DANIEL WEBSTER’S HOME, MARSHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS.
He took great interest in the operations of his farm at Marshfield, near Plymouth, Massachusetts, and delightful stories are told of the pleasure he took in his cattle—how he might be seen breaking ears of corn to feed to his oxen on the right and left declaring that he would rather be there than in the Senate, and adding with a smile, “I think it better company.” It was here, in 1852, that he was thrown from his carriage and received severe injuries from which he did not recover. In his last words, he manifested a desire to be conscious of the approach of death and his last words were, “I still live.” In the vast concourse which gathered at his funeral was a plain farmer who was heard to say, as he turned from the grave, “Daniel Webster, without you the world will seem lonely.”
SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS, JANUARY, 1830.
An extract from a speech by Mr. Webster, in reply to Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, in the Senate of the United States, January, 1830. This was probably the most remarkable speech ever made in the American Congress. His peroration, comprised in the last paragraph, under the succeeding heading, “Union and Liberty,” for patriotic eloquence has not a counterpart, perhaps, in all history. The speech is the more remarkable for the fact that Mr. Webster had but a single night in which to make preparation.
HE eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South Carolina, by the honorable gentleman, for her Revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent or distinguished character South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions,—Americans all,—whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines, than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,—does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it is in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification and delight, rather.
Sir, I thank God, that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here, in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven,—if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South,—and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!
Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist,—alienation and distrust,—are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.
Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts;—she needs none. There she is,—behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history,—the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill,—and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia,—and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it,—if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it,—if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraints, shall succeed to separate it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure,—it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm, with whatever vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin!