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177 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 Oration delivered by the lion. Edward Everett, on the occasion of the dedication 
 of the Statue of Mr. Webster, in Boston, Sept. \lth, 1859. 
 
 MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY : 
 
 Ox behalf of those by whose contributions this statue of Mr. 
 Webster has been procured, and of the committee intrusted with 
 the care of its erection, it is my pleasing duty to return to you, and 
 through you to the Legislature of the Commonwealth, our dutiful 
 acknowledgments for the permission kindly accorded to us, to place 
 the Statue in the Public Grounds. We feel, sir, that in allowing this 
 monumental work to be erected in front of the Capitol of the State, 
 a distinguished honor has been paid to the memory of Mr. Webster. 
 
 To you, sir, in particular, whose influence was liberally employ 
 ed to promote this result, and whose personal attendance and par 
 ticipation have added so much to the interest of the day, we are 
 under the highest obligations. 
 
 To you, our distinguished guests, and to you, fellow-citizens, of 
 either sex, who come to unite with us in rendering these monu 
 mental honors, who adorn the occasion with your presence, and 
 cheer us with your countenance and favor, we tender a respectful 
 and grateful welcome. 
 
 To you, also, Mr. Mayor, and to the City Council, we return our 
 cordial thanks for your kind consent to act on our behalf, in deliv 
 ering this cherished memorial of our honored fellow-citizen into the 
 custody of the Commonwealth, and for your sympathy and assist 
 ance in the duties of the occasion. 
 
 It has been the custom, from the remotest antiquity, to preserve 
 and to hand down to posterity, in bronze and in marble, the coun 
 terfeit presentment of illustrious men. "Within the last few years 
 modern research has brought to light, on the banks of the Tigris, 
 huge slabs of alabaster, buried for ages, which exhibit in relief the 
 faces and the persons of men who governed the primeval East in 
 the gray dawn of History. Three thousand years have elapsed 
 since they lived and reigned, and built palaces, and fortified cities, 
 and waged war, and gained victories, of which the trophies are 
 carved upon these monumental tablets the triumphal procession, 
 the chariots laden with spoil, the drooping captive, the conquered 
 monarch in chains, but the legends inscribed upon the stone are 
 imperfectly deciphered, and little beyond the names of the person 
 ages, and the most general tradition of their exploits is preserved. 
 
 269564 
 
178 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 In like manner the obelisks and the temples of ancient Egypt arc 
 covered with the sculptured images of whole dynasties of Pharaohs 
 older than Moses, older than Joseph whose titles are recorded 
 in the hieroglyphics with which the granite is charged, and which 
 are gradually yielding up their long concealed mysteries to the 
 sagacity of modern criticism. The plastic arts, as they passed into 
 Hellas, with all the other arts which give grace and dignity to our 
 nature, reached a perfection unknown to Egypt or Assyria; and 
 the heroes and sages of Greece and Rome, immortalized by the 
 sculptor, still people the galleries and museums of the modern 
 world. In every succeeding age and in every country, in which 
 the fine arts have been cultivated, the respect and aifection of sur 
 vivors have found a pure and rational gratification in the historical 
 portrait and the monumental statue of the honored and loved in 
 private life, and especially of the great and good who have deserved 
 W T ell of their country. Public esteem and confidence and private 
 affection, the gratitude of the community and the fond memories 
 of the fire-side, have ever sought, in this way, to prolong the sensi 
 ble existence of their beloved and respected objects. What though 
 the dear and honored features and person, on which while living 
 we never gazed without tenderness or veneration, have been taken 
 from us something of the loveliness, something of the majesty 
 abides in the portrait, the bust, and the statue. The heart bereft 
 of the living originals turn to them, and cold and silent as they are, 
 they strengthen and animate the cherished recollections of the 
 loved, the honored, and the lost. 
 
 The skill of the painter and sculptor, which thus comes in aid of 
 the memory and imagination, is, in its highest degree, one of the 
 rarest, as it is one of the most exquisite accomplishments within 
 our attainment, and in its perfection as seldom witnessed as the per 
 fection of speech or of music. The plastic hand must be moved 
 by the same ethereal instinct as the eloquent lips or the recording 
 pen. The number of those who, in the language of Michael Angelo, 
 can discern the finished statue in the heart of the shapeless block, 
 and bid it start into artistic life who are endowed with the ex 
 quisite gift of molding the rigid bronze or the lifeless marble into 
 graceful, majestic, and expressive forms is not greater than the 
 number of those who are able, with equal majesty, grace, and ex 
 pressiveness, to make the spiritual essence the finest shades of 
 thought and feeling sensible to the mind, through the eye and the 
 ear, in the mysterious embodiment of the written and the spoken 
 word. If Athens in her palmiest days had but one Pericles, she 
 had also but one Phidias. 
 
 Nor are these beautiful and noble arts, by which the face and the 
 form of the departed are preserved to us calling into the highest 
 exercise as they do all the imitative and idealizing powers of the 
 painter and the sculptor the least instructive of our teachers. 
 The portraits and the statues of the honored dead kindle the gener- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 179 
 
 ous ambition of the youthful aspirant to fame. Themistocles 
 could not sleep for the trophies in the Ceramicus; and when the 
 livinjr Demosthenes, to whom you, sir [Mr. FeltonJ, have alluded, 
 hyd ceased to speak, the stony lips remained to rebuke and exhort 
 his degenerate countrymen. More than a hundred years have 
 elapsed since the great Newton passed aw r ay; but from age to age 
 his statue by lioubillac, in the ante-chapel of Trinity College, will 
 give distinctness to the conceptions formed of him by hundreds and 
 thousands of ardent youthful spirits, tilled with reverence for that 
 transcendent intellect, which, from the phenomena that lall within 
 our limited vision, deduced the imperial law by which the Sover 
 eign Mind rules the entire universe. We can never look on the 
 person of Washington, but his serene and noble countenance, per 
 petuated by the pencil and the chisel, is familiar to far greater mul 
 titudes than ever stood in his living presence, and will be thus 
 familiar to the latest generation. 
 
 What parent, as he conducts his son to Mount Auburn or to Bun 
 ker Hill, will not, as he pauses before their monumental statues, 
 seek to heighten his reverence for virtue, for patriotism, for science, 
 for learning, for devotion to the public good, as he bids him con 
 template the form of that grave and venerable Winthrop, who left 
 his pleasant home in England to come and found a new republic in 
 this untrodden wilderness ; of that ardent and intrepid Otis, who 
 first struck out the spark of American Independence ; of that noble 
 Adams, its most eloquent champion on the floor of Congress ; of 
 that martyr Warren, who laid down his life in its defense ; of that 
 self-taught Bowditch, who, without a guide, threaded the starry 
 mazes of the heavens ; of that Story, honored at home and abroad 
 as one of the brightest luminaries of the law, and by a felicity, of 
 which I believe there is no other example, admirably portrayed in 
 marble by his son ? What citizen of Boston, as he accompanies 
 the stranger around our streets, guiding him through our busy 
 thorough tares, to our wharfs crowded with vessels which range 
 every sea and gather the produce of every climate up to the 
 dome of this Capitol, which commands as lovely a landscape as can 
 delight the eye or gladden the heart, will not, as he calls his atten 
 tion at last to the statues of Franklin and Webster, exclaim 
 " Boston takes pride in her natural position, she rejoices in her 
 beautiful environs, she is gratelul for her material prosperity ; but 
 richer than the merchandise stored in palatial warehouses, greener 
 than the slopes of sea-girt islets, lovelier than this encircling pan 
 orama of laud and sea, of field and hamlet, of lake and stream, of 
 garden and grove, is the memory of her sons, native and adopted ; 
 the character, services, and fame of those who have benefited and 
 adorned their day and generation. Our children, and the schools 
 at which they are trained, our citizens, and the services they have 
 rendered; these are our jewels, these our abiding treasures." 
 
 Yes, your long rows of quarried granite may crumble to the 
 
180 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 dust ; the cornfields in yonder villages, ripening to the sickle, may, 
 like the plains of stricken Lombardy, a few weeks ago, be kneaded 
 into bloody clods by the madding wheels of artillery; this popu 
 lous city, like the old cities of Etruria and the Campagna liomana, 
 may be desolated by the pestilence which walketh in darkness, 
 may decay with the lapse of time, and the busy mart, which now 
 rings with the joyous din of trade, become as lonely and still as 
 Carthage or Tyre, as Babylon and Nineveh ; but the names of the 
 great and good shall survive the desolation and the ruin ; the mem 
 ory of the wise, the brave, the patriotic, shall never perish. 
 Yes, Sparta is a wheat-field ; a Bavarian prince holds court at the 
 foot of the Acropolis ; the traveling virtuoso digs for marbles in 
 the Roman Forum, and beneath the ruins of the temple of Jupiter 
 Capitolinus; but Lycurgus and Leonidas, and Miltiades and De 
 mosthenes, and Cato and Tully u still live ;" and HE still lives, 
 and all the great and good shall live in the heart of ages, while 
 marble and bronze shall endure; and when marble and bronze 
 have perished, they shall " still live" in memory, so long as men 
 shall reverence Law, and honor Patriotism, and love Liberty ! 
 
 EULOGIES AT THE TIME OF ME. WEBSTEE s DECEASE. 
 
 Seven years, within a few weeks, have passed since he, whose 
 statue we inaugurate to-day, was taken from us. The voice of re 
 spectful and affectionate eulogy, which was uttered in this vicinity 
 and city at the time, was promptly echoed throughout the country. 
 The tribute paid to his memory, by friends, neighbors, and fellow- 
 citizens, was responded to from the remotest corners of the Repub 
 lic, by those who never gazed on his noble countenance, or listened 
 to the deep melody of his voice. This city, which in early man 
 hood he chose for his home; his associates in the honorable 
 profession of which he rose to be the acknowledged head ; the law 
 school of the neighboring university speaking by the lips of one 
 so well able to do justice to his legal pre-eminence; the college at 
 which he was educated, and whose chartered privileges he had suc 
 cessfully maintained before the highest tribunal of the country ; 
 with other bodies and other eulogists, at the bar, in the pulpit, 
 and on the platform, throughout the Union, in numbers greater, I 
 believe, than have ever spoken on any other similar occasion, ex 
 cept that of the death of Washington, joined with the almost 
 unanimous press of the country, in one chorus of admiration of 
 his talents, recognition of his patriotic services, and respect and 
 affection for his memory. 
 
 Nor have these offerings been made at his tomb alone. Twice 
 or thrice since his death, once within a few months the anniver 
 sary of his birthday has called forth, at the table of patriotic 
 festivity, the voice of fervid eulogy and affectionate commemora 
 tion. In this way, and on these occasions, his character has been 
 delineated by those best able to do justice to his powers and attain- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. J^J 
 
 ments, to appreciate his services, to take the measure, if I may so 
 say, of his colossal mental stature. Without going heyond this 
 immediate neighborhood, and in no degree ungrateful for the liber 
 ality, or insensible to the ability with which he has been eulogized 
 in other parts of the country, what need be said, what can be said 
 in the hearing of those who have listened to Ilillard, to Chief Jus 
 tice Parker, to Gushing, and to our lamented Ghoate, whose dis 
 course on Mr. Webster at Dartmouth College appears to me as 
 magnificent a eulogium as was ever pronounced ? 
 
