A Manual of American Literature

by Unknown

Daniel Webster.—The prince of American orators, and one of the great orators of modern times, was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, on January 18, 1782. His ancestry was Scotch. He had the stinted education of a village school whose doors were open for a short term in winter. Yet he could never recollect the time when he could not read the Bible; and this and the few other books that he could obtain he perused so often that he virtually had them by heart. He was fond of committing passages to memory. But at Exeter, where he prepared for college, there was one thing which he could not do: “I could not speak before the school.” The efforts of his father made it possible for him to attend Dartmouth College. He read by himself with the avidity of a Lowell—but he also pursued with good intent the regular course of studies. Finishing this course in 1801, he studied law, earned a little money by teaching in Maine, and at length entered the office of Christopher Gore in Boston—“a tall, gaunt young man, with rather a thin face, but all the peculiarities of feature and complexion by which he was distinguished in later life.” There followed some years of practice with meagre remuneration, but of unceasing study. In 1813 he was sent to Congress from New Hampshire. His speech in that year on the repeal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees elicited praise from Chief Justice Marshall, and throughout the country. Webster immediately advanced to the front rank of debaters. It is baffling even to suggest the range and importance of his subsequent labours. When the famous Dartmouth College case, apparently a forlorn hope, was carried before the United States Supreme Court in 1818, Webster’s opening argument as junior counsel brought an unlooked for settlement in favour of the College; since then the case has furnished a ruling precedent in interpreting the Constitutional clause which prohibits state interference with the terms of a past contract. In 1820 he was engaged on the revision of the Massachusetts State Constitution. From 1823 to 1827 he was in the House of Representatives; from 1827 to 1841, and again from 1845 to 1850, in the Senate. He was Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler, and under Fillmore. Through supposed concessions to slavery in his speech of March 7, 1850, on the Constitution and the Union, he estranged his best friends in the North, and had to endure the taunt of faithlessness in Whittier’s “Ichabod.” Historians, however, have justified the loftiness of his statesmanship even here. He died as Secretary of State under Fillmore, October 24, 1852.

During his reply to Hayne in 1830, when Webster uttered his encomium on the State of Massachusetts, strong men were moved to tears. One cannot read it at this distance without strange emotion. Passages in the second address at Bunker Hill, or the argument in Knapp’s trial—the passage on the conscience of the murderer, or more especially that at the end on the universal sense of duty—rise to the point where the ethical and æsthetic values of eloquence are one and eternal. One might go on to mention his eulogy on “Adams and Jefferson,” his “First Settlement of New England”—but we should hardly finish a mere enumeration of the speeches he delivered during his forty years of public life.

Consider [said Choate] the work he did in that life of forty years—the range of subjects investigated and discussed; composing the whole theory and practice of our organic and administrative politics, foreign and domestic; the vast body of instructive thought he produced and put in possession of the country; how much he achieved in Congress as well as at the bar; to fix the true interpretation, as well as to impress the transcendent value of the Constitution itself ...; how much to establish in the general mind the great doctrine that the government of the United States is a government proper, established by the people of the States, not a compact between sovereign communities ...; to place the executive department of the government on its true basis ...; to secure to that department its just powers on the one hand, and on the other hand to vindicate to the legislative department, and especially to the Senate, all that belonged to them ...; to develop the vast material resources of the country, and push forward the planting of the West ...; to protect the vast mechanical and manufacturing interests ...; how much for the right performance of the most delicate and difficult of all tasks, the ordering of the foreign affairs of a nation, free, sensitive, self-conscious ...; how much to compose with honour a concurrence of difficulties with the first power of the world.

His style is simple, clear, free from tricks, unstudied in its details, the easy outflow of a mind nourished on choice and repeated reading, with the English Bible as its main source; not avoiding allusion to himself, but quickly mounting with the subject to universal application; not deficient in grace, yet on the whole massive, orderly, and neglectful of lighter emotions. In private life Webster was genial. He was fond of the open country, delighting in the rod and gun. “Black Dan” he was familiarly called, on account of his deep-set, lustrous eyes, over-shadowing brows, and commanding, swarthy countenance. The proportions and majesty of his head were in keeping with the dignity of his figure.

William Lloyd Garrison.—With the main agitator of the Abolitionist movement there was no thought of compromise. Orator as well as writer, William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), though the herald of self-restraint, and preaching the doctrine of non-resistance, carried his principles to their extreme length. He condemned the churches for their tolerance of slavery, and disliked the Constitution for permitting it. He favoured ending the Union, if the national disease could be removed by amputation. He could not tolerate gradual treatment or the doubtful promise of an incomplete cure.

Charles Sumner.—Garrison’s brave, handsome, and gifted friend, and the friend of Longfellow, Charles Sumner (1811–1878), was trained in the law under Judge Story. It was partly through Whittier’s influence that he entered politics, but when he succeeded Webster in the Senate his place as a leader was assured. The infamous assault upon him by Brooks in 1856, during the debate over the affairs of Kansas, left Sumner incapacitated until 1859. When “the eloquent vacant chair” was filled again, crowds gathered whenever announcement was made that Sumner would speak. His intellect was not equal to that of his illustrious predecessor; yet his sound judgment and winning personality, aided by a captivating delivery, put him, in the Senate, at the head of the new Republican party. His “Orations” have been published in eight volumes.

Thaddeus Stevens.—While Sumner was in the Senate, Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868), a less admirable character, led the Republicans in the House. He also was a bitter foe of slavery, and was urgent with Lincoln to emancipate the negroes. “A clear, logical, and powerful debater,” he was feared for his mordant invective. Influential with the rank and file of politicians, he rejoiced in the borrowed title of the “Great Commoner.”

Wendell Phillips.—Of course the trumpet of the Abolitionists was the impassioned Wendell Phillips (1811–1884), ever supporting the hands of Garrison, and similarly uncompromising. On graduating from Harvard in 1831, he studied law; but he refused to engage in its practice, since this would entail his swearing to uphold a national Constitution which tolerated slavery. He was a master of sarcasm, irony, and epigram, of choice and varied wit; serene in the presence of his enemies, capturing and holding their attention. When the Civil War was over, and the cause of Abolition won, he turned to the remedy of other evils, speaking in favour of woman’s rights, and championing labour reform. In the guise of a general redresser of wrongs he lost prestige as well as something of his own sense of dignity.

Rufus Choate.—The most famous of a famous family, Rufus Choate (1799–1859) was distinguished for his pleading at the bar, his literary attainments, and, during the time that he was there (1841–1845), the exercise of his talents in the Senate. A pupil of no less a lawyer than William Wirt, Choate, in his unrivalled success with juries, and his stirring if florid occasional addresses, was indebted not alone to his natural ardour and personal magnetism, but also to thorough analysis and unremitting preparation. His eulogy on Webster at Dartmouth College, July 27, 1853, was the tribute of an eminent graduate of that institution to the noblest.

Stephen A. Douglas.—Stephen Arnold Douglas (1813–1861) was born in Brandon, Vermont, studied law in Canandaigua, New York, continued this study in Ohio, and proceeded thence to Illinois to teach, and to practise his calling of lawyer. He was in the United States Senate from 1847 to 1861, doing his best to avert the Civil War. In 1858 and 1860 the “Little Giant” boldly appeared before audiences in the South and denied the right of any state to secede from the Union. His speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854) shows his attitude of laissez-faire in the matter of slavery. When he matched his wits with Lincoln in their joint debate, he unintentionally hastened his antagonist’s advance toward the Presidency.