against the Declaration of Independence, and the speech in support of it
ascribed to John Adams in the preceding address, are a portion of the
debates which actually took place in 1776 in the Continental Congress.
Those speeches were composed by Mr. Webster, after the manner of the
ancient historians, as embodying the arguments relied upon by the
friends and opponents of the measure, respectively. They represent
speeches actually made on both sides, but no report of the debates of
this period has been preserved, and Mr. Webster had no aid in framing
these addresses but what was furnished by tradition and the known line
of argument pursued by the speakers and writers of that day for and
against the measure of Independence. The first sentence of the speech
ascribed to Mr. Adams was suggested by the parting scene with Jonathan
Sewall, as described by Mr. Adams himself, in the Preface to the
"Letters of Novanglus and Massachusettensis."
The following answer was written by Mr. Webster to one of the letters of
inquiry above alluded to.
"WASHINGTON, _22 January, 1846_.
"DEAR SIR:--
"I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 18th
instant. Its contents hardly surprise me, as I have received very many
similar communications.
"Your inquiry is easily answered. The Congress of the Revolution sat
with closed doors. Its proceedings were made known to the public from
time to time, by printing its journal; but the debates were not
published. So far as I know, there is not existing, in print or
manuscript, the speech, or any part or fragment of the speech, delivered
by Mr. Adams on the question of the Declaration of Independence. We only
know, from the testimony of his auditors, that he spoke with remarkable
ability and characteristic earnestness.
"The day after the Declaration was made, Mr. Adams, in writing to a
friend, declared the event to be one that 'ought to be commemorated, as
the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It
ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports,
guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent
to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.'
"And on the day of his death, hearing the noise of bells and cannon, he
asked the occasion. On being reminded that it was 'Independent day,' he
replied, 'Independence forever!' These expressions were introduced into
the speech _supposed_ to have been made by him. For the rest I must be
answerable. The speech was written by me, in my house in Boston, the day
before the delivery of the Discourse in Faneuil Hall; a poor substitute,
I am sure it would appear to be, if we could now see the speech actually
made by Mr. Adams on that transcendently important occasion.
"I am, respectfully,
"Your obedient servant,
"DANIEL WEBSTER."
[25] Joseph White, an old man of eighty, was found murdered in his bed,
in Salem, Massachusetts, on the morning of April 7, 1830. A few weeks
later four men--Richard Crowninshield, George Crowninshield, John
Francis Knapp, and Joseph J. Knapp, Jr.--were arrested on the charge of
murder. On June 15 Richard Crowninshield committed suicide in his cell;
George Crowninshield, having proved an alibi, was discharged; and the
two Knapps were tried between July 20 and August 20, the former as
principal and the latter as accessory. Joseph made a full confession,
outside of court, on the government's promise of impunity; but
afterwards refused to repeat this testimony on the witness-stand. It was
shown that the fatal blow was struck by Richard Crowninshield; that John
Francis Knapp, who had bargained with Richard Crowninshield to commit
the murder, was lurking in the neighborhood during the commission of the
crime; and that Joseph J. Knapp was also an accessory before the fact,
having, indeed, projected the murder. The Knapps were executed. A
detailed description of the extraordinary network of circumstances,
before and after the murder, is given in the volume entitled "Great
Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster."
[26] The "Great Debate" in the Senate, between Webster and Hayne, had an
unexpected origin. A resolution had been introduced by Senator Samuel
Augustus Foot, of Connecticut, merely ordering an inquiry into the
expediency of throwing restrictions around future sales of public lands
of the United States. Into the discussion of this resolution, which
lasted five months, was brought a large number of partisan pleas, tariff
arguments, local jealousies, and questions of the right and wrong of
slavery, and of the respective powers of the State and national
governments. Recriminations and even personalities were not infrequent;
and some of the Southern speakers did not refrain, in defence of the new
"nullification" doctrine, from criticism of New England Federalism as
having been essentially selfish, derisive, and unpatriotic. Senator
Robert Young Hayne (1791-1840), of South Carolina, who had been a member
of the Senate since 1823, was conspicuous, in this debate, for his
advocacy of the idea that a State might suspend Federal laws at its
discretion; and his assertions to that effect, combined with sharp
criticisms of Massachusetts, led Mr. Webster to make his famous reply.