 What can be said that has not been better said before; what 
 need be said now that seven added years in the political progress 
 of the country, seven years of respectful and affectionate recollec 
 tion on the part of those who now occupy the stage, have con 
 firmed his title to the large place which, while he lived, he tilled in 
 the public mind ? While he yet bore a part in the councils of the 
 Union, he shared the fate which, in all countries, and especially in 
 all free countries, awaits commanding talent and eminent position ; 
 which no great man in our history not Washington himself has 
 ever escaped ; which none can escape, but those who are too feeble 
 to provoke opposition, too obscure for jealousy. But now that he 
 has rested for years in his honored grave, what generous nature 
 is not pleased to strew flowers on the sod ? What honorable op 
 ponent, still faithful to principle, is not willing that all in which 
 he differed from him should be referred, without bitterness, to the 
 impartial arbitrament of time ; and that all that he respected and 
 loved should be cordially remembered ? What public man, especially, 
 who, with whatever differences of judgment of men or measures, has 
 borne on his own shoulders the heavy burden of responsibility 
 who has felt how hard it is, in the larger complications of affairs, 
 at all times to meet the expectations of an intelligent and watchful, 
 but impulsive and not always thoroughly instructed public ; how 
 difficult sometimes to satisfy his own judgment is not willing 
 that the noble qualities and patriotic services of Webster should 
 be honorably recorded in the book of the country s remembrance, 
 and his statue set up in the Pantheon of her illustrious sons ? 
 
 POSTHUMOUS HONORS. 
 
 These posthumous honors lovingly paid to departed worth are 
 among the compensations which a kind Providence vouchsafes for 
 the unavoidable conflicts of judgment and stern collisions of party, 
 which make the political career always arduous, even when pur 
 sued with the greatest success, generally precarious, sometimes 
 destructive of health and even life. It is impossible under free gov 
 ernments to prevent the existence of party ; not less impossible 
 that parties should be conducted with spirit and vigor without 
 more or less injustice done and suffered, more or less gross un- 
 charitableness and bitter denunciation. Besides, with the utmost 
 effort at impartiality, it is not within the competence of our frail 
 
182 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 capacities to do full justice at the time to a character of varied and 
 towering greatness, engaged in an active and responsible political 
 career. The truth of his principles, the wisdom of his counsels, the 
 value of his services must be seen in their fruits, and the richest 
 fruits are not those of the most rapid growth. The wisdom of an 
 tiquity pronounced that no one was to be deemed happy until after 
 death ; not merely because he was then first placed beyond the 
 vicissitudes of human fortune, but because then only the* rival in 
 terests, the discordant judgments, the hostile passions of cotem- 
 poraries are, in ordinary cases, no longer concerned to question his 
 merits. Horace, with gross adulation, "sung to his imperial master, 
 Augustus, that he alone of the great of the earth ever received 
 while living the full meed of praise. All the other great bene 
 factors of mankind, the inventors of arts, the destroyers of mon 
 sters, the civilizers of states, found by experience that unpopularity 
 was appeased by death alone.* 
 
 That solemn event, which terminates the material existence, be 
 comes by the sober revisions of cotemporary judgment, aided by 
 offices of respectful and affectionate commemoration, the com 
 mencement of a nobler life on earth. The wakeful eyes are closed, 
 the feverish pulse is still, the tired and trembling limbs are relieved 
 from their labors, and the aching head is laid to rest on the lap of 
 its mother earth, like a play-worn child at the close of a summer s 
 day ; but all that we honored and loved in the living man begins to 
 live again in a new and higher being of influence and fame. It 
 was given but to a limited number to listen to the living voice, and 
 they can never listen to it again ; but the wise teachings, the grave 
 admonitions, the patriotic exhortations which fell from his tongue 
 will be gathered together and garnered up in the memory of mil 
 lions. The cares, the toils, the sorrows; the conflicts with others, 
 the conflicts of the fervent spirit with itself; the sad accidents of 
 humanity, the fears of the brave, the follies of the wise, the errors 
 of the learned ; all that dashed the cup of enjoyment with bitter 
 drops and strewed sorrowful ashes over the beauty of expectation 
 and promise ; the treacherous friend, the ungenerous rival, the 
 mean and malignant foe ; the uncharitable prejudice which with 
 held the just tribute of praise, the human frailty which wove sharp 
 thorns into the wreath of solid merit ; all these in ordinary cases 
 are buried in the grave of the illustrious dead ; while their brilliant 
 talents, their deeds of benevolence and public spirit, their wise and 
 eloquent words, the healing counsels, their generous aflcctions, the 
 whole man, in short, whom we revered and loved and would fain 
 imitate, especially when his image is impressed upon our recollec 
 tions by the pencil or the chisel, goes forth to the admiration of the 
 latest posterity. Extinctus amabiter idem. 
 
 * Comperit invidiam supremo fine, domari . 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 183 
 
 THE OBSEQUIES OF MR. CIIOATE. 
 
 Our city has lately witnessed a most beautiful instance of this 
 re-animating power of death* A few weeks since, we followed 
 Toward the tomb the lifeless remains of our lamented Choate. 
 Well may we consecrate a moment even of this hour to him who, 
 in that admirable discourse to which I have already alluded, did 
 such noble justice to himself and the great subject of his eulogy. 
 A short time before the decease of our much honored friend, I had 
 seen him shattered by disease, his nil-persuasive voice faint and 
 languid, his beaming eye quenched ; and as he left us in search of 
 health in a foreign clime, a painful image and a sad foreboding too 
 soon fulfilled dwelt upon my mind. But on the morning of the 
 day when we were to pay the last sad offices to our friend, the 23d 
 of July, with a sad, let me not say a repining, thought, that so 
 much talent, so much learning, so much eloquence, so much wit, 
 so much wisdom, so much force of intellect, so much kindness 
 of heart were taken from us, an engraved likeness of him was 
 brought to me, in which he seemed to live again. The shadows 
 of disease and suffering had passed from the brow, the well-re 
 membered countenance was clothed with its wonted serenity, 
 a cheerful smile lighted up the features, genius kindled in the 
 eye, persuasion hovered over the lips, and I felt as if I was going, 
 not to his funeral, but his triumph. " Weep not for me," it 
 seemed to say, u but weep for yourselves." And never while 
 he dwelt among us in the feeble tabernacle of the flesh ; never 
 while the overtasked spirit seemed to exhaust the delicate 
 frame ; never as I had listened to the melody of his living voice, 
 did he speak to my imagination and heart with such a touching 
 though silent eloquence, as when we followed his hearse along these 
 streets, that bright mid-summer s noon, up the via sacra in front 
 of this Capitol, slowly moving to the solemn beat of grand dead 
 marches, as they swelled from wailing clarion and muffled drum, 
 while the minute guns from yonder lawn responded to the passing 
 bell from yonder steeple. I then understood the sublime signifi 
 cance of the words, which Cicero puts in the mouth of Cato, that 
 the mind, elevated to the foresight of posterity, when departing 
 from this life, begins at length to live; yea, the sublimer words of 
 a greater than Cicero, " Oh, death! where is thy sting? oh, grave! 
 where is thy victory?" And then, as we passed the abodes of 
 those whom he knew, and honored, and loved, and who had gone 
 before ; of Lawrence here on the left ; of Prescott yonder on the 
 right ; this home where Hancock lived and AVashington was re 
 ceived; this where Lafayette sojourned; this Capitol where his 
 own political course began, and on which so many patriotic mem 
 ories are concentrated, I felt, not as if we were conducting another 
 frail and weary body to the tomb, but as if we were escorting a noble 
 brother to the congenial company of the departed great and good; 
 and I was ready myself to exclaim, " prceclarum diem, cum ad 
 
184 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 illud divinum animorum concilium ccetumque profisciscar, cumque 
 ex Jiac turbo, ct collumone discedam" 
 
 THE PEEIOD IN WHICH ME. WEBSTER LIVED. 
 
 It will not, I think, be expected of me to undertake the super 
 fluous task of narrating in great detail the well-known events of 
 Mr. Webster s life, or of attempting an elaborate delineation of that 
 character to which such ample justice has already been done by 
 master hands. I deem it sufficient to say in general, that, referred 
 to all the standards by which public character can be estimated, 
 he exhibited in a rare degree the qualities of a truly great man. 
 
 The period at which Mr. Webster came forward in life, and 
 during which he played so distinguished a part, was not one in 
 which small men, dependent upon their own exertions, are likely 
 to rise to a high place in public estimation. The present genera 
 tion of young men are hardly aware of the vehemence of the storms 
 that shook the world at the time when Mr. Webster became old 
 enough to form the first childish conceptions of the nature of the 
 events in progress at home and abroad. His recollections, he tells 
 us in an autobiographical sketch, went back to the year 1790 a 
 year when the political system of continental Europe was about to 
 plunge into a state of frightful disintegration, while, under the new 
 constitution, the United States were commencing an unexampled 
 career of prosperity ; Washington just entering upon the first Pres 
 idency of the new-born Eepublic ; the reins of the oldest monarchy 
 in Europe slipping, besmeared with blood, from the hands of the 
 descendant of thirty generations of kings. The fearful struggle 
 between France and the allied powers succeeded, Avhich strained 
 the resources of the European governments to their utmost tension. 
 Armies and navies were arrayed against each other such as the civ 
 ilized world had never seen before, and wars waged beyond all for 
 mer experience. The storm passed over the Continent as a tornado 
 passes through a forest, when it comes rolling and roaring from 
 the clouds, and prostrates the growth of centuries in its path. 
 England, in virtue of her insular position, her naval power, and 
 her free institutions, had more than any other foreign country 
 weathered the storm ; but Russia saw the arctic sky lighted with 
 the flames of her old Muscovite capital ; the shadowy Kaisers of 
 the House of Hapsburg were compelled to abdicate the crown of 
 the Holy Eoman Empire, and accept as a substitute that of Austria ; 
 Prussia, staggering from Jena, trembled on the verge of political 
 annihilation; the other German states, Italy, Switzerland, Hol 
 land, and the Spanish Peninsula were convulsed ; Egypt overrun; 
 Constantinople and the East threatened ; and in many of these 
 states, institutions, laws, ideas, and manners were changed as ef 
 fectually as dynasties. With the downfall of Napoleon a partial 
 reconstruction of the old forms took place ; but the political genius 
 of the continent of Europe was revolutionized. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTEE. 185 
 
 On this side of tho Atlantic, the United States, though studying 
 an impartial neutrality, were drawn at first to some extent into 
 the outer circles of the terrific maelstrom ; but soon escaping, they 
 started upon a career of national growth and development, of 
 which the world has witnessed no other example. Meantime, the 
 Spanish and the Portuguese Yiceroyalties south of us, from Mexico 
 to Cape Horn, asserted their independence, that Castilian empire 
 on which the sun never set was dismembered, and the golden chain 
 was forever sundered, by which Columbus had linked half his new 
 found world to the throne of Ferdinand and Isabella. 
 
