UNIVERSITY OF CLFORN A SAN D EGO 
 
 3 1822019520345
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN CHEGO 

 
 UN VERS TY O CALIFORNIA SAN DIE 
 
 3 1822 01952 0345 
 
 Soc,al Sc,ences & Humanities Library 
 
 Un,ver Srty of California, San Diego ^ 
 Note: This item is subject.o reca.,. 
 
 Date Due 
 
 UCSDLti.

 
 LIFE 
 
 OP 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTEK 
 
 BY 
 
 ONE OF HIS LITEEAKT EXECUTORS. 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 NEW YOEK: 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 1889.
 
 ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, br 
 
 GEOEGE TICKNOE CURTIS, 
 
 In tue Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York.
 
 PKEFACE. 
 
 "A /TK. WEBSTER, who died on the 24th of October, 1852, 
 -L-*-L made the following provision in his will, which he 
 executed a few hours before his death : 
 
 " I appoint Edward Everett, George Ticknor, Cornelius 
 Conway Felton, and George Ticknor Curtis, to be my literary 
 executors ; and I direct my son, Fletcher "Webster, to seal 
 up all my letters, manuscripts, and papers, and, at a proper 
 time, to select those relating to my personal history and my 
 professional and public life, which, in his judgment, should 
 be placed at their disposal, and to transfer the same to 
 them, to be used by them in such manner as they may think 
 fit. They may receive valuable aid from my friend George 
 J. Abbott, Esq., now of the State Department." 
 
 After the probate of the will, Mr. Fletcher "Webster 
 transferred to the literary executors all the papers which 
 were supposed to be embraced within the purpose of this 
 provision ; and steps were taken to collect from other sources 
 whatever else might be in existence which would be impor- 
 tant to the preparation of a Life of Mr. "Webster. The
 
 JV PREFACE. 
 
 result was the accumulation of a large mass of papers and 
 documents of a very important character, among which were 
 a number of exceedingly interesting reminiscences in MS., 
 furnished by the surviving few who had known Mr. "Webster 
 from his youth. Great pains were taken in collecting these 
 materials, which were chiefly gathered by Mr. Ticknor, acting 
 for his associates in the literary executorship. The whole of 
 these collections, with the exception of those which belonged 
 to Mr. Ticknor's personal relations with Mr. Webster, were 
 then passed over to Mr. Everett, with the full understanding, 
 however, that every thing else would be at his service when- 
 ever he should think it proper to undertake the writing of a 
 Life of Mr. Webster. 
 
 As I was the draughtsman of Mr. Webster's will, and as 
 he conversed freely with me respecting all of its provisions, 
 I may mention what occurred in reference to this literary 
 executorship. After naming Mr. Everett and Mr. Ticknor 
 as the friends whom he most desired to place in this rela- 
 tion, he dictated to me the substance of the clause as it 
 now stands. When it had been written down, he added, 
 after a short pause : " Put in also Professor Felton's name 
 and your own ; it is the only way I have to mark my affec- 
 tion for him and for you, and four will be as good as two." 
 When I assented to this addition of my own name, there 
 seemed to me scarcely a remote possibility that it would 
 fall to me to perform the office which was evidently in Mr. 
 Webster's contemplation in making this provision ; and, when 
 the will had taken effect, and for years afterward, it was 
 always tacitly assumed among us that Mr. Everett would, 
 at some period, be the person on whom that oflice would de- 
 volve. But Mr. Everett did nothing, I believe, after this time, 
 toward the preparation of a full Life of Mr. Webster. Nothing, 
 at least, was found, after his own lamented death, to show
 
 PREFACE. v 
 
 that he had "began to write one. His numerous avocations, 
 public and private, and perhaps a continuing doubt whether 
 the period had arrived when a Life of Mr. Webster could 
 be judiciously undertaken, led him to postpone a task for 
 which he was eminently fitted, which his associates in the 
 literary executorship were always unanimously anxious to 
 have him assume, and for which they were eager to afford 
 him all the aid in their power. It should not be forgotten, 
 however, that one part, of what may be considered his duty 
 to his illustrious friend, had been already performed by him, 
 with all the diligence and devotion of his own time to the 
 concerns of others that marked his character. In 1851, 
 when filling the very laborious and responsible office of 
 President of Harvard College, Mr. Everett had edited a full 
 collection of Mr. Webster's Works, to which he prefixed 
 a beautiful and carefully-written biographical memoir. At 
 a later period, he sanctioned the publication, in 1857, by 
 Mr. Fletcher Webster, of two volumes of Mr. Webster's Cor- 
 respondence, and partly assisted in carrying them through 
 the press. In the preface to that publication, it was sug- 
 gested that the letters embraced in it would be of value as a 
 collection of materials for a Biography of Mr. Webster, 
 when the time should arrive for the composition of such 
 a work. 
 
 Mr. Felton, who in 1860 became President of Harvard 
 College, died on the 26th of February, 1862, mourned by 
 the lovers of learning in our own country, and by not a 
 few in foreign lands. The death of Mr. Everett, in 1865, 
 occurring suddenly in the midst of unofficial and voluntary 
 patriotic labors during our great civil war, revealed to Mr. 
 Ticknor and myself the necessity for an immediate atten- 
 tion to the implied injunctions of Mr. Webster's will. I 
 scarcely need to say I shall be credited where we are both
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 known that, if my kinsman had consented to undertake 
 the office which one of us had thus become bound to dis- 
 charge, my own gratification would have been proportion- 
 ate to what must now be my regret. But his decision was 
 made with the promptness with which he decides all ques- 
 tions of duty ; and thus was devolved upon me the per- 
 formance of a labor for which three persons had been named 
 before me. As soon as this arrangement was definitely con- 
 cluded, in the winter of 1865-'66, all the papers were for- 
 warded to me by Mr. Ticknor, and I commenced the follow- 
 ing work. It has been prosecuted with such diligence as the 
 cares of an engrossing profession have allowed me to bestow 
 upon it. 
 
 My own opinion was, that the time had arrived both 
 for writing and publishing a Life of Mr. Webster. For writ- 
 ing it the time had certainly arrived, if there was any one 
 who, possessing the requisite knowledge of Mr. Webster's 
 history, and having enjoyed his confidence, might be able to 
 undergo the labor. In some of the necessary qualifications I 
 could not regard myself as entirely wanting, however deficient 
 I might be in others. I had known Mr. Webster intimately for 
 many years, during that period of his life when he was the 
 most communicative to those in whom he placed confi- 
 dence. I had lived from my youth in close association with 
 his nearest friends, in Boston, and I could easily have 
 access to others who were much trusted and loved by him, 
 in this city, and who could give me their aid and counsel. 
 Finally, he had, in his last moments, marked his affection 
 for me in the strongest manner, by many other acts besides 
 that of placing me on the list of those with whom he meant 
 to leave the care of his name and fame. Ten years had 
 passed since his death, and his eldest son, long the survivor 
 of all his children, had fallen on the field of battle, defend-
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 ing, in arms, that Government and Constitution winch the 
 father had, with so much renown, defended in the Senate, 
 in the Cabinet, and in the Forum. It did not seem to me 
 that I could properly hesitate to undertake, at whatever 
 sacrifice or risk, the duty that had been thus unexpectedly 
 cast upon me. 
 
 ls~or does it seem to me, now that this work has been 
 written, that there ought to be delay in its publication. 
 Nearly seventeen years have elapsed since Mr. "Webster's death. 
 If all who acted with him in public affairs have not yet 
 passed away, there has occurred in this country, since his 
 decease, one of those catastrophes which make a wide chasm 
 in the history of a nation, and which separate periods not 
 actually remote from each other, as if a century had inter- 
 vened. Mr. Webster's life ended as the era of patriotic 
 efforts to avert from our country the disasters of internal 
 conflict and civil war was about to close, and w.hen such 
 efforts were about to prove of no avail. To that era he 
 belongs, and in it he stands a grand historical figure, tow- 
 ard whom the eyes of men will be more and more directed 
 as they contemplate what was done to deepen the founda- 
 tions of our constitutional Republic by those who received 
 it from its immediate founders. "We cannot too often revert 
 to the study of their principles, the recollection of their meas- 
 ures, and the appreciation of their services. Above all, we 
 cannot too soon seek to do justice to the memory of a great 
 man, who for nearly forty years was one of the most con- 
 spicuous of our statesmen ; and whose intellect, by the admis- 
 sion of all, impressed itself upon the age in which he lived 
 with an influence inferior to that of none of his countrymen, 
 and to that of very few of his contemporaries in any portion 
 of the globe. 
 
 It is not alone, however, because Mr. "Webster was a great
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 statesman, that a life of him may be important or interest- 
 ing. He had the singular and rare fortune to be as eminent 
 in the profession of the law as he was in the capacity of 
 a statesman. Through his whole life, these two functions, 
 seldom united to a high degree in the same person, were dis- 
 played in constant activity, and each was constantly adding 
 to his reputation, and increasing his influence. 
 
 But when this has been said of Mr. Webster, all that 
 made up his public character and renown has not been said. 
 For, as if to complete the compass of his extraordinary en- 
 dowments, he was an orator in the sense in which Demos- 
 thenes, Cicero, Chatham, and Burke, were orators. 
 
 If to enlighten, instruct, and elevate popular assemblies' 
 or public bodies by spoken discourse, that becomes part of 
 the literature, and is indestructibly associated with the lan- 
 guage of a people if, to create those masterpieces of speech 
 which are preserved by diction, eloquence, reasoning, and 
 thought, that men will not " willingly let die " if this con- 
 stitutes oratory, Mr. Webster stands, by the judgment of 
 mankind, among those who have wielded this great power 
 in ancient or in modern times. What he was, however, as 
 an orator, as a lawyer, and as a statesman, would fail to be 
 an adequate portrayal of him, if it were not accompanied 
 by some delineation of what he was as a man. His great 
 intellectual endowments and conspicuous civil functions were 
 united with a character of equally marked peculiarities, and 
 his private life was as full and capacious as that which was 
 known to the public ; and it is that which is the most vividly 
 and fondly remembered by those who were intimately asso- 
 ciated with him. 
 
 If our literature were to remain without a suitable biog- 
 raphy of such a man until all those who had known him 
 have ceased to be able to attest and to describe him as he
 
 PEEFACE. ix 
 
 was, it would be marked by a void which some future gen- 
 eration might undertake to fill without the full means of 
 doing justice to him and to his relation to his tunes. In 
 this department of letters, it is possible- that something is 
 gained by the absence of any personal connection between 
 the biographer and his subject ; but it is also certain that 
 much is lost when the greater impartiality of the writer is 
 necessarily accompanied by an inferior knowledge of those 
 motives of action, those principles of conduct, and those 
 traits of character which constitute the essential individu- 
 ality of him who is to be described. The world is generally 
 agreed that lives of distinguished men, which are written 
 by those who fulfil in them an office of friendship, even if 
 they are to be taken with some allowance, possess a balance 
 of advantages. To the criticism, which embraces this gen- 
 eral principle, I do not fear to trust myself in all that I 
 have said concerning Mr. "Webster. ~Ko tie of kindred ex- 
 isted between him and myself; and I am not conscious of 
 the presumption of supposing that I can gain or lose by 
 the judgments that may be formed respecting any portion of 
 his career, any act of his life, or any feature of his char- 
 acter. At the same time, it would be an affectation, if I 
 were not to avow that the writing of this work has been 
 with me a labor of love. 
 
 In its prosecution, I have had the benefit of a thorough 
 revision of what I have written by Mr. Ticknor, whose in- 
 terest both in the subject and in the writer has been with 
 him a double motive for the attention he has bestowed upon 
 my work. All who know the strength of his memory, the 
 soundness of his judgment, and the severity of his taste, 
 will appreciate, as I do, the advantage I have derived from 
 his assistance. ISTo part, however, of this work, it should 
 be understood, has proceeded from his pen, excepting the
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 passages which are expressly quoted from his reminiscences, 
 which were written immediately after Mr. "Webster's death, 
 in 1852, but have been hitherto unpublished. 
 
 My thanks are also due to the Hon. R. M. Blatchford, 
 the Hon. Hiram Ketchum, and Charles A'. Stetson, Esq., 
 of this city; and to the Hon. Peter Harvey and Franklin 
 Haven, Esq., of Boston all dear and cherished friends of 
 Mr. Webster for the communication of important materials 
 and information. 
 
 The Eight Hon. John Evelyn Denison, Speaker of the 
 House of Commons, one of Mr. "Webster's English friends, 
 with whom he most frequently corresponded, has kindly 
 placed at my disposal the letters which passed between them. 
 
 To George J. Abbott, Esq., formerly of the State De- 
 partment, and now United States Consul at Sheffield, Eng- 
 land who acted for a long time as Mr. Webster's private 
 secretary, and was with him at Marshfield at the time of 
 his death, who enjoyed Mr. Webster's full confidence, and 
 was much beloved by him I have to express the cordial 
 thanks of the surviving literary executors for the services 
 anticipated in the reference to him made in Mr. Webster's 
 will. 
 
 Although some of the letters which are embraced in this 
 work have been in print since the year 1857, and a few of 
 them had been published previously, their use, in the con- 
 nection in which they are here found, was essential to the 
 development of Mr. Webster's history, and the illustration of 
 his character. A great many others of Mr. Webster's letters 
 are now published for the first time. 
 
 The portrait, which has been engraved for the first vol- 
 ume of this work, was painted by Healy, soon after the 
 negotiation of the Treaty of Washington. Mr. Webster was 
 painted many times, at different periods of his life, by other
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 artists, but by no one better than bj Mr. Healy, to whom 
 he sat several times. The picture, of which I have made 
 use, was kindly lent for the purpose by Mr. Blatchford. 
 
 The portrait which has been engraved as a frontispiece for 
 the second volume was painted by the late Chester Harding, 
 Esq., when Mr. "Webster was at the age of sixty-seven. It 
 belongs to General James H. Yan Alen, of New York, to 
 whose kindness I am indebted for its use. 
 
 The engraving at page 380 of the second volume is from a 
 photograph. 
 
 The various illustrations, in woodcut, contained in the 
 body of the work, are from photographic views taken ex- 
 pressly for this purpose. They embrace " Elms Farm," and 
 the burial-place of the "Webster family, at Franklin, New 
 Hampshire ; Mr. "Webster's house, in Summer Street, Bos- 
 ton ; the " Green Harbor " estate, at Marshfield ; and the 
 monuments erected at the tomb in which lie the remains 
 of Mr. "Webster, Mrs. Grace Webster, and their children. 
 
 Mrs. Caroline Le Hoy Webster, after the death of her 
 husband, transferred to the trustees, under Mr. "Webster's will, 
 her interest in the estate at Marshfield, and came to reside 
 in the city of New York, where she still survives, surrounded 
 by the respect and interest of a large circle of friends. 
 
 NEW YORK, Sept., 1869.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME L 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 1782-1797. 
 Birth and Parentage Boyhood Early Education Enters Dartmouth College, 1-25 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 1797-1801. 
 College Life Rank as a Student Development and Acquisition . . 26-46 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1801-1807. 
 
 Begins the Study of the Law in Salisbury Teaches a School in Maine Enters the 
 Office of Mr. Gore, in Boston Admission to the Bar Refuses a Lucrative Office 
 Practises in Boscawen Death of his Father Removal to Portsmouth 47-80 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1807-1813. 
 
 Removal to Portsmouth Marriage The Buckminsters Mr. Jeremiah Mason 
 Birth of a Daughter The Embargo Phi Beta Kappa Oration War of 1812 
 The English and French Decrees Rockingham Memorial Election to Con- 
 gress Resolutions on the alleged Repeal of the French Decrees . 81-114 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 1813-1814. 
 
 Mr. Webster's Life at Portsmouth Birth of Daniel Fletcher Great Fire in the 
 Town Congress of 1813-'14 Resolutions on French Decrees Military Trials 
 for Treason Encouragement of Enlistments Modification of the Embargo 
 Repeal of the Restrictive System Domestic Manufactures Practice in Su- 
 preme Court Returns Home 115-132 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 1814-1815. 
 
 Extraordinary Session of Congress Burning of the Capitol by the English Peace 
 Negotiations The Hartford Convention A Land Tax Conscription Attempt 
 to create a National Bank . 133-145
 
 xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 1815-1816. 
 
 Fourteenth Congress National Bank Specie Resolutions Tariff of 1816 Death 
 of Mr. Webster's Mother Challenged by Mr. Randolph Returns from Congress 
 Removal to Boston 146-156 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 1816-1819. 
 
 Congress in 1816-'l7 Death of Little Grace Retires from Public Life Birth of 
 his Daughter Julia Position at the Boston Bar Social Life Dartmouth Col- 
 lege Case Robbery of Major Goodridge 157-175 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 1820-1822. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun's Visit to Boston Professional Position Convention to Revise the 
 Constitution of Massachusetts The Plymouth Oration Case of La Jeune 
 Eugenie Defence of Judge James Prescott Elected to Congress from Bos- 
 ton 176-198 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 1823-1824. 
 
 Reenters Congress Speech on the Greek Revolution Tariff of 1824 Proposed 
 Changes in the Judicial System The Case of Gibbons vs. Ogden Candidacy 
 of Mr. John Quincy Adams First Visit to Marshfield Reflected to Con- 
 gress 199-221 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 1824-1825. 
 
 Visit to Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison Death of his Son Charles Election of 
 Mr. John Quincy Adams as President Internal Improvements Crimes Act, 
 1825 Correspondence with J. Evelyn Denison, Esq. First Bunker-Hill Oration 
 Journey to Niagara 222-255 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1825-1826. 
 
 Correspondence Amendment of the Judicial System Speech on the Congress ol 
 Panama Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson Reflected to Congress 256-281 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 1826-1827. 
 
 Bankrupt Law Case of Ogden vs. Saunders Difficulties in Georgia Colonial 
 Trade Spanish Claims 282-288
 
 CONTENTS. xv 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 1827-1828. 
 
 Elected to the Senate of the United States Illness and Death of Mrs. Webster, at 
 New York Her Funeral, in Boston Return of Mr. Webster to Washington 
 Visited by Mr. Ticknor and Mr. Prescott Speech for the Revolutionary 
 Officers Speech on the Tariff Public Dinner in Boston The Presidential 
 Election Prosecutes for a Libel Address before the Boston Mechanics' As- 
 sociation 289-336 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1828-1829. 
 
 Inauguration of President Jackson Death of Mr. Ezekiel Webster Second Mar- 
 riage 337-346 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 1829-1830. 
 
 Power of Removal from Office Nullification The Two Speeches on Foot's Resolu- 
 tion Reply to Hayne 847-385 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 1830-1831. 
 
 Mr. Webster's Popularity Character of General Jackson Mr. Clay's Claims to the 
 Presidency Antimasonry Dinner to Mr. Webster, in New York Gives up a 
 Journey to the West Nomination of Mr. Clay as the Candidate of the National 
 Republicans Relief of Insolvent Debtors of the United States Miscellaneous 
 Correspondence 386-410 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 1831-1832. 
 
 Modification of the Tariff Bill to Renew the Charter of the Bank President 
 Jackson's " Veto " Speech on the President's Objections Rejection of Mr. Van 
 Buren as Minister to England Report on the Apportionment of Representa- 
 tivesFirst Purchase at Marshfield 411-428 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 1832-1833. 
 
 Nullification Conduct of South Carolina Speech at Worcester, in October, 1832 
 Reelection of General Jackson Mr. Calhoun's Position The President's 
 Proclamation Mr. Clay's Compromise Bill The Force Bill Mr. Webster's 
 Views of the Proper Course to be pursued Debate with Mr. Calhoun on the 
 Nature of the Government President Jackson's Visit to New England Mr. 
 Webster's Visit to the West General Jackson's Sense of Mr. Webster's Ser- 
 vices Correspondence 429-469
 
 xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 1833-1834. 
 
 Mr. Webster's Financial Views Removal of the Government Deposits from the Bank 
 of the United States Mr. Clay's Resolution of Censure Mr. Webster's Report 
 on the Removal of the Deposits Introduces a Bill to meet the Crisis The 
 President's Protest against the Resolutions of the Senate Speech in Answer to 
 the Protest Personal Relations to the Bank Rise of the Whig Party 470-500 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 1834-1835. 
 
 Nominated for the Presidency by the Whigs of Massachusetts Various Populai 
 Demonstrations in other States Correspondence with the Antimasons of Penn- 
 sylvania General Harrison nominated by the whole Opposition, in Pennsyl- 
 vania Difficulties with France War averted Defeat of the Fortification Bill 
 French Spoliation before 1800 Speech on the Power of Removal from Office 
 Mr. Benton's " Expunging " Resolution Regulation respecting Treasury 
 Drafts on the Deposit Banks 501-520 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 1835-1836. 
 
 The Independence of Texas achieved Mr. Webster's Desire to have her remain a 
 Nation by herself Early Spirit of the Antislavery Movement Opinions of Mr. 
 Webster on the whole Subject of Slavery Treatment of the Petitions for its 
 Abolition in the District of Columbia " Incendiary Publications " Acknowl- 
 edgment of Texan Independence Loss of the Fortification Bill at the Previous 
 Session Mr. Webster's Defence of his own Course An Unpublished Speech 
 Custody of the Public Funds Regulation of the Deposit Banks Distribution 
 of Surplus Revenues Settlement of the Difficulty with France Presidential 
 Election of 1836 521-539 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 1836-1837. 
 
 The " Specie Circular" A "Constitutional Currency" Mr. Benton's Expunging 
 Resolution Mr. Webster's Protest Slavery in the District of Columbia Recep- 
 tion of Petitions Farming Operations Proposes to resign his Seat Reception 
 in New York Speech at Niblo's Saloon Journey to the West Special Session 
 of Congress in the Autumn of 1837 Mr. Van Buren's Financial Policy Contro- 
 versy with Mr. Calhoun Texas seeks Admission into the Union . 540-570 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 1837-1838. 
 
 Project for a Great Western Farm Separate Nationality of Texas Slavery in the 
 District of Columbia The Sub-Treasury Preemption Rights for Settlers on the 
 Public Lands The Commonwealth Bank, in Boston Correspondence, 571-580 
 
 APPENDIX AND NOTES .... 581-612
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 1782-1797.- 
 
 BIKTH AND PARENTAGE BOYHOOD EARLY EDUCATION ENTERS 
 
 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE. 
 
 NEAR the centre of New Hampshire, where two moderate 
 rivers unite, and form the Merrimac, a company of per- 
 sons from Kingston, after the peace of 1763, obtained from the 
 royal governor of the province a grant of a township of land, to 
 which the name of Stevenstown was first given, from the name 
 of Colonel Stevens, their leader. Among these persons was 
 Ebenezer Webster, who was born in Kingston in 1739, the son 
 of a farmer and freeholder of the same name. Like many of 
 the young men of New England, he, in early life, enlisted in 
 the provincial troops, raised to take part in the French "War ; 
 and became a private in one of the companies of " Rangers," 
 which were commanded by Major Robert Rogers, and which
 
 2 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. I 
 
 served under Sir Jeffrey Amlierst in the invasion of Canada. 1 
 He rose to the rank of captain before the end of the war. At 
 the peace he returned to his native town, was married, and 
 joined the company of settlers who went northward into the 
 wilderness, and founded the town of Stevenstown, the name of 
 which was afterward changed to Salisbury. The township, as 
 originally laid out, was four miles wide, along the west bank 
 of the Merrimac, and extended southwestwardly for nine miles, 
 nearly to the top of the Kearsarge Mountain. The portion 
 of this grant, which Ebenezer Webster obtained for himself, lay 
 farther to the north than any of the others, so that, after his 
 log house was built upon it, there was no civilized neighbor 
 between him and Montreal. 
 
 The family of "Webster, from which this pioneer of New 
 Hampshire was descended, appear to have been first settled at 
 Hampton, on the coast, about 1636, or sixteen years after the 
 landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Their most remote 
 known ancestor was Thomas Webster, from whom the descent 
 to Ebenezer Webster can be regularly traced in the church and 
 town records of Hampton, Kingston, and Salisbury. They 
 were originally Scotch ; but they probably emigrated to this 
 country from England. 
 
 Precisely how long Ebenezer Webster continued to live in 
 the log house, which he must have erected about the year 1764, 
 cannot now be determined ; but that house was his home from 
 the time when it was built until near the close of the Revolu- 
 tionary War. From it he buried his first wife, Mehitable 
 Smith, who died in March, 1774 ; and to it he brought Abigail 
 Eastman, who became his second wife in August of the same 
 year. It was on a hill, three miles westwardly from the river. 
 'The region about it was mountainous ; the winters were long 
 nd dreary ; the depth of snow was often prodigious, and there 
 were no regular roads for communication with the country 
 below. The land was poor. Of comfort there was little to be 
 coined there. Of the necessaries of life, what could be had 
 
 frere purchased with severe toil, hardship, and often danger, or 
 
 J '' 
 
 , 
 
 1 From the journals of Major Rogers, the enlistment of Ebenezer Webster oc- 
 A rare and curious book, printed in curred in 1760, or when he was about 
 London, in 1765, it may be inferred that two-and-twenty.
 
 1763.] PARENTAGE. 3 
 
 at least with the apprehension of danger ; for, although the 
 peace of 1763 had put an end to the wild and cruel forays of 
 the Northern Indians into the settlements of New England, the 
 memory of those terrible midnight raids had not yet passed 
 away, and, in the forest that stretched from Ebenezer Webster's 
 farm to the frontier of Canada, there still lurked, if not roving 
 bands, roving individual savages, whose visits, when innocent 
 of blood, too well suggested the horrors of a time not long gone 
 by. 1 In such scenes, and in such a life, he who had " come 
 home from the wars" with strong elements of character to 
 settle down as a farmer on the outposts of civilization, to be 
 one of the founders of a new town, to have children born to 
 him, to know sorrow, to struggle and to toil, was not unlikely 
 to become a devoted parent, a patriotic and respected citizen, 
 and a devout man. All these qualities and characteristics, in 
 fact, belonged to Ebenezer "Webster. He is described, too, as 
 a man of great firmness, whose bearing and manner were 
 decisive ; * tall and erect, with a full chest, black hair and eyes, 
 and rather large and prominent features. Of education, save 
 what he had given to himself, he had none ; for it is recorded 
 of him that he never saw the interior of a school-house in 
 the capacity of a pupil. Yet it is known that some of the 
 earliest records of the town of Salisbury are in his hand- 
 writing ; and by the middle period of his life he was suffi- 
 ciently well educated to fulfil, from that time to his death, 
 
 1 When speaking once, at length, of clergyman, the Rev. Thomas "Worcester, 
 
 his father and mother and their life in A council, after the manner of the 
 
 the log house, Mr. Webster said : " They churches in New England, was assem- 
 
 endured together in this hut all sorts of bled to perform the ordination. But a 
 
 privations and hardships ; my mother dispute arose between the council and 
 
 was constantly visited by Indians who Mr. Worcester on a point of doctrine, 
 
 had never before gone to a white man's and a long time was spent in the dis- 
 
 house but to kill its inhabitants, while cussion, the people waiting impatiently 
 
 my father perhaps was gone, as he fre- without for the ordination to proceed, 
 
 quently was, miles away, carrying on At length Judge Webster was appointed 
 
 his back the corn to be ground, which to wait upon the council, and inquire 
 
 was to support his family." (MSS. in into the cause of the delay. He ap- 
 
 the author's possession.) peared before them, and heard their 
 
 s The following anecdote, illustrating statement. " Gentlemen," said he, " the 
 
 his decision of character, is taken from ordination must come on now, and, if 
 
 a Memoir of him, published in the New- you cannot assist, we must try to get 
 
 Hampshire Statesman, in 1858, by George along without you. The point under 
 
 W. Nesmith, Esq. In 1791, he was ap- discussion must be postponed to some 
 
 pointed at the head of a committee of other day." The ordination ceremonies 
 
 the town and the church, to settle a proceeded without any further delay.
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [On. L 
 
 with entire respectability, the functions of a legislator and a 
 magistrate. 1 
 
 He had been married a second time, as I have said, not long 
 before the shock sent through New England from Buukei 
 Hill was felt in her remotest borders, and her yeomanry sprang 
 to arms. Captain Webster was among the first of them to obey 
 that summons. He raised a company in his own town, the 
 population of which had then become so considerable that it 
 could furnish two hundred men ; and, with the other JSTew- 
 Hampshire troops, he and the company which he commanded 
 were out in nearly every campaign of the Revolutionary War. 
 He fought at Bennington under Stark, and at White Plains ; 
 and he was at West Point when Arnold's attempt to surrender 
 that post to the British occurred.* In the militia of New Hamp- 
 shire he held the rank of colonel ; but, in his own neighbor- 
 hood, he was for a long time generally called " the captain." 
 
 How much he was at home during the war it would of 
 
 1 One of his townsmen thus described 
 him in a letter addressed to the son-in- 
 law of Ezekiel Webster, Professor San- 
 born of Dartmouth College, in 1853 : 
 " Of his father, Hon. Ebenezer Webster, 
 I have a perfect recollection, as to form 
 and features. His stature was nearly 
 six feet. He was compact, robust, and 
 well-proportioned, and, late in life, in- 
 clined to corpulency. His complexion 
 was dark, a broad projecting forehead, 
 eyes large, black, and piercing, over- 
 shadowed by heavy brows. With re- 
 spect to intellect, he was a perfect ex- 
 ample of a strong-minded, unlettered 
 man ; of sound common sense, correct 
 judgment, and tenacious memory ; all 
 of which desirable qualities were for 
 him, to some extent, a substitute for 
 education. He was a resolute, deter- 
 mined character, and never easily turned 
 from his purpose, when once convinced 
 that it was right." {Letter by Mr. 
 Thomas H. Pettingill. Correspondence 
 of Daniel Webster, vol. i., p. 69.) 
 
 * "A sergeant of his company informed 
 me that he was among the first [at Ben- 
 nington] to scale the Tory breastwork, 
 as it was called ; and that, when he came 
 out of the battle, he was so covered 
 with dust and powder that he could 
 scarcely be recognized." (Mr. Pettin- 
 gill, ut supra.) In 1840, while travelling 
 
 in the southwestern part of New Hamp- 
 shire, and anxious to reach his destina- 
 tion, Mr. Webster, while ascending a 
 hill, observed an aged man before him 
 who was driving a fine horse. His name 
 was Boynton. Leaving his own vehicle, 
 Mr. Webster jumped into Mr. Boynton's 
 wagon ; so that " the first thing I 
 knew," as the old man said afterward, 
 " he was sitting beside me." But he 
 did not know his passenger at that time, 
 although he engaged to drive him to 
 Wilton. As they went along, convers- 
 ing about people in New Hampshire, Mr. 
 Boynton observed that he had known 
 " Old Judge Webster, the father of 
 Daniel ; " he had been " out in the Con- 
 tinental War with him. I remember," 
 said he, " that he stood guard before 
 General Washington's headquarters the 
 night after Arnold's treason. In the 
 morning General Washington asked him 
 to take a glass of wine with him ; and I 
 don't believe he slept a wink the night 
 after that." (MSS.) It was a well- 
 known tradition in New Hampshire, de- 
 rived from one of his soldiers, that when 
 he was posted for that night as officer 
 of the guard, at headquarters, Washing- 
 ton said to him, "Captain Webster, I 
 believe I can trust you." ( Mr. NesmitJi'i 
 Memoir in the New-Hampshire Statesman, 
 ut supra.)
 
 1782. JEt. 1-14.] BIRTH. 5 
 
 course be impossible to ascertain now. But the domestic events 
 which mark this portion of his life, and render his name and 
 character of interest to the world, were the births of his two 
 sons, Ezekiel and Daniel, who were the only sons of his second 
 marriage. The former was born on the llth of April, 1780 
 and the latter on the 18th of January, 1782. ' From a colla- 
 tion of all the evidence respecting the place in which Daniel 
 was born, it appears that his brother Ezekiel and one of his 
 sisters were born in the log house ; that their father built a 
 second house, usually called a " frame " house, near the same 
 spot ; as.d that, in this second house, Daniel was born. In 
 about a year after his birth his father removed to the bank of 
 the Merrimac, to the house in which he died.* 
 
 " Elms Farm," as it was afterward called, from the numbers 
 of fine elms which are upon it, is the place to which Captain 
 Webster removed in 1783. It is situated in a valley, at a bend 
 of the Merrimac, two and a half miles below the head of that 
 river. It was originally a part of the township of Salisbury ; 
 but in 1828 a new town, including this farm, was set off from 
 the eastern end of Salisbury, and called Franklin. THe place 
 was bought by Mr. Webster's father, of a family whose name 
 was Call. They were the first settlers upon it; and, many 
 years before they sold it, they had suffered terrible cruelties 
 there at the hands of the Indians. 1 High ranges of hills enclose 
 
 1 The children of Ebenezer Webster, tect the inhabitants of this and the 
 
 by his first marriage, were five Olle, neighboring towns against the Indians. 
 
 a daughter, and Ebenezer, a son, who The Indians made constant attacks, 
 
 died young ; Susannah, born October, often so suddenly, that they could not 
 
 1766, married to John Colby; David, be resisted. A Mrs. Call was killed by 
 
 and Joseph. The children of the second them on this spot, about the year 1775. 
 
 marriage were Mehitable, Abigail, mar- The cellar of her cabin is close by my 
 
 ried to Mr. Haddock, Ezekiel, Daniel, house. She was an elderly woman, and 
 
 and Sarah ; Mehitable died unmarried, her husband and her son were at work 
 
 For Sarah, see Index. in the field, not half a mile off. Her 
 
 8 A sketch of the house in which Mr. daughter-in-law, with her child in her 
 
 Webster was born, drawn by Charles arms, seeing the Indians coming, jumped 
 
 Lanman, Esq., and sanctioned by Mr. in behind the chimney, hushed her baby, 
 
 Webster, is prefixed to the first volume and so avoided discovery, and escaped 
 
 of his works. The cut at the head of death. This baby, whose name was John 
 
 the present chapter is a view of " Elms Call, I knew very well when I was a 
 
 Farm," as it now appears. boy. My father bought this place of 
 
 3 Mr. Webster, in a letter written that family. This is one of the very many 
 
 from this spot to President Fillmore, in border stories to which I have listened 
 
 July, 1852, says: "Under my eyes, at of winter evenings, in the early part of 
 
 this moment, is the site of one of the my life. You will perceive, my dear sir, 
 
 last forts, built on the frontiers to pro- that I am old enough to begin to become
 
 6 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. 1. 
 
 the river on both sides, but leaving a broad "intervale" of 
 meadow. The two streams which form the Merrimac have 
 retained their Indian names. One, the Pemigewasset, rises in 
 the "White Mountains, and flows down their southern slopes, 
 " the beau ideal of a mountain stream," as Mr. "Webster has 
 described it " cold, noisy, winding, and with banks of much 
 picturesque beauty." * The other, the Winnepiseogee, is the 
 outlet of the great lake of the same name, which discharges its 
 waters westwardly, until they unite with those of the mountain 
 torrent, making a circuit of about a hundred miles before they 
 reach the sea, through the Merrimac, at Newburyport. Con- 
 cord, the legislative capital of New Hampshire, is fifteen miles 
 below Franklin, on the same side of the river. From a high 
 sheep-pasture on the Webster farm, through a wide opening in 
 the hills, beyond the Kearsarge Mountain, in a northwesterly 
 direction, Ascutney Mountain, in Yermont, is visible ; and 
 from the same spot, looking nearly northeast, Mount "Washing- 
 ton, the highest peak of the "White Mountains, shows its snowy 
 summit. On this farm the boyhood of DANIEL WEBSTER was 
 passed. 
 
 No account of his origin can be complete without some 
 attempt to find in his race those remarkable physical traits 
 which distinguished his person through life, and which are so 
 well known to the world, in their unison with his intellectual 
 and moral nature. Fortunately, we have his own account of 
 the physical peculiarities of his family, given with his accus- 
 tomed clearness in a few sentences of his autobiography. From 
 these many of my readers may be surprised to learn that 
 the "Websters of New England have, in general, " light com- 
 plexions, sandy hair, a good deal of it, and bushy eyebrows ; " 
 and that they " are rather slender than broad or corpulent." * 
 But he tells us that his father and his father's brothers were 
 very unlike in their personal traits ; that his father resembled 
 his grandmother, while his uncles resembled his grandfather. 
 
 garrulous; for it is certain that Mrs. Franklin, May 3, 1846. (Correspond- 
 
 Call's murder, by the Indians, a hun- ence, ii., 225. 
 
 dred years ago, has little to do with the 3 Dr. Noah Webster, the eminent 
 
 legislation or diplomacy of the present lexicographer, was of a collateral branch 
 
 time." (Correspondence, ii., 535.) of this family. (Biographical Memoir, 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Blatchford, from Works, i.)
 
 1782. &T. 1.] FAMILY COMPLEXION. 7 
 
 This grandmother, his father's mother, was Susannah Bach- 
 elder, a descendant of the Rev. Stephen Bachelder, in the 
 county of Rockingham. She had black hair and black eyes, 
 and was a woman of uncommon strength of character. Her 
 son, Mr. Webster's father, inherited from her the " Bachelder 
 complexion ; " her other sons had the "Webster characteristics. 
 The same division of the parental traits took place in Mr. 
 "Webster's own generation. He himself has said that, of his 
 four brothers, only one was dark like himself; the other three 
 " ran off into the general characteristics belonging to the 
 name." * In fact, however, I have understood that his own 
 brother Ezekiel, who is represented as a model of manly 
 beauty, although his complexion was not so dark as Daniel's, 
 had black hair. 
 
 For which of these two brothers there appeared to be the 
 best chance of health and longevity, in their earlier years, their 
 contemporaries would not have doubted. Ezekiel was a robust 
 youth, grew nearly to manhood in the healthy labors of a farm- 
 er's son, who was destined for a farmer himself, was afterward 
 educated, and studied and practised the law ; but ^ he died 
 instantly, without any apparent illness, at the age of forty- 
 nine. Daniel was a sickly child, and for that reason was 
 not put to work upon the farm so nrach as his brother ; yet 
 he lived to be a man whose physical constitution and frame 
 seemed to be a fitting tabernacle for so great an intellect ; and 
 his last illness, in his seventy-first year, was almost the only 
 acute one that he was ever called to endure after he had 
 grown up. 
 
