DANIEL WEBSTER. Ar a time when the relations between | shire. In a speech delivered by him in England and America are looked at 1840, at Saratoga, Mr. Webster himself with interest, and when that vast and alluded, with evident pride, to his birthincreasing country is regarded as our place, a very humble farm-house, and to natural ally, in the event of a combina- the lowly condition of his family at the tion of the despotic powers against us, time: it was not unnatural that the death of one of her greatest statesmen, and of one who was brought immediately into contact with our government in the important settlement of the Oregon question, should be looked at with interest, and the events of his life should be inquired after with some curiosity. "It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin; but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin raised amid the snow-drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early as that, when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney, and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of On the other side of the Atlantic a white man's habitation between it ocean his loss was felt as national. and the settlements on the rivers of The whole of the press teemed with memorials and reviews of his life; and what was more honourable to him, even those most opposed to him politically, -and America it must be remembered is a country wherein party spirit runs high,-were the first to offer their testimony to his talent, his integrity, and his thorough political honesty. A man who could so interest a vast country, so pervade the hearts of his fellow men, must needs be remarkable; and such indeed was DANIEL WEBSTER. In tracing his life, we shall find how unvarying an accompaniment is success to industry and determination, and we shall read some useful lessons, in the history of one who commenced life as a schoolmaster, and rose to Secretary of state, to our own too exclusive and aristocratic government. One of the very first settlers in New Hampshire was Thomas Webster, who had himself come originally from Scotland, and whose character, earnest, stern and unbending, seems to have fallen upon his descendants. From this same Thomas proceeded in the direct male line, Ebenezer Webster, an old revolutionary soldier, serving as a captain under Major-General Henk, and who finally died whilst performing the duties of the judge of the Court of Common Pleas, in New Hampshire; leaving by his second wife, Abigail Eastman, a lady of a Welsh family, five children, three daughters and two boys, Ezekiel and Daniel Webster. The younger of these, and the subject of this paper, was born on the 18th of January, 1782, in the town of Salisbury, Merrimac county, New Hamp Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it, to teach them the hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode. I weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are now living; and if ever I am ashamed of it, or if I ever fail in affectionate veneration for him who reared it, and defended it against savage violence and destruction, cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and, through the fire and blood of a seven years' revolutionary war, shrunk from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country, and to raise his children to a better condition than his own, may my name, and the name of my posterity, be blotted for ever from the memory of mankind."* His earlier youth appears to have been entirely spent under the guidance of his mother, who, on account of his weakness, herself superintended his education at that period. His father, like many other American gentlemen, turned, it would appear, every possible source of income to account, being himself but a poor man: a fact, which made him also take out his son to help him in his business, when he should have been at school. But by this Webster lost little, as the following anecdote will testify: "Near his birthplace and in the bed of a little brook are the remains of an * Webster's Speeches, 6 vols. Boston, old mill which once stood in a dark glen, and was then surrounded by a majestic forest which covered the neighbouring hills. The mill was a source of income to Ebenezer Webster, and he kept it in operation. To that mill, Daniel, though a small boy, went daily to assist his father in sawing boards. He was apt in learning anything useful, and soon became so expert in doing everything required, that his services, as an assistant, were valuable. But his time was not mispent or misapplied. After setting the saw and hoisting the gate,' and while the saw was passing through the log from end to end, which occupied from ten to fifteen minutes for each board, Daniel was usually seen reading attentively the books in the way of history and biography which he was permitted to take from the house. 66 "There, in that old saw-mill, surrounded by forests, in the midst of the great noise which such a mill makes, and this, too, without materially neglecting his task, he made himself familiar with the most remarkable events recorded by the pen of history, and with the lives and characters of the most celebrated persons who had lived in the olden time. He has never forgotten what he read there. So tenacious is his memory, that it is said by those who know, he could recite long passages from, and state with accuracy the contents of, pages in the old books which he read there and had scarcely looked at since."