From Farm Boy to Senator / Being the History of the Boyhood and Manhood of Daniel Webster

by Jr. Horatio Alger

When the fitting time came Mr. Webster rose. He was in the full vigor of a magnificent manhood, the embodiment of conscious strength. He gazed around him, never more self-possessed than at that moment. He saw his adversaries with their complacent faces already rejoicing in his anticipated discomfiture; he looked in the faces of his friends, and he noted their looks of anxious solicitude; but he had full confidence in his own strength, and his deep cavernous eyes glowed with “that stern joy which warriors feel in foemen worthy of their steel.”

There was a hush of expectation and a breathless silence as those present waited for his first words.

He began thus: “Mr. President, when the mariner has been tossed for many days, in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float further on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to form some conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of the resolution.”

This was felt to be a happy exordium, and was sufficient to rivet the attention of the vast audience.

After the resolution was read Mr. Webster continued: “We have thus heard, sir, what the resolution is which is actually before us for consideration; and it will readily occur to every one that it is almost the only subject about which something has not been said in the speech, running through two days, by which the Senate has been now entertained by the gentleman from South Carolina. Every topic in the wide range of our public affairs, whether past or present, everything, general or local, whether belonging to national politics or party politics, seems to have attracted more or less of the honorable members attention, save only the resolution before the Senate. He has spoken of everything but the public lands; they have escaped his notice. To that subject in all his excursions he has not paid even the cold respect of a passing glance.

“When this debate, sir, was to be resumed on Thursday morning, it so happened that it would have been convenient for me to be elsewhere. The honorable member, however, did not incline to put off the discussion to another day. He had a shot, he said, to return, and he wished to discharge it. That shot, which it was kind thus to inform us was coming, that we might stand out of the way, or prepare ourselves to fall before it and die with decency, has now been received. Under all advantages, and with expectation awakened by the tone which preceded it, it has been discharged and has spent its force. It may become me to say no more of its effect than that, if nobody is found, after all, either killed or wounded by it, it is not the first time in the history of human affairs that the vigor and success of the war have not quite come up to the lofty and sounding phrase of the manifesto.”

Referring to Col. Hayne’s statement that there was something rankling here (indicating his heart) which he wished to relieve, Mr. Webster said: “In this respect, sir, I have a great advantage over the honorable gentleman. There is nothing here, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness; neither fear nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more troublesome than either, the consciousness of having been in the wrong.... I must repeat, also, that nothing has been received here which rankles or in any way gives me annoyance. I will not accuse the honorable gentleman of violating the rules of civilized war; I will not say he poisoned his arrows. But whether his shafts were, or were not, dipped in that which would have caused rankling if they had reached, there was not, as it happened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring them to their mark. If he wishes now to gather up these shafts he must look for them elsewhere; they will not be found fixed and quivering in the object at which they were aimed.”

Col. Hayne and his friends, as they listened to these words, breathing a calm consciousness of power not unmixed with a grand disdain, must have realized that they had exulted too soon. Indeed Hayne’s friends had not all looked forward with confidence to his victory. Senator Iredell, of North Carolina, to a friend of Hayne’s who was praising his speech, had said the evening previous, “He has started the lion—but wait till we hear his roar, or feel his claws.”

While I do not propose to give an abstract of this famous oration, I shall quote some of the most brilliant and effective passages, well known and familiar though they are, because they will be re-read with fresh and added interest in this connection. There was not a son of Massachusetts, nay, there was not a New Englander, whose heart was not thrilled by the splendid tribute to Massachusetts.