"And does any one believe that these results [to wit, the winning of American independence, and the building of the American nation] could have been attained in any other method than by arms and successful physical resistance."
In 1847, he held the only political office to which he was ever elected by popular suffrage,—that of representative in the Legislature. In 1850, he was appointed surveyor of the port of Boston by President Taylor, and he was reappointed to the same office by Presidents Pierce and Buchanan successively. There were many who would have been glad to see him in a larger sphere, but "the mark which he made upon his times," as Mr. Hillard observes, was less than his friends had anticipated. Occasionally he appeared as an orator in political campaigns, notably in 1856, at Exeter, in his native State, where he spoke with laudable pride of having "sat at the feet of a great statesman now no more."
The son of Martin Van Buren and the son of Levi Woodbury united their voices on that occasion with the voice of the son of Webster. A striking remark then made by him is well remembered. Referring to the speech of Senator Sumner, which excited the assault of Mr. Brooks, Mr. Webster said, "If I had been going to make such a speech, I should have worn an iron pot upon my head."
In 1857, he published two volumes of the Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster. In editing the papers of such a man, it is not difficult to make a "spicy" book. Witness McVey Napier's Edinburgh Review correspondence and Mr. Fronde's Carlyle correspondence. They have spared no one's feelings. They have paraded hasty expressions of transient spleen, which the authors would blush to read, except, perhaps, at the moment of writing. Mr. Webster has shown us a more excellent way, though it may be less profitable. "With charity for all, with malice for none," he carefully excised from his father's correspondence every passage tending to rekindle the fire of any former personal controversy in which his father had engaged. In this, perhaps, he followed the behests of his father, who evinced, as he approached the tomb, an earnest desire for reconciliation with all with whom he had had differences, illustrating the Scottish proverb, "The evening brings all home."
When the disruption of the Union came to be attempted, none of us who knew Fletcher Webster doubted for a moment what position he would take. The same "passionate and exultant nationality," which had nerved him to bear the loss of friends at the North, and to forego the chance of a public career, rather than countenance any measure calculated to excite ill-will at the South, now prompted him to advocate military coercion for the preservation of the Union. Notwithstanding President Lincoln had just deprived him of the office upon which he depended for the maintenance of his family, he did not hesitate to tender to the administration his personal support in the field.
In the oration already quoted, he had said: "There are certain ultimate rights which must be maintained; and when force is brought to overthrow them, it must be resisted by force." Among the rights which must thus be maintained, in his view, was the right of the United States to maintain, forever, the union of these States. The policy of coercion, bitterly as he bewailed its necessity, was not new to him. His father had advocated the Force Bill almost thirty years before. The time had come, when, in the words of Jefferson (words spoken when only the Articles of Confederation held the States in union): "Some of the States must see the rod; perhaps some of them must feel it." Accordingly, on the twentieth of April, 1861, while the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the attack on the Sixth Regiment were firing the Northern heart, Fletcher Webster called that memorable Sunday-morning meeting in State Street, which resulted in the organization of the Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry. Referring to that occasion, George S, Hillard said it recalled to the minds of those present, Colonel Webster's father, who had then been but nine years in the grave. "To the mind's eye, that majestic form and grand countenance seemed standing by the side of his son; and in the mind's ear, they heard again the deep music of that voice which had so often charmed and instructed them."
Colonel Webster said: "He whose name I bear had the good fortune to defend the Union and the Constitution in the forum. That I cannot do, but I am ready to defend them in the field." Like other national men, he refused to listen to the "sixty-day" prattle by which others were deceived. He saw that by no "summer excursion to Moscow" could the Southern Confederacy be suppressed; that immense forces would be marshalled in aid of that Confederacy; and that the war for the Union, like the war for Independence, would be won only by 'suffering, and struggle, and death.
Ten years earlier, it seemed to Rufus Choate as if the hoarded-up resentments and revenges of a thousand years were about to unsheath the sword for a conflict, "in which the blood should flow, as in the Apocalyptic vision, to the bridles of the horses; in which a whole age of men should pass away; in which the great bell of time should sound out another hour; in which society itself should be tried by fire and steel, whether it were of Nature and of Nature's God, or not."
Such a conflict was indeed impending, and Fletcher Webster appreciated its extreme gravity, when, from the balcony of the Old State House, on that Sunday morning, he made his stirring appeal: "Let us show the world that the patriotism of '61 is not less than that of '76; that the noble impulses of those patriot hearts have descended to us."
On the eighteenth of July, 1861, Edward Everett presented to Colonel Webster a splendid regimental flag, the gift of the ladies of Boston to the Twelfth Regiment.[1] It need not be said that the presentation speech of Mr. Everett, and the reception speech of Colonel Webster, were of the first order. But not even the words of a Webster or an Everett could adequately express the profound emotion of the vast concourse of people then assembled. For it was one of those occasions when, as the elder Webster said, "Words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible."