Much of what he was in character he owed to Rachel Jackson. He once said to a prominent man, "My wife was a pious Christian woman. She gave me the best advice, and I have not been unmindful of it. When the people, in their sovereign pleasure, elected me President of the United States, she said to me, 'Don't let your popularity turn your mind away from the duty you owe to God. Before him we are all alike sinners, and to him we must all alike give account. All these things will pass away, and you and I and all of us must stand before God.' I have never forgotten it, and I never shall."
DANIEL WEBSTER.
In the little town of Salisbury, New Hampshire, now called Franklin, Daniel Webster was born, January 18, 1782, the ninth in a family of ten children. Ebenezer, the father, descended from a sturdy Puritan ancestry, had fought in the French and Indian Wars; a brave, hardy pioneer. He had cleared the wilderness for his log house, married a wife who bore him five children, after which she died, and then married a second time, Abigail Eastman, a woman of vigorous understanding, yet tender and self-sacrificing. Of the five children of the latter wife, three daughters and two sons, Daniel was the fourth, a slight, delicate child, whose frail body made him especially dear to the mother, who felt that at any time he might be taken out of her arms forever.
"In this hut," said Webster, years later, speaking of his father and mother, "they endured together all sorts of privations and hardships; my mother was constantly visited by Indians, who had never gone to a white man's house but to kill its inhabitants, while my father, perhaps, was gone, as he frequently was, miles away, carrying on his back the corn to be ground, which was to support his family."
The father was absent from home, also, on more important errands. When the news of the battle of Bunker Hill thrilled the colonies, Captain Webster, who had won his title in the earlier wars, raised a company, and at once started for the scene of action. He fought at Bennington under Stark, being the first to scale the Tory breastworks, at White Plains, and was at West Point when Arnold attempted to surrender it to the British. He stood guard before General Washington's headquarters, the night of Arnold's treason. No wonder, when Washington looked upon the robust form nearly six feet high, with black hair and eyes, and firm decisive manner, he said, "Captain Webster, I believe I can trust you."
And so thought the people of New Hampshire, for they made him a member of both Houses of the State Legislature at various times, and a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in his own county.
The delicate boy Daniel was unable to work on the farm like his brother Ezekiel, two years older, but found his pleasure and pastime in reading, and in studying nature. The home, "Elms Farm," as it was called later, from the elms about it, was in a valley at a bend of the Merrimac. From here the boy gazed upon Mount Kearsarge, and Mount Washington, the king of the White Mountain peaks, and if he did not dream of what the future had in store for him, he grew broad in soul from such surroundings. Great mountains, great reaches of sea or plain, usually bring great thoughts and plans to those who view them with a loving heart.