* Even at so early an age, there seemed with the future statesman, a perfect consciousness of the value of life, and, what seems stranger possibly to us than to his own countrymen, where boyish foresight is not uncommon, a complete knowledge of the ways by which that life was to be made rich, honourable, and successful; for he himself has told us, that when a mere boy, the motto which prompted all his conduct was : "Since I know nothing, and have nothing, I must learn and earn.' His education was, it would seem, the average education of an American citizen, the difference consisting, as it in truth does with most of us, in the use made of the time occupied in education. After being under various masters, of whom perhaps the most known was Joseph S. Buckminster, he went to college. Of the puerile and intensely * Personal Memorials of Daniel Webster. dull stories told of him at this period in the "Personal Memorials," published at Philadelphia, we relate nothing, the book having nothing curious about it but its benighting dulness. In 1797 the future statesman entered Dartmouth College as a freshman. The students of that day were very different from the smart and dandified youths of our time. Daniel set out in a suit entirely of domestic manufacture, mounted upon the least valuable of his father's horses, the one which could best be spared from the farm, and the whole of his wardrobe and library deposited in two saddle-bags. Through rain and storm the student proceeded on his slow-paced nag, unmindful of the weather, being obliged to join at the commencement of term, and arrived at last in a very piteous condition. He joined his class the next day, and at once took his position, as a first-rate man, a position which he has since held in the intellectual world. He went through college in a manner creditable to himself, and gratifying to his friends. He graduated in 1801, and it was thought that he would receive the additional honour of the Valedictory; but this honour was bestowed upon some other, less distinguished in after life than his less fortunate rival. He received, however, a diploma, which "common-place compliment," to quote from one who knew him well, only displeased him. This authority indeed adds a story of his assembling his class-mates on the college green, and tearing up the honorary document with the exclamation, "My industry may make me a great man, but this miserable parchment cannot;" an act which, if true, redounds by the way, very little to his credit. On his return from college, his leading wish seems to have been that his brother Ezekiel (a great love appears ever to have subsisted between the brothers) should have the benefit of a collegiate education as well as himself. But his father's circumstances were too poor to admit of this; and to accomplish it, Daniel accepted the situation of schoolmaster, with the determination of devoting part of his earnings towards the expenses of his brother's education. The place where Mr. Webster spent the most of his time as a schoolmaster was Freyburg, in the state of Maine. He had been invited thither by a friend of his father, who was acquainted with the circumstances of the family. His school was quite large, and his salary 350 dollars, to which he added a considerable sum by devoting his evenings to copying deeds in the office of the county recorder, at twenty-five cents per deed. He also found time during this period to go through with his first reading of Blackstone's Commentaries, and other substantial works, which have been so good a foundation to his after fame. At the drudgery of engrossing he laboured a great part of the night, and there now exist in his handwriting two large folios as proofs of his labours and industry. By economy at the end of the first year he was enabled to pay 100 dollars to support his brother at college. To add to this, Ezekiel taught an evening school for sailors at Boston as well as a private school. In the year 1805, and of course in the twenty-third year of his age, Mr. Webster was tendered the vacant clerkship of the Court of Common Pleas for the county of Hillsborough, New Hampshire. His father was one of the judges of court, and the appointment had been bestowed upon his son by his colleagues as a token of personal regard. The office was worth some 1500 dollars, which in those days and that section of country, was equal to the salary of secretary of state of the present day. formidable to your enemies, and you will have nothing to fear." The student listened attentively to these sound arguments, and had the good sense to appreciate them. His determination was immediately made; and now came the dreaded business of advising his father as to his intended course. He at once sought him and finding him alone spoke gaily about the office; expressed his great obligation to their honours, and his intention to write them a most respectful letter: if he could have consented to record anybody's judgments, he should have been proud to have recorded their honours', &c., &c. He proceeded in this strain till his father exhibited signs of amazement, it having occurred to him, finally, that his son might all the while be serious. "Do you intend to decline this office?" he said at length. certainly," replied his son. "I cannot think of doing otherwise. I mean to use my tongue in the courts, not my pen; to be an actor, not a registrar of other men's actions." "Most "For a moment Judge Webster seemed angry. He rocked his chair slightly, a flash went over his eye, softened by age, but even then black as jet, but it soon disappeared, and his countenance regained its usual serenity. Well, my son,' said Judge Webster finally, 'your mother always said that you would come to something or nothing, becomo That son was then a student in the a somebody or anobody; it is now settled office of Mr. Gore, in Boston. He re-that you are to be a nobody.' In a few ceived the news with sensations of glad- days the student returned to Boston, ness that he had never before experi- and the subject was never afterwards enced. With a throbbing heart he mentioned in the family."