturally, Mr. Webster
became the leader of this Whig party, so called from the Whig party in
England, formed to resist the ultra demands of the king. Massachusetts
favored him for the presidency. Boston presented him with a massive
silver vase, before an audience of four thousand persons. Philadelphia
and Baltimore gave him public dinners. Letters came from various States
urging his name upon the National Convention, which met at Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, December 4, 1839. But Mr. Webster had been so prominent
that his views upon all public questions were too well known, therefore
General William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, an honored soldier of the War
of 1812, was chosen, as being a more "available" candidate.
Webster must have been sorely disappointed, as were his friends, but he
at once began to work earnestly for his party, spoke constantly at
meetings, and helped to elect Harrison, who died one month after the
exciting election, at the age of sixty-eight. John Tyler, of Virginia,
the Vice-President, succeeded him, and Mr. Webster remained Secretary of
State under him, as he had been under Harrison. Here the duties were
arduous and complicated.
For many years the north-eastern boundary had been a matter of dispute
between England and the United States. Bitter feeling had been
engendered also by trouble in Canada in 1837. Several of those in
rebellion had fled from Canada to the States, had fitted out an American
steamboat, the Carolina, to make incursions into that country. She was
burned by a party of Canadians, and an American was killed. McLeod,
from Canada, acknowledged himself the slayer, was arrested, and
committed for murder. The British were angered by this, as were the
Americans by the search of their vessels by British cruisers. Lord
Ashburton was finally sent as a special envoy to the United States, and
largely through the statesmanship of Mr. Webster the Ashburton treaty
was concluded, and war between the nations avoided.
Meantime, President Tyler had vetoed the bill for establishing another
United States Bank, and thereby set his own party against him. Most of
the cabinet resigned, and although much pressure was brought by the Whig
party upon Mr. Webster, that he resign also, he remained till the treaty
matter was settled. Then he returned to Marshfield, and devoted himself
once more to the law.
He had spent lavishly upon his farm; he had also bought western land,
and lost money by his investments. He felt obliged to entertain friends,
and this was expensive. Besides, he never kept regular accounts, often
in his generosity gave five hundred dollars when he should have given
but five, and now found himself embarrassed by debts which were a source
of sorrow to his friends as well as to himself, and a source of
advantage to his enemies. Thirty-five thousand dollars were now given
him by his admirers, from which he received a yearly income.