 Such was the crowd and the importance of the events in which, 
 from his childhood up, the life of Mr. Webster, and of the genera 
 tion to which he belonged was passed, and I can with all sincerity 
 say, that it has never been my fortune, in Europe or America, to 
 hold intercourse with any person who seemed to me to penetrate 
 further than he had done into the spirit of the age, under its 
 successive phases of dissolution, chaos, reconstruction, and prog 
 ress. Born and bred on the verge of the wilderness (his father a 
 veteran of those old French and Indian wars, in which, in the 
 middle of the 18th century, wild men came out of the woods to 
 wage war with the tomahawk and the scalping-knife, against the 
 fireside and the cradle), with the slenderest opportunities for early 
 education, entering life with scarce the usual facilities for reading 
 the riddle of foreign state-craft, remote from the scene of action, 
 relying upon sources of information equally open to all the world, 
 he seemed to me nevertheless, by the instinct of a great capacity, 
 to have comprehended in all its aspects the march of events in 
 Europe -and this country. He surveyed the agitations of the age 
 with calmness, deprecated its excesses, sympathized with its pro 
 gressive tendencies, rejoiced in its triumphs. His first words in 
 Congress, when he came unannounced from his native hills in 
 1813, proclaimed his mastery of the perplexed web of European 
 politics, in which the United States were then but too deeply en 
 tangled ; and from that time till his death I think we all felt 
 those who differed from him as well as those who agreed with 
 him that he was in no degree below the standard of the time ; 
 that if Providence had cast his lot in the field where the great des 
 tinies of Europe are decided, this poor New Hampshire youth 
 would have carried his head as higk among the Metternichs, the 
 Nesselrodes, the Hardenbergs, the Talleyrands, the Castlereaghs 
 of the day, and surely among their successors, who now occupy 
 the stage, as he did among his cotemporaries at home. 
 
 HIS COTEMPOEARIES. 
 
 Let me not be thought, however, in this remark, to intimate that 
 these cotemporaries at home were second-rate men ; far otherwise. 
 It has sometimes seemed to me that, owing to the natural reverenco 
 in which we hold the leaders of tho Revolutionary period the 
 
16 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 heroic age of the country and those of the constitutional age who 
 brought out of chaos this august system of confederate republican 
 ism, we hardly do full justice to the third period in our political 
 history, which may be dated from about the time when Mr. Web 
 ster came into political life and continued through the first part of 
 his career. The heroes and sages of the revolutionary and consti 
 tutional period were indeed gone, Washington, Franklin, Greene, 
 Hamilton, Morris, Jay slept in their honored graves. John 
 Adams, Jefferson, Carroll, though surviving, were withdrawn from 
 affairs. <| But Madison, who contributed so much to the formation 
 and adoption of the constitution, was at the helm ; Monroe in the 
 cabinet ; John Quincy Adams, Gallatin, and Bayard negotiating in 
 Europe ; in the Senate were Rufus King, Christopher Gore, Jer 
 emiah Mason, Giles, Otis ; in the House of Representatives, Pinck- 
 ney, Clay, Lowndes, Cheves, Calhoun, Gaston,, Forsyth, Randolph, 
 Oakley, Pitkin, Grosvenor ; on the bench of the Supreme Court, 
 Marshall, Livingston, Story ; at the bar, Dexter, Emmet, Pinkney, 
 and Wirt ; with many distinguished men not at that time in the 
 general government, of whom it is enough to name Dewitt Clinton 
 and Chancellor Kent. It was my privilege to see Mr. Webster, 
 associated and mingling with nearly all those eminent men, and 
 their successors, not only in later years, but in my own youth, 
 and when he first came forward, unknown as yet to the country at 
 large, scarcely known to himself, not arrogant, nor yet unconscious 
 of his mighty powers, tied to a laborious profession in a narrow range 
 of practice, but glowing with a generous ambition, and not afraid 
 to grapple with the strongest and boldest in the land. The opinion 
 pronounced of him, at the commencement of his career, by Mr. 
 Lowndes, that the " South had not in Congress his superior nor 
 the North his equal," savors in the form of expression of sectional 
 partiality. If it had been said, that neither at the South or the 
 North had any public man risen more rapidly to a brilliant reputa 
 tion, no one I think would have denied the justice of the remark. 
 He stood from the first the acknowledged equal of the most distin 
 guished of his associates. In later years he acted with the suc 
 cessors of those I have named, with Benton, Burgess, Edward Liv 
 ingston, Hayne, McDufiie, McLean, Sergeant, Clayton, Wilde, 
 Storrs, our own Bates, Davis, Gorham, Choate, and others who 
 still survive; but it will readily be admitted that he never sunk 
 from the position which he assumed at the outset of his career, or 
 stood second to any man in any part of the country. \ 
 
 THE QUESTIONS DISCUSSED IN HIS TIME. 
 
 If we now look for a moment at the public questions with 
 which he was called to deal in the course of his career, and with 
 which he did deal, in the most masterly manner, as they succes 
 sively came up, we shall find new proofs of his great ability. 
 When he first came forward in life, the two great belligerent 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 187 
 
 powers of Europe, contending with each other for the mastery of 
 the world, despising our youthful weakness and impatient of 
 our gainful neutrality, in violation now admitted of the Law of 
 Nations, emulated each other in the war waged upon our com 
 merce and the insults offered to our Hag. To engage in a contest 
 with both would have been madness; the choice of the antagonist 
 was a question of difficulty, and well calculated to furnish topics 
 of reproach and recrimination. Whichever side you adopted, your 
 opponent regarded you as being, in a great national struggle, the 
 apologist of an unfriendly foreign power, (in 1798 the United 
 States chose France for their enemy ; in 1812 Great Britain. War 
 was declared against the latter country on the 18th of June, 1812; 
 the Orders in Council, which were the immediate cause of the 
 war, were rescinded five days afterward. Such are the narrow 
 chances on which the Fortunes of States depend L^iJ 
 /^tjrreat questions of domestic and foreign policy followed the 
 close of war. Of the former class were the restoration of a cur 
 rency which should truly represent the values which it nominally 
 circulated a result mainly brought about by a resolution moved 
 by Mr. Webster ; the fiscal system of the Union and the best 
 mode of connecting the collection, safe-keeping, and disbursement 
 of the public funds, with the commercial wants, and especially 
 with the exchanges of the country ; the stability of the manufac 
 tures, which had been called into existence during the war; what 
 can constitutionally be done, ought anything as a matter of policy 
 to be done by Congress to protect them from the competition of 
 foreign skill, and the glut of foreign markets ; the internal com 
 munications of the Umon, a question of paramount interest before 
 the introduction of Railroads; can the central power do any 
 thing what can it do by roads and canals, to bind the distant 
 parts of the continent together; the enlargement of- the judicial 
 system of the country to meet the wants of the greatly increased 
 number of the States ; the revision of the criminal code of the 
 United States, which was almost exclusively his work; the ad 
 ministration of the public lands and the best mode of filling 
 with civilized and Christian homes this immense domain, the 
 amplest heritage which was ever subjected to the control of a free 
 government; connected with the public domain the relations of 
 the civilized and dominant race to the aboriginal children of the 
 soil; and lastly the constitutional questions on the nature of the 
 government itself, which were raised in that gigantic controversy 
 on the interpretation of the fundamental law itself. These were 
 some of the most important domestic questions which occupied the 
 attention of Congress and the country while Mr. Webster was on 
 the stage. 
 
 Of questions connected with Foreign affairs were those growing 
 out of the war, which was in progress when he first became a 
 member of Congress ; then the various questions of International 
 
188 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 Law, some of them as novel as they were important, which had 
 reference to the entrance or the attempted entrance of so many 
 new states into the family of nations ; in Europe Greece, Bel 
 gium, Hungary ; on this continent, twelve or fourteen new repub 
 lics, great and small, bursting from the ruins of the Spanish 
 colonial empire like a group of asteroids from the wreck of an 
 exploded planet; the invitation of .the infant American Republics 
 to meet them in Congress at Panama ; our commercial relations 
 with the British Colonies in the West Indies and on this con 
 tinent ; demands of several European states for spoliations on our 
 commerce during the wars of the French Revolution ; our secular 
 controversy with England relative to the boundary of the United 
 States on the North-Eastern and Pacific frontiers ; our relations 
 with Mexico, previous to the war ; the immunity of the American 
 flag upon the common jurisdiction of the ocean ; and more im 
 portant than all other questions, foreign or domestic, in its 
 influence upon the general politics of the country, the great 
 sectional controversy not then first commenced, but greatly in 
 creased in warmth and urgency, which connected itself with the 
 organization of the newly acquired Mexican territories. 
 
 Such were the chief questions on which it was Mr. Webster s 
 duty to form opinions ; as an influential member of Congress and a 
 political leader to speak and to vote ; as a member of the Execu 
 tive Government to exercise a powerful, over some of them, a de 
 cisive control. Besides these there was another class of questions 
 of great public importance, which came up for adjudication in the 
 Courts of the United States, which he was called professionally to 
 discuss. Many of the questions of each class now referred to di 
 vided and still divide opinion ; excited and still excite the feelings 
 of individuals, of parties, of sections of the countrvjf There are 
 some of them, which, in the course of a long life, unaer changing 
 circumstances, are likely to be differently viewed at different peri 
 ods by the same individual. I am not here to-day to rake off the 
 warm ashes from the embers of controversies which have spent 
 their fury and are dying away, or to fan the fires of those which 
 etill burn. But no one, I think, whether he agreed with Mr. Web 
 ster or differed from him as to any of these questions, will deny 
 that he treated them each and all, as they came up in the Senate, 
 in the Courts, or in negotiations with Foreign powers, in a broad, 
 statesmanlike, and masterly way. There were few who would not 
 confess, when they agreed with him, that he had expressed their 
 opinions better than they could do it themselves ; few, when they 
 differed from him, who would not admit that he had maintained 
 his own views manfully, powerfully, and liberally. 
 
 HIS CAREER AS A STATESMAN. 
 
 Such was the period in which Mr. Webster lived, such were the 
 associates with whom he acted, the questions with which he had 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 189 
 
 to deal as statesman, jurist, the head of an administration of the 
 government, and a public speaker. Let us contemplate him for a 
 moment in either capacity. 
 