* announced the tidings to his legal coun- Not long after this, and in a surprissellor and friend, and to his utter aston-ingly short time to a European mind, ishment that far-seeing and sagacious who do not consider how rapidly things man expressed his utter disapprobation of the proposed change in his pursuits. "But my father is poor, and I wish to make him comfortable in his old age," replied the student. "That may all be," continued Mr. Gore, "but you should think of the future more than of the present. Become once a clerk and you will always be a clerk, with no prospect of attaining a higher position. Go on and finish your legal studies; you are indeed poor, but there are greater evils than poverty; live on no man's favour; what bread you do eat, let it be the bread of independence; pursue your profession; make yourself useful to the world and are carried forward in a new country like America, we find Mr. Webster accumulating sufficient money from his legal practice to pay the debts of his father; and after another short interval we find him in possession of a large practice at Portsmouth, doing the heaviest law business of any man in New Hampshire," retained in all the important causes, and but seldom appearing as a junior counsel. His powers as an advocate were at once conceded; but his manners at the bar were by some thought to be a little too severe and sharp, but there was no question * March's Reminiscences of Congress. as to his popularity and as to his ability. "The South," said a contemporary of him, "has not his superior, nor the North his equal." In March, 1805, Mr. Webster was admitted to practise in the Suffolk Court of Common Pleas; in May, 1807, he was attorney and counsel of the Superior Court of New Hampshire. In 1808, he married Miss Grace Fletcher, daughter of a New Hampshire clergyman, and by whom he had four children, Grace, Fletcher, Julia and Edward; only one of these survives him, Fletcher, a naval officer. The time was now fast approaching when Webster was to distinguish himself in a larger sphere than that of a barrister, however well known, and however large his fees, and these latter were very heavy; he had, in fact, become so much sought after that his assistance was difficult to be obtained, and his power of oratory was so well acknowledged that counsel dreaded to have him against them. us to raise, in our endeavours to imitate the magnificent structures which they have left us. "A spot," he said, " so distinguished, so connected with interesting memorials as Greece, may naturally create some warmth and enthusiasm." We must, indeed, fly beyond the civilized world, we must pass the dominion of law and the boundaries of knowledge, we must more especially withdraw ourselves from this place, and the scenes and objects which here surround us, if we would separate ourselves entirely from the influence of all those memorials which ancient Greece has transmitted for the admiration and benefit of mankind. This free form of government, this popular assembly, the common council held for the common good, where have we contemplated its earliest models? This practice of free debate and public discussion, the contest of mind with mind, and that popular eloquence, which, if it were now here on a subject like this, would move the stones of the capitol-whose was the language in which all these were first exhibited? Even the edifice in which we now assemble, these proportioned columns, this ornamented architecture, all remind us that Greece has existed, and that we, like the rest of mankind, are her debtors." Not contented, however, with an illustration, at once so beau warming as he proceeded, showed his audience that the Greeks claimed a sympathy above even that of a grateful pupil to its teachers, the sympathy of one Christian nation to another. "The Greeks address the civilized world with a pathos not easy to be resisted, they invoke our favour by more moving considerations than can well belong to the condition of any other people. They stretch their arms to the Christian communities of the earth, beseeching them, by a ge At the age of thirty, in May 1813, he took his seat as representative in Congress, and soon distinguished himself. At the adjournment of Congress he left his residence in Portsmouth, and established himself in Boston. Towards the close of the year 1822, the inhabitants of Boston determined to be represented by one who should reflect a credit on their city, and they so strongly urged this upon Webster that he allowed him-tiful and so appropriate, the orator, self to be put in nomination, and was elected, after being absent from the National Legislature for a term of six years. In 1823, he delivered perhaps the most powerful speech he had yet made, in a proposition looking to an early recognition of Greek independence. A part of this speech, which we shall quote, will let the reader partly into the secret of Webster's