 Of the mother of Daniel "Webster, there is important testi- 
 mony from her sons. That she was a woman of clear and vigor- 
 ous understanding, that she was a tender and self-sacrificing 
 mother, and that to her was referred the final decision of a ques- 
 tion that was to affect not only their welfare, but her own and 
 that of every other member of her family, are well authenticated 
 facts. 
 
 But it was from his father chiefly, I suppose from that 
 ' Bachelder complexion," physical and moral that Daniel 
 
 1 Autobiography.
 
 S LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. I. 
 
 Webster derived the marked qualities of his nature;' and to 
 the father I therefore now return, in order to give my readers 
 some idea of the feeling with which his son ever regarded him, 
 before I enter upon the narrative of that son's childhood and 
 youth. To me there is something singularly attractive in the 
 image of that tall, dark man, in form and presence one of the 
 noblest of the earth, 8 standing on his not too fertile New-Hamp- 
 shire acres, looking abroad into the world, and comparing him- 
 self with men for whom Nature had done less than she had for 
 him, but whom education had placed where he could not be 
 their competitor. I seem to see his deep, black eye fall ten- 
 derly on the boys who are growing up around him, marking 
 the elder for the stay and staff of his age in the labors of home, 
 and setting apart the younger for a life of books and learning 
 and fame. He has no concealments from his household ; and, 
 as time rolls on, all come to know his plan. It suits the cir- 
 cumstances, it is in accordance with the habits of a New-Eng- 
 land family. Nevertheless, it is a great undertaking in such a 
 house, to send even one son " to college." But this man is full 
 of resolution. He has a complexion, as General Stark said of 
 him, " which burned gunpowder will not change," and a 
 heart, as his great son said of him, " which he seemed to have 
 borrowed from a lion." Moreover, he is one of that kind of 
 men who live for their children ; and he knows that in his 
 laborious life he has nothing else for which to live. His own 
 want of early education, he thinks, shall 'be compensated by 
 that which he will give to this intelligent, though feeble, 
 youngest boy ; and he and the elder lad will extort from 
 their ' stubborn glebe " the means of accomplishing this work 
 of love. 
 
 He came, it may readily be supposed, not suddenly or 
 hastily to this resolution. To the age of fourteen, Daniel who 
 
 1 Writing to his son Fletcher, in 1840, of understanding. If I had had many 
 
 respecting the name to be given to his boys, I should have called one of them 
 
 eldest grandson, Mr. Webster said : " I ' Bachelder.' " The boy in question, 
 
 believe we are all indebted to my father's Mr. Fletcher Webster's eldest son, was 
 
 mother for a large portion of the little named for his grandfather, 
 
 sense and character which belongs to 2 Mr. Webster always said that hia 
 
 us. Her name was Susannah Bachel- father was the handsomest man he had 
 
 der ; she was the daughter of a clergy- ever seen, excepting his brother Eze- 
 
 man, and a woman of uncommon strength kiel.
 
 1782. Mi. 14.] SCHOOL DAYS. 9 
 
 Lad been taught to read at home, by his mother or his elder 
 sisters, so early that he never afterward could remember when 
 he could not read the Bible had no other advantages of educa- 
 tion than such as he could obtain at the poor town-schools, 
 which were kept only during a part of the year. But his own 
 words will best describe how this was managed, and to what it 
 amounted : 
 
 " I do not remember when or by whom I was taught to read, because 
 I cannot, and never could, recollect a time when I could not read the 
 Bible. I suppose I was taught by my mother, or by my elder sisters. My 
 father seemed to have no higher object in the world than to educate his 
 children to the full extent of his very limited ability. No means were 
 within his reach, generally speaking, but the small town-schools. These 
 were kept by teachers, sufficiently indifferent, in the several neighborhoods 
 of the township, each a small part of the year. To these I was sent with 
 the other children. 
 
 " When the school was in our neighborhood, it was easy to attend ; 
 when it removed to a more distant district, I followed it, still living at 
 home. While yet quite young, and in winter, I was sent daily two and a 
 half or three miles to the school. When it removed still farther, my 
 father sometimes boarded me out in a neighboring family, so that I 
 could still be hi the school. A good deal of this was an 'extra care, 
 more than had been bestowed on my elder brothers, and originating in a 
 conviction of the slenderness and frailty of my constitution, which was 
 thought not likely ever to allow me to pursue a robust occupation. 
 
 " In these schools, nothing was taught but reading and writing ; and, 
 as to these, the first I generally could perform better than the teacher, 
 and the last a good master could hardly instruct me in ; writing was so 
 laborious, irksome, and repulsive an occupation to me always. My mas- 
 ters used to tell me that they feared, after all, my fingers were destined for 
 the plough-tail." ' 
 
 Such was the life of the boy Daniel Webster at about 
 the period when the foundations of the Constitution of the 
 United States were laid. The strong good sense and intel- 
 ligent patriotism of the father acted upon that great national 
 event. 1 His townsmen had been accustomed to intrust to him 
 
 1 Autobiography, written by Mr. Web- Constitution, and requested me, if I ever 
 
 Eter in 1830. had an opportunity, to do something to 
 
 8 Mr. Webster once repeated to me, perpetuate it. It is well known that 
 
 with great pride, a little speech made by when the convention of New Hampshire 
 
 his father before giving his vote for the first assembled, in February, 1788, a
 
 10 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. I. 
 
 such public stations as they had to bestow, and he sat in the 
 convention of New Hampshire, which ratified the Federal Con- 
 stitution, while his little son at home was playing among the 
 cowslips in the sweet meadows of the Merrimac. When the 
 father gave his vote for " the more perfect Union " which the 
 new frame of government was to establish, the early years of 
 his child, who was to instruct the intellect of the nation in its 
 principles, had so little promise of health, that, as he grew up, 
 play was necessarily allowed to be his chief vocation. 
 
 The boy became an adept in it. He played all through the 
 long summer days when he could not work, having for his chief 
 companion, in his field-sports, a curtain battered old British sol- 
 dier and sailor, who had deserted from the king's colors at 
 Bunker Hill, and, having come with a New-Hampshire regiment 
 at the close of the war, had settled himself in a little cottage 
 on the Webster farm. From this man, or with him, he learned 
 the art of angling, which remained a passion with him through 
 life. He apostrophizes this odd character in his autobiography, 
 as Hamlet did Yorick. 
 
 " Thou hast carried me on thy back a thousand times," 
 
 was a phrase that rushed to his memory when, after he hau 
 become a pillar of the state, he wrote this account of Robert 
 Wise: 
 
 " Early and deeply religious, my father had still a good deal of 
 natural gayety ; he delighted to have some one about him that possessed 
 
 majority of the delegates were found to ment which will enable us to pay off the 
 
 be under instructions from their towns national debt the debt which we owe 
 
 to vote against the Constitution. This for the Revolution, and which we are 
 
 was the case with Colonel Webster. But bound in honor fully and fairly to dis- 
 
 the convention was adjourned to meet charge. Besides, I have followed the 
 
 again in June ; and, in the mean time, lead of Washington through seven years 
 
 Colonel Webster obtained from his con- of war, and I have never been misled, 
 
 stituents permission to vote according to His name is subscribed to this Constitu- 
 
 his own judgment. When the vote was tion. He will not mislead us now. I 
 
 about to be taken, he rose, and said : shall vote for its adoption." 
 " Mr. President, I have listened to the I have taken the words of the speech 
 
 arguments for and against the Constitu- from Mr. Nesmith's Memoir. They are 
 
 tion. I am convinced such a govern- substantially the same with those re- 
 
 ment as that constitution will establish, peated to me by Mr. Webster. Judge 
 
 if adopted a government acting direct- Webster was one of the electors of the 
 
 ly on the people of the States is neces- President in New Hampshire, when 
 
 sary for the common defence and the Washington was first chosen to thai 
 
 general welfare. It is the only govern- office.
 
 1782-97. Mi. 1-14.] BOYISH SPORTS. H 
 
 a humorous vein. A character of this sort, one Robert Wise, with whose 
 adventures, as I learned them from himself, I could fill a small book, was 
 a near neighbor, and a sort of humble companion for a great many years. 
 He was a Yorkshire man; had been a sailor; was with Byng in the 
 Mediterranean ; had been a soldier ; deserted from the garrison of Gibral- 
 tar ; travelled through Spain and France and Holland ; was taken up 
 afterward, severely punished, and sent back to the army ; was in the 
 battle of Minden ; had a thousand stories of the yellow-haired Prince 
 Ferdinand ; was sent to Ireland, and thence to Boston, with the troops 
 brought out by General Gage ; fought at Bunker Hill ; deserted to our 
 ranks ; served with the New-Hampshire troops in all the succeeding cam- 
 paigns, and, at the peace, built a little cottage in the corner of our field, 
 and lived there to an advanced old age. He was my Izaac Walton. He 
 had a wife, but no child. He loved me, because I would read the news- 
 papers to him, containing the accounts of battles in the European wars. 
 He had twice deserted from the English king, and once at least com- 
 mitted treason as well as desertion ; but he had still a British heart. 
 When I have read to him the details of the victories of Howe, and Jervis, 
 etc., I remember he was excited almost to convulsions, and would relieve his 
 excitement by a gush of exulting tears. He finally picked up a fatherless 
 child, took him home, sent him to school, and took care of him, only, as 
 he said, that he might have some one to read the newspaper to him. He 
 could never read himself. Alas, poor Robert ! I have never so attained 
 the narrative art as to hold the attention of others as thou, with thy York- 
 shire tongue, hast held mine. Thou hast carried me many a mile on thy 
 back, paddled me over and over, and up and down the stream, and 
 given whole days in aid of my boyish sports, and asked no meed but 
 that, at night, I would sit down at thy cottage door, and read to 
 thee some passage of thy country's glory ! Thou wast indeed a true 
 Briton." J 
 
 It was in this happy childhood that he began those habits 
 of minute observation of nature, which all who ever knew him 
 knew to be one of his strongest characteristics, and one of his 
 greatest pleasures. Then, for example, he saw and never forgot 
 how the salmon and the shad, as they came up the Merrimac, 
 " shook hands, and parted " at the confluence of the two 
 streams which make that river, " the shad all going into the 
 lakes, and the salmon all keeping up the mountain torrent, 
 which they continued to ascend, as used to be said, until their 
 back fins were out of the water." * Then, too, he first began to 
 notice how the river was deepening its channel ; a phenomenjn 
 
 1 Autobiography. * Letter to Mr. Blatchford, ut supra.
 
 12 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. t 
 
 in what he calls " the philosophy of streams," which he con- 
 tinued, at intervals, to note from those banks for fifty years. 1 
 Then, also, he must have acquired that strong love of agricul- 
 ture which never left him ; for at no period of his life, after 
 boyhood, could he have seen much of practical farming, until 
 he became possessed of his father's property ; and I imagine 
 that this is not a propensity which educated men often acquire 
 after they have become cultivated and busy men of the world. 
 In this easy and expanding life, overcoming, each year, some- 
 thing of the ailments of his childhood, he grew to be fourteen 
 years of age, and imbibed most of those tastes which ever after- 
 ward drew him, when he could release himself from contact 
 with man, into the closest communion with Nature. 
 
 In this period also we are to find the early influences which 
 gave a peculiar tinge and fervor to his patriotic feelings feel- 
 ings that always carried his love of country, by emotions whose 
 sources lay deep in an emotional nature, to the history of what 
 had been done and suffered in order to make a country. For 
 we are to remember that at his paternal fireside sat and talked, 
 in the long winter evenings, one who had been an actor, first in 
 the great war by which our fathers helped the crown of Eng- 
 land to extinguish the power of France on this continent, and 
 then in that other war for independence, by which the unre- 
 quited and misgoverned provinces severed themselves from the 
 parent state. Whoever seeks to know what it was in the for- 
 mation of the character of Daniel "Webster that gave such a 
 glow to the eloquence, and such a breadth to the patriotism of 
 his after-years, whenever and wherever American history con- 
 nected itself with American nationality, must go back to that 
 fireside, and listen in imagination to the tales which his young 
 heart drank from his father's lips. 
 
 Finally, we must go to this period as the time when the 
 religious tendencies, which Nature had implanted in his tem- 
 perament, received their first impulses and their early develop- 
 ment. Whatever may have been his imperfections or his fail- 
 ings, his religious feelings were always deep and fervent ; and 
 in all the successes or vicissitudes or sorrows of his life, they 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Blatchford, ut supra.
 
 1782-97. JT. 1-14.] BOYISH READING. 13 
 
 grew stronger and stronger to the hour of his death. All that 
 need now be said of the special form of Christian faith under 
 which his childhood was passed is, that it was doubtless that 
 which was derived from, the Puritans. But its spirit, as it pre- 
 vailed in his father's house and in his father's life, is all com- 
 prehended in two emphatic words, which he applied to his 
 parent, and which described him as " religious, but not sour." ' 
 
 "What he had learned of books, at this time, we are partly 
 told by himself in his autobiography. A small circulating 
 library had been established in the neighborhood by his father 
 and other persons, and among the books which he obtained 
 from it was the Spectator. Fond of poetry, he went at once to 
 the criticism on Chevy Chase, for the sake of the verses which 
 are cited. " I could not understand," he says, " why it was 
 necessary that the author of the Spectator should take such 
 great pains to prove that Chevy Chase was a good story ; 
 that was the last thing I doubted." Of other poetry, he knew 
 the psalms and hymns of Dr. Watts ; and he informs us that he 
 could repeat them at ten or twelve years of age. There never 
 was, in truth, a time in his subsequent life when he could not 
 repeat them, as many can attest who have heard him do so with 
 
 1 " He had in him," says Mr. Web- his business with his nephew, and re- 
 eter, what I collect to have been the turned home. Sodn the rumor was cir- 
 character of some of the old Puritans, culated that Judge Webster had been 
 He was deeply religious, but not sour, seen in a dancing-hall. A member of 
 On the contrary, good-humored, face- his church entered a complaint, requir- 
 tious, showing even in his age, with a ing satisfaction for this reproach. Par- 
 contagious laugh, teeth all as white as son Worcester suggested a written ac- 
 alabaster, gentle, soft, playful, and yet knowledgment Judge Webster replied 
 having a heart in him that he seemed to that he would put nothing on file, but 
 have borrowed from a lion. He could that he would make an oral confession 
 frown a frown it was but cheerful- before the congregation. Accordingly, 
 ness, good-humor, and smiles composed on the next Sunday, after the forenoon 
 his most usual aspect." (Letter to R. M. exercises were closed, he rose in his 
 Blatchford, Esq., May 3, 1846. Corre- place, and said: "A few days since, I 
 spondence, voL ii., p. 227.) had some business with my nephew, 
 
 Mr. Xesmith relates the following Stephen Bohonon ; went up to his house, 
 
 specimen of his humor : He had a found him in the hall of the tavern, in- 
 
 nephew, Stephen Bohonon by name, structing the youth in dancing. They 
 
 who had been a soldier in his company were in the midst of a dance when I 
 
 at West Point, and afterward lived at entered the hall. I took a seat, and 
 
 the " South Road " village, in Salisbury, waited until the dance was closed ; took 
 
 One day, having some business with his the earliest opportunity to do my errand 
 
 nephew, he went to this village, and with Stephen ; found the young people 
 
 found him teaching the young people of civil and orderly ; saw nothing improper. 
 
 the neighborhood to dance. He entered Xow, if, in all this, I have offended any 
 
 the hall where the dancing was going on, of my weaker brethren, I am sorry fb) 
 
 ind, after waiting a short time, finished it." (New-Hampshire Statesman.)
 
 14 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. L 
 
 singular felicity, sometimes with a serious and sometimes with 
 a humorous application. !No other sacred poetry ever appeared 
 to him so affecting and devout. 
 
 He also read, at this time, Pope's "Essay on Man," and 
 learned to repeat the whole of it. This was done systematically ; 
 for, he says, " we had so few books, that to read them once or 
 twice was nothing. "We thought they were all to be got by 
 heart." But with a fondness of recollection, that will cause all 
 who remember the arrival of a new year's almanac in such a home 
 to understand him when he pronounces it "an acquisition," 
 he relates how he one night rose from his bed, after a dispute 
 with Ezekiel about a couplet of poetry at the head of the April 
 page in the new annual, groped his way to the kitchen, lighted 
 a candle, and went to find the little pamphlet in a distant room. 
 He reached the object of his search, ascertained that he was 
 wrong in his quotation, returned to his chamber, blew out his 
 candle, and went to bed. But, in his literary eagerness, he had 
 come very near burning down the house. A spark from the 
 candle had set fire to some cotton clothes in the room where 
 the almanac had been left, and where his maternal grand- 
 mother, of the age of eighty, was sleeping. The flames had 
 caught some of the furniture, and even part of the woodwork 
 of the room. Luckily, he saw the light before he fell asleep. 
 It was at two o'clock in the morning, and in midwinter ; and 
 winter in New Hampshire is no genial season. He sprang 
 from his bed, and roused the family by a sharp cry. His 
 father's presence of mind saved the house. 
 
 Beyond such acquisitions as were made at home, and the 
 very little that he obtained at the town schools, he is not known 
 to have had any other learning down to the time when his father 
 determined to send him away for other advantages. But I must 
 not leave this period of his first school-days without mentioning 
 his masters, whose names have been rescued from oblivion by 
 their connection with his, and by his affectionate fidelity to all 
 early associations. Two of them were Thomas Chase and James 
 Tappan. Of neither of these pedagogues, however, could it 
 piobably be said that the neighbors were much astonished by 
 what they carried in their heads. 
 
 The good folk of Salisbury were well aware that there were
 
 1732-97. JET. 1-14.] EARLY TEACHERS. 15 
 
 institutions and teachers not far off, that could do rather more 
 for their children, when the time came, than Master Chase or 
 Master Tappan. But the district schools of New England have 
 been, from the first, the intellectual nurseries of the land ; and 
 it was in these that the two worthies above named dispensed 
 such food for infant minds as they had to give. It is related of 
 Thomas Chase, by Mr. Everett, I presume on Mr. Webster's 
 authority, that he could read tolerably well, and wrote a good 
 hand, but that spelling was not his forte. 1 As Mr. "Webster 
 was but three or four years old when he attended Master Chase, 
 the orthography of the teacher was not perhaps of the last impor- 
 tance. Tappan came after him, and had somewhat higher 
 qualifications. He lived to a very advanced age, to be always 
 tenderly remembered by his pupil, and to receive from him 
 more substantial tokens of affectionate recognition than the 
 words, however graceful and touching they were, that came to 
 the aged teacher from a pen whose faculty of expressing sym- 
 pathy and kindness and consolation was scarcely less than its 
 power to address and control the understandings of men. 
 
 There was also a third master, whose name Mr, Webster 
 has commemorated in an especial manner, in connection with 
 the first time that he ever saw a copy of the Constitution of the 
 United States. This was William Hoyt, who taught the school 
 in Salisbury for many years, and whp also fulfilled the function 
 of keeping a small shop. Mr. Webster has not directly said 
 that he attended Hoyt's school, but, from his account of him, 
 it is no doubt to be inferred that he did : 
 
 " "William Hoyt was for many years teacher of our country school in 
 Salisbury. I do not call it village school, because there was at that time 
 no village ; and boys came to school in the winter, the only season in which 
 schools were usually open, from distances of several miles, wading through 
 the snow or running upon its crust, with their curly heads of hair often 
 whitened with frost from their own breath. I knew William Hoyt well, 
 and ' every truant knew.' He was an austere man, but a good teacher 
 of children. He had been a printer in Newburyport, wrote a very fair 
 and excellent hand, was a good reader, and did teach boys, that which so 
 few masters can or will do, to read well themselves. Beyond this, and 
 perhaps a very slight knowledge of grammar, his attainments did not 
 
 1 Biographical Memoir, Works, vol. i., xxL
 
 1C LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [OH. I. 
 
 extend. He had brought with him into the town a little property, which 
 he took very good care of. He rather loved money ; of all the cases of 
 nouns, preferring the possessive. He also kept a little shop for the sale of 
 various commodities, in the house exactly over the way from this. I do 
 not know how old I was, but I remember having gone into his shop one 
 day, and bought a small cotton pocket-handkerchief with the Constitution 
 of the United States printed on its two sides. From this I learned either 
 that there was a constitution, or that there were thirteen States. I remem- 
 ber to have read it, and have known more or less of it ever since. William 
 Hoyt and his wife lie buried in the graveyard under our eye, on my farm, 
 near the graves of my own family. He left no children. I suppose that 
 this little handkerchief was purchased about the time I was eight 
 years old, as I remember listening to the conversation of my father 
 and Mr. Thompson upon political events which happened in the year 
 1790." ' 
 
 About the year 1791, his father, who had been a member of 
 both Houses of the State Legislature at various times, was made 
 a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the county in which 
 he lived. It was the practice in New Hampshire, at that day, 
 to constitute this court by the appointment of a lawyer as pre- 
 siding judge, and to associate with him two assistant judges, 
 who were generally called " side justices." The latter were 
 commonly selected from among the substantial farmers. They 
 sat in court at the trial of causes ; and, as all the judges had the 
 right, if they chose to exercise it, to sum up the case to the jury, 
 the several members of the court might differ on the law, as 
 well as the jury on the facts. There was, however, much busi- 
 ness transacted at those courts which was not strictly judicial, 
 but rather administrative and prudential, relating to the affairs 
 of the county, and requiring strong good sense, integrity of pur- 
 pose, and activity of mind qualities which Judge Webster pos- 
 
 1 Memorandum dictated to Mr. Blatch- dear ; and a cotton handkerchief could 
 
 ford, at Franklin, October 29, 1850. be made and printed for a few cents. 
 
 (Correspondence, ii., 398.) But I fear that, however durable may 
 
 It was a good deal the practice in have been the impression produced by a 
 
 the latter part of the last, and the be- few readings on the mind of such a boy 
 
 ginning of the present century, to print as Daniel Webster, the impression of 
 
 such documents on the cotton handker- the types on his pocket-handkerchief 
 
 chiefs sold through the country. Many could not have lasted long after its first 
 
 of my readers will remember the Dec- immersion in water. My own recollec- 
 
 laration of Independence, Washington's tion of these specimens of our infant 
 
 Farewell Address, as well as the Consti- manufactures is, that they were very ai- 
 
 tution, so printed. It may have been a tractive to the youthful mind, but that 
 
 rude, but it was a happy thought, with the housewives generally held that thoy 
 
 whomsoever it originated. Paper was " wouldn't wash."
 
 1782-1797.] EDUCATION DETERMINED. 17 
 
 sessed in a remarkable degree. The position of " side justice," 
 when filled by such a man, was a highly useful and respectable 
 one. There was a salary attached to the office, amounting to 
 three or four hundred dollars a year, which Mr. Webster says 
 was " a sum of the greatest importance to the family." It is 
 not probable that this increase of his income caused Judge 
 Webster to decide immediately to give Daniel a collegiate 
 education, but there can be no doubt that, when the time came 
 for that decision, he felt that this salary would be a very im- 
 portant aid to him in carrying out his plan. If his pecuniary 
 circumstances had been such as to enable him to devote the 
 whole of this sum to his youngest son's expenses at college, it 
 would have been quite sufficient for the purpose. But this was 
 not the case. The sequel did not show that the judicial salary 
 could meet what the excellent parent finally had to do. 
 
 Daniel was eleven years old when this improvement in his 
 father's affairs took place. He passed three or four years more 
 in the kind of life which he thus describes : " I read what 
 I could get to read, went to school when I could ; and, when 
 not at school, was a farmer's youngest boy, not good fo,r much 
 for want of health and strength, but was expected to do some- 
 thing." ' At the end of this time, in the summer of 1795, his 
 father disclosed to him his purpose to give him a better educa- 
 tion than he had been able to afford to his elder sons. But it 
 does not appear, by what can be gathered from a collation of 
 Mr. "Webster's autobiography and portions of his correspond- 
 ence, that he understood at this time that he was to be sent to 
 college, or that his father mentioned the subject of his educa- 
 tion to him in reference to such a step. What occurred in 
 1795, however, can be related by no one else as he has re- 
 lated it, and I therefore transcribe his own touching account 
 of it: 
 
 " Of a hot day in July, it must have been in one of the last years of 
 Washington's administration, I was making hay with my father, just 
 where I now see a remaining elm-tree. About the middle of the forenoon 
 the Honorable Abiel Foster, M. C., who lived in Canterbury, six miles off, 
 called at the house, and came into the field to see my father. He was a 
 worthy man, college-learned, and had been a minister, but was not a 
 
 1 Autobiography. 
 3
 
 18 LIFE OF UANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. L 
 
 person of any considerable natural power. My father was his friend and 
 supporter. He talked a while in the field, and went on his way. When 
 he was gone, my father called me to him, and we sat down beneath the 
 elm, on a hay-cock. He said, ' My son, that is a worthy man ; he is a 
 member of Congress ; he goes to Philadelphia, and gets six dollars a day, 
 while I toil here. It is because he had an education, which I never had. 
 If I had had his early education I should have been in Philadelphia in his 
 place. I came near it as it was. But I missed it, and now I must work 
 here.' ' My dear father,' said I, ' you shall not work. Brother and I will 
 work for you, and will wear our hands out, and you shall rest.' And I 
 remember to have cried, and I cry now at the recollection. ' My child,' 
 said he, ' it is of no importance to me. I now live but for my children. I 
 could not give your elder brothers the advantages of knowledge, but I can 
 do something for you. Exert yourself, improve your opportunities, learn, 
 learn, and, when I am gone, you will not need to go through the hard- 
 ships which I have undergone, and which have made me an old man 
 before my time." ' 
 
 When the next spring arrived, his father took an important 
 tep, but still without informing him that he was to be pre- 
 pared for college, and apparently without having definitively 
 decided that point in his own mind. In 1781 there had been 
 founded at Exeter, by the Honorable John Phillips, an institu- 
 tion, which has ever since been known as the Phillips Exeter 
 Academy. It has always been conducted like some of the 
 great schools in England ; that is to say, the boys are lodged in 
 the houses of respectable families in the town, and they attend 
 a school that is held in the academy building erected for the 
 purpose, and furnished with appropriate rooms for the different 
 classes. Its principal, in Mr. "Webster's time, and for forty 
 years afterward, was Dr. Benjamin Abbot, one of the most 
 eminent instructors of youth that this country has produced. 
 
 To this institution young Webster was taken by his father in 
 May, 1Y96. 3 He had never been from home before, and the 
 change, he says, overpowered him. He found himself among 
 ninety boys, who had seen more, and appeared to know more 
 than he did ; " and I scarcely remained," he adds, " master of 
 my own senses." But -this probably soon wore off, on all occa- 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Blatchford. (Corre- who was accounted the wit of the fam- 
 tpondence, ii., 228.) ily. He was in the habit of saying that 
 
 2 Mr. Webster had an elder half- Daniel was sent to school in order to 
 brother, whose name was Joseph, and make him " equal to the rest of the boys."
 
 1796.] RAPED ADVANCEMENT. 19 
 
 sions, at least, but one. He was put into the lowest class, and 
 began English grammar, writing, and arithmetic. The follow- 
 ing anecdote is given by Mr. Everett, as a proof of the rapidity 
 of his progress : At the end of a month, the usher * said to him 
 one morning, " Webster, you will pass into the other room, and 
 join a higher class ; " and added, " Boys, you will take your 
 final leave of Webster you will never see him again." a That 
 he was transferred to a higher class, in rather a marked manner, 
 was told by himself to one of his early friends, who has added 
 the following explanation of the occurrence, as he received it 
 from Mr. Webster : 
 
 " The incident related by Mr. Everett, in his Memoir of Mr. Webster, 
 respecting his elevation to a higher class, at the end of the first month 
 at the academy in Exeter, needs, I think, a little correction or explanation, 
 in order to present its most important bearing upon his future life. 
 When his first term at Exeter was near its close, the usher said : ' Web- 
 ster, you may stop a few minutes after school ; I wish to speak to you.' 
 When the other scholars had gone, the usher asked him whether he 
 intended to return to the academy after the vacation. The answer indi- 
 cated something like reluctance. It had not escaped the observation of 
 the usher, that Webster's rustic manners and unfashionable raiment had 
 drawn upon him the ridicule of some of his associates, who, in every 
 respect, except habiliments and external accomplishments, were greatly his 
 inferiors. The inference was justly drawn that the academy was in danger 
 of losing an estimable and promising pupil, while it retained others who 
 gave no promise of doing honor to that distinguished seminary. The 
 usher, therefore, judiciously and kindly remarked to Mr. Webster that he 
 was a better scholar than any in his class ; that he learned more readily 
 and easily than they did ; and, if he would return at the commencement 
 of the next term, he should be put into a higher class, and should no 
 longer be hindered in his progress by those boys who cared more for 
 play and dress than for solid improvement. ' These were the first truly 
 encouraging words,' said Mr. Webster, ' that I ever received with regard 
 to my studies. I then resolved to return, and pursue them with diligence 
 and so much ability as I possessed.' Probably the kindness and good judg- 
 ment of the usher had an important influence upon the whole course of 
 Mr. Webster's after-life." * 
 
 In October he went home for a short vacation, and then 
 
 1 Nicholas Emery, afterward an emi- * Letter by J. "W. McGaw, Esq., of 
 
 nent lawyer and judge in Portland, Maine. Bangor, November 16, 1852. (C'orre- 
 
 s Biographical Memoir. (Works, L, spondenee, i., 48-52.) 
 ixiv.)
 
 20 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. I. 
 
 returned to the academy, and began the Latin grammar. Dr. 
 Abbot was absent on account of indisposition, and a very young 
 usher was fulfilling a part of the doctor's duties. This was 
 Joseph Stevens Buckminster, whose early maturity, personal 
 graces, scholarship, piety, and eloquence, left an impression in 
 New England that is even now but little weakened, although 
 more than half a century has elapsed since his character became 
 sanctified in that community, by an early death, at the age of 
 twenty-eight. 1 In 1796, Buckminster was an advanced pupil 
 of the academy, where he had won great distinction as a 
 scholar, and where his moral excellence, and the fascination 
 of his manners, had made him the idol of all connected with 
 the institution. 
 
 To this youthful and brilliant teacher, younger than him- 
 self, Webster's first exercises in Latin were recited. It was 
 Buckminster who first endeavored to overcome in the pupil a 
 native diflidence, which will astonish any reader, who now 
 learns, for the first time, that Daniel Webster could not, when 
 a boy, make a school declamation. This fact, which would 
 scarcely be credited on any other testimony than his own, was 
 recorded by him in his autobiography with perfect frankness, 
 and with his usual precision, and is therefore to be accepted 
 just as he states it : 
 
 " I believe I made tolerable progress in most branches which I attended 
 to while in this school ; but there was one thing I could not do I could 
 not make a declamation. I could not speak before the school. The kind 
 and excellent Buckminster sought, especially, to persuade me to perform 
 the exercise of declamation like other boys, but I could not do it. Many 
 a piece did I commit to memory, and recite and rehearse in my own room, 
 over and over again, yet, when the day came, when the school collected to 
 hear declamations, when my name was called, and I saw all eyes turned to 
 my seat, I could not raise myself from it. Sometimes the instructors 
 frowned, sometimes they smiled. Mr. Buckminster always pressed and 
 entreated, most winningly, that I would venture, but I could never com- 
 mand sufficient resolution. When the occasion was over, I went home, and 
 wept bitter tears of mortification." * 
 
 It would have been interesting if he had added a few 
 
 1 Buckminster was born May 26, 1784 ; 2 Autobiography. ( Coirespondence, 
 
 entered Harvard College in July, 1797; vol. L, p. 9.) 
 graduated in 1800 ; died in 1812.
 
 1796.] LEAVES EXETER. 21 
 
 words more, and had given us his own recollection of the 
 time when this timidity gave way, and the means which he 
 took, if he ever took any, to overcome it. The image of De- 
 mosthenes, breaking up the impediments in his speech, occurs 
 at once to the mind. But there is probably no parallel 
 between the two cases. Mr. Webster's difficulty was doubtless 
 in some degree connected with the state of his physical system ; 
 but, I imagine that, as he grew stronger, it disappeared at once, 
 and without his being conscious of the change. The circum- 
 stances, too, by which he was surrounded, may have had some- 
 thing to do with his inability to speak before the school. He 
 came there a rustic boy of fourteen, independent, but shy, did 
 not mix a great deal in the sports of the other boys, and was 
 perhaps less well clad than most of them. The tyranny which 
 a great public school can exercise over its better and more sen- 
 sitive members is proverbial ; and it is not less a tyranny, in 
 such cases, because it may be an unintentional one. Mr. Web- 
 ster has not analyzed the feeling which made it impossible for 
 him to ascend the platform at Exeter; but two of his early 
 friends, one of whom was with him at the school, have stated facts 
 which warrant my suggestions. 1 I judge it to have been a tem- 
 porary embarrassment, of which he never was specially conscious 
 afterward, because there is no record, so far as I am informed, of 
 his having at a later period subjected himself to any discipline 
 on account of such a feeling, as there is also no tradition of 
 his having experienced it after he entered college. On the con- 
 trary, he became at Dartmouth a very easy and impressive 
 speaker and debater. But the remainder of his preparatory 
 education, before he went to college, was passed under a 
 private tutor ; and he was not, therefore, in a situation to 
 be exercised in public declamation until he joined that insti- 
 tution. 
 
 He remained at Exeter only about nine months. In De- 
 cember, 1796, or January, 1797, his father came for him, 
 and took him home. He had remained at the academy 
 long enough, however, to form some friendships with persons 
 with whom he was afterward associated in public or private 
 
 1 See the letter of James H. Bing- the extract quoted above, from J. W. 
 ham, Esq. (Correspondence, i., 54); and McGaw, Esq.
 
 22 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. I. 
 
 life. 1 He has nowhere assigned any reason why he was removed 
 from Exeter. His progress there must have been entirely satis- 
 factory to his father, his teachers, and himself. But probably 
 the expense, although moderate, must have had some influence 
 with his father, who found that he could command from a 
 clergyman in his own neighborhood good instruction on easier 
 terms. The state of his health, too, may have rendered it desir- 
 able that he should be nearer home ; or it may have been 
 thought that, as he was now fifteen years old, he could be 
 carried forward faster by a private tutor than he could be in a 
 great public school. 
 
 For some, or all of these reasons, his father determined, in 
 February, 1797, to place him with the Rev. Samuel Wood, the 
 minister of the adjoining town of Boscawen. The distance 
 was about six miles from their home. On the way thither his 
 father first disclosed to him the plan which he had formed of 
 giving him a collegiate education. " I remember," he says, 
 " the very hill which we were ascending, through deep snows, 
 in a New-England sleigh, when my father made known this 
 purpose to me. I could not speak. How could he, I thought, 
 with so large a family, and in such narrow circumstances, think 
 of incurring so great an expense for me ? A warm glow ran all 
 over me, and I laid my head on my father's shoulder, and 
 wept." 
 
 Of the qualifications of Dr. Wood for the charge which he 
 had undertaken, we can judge only from the very little which 
 Mr. "Webster has said with respect to the state of his prepara- 
 tion when he entered college. It was doubtless a period, as 
 Mr. Everett has observed, when the general standard of classical 
 attainments in our country was exceedingly low far lower than 
 it had been for several generations succeeding the first settle- 
 ment of the country ; and it was long after Mr. "Webster had 
 entered upon the active duties of life before there began to be 
 any improvement in this respect. Dr. "Wood was as good a 
 scholar, it is fair to presume, as most clergymen in New Eng- 
 
 1 He mentions, in his autobiography, and James H. Bingham, now of Clare- 
 
 " J. W. Bracket, late of New York, de- mont, N. H." 
 
 seased; William Garland, late of Ports- 2 Biographical Memoir. (Works, i., 
 
 mouth, deceased ; Governor Cass, of xxiv.) 
 Michigan ; Mr. Saltonstall [of Salem] ;
 
 1796.] ENTERS COLLEGE. 23 
 
 land at that day ; and it is equally safe to assume that he was 
 not a better one. "When Mr. Webster says that he got " a mere 
 breaking in," and that he went to college " miserably prepared, 
 both in Latin and Greek," we are to remember two things : 
 first, that he remained with Dr. "Wood only six months, and 
 that at Exeter he had but a short training in the Latin gram- 
 mar and none in the Greek ; secondly, that at college, and 
 afterward, as will hereafter appear, he became a very good 
 Latin scholar at least, and was therefore very likely to depre- 
 ciate the acquisitions which he carried with him when he left 
 Dr. "Wood. 1 In his autobiography he says : 
 
 " Mr. Wood put me upon Virgil and Tully, and I conceived a pleasure 
 in the study of them, especially the latter, which rendered application no 
 longer a task. With what vehemence did I denounce Catiline ! with what 
 earnestness struggle for Milo ! In the spring I began the Greek grammar, 
 and at midsummer Mr. Wood said to me : 'I expected to keep you till 
 next year, but I am tired of you, and I shall put you into college next 
 month.' And so indeed he did, but it was a mere breaking in ; I was 
 indeed miserably prepared both in Latin and Greek ; but Mr. Wood 
 accomplished his purpose, and I entered Dartmouth College, as a fresh- 
 man, August, 1797.* 
 
 "While he was at Dr. "Wood's an incident occurred which 
 shows the humorous indulgence of. his father's treatment of 
 him, and which I should mar if I were to attempt to repeat 
 it in any other than the colloquial way in which he related 
 it to some friends, on a drive from Boston to Salem, in 1825 : 
 
 " My father sent for me in haying-time, to help him, and put me into a 
 field to turn hay, and left me. It was pretty lonely there, and, after work- 
 ing some time, I found it very dull ; and, as I knew my father was gone 
 
 1 In 1825 he spoke of Mr. Wood as scholar, though a lover of learning. He 
 " a man of some learning." (MSS.) could appreciate genius without feeling 
 
 2 Dr. Wood, who was also Ezekiel its fires in his own bosom. By his un- 
 Webster's tutor, and afterward his pastor, wearied diligence and fidelity he suc- 
 was a man of great excellence of char- ceeded in making good scholars. He 
 acter ; " distinguished," says Professor labored from principle from an ever- 
 Sanborn, " for his rare Christian virtues, present conviction that he must do all 
 He was one of the excellent of the earth, within his power to benefit the rising 
 During his long and successful minis- generation. It was the boast and glory 
 try at Boscawen, he fitted more than one of his life that he was the tutor of 
 hundred young men for college. Those Ezekiel and Daniel Webster. He loved 
 who could not pay the debt, he trusted ; them as children ; they honored him as 
 and to some very indigent pupils he for- a father." (Correspondence, i., 35.) 
 gave the debt. He was not an eminent
 
 24 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. I. 
 
 away, I walked home, and asked my sister Sally if she did not want to go 
 and pick some whortleberries. She said yes. So I went and got some 
 horses, and put a side-saddle on one, and we set off. "We did not get 
 home until it was pretty late, and I soon went to bed. When my father 
 came home he asked my mother where I was, and what I had been about. 
 She told him. The next morning, when I awoke, I saw all the clothes I had 
 brought from Dr. Wood's tied up in a small bundle again. When I saw 
 my father he asked me how I liked haying. I told him I found it ' pretty 
 dull and lonesome yesterday.' ' Well,' said he, ' I believe you may as well 
 go back to Dr. Wood's.' So I took my bundle under my arm, and on my 
 way I met Thomas W. Thompson, a lawyer in Salisbury ; he laughed very 
 heartily when he saw me. ' So,' said he, ' your farming is over, is it ? '" 1 
 
 After tills exploit in haying and picking whortleberries, 
 there remained but six weeks in which to finish his preparation 
 for college ; and it appears that Dr. Wood thought it expedi- 
 ent to have some assistance for his Greek. " "Well, sir," con- 
 tinued Mr. Webster, conversing in 1825 about his early life, " I 
 went to Dr. Wood's, and, as my father had consented to my 
 going to college, he got a young man of the name of Palmer, 
 a senior in Dartmouth, to come and teach me Greek. I knew 
 nothing at all about it, and I had just six weeks to prepare in. 
 But I went to work, and entered in '97, when I was fifteen." 
 