 > "Without passing through the preliminary stage of the State Leg- 
 islature, and elected to Congress in six years from the time of his 
 admission to the Superior Court of New Hampshire, he was, on his 
 first entrance into the House of Representatives, placed by Mr. 
 Speaker Clay on the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and took rank 
 forthwith as one of the leading statesmen of the day. His lirst 
 speech had reference to those famous Berlin and Milan decrees and 
 Orders in Council, to which I have already alluded; and the im 
 pression produced by it was such as to lead the venerable Chief 
 Justice Marshall eighteen years afterward, in writing to Mr. Justice 
 Story, to say, u At the time when this speech was delivered I did 
 not know Mr. Webster, but I was so much struck with it that I 
 did not hesitate then to state that he was a very able man, and 
 would become one of the very first statesmen in America, perhaps 
 the very first." His mind at the very outset of his career had, by 
 a kind of instinct, soared from the principles which govern the mu 
 nicipal relations of individuals to those great rules which dictate 
 the Law of Nations to Independent States. He tells us, in the frag 
 ment of a diary kept while he was a law student in Mr. Gore s 
 office, that he then read Vattel through for the third time. Accord 
 ingly, in after life, there was no subject which he discussed with 
 greater pleasure and, I may add, with greater power, than ques 
 tions of the Law of Nations. The Revolution of Greece had from 
 its outbreak attracted much of the attention of the civilized world. 
 A people, whose ancestors had originally taught letters and arts to 
 mankind, struggling to regain a place in the great family of inde 
 pendent states; the convulsive efforts of a Christian people, the 
 foundation of whose churches by the Apostles in person is ivronk-d 
 in the New Testament, to shake off the yoke of Mohammedan des 
 potism, possessed a strange interest for the friends of Christian Lib- 
 erty throughout Europe and America. Preside*; Monroe had 
 called the attention of Congress to this most interesting struggle in 
 December, 1823 ; and Mr. Webster returning 4o Congress, after a 
 retirement of eight years, as the representative of Boston, made the 
 Greek Revolution the subject of a motion and a speech. In this 
 speech he treated what he called " the great question of the day 
 the question between absolute and regulated governments." He 
 engaged in a searching criticism of the doctrines of the " Holy Alli 
 ance," and maintained the duty of the United States, as a great 1 ive 
 power, to protest against them. That speech remains, in my judg 
 ment, to this day the ablest and most effective remonstrance against 
 the principles of the allied military powers of continental Europe. 
 Mr. Jeremiah Mason pronounced it u the best sample of parliament 
 ary eloquence and statesmanlike reasoning which our country had 
 seen." His indignant protest against the spirit of absolutism, and 
 
190 DANIET, WEBSTER. 
 
 his words of sympathy with an infant People struggling for inde 
 pendence, were borue on the wings of the wind throughout Chris 
 tendom. They were read in every language, at every court, in 
 every cabinet, in every reading-room, on every market-place, by 
 the Republicans of Mexico and Spanish South America, by the Re 
 formers of Italy, the Patriots of Poland ; on the Tagus, on the Dan 
 ube, as well as at the head of the little armies of revolutionary 
 Greece. The practical impression which it made on the American 
 mind was seen in the liberality with which cargoes of food and 
 clothing, a year or two afterward, were dispatched to the relief of 
 the Greeks. ISTo legislative or executive measure was adopted at 
 that time in consequence of Mr. Webster s motion and speech; 
 probably none was anticipated by him; but no one who considers 
 how much the march of events in such cases is influenced by the 
 moral sentiments, will doubt that a great word like this, spoken in 
 the American Congress, must have had no slight effect in cheering 
 the heart of Greece to persevere in their unequal but finally suc 
 cessful struggle. 
 
 It was by these masterly parliamentary efforts that Mr. Webster 
 left his mark on the age in which he lived. His fidelity to his con 
 victions kept him for the greater part of his life in a minority ; a 
 position which he regarded, not as a proscription, but as a post of 
 honor and duty. He felt that in free governments and in a normal 
 state of parties, an opposition is a political necessity, and that it has 
 its duties not less responsible than those which attach to office. 
 Before the importance of Mr. Webster s political services is dispar 
 aged for want of positive results, which can only be brought about 
 by those who are clothed with power, it must be shown that to 
 raise a persuasive and convincing voice in the vindication of truth 
 and right, to uphold and assert the true principles of the govern 
 ment under which we live, and bring them home to the hearts of 
 the people to do this from a sense of patriotic duty, and without 
 hope of the honors and emoluments of oih ce, to do it so as to in 
 struct the public conscience and warm the public heart, is a less 
 meritorious service to society than to touch with skillful hand the 
 springs of party politics, and to hold together the often discordant 
 elements of ill-compacted majorities. 
 
 The greatest parliamentary effort made by Mr. Webster was his 
 second speech on Foot s resolution ; the question at issue being 
 nothing less than this : Is the Constitution of the United States a 
 compact without a common umpire between confederated sov 
 ereignties, or is it a government of the People of the United States, 
 sovereign within the sphere of its delegated powers, but reserving 
 a great mass of undelegated rights to the separate State govern 
 ments and the People. With those who embrace the opinions 
 which Mr. Webster combated in this speech, this is not the time 
 nor the place to engage in an argument ; but those who believe 
 that he maintained the true principles of the Constitution will 
 
DANIEL WEHSTER. \f)\ 
 
 probably agree that since that Instrument was communicated to 
 the Continental Congress, seventy-two years ago this day, by 
 George Washington, as President of the Federal Convention, no 
 greater service baa been rendered to them than in the delivery of 
 this speech. Well do I recollect the occasion and the scene. It 
 was truly what Wellington called the battle of Waterloo, a conflict 
 of Giants. I passed an hour and a half with Mr. Webster, at his 
 request, the evening before this great effort ; and he went over to 
 me, from a very concise brief, the main topics of the speech, which 
 he had prepared for the following day. So calm and unimpas- 
 sioned was the memorandum, so entirely was he at ease himself, 
 that I was tempted to think, absurdly enough, that he was not 
 sufficiently aware of the magnitude of the occasion. But I soon 
 perceived that his calmness was the repose of conscious power. 
 He was not only at ease, but sportive and full of anecdote ; and as 
 he told the Senate playfully the next day, he slept soundly that 
 night on the formidable assault of his gallant and accomplished 
 adversary. So the great Conde slept on the eve of the battle of 
 Rocroi ; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela ; 
 and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame. As I saw him in 
 the evening (if I may borrow an illustration from his favorite 
 amusement) he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit as some 
 here have often seen him, while floating in his fishing-boat along 
 a hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line 
 here and there, with the varying fortune of the sport. The next 
 morning he was like some mighty Admiral, dark and terrible, 
 casting the long shadow of his frowning tiers far over the sea, that 
 seemed to sink beneath him ; his broad pennant streaming at the 
 main, the stars and stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak, 
 and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist, with all his 
 canvas strained to the wind, and all his thunders roaring from 
 his broadsides. 
 
 AS A JTJEIST. 
 
 /Mr. Webster s career was not less brilliant as a jurist than as a 
 statesman. In fact, he possessed in an eminent degree a judicial 
 mind. While performing an amount of congressional and official 
 labor sufficient to fill the busiest day and to task the strongest 
 powers, he yet sustained with a giant s strength the Herculean 
 toils of his profession. At the very commencement of his k jral 
 studies, resisting the fascination of a more liberal course of read 
 ing, he laid his foundations deep in the common law ; grappled as 
 well as he might with the weary subtilties and obsolete technical 
 ities of Coke Littleton, and abstracted and translated volumes of 
 reports from the Norman-French and Latin. A fe\v years of prac 
 tice follow in the Courts of New Hampshire, interrupted by his 
 service in Congress for two political terms, and we find him at the 
 bar of the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington, in- 
 
192 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 augurating in the Dartmouth College case what may be called a 
 new school of constitutional jurisprudence. 
 
 It would be a waste of time to speak of that great case, or of Mr. 
 Webster s connection with it. It is too freshly remembered in our 
 tribunals. So novel at that time were the principles involved in 
 it, that a member of the Court, after a cursory inspection of the 
 record of the case, expressed the opinion that little of importance 
 could be urged in behalf of the plaintiff in error ; but so firm is 
 the basis on which in that and subsequent cases of a similar char 
 acter those principles were established, that they form one of the 
 best settled, as they are one of the most important, portions of the 
 constitutional law of the Union. 
 
 Not less important, and, at the time, not less novel, were the 
 principles involved in the celebrated case of Gibbons and Ogden. 
 This case grew out of a grant by the State of New York to the as 
 signees of Fulton of the exclusive right to navigate by steam the 
 rivers, harbors, and bays of the Empire State. Twenty-five years 
 aftenvard, Mr. Justice Wayne gave to Mr. Webster the credit of 
 having laid down the broad constitutional ground on which the 
 navigable waters of the United States, " every creek and river and 
 lake and bay and harbor in the country," was forever rescued from 
 the grasp of State monopoly. So failed the intention of the Legis 
 lature of New York to secure a rich pecuniary reward to the great 
 perfecter of steam navigation ; so must have failed any attempt to 
 compensate by money the inestimable achievement. Monopolies 
 could not reward it; silver and gold could not weigh down its 
 value. Small services are paid with money ; large ones with fame. 
 Fulton had his reward \vhen, after twenty years of unsuccessful 
 experiment and hope deferred, he made the passage to Albany by 
 steam ; as Franklin had his reward when he saw the fibers of the 
 cord which held his kite stiffening with the electricity they had 
 drawn from the thunder-cloud ; as Galileo had his when he point 
 ed his little tube to the heavens and discovered the Mediceau stars ; 
 as Columbus had his when he beheld from the deck of his vessel a 
 moving light on the shores of his new-found world. That one 
 glowing, unutterable thrill of conscious success is too exquisite to 
 be alloyed with baser metal. The midnight vigils, the aching 
 eyes, the fainting hopes turned at last into one bewildering ecstasy 
 of triumph, can not be repaid with gold. The great discoveries, 
 improvements, and inventions which benefit mankind can only be 
 rewarded by opposition, obloquy, poverty, and an undying name ! 
 
 Time would fail me, were I otherwise equal to the task, to dwell 
 on the other great constitutional cases argued by Mr. Webster; 
 those on State insolvent laws, the Bank of the United States, the 
 Sailor s Snug Harbor, the Charlestown Bridge Franchise, or those 
 other great cases on the validity of Mr. Girard s will, in which Mr. 
 Webster s argument drew forth an emphatic acknowledgment 
 from the citizens of Washington, of all denominations, for its great 
 
DANIEL WEBSTEK. 193 
 
 value "in demonstrating the vital importance of Christianity to 
 the success of our free institutions, and that the general diffusion 
 of that argument among the People of the United States is a mat 
 ter of deep public interest ;" or the argument in the Rhode Island 
 charter case in 1848, which attracted no little public notice in Eu 
 rope at that anxious period, as a masterly discussion of the true 
 principles of constitutional obligation. 
 
 .^-""It would be superfluous, I might almost say impertinent, to re 
 mark, that if Mr. Webster stood at the head of the constitutional 
 lawyers of the country, he was not less distinguished in early and 
 middle life in the ordinary walks of the profession. From a very 
 early period he shared the best practice with the most eminent of 
 his profession. The trial of Goodridge in 1817, and of Ivnapp in 
 1829, are still recollected as specimens of the highest professional 
 skill, the latter, in fact, as a case of historical importance in the crim 
 inal jurisprudence of the country. 
 
 But, however distinguished his reputation in the other depart 
 ments of his profession, his fame as a jurist is mainly associated 
 with the tribunals of the United States. The relation of the Fed 
 eral Government to that of the States is peculiar to this country, 
 and gives rise to a class of cases in the Supreme Court of the 
 United States to which there is nothing analagous in the jurispru 
 dence of England. In that country, nothing, not even the express 
 words of a treaty, can be pleaded against an act of Parliament. 
 The Supreme Court of the United States entertains questions 
 which involve the constitutionality of the laws of State Legislatures, 
 the validity of the decrees of State Courts nay, of the constitu 
 tionality of the acts of Congress itself. Every one feels that this 
 range and elevation of jurisdiction must tend greatly to the respecta 
 bility of practice at that forum, and give a breadth and liberality to 
 the tone with which questions are there discussed, not so much to be 
 there looked for in the ordinary litigation of the common law. No 
 one needs to be reminded how fully Mr. Webster felt, and, in his 
 own relations to it, sustained the dignity of this tribunal. He re 
 garded it as the great mediating power of the Constitution. He 
 believed that, while it commanded the confidence of the country, 
 no serious derangement of any of the other great functions of the 
 government was to be apprehended. If it should ever fail to do so, 
 he feared the worst. For the memory of Marshall, the great and 
 honored magistrate, who presided in this court for the third part 
 of a century, and did so much to raise its reputation and establish 
 its influence, he cherished feelings of veneration second only to 
 
 V those which he bore to the memory of Washington. , 
 
 AS A DIPLOMATIST. 
 