Mr. Hayne was subsequently Governor of South Carolina, at the time of
the almost armed collision between that State and President Jackson, in
1832, over the nullification of tariff laws. At one time Governor Hayne
actually issued a proclamation of resistance to the authority of the
general government; but subsequently Congress modified the objectionable
tariff provisions and the State repealed its nullification ordinance,
which President Jackson's firmness had certainly made "null, void, and
no law."
[27] It had been charged that John Quincy Adams, during his presidency
(1825-1829), had sought to purchase the support of Webster by giving
offices to members of the old Federalist party, then merging into the
"National Republican" or Whig party. Furthermore, the opposition had
declared that Adams's bestowal of the Secretaryship of State upon Henry
Clay was in accordance with a bargain by which Adams was to be supported
by the Clay vote in the House of Representatives.
[28] Mr. Webster here quotes parts of lines 69 and 74 of Macbeth, Act
III. Scene 14.
[29] The Ordinance of July 13, 1787, was an act of the Congress of the
Confederation,--prior to the beginning of the constitutional government
of the United States in 1789,--which, in its sixth article, said of the
"Northwest Territory," organized by this Ordinance: "There shall be
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory,
otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted." Under the provisions of this Ordinance Ohio became
a State in 1802. Says Johnston in his "History of American Politics ":
"The Ordinance of 1787 is noteworthy as an exercise by the Congress of
the Confederacy of the right to exclude slavery from the territories. It
will be found that the language of this Ordinance was copied in the
efforts made in 1819 (Missouri), 1846 (Wilmot Proviso), and 1865 (XIIIth
Amendment), to assert and maintain for the Federal Congress under the
Constitution this power of regulating and abolishing slavery in the
territories of the United States, and finally in the States as the
result of civil war."
[30] The line between Pennsylvania, a free State, and Maryland, a slave
State; originally run by two surveyors bearing these names.
[31] The "Virginia Resolutions of 1798," of which the most important is
here quoted, and the similar Kentucky Resolutions of the same year, were
protests of the Republican, or Anti-Federalist, legislatures of the two
States, against the "Alien and Sedition Laws" passed by the Federalist
majority in Congress. These laws were the outgrowth of an almost warlike
feeling between the United States and France, due to a variety of
causes, for the most part discreditable to France. They authorized the
President to order out of the country any foreigner he deemed dangerous;
and imposed fines and imprisonment upon alleged conspirators against
Government measures, or libellers of Congress or the President. The laws
were deemed by the Anti-Federalists to be autocratic and
semi-monarchical. The Virginia protesting resolutions were put into form
by James Madison, afterwards President.
[32] James Hillhouse (1754-1832), of Connecticut.
[33] The District of Columbia is governed directly by Congress, but
sends no representative thereto.
[34] The Embargo Bill of 1807 prohibited American vessels from foreign
trade, and foreign vessels from American, only coasting trade being
permitted. It was directed against England, and was supported by the
Anti-Federalists and bitterly opposed by the Federalists. For the time
it almost destroyed American commerce, and bore especially heavily on
New England.
[35] Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), author of the famous
"Commentaries on the Laws of England" (1765-1769).
[36] Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1675) an
eminent French general, who left memoirs of his campaigns from 1643 to
1658.
[37] See note on page xciv.
[38] John Fries (1764?-1825) was the leader of seven hundred men who
forcibly resisted the levying of the "house or window" tax in
Northampton, Bucks, and Montgomery counties, Pennsylvania, in 1798-1799.
These men liberated prisoners and "arrested" the assessors themselves;
and Fries, when marching toward Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, resisted a
United States marshal. He was tried for treason in 1799, found guilty,
given a new trial in 1800, again found guilty, and sentenced to be
hanged; but President John Adams, against the advice of all his cabinet,
pardoned him and gave a general amnesty to the rioters. Fries became a
well-to-do merchant in Philadelphia.