 At Boscawen he had found another circulating library, and 
 he read a great many of the books which it contained. But he 
 mentions one only " Don Quixote." It was the common 
 translation, and in an edition of three or four duodecimo vol- 
 umes. "I began to read it," he says in the autobiography, 
 " and it is literally true that I never closed my eyes until I 
 had finished it ; nor did I lay it down, so great was the power 
 of that extraordinary book on my imagination." 
 
 Such was the youth Daniel Webster when he entered Dart- 
 mouth College. In the ancient languages, the Latin grammar, 
 the first six books of the "^Eneid," Cicero's four Orations against 
 Catiline, a little Greek grammar, and the four Evangelists of 
 the Greek Testament, were his whole stock. In mathematics 
 he had nothing but the small amount of arithmetic which he 
 might have obtained at the town-schools and at Exeter. Of 
 geography and history he had almost nothing but what he 
 
 1 MSS. account of a drive from Boston to Salem, in 1825, preserved by Mr. 
 Ticknor.
 
 1797.] LOVE OF READING. 25 
 
 had picked up in his desultory reading. In English literature 
 we have certain knowledge that he had read some of Addison's 
 prose, one of Pope's larger poems, the devotional poetry of Dr. 
 Watts, and a translation of " Don Quixote." I have sought 
 diligently to find the earliest period at which he first knew 
 any thing of Milton and Shakespeare poets whose imagery, 
 sentiments, language, and lines became afterward so inwrought 
 with his intellectual being that they sprang into his discourse, 
 sometimes in unbidden and unconscious quotation, and some- 
 times with a purposed use of riches which he had stored in one 
 of the most retentive memories ever possessed by man. But 1 
 find no evidence that his knowledge of Milton and Shakespeare 
 began at this early age. It is certain, however, that, before he 
 went to Dartmouth, he must have had some miscellaneous 
 reading of which we have no account. That he read every 
 thing he could get to read, he has told us ; and, although the 
 two circulating libraries, which came within his reach, at Salis- 
 bury and at Boscawen, must have been rather meagre collec- 
 tions, we may safely infer that he devoured whatever he could 
 find in them that could attract a lad of his years. For he tells 
 us : " In those boyish days there were two things which I did 
 dearly love, viz., reading and playing passions which did not 
 cease to struggle when boyhood was over (have they yet, alto- 
 gether?) and, in regard to which, neither <nta mors nor the 
 victoria laeta could be said of either." 1 
 
 horae 
 
 Momenta dta mors venit, aut victoria laeta." 
 
 HOEACE, Sat. I. 7.
 
 26 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IL 
 
 CHAPTEK II. 
 
 1797-1801. 
 
 COLLEGE LIFE BANK AS A STUDENT DEVELOPMENT AND 
 
 ACQUISITIONS. 
 
 ~TTT~E now enter upon a period, in the life of Mr. "Webster, 
 V V through which it is necessary to move with careful steps. 
 The extraordinary elevation to which he rose has tended to 
 invest his college-life with an uncommon interest, and to sur- 
 round it with impressions which, however pleasing in their 
 apparent conformity with what he afterward became, must be 
 examined with fidelity. For those who knew him, and acted 
 with him only after his mind was in its full maturity, and 
 those who knew him only through the glory of his vast reputa- 
 tion, could not well conceive that there ever was a time, after 
 his intellect began to be manifested at all to the observation of 
 others, when it was not, in a degree corresponding to its subse- 
 quent exhibitions, of the same preeminent qualities and powers. 
 Thinking and speaking of him as a prodigy, such as ISTature can 
 vouchsafe but once, men easily believed that, at all times, and 
 in every period of his existence, he must have stood in the same 
 relative superiority to his fellows, in which they saw and felt 
 that he stood when they could compare him with others or 
 themselves. 
 
 It is well known that there have been those, among the con- 
 temporaries of his youth, who have thought that his future 
 greatness was then foreseen and predicted. But such a sug- 
 gestion, even in regard to such a man, may challenge a dissent
 
 1797.] COLLEGE LIFE. 37 
 
 that springs from no love of disparagement ; and, accordingly, 
 there have been others who lived at the same period, and in 
 the same associations, who have not admitted that, at col- 
 lege, he stood in all respects far above his competitors, and 
 who have thought it unwise to hold him up as an example 
 of mere genius, ascending at once to the highest pinnacles of 
 fame, without the toil and the patient submission to routine, 
 by which distinction is most commonly supposed, and should 
 ordinarily be held, to be best achieved. 
 
 The purpose of biography is, or should be, truth. Eulogy 
 and praise are not to be discarded from it, if they can rest 
 on solid foundations. But such foundations must be explored 
 without preconceived theories. He who admits into his descrip- 
 tions of a great man's life and character the influence of any 
 opinion concerning their example, or who is anxious about 
 methods of education or the best means of self-culture, admits 
 into his office that which will not be unlikely to disturb its per- 
 formance. As little should there be an effort to maintain any 
 favorite idea of one's own, concerning what must have been 
 the early intellectual and moral development of a man like 
 Daniel "Webster. "We do not know enough of all the laws that 
 govern the growth of a human mind, to be able to reason back- 
 ward, from what we have known of it in its maturity, to the 
 times and the processes through which it began to approach the 
 perfect stature in which it has stood before us. We can no 
 more reason in this way, concerning the mind, than we can in 
 regard to the body. "Who that ever saw the physical frame of 
 this man in the middle period of his days filled with life and 
 health, as capacious of labor as of the enjoyment of all that 
 the senses can enjoy, perfect in grace and dignity, speaking in 
 every motion and in every look of power and energy and 
 vitality could have argued from it back to his earliest years, 
 and have found, without other guide, the feeble and even sickly 
 childhood, with which we know that his earthly existence 
 began ? In the history of the mental, as of the physical con- 
 stitution, we must investigate facts. Evidence is to be carefully 
 sifted and weighed ; the opinions and narrations of those who 
 are competent to inform us must be examined and compared, 
 and, above all, if he whose history we desire fully to know has
 
 28 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IL 
 
 left us his own testimony, given with full justice to others, 
 and with no undue bias toward himself, we are bound to regard 
 it as of great weight, in forming our estimate of what he may 
 have been at a period so remote from the time in which he may 
 have spoken or written concerning his early life. 
 
 In the case of Mr. Webster, there is strong reason for relying 
 on his own statements respecting himself. He was an emi- 
 nently just man ; and he never was accused of vanity. He was 
 not unconscious of what he was, or insensible to what he had done 
 in the world, 'or indifferent about his reputation. But he never 
 sought praise at the expense of others, whether it was the praise 
 that attends the exhibition of mere talent, or that which fol- 
 lows the exhibition of mere industry. He was at once too 
 grand and too simple in his nature to court a cheap applause ; 
 and, in speaking of himself at any time, or about any time in 
 his life, if he ever failed in impartiality, he erred against him- 
 self, and against no one else. One thing is certainly true of 
 him and it is, that, in his opinions respecting the means by 
 which he laid the foundation of his extraordinary success, he 
 always gave the utmost importance to the amount of labor 
 which he very early accustomed himself to perform, to the 
 power of labor which he cultivated and increased as he grew 
 in years, and to the command which it gave him over his intel- 
 lectual faculties. It would have been the last thing which he 
 could ever have desired, to be handed down to posterity as 
 a man of genius who never needed the discipline to which 
 common minds must submit. He never exhibited any of that 
 weakness which has sometimes led men of the highest endow- 
 ments to conceal their preparation for particular efforts at the 
 bar, or in the senate, or which has craved, at the expense of 
 probability or of truth, a reputation for doing great things out of 
 the inspiration of the moment. Probably few men have ever 
 lived who exceeded Mr. "Webster in the power of immediately 
 entering on the discussion of an important subject with very 
 little previous notice of the duty and its demands. But, when 
 he did so, he drew upon stores which he had garnered up in 
 his intellectual resources for years, and it was the discipline 
 of years, long gone by, that enabled him so to use his faculties 
 as to bring those stores instantly to the uses of the hour. He
 
 1797.1 AMERICAN COLLEGES. 29 
 
 would not have had it understood to be otherwise. I. do not 
 mean to say that he was never, or that he was rarely, indebted 
 to that high exaltation of the intellect which comes when in 
 the presence of an audience the mind assumes its greatest in- 
 tensity of action ; which clothes a syllogism in poetic fire, or 
 adorns a train of reasoning with a flow of eloquence, more 
 perfectly than all that study or the closet can do. Ko great 
 orator, of ancient or of modern times, probably felt more deeply, 
 or displayed more strikingly, in extemporaneous discourse, the 
 effect of what is called inspiration. But I point now merely to 
 that feature of his character which made him entirely free from 
 a vulgar appetite for unmerited fame, and which rendered a 
 false pride, in respect to the present or the past, a stranger to 
 his breast. A man who had this strength and this moral sim- 
 plicity could surely speak, in his manhood or in his age, of what 
 he was at fifteen or at twenty, in a way that renders his testi- 
 mony of inestimable value to those who would know him as 
 he was. 
 
 There are some other general observations which must be 
 made before the narrative of his college life proceeds, because 
 they are necessary to a correct understanding of the -kind and 
 degree of development which he attained at Dartmouth. 
 
 An American college is conducted, in some respects, differ- 
 ently from the corresponding institutions in most parts of 
 Europe. Xo comparison is here intended to be drawn in 
 respect to the advantages of different systems of education, but 
 it is intended merely to describe the kind of institution at which 
 Mr. "Webster received his academic education. In most of our 
 colleges there is a curriculum, or prescribed course of studies, 
 in the ancient and modern languages, in mathematics and the 
 exact sciences, in mental and moral philosophy, in history, in 
 rhetoric, and in some other branches. In these the student is 
 required to prepare lessons, and to attend daily examinations, 
 which are called " recitations." A daily record is kept of the 
 performance of each student at the particular recitation ; and 
 the summary of this record, together with the results of per- 
 sonal deportment and punctuality of attendance on prescribed 
 exercises, determines the relative rank of the students, and their 
 title to the academic honors which the college, in its official
 
 30 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. H. 
 
 capacity, bestows. Lectures are also delivered by the profes- 
 sors in their several departments, some of which the students 
 are required to attend, while on others the attendance is vol- 
 untary. 
 
 In addition to these means of culture and discipline, there 
 are others furnished by the college, which have a very impor- 
 tant influence in the training of our young men. Among these 
 are the public " declamations," which take place before the 
 whole college at stated and frequent times, and in which each 
 student is required to bear his part ; the " exhibitions," which 
 occur at certain periods in the college course, and the " com- 
 mencement " exercises, with which the four years of college life 
 terminate, and at which the degree of Bachelor of Arts is con- 
 ferred upon each student, who has performed the college course 
 without serious dereliction, and without incurring the neces- 
 sity of being deprived of such a diploma by misconduct. At 
 the exhibitions and the commencement exercises, the students, 
 on whom the distinction falls, by the award of the College Fac- 
 ulty, deliver their own compositions in the form of orations and 
 addresses in English, or Greek, or Latin ; and these appoint- 
 ments constitute the college honors that are the objects of com- 
 petition among the young men who contend for them. The 
 performances are delivered upon a public stage, and there is 
 always a public audience in addition to the faculty and mem- 
 bers of the college. 
 
 In many of our colleges, also, there are voluntary societies 
 among the students, which have existed for a long time, and 
 which are conducted with great spirit and emulation, for pur- 
 poses of general culture in writing and speaking, and for prac- 
 tice in the art of debating. Over these the college exercises no 
 official control. The existence and operation of these voluntary 
 associations which are often carried on so effectively as to pro- 
 duce an important influence on the development of individuals, 
 aside from all that part of education of which the college takes 
 official cognizance will account for the fact that a young man 
 may have a high repute among his fellows for talent or scholar- 
 ship, and may yet fail to achieve the highest honors of his col- 
 lege. But when this occurs, it will almost always be found that 
 he who enjoys such a reputation among his fellow-students has
 
 1798.] FRESHMAN AND SOPHOMORE. 31 
 
 gained it on account of his acquirements beyond the college 
 course, and by his superiority in writing and debate ; while 
 he who wins a high college appointment, wins it on account of 
 his exactness in the recitation-room. The two distinctions are 
 rarely united in the same person. 
 
 Dartmouth College, when Mr. "Webster entered it, was such 
 an institution as I have above described, excepting that it had 
 no provision for teaching the modern languages, and that, in 
 the mathematics and the exact sciences, its course was exceed- 
 ingly meagre. 1 When young Webster was fairly entered as a 
 Freshman, his class went on with the seventh book of the 
 "uEneid," and with the remainder of the Greek Testament. 
 The studies through the Freshman and Sophomore years con- 
 tinued to be in Latin and Greek, with Pike's Arithmetic and 
 Algebra. But from all the sources of information that are 
 accessible, it seems that he did not rise into immediate and 
 prominent distinction during these first two years of his col- 
 lege course. He was a good scholar, and punctual in his attend- 
 ance on all exercises ; but it appears, on the testimony of one 
 entitled to know, that he was not spoken of at this time as the 
 best scholar in his class, or indeed that any one elae was so 
 spoken of; and the estimation in which the College Faculty 
 held him at this period is proved by the fact that, at his Sopho- 
 more exhibition, neither of the two principal appointments was 
 assigned to him.* 
 
 There are extant a few verses which he addressed to one of 
 his college friends, George Herbert, as a farewell, when he was 
 leaving the college for the winter vacation in his Sophomore 
 year, December, 1798. They exhibit no more poetic talent, or 
 power of versification, or vigor of mind, than any lad of six- 
 teen might show who had been similarly educated. 
 
 But there is a striking contrast between them and another 
 
 1 Upon this Mr. Ticknor observes : * I state these facts on the authority 
 
 " In every department, when Mr. Web- of the Rev. T. A. Merrill, D. D., of Mid- 
 
 ster was at Dartmouth, the teaching dlebury, Vermont, who was one of his 
 
 was ' exceedingly meagre.' Pike's Arith- class-mates, and who, in 1853, soon after 
 
 metic was a miserable book. I doubt Mr. Webster's death, wrote for the liter- 
 
 whether he [Mr. W.] ever dealt with ary executors quite a full account of Mr. 
 
 algebra." But Dr. Merrill, who was Webster's college history, which now 
 
 Webster's rival for the college honors, lies before me in MSS. 
 expressly mentions algebra.
 
 32 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. II. 
 
 short piece written and addressed to the same friend, a little 
 more than a year afterward. The latter displays a great advance 
 in his power of expression and thought, and, if the verses are, as 
 the verses of most youths are, somewhat imitative, they do not 
 lack the elements of real poetry. Some of his companions then 
 thought, and have always believed, that the Muses had been 
 lavish of their gifts to him, and that he did not cultivate them 
 as he should have done. But the truth is, in respect to most of 
 his rhymes that remain, although Nature had made him, in 
 one sense, a poet, and although the prose of his whole life shows 
 how strong were his imaginative tendencies, and how poetical 
 his gravest eloquence often was, there is nothing that can, criti- 
 cally speaking, be dignified by the name of poetry. Whenever 
 he wrote any thing serious in the form of verse, during his col- 
 lege life, or afterward, he was accustomed to laugh at it ; and 
 when he wrote any thing comic, his sense of the ludicrous was 
 so strong, and his power of embodying it so exuberant, that he 
 made others laugh with him as heartily as he did himself. But 
 he undoubtedly possessed, at an early age, a faculty of descrip- 
 tion, in the forms of verse, akin to that which he could always 
 use with wonderful force in prose composition or extemporane- 
 ous speaking. There is a tradition of a poem which he read in 
 his junior year, on a battle between an English and a French 
 ship-of-war, in which the latter was sunk, " that held the pro- 
 fessor and the class," says one who heard it, " in apparent 
 amazement. I almost shudder," continues his class-mate, " as, 
 fifty-four years after, I seem to see the French ship go down, 
 and to hear her cannon continue to roar till she is absolutely 
 submerged." l 
 
 But not to anticipate the two later and most important 
 years of his residence at Dartmouth, the reader must now go 
 home with him to the paternal roof, at the spring vacation, in 
 May, 1799, during his Sophomore year ; for it was then that a 
 domestic episode occurred in his life, which affected it through 
 many a long year of generous and manly resistance against the 
 ills of poverty. 
 
 The affection that had existed between Ezekiel and Daniel 
 Webster, from their childhood, was such as even brothers whc 
 
 1 Dr. Merrill's MSS.
 
 1799.] EZEKIEL WEBSTER. 33 
 
 are nearly of an age rarely feel. Whether it was that the 
 younger had, from infancy, stood more than commonly in need 
 of the strong protection of the older and stouter boy, or whether 
 it was the effect of companionship operating upon natures with 
 whom " blood was thicker than water " to a degree not often 
 exceeded in the family tie, they loved each other, until death 
 divided them, as men seldom do or can. They were the sons 
 of an old man, who had become, to repeat his own homely but 
 strong expression, " old before his time ; " children of his 
 age, and probably the first of his children who had given much 
 promise of future usefulness, as Daniel was certainly the first 
 of his sons for whom he thought himself called to afford the 
 means of education. The reader already knows the plan which 
 ne had formed for his declining years. Ezekiel was to remain 
 at home, and carry on the farm ; Daniel was to be educated 
 for one of the learned professions. But as the ample page of 
 knowledge began to unfold itself before the eyes of the young 
 student, and he saw the wide gulf that was to open between him- 
 self and his elder brother, his heart was moved. He believed 
 that Ezekiel's talents were as good as his own, and he. could 
 not bear to think of him as destined to an inferior lot in life. 
 When he came home for the vacation, he found that his brother 
 felt the unpromising character of his prospects, and that there 
 was a struggle between duty to his parents and the aspirations 
 of a really superior mind. Daniel was unhappy about this 
 state of things. He had a consultation with his brother, after 
 they had gone to bed, which lasted through the whole night, 
 and until after sunrise, neither of them having shut his eyes. 
 Mr. "Webster says of his brother, in the autobiography : 
 
 " He had thought of going into some new part of the country. That 
 was discussed and disagreed to. All the pros and cons of the question 
 of remaining at home were weighed and considered, and, when our 
 council broke up, or rather got up, its result was that I should pro- 
 pose to my father that he, late as it was, should be sent to school also, 
 and to college. This, we knew, would be a trying thing to my father and 
 mother and two unmarried sisters. My father was growing old, his health 
 not good, and his circumstances far from easy. The farm was to be 
 carried on, and the family taken care of; and there was nobody to do all 
 this but him, who was regarded as the main stay that is to say, Ezekiel. 
 However, I ventured on the negotiation, and it was carried, as other things 
 4
 
 34: LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. II 
 
 often are, by the earnest and sanguine manner of youth. I told him that I 
 was unhappy at my brother's prospects. For myself, I saw my way to 
 knowledge, respectability, and self-protection ; but, as to him, all looked 
 the other way ; that I would keep school, and get along as well as I could, 
 be more than four years in getting through college, if necessary, provided 
 he also could be sent to study. He said at once he lived but for his 
 children ; that he had but little, and on that little he put no value, except 
 so far as it might be useful to them. That to carry us both through col- 
 lege would take all he was worth ; that, for himself, he was willing to run 
 the risk ; but that this was a serious matter to our mother and two unmar- 
 ried sisters ; that we must settle the matter with them, and, if their con- 
 sent was obtained, he would trust to Providence, and get along as well as 
 he could." 
 
 AH was now referred, therefore, to the decision of the 
 mother ; and her decision involved the family means for her 
 whole remaining life, and for the lives of her unmarried 
 daughters. Her husband told her that the farm was already 
 mortgaged to meet the expenses of Daniel's education; and 
 that if Ezekiel, too, were sent to college, it would take all that 
 they had. Her answer was ready : " "Well," said she, " I will 
 trust the boys." l 
 
 Perhaps there is nowhere a tablet in the Temple of Fame, 
 on which any thing more touching than this act of maternal 
 heroism has been or can be inscribed. Thenceforward there 
 was a long period of anxiety and privation for all of them. 
 But its compensations came. The father lived to know that 
 his sons were to take their places among the most honored of 
 their native State. The mother lived longer, to behold the 
 .opening of that great career which was before the younger, 
 and to find repose and every comfort in the house of her elder 
 son. The sisters lived to find how safe had been their reliance 
 on fraternal gratitude and honor. On the early grave, there- 
 fore, to which one of these brothers went suddenly down, in the 
 prime of a useful and honorable, although a less distinguished 
 life, and on the tomb in which the other, when full of years and 
 honors, and with all the renown that a statesman can reap, was 
 laid by a mourning nation, it should be written that a mother's 
 sagacious faith in the future of her sons supplied to a father's 
 courage all that was needed for one of the largest parental 
 
 1 MS. notes, by Mrs. Ticknor, of Mr. Webster's conversation, in 1825.
 
 1799.] EZEKIEL WEBSTER. 35 
 
 sacrifices that the lives of educated men, in any country, have 
 ever had to show. 
 
 Perhaps the reader may now think that the question of 
 Daniel Webster's exact rank as a college student has sunk intc 
 insignificance. Here was a youth, scarcely more than seventeen 
 years of age, so strong in fraternal affection, so firm in his self- 
 reliance, so capable of looking forward to estimate the future 
 for his brother and himself, that he could tell his aged father 
 that he would assume the burdens that this great sacrifice was 
 to cast upon the family. We are concerned, in this investiga- 
 tion of his life, with the growth of character, as well as with the 
 growth of his mind, or his acquisitions of knowledge ; and when 
 we go back with him to his college, we are to remember that, 
 although a boy in years, in moral stature he is already a man. 
 He might have, it is known that he did have, other methods of 
 discipline, other objects of ambition, other desires for knowl- 
 edge, than those which were limited or satisfied by the aca- 
 demic prizes. He began to fight the great battle of life almost 
 before the down was upon his lip ; and if he fought it in his 
 own way, or chose his weapons for himself, or burnished his 
 armor more variously than his comrades, it was because the 
 responsibility of the contest had come upon him so early, and 
 so gravely; and because Nature had 'given him the strength, 
 and pointed him the way. 
 
 Ezekiel "Webster, who was at the age of nineteen when the 
 consent of his parents was given to the plan for his education, 
 immediately began to attend a small academy, then recently 
 established, in Salisbury. He remained at this school for two 
 terms, and then went to reside with Dr. Wood, with whom his 
 preparation for college was finished. " His intellectual char- 
 acter," his brother informs us, " as it afterward developed itself, 
 was not early understood, at least not in its full extent. He 
 was thought to have good sense, but not to have, and perhaps 
 had not, great quickness of apprehension." 1 He was at first 
 distrustful of himself, and appears to have been in the habit of 
 writing to Daniel, as if the latter, with superior powers, and 
 earlier advantages, could not appreciate what he had to con- 
 tend with. Daniel would never admit that his brother was his 
 
 1 Autobiography.
 
 36 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. II. 
 
 inferior in natural abilities. It is singular to see the order of 
 Nature thus reversed in their relative situations, and to find th 
 younger generously and judiciously performing the duties of 
 mentor to the elder. " You tell me," writes Daniel, " that you 
 have difficulties to encounter which I know nothing of. What 
 do you mean, Ezekiel ? Do you mean to flatter ? That don't 
 become you ; or do you think you are inferior to me in natural 
 abilities ? If so, be assured you greatly mistake. Therefore, 
 for the future, say in your letters to me, ' I am superior to you 
 in natural endowments ; I will know more in one year than you 
 do now, and more in six than you ever will.' I should not 
 resent this language. I should be very well pleased in hearing 
 it ; but be assured, as mighty as you are, your great puissance 
 shall never insure you a victory without a contest." l 
 
 Ezekiel was certainly not the equal of Daniel at any period 
 of their lives ; but he was a man of fine intellect, and, notwith- 
 standing all the difficulties with which he had to contend, he 
 entered Dartmouth College in March, 1801, six months before 
 his brother was graduated, so well prepared, and with such 
 admirable habits of study, that he immediately took, and 
 always retained, so long as he could remain at the college, a 
 high rank in his class.* His father's means were from the first 
 inadequate to meet the expenses of both his and Daniel's educa- 
 tion. But the compact which had been made at the family 
 altar came at once into operation. Daniel was now able to 
 earn a little more than he needed to spend. He superintended 
 a small weekly newspaper, printed in Hanover, and called The 
 Dartmouth Gazette, during the year 1800, which was his junior 
 year. What he received for this literary service paid his own 
 board for the year, and so far relieved the family burdens. In 
 the winter vacation of the same year, he taught a school in 
 Salisbury, and the money thus earned helped to defray Ezekiel's 
 expenses at Dr. Wood's. This was the beginning of that remark- 
 able struggle, which lasted for several years, and through which 
 
 1 Letter to E. Webster, April 25, 1800. 1857. It will give the reader some idea 
 
 ( Correspondence, i., 83.) of that beloved brother, whose name Mr. 
 
 8 In Mr. Webster's Correspondence, Webster desired might be associated 
 
 voL i., p. 31, there is an account of Eze- with his own, so long as his own might 
 
 kiel Webster's college reputation written endure. 
 by his son-in-law, Professor Sanborn, in
 
 1799.] EARLY ORATORY. 37 
 
 these brothers mutually aided each other by turns, until both 
 had acquired the profession of their choice ; for, as Mr. Webster 
 once humorously expressed their frequent interchange of study 
 and of labor for their joint support, as they had but one horse 
 between them, they " rode in tie." ' 
 
 On his return to the college, after the spring vacation of 
 1799, Daniel appears to have entered upon the discipline of his 
 powers of communication, and to have developed them with 
 great rapidity. For this, the society long known in that in- 
 stitution as " The United Fraternity," afforded him all the 
 needful facilities. He became at once distinguished as a de- 
 bater, and, before the close of his junior year, he was accounted 
 by far the best writer and speaker in the college. The compass 
 and force of his arguments, in extemporaneous discussion, were 
 acknowledged by all who had the opportunity of hearing him 
 in his society. He manifested, then, in kind, the same com- 
 pleteness and fulness in his views, and the same power of 
 expressing them, which he displayed through life. Although 
 not required to do so, he was in the habit of writing his own 
 declamations for the college stage. " He was accustomed," 
 said one of his class-mates, " to arrange his thoughts in his 
 mind, in his room or his private walks, and to put them upon 
 paper just before the exercise was called for. When he was 
 required to speak at two o'clock, he would frequently begin to 
 write after dinner, and, when the bell rang, he would fold his 
 paper, put it in his pocket, and go in, and speak with great 
 ease. In his movements, he was rather slow and deliberate, 
 except when his feelings were aroused ; then his whole soul 
 would kindle into a flame." a Indeed, the testimony of all who 
 were living at the time of Mr. Webster's death, and who had 
 been with him at Dartmouth, is uniform on this point : " We 
 used to listen to him," said another of them, " with the deepest 
 interest and respect, and no one ever thought of equalling the 
 vigor and flow of his eloquence." * 
 
 That he carried on courses of reading and study, adapted to 
 
 'A New - England phrase, which fessor Sanborn. (Correspondence, i., 46.) 
 means that two people, who have but Written from Pomfret, in Vermont, No- 
 one animal between them, alternately vember 10, 1852. 
 ride and walk. 3 Hon. Henry Hubbard, ex-Governor 
 
 * Letter by Mr. Elihu Smith, to Pro- of Xew Hampshire. (Correspondence, i.)
 
 38 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. II. 
 
 the training which he sought to give himself, is equally well 
 authenticated. He did not neglect the college studies, but he 
 went beyond them. He mastered any subject or book as if by 
 intuition. He gave himself especially to history, in pursuing 
 which he burnt the lamp to very late hours. 1 He studied poli- 
 tics as few young men of the same age have ever studied them. 9 
 There are passages in his letters, written at this time (1800), 
 which show how closely he observed, and how deeply he was 
 affected, by what was then taking place in Europe. Observa- 
 tions and reflections, that might have flowed from his pen at 
 any age, are to be found scattered through his college cor- 
 respondence. It was at the period, when Bonaparte, for 
 example, had just returned from Egypt, and the colossal, 
 power, which he had grasped as soon as he had reached Paris, 
 began to overshadow even this distant republic, agitated as it 
 had been by sympathies with the French Revolution, that had 
 prepared the way for his ascent to a despotic throne, and his 
 attempt at universal dominion. This young American student 
 saw it, and comprehended it in its relations to his own country. 
 He had been bred up at home, in the school of what was called 
 the Federal party, and had been, therefore, predisposed to the 
 "Washingtonian policy of keeping the interests of this country free 
 from entanglements with European politics. But after making 
 every allowance for the effects of early education and home 
 influences, when we read in the letters of a young student of 
 eighteen, a junior undergraduate in Dartmouth College, that 
 he understood the dangers to which his country was exposed, 
 through her necessary commercial relations ; that he saw how 
 essential to her safety was internal harmony, and that her 
 liberties could be made the sport of European powers, only 
 when " American blood shall be made to flow in rivers by 
 American swords," we may recognize whose youth it was, that 
 began thus early and fervently to pray that " the bonds of the 
 Federal Union might be strengthened." 
 
 1 Dr. Merrill. MSS. ambition, and the fate of republicanism 
 
 8 Among the books which he read at in Europe, may be seen in one of his let- 
 
 this time, there was one which deeply ters to a college friend, to whom he 
 
 iffected him Mallet du Pan's " History poured forth the feelings excited by 
 
 of the Destruction of the Helvetic Union." what had befallen Switzerland. (Cor- 
 
 What this revealed to him of French respondence, i., 81.)
 
 1800.] EULOGY ON A CLASS-MATE. 39 
 
 His reputation in the college and its neighborhood, as a 
 writer and speaker, led the people of the town of Hanover to 
 invite him to deliver an oration on the 4th of July, 1800. 
 This, which was his first public performance, was printed. As 
 might be expected, it shows, in style and expression, marks of 
 the unripe taste of a youth of eighteen ; but, in power of thought, 
 and strong grasp of the subject, it gives no uncertain promise 
 of the productions of a later period. The oration begins 
 with a rapid sketch of the history of the country, closing with 
 the glorious success of the Revolution. Several of the soldiers 
 of the Revolution were present, who were addressed in terms 
 of glowing admiration and gratitude. Many of the deceased 
 patriots of the Revolution were commemorated, and the loss 
 which the country had recently sustained, in the death of 
 Washington, was lamented in two or three paragraphs of some- 
 what high-flown language, such, however, as older speakers in 
 those days were very apt to use. The closing paragraphs were 
 strongly Federal in their tone, full of denunciation of France 
 and of Bonaparte, whom the young orator calls " the gascon- 
 ading pilgrim of Egypt." The faults of the discourse are such 
 as an audience, in sympathy with its sentiments, would easily 
 overlook ; and it was, doubtless, heard with enthusiastic favor. 
 
 There is one other of Mr. Webster's college productions, 
 which was printed at the time. This was a eulogy pronounced 
 at the funeral of his class-mate, Simonds, who died at Hanover, 
 in June of their senior year. There is, perhaps, nothing that 
 so profoundly moves a band of college youths as the death of a 
 class-mate, especially if it take place at the institution. In such 
 a closely-united circle of generous and aspiring young men, in 
 the morning of life, Death seems to come with an especial shock ; 
 and if his shaft is aimed at one who has given more than ordi- 
 nary promise, and is more than usually beloved, there will be, 
 inevitably, from the nature of the emotions excited, more than 
 from any desire to ape the customs of the larger and older 
 world, an expression of what is felt, in the formal funeral ora- 
 tion, or other ceremony of that kind. The case of Simonds, 
 excepting in the circumstances of his death, was just such a one 
 as that of which Landor afterward said, all that can be said in 
 such cases, when he wrote the beautiful epitaph, in five words
 
 40 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. H. 
 
 of his masterly Latin, over the poor Oxford scholar, who had 
 wandered out in the fields, and died of exhaustion : 
 
 " Literarum quaesivit gloriam, 
 Dei videt." 
 
 This is what young Webster was appointed to say over his 
 class-mate Simonds, and what he did in substance say, in the 
 more expanded form of a public eulogy. I know of but one 
 copy now in existence. It is natural, unaffected, full of feel- 
 ing, and of a strong religious faith. It is not, in my judgment, 
 open to the criticism which he afterward made upon his 
 printed college performances, of being in " bad taste " in 
 respect to its style. Of course, it has not the same sim- 
 plicity which he afterward reached ; there are words which 
 he would have expunged, and sentences which he would not 
 have constructed ten years afterward. But it might, if he had 
 chosen to have it so, have been seen by the world at any 
 period of his life, as a not unworthy forerunner of his more 
 mature productions, for it is marked throughout by the eleva- 
 tion of thought, as well as the tenderness of feeling, that 
 belonged to his character. 1 
 
 The reader is now prepared to understand what was his 
 relative position as a scholar when he approached the termina- 
 tion of his college career. He was not the first scholar in his 
 class, as the faculty, by their rules, were obliged to account 
 scholarship on the college records ; but he was the most promi- 
 nent person in the college in respect to general attainments ; 
 and, as an orator, he had no equal. How, then, it will be 
 asked, did it happen that he took no part in the Commence- 
 ment exercises ? And why does he say in mentioning in his 
 
 1 The copy of this eulogy, which I and rather sternly toward me, and said : 
 have seen, belongs to Mr. Ticknor. " In ' Have you ? I thought, till lately, that, 
 1820," says Mr. Ticknor, " I happened to as only a few copies of it were printed, 
 dine with Mr. Webster at his own house, they must all have been destroyed long 
 while the convention, to revise the Con- ago ; but, the other day, Bean, who was 
 stitution of Massachusetts, of which he in college with me, told me he had one. 
 was the leading member, was in session ; It flashed through my mind that it must 
 and, sitting next to him after dinner, I have been the last copy in the world, 
 told him, in the course of conversation, and that if he had it in his pocket it 
 that I had recently found among some would be worth while to kill him, to de- 
 old pamphlets a copy of the oration stroy it from the face of the earth. So I 
 which he delivered in his senior year on recommend you not to bring your copy 
 the death of his class-mate Simonds. He where I am.' " (MSS. Recollections of 
 looked surprised, and turned suddenly, Mr. Webster, by Mr. Ticknor.)
 
 1801.] COLLEGE HONORS. 41 
 
 autobiography that this was " owing to some difficulties " 
 " Jiaec non meminisse juvat f " 
 
 The circumstances which he did not think it worth while to 
 recall are now before me, clearly related by one of his class- 
 mates, who remained at the college as a tutor for three years 
 after he was graduated, and who therefore had full means of 
 knowing both sides of the affair, the views of the faculty, and 
 the feelings of the class. From his narrative I abridge the 
 following statement : 
 
 In the arrangements of the faculty, the four principal 
 appointments had long been ranked as follows the Salutatory 
 Oration, in Latin, as the first ; the Philosophic, in English, as 
 the second ; a Greek Oration, as the third ; and the Valedictory, 
 in English, as the fourth. It was their practice to assign the 
 first three, and then to call upon the class to choose the Vale- 
 dictory Orator. It was understood by the class that, in other 
 colleges, the Valedictory was regarded as the first in rank of 
 all the appointments. This circumstance, and the fact that 
 the class expected to make the appointment, would lead a 
 young man of Webster's accomplishments and popularity to 
 prefer it ; and the class would have preferred that he should 
 have it. But previous classes had quarrelled so seriously in 
 choosing the Valedictory Orator, that the faculty determined 
 to make this appointment themselves. Webster's rank as a 
 scholar, in the estimate which the faculty felt obliged to make, 
 did not entitle him to the Latin Oration, notwithstanding his 
 relative proficiency in that language ; at the same time he stood 
 too high upon the record to make it proper for them to appoint 
 him to the Valedictory, which, for this occasion, they ranked as 
 the fifth of the academic honors. There was, too, an obvious 
 unfitness in making a young man, who was so impressive a 
 speaker in his own tongue, pronounce a public performance in 
 a dead language ; while the habits and policy of the college 
 made it necessary to give an honorable precedence to Latin and 
 Greek. Accordingly, the faculty undertook to solve the diffi- 
 culty, by offering to Webster a choice of a poem in English or 
 an oration in English on the fine arts ; and they gave the 
 Valedictory to another member of the class, not suspecting that 
 Webster and his friends would not be gratified. But a poem
 
 42 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. II. 
 
 had never ranked with the first four appointments, and if Web- 
 ster had selected in place of it the English oration which was 
 offered to his choice, he would, by his own act, have placed 
 himself second on the list of the college honors. This dilemma 
 the faculty did not foresee, or did not appreciate. 
 
