passage, and if the cry of injured justice could pierce the flattering
din of office-seekers surrounding him. But, reading the paragraph as
the expression of a _hope_ of what may one day be, how grand and
consoling it is! The information given in this fine oration respecting
the condition of Greece and the history of her struggle for
independence was provided for him by the industry of his friend,
Edward Everett.
One of the minor triumphs of Mr. Webster's early Congressional life
was his conquest of the heart of John Randolph. In the course of a
debate on the sugar tax, in 1816, Mr. Webster had the very common
fortune of offending the irascible member from Virginia, and Mr.
Randolph, as his custom was, demanded an explanation of the offensive
words. Explanation was refused by the member from Massachusetts;
whereupon Mr. Randolph demanded "the satisfaction which his insulted
feelings required." Mr. Webster's reply to this preposterous demand
was everything that it ought to have been. He told Mr. Randolph that
he had no right to an explanation, and that the temper and style of
the demand were such as to forbid its being conceded as a matter of
courtesy. He denied, too, the right of any man to call him to the
field for what he might please to consider an insult to his feelings,
although he should be "always prepared to repel in a suitable manner
the aggression of any man who may presume upon such a refusal." The
eccentric Virginian was so much pleased with Mr. Webster's bearing
upon this occasion, that he manifested a particular regard for him,
and pronounced him a very able man for a Yankee.
It was during these years that Daniel Webster became dear, beyond all
other men of his time, to the people of New England. Removing to
Boston in 1816, and remaining out of Congress for some years, he won
the first place at the New England bar, and a place equal to the
foremost at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. Not one
of his legal arguments has been exactly reported, and some of the most
important of them we possess merely in outline; but in such reports as
we have, the weight and clearness of his mind are abundantly apparent.
In almost every argument of his, there can be found digressions which
relieve the strained attention of the bench, and please the unlearned
hearer; and he had a happy way of suddenly crystallizing his argument
into one luminous phrase, which often seemed to prove his case by
merely stating it. Thus, in the Dartmouth College case, he made a rare
display of learning (furnished him by associate counsel, he tells us);
but his argument is concentrated in two of his simplest sentences:--1.
The endowment of a college is private property; 2. The charter of a
college is that which constitutes its endowment private property. The
Supreme Court accepted these two propositions, and thus secured to
every college in the country its right to its endowment. This seems
too simple for argument, but it cost a prodigious and powerfully
contested lawsuit to reduce the question to this simplicity; and it
was Webster's large, calm, and discriminating glance which detected
these two fundamental truths in the mountain mass of testimony,
argument, and judicial decision. In arguing the great steamboat case,
too, he displayed the same qualities of mind. New York having granted
to Livingston and Fulton the exclusive right to navigate her waters by
steamboats, certain citizens of New Jersey objected, and, after a
fierce struggle upon the waters themselves, transferred the contest to
the Supreme Court. Mr. Webster said: "The commerce of the United
States, under the Constitution of 1787, is a unit," and "what we call
the waters of the State of New York are, for the purposes of
navigation and commerce, the waters of the United States"; therefore
no State can grant exclusive privileges. The Supreme Court affirmed
this to be the true doctrine, and thenceforth Captain Cornelius
Vanderbilt ran his steamboat without feeling it necessary, on
approaching New York, to station a lady at the helm and to hide
himself in the hold. Along with this concentrating power, Mr. Webster
possessed, as every school-boy knows, a fine talent for amplification
and narrative. His narration of the murder of Captain White was almost
enough of itself to hang a man.
But it was not his substantial services to his country which drew upon
him the eyes of all New England, and made him dear to every son of the
Pilgrims. In 1820, the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth celebrated the
anniversary of the landing of their forefathers in America. At the
dinner of the Society, that day, every man found beside his plate five
kernels of corn, to remind him of the time when that was the daily
allowance of the settlers, and it devolved upon Daniel Webster to show
how worthy they were of better fare. His address on this anniversary
is but an amplification of his Junior Fourth-of-July oration of 1800;
but what an amplification! It differed from that youthful essay as the
first flights of a young eagle, from branch to branch upon its native
tree, differ from the sweep of his wings when he takes a continent in
his flight, and swings from mountain range to mountain range. We are
aware that eulogy is, of all the kinds of composition, the easiest to
execute in a tolerable manner. What Mr. Everett calls "patriotic
eloquence" should usually be left to persons who are in the gushing
time of life; for when men address men, they should say something,
clear up something, help forward something, accomplish something. It
is not becoming in a full-grown man to utter melodious wind.
