DANIEL WEBSTER.
THE DEFENDER OF NATIONAL UNION.
MONG the men who may properly be called the makers of the nation, Daniel Webster holds a foremost place. If Washington was “the father of his country,” and Lincoln its “saviour,” it may also be said that it was Webster, more than any other one man, who laid down the principles upon which it was made possible for the nation to endure; for it was he who maintained that the Federal Constitution created not a league, but a nation, thus enunciating far in advance the theories which were wrought into our constitutional law at the expense of a long and bloody Civil War.
The life of Daniel Webster extended from 1782 until 1852. His father was one of the brave men who fought at Lexington, and Daniel was the youngest of ten children who were compelled very early in life to share in the labor of supporting the family on a rocky New Hampshire farm. Working in his father’s sawmill, he used the time while the saw was going through the log in devouring a book. His abilities were very remarkable and the fame of “Webster’s boy” was known far and wide. His memory was very extraordinary. In a competition between the boys of his school in committing to memory verses in the Bible, the teacher heard him repeat some sixty or seventy which he had committed between Saturday and Monday and was then obliged to give up as Webster declared that there were several chapters more that he had learned. By means of great sacrifice on the part of the entire family, Daniel was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy, and, by teaching school in vacations, made his way through Dartmouth College. He took up the study of law and was admitted to practice in 1805.
There was something in Mr. Webster’s appearance and bearing which must have been very majestic. He seemed to everyone to be a giant; but as his proportions were not those of an unusually large man, his majestic appearance must have been due to something within which shone out through his piercing eyes and spoke in his finely cut and noble features. It is said that he never punished his children, but, when they did wrong, he would send for them and silently look at them, and the sorrow or the anger of the look was reproach enough.
Webster was a lawyer, an orator and a statesman. As a lawyer, his most famous arguments are those in the “Dartmouth College Case,” the “White Murder Case” and the “Steamboat Case,” as they are called. A part of his speech in the “Murder Case” is still printed in the school readers. The “Dartmouth College Case” is very famous. It was a suit whose success would have destroyed the college, and, after trial in the State Courts, it was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, before which Mr. Webster made his argument. The interest was very great and the details of the trial are among the most interesting in the history of our jurisprudence. The eloquence with which Mr. Webster described the usefulness of the institution, his love for it, and the consequences which the precedent sought to be established would involve, all contributed to make this one of the greatest oratorical efforts of which we have any record.
“Sir,” said he, “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 great 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 the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears; his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling.
The court room, during these two or three minutes, presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall, gaunt figure bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheeks expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington at his side, with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance like marble, leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look, and every movement of the speaker’s face. If the painter could give us the scene on canvas—those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst—it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence.
As an orator, Mr. Webster’s most famous speeches are the “Plymouth Rock Address” in 1820, on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, the “Bunker Hill Monument Address,” and his speech in the Senate in reply to Hayne in 1830, and on “Clay’s Compromise Bill of 1850.”
Upon Mr. Harrison’s inauguration in 1841, Mr. Webster became Secretary of State, which office he held until 1843. During this time, he negotiated the famous treaty with Lord Ashburton which settled a long-standing dispute with England over the boundary of Maine. He supported Clay for the presidency in 1804 and opposed the annexation of Texas. In the debate on the “Compromise of 1850,” Mr. Webster advocated the acceptance of the provisions for extending slavery into the territory purchased from Mexico, and for the “Fugitive Slave Law,” and in so doing gave great offense to his supporters in the North. In 1850, he was appointed Secretary of State, which office he held until his death.
DANIEL WEBSTER’S HOME, MARSHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS.