 As not unfrequently happens on these occasions, a great 
 excitement followed among the members of the class. Several 
 of them applied to be excused from speaking on the day of Com- 
 mencement, and were excused. Webster was one of them. His 
 friends did not claim that he was entitled to the Latin Oration ; 
 but they had marked him for their Yaledictory Orator, and con- 
 sidered themselves aggrieved by the refusal of the faculty to 
 intrust them with the appointment, according to an established 
 usage. Webster himself was placed in too embarrassing a posi- 
 tion toward his competitors to allow of his exercising the choice 
 which the faculty had given him. Apparently he had no other 
 feeling about the whole affair, for I find no trace in his corre- 
 spondence of any bitterness toward the faculty or any one else ; 
 and his attachment to his Alma Mater, which never flagged, 
 became historical, inspiring one of the grandest of his forensic 
 efforts, when he was called upon, in less than twenty years after- 
 ward, to defend her interests and her chartered rights before the 
 highest judicial tribunal in the country. 
 
 It is well observed by the gentleman, whose narrative I have 
 followed, that the whole matter turns to Webster's honor, if he 
 did nothing improper himself; and it is therefore incumbent on 
 me to state that there is no foundation for the story of his 
 having destroyed his diploma in disgust and anger after the 
 Commencement exercises were over. If this rumor ever had so 
 much origin as to be a college tradition, it is refuted by evi- 
 dence that ought to be regarded as decisive ; for it is certain 
 that it was not heard of at Dartmouth at the time, or for several 
 years afterward. 1 
 
 The friendships which he formed, when in college, with 
 
 1 Dr. Merrill, his class - mate, from intimate friend and correspondent, and 
 
 whose account I have taken the facts re- continued to reside at the college for 
 
 specting the appointments, says of this three years, but never heard of the story 
 
 Btory : " I never believed it, and probably for more than a quarter of a century." 
 
 never shall believe it, unless some per- (MSS.) The Rev. Elihu Smith, another 
 
 son reports it directly from Webster him- of his class - mates, said : " I have nc 
 
 self, as one of the witnesses. I was an doubt the report is false. I stood by
 
 1801.] COLLEGE FRIEXDS. 43 
 
 some of the members of his own class, and with two or three 
 young men who were in other classes, were peculiarly strong, 
 and lasted through his life. But perhaps my readers may be 
 curious to know what associations he had with young persons 
 of the other sex, and whether his heart, at this susceptible 
 period, remained wholly his own. There was a small society 
 of young ladies in Hanover, during his junior and senior years, 
 with whom he and his college friends were on terms of intimacy. 
 They appear, however, in his correspondence by their Christian 
 names alone ; and probably no diligence on my part, if I were 
 to use it, after the lapse of sixty-five years, to acquire further 
 information concerning them, would be rewarded with much 
 success. 1 But there was gayety in the little town of Hanover in 
 those days, of that modest and moderate sort which consisted with 
 the habits of a seat of learning, and of a religious community. 
 An evening visit, or a social tea-table, a walk, or a drive, were 
 matters of course ; and young women could converse with young 
 men without the necessary presence of a superintending eye or 
 ear, because the young of both sexes, from the very purity of 
 the atmosphere in which they were born and educated, and had 
 always dwelt, were fit to be intrusted in a large degree with 
 their own conduct. Hence it has often happened among 
 us that the tenderest and most enduring of all ties have 
 been formed by our educated men at a very early age ; 
 and, however strangely it may sound elsewhere, it has 
 been no uncommon occurrence, in all parts of our country, 
 for a young man to leave college with his destiny fixed in 
 at least one very important affair of life, rendering it necessary 
 
 his side when he received his degree Mr. Webster's friends still remaining at 
 with a graceful bow ; and, such was my Hanover, and who had a strong interest 
 connection with him in our society affairs, in him, from having been acquainted 
 that if he had destroyed it afterward, I with him at Fryeburg, observed, in a 
 should certainly have known it." (Rev. letter written to one of the literary ex- 
 E. Smith to Professor Sanbom, Novem- ecutors, in December, 1852: "I never 
 ber 10, 1852. Correspondence, L, 46.) Mr. heard of his resentment manifesting it- 
 Webster's character and deportment in self in tearing up his diploma." 
 college, in regard to which the testimony l To the remark made in the text, 
 is uniform, were entirely inconsistent there is one exception. One of the 
 with the perpetration of such an act. ladies of this little circle, a distant con- 
 " No one," says Mr. Smith, " presumed nection of my own, is mentioned in his 
 to bring a railing accusation against letters by her full name, Mary Wood- 
 him." The Honorable Samuel Fessen- ward. She was a woman of much talent, 
 den, who entered Dartmouth College in and high character, but married unfor- 
 1803, and who personally knew many of tunately.
 
 44 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. II. 
 
 for him to hasten with all speed into a settled position in 
 the world. 
 
 This did not happen, however, to Daniel Webster ; and, 
 after a close scrutiny of his most confidential letters, it is quite 
 clear that, although he may have been a little interested, he 
 escaped, on the whole, unharmed. Perhaps this was owing 
 to the fact that there were two charmers when there should 
 have been but one. That there were two, that he was a little 
 in doubt, that they perplexed him and he them, and that it was 
 chiefly fun and innocent frolic on all sides, is manifest enough. 
 Possibly the dignity of my subject might have excluded this 
 inchoate piece of romance. But as there were rumors which 
 had their day, and he wrote about them half seriously and half 
 playfully, the reader may as well see how he dismissed them. 
 One of the young ladies whom he had most admired was, it 
 would appear, a visitor from Salem ; and he thus gives a char- 
 acteristic close to a letter to his friend Bingham, written in the 
 winter of his senior year : 
 
 " Salem ! enchanting name ! who would have thought that from the 
 ashes of witches, hung a century ago, should have sprung such an arch 
 coquette as should delight in sporting with the simplicity of 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTEK." 1 
 
 With respect to his own opinions about his college acquire- 
 ments and standing, I find four occasions on which he said or 
 wrote something directly, and the tenor of the whole is uniform. 
 The first occurred in 1802, when he had been graduated only a 
 year. It was observed to him that his scholarship in college 
 had always been regarded as of the highest grade, which was 
 not true of a gentleman then at the bar, whom he had expressed 
 a hope of some day equalling in his professional career. He said : 
 
 " Ay, but the opinion of my scholarship was a mistaken one. It was 
 over-estimated. I will explain what I mean. Many other students read 
 more than I did, and knew more than I did But so much as I read I 
 made my own. When a half hour or an hour, at most, had elapsed, I 
 closed my book, and thought over what I had read. If there was any 
 thing peculiarly interesting or striking in the passage, I endeavored to 
 recall it, and lay it up in my memory, and commonly could effect my 
 object. Then, if, in debate or conversation afterward, any subject came 
 
 1 Correspondence, i., 87.
 
 1801.] COLLEGE ACQUIREMENTS. 45 
 
 up on which I had read something, I could talk very easily so far as 1 
 had read, and then I was very careful to stop. Thus greater credit was 
 given me for extensive and accurate knowledge than I really possessed." l 
 
 The next occasion was in 1825, when he said : 
 
 " My Greek and mathematics were not great while I was in college, but 
 I was better read in history and English generally than any of my class, 
 and I was good in composition. My Latin was pretty strong too." a 
 
 In his autobiography he says : 
 
 " I was graduated in course, August, 1801. Owing to some difficulties 
 Jiaec non meminisse jutat I took no part in the Commencement exercises. 
 I spoke an oration to the Society of the United Fraternity, which I suspect 
 was a sufficiently boyish performance. 
 
 " My college life was not an idle one. Besides the regular attendance on 
 prescribed duties and studies, I read something of English history and 
 English literature. Perhaps my reading was too miscellaneous. I even 
 paid my board for a year by superintending a little weekly newspaper, and 
 making selections for it from books of literature and from the contemporary 
 publications. I suppose I sometimes wrote a foolish paragraph myself. 
 While in college, I delivered two or three occasional addresses, which were 
 published. I trust they are forgotten ; they were in very bad taste. I had 
 not then learned that all true power in writing is in the idea, aad not in 
 the style, an error into which the Ars rhetorica, as it is usually taught, may 
 easily lead stronger heads than mine." * 
 
 In 1851, eighteen months before his death, writing to his 
 class-mate, Dr. Merrill, he said : 
 
 "I assure you, my dear old friend, that I hear from you with pleasure. 
 You are no shepherd, and certainly I am no king. But we are friends, 
 born in the same country, about the same age, and educated at the same 
 college. "We embraced different professions, which we have pursued now 
 for a long time ; and Providence has graciously blessed us both with a 
 great share of health and happiness. At our time of life the mind often 
 turns to the past. I find that I think now, much more frequently than 
 twenty or thirty years ago, on college scenes and college friends. I look 
 over the catalogue, call to mind the dead, and inquire after the living. I 
 well remember that I did not keep up with you in the stated course of col- 
 iegiate exercises. Your lessons were better learned, and you were a great 
 favorite with Professor Smith and the other members of ' the authority,' 
 
 1 Letter from J. "W. McGaw, Esq., to teacher of an academy, and they lived 
 
 Professor Sanborn, November, 16, 1852. much together. 
 
 (Correspondence, L, 51.) Mr. McGaw * Ticknor MSS. ; notes of the conver- 
 
 was a young lawyer at Fryeburg, Maine, sation on the drive to Salem, 
 
 when Mr. Webster resided there as 8 Correspondence, L, 11.
 
 46 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cu. II. 
 
 from the exact punctuality of all your performances. I believe I was less 
 industrious ; at any rate, I indulged more in general reading, and my attain- 
 ments, if I made any, were not such as told for much in the recitation-room. 
 After leaving college, I ' caught up,' as the boys say, pretty well in Latin ; 
 but in college, and afterward, I left Greek to Loveland, and mathematics 
 to Shattuck. Would that I had pursued Greek till I could read and 
 understand Demosthenes in his own language ! " 
 
 From youth to age did lie thus always speak when he 
 spoke of himself ; with that moderation and modesty, that deli- 
 cacy toward others, that unwillingness to advance pretensions, 
 which are the characteristics of true greatness, and which, in 
 him, were unmingled with condescension or affectation. If we 
 take the sum of his own testimony, and enlarge it by that of 
 others who knew him at Dartmouth, and who could say what 
 he could not say, adding also what we can learn from such of 
 his writings as have survived from that time, we find that he left 
 the institution with but a small amount of Greek, but very well 
 grounded in Latin ; that his acquisitions in English history and 
 English literature were extensive ; that his powers as an orator 
 were already developed to a degree rarely witnessed in a young 
 man of nineteen; that his style of writing was flowing and 
 easy, but far from that chaste, compact, and perspicuous 
 manner which he afterward attained ; that he had become 
 already a practised debater ; that his faculty for labor was 
 something prodigious, his memory disciplined by methods not 
 taught him by others, and that his intellect was expanded far 
 beyond his years. He was abstemious, religious, of the highest 
 sense of honor, and of the most elevated deportment. His 
 manners were genial, his affections warm, his conversation was 
 brilliant and instructive, his temperament cheerful, his gayety 
 overflowing. He was beloved, admired, and courted by all who 
 knew him ; and, finally, when he went forth from his college, 
 whatever may have been the discouragements of his narrow 
 fortunes, he was followed by those who had marked his 
 genius and measured his character, as a young man who 
 was soon to be heard of with distinction on the high places 
 of the world.
 
 1801.1 CHOOSES A PROFESSION. 4," 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1801-1807. 
 
 BEGEMS THE STUDY OF THE LAW IN SALISBUEY TEACHES A SCHOCL 
 IN MAINE ENTERS THE OFFICE OF MK. GOKE IN BOSTON AD- 
 MISSION TO THE BAR REFUSES A LUCRATIVE OFFICE PRAC- 
 TISES IN BOSCAWEN DEATH OF HIS FATHER REMOVAL TO 
 
 PORTSMOUTH. 
 
 ~T~ EAYING his brother Ezekiel at college in the Sophomore 
 i-J class, Mr. "Webster returned to his father's house imme- 
 diately after he was graduated, in August, 1801, and com- 
 menced the study of the law in the office of Thomas W. Thomp- 
 son, Esq., a lawyer in Salisbury, his father's neighbor and 
 friend. He chose this profession in compliance with the wish 
 of his father, who did not, however, make that wish known to 
 him in any other than the most delicate manner. His other 
 friends urged it strongly ; and the nearness of a very good 
 lawyer's office to his father's house probably had some influ- 
 ence on his decision. But his own inclination to the law was 
 not at first very strong. The tenor of his correspondence at 
 this period shows, at least, that he would gladly have spent 
 some further time in exploring the wider fields of literature. 
 Yet he " precipitated " himself " into an office," as he said 
 at the time, and immediately began such a course of ele- 
 mentary law-reading as the books and the methods of that day 
 aiforded. 
 
 Mr. Thompson, the gentleman with whom he began to study 
 his profession, was a lawyer in good country practice, an assidu
 
 48 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. HI. 
 
 ous man of business, and a person of cultivated mind. 1 He 
 possessed a tolerably good law library, and a much better one 
 in general letters and history. The first works which Mr. 
 "Webster read in the law were in the department of the 
 Law of Nations being Yattel, Burlamaqui, and Montesquieu. 
 These were followed by a part of Blackstone's Commentaries, 
 and he read, at the same time, the historians Hume and Robert- 
 son. Nothing could have been better at that period for a 
 student before entering upon the principles of the municipal 
 and common law. He read Shakespeare, too, a good deal at 
 this time, some of the poetry of Cowper, and Pope's transla- 
 tion of the Iliad. His knowledge of Shakespeare and of Milton 
 commenced while he was at Dartmouth. He now began to 
 quote them familiarly in his letters. He also read, during the 
 autumn of this year, a large amount of what he calls " miscel- 
 laneous stuff of no great account." Hia dog and gun and his 
 fishing-rod filled up his leisure hours.* 
 
 But reading and shooting or fishing- were not the sole voca- 
 tions of a young law-student in those days. He was expected 
 to look after the minor affairs of the office business, and a part 
 of his professional education consisted in " making writs." 
 There was another and older student in the office, Daniel 
 Abbot, afterward a leading lawyer and most estimable citizen 
 of Nashua, and a life-long friend of Mr. Webster. On one 
 occasion, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Abbot were both absent, and 
 the entire charge of affairs devolved on "Webster, who thus 
 indulged his wit upon a case that fell into his hands : 
 
 " I have made some few writs, and am now about to bring an action 
 of trespass for breaking a violin. The owner of the violin was at a 
 husking, where 
 
 ' His jarring concord and his discord dulcet ' 
 
 made the girls skip over the husks as nimbly as Virgil's Camilla over 
 the tops of the corn, till an old surly creature caught his fiddle, and 
 
 1 He was graduated at Harvard Col- from the abundance of Merrimac a few 
 lege in 1786, and was for three years anti-Federal fishes no loaves such 
 afterward a tutor in that university. as sword -back, perch, and flat -headed 
 
 2 "With the assistance of my first demi-semi-crotchet quavers, alias scaly 
 minister, Mr. Gallatin, formerly called flat-sides." (Letter to James H. Bingliam, 
 Leo, I have dismissed from the office September 22, 1801.) The fun of thin 
 of this life a few Federal partridges, consists in some allusion to the party 
 pigeons, and squirrels, and have drawn politics of the time.
 
 1801.] INTERRUPTION OF STUDY. 49 
 
 broke it against the wall. For the sake of having plump witnesses, the 
 plaintiff will summon all the girls to attend the trial at Concord." 1 
 
 But this pleasant and profitable life for our young student 
 was soon to be interrupted. 
 
 As the winter came on, it brought with it Ezekiel's accu- 
 mulating expenses at college. In December, Daniel thus writes 
 to his friend Bingham, to whom he was accustomed to impart 
 his troubles : 
 
 " Having found myself at home after commencement, I found, on con- 
 sideration, that it would be impossible for my father, under existing cir- 
 cumstances, to continue Ezekiel at college. Drained of all his little income 
 by the expenses of my education thus far, and broken down in his exer- 
 tions by some ever-lamented family occurrences, I saw he could not afford 
 Ezekiel means to live abroad with ease and independence ; and I knew too 
 well the evils of penury to wish him to stay half-beggared at college. I 
 thought it therefore my duty to suffer some delay in my profession for the 
 sake of serving my elder brother, and was making a little interest in some 
 places to the eastward for an employment. My father, however, deter- 
 mined to hire a few hundreds till future days, being very averse to my 
 leaving him. He accordingly rode to Exeter, told his Excellency a of the 
 state of affairs, and the good governor helped him to what he wanted on 
 reasonable terms. This was much more favorable than I expected", and I 
 have now hopes of continuing here for the present." ' 
 
 Whether it was that the supply obtained from " the good 
 governor's " friendly aid was insufficient, or whether some unex- 
 pected demand broke down the family resources with the 
 weight of the last feather, the result was that Daniel was 
 obliged, before the new year came in, to quit his studies, 
 mount his horse, and go forth in quest, not of adventures, 
 but of the vulgar article money. It was a hard trial for 
 him. He had been four months with Mr. Thompson, and 
 very profitable months they had been to him. He was 
 going on rapidly in his studies of all kinds, and he felt 
 more at ease, after his father's visit to Governor Oilman, 
 than he had felt for a long time. But duty and affection 
 
 1 Letter to Bingham, October 26, was so great, and his character so much 
 1801. respected, that he was more than once 
 
 2 John Taylor Oilman, Governor of elected governor when his party was in 
 New Hampshire from 1797 until 1807, the minority. 
 
 and from 1813 to 1815. He was a very 8 Letter to Bingham, December 8, 
 decided Federalist ; but his popularity 1801. 
 5
 
 50 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IIL 
 
 botli demanded the sacrifice, and he made it instantly and 
 cheerfully. 
 
 He had been written to, and offered the charge of ar 
 academy in Fryeburg, Maine, which was at that time a " Prov 
 ince" of Massachusetts. This town is at the head of the 
 Saco River, not far from the border of New Hampshire, near 
 the foot of the White Mountains, and opposite to the town of 
 Conway. He purchased a horse for twenty-five dollars, and, 
 with his wardrobe and such books as he could carry in his 
 saddle-bags, made his way across the country. He found the 
 village of his destination a new one, but it was growing 
 rapidly, and had already an intelligent population, in which 
 the learned professions were all duly represented by " men of 
 information and conversable manners," as he described them in 
 one of his letters. His salary was fixed at the rate of three 
 hundred and fifty dollars a year, but his engagement was for 
 only six months. As he had come there to earn money, he 
 availed himself of an accidental source of further supply, in the 
 humble occupation of copying deeds. It so happened that he 
 went to board in the family of James Osgood, Esq., registrar 
 of deeds for the then newly-created county of Oxford. This 
 gentleman, Mr. Webster tells us in his autobiography, " was 
 not clerical in and of himself, and his registration was to be 
 done by deputy." 
 
 " The fee for recording at full length a common deed, in a large fair 
 hand, and with the care requisite to avoid errors, was two shillings and 
 three pence. Mr. Osgood proposed to me that I should do this writing, 
 ;and that of the two shillings and three pence for each deed I should have 
 one shilling and six pence. I greedily seized on so tempting an offer, 
 .and set to work. Of a long winter's evening I could copy two deeds, 
 and that was half a dollar. Four evenings in a week earned two 
 dollars ; and two dollars a week paid my board. This appeared to me 
 to be a very thriving condition, for my three hundred and fifty dol- 
 lars' salary as a school-master was thus going on without abatement 
 or deduction for vivers. I hope yet to have an opportunity to see once 
 more the first volume of the records of deeds for the county of Oxford. 
 It is now near thirty years since I copied into it the last ' witness my 
 hand and seal,' and I have not seen its outside since. Bui the ache is not 
 vet out of my fingers, for nothing has ever been so laborious to me as 
 .writing, when under the necessity of writing a good hand." * 
 
 1 Autobiography.
 
 1802.] FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. TICKNOR. 51 
 
 Certainly this is not the first instance, as it will not be the 
 last, in which a similar labor has been, or will be, submitted to, 
 by young men of education contending against adverse for- 
 tunes. But we naturally inquire for the motive that could have 
 made such a drudgery possible to one whose extraordinary gifts 
 of Mature had been enlarged and enriched by the delights of 
 learning. On the other side of the range of hills that lay 
 between his new abode and the college which he had recently 
 left was that brother, for whose education he had made him- 
 self responsible to his parents ; while at home was an anxious 
 and aged father, now left without the prop on which he had 
 meant to lean. The whole secret of this endurance, therefore, 
 is comprehended in the following occurrence : 
 
 " In May of this year (1802), having a week's vacation, I took my quar- 
 ter's salary, mounted a horse, went straight over all the hills to Hanover, 
 and had the pleasure of putting these, the first earnings of my life, into my 
 brother's hands for his college expenses. Having enjoyed this sincere and 
 high pleasure, I hied me back again to my school and my copying of 
 deeds."- 1 
 
 It was on this visit to Hanover that my kinsman } George 
 Ticknor, Esq., who, excepting myself, is now the sole survivor 
 of his four literary executors, first saw him. As I shall have 
 frequent occasion to quote from Mr. Ticknor's recollections of 
 him, extending through a period of fifty years, and now form- 
 ing, in manuscript, some of the most important and interesting 
 of the materials before me, I avail myself of his mention of the 
 time when the acquaintance and friendship between Mr. "Web- 
 ster and himself began. He observes : 
 
 " The first time I ever saw Mr. "Webster was in Hanover, in May, 1802. 
 All that I remember of him then is, that the students of the college, 
 whom I was in the habit of seeing, were very proud and very fond of 
 him. It was a knot of young men, among whom was Mr. Henry Hubbard, 
 afterward Governor of New Hampshire ; Amos Twitchell, afterward a dis- 
 tinguished surgeon ; his own brother Ezekiel, and others, living in the 
 old Kinsman House ; at least I saw them there. He was returning from 
 Fryeburg, where he had kept school. He was thin, and had not the 
 appearance of being a strong man. He remained in Hanover only two or 
 three days. The young men seemed rejoiced to have him with them, and 
 
 1 Autobiography.
 
 52 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. Ill 
 
 treated him very caressingly and affectionately. He had been graduated 
 only one year." x 
 
 Mr. Webster returned to Fryeburg, and remained there in 
 the same occupations until the following September. From 
 three persons who knew him there, and who were ever after- 
 ward numbered among his cherished friends, we learn some- 
 thing of interest concerning him. One of them was Jacob W. 
 McGaw, Esq., then a young lawyer in Fryeburg, with whom 
 he li ved at Mr. Osgood's. " Here," said Mr. McGaw, " was 
 laid the foundation of that friendship, which, by his generous 
 indulgence, has remained constant and uninterrupted till the 
 time of his death, notwithstanding the very great changes 
 which occurred in our relative positions, by reason of his con- 
 stant elevation from one grade of honor to another, till he 
 attained a standing from which human greatness knows no 
 progress." Another was Samuel Osgood, son of the registrar, 
 a young man who was near his own age, and who was just 
 then completing his preparation to enter college at an ad- 
 vanced standing. "With this gentleman, who became an emi- 
 nent divine at Springfield, in Massachusetts, he contracted 
 a friendship which was mutually preserved amidst all the 
 changes of their lives. The third was the Honorable Samuel 
 Fessenden, of Portland, son of the Rev. "William Fessenden, of 
 Fryeburg, who was Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the 
 Academy. Mr. Samuel Fessenden was nearly of the same age 
 with Mr. Webster, and they were strongly attached to each 
 other. " If I ever loved a man," Mr. Fessenden wrote after 
 Mr. "Webster's death, " not a near relative, and out of the pale 
 of kindred, that man was Daniel Webster." a 
 
 Mr. McGaw tells us that " he had not then attained the full 
 development of manhood. Neither the physical nor intellectual 
 expression of his countenance had become so striking as in sub- 
 sequent life. His cheeks were thin, and his cheek-bones high. 
 There was nothing specially noticeable about him then except 
 his full, steady, large, and searching eyes. Nobody could see 
 those eyes and ever forget their appearance, or him who pos- 
 
 1 MSS. Mr. Ticknor was then passing entering the college), on a visit with his 
 a summer near Hanover (previous to his father and mother. * MSS.
 
 1802.] READING AT FRYEBURG. 53 
 
 sessed them. His gentleness, modesty, and social habits won 
 for him the good- will of his acquaintances and pupils." 
 
 " He was always," says Dr. Osgood, " dignified in his de- 
 portment. He was usually serious, but often facetious and 
 pleasant. He was an agreeable companion, and eminently 
 social with all who shared his friendship. He was greatly 
 beloved by all who knew him. His habits were strictly ab- 
 stemious, and he neither took wine nor strong drink. He was 
 punctual in his attendance upon public worship, and ever 
 opened his school with prayer. I never heard him use a 
 profane word, and never saw him lose his temper." 
 
 Mr. Fessenden, in a letter addressed to the literary execu- 
 tors, after Mr. Webster's decease, observes : 
 
 " The first I ever knew of Daniel Webster was immediately after he left 
 college, and was employed by my father, the secretary of the Trustees of 
 Fryeburg Academy, to become the principal instructor in that institution. 
 He was not, when he commenced, twenty years old. I heard no one com- 
 plain that his scholarship was not adequate to the duty he had assumed. 
 On the contrary, I heard the Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Porter, of Conway, and 
 my father, the Rev. William Fessenden, of Fryeburg, both of whom were 
 good scholars, and the former, Dr. Porter, a very great man, say that 
 Daniel Webster was then a very good scholar for one of his years. He 
 did, while at Fryeburg, exhibit traits of talent and genius which drew 
 from those two divines, and from other professional gentlemen, unqualified 
 praise of his powers of mind. I remember very distinctly hearing my 
 father remark that, if Mr. Webster should live, and have health, and pur- 
 sue a straightforward course of industry and virtue, he would become 
 one of the greatest men this country had produced." 
 
 His reading at Fryeburg was chiefly in history and politics, 
 and English literature. He began then to investigate carefully 
 some parts of the political history of the United States. He read 
 Adams's Defence of the American Constitutions, Williams's Yer- 
 mont, and Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History ; and he continued 
 his reading of Blackstone's Commentaries. Here, too, he found 
 Mr. Ames's celebrated speech on the British treaty, and com- 
 mitted it to memory. He read the Spectator and the Tatler, 
 and the whole of Pope's poetical works, with many other things. 
 Some idea of his industry may be formed from this list, when 
 we remember that he was at the same time teaching a school, 
 and copying deeds four evenings in the week.
 
 64 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. III. 
 
 All his hours that could be spared from labor, or necessary 
 recreation, were spent in study or in meditation in the fields, 
 and he rarely went abroad in his rambles without a book. 1 
 
 "What he was as a teacher, is sufficiently attested by the fact 
 that he was earnestly pressed to remain on an increased salary. 
 " A compensation annually of five or six hundred dollars," he 
 writes to Bingham, " a house to live in, a piece of land to culti- 
 vate, and, inter nos solos, a clerkship of the Common Pleas, are 
 now probably within the reach and possession of your friend." 
 
 I cannot say that he hesitated much, but he did honestly 
 put down upon paper both sides of the question. 
 
 Mr. McGaw was always of opinion that he did not at this 
 time feel very strongly the promptings of ambition, or entertain 
 any very sanguine expectations of future eminence ; or that, if 
 he had such expectations, he concealed them. In proof of this, 
 he refers to several occasions on which Mr. 'Webster evinced in 
 conversation a very moderate estimate of himself and his future 
 prospects. But we are to remember that, over all his youth, 
 poverty had cast its discouraging shadow, and that the vigor and 
 elasticity of even his spirit must have been occasionally chilled 
 by it. "We are to recollect, too, some points of his character 
 which never changed. He was always a serious man in every 
 serious affair of life. Whatever may have been his conscious- 
 ness of superior intellectual powers, he never treated any thing 
 contemptuously, which obliged him to put himself on a level with 
 others for the purpose of measuring the exertion which he had to 
 put forth. Whatever he may have thought of this offer, which 
 the good people of Fryeburg doubtless made as tempting as they 
 could, he met it with no disdain, even when writing of it to one 
 of his most intimate friends. But he was drawn away from it, 
 first, by his father's desire to have him embrace the profession of 
 the law ; and secondly, as I have no doubt, by that mysterious 
 power, which operates unconsciously upon men of great intellect 
 in their youth, leading them toward the destiny which genius cre- 
 ates for them, and carrying them away from the proffered com- 
 fort of obscure and inferior stations to further efforts and contin- 
 ued privation, until the loftier sphere, which has been scarcely 
 revealed to their vision, is entered in triumph at last. So, at 
 
 1 Dr. Osgood.
 
 1802.] ADHERES TO THE LAW. 55 
 
 least, I interpret the sober views which the young Webster 
 thus expressed to his friends, before he finally decided not to 
 make himself for life school-master and denizen of Fryeburg, 
 and Clerk of the Common Pleas for the county of Oxford : 
 
 u What shall I do ? Shall I say, ' Yes, gentlemen,' and sit down here 
 to spend my days in a kind of comfortable privacy, or shall I relinquish 
 these prospects, and enter into a profession, where my feelings will be con- 
 stantly harrowed by objects either of dishonesty or misfortune ; where my 
 living must be squeezed from penury (for rich folks seldom go to law), 
 and my moral principle continually be at hazard ? I agree with you that 
 the law is well calculated to draw forth the powers of the mind, but what 
 are its effects on the heart ? Are they equally propitious ? Does it inspire 
 benevolence, and awake tenderness ; or does it, by a frequent repetition 
 of wretched objects, blunt sensibility, and stifle the still small voice of 
 mercy ? 
 
 " The talent with which Heaven has intrusted me is small, very small, 
 yet I feel responsible for the use of it, and am not willing to pervert it to 
 purposes reproachful and unjust ; nor to hide it, like the slothful servant, 
 in a napkin. 
 
 " Now, I will enumerate the inducements that draw me toward the 
 law : First, and principally, it is my father's wish. He does not dictate, 
 it is true, but how much short of dictation is the mere wish of a parent, 
 whose labors of life are wasted on favors to his children ? Even the 
 delicacy with which this wish is expressed gives it more effect than it would 
 have in the form of a command. Secondly, my friends generally wish it. 
 They are urgent and pressing. My father even offers me I will some- 
 tune tell you what and Mr. Thompson offers my tuition gratis, and to 
 relinquish his stand to me. 
 
 " On the whole, I imagine I shall make one more trial in the ensuing 
 autumn. If I prosecute the profession, I pray God to fortify me against 
 its temptations. To the winds I dismiss those light hopes of eminence 
 which ambition inspired, and vanity fostered. To be 'honest, to be 
 capable, to be faithful ' to my client and my conscience, I earnestly hope 
 will be my first endeavor. I believe you, my worthy boy, when you tell 
 me what are your intentions. I have long known and long loved the 
 honesty of your heart. But let us not rely too much on ourselves ; let us 
 look to some less fallible guide to direct us among the temptations that 
 surround us." l 
 
 In September, Ezekiel came to Fryeburg, and the two 
 brothers made a journey together to the lower part of Maine, 
 and then returned to Salisbury. Ezekiel soon after went back 
 to college, and Daniel resumed his place in Mr. Thompson's 
 
 1 Letter to Bingham, May 18, 1802.
 
 56 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IIL 
 
 office, where he remained until February or March, 1804. 
 What his studies had thus far been in the law, the reader has 
 seen. Mr. Thompson now made one mistake in directing his 
 reading, to which Mr. Webster thus refers in his autobio- 
 graphy : " He was an admirable man, and a good lawyer him- 
 self, but I was put to study in the old way, that is, the hardest 
 books first, and lost much time. I read Coke-Littleton through 
 without understanding a quarter part of it." But he had 
 already mentioned in the same paragraph that he had read 
 two or three volumes of Blackstone's Commentaries ; and the 
 criticism therefore, which follows, and is now to be quoted, was 
 intended to point out the inexpediency of making Coke a text- 
 book after Blackstone, with nothing between them to instruct 
 the pupil in the application of the principles of the common 
 law to the transactions of life which form the subjects of 
 ordinary litigation. The best book which Mr. Webster could 
 then find within his reach, for this purpose, was Espinasse's 
 Nisi Prius ; and, inferior as this was to the numerous text- 
 books since written, it answered very well. His resort to it 
 shows that he did not mean to have it understood, from his 
 observations about Coke, that Mr. Thompson had neglected to 
 inform him that Blackstone's Commentaries was the proper 
 book with which to begin his legal studies. In fact, his cor- 
 respondence shows that he began Blackstone when he first 
 entered Mr. Thompson's office, in the autumn of 1801. In the 
 Autobiography he says : 
 
 " Happening to take up Espinasse's ' Law of Nisi Prius,' I found I could 
 understand it, and, arguing that the object of reading was to understand 
 what was written, I laid down the venerable Coke, et alios similes reve- 
 rendos, and kept company for a time with Mr. Espinasse and others, the 
 most plain, easy, and intelligible writers. A boy of twenty, with no previ- 
 ous knowledge of such subjects, cannot understand Coke. It is folly to 
 set him on such an author. 
 
 " There are propositions in Coke so abstract, and distinctions so nice, 
 and doctrines embracing so many conditions and qualifications, that it 
 requires an effort, not only of a mature mind, but of a mind both strong 
 and mature, to understand him. Why disgust and discourage a boy by 
 telling him that he must break into his profession through such a wall as 
 this ? I really often despaired. I thought I never could make myself a 
 lawyer, and was almost going back to the business of school-keeping. A
 
 1804.] STUDIES AND REVERIES. 57 
 
 friend has recently returned to me a letter, -written by me to him at that 
 time, showing my feelings of despondence and despair. Mr. Espinasse, 
 however, helped me out of this in the way I have mentioned ; and I have 
 always felt greatly obliged to him." 
 
 He had not gone far, however, in his law studies, before he 
 made another discovery which was quite characteristic of him, 
 because it denoted a principle upon which he had been accus- 
 tomed in college to discipline and to store his memory on other 
 subjects. " Here give me leave," he writes to Bingham, " to 
 pronounce a wise opinion, viz., that the best way to study law 
 is in relation to particular points. I had read the statute of lim- 
 itations, I do not know how many times, nor how many more 
 times I might have read it among others, without discovering 
 that it did not affect a sealed instrument, unless I had looked 
 with reference to that particular inquiry. It is very much so, 
 I believe, with history. We read page after page, and, retaining 
 a slender thread of events, every thing else glides from the mind 
 about as fast as the eye traces the lines of the book, yet, when 
 we examine a particular occurrence, or search after a single date, 
 the impression is permanent, and we have added one idea to the 
 stock of real knowledge." ' 
 
 Of his other reading, while he remained in Mr. Thompson's 
 oflice, we get some sketches, also from his own pen : 
 
 " I do not know whether I read much during this year and a half 
 besides law-books, with two exceptions. I read Hume through, not for the 
 first time ; but my principal occupation with books, when not law-books, 
 was with the Latin classics. I brought from college a very scanty inheri- 
 tance of Latin. I now tried to add to it. I made myself familiar with 
 most of Tully's Orations, committed to memory large passages of some of 
 them ; read Sallust and Caesar and Horace. Some of Horace's Odes I 
 translated into poor English rhymes ; they were printed. I have never 
 seen them since. My brother was a far better Latin scholar than myself, 
 and, in one of his vacations, we read Juvenal together. But I never 
 mastered his style, so as to read him with ease and pleasure. At this 
 period of my life I passed a great deal of time alone. My amusements 
 were fishing and shooting and riding ; and all these were without a com- 
 panion. T loved this occasional solitude then, and have loved it ever 
 since, and love it still. I like to contemplate Nature, and to hold com- 
 munion, unbroken by the presence of human beings, with ' this universal 
 frame thus wondrous fair.' I like solitude also, as favorable to thoughts 
 
 1 Lettei to Bingham, December 21, 1802. (Correspondence, 5., 127.)
 
 58 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IIL 
 
 less lofty. I like to let the thoughts go free, and indulge excursions. And 
 when thinking is to be done, one must, of course, be alone. No man knows 
 himself who does not thus sometimes keep his own company. At a subse- 
 quent period of life, I have found that my lonely journeys, when following 
 the court on its circuits, have afforded many an edifying day." 
 
 No man, who ever rose to great eminence in tlie profession 
 of the law, has entered it through an experience more danger- 
 ous to an elevated and generous view of the objects which a 
 young lawyer should set before him. If a hard and pinching 
 necessity could ever excuse the growth of a sordid desire for 
 gain, and the pursuit of it by ignoble means, they would have 
 been excused in him. 
 
 For nearly two years Mr. Webster studied the law in a 
 country village, where the lowest and speediest of its modes of 
 gaining money must have been the chief aspect in which it 
 appeared to him as a calling. 
 