Nevertheless, it can be truly said of this splendid and irresistible
oration, that it carries that kind of composition as far as we can
ever expect to see it carried, even in this its native land. What a
triumphant joy it must have been to an audience, accustomed for three
or four generations to regard preaching as the noblest work of man,
keenly susceptible to all the excellences of uttered speech, and who
now heard their plain old fathers and grandfathers praised in such
massive and magnificent English! Nor can it be said that this speech
says nothing. In 1820 it was still part of the industry of New England
to fabricate certain articles required by slave-traders in their
hellish business; and there were still descendants of the Pilgrims who
were actually engaged in the traffic.
"If there be," exclaimed the orator,
"within the extent of our knowledge or influence any
participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves here,
upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It
is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the
shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the
smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still
forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who by
stealth and at midnight labor in this work of hell, foul and
dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of
misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it
cease to be of New England."--_Works_, Vol. I. pp. 45, 46.
And he proceeds, in language still more energetic, to call upon his
countrymen to purge their land of this iniquity. This oration, widely
circulated through the press, gave the orator universal celebrity in
the Northern States, and was one of the many causes which secured his
continuance in the national councils.
Such was his popularity in Boston, that, in 1824, he was re-elected to
Congress by 4,990 votes out of 5,000; and such was his celebrity in
his profession, that his annual retainers from banks, insurance
companies, and mercantile firms yielded an income that would have
satisfied most lawyers even of great eminence.
Those were not the times of five-thousand-dollar fees. As late as
1819, as we see in Mr. Webster's books, he gave "advice" in important
cases for twenty dollars; his regular retaining fee was fifty dollars;
his "annual retainer," one hundred dollars; his whole charge for
conducting a cause rarely exceeded five hundred dollars; and the
income of a whole year averaged about twenty thousand dollars. Twenty
years later, he has gained a larger sum than that by the trial of a
single cause; but in 1820 such an income was immense, and probably not
exceeded by that of any other American lawyer. Most lawyers in the
United States, he once said, "live well, work hard, and die poor"; and
this is particularly likely to be the case with lawyers who spend six
months of the year in Congress.
Northern members of Congress, from the foundation of the government,
have usually gratified their ambition only by the sacrifice of their
interests. The Congress of the United States, modelled upon the
Parliament of Great Britain, finds in the North no suitable class of
men who can afford to be absent from their affairs half the year. We
should naturally choose to be represented in Washington by men
distinguished in their several spheres; but in the North, almost all
such persons are so involved in business that they cannot accept a
seat in Congress, except at the peril of their fortune; and this
inconvenience is aggravated by the habits that prevail at the seat of
government. In the case of a lawyer like Daniel Webster, who has a
large practice in the Supreme Court, the difficulty is diminished,
because he can usually attend the court without seriously neglecting
his duties in Congress,--usually, but not always. There was one year
in the Congressional life of Mr. Webster when he was kept out of the
Supreme Court for four months by the high duty that devolved upon him
of refuting Calhoun's nullification subtilties; but even in that year,
his professional income was more than seven thousand dollars; and he
ought by that time, after thirty years of most successful practice, to
have been independent of his profession. He was not, however; and
never would have been, if he had practised a century. Those habits of
profusion, that reckless disregard of pecuniary considerations, of
which we noticed indications in his early days, seemed to be part of
his moral constitution. He never appeared to know how much money he
had, nor how much he owed; and, what was worse, he never appeared to
care. He was a profuse giver and a careless payer. It was far easier
for him to send a hundred-dollar note in reply to a begging letter,
than it was to discharge a long-standing account; and when he had
wasted his resources in extravagant and demoralizing gifts, he deemed
it a sufficient answer to a presented bill to ask his creditor how a
man could pay money who had none.
It is not true, therefore, that the frequent embarrassments of his
later years were due to the loss of practice by his attendance in
Congress; because, in the years when his professional gains were
smallest, his income was large enough for the wants of any reasonable
man. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that when, in 1827, by his
acceptance of a seat in the Senate, he gave himself permanently to
public life, he made a sacrifice of his pecuniary interests which, for
a man of such vast requirements and uncalculating habits, was very
great.
But his reward was also very great. On that elevated theatre he soon
found an opportunity for the display of his talents, which, while it
honored and served his country, rendered him the foremost man in that
part of it where such talents as his could be appreciated.