[39] Interesting examples of Webster's revision of important passages in
this speech may be found by comparing the present standard text with the
original versions as preserved in the Boston Public Library. The
eulogium of Massachusetts, beginning "Mr. President, I shall enter on no
encomium" and ending with "the very spot of its origin," was spoken
thus:
"Sir, I shall be led on this occasion into no eulogium on Massachusetts.
I shall paint no portraiture of her merits, original, ancient or modern.
Yet, Sir, I cannot but remember that Boston was the cradle of liberty,
that in Massachusetts (the parent of this accursed policy so eternally
narrow to the West), etc., etc., etc. I cannot forget that Lexington,
Concord and Bunker Hill _are_ in Massachusetts, and that in men and
means and money she _did_ contribute more than any other State to carry
on the Revolutionary war. There was not a State in the Union whose soil
was not wetted with Massachusetts blood in the Revolutionary war, and it
is to be remembered that of the army to which Cornwallis surrendered at
Yorktown a majority consisted of New England troops. It is painful to me
to recur to these recollections even for the purpose of self-defence,
and even to that end, Sir, I will not extol the intelligence, the
character and the virtue of the people of New England. I leave the theme
to itself, here and everywhere, now and forever."
The first form of the famous concluding passage was as follows:
"When my eyes shall be turned for the last time on the meridian sun, I
hope I may see him shining bright upon my united, free, and happy
country. I hope I shall not live to see his beams falling upon the
dispersed fragments of the structure of this once glorious Union. I hope
I may not see the flag of my country with its stars separated or
obliterated; torn by commotions, smoking with the blood of civil war. I
hope I may not see the standard raised of separate State rights, star
against star, and stripe against stripe; but that the flag of the Union
may keep its stars and its stripes corded and bound together in
indissoluble ties. I hope I shall not see written as its motto, '_First_
liberty, and _then_ Union.' I hope I shall see no such delusive and
deluded motto on the flag of that country. I hope to see, spread all
over it, blazoned in letters of light and proudly floating over land and
sea, that other sentiment, dear to my heart, 'Union _and_ Liberty, now
and forever, one and inseparable.'"
[40] At the beginning of the nineteenth century Marcus Tullius Cicero
was often called Tully.
[41] Bishop George Berkeley's (1684-1753) "On the Prospect of Planting
Arts and Learning in America."
[42] A remark by Fisher Ames (1758-1808), of Massachusetts,--perhaps the
extremest Federalist of his time.
[43] The famous phrase "honest friendship with all nations, entangling
alliances with none" was not Washington's, but Jefferson's.
[44] In the debate on Henry Clay's Compromise resolutions.
[45] Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad, book xviii., lines 701-4.
Webster changes the first word, "Thus," to "Now."
[46] Shakespeare, King Henry the Fifth, Prologue, lines 1-4.
[47] Mr. Webster's table contained, of course, the figures for 1793 and
1851 only. For the sake of illustration, those for 1900 are now added.
[48] Including Hawaii, but not the other foreign possessions.
[49] Including Alaska, but no other possession not contiguous to the
United States.
[50] Male population available for defence.
[51] Total lighted aids in the year 1893.
[52] The area given for 1851 was incorrect.
[53] Exclusive of double tracks and sidings.
[54] Total liabilities.
[55] Excluding private lines.
[56] Including public, society, and school libraries.
[57] Total from all parts of the world.
[58] The Washington monument here mentioned had been begun in 1848. Work
was continued, by State and other donations, until 1855, when it was
abandoned until 1877. But as the unfinished condition of the shaft was
felt to be a sort of national disgrace, its construction was resumed in
the last-named year, under a Congressional appropriation, and steadily
pushed forward until the completion of the noble obelisk in 1884, at a
total cost of $1,300,000. It is built of white Maryland marble, and is
555 feet high--the loftiest masonry construction in the world, though
much surpassed in height by the steel Eiffel Tower in Paris.
[59] From the address at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill
Monument.