 But his nature was one that could not be satisfied with the 
 acquisition of any profession, merely because it offered the 
 speediest prospects of gain. Poor as he was, and plainly as he 
 must have seen that the sharp weapons of the law, in his 
 hands, might be turned rapidly to account, he did not keep 
 himself from those elegant studies which bring in their im- 
 mediate riches to the mind alone. He turned from the statute 
 of limitations and the writs of a country office to the Latin 
 classics, to history, to poetry, to whatever would keep him from 
 losing the love of letters, which he had so eagerly and so fully 
 cultivated from his boyhood. Instead of being attracted, he 
 was repelled by the facilities which the lower departments 
 of legal practice appeared to afford for making money; for 
 he saw that they were chiefly concerned with those whom he 
 described as " the very refuse and remnant of mankind." lie 
 complains, too, that " law-reading has no tendency to add the 
 embellishments of literature to a student's acquisitions. Our 
 books," he adds, " are written in a hard, didactic style, inter- 
 spersed on every page with the mangled pieces of murdered 
 Latin, and as perfectly barren of all elegance as a girl's cheek 
 is of beard. 1 The morality of the profession is, too, a matter 
 
 1 There was nothing for the student on this side of the Atlantic, of whom 
 then but what had come to us from Eng- he would not have made this criticism, 
 land. He lived to see other writers arise Have we paid back the debt ?
 
 1803.] LAW STUDIES. 59 
 
 of doubt, or rather it is a matter of no doubt at all. Mr. 
 Bennett says that a lawyer, who preserves his integrity un- 
 spotted, deserves a place in the calendar of saints. If this 
 calendar were entirely made up of lawyers, I fancy it would be 
 a short, a very short list, not so long, if you take the whole 
 world over, as a catalogue of Freshmen, and yet this is the 
 profession to which I am devoting myself." But, in the midst 
 of these disheartening views, he consoles himself with the reflec- 
 tion that, " if one can keep up an acquaintance with general 
 literature in the mean time, the law may help to invigorate and 
 unfold the powers of the mind." 
 
 He found that great help in due time. He mastered Coke 
 without serious difficulty, after he had learned to apply his 
 severe abstractions ; and he read him, too, in black-letter. 1 He 
 " laid hands heavily " to borrow his own expression on the 
 special pleading of the common law ; a science which few of 
 our young lawyers of the present day have an opportunity of 
 studying for practical use, and which, as an aid to mental dis- 
 cipline, and as a system of logical devolution of the issues of a 
 strictly legal controversy, is entirely unequalled by any of the 
 modern devices which have supplanted it. Mr. "Webster was 
 always one of the best special pleaders of his time ; and he 
 owed his knowledge of the intricacies and the order of that 
 method of pleading to the diligence with which he worked it 
 out in the Latin pages of Saunders, translating and copying as 
 he read. Yet with these graver studies he continued to make 
 rhymes for his own amusement, and for the sake of " keeping 
 alive," as he said, " some taste for the fielles lettres." But he 
 had no inclination to be drawn before the public as a poet. 
 He was invited, in the winter of 1803, to deliver a poem before 
 
 1 He could not always restrain his 6, 1803. Correspondence, vol. i.) I 
 fun over some of the doctrines of the suppose that when he mooted this in- 
 English law : " The law question that teresting question, he must have had 
 now puzzles us in this quarter is, whether before him Coke's Observations on the 
 Bonaparte, when he shall have gone to Statute 25, Edward III., de proditionibus ; 
 John Bull's palace, and taken hold of where that " prince of the law," as he 
 the ring of the door in the name of calls stout old Sir Edward, lays down 
 seisin of the whole island, will be such how treason may be committed against 
 a king against whom it will be treason the king in possession, although done in 
 in an Englishman to fight. But they behalf of the king who ought to be in 
 may settle this among them ; you and possession ; and how a pardon by the 
 1 will not give an opinion without king de jure is no pardon if he be not 
 a fee." (Letter to Bingham, October also king de facto. (See 3d Inst., 617.)
 
 60 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [C H . IIL 
 
 the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Dartmouth, at their next 
 aimiversary. Writing to his class-mate Merrill, he says : 
 
 "John Porter, in his official capacity, has notified me of the wishes of 
 the P. B. to write them a poem. If six of the nine Muses were to stand 
 at my elbow, and promise that, according to their best discretion, they 
 would inspire every line, word, and syllable, semicolon and comma, I 
 should not choose to write a poem. I left making rhymes when I left col- 
 lege ; and, as to poetry, I do not know that I ever made any." 
 
 As time sped on with him, although he could not quite shake 
 off all the influences of his "narrow fortunes, he began to be less 
 discomfited by them, and also to have some perception of what 
 the jurisprudence of his country was to become. " What you 
 have said," he replies to Bingham, " of the obstacles in the way 
 to eminence in this country, has much to support it. But what 
 then ? Must we sit down contented in the lonely valley of infe- 
 riority ? This is a cold, poor, comfortless place. If the hill of 
 difficulties be so high that we cannot climb over it, yet perhaps 
 we can make a shift to creep round it. At all events, it is worth 
 the trial. I do not soon expect to see in America a Locke, a New- 
 ton, a Pope, or a Sir Joshua. But Mansfields and Kenyons, I 
 believe, we shall rear in the next age. And the reason of the dif- 
 ference is, that eminence will be sought with more ardor in the 
 lucrative professions, than in the abstract sciences and the fine 
 arts." Still, for himself, his expectations, so far as they were 
 expressed to his Mends, continued to be moderate and subdued. 
 " Yet, Merrill," he writes a year later, " you and I have some am- 
 bition ; so has, or ought to have, every one. So much ambition 
 as shall prompt to laudable exertion and industry ; so much as 
 is well consistent with the duties and the honest pleasures of 
 life, as induces a wish to make ourselves respected by our friends 
 and not entirely despised by our enemies ; and, on the score of 
 property, so much ambition as instigates to the acquirement of 
 a decent, competent estate, enabling us to treat our friends as 
 they deserve, and to live free from embarrassment ; this degree 
 of ambition is rational and necessary." 
 
 Was this all that at the age of two-and-twenty he had pro- 
 posed to himself? Did his description of a " rational and neces- 
 sary ambition " comprehend all that burned within him, or was 
 there still something that he held in reserve, even with his youth-
 
 1804.] THE SHORT-STREET SCHOOL. 61 
 
 ful companions, and that urged him on to a more brilliant future 
 than that which he depicted as their common lot ? His corre- 
 spondence with his college friends was entirely free and intimate, 
 and he probably expressed in it, as openly as any man ever ex- 
 presses in such letters, the feelings of his heart. Apparently he 
 was not at this time looking, in his own thoughts, for the great 
 prizes in the lottery of life. He was a diligent and laborious 
 student, devoted to the acquisition of knowledge both in and out 
 of his profession. He did not mean to take an inferior position 
 in it, and he did not confidently expect to ascend to its highest 
 honors. He was not, at this time, looking to any of the chief 
 cities or the large towns as his future theatre. He knew that 
 while his father lived, and perhaps for a much longer period, he 
 must be where he could minister to the comfort of those who 
 had now such strong claims upon his presence and his care. 
 The life of a country lawyer, therefore, was the sphere that 
 appeared to him to be before him. Still the great powers 
 which he had so sedulously cultivated, and which stirred 
 within him half -conscious of their destiny, craved a larger 
 development, wider fields of observation, and more, ample 
 means of culture, than his native village could afford. He 
 had a strong desire to finish his studies in Boston ; and 
 
 O 9 
 
 thither his hopes and his plans tended for some time in the 
 autumn and early winter of 1803. But he had to wait, as he 
 said, until " something like a miracle " should put the means 
 into his hands. 
 
 The " miracle " came in the shape of an accidental turn of his 
 brother's affairs. Ezekiel had worked hard to maintain himself 
 at college, and had been helped by all at home, until help was 
 no longer possible. Something had to be done by one or the 
 other of the brothers to recruit their exhausted finances. Eze- 
 kiel passed the winter vacation of 1803-'4: in teaching a school 
 in Sanbornton ; and in February, Daniel went to Boston, to seek 
 some employment for himself or his brother. It chanced that a 
 young college friend of theirs, Dr. Cyrus Perkins, afterward a 
 distinguished physician in Boston and New York, had been for 
 some time teaching a small private school in Boston, in what was 
 Jien called " Short " Street. 1 He had obtained the mastership of 
 
 1 Since a part of " Kingston " Street.
 
 62 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IIL 
 
 one of the public schools, and offered to relinquish his private 
 school to Ezekiel Webster. 
 
 This arrangement was at once concluded, as soon as Daniel 
 could return to Salisbury; and Ezekiel went immediately to 
 Boston, although at the risk of not obtaining his degree at the 
 ensuing college commencement. 
 
 Ezekiel being thus settled for a time in Boston, Daniel appears 
 to have turned his thoughts toward the city of JSTew York. But 
 his brother earnestly opposed this plan, and thus advised his 
 coming to Boston : 
 
 " Agreeably to your injunction, I have thought and meditated upon 
 your letter for three days, and for no inconsiderable portion of three 
 nights, and I now give you the result as freely as I wish your welfare. I 
 am directly opposed to your going to New York, and for several reasons. 
 First, the expensiveness of a journey to that city, and of a residence in it, is, 
 with me, a material objection ; secondly, the embarrassments to which 
 you will be liable, without friends to assist, or patronage to support you ; 
 thirdly, I fear the climate would be injurious to your constitution. I 
 have now told you what I would not have you do ; and I also tell you 
 what I wish you to do. I would have you decamp immediately with all your 
 baggage from Salisbury, and march directly to this place. This is the opin- 
 ion which I have maturely formed, for which a thousand reasons might be 
 urged. They are too numerous to be mentioned, nor is it perhaps neces- 
 sary, for I say to you imperatively, ' Come.' It is the easiest thing in the 
 world for a fellow of any enterprise or ability to support himself here 
 very handsomely, without descending to any business incompatible with 
 the situation of a gentleman. Here, too, is the focus of information. . . . 
 I will state to you a single circumstance which, I think, will remove all 
 doubt about paying your way. I have now eight scholars in Latin and 
 Greek, whom I shall be obliged to dismiss if I cannot have an assistant, 
 and I dare not at present hire one. The tuition of these eight scholars 
 will pay for your board. They recite twice in a day, and it will take you 
 about three-fourths of an hour to hear them each time. Here, then, you 
 can support yourself by the labor of one hour and a half each day. If 
 you will spend that time in my school daily, I will board you at as 
 genteel a boarding-house as you can wish, or the place affords. Consult 
 father, the family, and your friends, and start for Boston the next day 
 after the receipt of this letter. Another such an opportunity may never 
 occur. Come, and, if you don't find every thing to your liking, I will 
 carry you back to Salisbury with a chaise and six, and pay you for your 
 time. I must say again, consult father. If he approves, take the patri- 
 archal blessing, and come." l 
 
 1 Ezekiel to Daniel, April 4, 1804
 
 1804.] CHRISTOPHER GORE. 63 
 
 Mr. "Webster says in his Autobiography : 
 
 "Accordingly, I went to Boston IB July, to pass a few months in 
 some office. I had not a single letter, and knew nobody in the place to 
 which I was going, except Dr. Perkins, then a very young man, and, like 
 myself, struggling to get on. But I was sanguine, and light-hearted. 
 He easily persuades himself that he shall gain who has nothing to lose, 
 and is not afraid of attempting to climb, when, if he fail in his first 
 step, he is in no danger of a fall. Arrived in Boston, I looked out for 
 an office wherein to study. But, then, as I knew none of the legal 
 gentlemen, and had no letter, this was an affair of some difficulty. Some 
 attempts to be received into a lawyer's office failed, properly enough, for 
 these reasons ; although the reminiscence has since sometimes caused me 
 to smile." 
 
 Mr. Ticknor observes, that Mr. "Webster made but one 
 such unsuccessful application, and that he was in the presence 
 of the gentleman but for a moment, who never remembered 
 the occurrence afterward. There was one member of that 
 bar, however, who had a quicker penetration, although his 
 associations and habits might perhaps have made access to 
 him under such circumstances even more difficult than to 
 others. 
 
 Christopher Gore, whose pupil Mr. "Webster became in Bos- 
 ton, was the first district attorney of the United States for Mas- 
 sachusetts, having been appointed to that office by Washington 
 in 1789. In 1796 he was sent to England as a commissioner 
 under Jay's treaty, for the settlement of claims of citizens of the 
 United States for spoliations by British cruisers during the wars 
 of the French Revolution. He remained in London in the dis- 
 charge of that duty for nearly eight years ; and, during an ab- 
 sence of the American minister in 1803, he acted as charge (P af- 
 faires. He was a man of good fortune, a scholar and a courtly 
 and polished gentleman, whose information and manners exhib- 
 ited the fruits of much intercourse with the world. He was, 
 too, an excellent commercial lawyer, fond of the practice of 
 his profession, in which his standing was eminently respectable. 
 On his return to Boston, shortly before Mr. "Webster applied to 
 be received as his pupil, he had resumed his practice. Five 
 years afterward, in 1809, he was elected Governor of Massa- 
 chusetts by the Federal party, but in the next year he waa
 
 64 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [00. III. 
 
 defeated by Mr. Gerry, the candidate of the Democratic party. 1 
 From 1813 to 1815 lie was a member of the Senate of the 
 United States. It was a most fortunate thing for Mr. Web- 
 ster that he came in contact with such a man. Mr. Gore 
 was, doubtless, the first person he had then met, who, to 
 great refinement of manners and complete knowledge ofj 
 the world, united a general scholarship. Mr. Webster said 
 of him : 
 
 " Since I left John Wheelock," I have found no man so inde- 
 fatigable in research. He has great amenity of manners, is easy, 
 accessible, and communicative, and, take him all in all, I could 
 not wish a better preceptor." 8 This was said, when Mr. Web- 
 ster had been four months in Mr. Gore's office ; and his estimate 
 of Mr. Gore never changed. That they appreciated each other 
 from the first, is quite apparent from the narrative which Mr. 
 Webster has left us of the mode in which their acquaintance 
 began. 
 
 " Mr. Gore had just then returned from England, and renewed the prac- 
 tice of the law. He had rooms in Scollay's Building, and, as yet, had no 
 clerk. A young man, as little known to Mr. Gore as myself, undertook to 
 introduce me to him. In logic, this would have been bad. Ignotum per 
 ignotum. Nevertheless, it succeeded here. "We ventured into Mr. Gore's 
 rooms, and my name was pronounced. I was shockingly embarrassed, but 
 Mr. Gore's habitual courtesy of manner gave me courage to speak. I had 
 the grace to begin with an unaffected apology ; told him my position 
 was very awkward, my appearance there very like an intrusion ; and that, 
 if I expected any thing but a civil dismission, it was only founded in his 
 
 1 It used to be said that Mr. Gore the dignified accompaniments of a life 
 
 lost his election as governor, when he of refinement and social distinction. But 
 
 was a candidate a second time, by rea- they certainly were not calculated to 
 
 son of his having made a canvassing tour win votes at a popular election, at a 
 
 through the State in a coach-and-four, time when party spirit ran very high, 
 
 attended by servants in livery, and es- Mr. Gore, however, never laid them 
 
 corted by a troop of horse. When he aside in consequence of his defeat, and 
 
 left the office of governor, he retired to he always retained the sincere respect 
 
 an elegant country - seat in Waltham, of the people of Massachusetts. Dying 
 
 about nine miles from Boston, where he without children, he left the bulk of his 
 
 lived for the residue of his life. He died fortune to Harvard College. The mod- 
 
 in 1827. His chariot, with its crimson ern library of the university, built from 
 
 hammer-cloth, his four long-tailed bays, his munificent donation, was called in 
 
 liveried coachman, and mounted foot- his honor Gore Hall, 
 men are among my earliest recollections. * The President of Dartmouth Col 
 
 But these manners were not adopted by lege. 
 
 Mr. Gore in a spirit of ostentation, nor * Letter to Merrill, November 30, 
 
 were they altogether singular in those 1804. 
 days. In him, as in others, they were
 
 1804.] ENTERS MR. GORE'S OFFICE. 65 
 
 known kindness, and generosity of character. I was from the country, I 
 said ; had studied law for two years ; had come to Boston to study a year 
 more ; had some respectable acquaintances in New Hampshire, not un- 
 known to him, but had no introduction ; that I had heard he had no clerk ; 
 thought it possible he would receive one ; that I came to Boston to work, 
 not to play ; was most desirous, on all accounts, to be his pupil ; and all 
 I ventured to ask at present was, that he would keep a place for me in his 
 office till I could write to New Hampshire for proper letters, showing me 
 worthy of it. I delivered this speech trippingly on the tongue, though I 
 suspect it was better composed than spoken. Mr. Gore heard me with 
 much encouraging good-nature. He evidently saw my embarrassment ; 
 spoke kind words, and asked me to sit down. My friend had already dis- 
 appeared. Mr. Gore said, what I had suggested was very reasonable, and 
 required little apology. He did not mean to fill his office with clerks, 
 but was willing to receive one or two, and would consider what I had 
 said. He inquired, and I told him, what gentlemen of his acquaint- 
 tance knew me and my father in New Hampshire. Among others, I 
 remember I mentioned Mr. Peabody, who was Mr. Gore's class-mate. 
 He talked to me pleasantly for a quarter of an hour ; and, when I 
 rose to depart, he said : ' My young friend, you look as though you 
 might be trusted. You say you came to study, and not to waste 
 time. I will take you at your word. You may as well hang up your 
 hat at once ; go into the other room ; take your book, and sit down 
 to reading it, and write at your convenience to New Hampshire for 
 your letters.' " 
 
 This immediate confidence could not have been wholly the 
 effect of a morning of good-nature, with an easy gentleman who 
 happened to be quite at leisure and was willing to trust to acci- 
 dent for a clerk. The young man who presented himself thus 
 unheralded, before a person of Mr. Gore's fastidious perceptions, 
 could have been no rustic bumpkin, notwithstanding the air of 
 embarrassment which his own modesty of narration has thrown 
 around the scene. Learning and mental discipline, such as he 
 had enjoyed, do not pour their riches into such a nature as his, 
 without affecting the outer man ; and genius and gentlemanly 
 culture may be detected as quickly as their opposites, by one who 
 is accustomed to note their manifestations. We know, too, that 
 later there was a magnetism, in the presence of Mr. Webster, 
 which all men felt, and which has been felt where his name was 
 for the moment unknown. The same innuen ce may have existed 
 in his younger days ; or a keen and practised observer, like Mr. 
 Gore, might have seen in his eye, which it was said no man, even
 
 66 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IIL 
 
 then, ever saw and forgot, some revelation of the intellect and 
 character within. 1 
 
 But whether this speculation is fanciful or well founded, the 
 pleasing character of the anecdote remains. It connects, by 
 an incident honorable to both, the name of the great statesman 
 with the name of a man whose pure and elevated character 
 made him one of the ornaments, as his love of letters made him 
 one of the benefactors, of the society in which he lived and died. 
 Mr. Gore was well fitted to direct the studies of such a pupil, 
 and to supply and point out to him those sources of knowledge 
 which could not have come within his reach in New Hampshire. 
 
 " I was conscious," continues the autobiography," of having made a 
 good stride onward, when I had obtained admission into Mr. Gore's office. 
 It was a situation which offered to me the means of studying books and 
 men and things. It was on the 20th of July, 1804, that I first made my- 
 self known to Mr. Gore ; and, although I remained in his office only till 
 March following, and that with considerable intervening absences, I made, 
 as I think, some respectable progress. 
 
 " In August the Supreme Court sat. I attended it constantly, and 
 reported every one of its decisions. I did the same in the Circuit Court 
 of the United States. I kept a little journal at that time, which still 
 survives. It contains little besides a list of books read. 
 
 " In addition to books on the common and municipal law, I find I 
 read Vattel for the third time in my life, as is stated in the journal, Ward's 
 ' Law of Nations,' Lord Bacon's ' Elements,' Puffendorff 's ' Latin History 
 of England,' Gifibrd's Juvenal, Boswell's ' Tour to the Hebrides,' Moore's 
 ' Travels,' and many other miscellaneous things. 8 
 
 " But my main study was the common law, and especially the parts of 
 it which relate to special pleading. Whatever was in Viner, Bacon, and 
 other books then usually studied on that part of the science, I paid my 
 respects to. Among other things I went through Saunders's Reports, 
 the old folio edition, and abstracted, and put into English, out of Latin 
 and Norman-French, the pleadings in all his reports. It was an edify- 
 ing work. From that day to this the forms and language of special 
 pleas have been quite familiar to me. I believe I have my little abstract 
 yet. 
 
 1 Mr. Webster mentioned, with some never have to set out again." (Letter to 
 
 glee, in one of his letters written at the Bingham, August 4, 1804.) 
 time, that, in consequence of his name 2 He might have added to this list 
 
 not being distinctly pronounced by his " Gibbon's Life and Posthumous Works," 
 
 companion who introduced him, he had by Lord Sheffield, and Paley's " Natural 
 
 been in the office a week before Mr. Theology." He called the " ' Natural 
 
 Gore knew his name. " This," he added, Theology' an ingenious little thing." 
 
 " I call setting out in the world. . . . (Letter to Merrill, May 14, 1805. Corr 
 
 But I most devoutly hope that I shall spondence, vol. i.)
 
 1804.] SCHOOL IN SHORT STREET. g? 
 
 " I remember, one day, as I was alone in the office, a man came in, and 
 asked for Mr. Gore. Mr. Gore was out, and he sat down to wait for him. 
 He was dressed in plain gray clothes. I went on with my book till he 
 asked me what I was reading, and, coming along up to the table, I held 
 out my book, and he took it and looked at it. ' Roccus,' 1 said he, ' de 
 navibus et naulo. "Well, I read that book, too, when I was a boy ; ' and 
 proceeded to talk not only about ' ships and freights,' but insurance, prize, 
 and other matters of maritime law in a manner ' to put me up to all I 
 knew,' l and a good deal more. The gray-coated stranger turned out to 
 be Mr. Rufus King." * 
 
 Men, indeed, as he has said, were the objects of his study, as 
 well as books. The leaders of the Boston bar, at that time, were 
 Theophilus Parsons, afterward the celebrated Chief Justice of 
 Massachusetts ; Samuel Dexter, the great advocate who, at a later 
 period, argued against the Embargo for his townsmen, and " put 
 his whole heart " into the cause ; * Harrison Gray Otis, fluent, 
 rapid, classical, a graceful orator, and one of the most ingenious 
 of lawyers ; James Sullivan, a strong, laborious, and earnest 
 man; and Daniel Davis, a skilful criminal lawyer, of much ex- 
 perience and ability as a public prosecutor, and for a long time 
 Solicitor-General of the State. How closely Mr. Webster ob- 
 served these men, and how accurately he measured them, his 
 diary, kept while he was in the office of Mr. Gore, abundantly 
 proves. Although he might afterward, if he had undertaken 
 it, have drawn more elaborate portraits, I doubt if he would at 
 any subsequent period have changed any thing that he then set 
 down. In two or three instances he sketched these eminent 
 lawyers by a few strokes of his pen, which at once discriminate 
 them. 4 But a kindred intellect led him to a closer comparison 
 of Dexter and Parsons. 
 
 Besides attending the courts and studying the law, Mr. Web- 
 ster had, for a time at least, one other occupation in Boston 
 while he was in the office of Mr. Gore. In August, 1804, it be- 
 came necessary for his brother Ezekiel to go to Hanover, in 
 order to take his degree ; and, during his absence, Daniel took 
 
 1 For the origin of the phrase, to put ton bar embodies a manner that is 
 
 a man up to all he knows, see post. not rare in any age with men of a cer- 
 
 * Autobiography. tain vehemence of temperament : " He 
 
 3 Second speech on Foot's resolution, rolls on his cause with an immense labor, 
 (Works, iii., 329.) deals in much sour invective, and acts 
 
 4 One of his short descriptions re- in that way, as if he supposed the court 
 fering to a gentleman then at the Bos- and jury against him."
 
 68 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IIL 
 
 charge of the little school in Short Street. Edward Everett was 
 one of the pupils of the school at that time ; and in this relation 
 the friendship between Mr. "Webster and that distinguished 
 scholar and statesman began, nearly fifty years before Mr. "Web- 
 ster's death. George Ticknor was not a pupil of the school, but 
 in 1804^' 5 he received private instruction in Greek from Ezekiel 
 "Webster, and at his father's house both the "Websters and their 
 friend Perkins were frequent visitors. That the younger Web- 
 ster mingled to some extent in the other society of the town, is 
 apparent from his correspondence ; but his circle of acquaintance 
 was not large, and he was too busy to increase it. He appears 
 to have been absent from Boston in November, 1804, on an ex- 
 cursion to Albany, in company with a gentleman who had some 
 occasion for his services. They travelled in a private carriage 
 through Springfield to Albany, and thence came clown to Hud- 
 son, from which place they returned by way of Hartford and 
 Providence to Boston. 
 
 The following letter was written to his brother from Al- 
 bany : 
 
 [TO EZEKIEL WEBSTER.] 
 
 " ALBANY, November 15, 1804. 
 
 " DEAR ZEKE : Like other invalids, we have made it an importanl 
 point to visit the Springs. Yesterday we were at New Lebanon. The 
 health of both of us is much benefited by a visit to the medicinal waters 
 of that place. We drank, I believe, nearly a teaspoonful apiece, and, after 
 washing it down with a draught of wine, we really thought we felt better. 
 This place, New Lebanon, and Saratoga, will be the Bath and Spa of 
 America. They are now the resort of the well as well as the sick of the 
 gay, the rich, and the fashionable. Where you look to see every nook 
 and corner crowded by cripples and consumptive skeletons, you find 
 taverns, assembly-rooms, and billiard-tables. 
 
 " Albany is no despicable place. To be sure, it is irregular, and without 
 form. Its houses are generally old and poor-looking its streets are rather 
 dirty but there are many exceptions. A part of the town is very high, 
 overlooking the river in a very pleasant manner, and affording many fine 
 seats. Some handsome buildings ornament the town. The Dutch Re- 
 formed Church and the new State Bank would not disgrace State Street. 
 Here are all sorts of people both Greek and Jew, Englishman and Dutch- 
 man, Negro and Indian. Almost everybody speaks English; occasion- 
 ally, though, I have heard them talk among themselves in a lingo which I 
 never learned even at the Indian charity school. The river here is half a 
 mile wide that is, I should think so ; and, if I think wrong, you must 
 look at Dr. Morse, and correct me.
 
 1805.] OFFER OF A CLERKSHIP. 69 
 
 " To-morrow, weather being fair, we set out on our return. We shall 
 probably go by way of Hudson, Hartford, etc. 
 
 " Before I get back to Boston, the time will expire in which I was to pay 
 Mr. Howard, Codman's Wharf, for the sugar, 1 etc. He was promised his 
 cast by the 20th instant. If you will borrow it somewhere, and pay him, 
 perhaps I can replace it when I arrive. I am peculiarly desirous of being 
 punctual in this case, because Mr. C. was surety to Mr. Howard that I 
 should be so. Pray get it paid somehow before the sun goeth down the 
 20th. It is about eighteen dollars. 
 
 " Call in at Mr. Chamberlain's, and give him and his family my love. I 
 shall be glad to get back again, tell them. 
 
 " Adieu, honest fellow. " D. WEBSTER. 
 
 " And there went abroad over all the land an evil spirit, and it deluded 
 many. Oh, good old mother Massachusetts ! " * 
 
 This excursion gave Mr. Webster an opportunity to see a part 
 of the country which he had never visited before, and, of course, 
 it was the first time he had ever been out of New England. His 
 companion defrayed the expenses of the journey, and at the end 
 of it Mr. Webster wrote to Bingham : " I put my hand in my 
 pocket and found one hundred and twenty dear delightfuls, all 
 my own, yes, every dog of 'em. I am so proud to have a dollar 
 of my own, I was determined to tell you of it." * 
 
 As he was thus going on toward the period of his admission 
 to the bar, the worthy father at home, anxious and embarrassed 
 in his affairs, was suddenly cheered by a plan for his son's set- 
 tlement in life, which would place them all in a position of easy 
 independence. The other judges of the court of which he was 
 a member had great regard for him, and, the clerk of their court 
 having died, they offered the place to Judge Webster for his son 
 
 1 Supplies for his father's family. all be willing to give as much to see 
 
 * Great political changes took place you in this town, if we had the change 
 
 in Massachusetts at this time. as handy as you have in Boston." And 
 
 "Letter to Bingham, January 2, 1805. then the good girl tells him the very 
 
 From an unexpected quarter we may little of country news in her small 
 
 learn the exact per diem which made up sphere how the people move on in the 
 
 this " dear delightful " sum. In a simple- same old way as when he was at home ; 
 
 hearted, affectionate letter from home, and how they sometimes have "junkets," 
 
 written by his sister Sarah (she of the and sometimes " freewillers' meetings," 
 
 whortleberry incident), there is a passage which last, being interpreted, were a 
 
 which reads as follows : kind of " love-feast " among a portion of 
 
 . " Before we received your letters by the Baptists, not participated in, prob- 
 the mail, we heard that you were gone ably, by the orthodox Webster family, 
 to New York with a gentleman, at the There is a postscript to the lady's let- 
 moderate price of seven dollars a day for ter, but it was dictated and signed by 
 your company. It seems, Daniel, that the father ; and it reveals a cause for 
 your company is very agreeable in Bos- the satisfaction with which Daniel re- 
 ton as well as in Salisbury. We should garded his earnings.
 
 70 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IIL 
 
 Daniel. The joyful news was quickly communicated to the lat- 
 ter in Boston. Here was another temptation, and a stronger 
 one than the Fryeburg preferment held out ; for it was a better 
 situation, and it was one, moreover, that would put him at once 
 where his parents and his sisters could have the benefit of his 
 society as well as his pecuniary aid. But I cannot relate his 
 perplexities and contradictory feelings as he has related them 
 himself, and I therefore compile a narrative of the manner 
 in which he met this singular event in his life, from the two 
 ample sources that are before me. One of these accounts, 
 which is contained in his Autobiography, has been published 
 several years. The other, which is in some respects still more 
 graphic and detailed, was given in the conversation of 1825, 
 to which I have more than once referred, and which has not 
 hitherto been made public. The colloquial narrative begins in 
 this way : 
 
 " In 1804, the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Hillsborough 
 County died, and Chief-Justice Farrar immediately offered the place to 
 me. The receipts of this office were full fifteen hundred dollars a year, 
 and you may imagine that I felt as if my fortune was made. My brother 
 and I were both in debt, our father was old, and his estate mortgaged. I 
 had been looking to this office, but hardly with hope, and here it was 
 here was the appointment to what, as I may say, had been the ambition of 
 the family ever since the Revolution. It was fifteen hundred a year. Why, 
 I could pay all the debts of the family, could help on Ezekiel in short, I 
 was independent. I had no sleep that night ; and, the next morning, 
 when I went to the office, I stepped up the stairs with a lighter heart than 
 I ever had before. I told Mr. Gore of my good fortune. ' Well, my young 
 friend,' said he, ' the gentlemen have been very kind to you ; I am glad of 
 it. You must thank them for it. Certainly they are very good ; you 
 must write them a civil letter. You will write immediately, of course.' I 
 told him that I felt their kindness and liberality very deeply ; that I should 
 certainly thank them in the best manner I was able ; but that I should go 
 up to Salisbury so soon, I hardly thought it was necessary to write. He 
 looked at me as if he was greatly surprised. ' Why,' said he, ' you don't 
 mean to accept it, surely ! ' The bare idea of not accepting it so astounded 
 me that I should have been glad to have found any hole to have hid my- 
 self in ; the very centre of Symmes's would have been welcome to me. j 
 told him, as soon as I could speak, that I had no thought of any thing 
 else. 'Well,' said he, ' you must decide for yourself; but come, sit down, 
 and let us talk it over. The office is worth fifteen hundred a year, you 
 say. Well, it never will be any more. Ten to one, if they find out it is so
 
 1805.] REFUSES THE CLERKSHIP. 7i 
 
 much, the fees will be reduced. 1 You are appointed now by friends ; 
 others may fill their places who are of different opinions, and who have 
 friends of their own to provide for. You will lose your place ; or, sup- 
 posing you to retain it, what are you but a clerk for life ? And your pros- 
 pects as a lawyer are good enough to encourage you to go on. Go on, 
 and finish your studies ; you are poor enough, but there are greater evils 
 than poverty ; live on no man's favor ; what bread you do eat, let it be the 
 bread of independence ; pursue your profession, make yourself useful to 
 your friends, and a little formidable to your enemies, and you have nothing 
 to fear.' 
 
 " I could say nothing to all this, and Mr. Gore's opinion that I could 
 do something as a lawyer encouraged and flattered me. He told me to 
 come the next morning, and talk a little more with him; I went home, 
 and passed another sleepless night. 
 
 " The obtaining this office had been a darling object with my father. 
 Its possession would make the family easy ; and he had hastened to send 
 me word that the prize was won. I certainly considered it a great prize 
 myself, not that I did not love my profession, not that I did not hate the 
 clerkship, and all clerkships, but simply from a desire to reach that high 
 point of terrestrial bliss, at which I could feel that there was a competency 
 for our family, myself included. I had felt the res angustce till my very 
 bones ached. Mr. Gore peremptorily shut me out from this opening para- 
 dise. 2 I need hardly say that I acquiesced in his good advice, though it 
 certainly cost me a pang. Here was present comfort, competency, and, I 
 may even say, riches, as I then viewed things, all ready to be enjoyed, and 
 I was called upon to reject them for the uncertain and distant prospect of 
 professional success. But I did resist the temptation ; I did hold on to 
 the hope which the law set before me. One very difficult task remained, 
 however, to be performed, and that was to reconcile my father to my de- 
 cision. I knew it would strike him like a thunder-bolt. He had long had 
 this office in view for me. Its income would make him, and make us all, 
 easy and comfortable ; his health was bad, and growing worse. His sons 
 were all gone from him. This office would bring me home, and it would 
 bring also comfort and competency ' to all the house.' It was now mid- 
 winter. 
 
 " Well, sir," continued Mr. Webster, in 1825, " after talking further 
 with Mr. Gore, I made up my mind to refuse the clerkship at all risks. I 
 went to Mr. Taylor, 8 and told him I wanted some money, and that I should 
 pay him some time or other. He said I should have as much as I wanted. 
 
 1 The MS. adds, " Within two years left college, but who was not either of 
 
 of this time the fees were reduced." those whom he had known at Hanover. 
 
 * Mr. Webster, at this time, had no But this affair never proceeded very 
 thought of marrying. He had not even far, and he had entirely dismissed it 
 met the lady who afterward became his from his mind before he went to Bos- 
 wife. He had been somewhat interested ton. 
 
 in another lady, who is occasionally re- 3 Mr. Joseph Taylor, a connection of 
 
 ferred to in his letters written after he the Amory family.
 
 72 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. III. 
 
 I told him I must have a good deal three or four hundred dollars. He 
 gave it to me, and, with this in my pocket, I hired a sleigh, 1 and set off 
 for home. I got home one afternoon, just at sunset, and saw my father in 
 his little room, sitting in his arm-chair. He was pretty old then, and tall, 
 and very thin. His face was pale, and his cheek sunken, and his eyes 
 which were always large, and very black seemed larger and blacker than 
 I ever saw them. He seemed glad to see me, and, almost as soon as I sat 
 down, he said : ' Well, Daniel, we have got that office for you.' ' Yes, 
 father,' said I, ' the gentlemen were very kind, I must go and thank them.' 
 ' They gave it to you without my saying a word about it.' ' 1 must go 
 and see Judge Farrar, and tell him I am much obliged to him.' And so I 
 talked about it very carelessly, and tried to make my father understand 
 me. At last he began to have some suspicion of what I meant ; and he 
 straightened himself up in his chair, and looked at me as if he would look 
 me through. ' Daniel, Daniel,' said he, ' don't you mean to take that 
 office ? ' ' No, indeed, father,' said I ; ' I hope I can do much better than 
 that. I mean to use my tongue in the courts, not my pen ; to be an actor, 
 not a register of other men's acts. I hope yet, sir, to astonish your honor 
 in your own court by my professional attainments.' 
 
 " For a moment I thought he was angry. He rocked his chair, 
 slightly ; a flash went over an eye, softened by age, but still as black as 
 jet ; but it was gone, and I thought I saw that parental partiality was, 
 after all, a little gratified at this apparent devotion to an honorable pro- 
 fession, and this seeming confidence of success in it. He looked at me 
 for as much as a minute, and then said very slowly, ' Well, my son, your 
 mother has always said you would come to something or nothing. She 
 was not sure which ; I think you are now about settling that doubt for 
 her.' This he said, and never a word spoke more to me on the subject. 
 I stayed at home a week, paid any little bills that came in, bought what 
 was necessary for the family, promised to come to him again as soon as I 
 was admitted to the bar, and returned to Boston." 
 
 The time was now approaching for his admission to the 
 bar, and the choice of a place of settlement. " In some country 
 town in New Hampshire," he writes to one of his friends just 
 before his admission, " I shall probably put off my character 
 of a rover, and fix my feet for a season. Having been for the 
 winter a wandering comet, in the spring I become a falling 
 star, and shall drop from the firmament of Boston gayety and 
 pleasure to the level of a rustic village of silence and ob- 
 scurity." * 
 
 1 He means that he hired a seat in a ran into the centre of New Hampshire 
 
 country sleigh that had come down to the than they ran to Baffin's Bay." 
 market. At that time, he says in the 2 Letter to Mr. Fuller, March 10 
 
 Autobiography, " Stage-coaches no more 1805.
 
 1805.] BEGINS PRACTICE IN BOSCAWEN. 73 
 
 He was admitted to practice in March, 1805, in the Court of 
 Common Pleas in Boston, on the motion of Mr. Gore. It was 
 the custom then for the patron to make a short speech intro- 
 ducing the pupil to the court. It is a well-known tradition 
 that on this occasion Mr. Gore predicted the future eminence of 
 his young friend. What he said has not been preserved ; but 
 that he said what Mr. Webster never forgot, that it was dis- 
 tinctly a prediction, and that it excited in him a resolve that 
 it should not go unfulfilled, we have upon his own authority, 
 although he appears to have been unwilling to repeat the words 
 of Mr. Gore's address. 1 This ceremony being over, he went im- 
 mediately to Amherst, in New Hampshire, where his father then 
 was, attending a session of the court. It was his wish at this 
 time to settle in Portsmouth ; but he resolved not to leave the 
 immediate neighborhood of Salisbury during his father's life. 
 Accordingly, he established himself in the adjoining village of 
 Boscawen ; and there, in the spring of 1805, he began the life 
 of a country lawyer. 
 