success in oratory. He calls to men's minds the ancient glories of the country of Plato and Alcibiades, of Xenophon and Prax-nerous recollection of their ancestors, iteles, of Poetry and Art, and connects this reverential regard with the present life and feelings of his audience by the familiar illustration of the interior of the house in which they sat, the house of representatives, which is of exceeding beauty, a beauty which, as he said, it owes to the arts of Greece. He wishes to raise a sympathy with a people struggling for freedom, and he does so by pointing to the polished marble column which their forefathers taught by the consideration of their own desolated and ruined cities and villages, by their wives and children sold into an accursed slavery, by their own blood which they seem willing to pour out like water, by the common faith, and in that Name which unites all Christians, that they would extend to them at least some token of compassionate regard.” The American Press circulated this powerful speech-part of which, by the way, might well have been applied to plausibility to be based upon, and certain wives and children sold in sla- clearly deducible from, the Virginia very in their own free land-throughout and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and their vast continent, and in the glow 1799, which are known to have been of admiration excited by it Webster drafted respectively by Jefferson and was said to equal Burke, and superior Madison, and repeatedly reaffirmed as to Chatham. In the same year he con-containing the democratic creed resistently favoured the acknowledgment specting the powers of the Federal of South American independence; and Government, and their rightful limitain 1824 made what is called his great tions. Mr. Webster inexorably deFree-trade speech, which was deemed monstrated the incompatibility of this the ablest ever delivered on the subject. doctrine with any real power or force In the same year, John Quincy in the federal government, and, admitAdams was put forward by the New ting fully the right of revolution as Englanders for President. To this superior to all governments, showed election Webster, although it was that a state could not remain in the known that he was no admirer of Mr. Union and assume to nullify acts of Adams, gave his unflinching support, Congress upheld by the supreme court; from the belief that Mr. Adams would that the contrary assumption was condo well for the country. Daniel Web-demned by the Constitution itself, and ster and John Randolph were tellers on the occasion, and Quincy Adams was elected by the vote of thirteen States to eleven; Webster became one of the ablest supporters of the administration of Adams and Clay. In 1826 he was chosen a Senator of the United States, and took his seat in the Upper House. Towards the close of 1827 his first wife died, whilst he was on his way to Washington to take his seat in the Senate. The next year, 1828, was signalized by the defeat of John Quincy Adams, and the accession of General Jackson to the Presidency. utterly at war with the public_tranquillity and safety. Mr. Webster's speeches arrested the Jackson party on the brink of committing itself irretriev ably to the doctrine of nullification—a committal which would have proved an act of suicide. In the Senate he also advocated the recharter of the second United States Bank, opposing the re-election of General Jackson, and supporting Mr. Clay in opposition to him; vigorously opposing nullification when attempted to be put in practice in 1833; opposing the tariff compromise of that year, the removal of deposits, &c. He was candidate for the Presidency in 1836, but received the 12 votes of Massachusetts only. In 1839 he visited Europe, where, with the exception of some weeks spent on the Continent, he passed his time in England, where he was received by our statesmen, and by all with the greatest attention and civility. During the session of 1829-30, occurred the memorable debate on Foote's resolution respecting the Public Lands, wherein Mr. Webster, in replying to Colonel Hayne, of South Carolina, vindicated his right to rank first among living debaters. It is hardly too much to say of his great and lesser speech on that occasion, that they rescued the Federal Constitution from a construction fast becoming popular, He continued in the senate warmly which, once established as correct, advocating General Harrison's election, must have proved its destruction. The and upon that event taking place was constitutional right of any State of the called to fill the place of Secretary of Union to nullify an act of Congress, State, or head of the Cabinet. This whether by its ordinary legislature, or he continued to fill after Harrison's by a convention specially called, once lamented and untimely death, and readmitted as legal, would strip the fede- mained in it till 1843. During his ral authority of all just claim to be con- administration the relations of England sidered a government, and throw us and America seemed likely to become back upon the inefficiency and semi-embroiled through a disputed line of anarchy of the old Continental Confederation. Yet that doctrine of nullification, so frankly propounded and ably defended by Colonel Hayne, in a debate with Webster, claimed, with much boundary. This dispute was known here as the Oregon question. Oregon extends from 42 deg. to 54 deg. 4 min. north lat., and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The terri |