All wars of which we have any knowledge have consisted of two parts:
first, a war of words; secondly, the conflict of arms. The war of
words which issued in the late Rebellion began, in 1828, by the
publication of Mr. Calhoun's first paper upon Nullification, called
the South Carolina Exposition; and it ended in April, 1861, when
President Lincoln issued his call for seventy-five thousand troops,
which excited so much merriment at Montgomery. This was a period of
thirty-three years, during which every person in the United States who
could use either tongue or pen joined in the strife of words, and
contributed his share either toward hastening or postponing the final
appeal to the sword. Men fight with one another, says Dr. Franklin,
because they have not sense enough to settle their disputes in any
other way; and when once they have begun, never stop killing one
another as long as they have money enough "to pay the butchers." So it
appeared in our case. Of all the men who took part in this preliminary
war of words, Daniel Webster was incomparably the ablest. He seemed
charged with a message and a mission to the people of the United
States; and almost everything that he said in his whole life of real
value has reference to that message and that mission. The necessity of
the Union of these States, the nature of the tie that binds them
together, the means by which alone that tie can be kept strong,--this
was what he came charged to impart to us; and when he had fully
delivered this message, he had done his work. His numberless speeches
upon the passing questions of the day,--tariff, Bank, currency,
Sub-treasury, and the rest,--in which the partisan spoke rather than
the man may have had their value at the time, but there is little in
them of durable worth. Those of them which events have not refuted,
time has rendered obsolete. No general principles are established in
them which can be applied to new cases. Indeed, he used often to
assert that there _were_ no general principles in practical
statesmanship, but that the government of nations is, and must be, a
series of expedients. Several times, in his published works, can be
found the assertion, that there is no such thing as a science of
political economy, though he says he had "turned over" all the authors
on that subject from Adam Smith to his own time. It is when he speaks
of the Union and the Constitution, and when he is rousing the
sentiment of nationality, that he utters, not, indeed, eternal truths,
but truths necessary to the existence of the United States, and which
can only become obsolete when the nation is no more.
The whole of his previous life had been an unconscious preparation for
these great debates. It was one of the recollections of his childhood,
that, in his eighth year, he had bought a handkerchief upon which was
printed the Constitution of 1787, which he then read through; and
while he was a farmer's boy at home, the great question of its
acceptance or rejection had been decided. His father's party was the
party for the Constitution, whose only regret concerning it was, that
it was not so much of a constitution as they wished it to be. The
Republicans dwelt upon its defects and dangers; the Federalists, upon
its advantages and beauties: so that all that this receptive lad heard
of it at his father's fireside was of its value and necessity. We see
in his youthful orations that nothing in the history of the continent
struck his imagination so powerfully as the spectacle of thirty-eight
gentlemen meeting in a quiet city, and peacefully settling the terms
of a national union between thirteen sovereign States, most of which
gave up, voluntarily, what the sword alone was once supposed capable
of extorting. In all his orations on days of national festivity or
mourning, we observe that his weightiest eulogy falls upon those who
were conspicuous in this great business. Because Hamilton aided in it,
he revered his memory; because Madison was its best interpreter, he
venerated his name and deferred absolutely to his judgment. It was
clear to his mind that the President can only dismiss an officer of
the government as he appoints him, by and with the advice and consent
of the Senate; but he would not permit himself to think so against Mr.
Madison's decision. His own triumphs at the bar--those upon which he
plumed himself---were all such as resulted from his lonely broodings
over, and patient study of, the Constitution of his country. A native
of one of the smallest of the States, to which the Union was an
unmixed benefit and called for no sacrifice of pride, he grew up into
nationality without having to pass through any probation of States'
rights scruples. Indeed, it was as natural for a man of his calibre to
be a national man as it is for his own Monadnock to be three thousand
feet above the level of the sea.
The South Carolina Exposition of 1828 appeared to fall still-born from
the press. Neither General Jackson nor any of his nearest friends seem
to have been so much as aware of its existence; certainly they
attached no importance to it. Colonel Benton assures us, that to him
the Hayne debate, so far as it related to constitutional questions,
seemed a mere oratorical display, without adequate cause or object;
and we know that General Jackson, intimately allied with the Hayne
family and strongly attached to Colonel Hayne himself, wished him
success in the debate, and heard with regret that Mr. Webster was
"demolishing" him. Far, indeed, was any one from supposing that a
movement had been set on foot which was to end only with the total
destruction of the "interest" sought to be protected by it. Far was
any one from foreseeing that so poor and slight a thing as the
Exposition was the beginning of forty years of strife. It is evident
from the Banquo passage of Mr. Webster's principal speech, when,
looking at Vice-President Calhoun, he reminded that ambitious man
that, in joining the coalition which made Jackson President, he had
only given Van Buren a push toward the Presidency,--"No son of
_theirs_ succeeding,"--it is evident, we say, from this passage, and
from other covert allusions, that he understood the game of
Nullification from the beginning, so far as its objects were personal.
But there is no reason for supposing that he attached importance to it
before that memorable afternoon in December, 1830, when he strolled
from the Supreme Court into the Senate-chamber, and chanced to hear
Colonel Hayne reviling New England, and repeating the doctrines of the
South Carolina Exposition.
