"Appreciations and Addresses."—Rosebery.
DANIEL WEBSTER
(1782–1852)
Born at Salisbury (now Franklin), New Hampshire, Daniel Webster received his education at Dartmouth College. He afterward studied law and then removed to Massachusetts, where he soon obtained distinction as a politician, and was in 1812 sent to Congress. He championed the New England cause against the embargo and the other measures of the administration, yet although his great oratorical powers were already manifest, he displayed little of that breadth of character which afterwards distinguished him.
To the years which followed we owe some of his most popular forensic efforts and public addresses, the "Dartmouth College Case," the "Girard Will," and the addresses at Plymouth and Bunker Hill.
In 1827 he was elected to the United States Senate. Three years later he delivered his masterpiece, "The Reply to Hayne," on the floor of the Senate. Under Presidents Harrison and Tyler he was Secretary of State, and was instrumental in negotiating the celebrated "Webster-Ashburton Treaty."
For many years the leading man of the Whig party, his presidential aspirations were doomed to disappointment. His last years in the Senate were, like those of Clay, consecrated to the effort to preserve the Union. But his pleas for compromise fell in the North on dull ears, and his pleas for concessions to the South were looked on as treason. The time for compromise was passing.
The Whigs being returned to power in 1850, Webster again became Secretary of State, but again failing to secure the nomination for President, he returned to Marshfield, where, after a brief illness, he died in October, 1852.