 Before he left Boston, he had made a considerable purchase 
 of books, for which he was to remit the money from New Hamp- 
 shire. The money was forwarded, but the letter containing it 
 was stolen from the messenger before it reached the hands of 
 Ezekiel. Many letters passed between the brothers, and many 
 plans were devised for raising another sum sufficient to obtain 
 the books. At first, Ezekiel was desired to wait upon the book- 
 seller, explain the loss, and request that the books might be put 
 again upon his shelves. At length it was arranged that Ezekiel 
 should ask Mr. Thacher, a member of the Boston bar, to become 
 surety for the payment ; to which that gentleman at once 
 assented. 
 
 Furnished with this security, Ezekiel repaired to the book- 
 seller's shop, tendered the indorsement of Mr. Thacher upon his 
 own note, and asked for the books. But the worthy bibliopole 
 refused all security, kindly forwarded the books, and gave all 
 the credit that was asked. He lived to witness Mr. Webster's 
 whole career." 
 
 Books, indeed, were quite essential to his existence where he 
 
 1 See the Autobiography. ( Corre- * The bookseller was Mr. Samuel H 
 tp&ndence, i., 20. Parker.
 
 74 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. HL 
 
 now was. The life which he led at Boscawen, for two years 
 and a half, would have been insupportable without them. He 
 described it in his letters as " a life of writs and summonses." 
 " Other mechanics do pretty well here," he said, " and I am 
 determined to try my luck among others." ' 
 
 There was no congenial society for him, and he yet wanted 
 that support which other young men, similarly situated, have 
 found, from having formed that tender connection which may 
 be the solace of present silence and obscurity, even when the 
 beloved object is far away. He was not in love, and apparently 
 he was not likely to be. He endured " the burden of perpetual 
 solitude and seclusion," by devoting himself to business and 
 study. His practice extended over three counties, Hillsborough, 
 Buckingham, and Grafton." It amounted to not more than six 
 or seven hundred dollars a year ; but this was sufficient for his 
 support, besides leaving a small sum for the increase of his 
 library. His studies during this period were various, and more 
 extensive, I imagine, than they were during the same length of 
 time at any former portion of his life, especially in the law and 
 in history. With what energy he continued to resist the influ- 
 ences of that kind of practice in which most young men must 
 begin their professional life, how he labored at this time to 
 make himself a real lawyer, and how well he estimated the 
 means that were to make him one, his correspondence shows. 
 After reading what is now to be quoted, no one need be sur- 
 prised that, as soon as he stepped forth from that little village 
 in the interior of New Hampshire, he stood at once the equal 
 and the competitor of men who were many years his seniors, 
 and who had long occupied the foremost places at the bar of 
 New England.* 
 
 " Study is the grand requisite for a lawyer. Men may be born poets, 
 and leap from their cradle painters ; Nature may have made them musi- 
 
 1 He revenged himself upon the writs musical form, it will certainly be the 
 
 and summonses by turning them into most harmonious thing they ever did." 
 
 verse : (Letter to Bingliam, January 19, 1806.) 
 
 " AH good sheriffs in the land, 2 " Scattering business over so much 
 
 We command, surface," he said, " is like spilling water 
 
 That fortowithyou arrest John Dyer, up(m the ground 
 
 If in your precinct you can find him, 8 Mr. Webster has said in his Auto- 
 
 And bind him," etc., etc. biography (written in 1829), that, with 
 
 He then adds : " If the Legislature will the exception of instances in which he 
 
 but put our writs into a poetical and had been associated with the Attorney
 
 1806.] 
 
 DEATH OF HIS FATHER. 
 
 75 
 
 cians, and called on them only to exercise, and not to acquire, ability ; 
 but law is artificial. It is a human science, to be learned, not inspired 
 Let there be a genius for whom Nature has done so much as apparently to 
 have left nothing for application, yet, to make a lawyer, application must 
 do as much as if Nature had done nothing. The evil is, that an accursed 
 thirst for money violates every thing. We cannot study, because we must 
 pettifog. We learn the low recourses of attorneyism, when we should 
 learn the conceptions, the reasonings, and the opinions of Cicero and 
 Murray. The love of fame is extinguished, every ardent wish for knowl- 
 edge repressed ; conscience put in jeopardy, and the best feelings of the 
 heart indurated by the mean, money-catching, abominable practices which 
 cover with disgrace a part of the modern practitioners of the law. . . . 
 Our profession is good, if practised in the spirit of it; it is damnable 
 fraud and iniquity when its true spirit is supplied by a spirit of mischief- 
 making and money-catching." * 
 
 BLTJIAL-PLACE AT FRJLNKLIX. 
 
 His first speech at the bar was made during the first year 
 of his residence at Boscawen, and after the lapse of forty years 
 he remembered with the deepest tenderness that his father heard 
 it.* But his father never heard him a second time. He appears 
 to have been unable to go abroad during the succeeding winter, 
 and he died in April, 1806. In a burial-place set apart in hid 
 
 General of the United States, he had 
 hardly ten times in his life acted as 
 junior counsel. 
 
 1 Letter to Bingham, January 19, 1806. 
 
 * Letter to Mr. Blatchford, written 
 from Franklin, May 3, 1846. (Corre- 
 spondence, ii., 226.) He states the same 
 fact in the Autobiography.
 
 70 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. HI 
 
 own field, " beneath the shadows of a tall pine," he was laid by 
 filial hands. "Writing from that spot, when he was nearly of 
 the same age at which his father died, Mr. Webster said : " I 
 neither left him nor forsook him. My opening an office in 
 Boscawen was, that I might be near him. I closed his eyes in 
 this very house. He died at sixty-seven years of age, after a 
 life of exertion, toil, and exposure : a private soldier, an officer, 
 a legislator, a judge, every thing that a man could be to whom 
 learning never had disclosed her ' ample page.' " ' 
 
 It is not easy to determine whether Mr. "Webster's first 
 speech, which he says was made when his father " was on the 
 bench," was made in the Court of Common Pleas, of which his 
 father was a judge, or in the Superior Court of Judicature of 
 which the Honorable Jeremiah Smith was the chief justice. The 
 local tradition in the county of Grafton, at the period of Mr. 
 Webster's death, was that his first cause was a case of some no- 
 toriety, that was tried in 1805, at Plymouth in that county, in 
 the Superior Court, and that Judge Smith was on the bench. 3 If 
 this was the case in which his father heard him, Judge "Webster 
 must have been invited to take a seat on the bench according 
 to the usual courtesy, but he could not have been present in his 
 official capacity, as he was a member of an inferior court. ]STor 
 could his son, in the year 1805, have been entitled to argue a 
 cause to the jury in the Superior Court, since he was not 
 admitted as a counsellor of that court until 1807. On the 
 other hand, there is something more authentic than a tradition, 
 respecting a cause which was tried before Chief-Justice Smith, 
 in what was then the county of Hillsborough, in 1806, and in 
 which Mr. Webster was allowed to take the part of junior 
 counsel ; and it was after hearing him in this case that Judge 
 Smith is said to have remarked, on leaving the court-house, 
 that " he had never before met such a young man as that." * 
 Both of these were civil cases. There is also an account of a 
 very powerful speech which he made in defence of a person 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Blatchford, written sell, a gentleman who visited Plymouth 
 
 from Franklin, May 3, 1846. (Corre- at that time, and carefully gathered the 
 
 spondence, ii., 225.) tradition of what was there supposed to 
 
 9 My authority for this statement is a have been Mr. Webster's first cause. 
 letter addressed to one of the literary 8 See Morrison's " Life of Chief- Jus- 
 
 executors, in 1853, by Mr. Alfred Rus- tice Smith," pp. 179, 180. Boston, 1845
 
 1806.] WRITES FOR THE "ANTHOLOGY." 77 
 
 indicted for murder and tried in the Superior Court in Grafton 
 County. It is said that the senior counsel abandoned the cause 
 after hearing the evidence, leaving to Mr. Webster the whole 
 burden of summing up to the jury. But it is scarcely needful to 
 trace the precise degree of accuracy with which these several 
 accounts have come down to us, or to determine which of them 
 is to be regarded as his first cause. It is enough to know that, 
 before he left the interior of the State, he had produced an 
 impression which is even now not effaced, and that different 
 counties have contended for the honor of having been the 
 scene of his first effort at the bar. 1 
 
 In the Autobiography, all that he says further, respecting 
 the period of his residence in Boscawen, is embraced in the 
 following short paragraph : 
 
 " The two years and a half which I spent in Boscawen were devoted to 
 business and study. I had enough of the first to live on, and to afford 
 opportunity for practice and discipline. I read law and history ; not 
 without some mixture of other things. These were the days of the 
 Boston Anthology ; and I had the honor of being a contributor to that 
 publication. There are sundry reviews written by me, not worth looking 
 up or remembering." 
 
 But, slight as was the interest which, in 1829, he thought 
 might be attached to these things, they are not to be passed 
 over without mention. His contributions to the Monthly Atir 
 
 1 Although I am unable definitely to when the trial came on, the attorney- 
 assign this honor, I can add to the anec- general was ill, and the prosecutors 
 dotes of this period the following ac- asked that Webster should be allowed 
 count of Mr. Webster's first encounter to conduct the case. I assented to this 
 with Mr. Jeremiah Mason, of Portsmouth, readily, thinking I 6ught to have an easy 
 which was given to me by Mr. Mason time of it; and we were introduced to 
 himself. A man, who had previously each other. We went at it, and I soon 
 held a respectable position in one of the found that I had no light work on my 
 counties where Mr. Webster then prac- hands. He examined his witnesses, and 
 tised, was indicted for forgery. Mr. shaped his case with so much skill, that 
 Mason, as the leading counsel in New I had to exert every faculty I possessed. 
 Hampshire, was sent for, on a special re- I got the man oif, but it was as hard a 
 tainer, to defend him. " I had heard," day's work as I ever did in my life, 
 said Mr. Mason, " that there was a young There were other transactions behind 
 lawyer up there, who was reputed to be this one which looked quite as awkward, 
 a wonderfully able fellow ; and was said When the verdict was announced, I went 
 by the country people to be as black as up to the dock, and whispered to the 
 the ace of spades, but I had never seen prisoner, as the sheriff let him out, to be 
 him. When they told me that he had off for Canada, and never to put himself 
 prepared the evidence for this prosecu- within the reach of that young Webster 
 tion, I thought it well to be careful, again. From that tune forth I never 
 especially as the trial was to be con- lost sight of Mr. Webster, and never had 
 ducted by the attorney - general But but one opinion of his powers."
 
 78 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IIL 
 
 thology were four ; in 1806, a review of a Treatise on Polit- 
 ical Economy, by Tunis Mortman ; in 1807, a review of the 
 first volume of Johnson's (ISTew York) Keports, and an article 
 on the French language ; in 1808, a review of Lawe's Trea- 
 tise on Pleading. 1 
 
 After his father's death, Mr. Webster waited only for hia 
 brother's admission to the bar, so that he could relinquish to 
 him the office in Boscawen, and that his mother and sisters 
 might have a protector at hand. He had assumed the burden 
 of his father's debts ; and in the autumn of 1807", Ezekiel took 
 charge of the farm on which the family had been left, and suc- 
 ceeded to the law business at Boscawen. From that time the 
 care of their mother and sisters was shared between them. In 
 September of that year, Daniel removed to Portsmouth. He 
 had been admitted as a counsellor of the Superior Court in the 
 preceding May.* 
 
 Of Mr. "Webster's political principles or his connection with 
 political affairs, down to the time of his removal to Portsmouth, 
 it is necessary to say but little, partly because his political 
 principles were very simple, and partly because his connection 
 with political affairs, before the year 1812, was less than is 
 commonly maintained by young American lawyers. I have 
 already intimated that his father, from having served under 
 Washington in the Revolution, was of that class of men who 
 deemed that they could best discharge their duty to their coun- 
 try by following in the footsteps of Washington in civil affairs. 
 These old officers of the Revolution, after their great chief had 
 retired from public life, endeavored to shape their political 
 conduct by the maxims which they believed had been incul- 
 cated in his " Farewell Address." That many of these men, 
 scattered through the country, after the formation of the polit- 
 ical parties, gravitated into the Federal party ; that they 
 tempered its counsels by their moderation and their sober pa- 
 triotism ; that they gave to its opposition to the measures of 
 
 1 The Monthly Anthology was pub- 8 His assumption of his father's 
 
 lished in Boston, from 1804 to 1811. debts continued to weigh upon him as 
 
 In the Boston Public Library there is a a heavy burden for many years. In fact, 
 
 copy of the work, in which the names he did not entirely free himself from it 
 
 of the writers are noted. The Anthology until after he removed to Boston, in 
 
 was the forerunner of the North Ameri- 181Y. (Ticknor MSS.) 
 xm Review.
 
 1806.] NEW-HAMPSHIRE FEDERALISM. 79 
 
 Government, when the Government passed into the hands of 
 their opponents, a consistent adherence to the spirit and pur- 
 poses of the Constitution, and that they prevented some of the 
 excesses to which an opposition is prone, are facts which 
 require now no formal proof. That this was eminently the 
 tone of the New-Hampshire Federalists, no one will doubt who 
 is acquainted with the political history of that State. It was in 
 that New-Hampshire school of Federal politics that Mr. TVeb- 
 ster was educated. To this circumstance, as well as to the 
 breadth and comprehensiveness of his intellect, we are to 
 ascribe the fact, that although he entered public life at a period 
 when party spirit was exceedingly virulent, he was never at 
 any time in his whole career a very warm partisan, and never 
 had any great faith in the utility of parties, while he submitted 
 to them as a necessity, and like a wise and practical statesman 
 regulated his cooperation with them as a choice between evils 
 which he could not prevent. In regard to his connection with 
 political affairs before the year 1812, after having indicated the 
 political school in which it may be said he was born and edu- 
 cated, there is little more to be said. For, although before his 
 removal to Portsmouth, he kept up an intelligent interest in 
 public affairs, and although his range of knowledge on such 
 subjects was far greater than that of most educated men at the 
 same period who were much older in years, yet his active par- 
 ticipation in politics was very slight, and his concern in the 
 management of party machinery amounted to almost nothing. 
 He* did, in 1804, at the request of his friends, when visiting his 
 father from Boston, write a political pamphlet to promote the 
 election of Governor Gilman, the candidate of the Federalists. 
 It was called " An Appeal to Old Whigs ; " being, of course, an 
 exhortation to those who had been "WTiigs in the Revolution. 
 But even then he felt no very strong party interest in his pro- 
 duction. 1 He also, as he has mentioned, delivered an oration 
 on the fourth of July, at three several times between the period 
 of his leaving college and his removal to Portsmouth. But he 
 
 1 He said of it, whimsically enough, the very few who know the author of the 
 
 a year later, " Last year I wrote a politi- ' Appeal to the Old Whigs.' Keep the 
 
 cal pamphlet in two days, which I have precious secret" (Letter to his class- 
 
 had the pleasure of seeing kicked about mate Bingham, January 19, 1806. Cor- 
 
 under many tables. But you are one of respondent*, voL L)
 
 gO LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cut. IIL 
 
 was pressed into this service more on account of his literary 
 and oratorical accomplishments, than on account of his activity 
 or zeal as a politician. None of these discourses are of any 
 importance, excepting in a literary point of view ; and, in this 
 respect, all of them that have survived exhibit the growth of 
 his power of expression and an approach to that pure and 
 vigorous English of which he afterward became so great a mas- 
 ter. But his political character should not begin to be studied 
 before he wrote the " Rockingham Memorial " in 1812, or at least 
 until the year 1808, when he published a small pamphlet on 
 the Embargo. This chapter, therefore, may be concluded with 
 what he has himself said on the subject of his connection with 
 political affairs prior to 1808 : 
 
 " I have never held office, popular or other, in the government of New 
 Hampshire. My time was always exclusively given to my profession till 
 1812, when the war commenced. I had occasionally taken part in politi- 
 cal questions, always felt an interest in elections, and contributed my part, 
 I believe, to the political ephemera of the day. Indeed, I always felt an 
 interest in political concerns. My lucubrations for the press go back, I 
 believe, to my sixteenth year. They are, or ought to be, all forgotten, at 
 least, most of them ; and all of this early period. 
 
 "When I visited my father from Boston, in January or February, 1804, 
 a severe political contest was going^ on between Governor Oilman and 
 Governor Langdon. The friends of the former, and they were my friends, 
 wanted a pamphlet, and I was pressed to write one. I did the deed, 
 I believe, at a single sitting of a winter's day and night. Among 
 other things of a similar kind, it is certainly not despicable. It is 
 called an " Appeal to Old Whigs." Like other young men, I made fourth 
 of July orations at Fryeburg, 1802 ; at Salisbury, 1805 ; at Concord, 1806, 
 which was published ; and at Portsmouth, 1812, published also. 
 
 " August, 1812, 1 wrote the ' Eockingham Memorial.' It was an anti- 
 war paper of some note in its time. I confess I am pleased to find, on 
 looking at it now, for I do not think I have read it in all the twenty 
 years that have rolled by since I wrote it, that it is of a tone and strain 
 less vulgar than such things are prone to be, 
 
 " Before this period, I think in 1808, 1 had written the little pamphlet, 
 lately rescued from oblivion, called ' Considerations on the Embargo 
 
 Laws.' " l 
 
 1 Autobiography.
 
 1807.1 REMOVAL TO PORTSMOUTH. 81 
 
 CHAPTEE IY. 
 
 1807-1813. 
 
 REMOVAL TO POKTSMOTJTH MARRIAGE THE BUCKMINSTERS MR. 
 
 JEREMIAH MASON BIRTH OF A DAUGHTER THE EMBARGO 
 P. B. K. ORATION WAR OF 1812 THE ENGLISH AND FRENCH 
 
 DECREES ROCKINGHAM MEMORIAL ELECTION TO CONGRESS 
 
 RESOLUTIONS ON THE ALLEGED REPEAL OF THE FRENCH DE- 
 CREES. 
 
 ON a Sunday morning in September, 1807, the sexton of 
 the Rev. Dr. Buckminster's church, in Portsmouth, intro- 
 duced a stranger into the minister's pew, according to the cus- 
 tom of the time. The eldest daughter of the family, on her 
 return from church, observed that " there had been a remark- 
 able person in the pew with her, that he riveted her attention, 
 and that she was sure he had a most marked character for good 
 or for evil." The stranger was Daniel Webster, at the age of 
 twenty-five. His appearance at that time has been thus de- 
 scribed, by another lady of the same family, from whom this 
 anecdote is derived : " Slender, and apparently of delicate or- 
 ganization, his large eyes and massive brow seemed very pre- 
 dominant above the other features, which were sharply cut, 
 refined, and delicate. The paleness of his complexion was 
 heightened by hair as black as the raven's wing." He took 
 lodgings very near Dr. Buckminster's house, and in a short 
 time, says the same lady, " there was no longer a problem con- 
 nected with him." 1 
 
 1 Mrs. E. Buckminster Lee. (Correspondence, i., p. 438.) 
 
 7
 
 82 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. IV. 
 
 He soon became very intimate in the family of Dr. Buck- 
 minster, who was the father of the young usher at Exeter 
 already mentioned. The younger Buckminster was now a dis- 
 tinguished clergyman in Boston, settled over the society wor- 
 shipping at the church in Brattle Street, and he was one 
 of the founders of the JZoston Anthology, to which Mr. Web- 
 ster had been a contributor during his residence at Boscawen. 
 To this association is probably to be traced the interest that 
 was immediately taken in Mr. "Webster by the Buckminster 
 family. Mrs. Lee says : 
 
 " We soon saw enough of him to appreciate in some degree, young as 
 we were, his extraordinary genius, and the noble qualities of his character. 
 The genial and exceedingly rich humor that he so often exhibited was, per- 
 haps, at this time more prized by us than any other of the diversified talents 
 we admired in him. He soon formed a circle around him, of which he 
 was the life and soul. We young people saw him only rarely, in friendly 
 visits. I well remember one afternoon that he came in, when the elders of 
 the family were absent. He sat down by the window, and, as now and 
 then an inhabitant of the small town passed through the street, his fancy 
 was caught by their appearance and his imagination excited, and he im- 
 provised the most humorous imaginary histories about them, which would 
 have furnished a rich treasure for Dickens, could he have been the delight- 
 ed listener, instead of the young girl for whose amusement this wealth of 
 invention was expended. Hon. Mr. Mason, of Portsmouth, who delighted 
 in the humor so often displayed by Mr. Webster, used to say, that ' there 
 was never such an actor lost to the stage as he would have made had he 
 chosen to turn his talents in that direction.' 
 
 " My father, Dr. Buckminster, took the liveliest interest in Mr. Webster, 
 and, as he remarked at this time the apparent frailty of his constitution, 
 he urged upon his young friend his sure remedy for slight indisposition. 
 This was half an hour of wood-sawing before breakfast, with a long two- 
 handed saw, himself holding the end opposite to that of his young friend. 
 We young people were always delighted when this strong medicine was 
 taken before breakfast, for, however disagreeable in itself, Mr. Webster 
 appeared at our breakfast, afterward, with his genial humor unimpaired." 
 
 In the following June (1808), Mr. "Webster left Portsmouth, 
 on a visit, as his friends supposed, to his native town ; and 
 without communicating to them any other intention. He re- 
 turned, bringing with him a wife. 
 
 When his matrimonial engagement was first formed does 
 aot distinctly appear, although there is a hint of it in one of
 
 1808.] MARRIAGE. 83 
 
 his letters written in the previous December : " I have been a 
 young dog long enough, and now think of joining myself, aa 
 soon as convenient, to that happy and honorable society of 
 which you are one, the society of married men. Can I do bet- 
 ter ? " * The lady was Grace Fletcher, daughter of the Rev. 
 Elijah Fletcher, of Hopkinton. 1 She had an elder sister, who 
 was the wife of Israel TV. Kelly, Esq., of Salisbury, at that 
 time sheriff of the county of Merrimack, and afterward United 
 States marshal for the district of New Hampshire. It was 
 while Miss Fletcher was on a visit to her sister that Mr. Web- 
 ster first met her, at some time in the year 1807. She was 
 at the period of her marriage at the age of twenty-seven. They 
 were married at Salisbury, June 24, 1808. 
 
 "Writing as if in the presence of the remaining few who knew 
 this lovely woman, the wife of Mr. "Webster's early days and 
 the mother of his children, I borrow, of course, the descriptions 
 of others. To me, the gentle being who shared his early for- 
 tunes, and after a union of twenty years was called away from 
 him, is not even a memory ; and it is only as her qualities were 
 said to have been reproduced in her daughter, whom IJmew, 
 that I can have her in imagination. But there is no need for 
 repetitions of what I have heard. Mrs. "Webster's character 
 can be given in the words of those who knew her during her 
 whole married life. Of these, it is needful to quote no one 
 but her own and her husband's early friend, Mrs. Lee, who, 
 in 1856, addressed to Mr. Fletcher TVebster a sketch of his 
 mother, which is printed in his father's correspondence : 
 
 " Mrs. Webster's mind was naturally of a high order, and whatever was 
 the degree of culture she received, it fitted her to be the chosen companion 
 and the trusted friend of her gifted husband. 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Fuller, Dec. 2, 1807. half-brother of Mrs. Grace Webster. He 
 5 Mrs. Webster's mother, Rebecca was one of the trustees under Mr. Web- 
 Chamberlin, married, first, the Rev. Eli- ster's will, to whom the estate at Marsh- 
 jah Fletcher, of Hopkinton. Of this mar- field was devised by Mr. Webster for the 
 riage there were four children three use of his son and grandson. He first 
 daughters and a son ; Grace being the met Mr. Webster in the year 1807, at his 
 youngest. Mrs. Fletcher again married mother's house. At that period Mr. 
 the Rev. Christopher Paige, of Hopkin- Paige's long connection with Mr. "Web- 
 ton, and bore to him three sons and a ster began, and it continued of the most 
 daughter. James W. Paige, Esq., who intimate and affectionate character to 
 became an eminent merchant in Boston, the time of Mr. Webster's death. Mr. 
 where he lately died, was the third son Paige died at his house in Summer 
 of this marriage, and was, consequently, in Boston, May 19, 1868.
 
 84 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IV 
 
 " She was sincerely and deeply religious, and to this divinely operating 
 principle was it to be attributed that she was never elated, never thrown off' 
 the balance of her habitual composure by the singular early success of her 
 husband, and the applause constantly following him. I remember a 
 remark of the Rev. Dr. Parker, of Portsmouth : ' that it was a striking 
 peculiarity of Mrs. Webster that she was always equal to all occasions ; 
 that she appeared with the same quiet dignity and composed self-posses- 
 sion in the drawing-room in Washington as in her own quiet parlor ; ' it 
 was only when an unexpected burst of applause followed some noble effort 
 of her husband, that the quickened pulse sent the blood to her heart, and 
 the tear started to her eye. Uniting with great sweetness of disposition 
 unaffected, frank, and winning manners, you will readily believe that no 
 one could approach your mother without wishing to know her ; and no 
 one could know her well without loving her. 
 
 " When Mr. Webster had brought this interesting companion to Ports- 
 mouth, the circle that gathered around them became more intimate, and 
 was held by more powerful attractions. There certainly was never a more 
 charming room than the low-roofed, simple parlor, where, relieved from 
 the cares of business, in the full gayety of his disposition, he gave himself 
 up to relaxation." 
 
 It is perhaps not given to us to know with certainty, or to 
 estimate accurately, the happiest period of any man's life, even 
 when we have been personally familiar with the whole of it. 
 But before the reader enters upon the days when Mr. Webster 
 was first drawn into the political arena, he may wish to linger 
 amid the tranquil scenes of domestic and social life which fol- 
 lowed his marriage, and filled his residence at Portsmouth with 
 a more than ordinary share of human felicity. All accounts 
 concur in representing this as a period of great happiness for 
 him and his. He himself speaks of those Portsmouth years, 
 long after they had flown and he had tasted the sweets of fame 
 and public honors, as " very happy years ; " and the testimony 
 of two of his most intimate friends, who saw him in the enjoy- 
 ments of this portion of his life I refer to Mr. Ticknor and 
 Mrs. Lee is like his own. The elements which made up that 
 happiness were very large. His health was now firmly estab- 
 lished. His professional position soon became every thing that 
 the condition of society in his native State could hold out to 
 any man. He had gathered about him ample means of further 
 intellectual culture ; he was surrounded by a circle of intelli- 
 gent and admiring friends; his great powers were expanding
 
 180Y.] PORTSMOUTH HAPPINESS. 85 
 
 with the discipline of his daily avocations ; the approbation and 
 affection of his fellow-citizens followed him without check ; he 
 had known no affliction greater than the loss of his father, 1 and 
 his domestic life had become complete. Within two years 
 after his marriage, a daughter was born, who received her moth- 
 er's name. She was a child of uncommon intelligence and 
 beauty, constantly in request among the friends of her parents, 
 and long remembered among them as are the early developed 
 and the early lost. As yet, that sorrow had not darkened his 
 house, and this little girl was among its attractions. 
 
 In Mr. Ticknor's Reminiscences of Mr. Webster, I find the 
 following passage relating to this period : 
 
 " Between 1809 and 1814, 1 was frequently in Portsmouth, visiting my 
 friend, Mr. K A. Haven, Jr. I always saw Mr. Webster on these occasions, 
 dining with him at his own house and elsewhere, and meeting him often 
 in the evening. Sometimes I saw him at his office. He seemed busy, but 
 was always ready for cheerful conversation ; and loved to tell humorous 
 stories of his college-life. His office was a common, ordinary-looking 
 room, with less furniture and more books than common. He had a small 
 inner room, opening from the larger, rather an unusual thing. When I 
 first saw him there, he lived in a small, modest, wooden housej which 
 was burned hi the great fire in 1813. His parlor was a bright and cheer- 
 ful room. I remember how proud and fond he seemed of little Grace, his 
 first child, as she sat by the fire with her book ; a child of uncommor 
 intelligence, with a brilliant red and white complexion, and deep-set eyes, 
 and hair as black as her father's. He seemed very happy. He ha'i 
 grown a little stouter than he was when I first saw him, and had a more 
 commanding air ; but he was always animated, and sometimes full of fun. 
 After the fire he had a somewhat better house ; that, I think, was behind 
 Dr. Buckrninster's Church. Mrs. Webster was pleasing and animated, and 
 her manner to the friends of her husband, and to us young men, was very 
 kind and cordial." a 
 
 To those who have known Mr. Webster only in public, or 
 who remember only the stately manner of his ordinary inter- 
 course with men, it is difficult to give an idea of the genial 
 affections which at every period of his life flowed out from him 
 in the domestic circle, and still more difficult to paint the 
 
 1 His sister Sarah, who was nearer years after he removed to Portsmouth, 
 his own age than any other member of This loss, therefore, I do not consider aa 
 his family, and to whom he was tenderly falling within the period particularly ad- 
 attached, died in a little more than four verted to in the text. * JiSS.
 
 86 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IV. 
 
 abounding gayety and humor and fascination of his early days, 
 the eloquence of his unrestrained conversation, and the influ- 
 ence of his personal presence. Yet it is upon these character- 
 istics, more than upon the manifestations of his great public or 
 professional talents, that the reminiscences of his early friends 
 have always dwelt. I can scarcely open one of the numerous 
 communications that are before me from those who knew him 
 as a young man, that does not speak with peculiar zeal of his 
 social powers. It seems as if they felt that the world has set 
 its seal upon all that was great in his genius and majestic in 
 his deportment and character, or imposing in his intellectual 
 achievements and public services, yet that there was a charm, a 
 grace, a perfume in his social existence, which they fear the 
 world has not known, and of which they bear their testimony 
 more fondly than of all things else that cluster about his 
 name. 
 
 In Portsmouth, Mr. Webster entered at once into a profes- 
 sional practice that brought him in contact with the first law- 
 yers of that bar. He was soon engaged as leading counsel on 
 one or the other side of nearly every important cause in several 
 of the counties of New Hampshire ; he and a few others of the 
 principal members of the Portsmouth bar following the Supe- 
 rior Court on its circuit through the State. Among these was 
 that extraordinary man, of whom little is now known, beyond 
 the borders of New England, by the active generations of 
 American lawyers ; but to whose acute and powerful mind, 
 through the discipline of opposing conflicts at the bar and the 
 associations of an intimate friendship, Mr. Webster has impres- 
 sively recorded his own obligations, as he always acknowledged 
 them in private conversation. This was Mr. Jeremiah Mason, 
 who was by fourteen years Mr. Webster's senior, and who was 
 the admitted head of the legal profession in New Hampshire, 
 when Mr. Webster went to Portsmouth, as he was also one of 
 the greatest lawyers that New England has ever produced. 
 Since it was my fortune to have known both of these very emi- 
 nent persons, to have heard them repeatedly at the bar, and to 
 have conversed with each of them respecting the other, I may, 
 before quoting what Mr. Webster has written concerning Mr 
 Mason, express my sense of its entire justness.
 
 1808.] MR. JEREMIAH MASON. 87 
 
 In stature, Mr. Mason, in the prime of life, stood six feet and 
 seven inches. His frame was proportionately massive ; his 
 movements were slow and deliberate ; and, as if from the incon- 
 venience of always towering above the majority of mankind, 
 he had a habit of stooping a good deal. This peculiarity, and 
 an absence of most of the external signs of great mental exer- 
 tion, made him often appear like a man who did not choose to 
 put forth more than half of his natural strength of body or of 
 mind. His countenance was almost as heavy as that of Dr. 
 Johnson ; while in the grasp of his intellect, in his sententious 
 wisdom, and in a certain contempt for every thing that was 
 not absolutely true when measured by the severest standards, 
 he was not unlike that celebrated person. His head did not 
 appear to be large, in comparison with the majestic propor- 
 tions of his body ; and the forehead, contrary to the usual rule 
 in men of great intellect, was somewhat retreating. A stranger, 
 seeing him in public, seated in a posture which denoted an ap- 
 parent sluggishness of temperament, might have taken him for 
 a dull man, if the constant watchfulness of his eyes had not 
 revealed the unceasing alertness and activity of his mind. As 
 his imposing form rose slowly, and he straightened himself by 
 degrees to as great a height as he ever permitted himself to at- 
 tain, all doubt as to what he was, or what he was about to do, 
 vanished from the spectator's thoughts, when the first words 
 reached his ears. He had no rhetoric whatever. He used no 
 gestures. His pronunciation was quaint, sometimes provin- 
 cial ; but his choice of language was unerring. He disdained 
 every ornament but the ornament of perfect clearness. His 
 discourse was the embodiment of pure reason, the expression of 
 an irresistible logic. When he dealt with evidence, he made it 
 crush the intellect of his hearer into conviction. "WTien he dealt 
 with principles of law, he handled them with such a simplicity, 
 and made them so lucid, and fitted them so exactly to his case, 
 that one could scarcely avoid believing that, if on the particular 
 occasion he was wrong, the law itself had always been wrong. 
 
 He was, indeed, a consummate master of the common law. 
 In the other parts of jurisprudence, he was not what would be 
 accounted very learned ; at least, there were many men of his 
 time who knew more of what the books contained, in several
 
 to LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IV. 
 
 of the departments of legal lore. But lie was always sufficiently 
 furnished to do justice to any cause that lie undertook, and he 
 brought to every cause in which he saw fit to engage a power 
 of reasoning and of discrimination, and a depth of insight, that 
 made him a most formidable adversary. He once accepted a 
 seat in the Senate of the United States, where he served from 
 1813 to 1817, and where his great abilities, his wise counsels, 
 and elevated character gave him a large influence. Being a 
 Federalist, and a change of parties having taken place in the 
 State, he was not reflected. He returned to the practice of 
 his profession in New Hampshire, and to the enjoyments of a 
 private station, in which he was widely known as the most emi- 
 nent citizen of the State. In 1832, at the age of sixty-four, he 
 removed to Boston, where he commanded a large practice in 
 the courts for a period of about six years. At the end of that 
 time, having accumulated such fortune as he deemed needful, 
 he retired from the more active duties of his profession, and 
 lived to the age of eighty, with dignity and ease, with all his 
 faculties unimpaired, and imparting to those who had the ad 
 vantages of his society the fruits of his singular wisdom and 
 sagacity, which touched with equal power every public ques- 
 tion and every private interest. He died on the 14th of Octo- 
 ber, 1848. 
 
 Of this great antagonist of his early professional career 
 and of this friend with whom he never had a moment's personal 
 difference, Mr. "Webster made a record in his Autobiography, 
 which he was well aware would remain private while either of 
 them lived, but which he intended should stand as his deliber- 
 ate judgment. It was written nearly twenty years before Mr. 
 Mason's death ; but it is well known that Mr. "Webster never 
 changed the estimate which he then so carefully placed on 
 record, as I am confident that he never could have had subse- 
 quent reason for changing it : l 
 
 1 In a playful letter, written by Mr. my bones yet, and don't care about 
 
 Webster to Mr. Mason, in 1830, from any more till that wears out." The 
 
 Washington, he says : " I have been profound respect of these great men 
 
 written to, to go to New Hampshire, for each other was founded in their in- 
 
 to try a cause against you next August, tellectual equality. Mr. Mason never 
 
 ... If it were an easy and plain case suppressed his contempt when he felt it. 
 
 n our side, I might be willing to go ; One of his Portsmouth neighbors was 
 
 but I have some of your pounding in accustomed to say, that he had often
 
 1807-16.] MR. JEREMIAH MASON. 89 
 
 " I lived in Portsmouth nine years, wanting one month. They were 
 very happy years. Circumstances favored me at my first beginning there. 
 Owing to several occurrences, there happened to be an unfilled place 
 among leading counsel at that bar. I did not fill it ; but I succeeded to 
 it. It so happened, and so has happened, that, with the exception of 
 instances in which I have been associated with the Attorney-General of 
 the United States, for the time being, I have hardly ten times in my life 
 acted as junior counsel. Once or twice with Mr. Mason, and once or 
 twice with Mr. Prescott, 1 once with Mr. Hopkinson,* are all the cases which 
 occur to me. 
 
 " Indeed, for the nine years I lived in Portsmouth, Mr. Mason and my- 
 self, in the counties where we both practised, were on opposite sides, pretty 
 much as a matter of course. He has been of infinite advantage to me, not 
 only by his unvarying friendship, but by the many good lessons he has 
 taught, and the example he set me in the commencement of my career. 
 If there be in the country a stronger intellect, if there be a mind of more 
 native resources, if there be a vision that sees quicker, or sees deeper into 
 whatever is intricate, or whatsoever is profound, I must confess I have not 
 known it. I have not written this paragraph without considering what it 
 implies. I look to that individual, who, if it belong to anybody, is en- 
 titled to be an exception. But I deliberately let the judgment stand. 
 That that individual has much more habit of regular composition, that he 
 has been disciplined and exercised in a vastly superior school, that he pos- 
 sesses even a faculty of illustration more various and more easy, I think 
 may be admitted. That the original reach of his mind is greater, that its 
 grasp is stronger, that its logic is closer, I do not allow." 
 
 The person with whom Mr. Webster here intended to com- 
 pare Mr. Mason was Chief-Justice Marshall. When this is 
 known, and it is recollected that, from the age of twenty-five, 
 for a period of nine years, Mr. Webster was in almost daily con- 
 flict with the professional adversary whom he thus described, 
 it is not difficult for us to appreciate the nature of the training. 
 Mr. Mason compelled, in those who had to meet him, the ut- 
 most diligence of preparation, and the utmost vigilance in the 
 trial of their causes. To be lacking in any thing that study of 
 the case could have insured, or to relax the attention, where lie 
 was the opponent, was certain defeat. Mr. Mason, too, was in 
 
 heard him speak of persons of very high This refers to the Dartmouth College 
 
 consideration in the country as " little case, in which Mr. Webster, in one sense, 
 
 ," and " little ; " but that he acted as " junior," that is, he opened 
 
 never heard him say " little Webster." the cause, and Mr. Hopkinson closed it. 
 