 In his political career Mr. Webster owed almost everything to 
 popular choice, or the favor of the Legislature of Massachusetts. 
 He was, however, twice clothed with executive power, as the head 
 
194 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 of an Administration, and in that capacity achieved a diplomatic, 
 success of the highest order. Among the victories of peace not 
 less renowned than those of war which Milton celebrates, the first 
 place is surely due to those friendly arrangements between great 
 powers, by which war is averted. Such an arrangement was effect 
 ed by Mr. Webster in 1842, in reference to more than one highly ir 
 ritating question between this country and Great Britain, and es 
 pecially the North-Eastern Boundary of the United States. I 
 allude to the subject, not for the sake of reopening obselete contro 
 versies, but for the purpose of vindicating his memory from the 
 charges of disingenuousness, and even fraud, which were brought 
 against him at the time in England, and which have very lately 
 been revived in that country. I do it the rather, as the facts of 
 ^the case have never been fully stated. 
 
 The North-Eastern Boundary of the United States, which was 
 described by the treaty of 1783, had never been surveyed and run. 
 It was still unsettled in 1842, and had become the subject of a con 
 troversy, which had resisted the ability of several successive 
 administrations, on both sides of the water, and had nearly ex 
 hausted the resources of arbitration and diplomacy. Border col 
 lisions, though happily no bloodshed, had taken place ; seventeen 
 regiments had been thrown into the British provinces ; General 
 Scott had been dispatched to the frontier of Maine ; and our 
 Minister in London (Mr. Stevenson) had written to the commander 
 of the American squadron in the Mediterranean, that a collision, 
 in his opinion, was inevitable. 
 
 Such was the state of things when Mr. Webster came into the 
 Department of State in the spring of 1841. He immediately gave 
 an intimation to the British Government that he was desirous of 
 renewing the interrupted negotiation. A change of ministry took 
 place in England in the course of a few months, and a resolution 
 was soon taken by Sir Eobert Peel and Lord Aberdeen to send a 
 special Envoy to the United States, to make a last attempt to settle 
 this dangerous dispute by negotiation. Lord Ashburton was selected 
 for this honorable errand, and his known friendly relations with 
 Mr. Webster were among the motives that prompted his appoint 
 ment. It may be observed, that the intrinsic difficulties of the ne 
 gotiation were increased by the circumstance, that, as the disputed 
 territory lay in the State of Maine, and the property of the soil 
 was in Maine and Massachusetts, it was deemed necessary to obtain 
 the consent of those States to any arrangement that might be en 
 tered into by the General Government. 
 
 The length of time for which the question had been controverted 
 had, as usually happens in such cases, the effect of fixing both 
 parties more firmly in their opposite views of the subject. It was 
 a pledge, at least, of the good faith with which the United States 
 had conducted the discussion, that everything in our archives bear 
 ing on the subject had been voluntarily spread before the world. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTEK. 195 
 
 On the other side, no part of the correspondence of the ministers 
 who negotiated the treaty had ever been published, and whenever 
 Americans were permitted, for literary purposes, to institute his 
 torical inquiries in the public offices in London, precautions were 
 taken to prevent anything from being brought to light which might 
 bear unfavorably on the British interpretation of the treaty. 
 
 The American interpretation of the treaty had been maintained 
 in its fullest extent, as far as I am aware, by every statesman in 
 the country, of whatever party, to whom the question had ever 
 been submitted. It had been thus maintained in good faith by an 
 entire generation of public men of the highest intelligence and most 
 unquestioned probity. The British government had, with equal 
 confidence, maintained their interpretation. The attempt to settle 
 the controversy by a reference to the King of the Netherlands had 
 failed. In this state of things, as the boundary had remained un 
 settled for tifty-nine years, and had been controverted for more 
 than twenty ; as negotiation and arbitration had shown that neither 
 party was likely to convince tho other ; and as, in cases of this 
 kind, it is more important that a public controversy should be settled 
 than how it should be settled (of course within reasonable limits), 
 Mr. Webster had from the first contemplated a conventional line. 
 Such a line, and for the same reasons, was anticipated in Lord Ash- 
 burton s instructions, and was accordingly agreed upon by the two 
 negotiators a line convenient and advantageous to both parties. 
 
 Such an adjustment, however, like that which had been proposed 
 by the King of the Netherlands, was extremely distasteful to the 
 people of Maine, who, standing on their rights, adhered with the 
 greatest tenacity to the boundary described by the treaty of 1783, 
 as the United States had always claimed it. As the opposition of 
 Maine had prevented that arrangement from taking effect, there is 
 great reason to suppose that it would have prevented the adoption 
 of the conventional line agreed to by Mr. Webster and Lord Ash- 
 burton, but for the following circumstance. 
 
 This was the discovery, the year before, by President Sparks, in 
 the archives of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, at Paris, of a copy 
 of a small map of North America, by D Auville, published in 1746, 
 on which a red line was drawn, indicating a boundary between the 
 United States and Great Britain more favorable to the latter than 
 she had herself claimed it. By whom it was marked, or for what 
 purpose, did not appear, from any indication on the map itself. 
 There was also found, in the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, in a hound 
 volume of official correspondence, a letter from Dr. Franklin to the 
 Count de Vergennes, dated on the Oth of December (six days alter 
 the signature of the provisional articles), stating that, in compliance 
 with the Count s request, and on 4 map sent him for the purpose, 
 he had marked, "with a strong red line, the limits of the United 
 States, as settled in the preliminaries." 
 
 The French archives had been searched by Mr. Canning s agents 
 
196 DANIEL WEBSTEK. 
 
 as long ago as 1827, but this map either escaped their notice, or 
 had not been deemed by them of importance. The English and 
 French maps of this region differ from each other, and it is known 
 that the map used by the negotiators of the treaty of 1783 was 
 Mitchell s large map of America, published under the official sanc 
 tion of the Board of Trade in 1754. D Anville s map was but 
 eighteen inches square, and on so small a scale the difference of the 
 two boundaries would be but slight, and consequently open to mis 
 take. The letter of the Count de Vergennes, transmitting a map 
 to be marked, is not preserved, nor is there any indorsement on 
 the red-line map to show that it is the map sent by the Count and 
 marked by Franklin. D AnvihVs map was published in 1746, and 
 it would surely be unwarrantable to take for granted, in a case of 
 such importance, that, in the course of thirty years, it could not 
 have been marked with a red line for some other purpose, and by 
 some other person. It would be equally rash to assume as certain 
 either that the map marked by Franklin for the Count de Vergen 
 nes was deposited by him in the public archives; or, if so depos 
 ited, may not still be hid a\vay among the sixty thousand maps 
 contained in that depository. The official correspondence of Mr. 
 Oswald, the British negotiator, was retained by the British minister 
 in his own possession, and does not appear to have gone into the 
 public archives. 
 
 In the absence of all evidence to connect Dr. Franklin s letter 
 with the map, it could not, in a court of justice, have been received 
 for a moment as a map marked by him ; and any presumption that 
 it was so marked, was resisted by the language of the treaty. 
 This point was urged in debate, with great force, by Lord Brougham, 
 who, as well as Sir Robert Peel, liberally defended Mr. Webster 
 from the charges which the opposition journals in London had 
 brought against him. 
 
 Information of this map was, in the progress of the negotiation, 
 very properly communicated to Mr. Webster by Mr. Sparks. For 
 the reasons stated, it could not be admitted as proving anything. 
 It was another piece of evidence of uncertain character, and Mr. 
 Webster could have no assurance that the next day might not pro 
 duce some other map equally strong or stronger on the American 
 side ; which, as I shall presently state, was soon done in London. 
 
 In this state of things, he made the only use of it which could 
 be legitimately made, in communicating it to the commissioners of 
 the State of Maine and Massachusetts and to the Senate, as a piece 
 of conflicting evidence, entitled to consideration, likely to be urged 
 as of great importance by the opposite party, if the discussion 
 should be renewed, increasing the difficulties which already sur 
 rounded the question, and thus furnishing new grounds for agree 
 ing to the proposed conventional line. No one, I think, acquainted 
 with the history of the controversy, and the state of public opinion 
 and feeling, can doubt that, but for this communication, it would 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 197 
 
 have been difficult, if not impossible, to procure the assent either 
 of Maine or of the Senate to the treaty. 
 
 This would seem to be going as far as reason or honor required, 
 in reference to an unauthentioated document, having none of the 
 properties of legal evidence, not exhibited by the opposite party, 
 and of a nature to be outweighed by contradictory evidence of the 
 same kind, which was very soon done. But Mr. Webster was, at 
 the time, severely censured by the opposition press in England, 
 and was accused of "perfidy and want of good faith" (and this 
 charge has lately been revived in an elaborate and circumstantial 
 manner), for not going with this map to Lord Ashburton ; entirely 
 abandoning the American claim, and ceding the whole of the dis 
 puted territory, more even than she asked, to Great Britain, on the 
 strength of this single piece of doubtful evidence. 
 
 Such a charge scarcely deserves an answer ; but two things will 
 occur to all impartial persons : one, that the red-line map, even had 
 it been proved to have been marked by Franklin (which it is not), 
 would be but one piece of evidence to be weighed with the words 
 of the treaty, with all the other evidence in the case, and especially 
 with the other maps ; and, secondly, that such a course as it is pre 
 tended that Mr. Webster ought to have pursued, could only be 
 reasonably required of him, on condition that the British govern 
 ment had also produced, or would undertake to produce, all the 
 evidence, and especially all the maps in its possession, favorable to 
 the American claim. 
 
 Now, not to urge against the red-line map, that, as was vigor 
 ously argued by Lord Brougham, it was at variance with the ex 
 press words "of the treaty, there were, according to Mr. Gallatin, 
 the commissioner for preparing the claim of the United States, to 
 be submitted to the arbiter in 1827, at least twelve maps published 
 in London in the course of two years after the signature of the pro 
 visional articles in 1782, all of which give the boundary line pre 
 cisely as claimed by the United States ; and no map was published 
 in London, favoring the British claim, till the third year. The 
 earliest of these maps were prepared to illustrate the debates in 
 Parliament on the treaty, or to illustrate the treaty in anticipation 
 of the debate. None of the speakers on either side intimated that 
 these maps are inaccurate, though some of the opposition speakers 
 attacked the treaty as giving a disadvantageous boundary. One 
 of these maps, that of Faden, the royal geographer, was stated on 
 the face of it to be u drawn according to the treaty." Mr. Sparks 
 is of opinion that Mr. Oswald, the British envoy by whom the 
 treaty was negotiated, and who was in London when the earliest 
 of the maps were engraved, was consulted by the map-makers on 
 the subject of the boundary. At any rate, had they been inaccu 
 rate in this respect, either Mr. Oswald or the minister, u who was 
 vehemently assailed on account of the large concession of the 
 boundaries," would have exposed the error. But neither by Mr. 
 
198 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 Oswald nor by any of the ministers was any complaint made of the 
 inaccuracy of the maps. 
 