Every one knows the story of this first triumph of the United States
over its enemies. Daniel Webster, as Mr. Everett records, appeared to
be the only person in Washington who was entirely at his ease; and he
was so remarkably unconcerned, that Mr. Everett feared he was not
aware of the expectations of the public, and the urgent necessity of
his exerting all his powers. Another friend mentions, that on the day
before the delivery of the principal speech the orator lay down as
usual, after dinner, upon a sofa, and soon was heard laughing to
himself. Being asked what he was laughing at, he said he had just
thought of a way to turn Colonel Hayne's quotation about Banquo's
ghost against himself, and he was going to get up and make a note of
it. This he did, and then resumed his nap.
Notwithstanding these appearances of indifference, he was fully roused
to the importance of the occasion; and, indeed, we have the impression
that only on this occasion, in his whole life, were all his powers in
full activity and his entire mass of being in full glow. But even then
the artist was apparent in all that he did, and particularly in the
dress which he wore. At that time, in his forty-eighth year, his hair
was still as black as an Indian's, and it lay in considerable masses
about the spacious dome of his forehead. His form had neither the
slenderness of his youth nor the elephantine magnitude of his later
years; it was fully, but finely, developed, imposing and stately, yet
not wanting in alertness and grace. No costume could have been better
suited to it than his blue coat and glittering gilt buttons, his ample
yellow waistcoat, his black trousers, and snowy cravat. It was in some
degree, perhaps, owing to the elegance and daintiness of his dress
that, while the New England men among his hearers were moved to tears,
many Southern members, like Colonel Benton, regarded the speech merely
as a Fourth-of-July oration delivered on the 6th of January. Benton
assures us, however, that he soon discovered his error, for the
Nullifiers were not to be put down by a speech, and soon revealed
themselves in their true character, as "irreconcilable" foes of the
Union. This was Daniel Webster's own word in speaking of that faction
in 1830,--"irreconcilable."
After this transcendent effort,--perhaps the greatest of its kind ever
made by man,--Daniel Webster had nothing to gain in the esteem of the
Northern States. He was indisputably our foremost man, and in
Massachusetts there was no one who could be said to be second to him
in the regard of the people: he was a whole species in himself. In the
subsequent winter of debate with Calhoun upon the same subject, he
added many details to his argument, developed it in many directions,
and accumulated a great body of constitutional reasoning; but so far
as the people were concerned, the reply to Hayne sufficed. In all
those debates we are struck with his colossal, his superfluous
superiority to his opponents; and we wonder how it could have been
that such a man should have thought it worth while to refute such
puerilities. It was, however, abundantly worth while. The assailed
Constitution needed such a defender. It was necessary that the
patriotic feeling of the American people, which was destined to a
trial so severe, should have an unshakable basis of intelligent
conviction. It was necessary that all men should be made distinctly to
see that the Constitution was not a "compact" to which the States
"acceded," and from which they could secede, but the fundamental law,
which the people had established and ordained, from which there could
be no secession but by revolution. It was necessary that the country
should be made to understand that Nullification and Secession were one
and the same; and that to admit the first, promising to stop short at
the second, was as though a man "should take the plunge of Niagara and
cry out that he would stop half-way down." Mr. Webster's principal
speech on this subject, delivered in 1832, has, and will ever have,
with the people and the Courts of the United States, the authority of
a judicial decision; and it might very properly be added to popular
editions of the Constitution as an appendix. Into the creation of the
feeling and opinion which fought out the late war for the Union a
thousand and ten thousand causes entered; every man who had ever
performed a patriotic action, and every man who ever from his heart
had spoken a patriotic word, contributed to its production; but to no
man, perhaps, were we more indebted for it than to the Daniel Webster
of 1830 and 1832.
We cannot so highly commend his votes in 1832 as his speeches. General
Jackson's mode of dealing with nullification seems to us the model for
every government to follow which has to deal with discontented
subjects:--1. To take care that the laws are obeyed; 2. To remove the
real grounds of discontent. This was General Jackson's plan. This,
also, was the aim of Mr. Clay's compromise. Mr. Webster objected to
both, on the ground that nullification was rebellion, and that no
legislation respecting the pretext for rebellion should be entertained
until the rebellion was quelled. Thus he came out of the battle, dear
to the thinking people of the country, but estranged from the three
political powers,--Henry Clay and his friends, General Jackson and his
friends, Calhoun and his friends; and though he soon lapsed again
under the leadership of Mr. Clay, there was never again a cordial
union between him and any interior circle of politicians who could
have gratified his ambition. Deceived by the thunders of applause
which greeted him wherever he went, and the intense adulation of his
own immediate circle, he thought that he too could be an independent
power in politics. Two wild vagaries seemed to have haunted him ever
after: first, that a man could merit the Presidency; secondly, that a
man could get the Presidency by meriting it.