 1 The Hon. William Prescott, father But the opening argument, as not infre- 
 
 of the historian. quently happens, was the decisive one. 
 
 * Joseph Hopkinson, of Philadelphia. This occurred in 1818.
 
 90 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IV. 
 
 himself a study for a young man educated as Mr. Webster had 
 been ; for, although there was much in his manner that might 
 be observed and avoided, there was also that which could be 
 noted to advantage. I well recollect a description Mr. "Web- 
 ster once gave me, of a change which he said he deliberately 
 made in his own style of speaking and writing. He observed 
 that, before he went to Portsmouth, his style was florid he 
 even used the word " vicious " and that he was apt to make 
 longer sentences and to use larger words than were needful. 
 He soon began, however, to notice that Mr. Mason was, as he 
 expressed it, "a cause-getting man." " He had a habit," said 
 Mr. "Webster, " of standing quite near to the jury, so near that 
 he might have laid his finger on the foreman's nose ; and then 
 he talked to them in a plain conversational way, in short sen- 
 tences, and using no word that was not level to the comprehen- 
 sion of the least educated man on the panel. This led mo 
 to examine my own style, and I set about reforming it alto 
 gether." 
 
 As we are now arrived at the period when Mr. Webster 
 began to take a more active interest in political questions than 
 he had previously exhibited, it will be necessary to describe 
 briefly the condition of public affairs, the situation of the peo- 
 ple who subsequently proffered him a seat in Congress, and 
 their and his relation to the public questions of the time. 
 
 During the European wars which followed the French 
 Revolution, "Washington had with difficulty preserved this 
 country in an attitude of neutrality, and in that attitude had 
 handed it over to his successor in the presidency, the elder 
 Adams. Through the administration of the latter, commencing 
 in 1797 and ending in 1801, the two political parties, known in 
 our subsequent history as the Federalists and the Democrats, 
 had become perfectly well defined ; * and the triumph of the 
 latter, in the election of Mr. Jefferson, established them as the 
 
 1 In the political nomenclature of that tendencies of some of the leading Fed- 
 period, the party which elected Mr. Jef- eralists. But the term " Democrats " 
 fersou President of the United States was that by which this party were usu- 
 were at first called " Republicans," and ally distinguished at the time of Mr. Web- 
 Mr. Jefferson himself always adhered ster's entrance into public life, and this 
 to this designation. It was originally term will accordingly be used in the 
 idopted for the purpose of expressing present work, 
 opposition to the supposed monarchical
 
 1807.] EXGLISH AND FREXCH DECREES. 91 
 
 governing party of the country for the long period of sixteen 
 years. Mr. Jefferson's administration, beginning in 1801 and 
 ending in 1809, commenced about two years before the gigantic 
 war which England waged against Bonaparte from 1803 to 
 1815, and which extended to the middle of Mr. Madison's 
 second presidency ; Mr. Madison having succeeded Mr. Jeffer- 
 son in 1809, and going out of office in 1817. Mr. Jefferson, 
 therefore, was President of the United States when Mr. "Web- 
 ster, in 1807, became a citizen of a town on the coast of New 
 England, the people of which were largely engaged in mari- 
 time commerce, and warmly sympathized in the political opin- 
 ions then in vogue in most of the commercial towns of that 
 region. These opinions were chiefly those of the Federalists. 
 The bearing, upon the interests of these communities, of the 
 events which were then taking place in Europe and which 
 strongly affected the relations of this country with the two 
 great antagonist powers then struggling for an exclusive con- 
 trol of the ocean, makes it needful to recall the precise attitude 
 in which their measures had placed our commerce, at the 
 moment when, in 1807, it was arrested by the Embargo. 
 
 On the 16th of May, 1806, the British Government in 
 retaliation for the previous occupation of Hanover by the 
 troops of Prussia, a country then under the control of Bona- 
 parte, and in consequence of the exclusion of British ships from 
 Prussian ports by an Order in Council, declared the coasts of 
 Prussia in a state of blockade, and also declared another block- 
 ade of the coasts of the Channel from Ostend to the mouth of 
 the Seine. Napoleon's counter-Decree, issued from Berlin, 
 November 21, 1806, placed the British Islands in a state of 
 blockade, prohibited all commerce and communication with 
 them, and declared that no vessel coming directly from Eng- 
 land or any of her colonies, or touching there after the publica- 
 tion of the decree, should be received into any French harbor. 
 This was followed, on the part of England, by another Order in 
 Council, issued January 7, 1807, excluding all neutral vessels 
 from trade with any port belonging to France or her allies, 
 from which British vessels were excluded. 
 
 Then came another Order in Council, dated November 11, 
 1807, which declared all ports and places of France and her
 
 92 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Co. IV. 
 
 allies, from which the British flag was excluded, as subject to 
 the same restrictions, in respect of trade and navigation, as if 
 actually blockaded in the most strict and vigorous manner, and 
 prohibited all trade in articles the produce or manufacture of 
 such countries or colonies. Finally, this series of violent mani- 
 festoes was made complete, by the famous Milan Decree, issued 
 by Bonaparte, December 17, 1807, by which every vessel, of 
 whatever nation, that should have submitted to be searched by 
 British cruisers, was declared to have lost the neutral char- 
 acter ; every neutral vessel sailing between British ports, with 
 any species of cargo, was declared to be good prize ; and these 
 rigorous measures were to be continued toward every neutral 
 nation, until it had caused England to respect the rights of 
 its flag. 
 
 These stupendous assumptions of a power which the public 
 law gave to neither of the belligerents, operated more inju- 
 riously upon the commerce of the United States than upon 
 that of any other country in the world. In fact, we were then 
 almost the only carrying nation that was not directly or indi- 
 rectly a party to the war ; and we had, in consequence, ever 
 since it began, possessed a large part of the carrying trade of 
 the globe. We were thus reduced to the dilemma of being 
 driven from the seas, or of compelling one or both of the belli- 
 gerents to recede from their unwarrantable positions. Which 
 of them was originally or was most in the wrong ; against 
 which it was our policy to fight, or to which it was expedient 
 to lean ; and what were the measures, short of actual war, that 
 ought to be adopted by us, were the questions on which our 
 political parties differed from the moment when our commerce 
 began to feel the effects of a contest that involved every part 
 of the European world and nearly every colonial dependency 
 of a European power. Many of the commercial classes in this 
 country naturally felt that the aggressions of France and the 
 ambition of Bonaparte had originally created this enormous 
 disturbance in the relations of nations ; and they as naturally 
 believed that affairs were not to be improved by our siding 
 with France against England. In the Eastern States, the com- 
 mercial towns were generally the political strongholds of the 
 Federalists; and the Federalists had been, from the first, dis-
 
 1807.] TENDENCIES TO WAR WITH ENGLAND. 93 
 
 trustful of a French alliance, opposed to the schemes of Bona- 
 parte, and desirous to have our difficulties with England accom- 
 modated, upon principles that would at once save our national 
 rights and prevent us from becoming absorbed into the vortex 
 of European politics and wars. 
 
 But the Federalists were in a political minority in the 
 country. The nation at large, whether from the effect of its 
 old contest with England, or from the sympathies awakened by 
 the early experiment of the French to possess and live under 
 republican institutions, did not decidedly recoil from the abso- 
 lute and despotic power which the empire subsequently estab- 
 lished both over France and over a large part of Europe ; and 
 perhaps nothing was ever more skilfully done, than when the 
 founder of that empire, in launching his final bolt against 
 England, warned the people of this country that, if they desired 
 to see the day when their rights as neutrals would be again 
 respected, they must extort their admission from England, but 
 that from him, until they had done this, they had nothing to 
 expect. 
 
 Some occurrences between this country and England, which 
 had happened or were happening when the full consequences 
 of these measures began to be felt on this side of the Atlantic, 
 largely contributed to the effect which Bonaparte expected to 
 produce. In June, 1807, the causeless attack on the Chesa- 
 peake by the Leopard, off the capes of Virginia, had filled the 
 whole country with indignation against the English, at a mo- 
 ment when our people were most excited by the pretension of 
 a right to search our vessels for British seamen and deserters. 
 Mr. Jefferson at once sent orders to the American ministers in 
 England to demand reparation for the outrage on the Chesa- 
 peake; and on the 2d of July he issued his proclamation 
 excluding British vessels-of-war from the waters of the United 
 States. He summoned Congress, in an extraordinary session, 
 to meet on the 26th of October. In the mean time, both 
 Napoleon's Berlin Decree of November 21, 1806, and the Eng- 
 lish Order in Council of January 7, 1807, were in operation ; 
 but when Mr. Jefferson sent his message to Congress, at the 
 opening of the special session, in consequence of the more 
 direct and immediate aggressions of the English upon our com-
 
 94 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cu. IV. 
 
 mercial rights and the recent affair of the Chesapeake, he 
 directed the attention of that body almost exclusively to the 
 complaints which we had to make against Great Britain ; and, 
 taking severe notice of her late interdiction of all trade by neu- 
 trals between ports not in amity with her, he mentioned the 
 French Decree of November 21, 1806, incidentally only, as a 
 document that had already been laid before Congress. The 
 consequence was, that our grievances against England, and the 
 measures proper to be adopted in relation to them, formed the 
 chief topic of popular excitement, at the time when intelligence 
 of the still more stringent Order in Council of November 11, 
 1807", was received at Washington, and when the President, 
 by his message of December 18, 1807, recommended the Em- 
 bargo. This recommendation, which was made one day be- 
 fore the date of Napoleon's Milan Decree, together with the 
 pending controversies with England, gave to the Embargo tlie 
 appearance of a measure directed against the latter power ; 
 when, in truth, it was claimed by the Administration to be 
 necessary to prevent the departure of our vessels from our own 
 ports, in order to save our commerce from exposure to the 
 depredations of both the belligerents. The bill, laying an 
 indefinite embargo on all vessels in the ports of the United 
 States, was promptly carried through Congress, and became a 
 law on the 22d of December, 1807. 
 
 No measure of the Federal Government, since the adoption 
 of the Constitution, had ever appeared, to most of those on 
 whose interests it directly operated, so sudden, so unnecessary, 
 and so oppressive, as the Embargo. It fell upon the Eastern 
 States with a terrific weight. Six towns in New England pos- 
 sessed more than a third of the tonnage of the whole Union. 
 At one blow, this great mass of shipping was rendered almost; 
 valueless. The numerous classes, who were dependent on its 
 active employment for their livelihood, were suddenly deprived 
 of their long-accustomed means of earning their daily bread. 
 When we consider the conflicting opinions that had prevailed 
 for years concerning the policy that ought to be pursued by our 
 Government toward the respective belligerents ; when we re- 
 member that, on the laying of the Embargo, one portion of 
 the people felt called upon to justify a measure that inflicted
 
 1808.] THE EMBARGO. 95 
 
 unparalleled suffering- upon another portion ; when we recall 
 the new, and then singular question, whether a constitutional 
 power to regulate commerce embraces a power to indefinitely 
 inhibit it in short, when we endeavor to estimate all the 
 elements of agitation and excitement that then pervaded our 
 politics, we shall have no cause for being surprised at the angry 
 crimination of parties, as we can have, in truth, no reason for 
 assuming that all the right, or all the wrong, was on either 
 side. It is easy to arraign the Federalist or the Democrat of 
 that period, if we choose to identify ourselves with his opponent. 
 But we shall find, if we survey such periods with impartiality, 
 that, even in times of difficulty and danger, the call of patriot- 
 ism will not always make men endure patiently the destruction 
 of all their pecuniary interests, when they firmly believe that 
 other measures might have been adopted to avert the injury ; 
 and that, when other men have fixed opinions that the measures 
 of Government are necessary and right, they will inevitably 
 erect .a very high and exacting standard of patriotism, by which 
 they will require the sufferers to restrain their opposition to 
 measures which they themselves uphold. In such a state of 
 things, there will be excesses on both sides. It is the part of a 
 wise posterity, in looking back to the political contests of a for- 
 mer generation, not to disregard the possibility of error that be- 
 longs to human nature, whatever may have been the badges that 
 it wore, or the political classification under which it was known. 
 It has already been said that Mr. "Webster's public charac- 
 ter should not be considered as beginning at least before the 
 year 1808, when he published a small pamphlet on the Em- 
 bargo. This production appeared at a period when the restric- 
 tions imposed by Congress upon the commerce of the country 
 were without limitation in point of time, and when it was suf- 
 fering from a paralysis, for which no prospect of relief could 
 be discerned in the apparent policy of the Administration. The 
 topics discussed by Mr. "Webster related to the distinction, in 
 point of constitutional power, between an unlimited and a 
 limited Embargo ; the real and the ostensible causes of the 
 present one, and the ruinous effects which it had produced. 1 
 
 1 1 do not discover why Mr. Webster But it may be conjectured that, as many 
 did not put his name to this pamphlet, of the Republican or Democratic party,
 
 96 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. IV. 
 
 For some time after the publication of this pamphlet, Mr. 
 Webster does not seem to have taken any active part in politi- 
 cal discussions, nor did he appear before the public in any 
 capacity until 1812, excepting as an orator of the P. B. K. 
 Society of Dartmouth, in the summer of 1809 a purely liter- 
 ary occasion. I take from Mr. Ticknor's Reminiscences the 
 following brief notice of this performance : 
 
 " In 1809 I was at Hanover, when Mr. "Webster went there to deliver 
 his Phi Beta Kappa oration. Mrs. "Webster, Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah 
 Mason, and several other friends, were with him. They made a very merry 
 party. Some of them stayed at the Olcotts', and others at Dr. Smith's. 
 They were objects of great interest in the village through the whole time 
 they remained there. Mr. Webster's manner in speaking was very fine 
 fresh, earnest, and impressive (I was then eighteen years old) ; his oration 
 was very much admired and praised ; but it seemed to me, at the time, 
 that the excitement he created and the homage he received were due 
 rather to their affection for the man, and their great admiration of him, 
 than to the merit of that particular performance." 
 
 The original manuscript of this discourse now lies before 
 me, just as it was written on the journey from Portsmouth to 
 Hanover ; for, in truth, Mr. Webster had accepted the engage- 
 ment in the midst of a very busy professional practice, and, 
 when he left Portsmouth, he had scarcely put pen to paper. 
 The oration was written at the inns on the journey, although 
 composed, doubtless, as was his frequent custom, during the 
 drive of each day. It bears the marks of this haste, and, apart 
 from the manner in which it was delivered, it was certainly, 
 on the whole, as Mr. Ticknor intimates, not a very remark- 
 able performance. But it contained touches of the power 
 which afterward became so characteristic, and which has pre- 
 served so many of his written discourses after all the adventi- 
 tious accompaniments of the occasion and the delivery have 
 
 in New England as well as elsewhere, friendly or unfriendly motives I do not 
 bad already begun to waver in their know, or in what way it had been " res- 
 political faith in the propriety of this cued." The only copy of it that I have 
 measure, it may have been thought ex- seen is in the Library of the Massachu- 
 pedient to furnish them with arguments setts Historical Society, which is one of 
 without indicating that they came from the original impression. The opinions 
 a Federal source. In his Autobiography, expressed in it, concerning the uncon- 
 he speaks of it as " the little pamphlet, stitutional character of an embargo, not 
 lately rescued from oblivion." Whether limited in duration, Mr. Webster nevet 
 it was then (1830) brought forward with changed.
 
 1309.] ORATION AT DARTMOUTH. 97 
 
 been long separated from their text. The subject which he 
 selected was the " State of our Literature." After adverting 
 to the fact that neither our own country nor the age was dis- 
 tinguished by uncommon literary zeal, he entered upon a dis- 
 cussion of the causes which then impeded the cultivation of 
 letters and science in America. The following passage, in 
 which he answered what was then a domestic apology for the 
 prevailing " apathy in the pursuit of literary and scientific 
 objects," may be quoted ; for it reminds us of the great 
 thoughts that were afterward so imposingly developed in his 
 Plymouth discourse : 
 
 "It has indeed been said that America is yet too young to imbibe an 
 ardor for letters ; that she can hardly expect even works of mediocrity, 
 for years yet to come ; that seven centuries from the foundation of Rome 
 were scarcely sufficient to produce Horace and Virgil, Hortensius and 
 Cicero ; that when as many years have rolled by, from the landing of our 
 fathers, as from Romulus to Augustus, we may then expect great poets, 
 orators, and historians. No reasons from analogy can apply among 
 nations so entirely dissimilar. Rome set out in the career of national ex- 
 istence completely barbarous. She got up out of her cradle an infant 
 savage, with all the wolf in her blood. She was profoundly ignorant of 
 first elements. She began at her alphabet. America, on the contrary, 
 commenced her existence at a time when the sources of knowledge were 
 unfolded, and the human mind was bounding forward in the path of im- 
 provement. Her first colonists were scholars. Raleigh, Smith, Penn, 
 Robinson, are not names found in the first page of Roman history. No 
 nation can trace so certain and so honorable an ancestry as America. It 
 runs not back to clans of ravishers and robbers, nor to the lair of the 
 foster-mother of Romulus. Nor is it enveloped in feudal ignorance or 
 Druidical mystery. It is the plantation of enlightened men, from the best- 
 informed nations of Europe, in a new country, who were anxious to strew 
 the seeds of knowledge at the birth and beginning of their republic." 
 
 This extract is sufficient to enable the reader to mark the 
 period when Mr. "Webster had acquired the style for which he 
 was distinguished through life. The short, pregnant sentences, 
 the choice and expressive words, the rejection of superfluous 
 phrases, are here as conspicuous as they are in any thing that 
 he ever wrote. 1 
 
 1 In some rough notes written by Mr. hardly put pen to paper when 1 left 
 
 Webster in 1831, for the use of a friend, Boscawen [Portsmouth] to deliver it. 
 
 I find the following, relating to this ora- Much was written on the road, and many 
 
 tion : " As far as I remember, I had things were conned over and delivered 
 
 8
 
 98 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IV 
 
 The period which, intervened between 1809 and 1812 was, 
 as I have already said, exclusively devoted by Mr. Webster to 
 the practice of his profession. But the year 1812 brought with 
 it a great change in the situation of the country, and a com- 
 munity like that of Portsmouth could not leave such a man as 
 Mr. Webster in the occupations and enjoyments of private life. 
 In June of that year, on the recommendation of Mr. Madison, 
 then President of the United States, Congress had declared 
 war against England a war which the supporters of the 
 Administration had long regarded as inevitable and necessary, 
 but which their opponents had as steadily sought to avert. 
 The Embargo, which commenced in 1807 under Mr. Jefferson, 
 had produced no effect on the course of England and France 
 toward the neutral commerce of the United States. It was 
 relaxed in 1809, in respect to our trade with other countries ; 
 but against England and France a system of the strictest non- 
 intercourse was substituted for it, by an act passed on the 1st 
 of March, 1809, which was to continue until the end of the 
 next session of Congress. It was announced, in this law, that 
 in case either England or France should so revoke or modify 
 her edicts as that they should cease to violate the neutral com- 
 merce of the United States, the President was authorized to 
 reopen the trade with the nation so doing, by proclamation. 
 
 The position thus taken involved us in such a way in the 
 dealings of the two belligerents with each other, in respect to 
 their injurious edicts, that France was enabled to exercise over 
 our course, by her menaces, her flattery, and her duplicity, a 
 far greater influence than should ever have been permitted to 
 her. As soon as Napoleon heard of our Non-intercourse Act 
 of March 1, 1809, he immediately seized and sequestered all 
 the American vessels then in France, with their cargoes, by 
 way, as he said, of reprisal. Congress then modified the 
 authority given to the President, by a new act passed on the 
 1st of May, 1810, which provided that, in case either Great 
 Britain or France should, before the 3d of March, 1811, so 
 
 which were never written at all. I have find any distinct allusion to the press, 
 
 turned down two leaves and marked but I presume Mr. Webster referred to a 
 
 short passages. I find, on one of them, passage in which he introduced a vigor- 
 
 a good round abuse of the press, which ous denunciation of the corrupting effect 
 
 it may be prudent to omit." I do not of party politics.
 
 1810.] CONDUCT OF FRANCE. 99 
 
 revoke or modify her edicts as that they would cease to violate 
 the neutral commerce of the "United States, the President might 
 declare the fact by proclamation ; and that, if the other nation 
 did not do the same thing within three months thereafter, the 
 President might put the Non-intercourse Act in force against 
 her. A copy of this law was immediately forwarded to the 
 American minister in Paris, and he was instructed to say to 
 the French Government that they now had an opportunity, by 
 repealing their edicts as to the United States, to see the latter 
 put their Non-intercourse Act in force against England, in order 
 to compel her to abandon her Orders in Council. At the same 
 time, our minister was directed to combine, with his application 
 for a repeal of the French Decrees, a demand for restitution of 
 the American property that had been sequestered in France. 
 
 Napoleon adroitly seized upon this overture. On the 5th of 
 August, 1810, his foreign secretary wrote to our minister, that 
 as Congress had now retraced their steps, and had opened 
 the trade of France to American ports, and engaged to oppose 
 whichever of the belligerent powers that should refuse to 
 acknowledge the rights of neutrals, he was authorized to, de- 
 clare the Decrees of Berlin and Milan revoked, and that after the 
 1st of the ensuing November they would cease to have effect ; 
 it being understood, he added, that, in consequence of this 
 declaration, the English should revoke their Orders in Council 
 and renounce the new principles of blockade which they had 
 wished to establish, or that the United States, conformably to 
 their Non-intercourse Act, should cause their rights to be re- 
 spected by the English. He further expressed the satisfaction 
 of the Emperor in making known this determination, and added 
 that His Majesty loved the Americans, and that their prosperity 
 and their commerce were within the scope of his policy. But 
 no copy of any repealing decree was furnished to the Ameri- 
 can minister, and he consequently could not enable his col- 
 league in London to exhibit to the British Government any 
 thing but the conditional and equivocal French note of August 
 5, 1810. As late as the 7th of September, all that could be 
 further drawn from the French secretary was, that the Berlin 
 and Milan Decrees would not be applied to American vessels, 
 if they could be considered as American, but that they would
 
 100 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ce. IV 
 
 be treated as hostile if they had submitted to be visited by 
 British cruisers under the Orders in Council. 
 
 But the British Government did not consider that this pro- 
 ceeding could be made the ground for exacting from them a 
 repeal of their Orders in Council, in compliance with a promise 
 which they had previously given to repeal them, when satisfied 
 of the revocation of the French Decrees. They construed the 
 French declaration in one of the ways of which it was certainly 
 susceptible, namely, as a conditional revocation ; the condition 
 being, as they viewed it, that, before the French Decrees should 
 cease to operate, Great Britain must have repealed her Orders 
 in Council, and also must have renounced those principles of 
 blockade which the French alleged to be new. They said that 
 the United States could not be warranted in putting their 
 Non-intercourse Act in force against England, and not against 
 France, under such a condition as France had now added to the 
 American claim. 
 
 At home, the President, relying on the French declaration, 
 on the 2d of November, 1810, issued his proclamation, an- 
 nouncing that the French Decrees had been so revoked as to 
 cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States, and 
 declaring our trade open with France and her dependencies. 
 On the same day the collectors of the customs throughout the 
 Union were instructed to put the Non-intercourse Act in force, 
 after the 2d of the ensuing February, against British vessels, 
 and all the productions of Great Britain and her dependencies, 
 if the revocation of the English Orders in Council had not in 
 the mean time been announced. When informed of this step, 
 Napoleon did nothing more than to direct his prize courts to 
 suspend the further execution of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, 
 in the cases of American vessels, until the 2d of February, but 
 to hold the American prizes in a state of sequestration until 
 that day. His cruisers were not directed to cease making 
 captures of American property sailing in contravention of his 
 decrees. The Emperor reserved to himself to determine, on 
 the 2d of February, " with regard to the definitive measures to 
 be taken for distinguishing and favoring the American navi' 
 gation." 
 
 While these things were taking place in France and ID
 
 1811.] WAR WITH ENGLAND. 101 
 
 America, our minister in London, Mr. Pinckney, was engaged 
 in claiming from the English ministry a repeal of their Orders 
 in Council, upon the ground of the French declaration of Au- 
 gust 5, 1810, and was receiving in substance the answer 
 which has already been recapitulated. This discussion lasted 
 from the middle of August, 1810, until the last of February, 
 1811, when Mr. Pinckney, convinced that nothing could be 
 done, asked for an audience of leave from the Prince Regent, 
 which was granted on the 1st of March, and he prepared to 
 return home. But, before his departure, the appointment of 
 Mr. Foster as minister plenipotentiary to the United States 
 was announced to him, with the intimation, however, that Mr. 
 Foster, while instructed to adjust, if possible, all matters of 
 difference with the United States, would not be authorized to 
 relinquish any of the principles on which the British Govern- 
 ment held it to be impossible for them to repeal their Orders 
 in Council under the conditions which they understood , to 
 have been dictated by France. They desired, they said, to re- 
 linquish those orders whenever it could be done without involv- 
 ing the sacrifice of their essential maritime rights and interests. 
 Meanwhile, in the absence of satisfactory proof that the 
 French Decrees had been repealed, more than twenty-five 
 American vessels, with their cargoes, were condemned by the 
 English Admiralty Court, in May and June of that year (1811), 
 for violation of the Orders in Council. Other occurrences 
 tended to increase the popular irritation against England on 
 this side of the Atlantic. In May, a conflict took place be- 
 tween our frigate the President and the British cruiser the 
 Little Belt. This affair was the counterpart of that of the 
 Chesapeake and the Leopard ; but, in this instance, the superi- 
 ority of force was on our side, and the combat grew out of an 
 attempt by our frigate to ascertain the nationality of the Little 
 Belt. "When, therefore, Mr. Foster arrived in "Washington, in 
 July, 1811, he had to deal with the cases of the Chesapeake 
 and the Little Belt, the grievances arising from the impress- 
 ment of seamen out of our vessels, the demand of our Govern- 
 ment for a repeal of the Orders in Council, and other topics of 
 serious difference. The great obstacles to any adjustment, how- 
 ever, were found in the right of search insisted on by Great
 
 102 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. IV 
 
 Britain, and the position in which the repeal of the Orders in 
 Council had been placed by what had already occurred. A 
 long negotiation, extending from July, 1811, to June, 1812, in 
 which the divergence still turned on the point whether the 
 French Decrees had, in truth, been repealed each side pre- 
 senting what it regarded as proof of its own view of that ques- 
 tion resulted in nothing. 1 The act of Congress which de- 
 clared war against England, passed on the 18th of June, 1812, 
 proceeded upon the idea that a state of actual hostilities had 
 for some time existed, and recognized a war as well as estab- 
 lished one. 
 
 These explanations will be sufficient to show the attitude 
 of the question relating to the policy or the propriety of the 
 war, as it was viewed among us by those who supported and 
 those who opposed it : the one side alleging that France, how- 
 ever oppressively she had conducted toward us in the past, 
 had at length removed her obnoxious decrees as against us, 
 and that England was now wholly in the wrong ; the other 
 side affirming that France had, in sheer duplicity, caused us to 
 make war on England, the result of which, besides its injuri- 
 ous effects on all our other interests, would be an unnatural 
 alliance between our Government and the Emperor Napoleon. 
 It was in this state of the public feeling that Mr. Webster 
 entered political life. His first appearance as a public speaker, 
 after the commencement of the war, was on the 4th of July, 
 1812, when he was invited to deliver an oration before the 
 " Washington Benevolent Society " of Portsmouth. 
 
 This address contained a firm but temperate statement of 
 the grounds of opposition to the war. But it also contained 
 more; for, young as Mr. "Webster was he was but just turned 
 of thirty he had already mastered the great purposes for 
 which the Federal Government had been established under the 
 Constitution, and he knew how to deduce from those purposes 
 the duties which, by plain implication, they impose upon any 
 administration that undertakes the conduct of a war against 
 
 1 Of this prolonged and dreary cor- the reason and justice of their cause ; 
 
 respondence, the Annual Register ob- yet both were, in fact, determined by 
 
 served, with great truth and impartiality, motives of state-policy operating exclu- 
 
 that "both parties boasted of their mod- sively upon themselves." -(Annual Regis 
 
 eration and forbearance ; both alleged ter for 1812, vol. liv., p. 194.)
 
 1812.] WANT OF A NAVY. 103 
 
 a maritime power. " Maritime defence, commercial regulation, 
 and national revenue, were laid," he said, " at the foundation 
 of the national compact. They are its leading principles, and 
 the causes of its existence. They were primary considerations, 
 not only with the convention which framed the Constitution, 
 but also with the people when they adopted it. They were the 
 objects, and the only important objects, to which the States 
 were confessedly incompetent. To effect these by the means of a 
 national government was the constant, the prevalent, the exhaust- 
 less topic of those who favored the adoption of the Constitution." 
 After showing that the interests of commerce had been 
 intrusted to the safe keeping of the General Government, not 
 for confinement and restriction, but for encouragement, protec- 
 tion, and manly defence, he proceeded to notice the departure 
 from "Washington's political system, that had been evinced by 
 the neglect into which the navy had been suffered to fall during 
 the administration of Mr. Jefferson. 
 
 " In the system of Washington was also embraced a competent pro- 
 vision for maritime and naval defence. He saw that we had no other 
 grounds to look for safety or security than in our own power to protect 
 ourselves, and to punish wrong wherever it was offered. A nary, suffi- 
 cient for the defence of our coasts and harbors, for the convoy of impor- 
 tant branches of our trade, and sufficient also to give our enemies to 
 understand, when they injure us, that they also are vulnerable, and that 
 we have the power of retaliation as well as that of defence, seems to be 
 the plain, necessary, indispensable policy of the nation. It is the dictate- 
 of nature and common sense, that means of defence shall have relation to 
 the nature of the danger. In the administration of Washington, whose 
 habit it was rather to follow the course of Nature than to seek to control 
 it, beginnings were made, bearing proportion to what our trade then was, 
 and looking forward to what it would be. Even at that time, the quan- 
 tity of our navigation justified respectable naval preparations. The quan- 
 tity of shipping, owned by the single neighboring county of Essex, as early 
 as that period, would bear comparison with the whole navigation of Eng- 
 land in the reign of Elizabeth, when the Armada of Spain was defeated by 
 the English navy. 
 
 "If the plan of Washington had been pursued, and our navy had been 
 Buffered to grow, as it naturally would have done, with the growth of our 
 commerce and navigation, what a blow might at this moment be struck, 
 and what protection yielded, surrounded as our commerce now is with 
 all the dangers of sudden war ! Even as it is, all our immediate hopes of 
 glory or conquest, all expectation of events that shall gratify the pride 01
 
 104 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Co. IV. 
 
 spirit of the nation, rest on the gallantry of that little remnant of a navy 
 that has now gone forth, like lightning, at the beck of Government, to 
 scour the seas. 
 
 " It will not be a bright page in our history, which relates the total 
 abandonment of all provision for naval defence, by the successors of Wash- 
 ington. Not to speak of policy and expediency, it will do no credit to 
 the national faith, stipulated and plighted as it was to that object, in 
 every way that could make the engagement solemn and obligatory. So 
 long as our commerce remains unprotected, and our coasts and harbors 
 undefended by naval and maritime means, essential objects of the Union 
 remain unanswered, and the just expectation of those who assented to it, 
 disappointed. 
 
 " A part of our navy has been suffered to go to entire decay. Another 
 part has been passed, like an article of useless lumber, under the hammer 
 of the auctioneer. As if the millennium had already commenced, our poli- 
 ticians have beaten their swords into ploughshares. They have actually 
 bargained away in the market essential means of national defence, and 
 carried the product to the Treasury. Without loss by accident or by 
 enemies, the second commercial nation in the world is reduced to the 
 humiliation of being unable to assert the sovereignty of its own seas, or to 
 protect its navigation in sight of its own shores. What war and the 
 waves have sometimes done for others, we have done for ourselves. We 
 have taken the destruction of our marine out of the power of fortune, and 
 nobly achieved it by our own counsels ! " 
 
 Why he began thus early to insist on measures of naval de- 
 fence, will be understood by those who remember that the ten- 
 dency was at first to make this a war on the land, and that the 
 project of invading Canada was already foreshadowed at the 
 time he delivered this address. Yet at this moment our mer- 
 chant-vessels were scattered over every sea, and it has been re- 
 marked by one of our own writers, who was entirely conversant 
 with the subject, that " no other instance can be found of so 
 great a stake in shipping with a protection so utterly inade- 
 quate." 1 
 
 This discourse is also important in another respect, for Mr. 
 "Webster took occasicn in it to state the true principles which 
 govern that question in political ethics which relates to the just 
 boundaries of political opposition in a time of war. These 
 principles he enunciated so clearly, that all can see in them the 
 
 1 Cooper's " History of the American cruising vessels on the ocean, nine of 
 Navy." He states that at the commence- them being of a class less than frig 
 ment of the war we had only seventeen ates.
 
 1812.] PRINCIPLES OF OPPOSITION. 105 
 
 rules by which his own conduct as a public man was regulated, 
 from the beginning of his career until its close : 
 
 " With respect to the war in which we are now involved, the course 
 which our principles require us to pursue cannot be doubtful. It is now 
 the law of the land, and as such we are bound to regard it. Resistance 
 and insurrection form no part of our creed. The disciples of Washing- 
 ton are neither tyrants in power nor rebels out. If we are taxed, to carry 
 on this war, we shall disregard certain distinguished examples, and shall 
 pay. If our personal services are required, we shall yield them to the pre- 
 cise extent of our constitutional liability. At the same time, the world 
 may be assured that we know our rights, and shall exercise them. We 
 shall express our opinions on this, as on every measure of Government I 
 trust, without passion ; I am certain, without fear. We have yet to learn 
 that the extravagant progress of pernicious measures abrogates the duty 
 of opposition, or that the interest of our native land is to be abandoned 
 by us in the hour of her thickest dangers, and sorest necessity. By the 
 exercise of our constitutional right of suffrage, by the peaceable remedy 
 of election, we shall seek to restore wisdom to our councils, and peace to 
 our country. 
 
 " Standing thus pledged by our principles to obey the laws, and to 
 perform the whole duty of faithful citizens, we are yet at liberty to declare 
 fully and freely the grounds on which we lament the commencement and 
 shall deplore the continuance of the present contest. We believe* then, 
 that this war is not the result of impartial policy. If there be cause of 
 war against England, there is still more abundant cause of war against 
 France. The war is professedly undertaken, principally, on account of 
 the continuance of the British Orders in Council. It is well known that 
 those orders, odious as they are, did not begin the unjust and vexatious 
 system practised upon neutrals, nor would that system end with those 
 orders, if we should obtain the object of the war, by procuring their 
 repeal. The decrees of France are earlier in point of time, more extrava- 
 gant in their pretensions, and tenfold more injurious in their conse- 
 quences. They are aggravated by a pretended abrogation, and, holding 
 our understandings in no higher estimation than our rights, that nation 
 requires us to believe in the repeal of edicts, the daily operation of which 
 is manifest and visible before our eyes." 
 
 The discourse was closed with a vigorous denunciation and 
 protest against a French alliance, or the establishment of a com- 
 mon interest between our free republican institutions and the 
 absorbing despotism and ambition of the French empire. 
 
 Regarded as the point from which Mr. Webster's political 
 career began, this address stands in a very important relation 
 to his history. Whatever differences of opinion may have pre-
 
 106 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IV. 
 
 vailed heretofore, or may exist now, in respect to the origin, 
 necessity, or expediency of the War of 1812, no liberal and just 
 man can well deny that there were grounds of opposition to it 
 on which a patriotic statesman could enter the public service of 
 a community whose opinions had been from the first adverse to 
 the policy which had led to it, and whose interests were be- 
 lieved to have been sacrificed to that policy. ISTo such man can 
 deny that Mr. Webster's statement of those grounds was tem- 
 perate and thoughtful, marked alike by a true fidelity to the 
 duties which a citizen owes to the government of his country, 
 and a manly assertion of the duties which that government 
 owes to the interests which it is appointed to protect. It is not 
 correct to regard the maritime interests of this country at that 
 period as bearing so small and insignificant a proportion to 
 what may be considered as the sum of all the industry of the 
 country, as to draw down upon men who held those interests, 
 on account of their opposition to the . war, the censure that is 
 justly applied to a factiously sectional resistance against great 
 national measures. The object for which the war was avowedly 
 begun was the vindication of our rights and the protection of 
 our interests as a commercial people. Those interests were so 
 large that a single State then possessed four times as much ship- 
 ping as was owned by England in the reign of Elizabeth. lS"or 
 was the relation of our shipping to the producing industry of 
 the country one that should have caused its anxiety to be 
 treated as a narrow and selfish local jealousy. In the year pre- 
 ceding the declaration of war (1811), the value of five principal 
 articles of our exports, of domestic production, exceeded forty- 
 five millions of dollars ; l a larger amount, with two exceptions, 
 than had ever been sent out of the country in a single year since 
 the adoption of the Constitution. Surely it cannot be said that 
 it was unreasonable in our own merchants to expect to be the 
 carriers of this mass of our own exports, and of the imports for 
 which it was exchanged ; or that their criticism of a public 
 policy, which was believed to deal unwisely with these great 
 maritime concerns, had no relation to the producing interests 
 of the whole Union. That the war finally resulted in what 
 could be regarded as a success, is du<^ in a large measure, to the 
 
 1 They consisted of cotton, tobacco, flour, rice, and manufactures.
 
 1812.] PRINCIPLES OF OPPOSITION. 107 
 
 employment and the achievements of the navy ; that arm of na- 
 tional defence which is at once fostered by a great national 
 commerce, and can alone effectually vindicate the rights of a 
 commercial people. 
 
