Although he became a distinguished orator, he failed utterly in public speaking at school. He afterwards said: “There was one thing I could not do; I could not make a declamation. I could not speak before the school.”
Daniel showed so great ability as a student that the family decided he must attend college, although this step called for additional hardship and sacrifice on the part of those at home. He studied under the direction of a clergyman in a neighboring town, spent one year at Phillips Exeter Academy, and entered Dartmouth College when he was fifteen years old. During his vacations he taught school to pay his expenses. He also assisted his brother Ezekiel in obtaining his education.
He finished his course at college with credit, and then studied law in Boston. He began his practice in Boscawen, a country town near his home; but after the death of his father he removed to Portsmouth, and was soon regarded as the leading man in his profession.
After a time he removed to Boston, where he became known as one of the ablest lawyers of his time.
Webster was elected to Congress from Boston, and took his seat in December, 1823, and continued to serve in that position till he was elected to the Senate, in which body he took his seat on the 4th of March, 1827.
The awkward village lad who could not declaim in the district school now ranked among the most eloquent orators of the country.
On the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, Webster delivered a stirring oration, which made him famous throughout the country; and at the laying of the corner stone of the Bunker Hill Monument he delivered an address which has not been equaled in this century. From that time Daniel Webster was sought after for every public occasion. He twice held the office of Secretary of State. He resigned the latter office on account of failing health during the summer of 1852, and retired to his country seat at Marshfield, Mass., where he died in the following October.
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 of 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. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country’s own means of distinction and defense. 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. But let us not too much grieve that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work, had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country’s independence established and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of peace, like
another morn,
Risen on mid-noon,—