 One of these maps was that contained in "Bew s Political Mag 
 azine," a respectable journal, for which it was prepared, to illus 
 trate the debate on the provisional articles of 1782. It happened 
 that Lord Ashburton was calling- upon me, about the time of the 
 debate in the House of Commons on the merits of the Treaty, on 
 the 21st March, 1843. On my expressing to him the opinion, with 
 the freedom warranted by our intimate friendly relations, that his 
 government ought to be much obliged to him for obtaining so much 
 of a territory, of which I conscientiously believed the whole be 
 longed to us, " What," asked he, " have you to oppose to the red- 
 line map?" I replied that, in addition to the other objections 
 already mentioned, I considered it to be outweighed by the numer 
 ous other maps which were published at London at the time, some 
 of them to illustrate the treaty ; and, among them, I added, " the 
 map in the volume which happens to lie on my table at this mo 
 ment," which was the volume of "Bew s Political Magazine," 
 to which I called his attention. He told me that he was unac 
 quainted with that map, and desired that I would lend him the vol 
 ume to show to Sir Robert Peel. This I did, and in his reply to 
 Lord Palmerston, in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel, hold 
 ing this volume of mine in his hand, referred to the map contain 
 ed in it, and "which follows," said he, "exactly the American 
 line," as an off-set to the red-line map, of which great use bad been 
 made by the opposition in England, for the purpose of showing 
 that Lord Ashburton had been overreached by Mr. Webster. In 
 the course of his speech he defended Mr. Webster in the handsom 
 est manner from the charges brought against him in reference to 
 this map by the opposition press, and said that in his judgment 
 * the reflections cast upon that most worthy and honorable man are 
 unjust." 
 
 ISTor was this all. The more effectually to remove the impression 
 attempted to be raised, in consequence of the red-line map, that 
 Lord Ashburton had been overreached, Sir Robert Peel stated 
 and the disclosure was now for the first time made that there was 
 in the library of King George the Third (which had been given to the 
 British Museum by George the Fourth) a copy of Mitchell s map, in 
 which the boundary as delineated " follows exactly the line claimed 
 by the United States." On four places upon this line are written 
 the words, in a strong, bold hand, * The boundary as described by 
 Mr. Oswald." There is documentary proof that Mr. Oswald sent 
 the map used by him, in negotiating the treaty, to King George 
 the Third, for his information; and Lord Brougham stated in his 
 place, in the House of Peers, that the words, four times repeated, 
 in different parts of the line, were, in his opinion, written by the 
 King himself! Having listened, and of course with the deepest in 
 terest to the debate in the House of Commons, I sought the earli- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. lf)() 
 
 est opportunity of inspecting the map, which was readily granted 
 to me by Lord Aberdeen. The boundary is marked, in the most 
 distinct and skillful manner, from the St. Croix all round to the St. 
 Marv s, ami is precisely thai which lias been always claimed by us. 
 Then- is every reason to believe that this is the identical copy of 
 Mitchell s map otlicially used by the negotiators and sent by Mr. 
 ()>\\ald. as we learn from Dr. Franklin, to England. Sir Kobert 
 Peel informed me that it was unknown to him till after the treaty, 
 and Lord Aberdeen and Lord Ashhurton gave me the same assur 
 ance. It was well known, however, to the agent employed under 
 Lord Melbourne s administration in maintaining the British claim, 
 and who was foremost in vilifying Mr. Webster for concealing the 
 red-line map!* 
 
 AB A PUBLIC SPEAKEE. 
 
 had intended to say a few words on Mr. "Webster s transcend- 
 ability as a public speaker on the great national anniversaries, 
 and the patriotic celebrations of the country. But it would be 
 impossible, within the limits of a few paragraphs, to do any kind 
 of justice to such efforts as the discourse on the twenty-second 
 December, at Plymouth ; the speeches on laying the corner-stone 
 and the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument ; the eulogy 
 on Adams and Jefferson ; the character of Washington ; the dis 
 course on laying the foundation of the extension of the Capitol. 
 "What gravity and significance in the topics, what richness of illus 
 tration, what soundness of principle, what elevation of sentiment, 
 what fervor in the patriotic appeals, what purity, vigor, and clear 
 ness in the style ! 
 
 With reference to the first-named of these admirable discourses, 
 the elder President Adams declared that " Burke is no longer enti 
 tled to the praise the most consummate orator of modern times;" 
 and it will, I think, be admitted by any one who shall attentively 
 study them, that if Mr. Webster, with all his powers and all his at 
 tainments, had done nothing else but enrich the literature of the 
 country with these performances, he would be allowed to have 
 lived not unworthily, nor in vain. When we consider that they 
 were produced under the severe pressure of professional and offi 
 cial engagements, numerous and arduous enough to task even his 
 intellect, we are lost in admiration of the affluence of his mental 
 resources. 
 
 * Sir Eobert Peel, with reference to the line on Oswald s map, observes, "I do 
 not say that that was the boundary, ultimately settled by the negotiators." Such, 
 however, is certainly the case. Mr. Jay s copy of Mitchell s map (which was also 
 discovered after the negotiation of the treaty) exhibits a line running down the St. 
 John s to its mouth, and called Mr. Oswald s line." This is the line which Mr. Os 
 wald offered to the American negotiators on the *th of October. It was, however, 
 not approved by the British government, and t!>e line indicated in the map of King 
 George the Third, as the u Boundary as described by Mr. Oswald," was finally 
 agreed to. 
 
200 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF STYLE AND MANATEE. 
 
 In all the speeches, arguments, discourses, and compositions of 
 every kind proceeding from Mr. Webster s lips or pen, there were 
 certain general characteristics which I am unwilling to dismiss 
 without a passing allusion. Each, of course, had its peculiar 
 merits, according to the nature and importance of the subject, 
 and the degree of pains bestowed by Mr. Webster on the dis 
 cussion ; but I find some general qualities pervading them all. 
 One of them is the extreme sobriety of the tone, the pervading 
 common sense, the entire absence of that extravagance and over 
 statement which are so apt to creep into political harangues and 
 the discourses on patriotic anniversaries. His positions were taken 
 strongly, clearly, and boldly, but without wordy amplification or one 
 sided vehemence. You feel that your understanding is addressed, 
 on behalf of a reasonable proposition, which rests neither on senti 
 mental refinement or rhetorical exaggeration. This is the case 
 even in speeches like that on the Greek Revolution, where, in en 
 listing the aid of classical memories and Christian sympathies, it 
 was so difficult to rest within the bounds of moderation. 
 
 This moderation not only characterizes Mr. Webster s parlia 
 mentary efforts, but is equally conspicuous in his discourses on 
 popular and patriotic occasions, which, amid all the inducements 
 to barren declamation, are equally and always marked by the treat 
 ment of really important topics in a manly and instructive strain 
 of argument and reflection, 
 
 Let it not be thought, however, that I would represent Mr. 
 Webster s speeches in Congress or elsewhere as destitute on proper 
 occasions of the most glowing appeals to the moral sentiments, or 
 wanting, when the topic invites it, in any of the adornments of a 
 magnificent rhetoric. Who that heard it, or has read it, will ever 
 forget the desolating energy of his denunciation of the African 
 Slave Trade, in the discourse at Plymouth ; or the splendor of the 
 apostrophe to Warren, in the first discourse on Bunker Hill ; or 
 that to the monumental shaft and the survivors of the Revolution 
 in the second ; or the trumpet-tones of the speech placed in the 
 lips of John Adams, in the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson ; or the 
 sublime peroration of the speech on Foot s resolution ; or the lyric 
 fire of the imagery by which he illustrates the extent of the Brit 
 ish empire ; or the almost supernatural terror of his description 
 of the force of conscience in the argument in Knapp s trial. Then, 
 how bright and fresh the description of Niagara ! how beautiful 
 the picture of the Morning in his private correspondence, which, 
 as well as his familiar conversation, was enlivened by the per 
 petual play of a joyous and fertile imagination! In a word, what 
 tone in all the grand and melting music of our language is there 
 which is not heard in some portion of his speeches or writings ; 
 while reason, sense, and truth compose the basis of the strain ? 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 201 
 
 Like the sky above us, it is sometimes serene and cloudless, and 
 peace and love shine out from its starry depths. At other times 
 the gallant streamers, in wild, fantastic play emerald, and rose, 
 and orange, and lleecy white shoot upward from the horizon, 
 mingle in a fiery canopy at the zenith, and throw out their flick 
 ering curtains over the heavens and the earth ; while at other 
 times the mustering tempest piles his lowering battlements on the 
 sides of the north; a furious storm- wind rushes forth from their 
 blazing loop-holes, and volleyed thunders give the signal of the ele 
 mental war ! 
 
 Another quality, which appears to me to be very conspicuous in all 
 Mr. Webster s .speeches, is the fairness and candor with which he 
 treats the argument of his, opponent, and the total absence of 
 olieiiMve personality. lie was accustomed, in preparing to argue 
 a question at the bar, or to debate it in the Senate, first to state 
 his opponent s case, or argument, in his own mind, with as much 
 force and skill as if it were his own view of the subject, not deeming 
 it worthy of a statesman discussing the great issues of the public 
 weal, to assail and prostrate a man of straw, and call it a victory 
 over his antagonist. True to his party associations, there w T as the 
 least possible mingling of the partizan in his parliamentary efforts. 
 No one, I think, ever truly said of him that he had either misrep 
 resented or failed to grapple fairly with the argument which he un 
 dertook to confute. That he possessed the power of invective in 
 the highest degree is well known, from the display of it on a few 
 occasions, when great provocation justified and required it ; but he 
 habitually abstained from offensive personality, regarding it as an 
 indication always of a bad temper, and generally of a weak 
 cause. 
 
 I notice, lastly, a sort of judicial dignity in Mr. Webster s mode 
 of treating public questions, which may be ascribed to the high de 
 gree in which he united, in the range of his studies and the habits 
 of his life, the jurist with the statesman. There were occasions, 
 and these not. a few, when but for the locality from which he 
 spoke, you might have been at a loss whether you were listening 
 to the accomplished senator unfolding the principles of the Con 
 stitution as a system of Government, or the consummate jurist ap 
 plying its legislative provisions to the practical interests of life. In 
 the Dartmouth College case, and that of Gibbons and Ogden, the 
 dryness of a professional argument is forgotten in the breadth and 
 elevation of the constitutional principles shown to be involved in 
 the issue ; while in the great speeches on the interpretation of the 
 Constitution, a severe judicial logic darts its sunbeams into the 
 deepest recesses of a written compact of Government, intended 
 to work out a harmonious adjustment of the antagonistic principles 
 of Federal and State sovereignty. None, I think, but a great 
 statesman could have performed Mr. Webster s part before the 
 highest tribunals of the land ; none but a great lawyer could have 
 
202 DANIEL WEBSTEB. 
 
 sustained himself as he did on the floor of the Senate. In fact, he 
 rose to that elevation at which the law, in its highest conception, 
 and in its versatile functions and agencies, as the great mediator be 
 tween the State and the individual ; the shield b j which the weakness 
 of the single man is protected from the violence and craft of his fel 
 lows, and clothed for the defense of his rights with the mighty power 
 of the mass ; which watches faithful guardian over the life and 
 property of the orphan in the cradle ; spreads the aegis of the pub 
 lic peace alike over the crowded streets of great cities and the sol 
 itary pathways of the wilderness ; which convoys the merchant 
 and his cargo in safety to and from the ends of the earth ; pre 
 scribes the gentle humanities of civilization to contending armies ; 
 sits serene umpire of the clashing interests of confederated States, 
 and molds them all into one grand union ; I say, M^ Webster 
 rose to an elevation at \vhich all these attributes and functions of 
 universal law in action alternately executive, legislative, and ju 
 dicial ; in form, successively constitution, statute, and decree are 
 mingled into one harmonious, protecting, strengthening, vitalizing, 
 sublime system ; brightest image on earth of that ineifable sove 
 reign energy, which, with mingled power, wisdom, and love, up 
 holds and governs the universe. 
 