He took great interest in the operations of his farm at Marshfield, near Plymouth, Massachusetts, and delightful stories are told of the pleasure he took in his cattle—how he might be seen breaking ears of corn to feed to his oxen on the right and left declaring that he would rather be there than in the Senate, and adding with a smile, “I think it better company.” It was here, in 1852, that he was thrown from his carriage and received severe injuries from which he did not recover. In his last words, he manifested a desire to be conscious of the approach of death and his last words were, “I still live.” In the vast concourse which gathered at his funeral was a plain farmer who was heard to say, as he turned from the grave, “Daniel Webster, without you the world will seem lonely.”
SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS, JANUARY, 1830.
An extract from a speech by Mr. Webster, in reply to Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, in the Senate of the United States, January, 1830. This was probably the most remarkable speech ever made in the American Congress. His peroration, comprised in the last paragraph, under the succeeding heading, “Union and Liberty,” for patriotic eloquence has not a counterpart, perhaps, in all history. The speech is the more remarkable for the fact that Mr. Webster had but a single night in which to make preparation.
HE eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South Carolina, by the honorable gentleman, for her Revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent or distinguished character South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions,—Americans all,—whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines, than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,—does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it is in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification and delight, rather.
Sir, I thank God, that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here, in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven,—if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South,—and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!
Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist,—alienation and distrust,—are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.
Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium 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, fallen 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 restraints, 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 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!
LIBERTY AND UNION, 1830.
(Continuation of the foregoing.)
PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread further and further, they have not outrun its protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.
While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! 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 severed, 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!
[♦] ‘forver’ replaced with ‘forever’
THE ELOQUENCE OF ACTION.
HEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it,—they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object,—this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence,—it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.
THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY.
(SUITED TO WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.)
ENTLEMEN, a most auspicious omen salutes and cheers us this day. This day is the anniversary of the birth of Washington. Washington’s birthday is celebrated from one end of this land to the other. The whole atmosphere of the country is this day redolent of his principles,—the hills, the rocks, the groves, the vales, and the rivers shout their praises and resound with his fame. All the good, whether learned or unlearned, high or low, rich or poor, feel this day that there is one treasure common to them all; and that is the fame of Washington. They all recount his deeds, ponder over his principles and teachings, and resolve to be more and more guided by them in the future.
To the old and the young, to all born in this land, and to all whose preferences have led them to make it the home of their adoption, Washington is an exhilarating theme. Americans are proud of his character; all exiles from foreign shores are eager to participate in admiration of him; and it is true that he is, this day, here, everywhere, all over the world, more an object of regard than on any former day since his birth.
Gentlemen, by his example, and under the guidance of his precepts, will we and our children uphold the Constitution? Under his military leadership, our fathers conquered their ancient enemies; and, under the outspread banner of the political and constitutional principles, will we conquer now? To that standard we shall adhere, and uphold it, through evil report and good report. We will sustain it, and meet death itself, if it come; we will ever encounter and defeat error, by day and by night, in light or in darkness—thick darkness—if it come, till
“Danger’s troubled night is o’er,
And the star of peace return.”
AMERICA’S GIFTS TO EUROPE.
MERICA has furnished to Europe proof of the fact that popular institutions, founded on equality and the principle of representation, are capable of maintaining governments, able to secure the rights of person, property, and reputation. America has proved that it is practicable to elevate the mass of mankind—that portion which in Europe is called the laboring or lower class—to raise them to self-respect, to make them competent to act a part in the great right and great duty of self-government; and she has proved that this may be done by education and the diffusion of knowledge. She holds out an example, a thousand times more encouraging than ever was presented before, to those nine-tenths of the human race who are born without hereditary fortune or hereditary rank.
America has furnished to the world the character of Washington; and if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind. Washington! “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” Washington is all our own! The enthusiastic veneration and regard in which the people of the United States hold him, prove them to be worthy of such a country, while his reputation abroad reflects the highest honor on his country.
I would cheerfully put the question to-day to the intelligence of Europe and the world, “What character of the century, upon the whole, stands out, in the relief of history, most pure, most respectable, most sublime?” and I doubt not that, by a suffrage approaching to unanimity, the answer would be, Washington!
