By the time Daniel was out of college his father had become a county judge, and was able to offer his youngest son a position as clerk of the court at fifteen hundred dollars a year, which was a large salary for that time and place. But Daniel refused the place, saying: “I intend to be a lawyer myself and not to spend my life jotting down other men’s doings.”
“ ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,’ ” said Judge Webster, reminding his son that there were already too many lawyers for them all to make a good living.
“There’s always room at the top,” said young Daniel Webster.
He went to Boston to study law, and his fame as attorney and orator spread far and wide. The two sons soon paid their father’s debts, and proud old Judge Webster soon saw his son Daniel not only in Congress, but acknowledged to be the greatest man in the Senate.
Ezekiel Webster did not have so brilliant a career as his younger brother, but Daniel always yielded to “Zeke’s” better judgment, even in the greatest public affairs. Ezekiel did not live to see Daniel’s highest success, and it was said that a new look of sadness came into the great Webster’s face, and never left it, after hearing of “Zeke’s” sudden death.
Although Daniel Webster was not six feet tall, his high, full, square brow and dignified bearing made him seem a giant. Carlyle, the great Scottish philosopher, met him in London and said: “Webster is a walking cathedral!”
When Daniel Webster was still a small boy on his father’s “rock-ribb’d” farm in New Hampshire, a thin, homely youth of fifteen came into the Court of Chancery in Richmond, Virginia. He was so awkward and bashful and dressed so queerly that the clerks winked at one another and snickered behind his back. That youth, whose name was Henry Clay, had come to Richmond from a low, swampy region called “the Slashes,” where he lived with his widowed mother. Because he used to ride a poor old horse to a mill near his home to get a little corn ground, Henry Clay was afterward called “the Mill Boy of the Slashes.”
Henry’s mother married again and moved out to Kentucky when it was still a western wilderness. Young Clay stayed in Virginia to study law and was soon admired because of his brightness. He improved his time, as well as his appearance, so that when he was eighteen, he was a popular orator and “the bright, particular star” of the Richmond Debating Society.
Then, instead of finding “room higher up” in his home state, Henry went west to be near his mother, and to “grow up with the country.” The twenty-one-year-old attorney hung out his sign in the new and growing town of Lexington, Kentucky. He was good-natured and thoughtful. He understood law very well for so young a man. As he was an eloquent speaker, he became a successful attorney. He married and settled down on a 600-acre estate which he named “Ashland.” This estate is still known all over the world as “the home of Henry Clay.”
The year before the War of 1812 began, Henry Clay was sent to Congress from Kentucky and was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. He raised his eloquent voice against England and bore a strong part in supporting President Madison in carrying on the war. He was so earnest in this that he was known as a leader of “the War Hawks.” When the war was over, Henry Clay was one of five men sent to Europe by the United States to arrange the terms of peace with Great Britain—a peace which has not been broken for more than a hundred years.