 THE CENTRAL IDEA OF HIS POLITICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Led equally by his professional occupations and his political du 
 ties to make the Constitution the object of his profoundest study 
 and meditation, he regarded it with peculiar reverence, as a Cove 
 nant of Union between the members of this great and increasing 
 family of States ; and in that respect he considered it as the most im 
 portant document ever penned by the hand of uninspired man. I 
 need not tell you that this reverence for the Constitution as the 
 covenant of union between the States was the central idea of his 
 political system, which, however, in this, as in all other respects, 
 aimed at a wise and safe balance of extreme opinions. He valued, 
 as much as any man can possibly value it, the principle of State 
 sovereignty. He looked upon the organization of these separate 
 independent republics of different sizes, different ages and histo 
 ries, different geographical positions and local interests as furnish 
 ing a security of inappreciable value for a wise and beneficent 
 administration of local affairs, and the protection of individual and 
 local rights. But he regarded as an approach to the perfection of 
 political wisdom, the molding of these separate and independent 
 sovereignties, with all their pride of individual right, and all their 
 jealousy of individual consequence, into a harmonious whole. He 
 never weighed the two principles against each other; he held 
 them complemental to each other, equally and supremely vital and 
 essential. 
 
 I happened, one bright starry night, to be walking home with 
 him, at a late hour, from the Capitol at Washington, after a skir- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 203 
 
 mishing debate, in "which lie had been speaking, at no great length, 
 but. with much earnestness and warmth, on the subject of thet on- 
 stitution as forming a united government. The planet Jupiter, 
 shininir with unusual brilliancy, was in full view. He paused as we 
 descended Capitol Kill, and unconsciously pursuing the train of 
 thought which he had been enforcing in the Senate, pointed to the 
 planet and said " Night unto night showeth knowledge: take 
 away the independent force, emanating from the hand of the Su- 
 
 Ereme, which impels that planet onward, and it would plunge in 
 ideous ruin from those, beautiful skies unto the sun ; takeaway 
 the central attraction of the sun, and the attendant planet would 
 shoot madly from its sphere ; urged and restrained by the balanced 
 forces, it wheels its eternal circles through the heavens." 
 
 HE CONTEMPLATES A WOKK ON THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 His reverence for the Constitution led him to meditate a work 
 in which the history of its formation and adoption should he traced, 
 its principles unfolded and explained, its analogies with other govern 
 ments investigated, its expansive fitness to promote the prosperity 
 of the country for ages yet to come, developed and maintained. 
 His thoughts had long flowed in this channel. The subject was 
 not only the one on which he had bestowed his most earnest par 
 liamentary efforts, but it formed the point of reference of much 
 of his historical and miscellaneous reading. He was .anxious to 
 learn what the experience of mankind taught on the subject of 
 governments in any degree resembling our own. As our fathers, 
 in forming the Confederation, and still more the members of the 
 Convention which framed the Constitution and especially Wash 
 ington studied with diligence the organization of all the former 
 compacts of government those of the Netherlands, of Switzer 
 land, and ancient Greece, so Mr. Webster directed special atten 
 tion to all the former leagues and confederacies of modern and 
 ancient times, for lessons and analogies of encouragement and 
 warning to his countrymen. He dwelt much on the Amphicty- 
 onic league of Greece, one of the confederacies to which the 
 framers of the Constitution often referred, and which is frequently 
 spoken of as a species of federal government. Unhappily for 
 Greece, it had little claim to that character. Founded originally 
 on confraternity of religious rites, it was expanded in the lapse of 
 time into a loose political association, but was destitute of all the 
 powers of an organized, efficient government. On this subject Mr. 
 Webster found a remark in Grote s History of Greece, which 
 struck him as being of extreme significance to the people of the 
 United States. Occasionally," says Grote, " there was a partial 
 pretense for the imposing title bestowed upon the Amphictyonic 
 league by Cicero, Commune Gra?cia3 Concilium, but we should 
 completely misinterpret Grecian History, if we regarded it as a 
 federal council habitually directing, or habitually obeyed." " And 
 
204 DANIEL WEBSTEE. 
 
 now," said Mr. Webster, " comes a passage which ought to be writ 
 ten in letters of gold over the door of the Capitol and of every State 
 Legislature : Had there existed any such " Commune Concilium" 
 of tolerable wisdom and patriotism, and had the tendencies of the 
 Hellenic mind been capable of adapting themselves to it, the whole 
 course of later Grecian History would probably have been altered ; 
 the Macedonian kings would have remained only as respectable 
 neighbors, borrowing their civilization from Greece, and exercising 
 their military energies upon Thracians and Illyrians ; while united 
 Hellas might have maintained her own territory against the con 
 quering legions of Rome. " * A wise and patriotic federal gov 
 ernment would have preserved Greece from the Macedonian 
 phalanx and the Roman legions! 
 
 Professional and official labors engrossed Mr. Webster s time 
 and left him no leisure for the execution of his meditated work 
 on the Constitution a theme which, as he would have treated it, 
 tracing it back to its historical fountains and forward to its pro 
 phetic issues, seems to me, in the wide range of its topics, to 
 embrace higher and richer elements of thought, for the American 
 statesman and patriot, than any other not directly connected with 
 the spiritual welfare of man. 
 
 MAGNITUDE OF THE THEME. THE FUTUKE OF THE UNION. 
 
 What else is there, in the material system of the world, so won 
 derful as the concealment of the Western Hemisphere for ages 
 behind the mighty vail of waters ? How could such a secret be 
 kept from the foundation of the world till the end of the fifteenth 
 century? What so astonishing as the concurrence, within less 
 than a century, of the invention of printing, the demonstration 
 of the true system of the Heavens, and this great-world discovery? 
 What so mysterious as the dissociation of the native tribes of this 
 continent from the civilized and civilizable races of man ? What 
 so remarkable, in political history, as the operation of the in 
 fluences now in conflict, now in harmony under which the 
 various nations of the Old World sent their children to occupy 
 the New ; great populations silently stealing into existence ; the 
 wilderness of one century swarming in the next with millions; 
 ascending the streams, crossing the mountains, struggling with a 
 wild, hard nature, with savage foes, with rival settlements of for 
 eign powers, but ever onward, onward ? What so propitious 
 as this long colonial training in the school of chartered govern 
 ment ; and then, when the fullness of time had come, what so 
 majestic, amid all its vicissitudes and all its trials, as the Grand 
 Separation mutually beneficial in its final result to both parties 
 the dread appeal to arms, that venerable Continental Congress, 
 the august Declaration, the strange alliance of the oldest monarchy 
 
 * Grote a History of Greece, Yol. ii. p. 886. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 205 
 
 of Europe with the Infant Republic? And, lastly, what so 
 worthy the admiration of men and angels as the appearance of 
 him the expected ; him the Hero, raised up to conduct the mo 
 mentous contliot to its auspicious issue in the Confederation, the 
 Union, the Constitution ! 
 
 Is this a theme not unworthy of the pen and the mind of Web 
 ster? Then consider the growth of the country, thus politically 
 inhered into existence and organized under that Constitution, as 
 delineated in his address on laying the corner-stone of the ex 
 tension of the Capitol; the thirteen colonies that accomplished 
 the Revolution multiplied to thirty-two independent States, a single 
 one of them exceeding in population the old thirteen; the narrow 
 border of settlement along the coast, fenced in by France and the 
 native tribes, expanded to the dimensions of the continent; 
 Louisiana, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, California, Oregon ter 
 ritories equal to the great monarchies of Europe added to the 
 Union ; and the two millions of population which fired the imagin 
 ation of Burke, swelled to twenty-four millions during the lifetime 
 of Mr. Webster, and in seven short years, which have since 
 elapsed, increased to thirty ! 
 
 With these stupendous results in his own time as the unit of 
 calculation beholding under Providence with each Decade of 
 years, a new people, millions strong, emigrants in part from the 
 Old World, but mainly bone of our bone, and flesh of our liesh, 
 the children of the soil, growing up to inhabit the waste places of 
 the continent, to inherit and transmit the rights and blessings 
 which we have received from our fathers ; recognizing in the 
 Constitution and in the Union established by it the creative in 
 fluence which, as far as human agencies go, has wrought these 
 miracles of growth and progress, and which wraps up in sacred 
 reserve the expansive energy with which the work is to be carried 
 on and perfected, he looked forward with patriotic aspiration to 
 the time when, beneath its aegis, the whole wealth of our civil 
 ization would be poured out, not only to fill up the broad inter 
 stices of settlement, if I may so express myself, in the old thirteen, 
 and their young and thriving sister States already organized in 
 the West, but in the lapse of time, to found a hundred ne\v repub 
 lics in the valley of the Missouri and beyond the Rocky Mountains, 
 till our letters and our arts, our schools and our churches, our laws 
 and our liberties, shall be carried from the arctic circle to the 
 tropics ; " from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof." 
 
 VIEWS OF THE PRE9EXT. 
 
 This prophetic glance, not merely at the impending, but the dis 
 tant future, this reliance on the fulfillment of the great design of 
 Providence, illustrated through our whole history, to lavish upon 
 the people of this country the accumulated blessings of all former 
 stages of human progress, made him more tolerant of the tardy 
 
206 DANIEL WEBSTER, 
 
 and irregular advances and temporary wanderings from the path of 
 what he deemed a wise and sound policy than those fervid spirits 
 who dwell exclusively in the present, and make less allowance for 
 the gradual operation of moral influences. This was the case in 
 reference to the great sectional controversy which now so sharply 
 divides and so violently agitates the country. He not only confi 
 dently anticipated what the lapse of seven years since his decease 
 has witnessed and is witnessing, that the newly-acquired and the 
 newly-organized territories of the Union would grow up into free 
 States ; but, in common with all or nearly ah 1 the statesmen of the 
 last generation, he believed that free labor would ultimately pre 
 vail throughout the country. He thought he saw that in the 
 operation of the same causes which have produced this result in 
 the Middle and Eastern States, it was visibly taking place in the 
 States north of the cotton-growing region ; and he inclined to the 
 opinion that there also, under the influence of physical and eco 
 nomical causes, free labor would eventually be found most produc 
 tive, and would therefore be ultimately established. 
 
