Famous American Statesmen

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"No, indeed, father," was the response, "I hope I can do much better than that. I mean to use my tongue in the courts, not my pen; to be an actor, not a register of other men's acts. I hope yet, sir, to astonish your honor in your own court by my professional attainments."

He looked half proud, half sorrowful, and said slowly, "Well, my son, your mother has always said you would come to something or nothing. She was not sure which; I think you are now about settling that doubt for her." He never spoke a word more upon the subject. The fifteen-hundred-dollar clerkship was gone forever, but Daniel had chosen the right road to fame and prosperity.

He returned finally to the quiet town of Boscawen, and, not willing to be separated from his father, began the life of a country lawyer. His practice brought not more than five or six hundred dollars a year, but it gave self-support. He had also time for study. "Study," he said, "is the grand requisite for a lawyer. Men may be born poets, and leap from their cradle painters. Nature may have made them musicians, and called on them only to exercise, and not to acquire, ability; but law is artificial. It is a human science, to be learned, not inspired. Let there be a genius for whom nature has done so much as apparently to have left nothing for application, yet, to make a lawyer, application must do as much as if nature had done nothing. The evil is that an accursed thirst for money violates everything.... The love of fame is extinguished, every ardent wish for knowledge repressed; conscience put in jeopardy, and the best feelings of the heart indurated by the mean, money-catching, abominable practices which cover with disgrace a part of the modern practitioners of the law."

Webster's first speech at the bar was listened to by his proud and devoted father, who did not live to hear him a second time. He died in 1806, at sixty-seven, and was buried beneath a tall pine-tree on his own field. Daniel assumed his debts, and for ten years bore the burden, if that may be called a burden which we do willingly for love's sake.

The next year he removed to Portsmouth. He was now twenty-five, pale, slender, and of refined and apparently delicate organization. He had written considerable for the press, made several Fourth of July orations, and published a little pamphlet, "Considerations on the Embargo Laws."

In June, 1808, when he was twenty-six, he made the wisest choice of his life in his marriage to Grace Fletcher, daughter of Rev. Elijah Fletcher of Hopkinton. She was twenty-seven, a rare combination of intellect and sweetness, just the woman to inspire an educated man by her cultivated and sympathetic mind, and to rest him with her gentle and genial presence. She had a quiet dignity which won respect, and her manners were unaffected, frank, and winning. From the first time he saw her she looked "like an angel" to him, and such she ever remained to his vision.

And now began the happiest years of his life. The small, wooden house in which they lived grew into a palace, because love was there. His first child, little Grace, named for her mother, became the idol of his heart. Business increased and friends multiplied during the nine years he lived at Portsmouth. He was fortunate in having for an almost constant opponent in the law the renowned Jeremiah Mason, fourteen years his senior, and the acknowledged head of the legal profession in New Hampshire. Mr. Webster studied him closely. "He had a habit," said Webster, "of standing quite near to the jury, so near that he might have laid his finger on the foreman's nose; and then he talked to them in a plain conversational way, in short sentences, and using no word that was not level to the comprehension of the least educated man on the panel. This led me to examine my own style, and I set about reforming it altogether." Before this his style had been somewhat florid; afterward it was terse, simple, and graphic.

On July 4, 1812, Webster delivered an oration before the "Washington Benevolent Society," in which he stoutly opposed the war then being carried on with England. The address immediately passed through two editions, and led to his appointment as delegate to an assembly of the people of Rockingham County, to express disapproval of the war. The "Rockingham Memorial," which was presented to the President, was written by Mr. Webster, and showed a thorough knowledge of the condition of affairs, and an ardent devotion to the Union, even though the various sections of the country might differ in opinion. The result of this meeting was the sending of Mr. Webster to Congress, where he took his seat May 24, 1813. He was thirty-one; the poverty, the poor clothes in Dartmouth College, the burden of the father's debts had not kept him from success.

Once in Congress, it was but natural that his influence should be felt. He did not speak often, but when he did speak the House listened. He was placed on the committee on Foreign Relations, with Mr. Calhoun as chairman. He helped to repeal the Embargo Laws, spoke on the Tariff, showing that he was a Free Trader in principle, but favored Protection as far as expediency demanded it, and took strong grounds against the war of 1812. He urged the right and necessity of free speech on all questions. He said, "It is the ancient and undoubted prerogative of this people to canvas public measures and the merits of public men. It is a 'home-bred right,' a fireside privilege. It has ever been enjoyed in every house, cottage, and cabin in the nation.... It is as undoubted as the right of breathing the air, or walking on the earth. Belonging to private life as a right, it belongs to public life as a duty; and it is the last duty which those whose representative I am shall find me to abandon."

He was active in that almost interminable discussion concerning a United States Bank. The first bank, chartered in 1791, had Hamilton for its defender, and Jefferson for its opponent. In 1811, the bank failed to obtain a renewal of its charter. During the war of 1812, the subject was again urged. The Jeffersonians were opposed to any bank; another party favored a bank which should help the government by heavy loans, and be relieved from paying its notes in specie; still another party, to which Webster belonged, favored a bank with reasonable capital, compelled to redeem its notes in specie, and at liberty to make loans or not to the government. On the subject of the currency he made some remarkable speeches, showing a knowledge of the subject perhaps unequalled since Hamilton.