 For these reasons, bearing in mind, what all admit, that the com 
 plete solution of the mighty problem, which now so greatly tasks 
 the prudence and patriotism of the wisest and best in the land, is 
 beyond the delegated powers of the General Government ; that it 
 depends, as far as the States are concerned, on their independent 
 legislation, and that it is, of all others, a subject in reference to 
 which public opinion and public sentiment will most powerfully 
 influence the law ; that much in the lapse of time, without law, is 
 likely to be brought about by degrees, and gradually done and per 
 mitted, as in Missouri, at the present day ; while nothing is to be 
 hoped from external interference, whether of exhortation or re 
 buke that in all human affairs controlled by self-governing com 
 munities, extreme opinions and extreme courses, on the one hand, 
 generally lead to extreme opinions and extreme courses on the 
 other ; and that nothing will more contribute to the earliest prac 
 ticable relief of the country from this most prolific source of con 
 flict and estrangement, than to prevent its being introduced into 
 our party organizations, he deprecated its being allowed to find a 
 place among the political issues of the day, North or South ; and 
 seeking a platform on which honest and patriotic men might meet 
 and stand, he thought he had found it, where our fathers did, in the 
 Constitution. 
 
 It is true that, in interpreting the fundamental law on this sub 
 ject, a diversity of opinion between the two sections of the Union 
 presents itself. This has ever been the case, first or last, in rela 
 tion to every great question which has divided the country. It is 
 the unfailing incident of constitutions, written or unwritten ; an 
 evil to be dealt with in good faith, by prudent and enlightened 
 men, in both sections of the Union, seeking, as Washington sought, 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 207 
 
 the public good, and giving expression to the patriotic common- 
 sense of the people. 
 
 Such, I have reason to believe, were the principles entertained 
 by Mr. Webster ; not certainly those best calculated to win a tem 
 porary popularity in any part of the Union, in times of passionate 
 sectional agitation, which, between the extremes of opinion, leaves 
 no middle ground for moderate counsels. If any one could have 
 found and could have trodden such ground with success, he would 
 seem to have been qualified to do it, by his transcendent talent, his 
 mature experience, his approved temper and calmness, and his 
 tried patriotism. If he failed of finding such a path for himself or 
 the country while we thoughtfully await what time and an all- 
 i rovidence has in store for ourselves and our children let ns 
 remember that his attempt was the highest and the purest which 
 can engage the thoughts of a Statesman and a Patriot : Peace on 
 earth, good-will toward men ; harmony and brotherly love among 
 the children of our common country. 
 
 And O, my friends, if among those who, differing from him on 
 this or any other subject, have yet, with generous forgetfulness of 
 that which separated you, and kindly remembrance of all that you 
 held in common, come up this day to do honor to his memory, 
 there are any who suppose that he cherished less tenderly than 
 yourselves the great ideas of Liberty, Humanity, and Brotherhood ; 
 that, because he was faithful to the duties which he inferred from 
 the Constitution and the Law, to which he looked for the govern 
 ment of Civil Society, he was less sensible than yourselves to the 
 broader relations and deeper sympathies which unite us to our 
 fellow-creatures, as brethren of one family and children of one 
 heavenly Father, believe me, you do his memory a grievous wrong. 
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTER. 
 
 This is not the occasion to dwell upon the personal character of 
 Mr. Webster, on the fascination of his social intercourse, or the 
 charm of his domestic life. Something I could have said on his 
 Companionable disposition and habits, his genial temper, the re 
 sources and attractions of his conversation, his love of nature, 
 alike in her wild and cultivated aspects, and his keen perception 
 of the beauties of this fair world in which we live ; something of 
 his devotion to agricultural pursuits, which, next to his profes 
 sional and public duties, formed the occupation of his life ; some 
 thing of his fondness for athletic and manly sports and exercise-; 
 something of his friendships, and of his attachments warmer than 
 friendships the son, the brother, the husband, and the father; 
 something of the joys and the sorrows of his home ; of the strength 
 of his religious convictions, his testimony to the truth of the 
 Christian Revelation; the tenderness and sublimity of the parting 
 scene. Something on these topics I have elsewhere said, and may 
 not here repeat. 
 
208 DANIEL WEBSTEE. 
 
 Some other things, my friends, with your indulgence, I would 
 say; thoughts, memories, which crowd upon, me, too vivid to be 
 repressed, too personal almost to be uttered. 
 
 On the 17th of July, 1804, a young man from New Hampshire 
 arrived in Boston, all but penniless, and all but friendless. He 
 was twenty -two years of age, and had come to take the first steps 
 in the career of life at the capital of New England. Three days 
 after arriving in Boston he presented himself, without letters of 
 recommendation, to Mr. Christopher Gore, then just returned from 
 England, after an official residence of some years, and solicited a 
 place in his office as a clerk. His only introduction was by a young 
 man as little known to Mr. Gore as himself, and who went to pro 
 nounce his name, which he did so indistinctly as not to be heard. 
 His slender figure, striking countenance, large dark eye, and massy 
 brow, his general appearance indicating a delicate organization,* 
 his manly carriage and modest demeanor, arrested attention and 
 inspired confidence. His humble suit was granted, he was received 
 into the office, and had been there a week before Mr. Gore learned 
 that his name was DANIEL WEBSTER! His older brother older 
 in years, but later in entering life (for whose education Daniel, 
 while teacher of the" Academy at Fryeburg, had drudged till mid 
 night in the office of the Register of Deeds), at that time taught a 
 small school in Short Street (now Kingston Street), in Boston, and 
 while he was in attendance at the commencement at Dartmouth, 
 in 1804, to receive his degree, Daniel supplied hi s place. At that 
 school, at the age often, I was then a pupil, and there commenced 
 a friendship which lasted, without interruption or chill, while his 
 life lasted ; of which, while mine lasts, the grateful recollection will 
 never perish. From that time forward I knew, I honored, I loved 
 him. I saw him at all seasons and on all occasions, in the flush 
 of public triumph, in the intimacy of the fireside, in the most unre 
 served interchange of personal confidence ; in health and in sick 
 ness, in sorrow and in joy ; when early honors began to wreath his 
 brow, and in after life through most of the important scenes of his 
 public career. I saw him on occasions th-at show the manly 
 strength, and, what is better, the manly weakness of the human 
 heart ; and I declare this day, in the presence of Heaven and of 
 men, that I never heard from him the expression of a wish unbe 
 coming a good citizen and a patriot the utterance of word unwor 
 thy a gentleman and a Christian ; that I never knew a more gen 
 erous spirit, a safer adviser, a warmer friend. 
 
 Do you ask me if he had faults? I answer, he was a man. He 
 had some of the faults of a lofty spirit, a genial temperament, and 
 a warm and generous nature ; he had none of the faults of a grov 
 eling, mean, and malignant nature. He had especially the "last 
 
 * Description by Mrs. Eliza Buckminstcr Leo, Webster s Private Correspond 
 ence, i., 438. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 209 
 
 infirmity of noble mind, and hud no doubt raised an aspiring eye 
 to the highest object of political ambition. But he did it in the 
 honest pride of a capacity i/qual to the station, and with a con- 
 sciousness that he should reflect back the honor which it conferred. 
 He might sny, with Burke, that "he had no arts but honest arts; 
 and if he sought the highest honors of the state, he did it by trans 
 cendent talent, laborious service, and patriotic devotion to the 
 public good. 
 
 It was not given to him, any more than to the other members 
 of the great triumvirate with whom his name is habitually associ 
 ated, to attain the object of their ambition ; but posterity will do 
 them justice, and begins already to discharge the debt of respect 
 and gratitude. A noble mausoleum in honor of Clay, and his statue 
 by Hart, are in progress ; the statue of Calhoun, by Powers, adorns 
 the Court House in Charleston, and a magnificent monument to his 
 memory is in preparation ; and we present you this day, fellow- 
 citizens, the Statue of Webster, in enduring bronze, on a pedestal 
 of granite from his native State, the noble countenance modeled 
 from life, at the meridian of his days and his fame, and his person 
 reproduced, from faithful recollection, by the oldest and most dis 
 tinguished of the living artists of the country. He sleeps by the 
 multitudinous ocean, which he himself so much resembled in its 
 mighty movement and its mighty repose ; but his monumental form 
 shall henceforward. stand sentry at the portals of the Capitol; the 
 right hand pointing to that symbol of the Union on which the left 
 reposes, and his imperial gaze directed, with the Hopes of the coun 
 try, to the boundless West. In a few short years, we, whose eyes 
 have rested on his majestic person, whose ears have drunk in the 
 music of his clarion voice, shall have gone to our rest; but our 
 children, for ages to come, as they dwell with awe-struck gaze upon 
 the monumental bronze, shall say, Oh that we could have seen, oh 
 that we could have heard, the great original! 
 
 Two hundred and twenty-nine years ago, this day, our beloved 
 city received, from the General Court of the Colony, the honored 
 name of Boston. On the long roll of those whom she has welcom 
 ed to her nurturing bosom is there a name which shines with a 
 brighter luster than his ? Seventy-two years ago, this day, the 
 Constitution of the United States was tendered to the acceptance 
 of the people by George Washington. Who, of all the gifted and 
 patriotic of the land, that have adorned the interval, has done 
 more to unfold its principles, assert its purity, and to promote its 
 duration ? 
 
 Here, then, under the cope of Heaven ; here, on this lovely em 
 inence ; here, beneath the walls of the Capitol of old Massachusetts, 
 here, within the sight of those fair New England villages ; here, in 
 the near vicinity of the graves of those who planted the germs of 
 all this palmy growth ; here, within the sound of sacred bells, we 
 raise this monument, with loving hearts, to the Statesman, the 
 
210 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 Patriot, the Fellow-Citizen, the Neighbor, the Friend. Long may 
 it guard the approach to these halls of council ; long may it look 
 out upon a prosperous country ; and, if days of trial and disaster 
 should come, and the arm of flesh should fail, doubt not that the 
 monumental form would descend from its pedestal, to stand in the 
 front rank of the peril, and the bronze lips repeat the cry of the 
 living voice " Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and in 
 separable!" 
 
HENRY WARD BEECHER S 
 ?. SERMONS -;.; 
 
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 Mnxs HOUSE, Charleston, S. C. , 
 
 February 2d, 1858. 
 Messrs. J. Sicgling & Son : 
 
 Gentlemen, I can only repeat 
 that which has been said so often 
 by others, (as well as myself,) 
 that I consider the Chickering is 
 Sons Pianos far beyond compari 
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 America; and I am also happy to 
 add, that they are quite fortunate 
 in being so ably represented in 
 tho South, by so respectable a 
 house as that of J. Siegling & Sou. 
 Yours Respectfully, 
 
 S. THALBERG. 
 
 PrrsmiRGH, March 25th, 1858. 
 
 Mr. Mel lor, Dear Sir : Since 
 my arrival in America I have con 
 stantly used the Pianos of Messrs. 
 Chickoring & Sons, and I can only 
 repeat to you (while thanking you 
 for tho Pianos you have so kindly 
 furnished for my concerts here,) 
 that which I have so often said be 
 fore the instruments aro tho 
 best I have seen in the United 
 States, and will compare favora 
 bly with any I have ever known. 
 Yours, Very Truly, 
 
 S. TIIALBERG. 
 
 \tv TV c- RICHMOND, VA., January 14, 1858. 
 
 _M? ffi > Jc r> ~~ 1 Messrs. CHICKERIXG & So.vs Square Piano-Fortes, and I have much pleasure la 
 
 certifying that there are no superior instrument* in this country or in Europe. 
 
 r 1D , Yours, Very Truly, 
 
 S. THALBERG, Exchange Hotel. 
 
 Ware Rooms in Boston, . . Tremont Street, 
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