 Mr. "Webster's address before the "Washington Society im- 
 mediately passed through two editions. It led to his appoint- 
 ment as a delegate from the town of Portsmouth to attend an 
 assembly of the people of the county of Rockingham, which was 
 convened in the following August, for the purpose of expressing 
 to the Government, in a direct manner, their opposition to the 
 war, and their opinions respecting the means by which it should 
 be brought to a speedy and honorable termination. This was 
 done in the form of a memorial, addressed to the President of 
 the United States, and signed by a committee representing 
 more than fifteen hundred delegates. The paper adopted for 
 this purpose was written by Mr. "Webster, and is the document 
 referred to in his Autobiography, and then and since known as 
 " The Rockingham Memorial." Its length and character, and 
 the character of the assembly which was what would now be 
 called a mass convention show that he had been selected to 
 prepare it before the day of the meeting. Many persons of dis- 
 tinction in that part of the State, much older than himself, were 
 named on the committee, but he was placed at its head, and re- 
 ported the memorial. It was a carefully-written document, 
 reviewing thoroughly the course of policy which had brought 
 about the war ; explaining the grounds of opposition to it which 
 the people in whose name it spoke felt themselves justified in 
 assuming ; pointing out and remonstrating against its tendency 
 to produce an alliance with France ; urging immediate naval 
 preparations, and a reliance on that means of defence ; and 
 recommending the adoption of a system that would speedily re- 
 store the blessings of peace and commerce. On the subject of 
 fidelity to the Union, it thus stated the principles of those who, 
 in this manner, as citizens of a free republic, addressed them 
 selves to its chief magistrate : 
 
 " "We are, sir, from principle and habit, attached to the Union of the 
 States. But our attachment is to the substance, and not to the form. It 
 is to the good which this Union is capable of producing, and not to the 
 evil which is suffered unnaturally to grow out of it. If the time should
 
 108 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IV. 
 
 ever arrive when this Union shall be holden together by nothing but the 
 authority of law ; when its incorporating, vital principle shall become 
 extinct ; when its principal exercises shall consist in acts of power and au- 
 thority, not of protection and beneficence ; when it shall lose the strong 
 bond which it hath hitherto had in the public affections ; and when, con- 
 sequently, we shall be one, not in interest and mutual regard, but in name 
 and form only we, sir, shall look on that hour as the closing scene of our 
 country's prosperity. 
 
 " We shrink from the separation of the States, as an event fraught with 
 incalculable evils, and it is among our strongest objections to the present 
 course of measures, that they have, in our opinion, a very dangerous and 
 alarming bearing on such an event. If a separation of the States ever 
 should take place, it will be on some occasion when one portion of the 
 country undertakes to control, to regulate, and to sacrifice the interest of 
 another ; when a small and heated majority in the Government, taking 
 counsel of their passions, and not of their reason, contemptuously disre- 
 garding the interests and perhaps stopping the mouths of a large and 
 respectable minority, shall, by hasty, rash, and ruinous measures, threaten 
 to destroy essential rights, and lay waste the most important interests. 
 
 " It shall be our most fervent supplication to Heaven to avert both the 
 event and the occasion; and the Government may be assured that the tie 
 that binds us to the Union will never be broken by us." 
 
 Toward the President himself this memorial was courteous 
 and dignified in its tone. It pressed indeed the argumentum 
 ad hominem, by reminding the President of the opinions which 
 he had frequently expressed, when advocating the adoption of 
 the Constitution, of the necessity for an acquisition of maritime 
 strength, in providing and maintaining a national navy. The 
 neglect into which the navy had been suffered to fall, by those 
 with whom Mr. Madison had politically acted since the Admin- 
 istration of the elder Adams went out of power, fully justified 
 this personal appeal. But it was couched in terms of the 
 utmost respect ; and as Mr. Webster soon after entered Con- 
 gress, and stood at once and always remained in friendly per- 
 sonal relations with Mr. Madison, it is certain that the latter 
 would have concurred in Mr. Webster's own observation 
 made nearly twenty years afterward that there was nothing 
 in this paper which the writer ever needed to regret. It marks 
 the character of the opposition which he continued to maintain 
 to the Administration of Mr. Madison, so long and so far as he 
 maintained any. 
 
 Among the purposes for which the Rockingham convention
 
 1813.] CONDUCT OF FRANCE. 109 
 
 was assembled, was the nomination of candidates for the ap- 
 proaching general election. Mr. Webster was nominated as a 
 Representative to the Thirteenth Congress, to which he was 
 subsequently elected, and in which he took his seat on the 24th 
 of May, 1813. 1 
 
 There were several young men in this Congress of high 
 talent, some of whom were afterward known to fame. The 
 two persons were there, with whose names Mr. Webster's has 
 been more associated than with those of any others of his con- 
 temporaries, as standing upon the same plane of intellect. 
 Henry Clay was the Speaker of this House, and John C. Cal- 
 houn was the leading member upon the floor, both being on the 
 side of the Administration. Among those of lesser mark, but 
 fat ill prominent then and always while they lived, were Wil- 
 liam Gaston, of North Carolina ; John McLean, of Ohio ; 
 John Forsyth, and George M. Troup, of Georgia ; Charles 
 J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania; and Felix Grundy, of Ten- 
 nessee. 
 
 One of the first acts of Mr. Webster, on entering Congress, 
 was, to introduce certain resolutions, calling upon the Executive 
 for information respecting the time and mode in which the re- 
 peal of the French Decrees had been communicated to our Gov- 
 ernment. As this whole matter stood before the public at the 
 time of the declaration of war, it appeared either that our Gov- 
 ernment had been deceived by the French ministry, or that 
 they were in possession of a repealing decree when the. war was 
 declared, and had withheld it ; for no such decree had made its 
 appearance until after the declaration of war had passed througa 
 Congress. Mr. Webster considered that the reputation of the 
 country was involved in this affair, because the French foreign 
 secretary had declared to the American minister in Paris, on the 
 1st of May, 1812, that a copy of the repealing decree had been 
 furnished to his predecessor, and that another had been trans- 
 mitted to the French minister at Washington at the time of its 
 date, which was April 28, 1811. Mr. Webster, therefore, for 
 the purpose of eliciting all the facts, and in order to have them 
 
 1 A law of the previous Congress had menced on that day, and was termi. 
 appointed the next meeting of that body nated on the 2d of August. The see- 
 to be held May 24, 1813. The first ses- ond session commenced December 6, 
 sion of the Thirteenth Congress com- 1813.
 
 110 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IV. 
 
 placed in their true light before the country, so framed his reso- 
 lutions that, if they were answered at all, the whole matter must 
 be disclosed. The resolutions were introduced by him on the 
 10th of June, 1813, accompanied by some temperate remarks 
 concerning the doubt in which this matter was then en- 
 veloped. 1 
 
 A long and somewhat angry debate ensued, in which Mr. 
 Calhoun led the defence of the Administration with great spirit 
 and warmth. He was at first somewhat disposed to stifle the 
 inquiry. But the House was not in a mood to do this. The war 
 was not at that time so popular that the members could refuse 
 an inquiry into the measures that had led to it. Indeed, the 
 declaration of war had originally passed a House of one hundred 
 and twenty-eight members by a majority of thirty votes only, 
 and a Senate of thirty-two members by a majority of six ; while 
 an amendment to include France in the war was negatived in 
 the Senate by the meagre majority of four. The friends of the 
 Administration were now, therefore, in a new Congress, obliged 
 to meet this inquiry, without having at their command such a 
 popular enthusiasm for the war as might have justified their re- 
 fusal, if such enthusiasm had existed. The debate on the reso- 
 lutions continued at intervals until the 21st of June, but they 
 were all finally passed as they were introduced, by very large 
 
 1 What Mr. Webster said on this oc- !> EOM JUDGK 6TORY -1 
 
 casion strongly attracted the attention of MT DBAB g'^TfteTtht ChTef Justice 
 
 Chief-Justice Marshall. Nearly twenty (Marshall) had received the volume of your 
 
 years afterward, when Mr. Webster's col- speeches this morning, he came into my 
 
 i , j i /; . uivu-,/1 u chamber, and told me he had been lookm ' 
 
 lected speeches were first published, it ap- over the ' indeXi and noticed two Omis9ioil | 
 
 pears from the following letters that the of speeches which he remembered you had 
 
 Chief Justice was disappointed at finding made in Congress at an early period of yoar 
 
 tliia nno nmUtori frnm tho TT-nlnmp public life, and which he had then read. One 
 
 was on some resolutions, calling upon Presi- 
 
 [FBOM CHIEF-JUSTICE MARSHALL.] dent Madison for the proof of the repeal of 
 
 "January 23. 1831. the Berlin and Milan Decrees ; the other, on 
 
 "DEAR SIR: I have just received the copy the subject of the Previous Question. He 
 
 of your ' Speeches and Forensic Arguments,' observed : ' I read these speeches with very 
 
 and am much nattered by this mark of your great pleasure and satisfaction at the time, 
 
 attention. I beg you to present my compli- At the time when the first was delivered, I did 
 
 ments to Mrs. Webster; and to say that I not know Mr. Webster : but I was so much 
 
 think myself, in part, indebted to her for it. struck with it, that I did not hesitate then to 
 
 At all events, she has, I perceive, had some state that Mr. Webster was a very able man, 
 
 agency in conferring the favor. and would become one of the very first states- 
 
 " I shall read the volume with pleasure, men in America, and perhaps the very first.' 
 and preserve it with care. " Such praise from such a source ought to 
 
 " Will you allow me to say that, on look- be very gratifying. Consider that he is now 
 
 ing over the contents, I felt at the first mo- seventy -five years old, and that he speaks 
 
 ment some disappointment at not seeing two of his recollections of you some eighteeij 
 
 speeches delivered by you in the first Con- years ago with a freshness which shows you 
 
 gress, I believe, of which you were a mem- how deeply your reasoning impressed itself 
 
 oer. on his mind. Keep this in memoriam rd. 
 
 " With great and respectful esteem, y our9 vcry truly, 
 
 " I ain, your obedient, " JOSEPH STORY. 
 
 "J. MARSHALL." "The Hon. Daniel Webster."
 
 1813.] MISTAKES OF OUR GOVERNMENT. Ill 
 
 majorities. Mr. "Webster had intended to close the discussion 
 upon them, but he found it unnecessary. 1 
 
 Mr. Jeremiah Mason had been recently chosen a Senator 
 from "New Hampshire, and he arrived and took his seat in the 
 Senate while these resolutions were under discussion in the 
 House. The answer to them was made by the Secretary of 
 State, Mr. Monroe, on the 12th of July. It disclosed the fact 
 that our Government had received no intelligence of the repeal- 
 ing decree of April 28, 1811, until the 13th of July, 1812, nearly 
 a month after the declaration of war against England. It fol- 
 lowed, therefore, that our reliance on the action of France was 
 based wholly upon the declaration of August 5, 1810, which, it 
 was argued by Mr. Monroe, had fully satisfied every claim of 
 the British Government according to their own principles, and 
 ought to have been received by them as sufficient cause for 
 a repeal of their Orders in Council. On this point there was of 
 course a great difference of opinion between those who favored 
 the war against England and those who believed that France 
 ought to have been selected as our enemy, or at least that she 
 should have been dealt with in a very different way from that 
 which had been adopted. It is in the highest degree probable 
 that, if there had been no such existing cause of irritation 
 against England as her oppressive pretension of a right to 
 search our vessels for seamen whose allegiance she claimed, 
 there would not have been the same inclination to push matters 
 to an extremity with her, by adopting so untenable a ground in 
 reference to the French Decrees. The French declaration of 
 August 5, 1810, was deceptive, and was intended to be so ; * 
 
 1 " You have learned the fate of my said ; " France has done nothing toward 
 
 resolutions. We had a warm time of it adjusting our differences with her. It is 
 
 for four days, and then the other side de- understood that the Berlin and Milan 
 
 clined further discussion. I had prepared Decrees are not in force against the 
 
 myself for a little speech, but the neces- United States, and no contravention of 
 
 sity of speaking was prevented. I went them can be established against her. On 
 
 with Rhea, of Tennessee, to deliver the the contrary, positive cases rebut the al- 
 
 resolutions to the President. I found legation. Still, the manner of the French 
 
 him in his bed, sick of a fever. I gave Government betrays the design of leaving 
 
 them to him, and he merely answered Great Britain a pretext for enforcing her 
 
 that they would be attended to." (Letter Orders in Council. And in all other re- 
 
 to Ezekiel Webster, June 28, 1813.) spects the grounds of our complaints re- 
 
 8 Mr. Madison had become convinced main the same. The utmost address has 
 
 of this before our declaration of war been played off on Mr. Barlow's hopes 
 
 against England. In a private letter to and wishes," etc. ( Writings of Mr. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson, written May 25, 1812, he Madison, vol. ii., p. 535.) This letter
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [Cn. IV. 
 
 and, as each of the belligerents rested the apology for its in- 
 jurious edicts upon the law of retaliation and self-defence, a 
 neutral, that could present to one of them no better proof of the 
 sincerity and good faith of its adversary than that French dec- 
 laration, had but a weak practical ground on which to depend, 
 however strong might be the argument against the inherent 
 illegality and wrong of the whole system on which the edicts 
 were justified by either of the two powers. ' 
 
 discloses two remarkable facts : one, that 
 the President still clung to the idea that 
 the French Decrees were not enforced 
 against us after August 5, 1810, notwith- 
 standing our vessels were still remaining 
 under sequestration, and no redress could 
 be obtained; the other, that the Presi- 
 dent had at length penetrated the design 
 of the French Government, namely, not to 
 have the English Orders in Council re- 
 pealed. But we had gone too far in the 
 direction in which France wished us to 
 go to retrace our steps, although the 
 President's private opinion of her con- 
 duct and designs did not now differ much 
 from that entertained by the Federalists. 
 What his opinion was will appear further 
 by an extract from a private letter which 
 he wrote to Mr. Barlow under date of 
 August 11, 1812: " The conduct of the 
 French Government, explained in yours 
 of the , on the subject of the de- 
 cree of April, 1811, will be an everlast- 
 ing reproach to it. It is the more shame- 
 ful as, departing from the declaration to 
 General Armstrong [August, 1810], of 
 which the enforcement of the non-impor- 
 tation was the effect, the revoking decree 
 assumes this as the cause, and itself as 
 the effect ; and thus transfers to this Gov- 
 ernment the inconsistency of its author-" 
 (Ibid., p. 540.) Yet, when this sub- 
 ject was brought before Congress at the 
 next session, not only did the Secretary 
 of State argue that the conduct of France 
 had deprived Great Britain of all reason- 
 able pretext for continuing her Orders, 
 but the whole force of the Administra- 
 tion was exerted on the floor of the 
 House in support of that view, as the 
 splendid abilities of Mr. Pinkney had 
 been exerted previously in London in the 
 same line of argument. As we now 
 know the private feelings and convictions 
 of Mr. Madison, the opponents of his 
 Administration ought to be relieved of 
 the charge of factiousness, even if they 
 did maintain that the conduct of France 
 
 had been animated by a purpose to lead 
 us into a war with England. 
 
 1 There is a judgment of Sir William 
 Scott, pronouncing condemnation in 1811 
 of certain American vessels under the 
 Orders in Council, in which that most 
 able judge employed his acute and pow- 
 erful intellect in framing a justification 
 for those orders upon the doctrine of re- 
 taliation. The question had been present- 
 ed to him in the argument, what would 
 be his duty as an admiralty judge, under 
 Ovrders in Council that were repugnant to 
 the law of nations. After admitting that 
 his court was bound to administer the 
 law of nations to the subjects of other 
 countries in their relations with Great 
 Britain, he parried the question that had 
 been pressed upon him by saying that 
 the king in council had legislative author- 
 ity over the court ; that the law of na- 
 tions constituted the unwritten law, and 
 the king's Orders in Council the written 
 law of the court ; and that there was in 
 this instance no repugnance between 
 these two laws, because the king's or- 
 ders and instructions were to be pre- 
 sumed, under the given circumstances, 
 to conform themselves to the principles 
 of the unwritten law. But as it could 
 not escape a mind of such penetration 
 that this led directly to the conse- 
 quence that the legislative will of a sin- 
 gle belligerent may dictate what the law 
 of nations is, so as to bind the judicial 
 action of a tribunal that sits to adminis- 
 ter that law between its own sovereign 
 and the subjects of other countries, ha 
 proceeded to say, further, that the Orders 
 in Council which he had then to enforce 
 were not repugnant to the law of nations, 
 because they were retaliatory. This was 
 at least an admission that the doctrine 
 of presumption was not quite sufficient, 
 and that it was necessary to find in the 
 law of nations itself some principle that 
 would make the orders conformable to 
 what a belligerent mav lawfully d'>. Ha
 
 1813.] 
 
 MR. WEBSTER'S RESOLUTIONS OF 1813. 
 
 113 
 
 The British Orders in Council were repealed on the 23d of 
 June, 1812, professedly upon the ground that the French De- 
 crees had been repealed on the 28th of April, 1811. When the 
 answer of our Secretary of State to Mr. "Webster's resolutions 
 was received in the House of Representatives, on the 12th of 
 July, 1813, it was referred to the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
 tions, of which Mr. Calhoun was chairman, with an order to 
 print five thousand copies of it. Mr. "Webster, who had re- 
 mained for some time longer than he had intended, waiting for 
 the answer of the secretary, had then left Washington on his 
 return home, supposing that the subject would not be again 
 brought before the House during that session. On the day fol- 
 
 found this principle in the doctrine of 
 retaliation. He frankly admitted that the 
 orders would be unjust if they ceased to 
 be retaliatory ; and that they would cease 
 to be retaliatory from the moment the 
 enemy should retract in a sincere man- 
 ner those measures of his against which 
 they were intended to retaliate. This 
 doctrine, applied to the real circum- 
 stances of the case, amounts to this, that 
 whenever a belligerent chooses to say 
 that the hostile measures of his adver- 
 sary require him, in self-defence, to re- 
 sort to measures of retaliation, his right 
 of retaliation is superior to all the rights 
 of all the neutral nations ; and that until 
 the neutral nations can, by forcing his 
 adversary to change his course, relieve 
 him of the necessity of retaliating, they 
 must submit to the entire displacement 
 and overthrow of the rights which, but 
 for this effect of his right of retaliation, 
 would belong to them. But it is obvious 
 that if the unwritten law of nations em- 
 braces this principle, there are no such 
 things as the rights of neutrals, or rights 
 which belong to nations which are not at 
 war, when some nations are at war. It 
 is, however, quite certain that the law of 
 nations does affix limits to the operation 
 of retaliatory measures upon the rights 
 of nations that are not engaged in the 
 war ; and the real question in relation to 
 the English Orders and the French De- 
 crees was, whether, admitting that they 
 were retaliatory, or claimed to be such, 
 they were within or without the limita- 
 tions which the law of nations has estab- 
 lished as the sphere in which the pro- 
 ceedings of nations at war can affect the 
 rights of nations that are not at war. At 
 9 
 
 the present day there would be very little 
 hesitation on the part of this country in 
 saying to any two belligerents, that this 
 doctrine of retaliation has limits which 
 must be respected. That we did not at 
 that time so act toward both England and 
 France, without complicating ourselves 
 in efforts to make one of them recede in 
 order to remove the other's claim of re- 
 taliation, must be imputed to our com- 
 parative weakness. Those who opposed 
 the war with England would have pre- 
 ferred to have our Government deal at 
 once with the original and inherent wrong 
 in the conduct of both the belligerents, 
 especially as they felt that the insults 
 heaped upon us by France were even 
 more aggravated than the injuries done 
 to us by England ; and, if we had been 
 then what we are now, it is probable that 
 the nation would have tolerated no se- 
 lection of either adversary, but would 
 have left each to choose for itself our 
 friendship or our hostility. As it was, 
 we were led, by a variety of causes, some 
 of which our Administration could not 
 control, to choose for ourselves the hol- 
 low and contemptuous friendship of 
 France and the open enmity of England. 
 (I have not been able to find this judg- 
 ment of Sir William Scott in the regular 
 reports of his court. But a copy of it 
 was transmitted by our charge at London 
 to our Secretary of State, in June, 1811, 
 and it is given in the annals of Congress, 
 Twelfth Congress, 1811-' 12, Appendix, p. 
 1742. It was pronounced on the 30th 
 of May, 1811, preparatory to a decree 
 condemning the brig Fox and a large num- 
 ber of other American vessels which had 
 been seized under the Orders in Council.)
 
 114 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. IV 
 
 lowing the reference, Mr. Calhoun made a report, which took 
 the ground that the pressure of our measures and the determi- 
 nation of Congress to redress our wrongs by arms, and not the 
 repeal of the French Decrees, had broken down the Orders in 
 Council. The report closed with recommending the passage of 
 a resolution approving the conduct of the Executive in relation 
 to the various subjects embraced in Mr. "Webster's resolutions. 
 Several eiforts were subsequently made to have this report con- 
 sidered, but the House refused to act upon it at this session. 
 On the 2d of August, Congress adjourned until the first Mon- 
 day in the ensuing December. 1 
 
 Although Mr. "Webster had been present in this Congress 
 out for a few weeks, he had already become a marked man. 
 He had taken his stand as one of the leading opponents of the 
 war, and had at the same time shown to the House and to the 
 country what the character of his opposition was to be. His 
 firmness in carrying this inquiry through the House had satis- 
 fied every one that he was not a person to be turned from his 
 purpose in any matter in which he believed the honor of the 
 country to be involved ; while it was equally apparent that he 
 intended to hold the Administration to nothing but its just de- 
 gree of responsibility to public opinion in respect to the course 
 of its action previous to the war. In future sessions, it was to 
 become his duty to oppose measures connected with the con- 
 duct of the war, which he believed to be in conflict with the 
 fundamental rights of the citizen, or in contravention of a sound 
 public policy. 
 
 1 The temper of the public mind in the nation almost una voce. Even with- 
 this country at the time of the adjourn- out a peace with England, the further re- 
 ment may be learned from Mr. Madison's fusal or prevarications of France on the 
 private letter to Mr. Barlow, already re- subject of redress may be expected to 
 ferred to, which was written in the same produce measures of hostility against her 
 month : " In the event of a pacification at the ensuing session of Congress. This 
 with Great Britain, the full tide of indig- result is the more probable, as the gen- 
 nation with which the public mind here eral exasperation will coincide with the 
 is boiling will be directed against France, calculations of not a few, that a double 
 if not obviated by a due reparation of war is the shortest road to peace." ( Wri- 
 her wrongs. War will be called for by tings of Madison, vol. ii., p. 541.)
 
 1813.1 DESTRUCTION OF MR. WEBSTER'S HOUSE. 115 
 
 CHAPTEE Y. 
 1813-1814. 
 
 ME. WEBSTER'S LIFE AT PORTSMOUTH BIETH OF DANIEL FLETCHER 
 GREAT FIRE IN THE TOWN CONGRESS OF 1813-'H RESOLU- 
 TIONS ON FRENCH DECREES MILITARY TRIALS FOR TREASON 
 
 ENCOURAGEMENT OF ENLISTMENTS MODIFICATION OF THE EM- 
 BARGO REPEAL OF THE RESTRICTIVE SYSTEM DOMESTIC MAN- 
 UFACTURES PRACTICE IN SUPREME COURT RETURNS HOME. 
 
 "A /T~R. "WEBSTEK reached his home in Portsmouth, from the 
 -LVJL special session of 1813, at about midsummer, and im- 
 mediately resumed his usual avocations. His children were 
 now two Grace, who has been mentioned in the last chapter, 
 and Daniel Fletcher, who was born July 23, 1813. Of his life 
 at this time, we have already had some reminiscences from the 
 pen of Mr. Ticknor. 
 
 The summer and autumn passed on as usual, but in De- 
 cember he was again on his way to attend the regular session 
 of Congress, leaving Mrs. "Webster and the children at home. 
 While he was on this journey, a great conflagration swept over 
 a considerable part of the town of Portsmouth, and his house 
 was burnt, with others. The house had been purchased by 
 Mr. "Webster a short time before, for the sum of six thousand 
 dollars. In addition to its furniture, his library was also lost ; 
 and, as there was no insurance on any part of the property, all 
 that he had of worldly goods was completely gone. Mrs. Web- 
 ster and the children found a temporary home in the family of
 
 1J 6 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. V. 
 
 Mr. Mason. In the mean time, the news of the fire, which had 
 been attended with some appalling circumstances, had reached 
 Washington, where Mr. "Webster, on his arrival, first met the 
 account. Before he could open his letters, his firmness was put 
 to a great trial, by the somewhat exaggerated statements of 
 those who hastened to give him information. But a cheerful 
 letter from his wife, advising him not to return, reassured him ; 
 and " finding nothing lost," he says, " but house and property," 
 and considering how critical were the public aifairs, he com- 
 mended his little family to their friends, and remained at Wash- 
 ington through the winter. 
 
 There was, indeed, no little need for such men, even if they 
 were not political friends of the Administration. The war, 
 although there had been some brilliant successes on the Lakes 
 and one important victory on the ocean, had not been prosper- 
 ous on the land. In Europe, the star of Bonaparte was no 
 longer in the ascendant disaster had overtaken him; and 
 England, at the head of the great combination that was now 
 closing around him, was not unlikely to be in a situation to 
 carry on her contest with us more vigorously than before. Our 
 Administration, not a strong one, was in want of both men 
 and money. Perplexed, and not sure of an undivided support 
 from its own party, it was in danger of following counsels 
 insufficiently weighed. It was conducting the first impor- 
 tant war that had been undertaken since the establishment of 
 the Constitution ; and on that war the sentiments of the peo- 
 ple were by no means unanimous. !New measures were to be 
 brought forward, new powers were to be exercised, which might 
 subject the Constitution to a severe test. These measures were 
 to undergo the ordeal of discussion by the representatives of 
 a people who had been accustomed to the utmost freedom of 
 debate and criticism ; who had not learned to surrender that 
 freedom to the demands of official judgment ; and who would 
 be certain to insist that the hitherto untried powers of war, 
 embraced in the Constitution, should' not be pressed to its injury 
 and its possible overthrow. If the war was to go on, its policy 
 was to be settled ; and perhaps there never has been a war con- 
 ducted by a constitutional government and in behalf of a free 
 people, in which the restraining influence of a vigilant and
 
 1813.] OPPOSITION TO THE WAR 117 
 
 upright opposition was more needed than it was in giving 
 direction to the forces and consistency to the aims of this one. 
 It was a period from which the people of this country can learn 
 many lessons. Rash men, in and out of Congress, there doubt- 
 less were, in the opposition, who said and did rash things. Pure 
 and patriotic men there were, connected with the opposition, 
 who committed the mistake of leading movements that were 
 not fully explained; who trusted too implicitly to the ex- 
 cellence of their own motives and the weight of their own 
 virtues, and left that which could be misapprehended or dis- 
 torted to work injury in the minds of the unsatisfied. But 
 through the whole of that conflict there were men in the Fed- 
 eral party, in both Houses of Congress, who fulfilled the true 
 function of an opposition ; who made the limits of opposition 
 so clear, that they incurred no merited obloquy ; who were 
 never connected with any occurrence that should cause their 
 judgments as statesmen to be impugned ; who spoke firmly, 
 but always temperately ; and who never spoke but to save a 
 constitutional principle, or to insure a wiser policy. Of these, 
 Mr. "Webster was one of the foremost ; on the floor of the Ipwer 
 House he was the first. 
 
 He had not lost sight of his resolutions of the last session, 
 which called for information respecting the repeal of the French 
 Decrees. The Secretary of State, Mr. Monroe, had not confined 
 himself to furnishing the facts inquired for, but had entered 
 into an elaborate defence of the war. "Without some action 
 upon his answer, the inference would be that it was regarded 
 as conclusive upon the judgment of the House and of the nation. 
 The House had now, with a near approach to unanimity, ordered 
 an inquiry into the causes of the failure of our arms. Mr. Web- 
 ster deemed it equally important that there should be a discus- 
 sion of the grounds of the war. " If," he said, " its advocates 
 can show satisfactorily that this war was undertaken on grounds 
 plainly and manifestly just ; if they can show that it was neces- 
 sary and unavoidable ; that it is strictly an American war ; that 
 it rests solely on American grounds ; and that it grew out of a 
 policy just and impartial as it related to the belligerents of Eu- 
 rope if they ever make all this manifest, the war will change 
 its character. It will then grow as energetic as it now is
 
 118 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. Y. 
 
 feeble. It will then become the cause of the people, and not 
 the cause of a party." He therefore sought and obtained a 
 reference of the secretary's answer to a committee of the whole. 
 This occurred on the 3d of January, 181A But the discussior 
 was never allowed to take place. 
 
 Before many days had elapsed, Mr. "Webster felt called upon 
 to speak in terms of indignant rebuke of a project which he 
 and such men as Gaston, Stockton, Hanson, and Cheves re- 
 garded as a proposition deliberately to violate the Constitution. 
 The country was filled with rumors of treasonable practices by 
 persons who were said to have given information to the enemy, 
 that had assisted his military movements. The party spirit, 
 that ruled a majority of the House of Representatives, per- 
 mitted a resolution to be introduced, contemplating the exten- 
 sion of the rules and articles of war, relating to spies, to citizens 
 of the United States. This was tantamount to the establishment 
 of a military jurisdiction for the trial of citizens charged with 
 the offence of treason. Robert Wright, of Maryland, was the 
 member who introduced the resolution, instructing a committee 
 of the whole to inquire into the expediency of so extending the 
 military jurisdiction. Mr. Stockton instantly denounced it as 
 a proposition unfit to be even referred to a committee. Other 
 gentlemen followed him in the same strain, when Mr. Webster 
 arose and delivered a short speech, which is probably very 
 imperfectly preserved, but of which enough remains to vin- 
 dicate his opposition to the measure. After declaring his 
 readiness to provide additional legal punishments for any de- 
 scription of offences, he proceeded to show that the offences 
 which were alleged to have given occasion for this inquiry con- 
 stituted the crime of treason, as it stands defined in the Consti- 
 tution, and that this resolution was one to change the forum for 
 the trial of that offence : 
 
 " If illegal intercourse with the enemy existed, he should go as far as 
 any one in applying constitutional remedies to that evil. But this resolu- 
 tion proposes, in effect, to consider whether it is not expedient to try accu- 
 sations for treason before military instead of civil tribunals. However 
 glaring may be the idea, yet such is in truth the real nature of the prop- 
 osition. It is to change the forum for the trial of treason. The mover 
 of the resolution and the gentleman from the State of Georgia (Mr. Troup) 
 have not left any doubt on this subject. They have alluded to cases which
 
 1814.] MILITARY TRIALS FOR TREASON. 119 
 
 they suppose the resolution to embrace, and for which they deem it 
 necessary to provide military punishment. But what is the nature of 
 those cases ? Are they not cases of treason ? It is said information has 
 been communicated to the enemy, very material to him, respecting the 
 operation of our own forces, by citizens of the United States. Signals are 
 said to have been made for this purpose on the St. Lawrence and else- 
 where. Do gentlemen suppose that the act of communicating to the 
 enemy important intelligence, whether by signals or otherwise, whereby he 
 is the better able to defend himself or attack his adversary, is not treason ? 
 Certainly, sir, all such offences as gentlemen have mentioned are pro- 
 vided for by law, and adequate penalties anpexed to their commission. 
 The simple question before us is, whether we will consider the propriety 
 of taking the power of trying for these offences from the courts of law, 
 where the Constitution has placed it, and confer it on the military. Sir, 
 the proposition strikes me as monstrous. I cannot consent to entertain 
 the consideration of it even for a moment. It goes to destroy the plainest 
 constitutional provisions. If it should prevail, I should not hesitate to 
 pronounce it a most enormous stride of usurpation. Nothing in any gov- 
 ernment called a free one, even in the worst of times, has exceeded it. I 
 am utterly shocked at the arguments offered in favor of it. When the 
 mover was asked why, in the cases he mentioned, the offenders could not 
 be punished for treasonable practices, I understood him to answer that, on 
 trials for treason in the courts of law, the testimony of two witnesses is re- 
 quired ; but, if the trial could be transferred to a military tribunal, thfe two 
 witnesses could be dispensed with. Are we now gravely to consider a 
 proposition of which this is among the professed objects ? The gentleman 
 from Georgia (Mr. Troup) observed that, when persons had been appre- 
 hended for offences, they had been rescued by habeas corpus issued by the 
 civil magistrate. And are we to deliberate whether it be not proper for 
 us to prevent the delivery of the citizens of this country from illegal ar- 
 rests and imprisonment by the interposition of their great constitutional 
 remedy, their writ of habeas corpus ? The Constitution contains no pro- 
 vision more valuable ; it makes no injunction more direct and imperative 
 than those respecting trials for treason, and the benefit of the habeas corpus. 
 Treason is not left to be defined, even by the highest courts of law. It 
 was foreseen that, in times of commotion, victims might be sacrificed to 
 constructive treason ; that doctrine which, in other places and in other 
 times, has shed so much innocent blood, and which brought Algernon 
 Sydney to the scaffold. The Constitution, therefore, defines treason, and 
 prescribes the mode of proof. But what is there in the worst cases of con- 
 struction of treason that can be compared, in point of enormity, to the 
 proposition now before us ? This is not to give a latitude of construction 
 to the judge ; it is to take the cause away from the judge, and carry it to 
 the camp. Instead of indictment, arraignment, and trial, it proposes the 
 summary process of martial law. If the proposition should pass into a 
 law, it takes away the constitutional definition of the offence ; it takea
 
 120 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. V 
 
 away the prescribed mode of proof; it takes away the trial by jury; 
 it takes away the civil tribunal and establishes the military. On a 
 resolution of this sort, I cannot believe the House will consent to de- 
 liberate." 
 
 Mr. "Wright's resolution was referred, by the small majority 
 of eleven votes, and was made the order of the day for the ensu- 
 ing Friday. But, after what had occurred, no one ventured to 
 bring it up in Committee of the Whole, and it was never acted 
 upon further. 1 
 
 A little later, when 'a bill to encourage enlistments into the 
 army, by giving very high bounties, was before the House, Mr. 
 Webster delivered a speech on the whole subject of the war, 
 which was of an exceedingly elevated and commanding tone. 1 
 
 The first attempt at the conquest of Canada had failed. 
 Still, the invasion of Canada appeared to be an essential object 
 with the Administration and a majority of its supporters in 
 Congress ; for an amendment offered to the bill, to restrict the 
 employment of the troops to be enlisted to the defence of our 
 own territory and frontiers, was rejected by a decisive vote. 
 Mr. Webster had, therefore, to address himself to what he 
 deemed an erroneous policy in the conduct of the war, as well 
 as to speak incidentally on its general merits. These two topics 
 were inseparably connected, because the known differences of 
 opinion respecting the original expediency of the war, and its 
 avowed objects, pointed to the necessity for a change in the 
 
 1 1 observe with pain the name of Mr. olution in order to terrify the opponents 
 
 Calhoun among those who voted for a of the war. The character of Judge 
 
 reference of this resolution. In any Ford was vouched for by several of the 
 
 other than a time of high party excite- most prominent members of the House, 
 
 ment, he could not have been persuaded He was formerly of New Jersey, and was 
 
 to give that vote, for he was devotedly now a person of eminence in the region 
 
 attached to the principles of constitu- where he lived, and had written and 
 
 tional liberty. Mr. Clay was in the chair, spoken a great deal against the war. 
 
 As there was a clear majority for the res- Perhaps the light which he " hoisted in 
 
 olution, he was not called upon to vote, his upper story" was metaphorical, 
 
 and did not. Among the stories told at * Speech on the Encouragement of 
 
 that time and repeated in this debate, it Enlistments, January 14, 1814. The 
 
 was said that Judge Ford, living some- speech is very well reported in the An- 
 
 where near the St. Lawrence, had, when nals of Congress. (Thirteenth Congress, 
 
 General Wilkinson's army was descend- vol. i., pp. 940 et seq.) It was not a pre- 
 
 ing that river, hoisted a light in his up- pared speech, but this report was cor- 
 
 per story, which gave the British infor- rected by Mr. Webster. He had no in- 
 
 mation, and that Wilkinson's army was tention of speaking until nine o'clock 
 
 soon fired upon from the Canada shore, that morning, and he addressed the 
 
 Such tales found a ready credence with House at two. (Correspondence, i., p. 
 
 some of the Administration members, 239 ; letter to his brother Ezekiel Web. 
 
 while others probably voted for the res- ster.)
 
 1814.] OPPOSITION TO THE WAR. 121 
 
 policy which had hitherto governed its prosecution. Of the 
 large circumspection with which a question of war should be 
 approached by the Government of this Union, Mr. Webster 
 spoke in terms that can never lose their importance while that 
 Government remains what it is : 
 
 " We are told that our opposition has divided the Government and 
 divided the country. Kemember, sir, the state of the Government and of 
 the country when war was declared. Did not difference of opinion then 
 exist ? Do we not know that this House was divided ? Do we not know 
 that the other House was still more divided ? Does not every man, to whom 
 the public documents were accessible, know, that in that House one single 
 vote, if given otherwise than it was, would have rejected the act declaring 
 war, and adopted a different course of measures ? A parental, guardian 
 government would have regarded that state of things. It would have 
 weighed such considerations ; it would have inquired coolly and dispas- 
 sionately into the state of public opinion in the States of this confeder- 
 acy ; it would have looked especially to those States most concerned in 
 the professed objects of the war, and whose interests were to be most 
 deeply affected by it. Such a government, knowing that its strength con- 
 sisted in the union of opinion among the people, would have taken no 
 step of such importance without that union ; nor would it have mistaken 
 mere party feeling for national sentiment. 
 
 " That occasion, sir, called for a liberal view of things. Not only the 
 degree of union in the sentiments of the people, but the nature and struc- 
 ture of the Government ; the general habits and pursuits of the community ; 
 the probable consequences of the war, immediate and remote, on our civil 
 institutions ; the effect of a vast military patronage ; the variety of impor- 
 tant local interests and objects these were considerations essentially be- 
 longing to the subject. It was not enough that Government could make 
 out its cause of war on paper, and get the better of England in the argu- 
 ment. This was requisite, but not all that was requisite. The question 
 of war or peace, in a country like this, is not to be compressed into the 
 compass that would fit a small litigation. Incapable, in its nature, of 
 )eing decided upon technical rules, it is unfit to be discussed in the man- 
 ner which usually appertains to the forensic habit. It should be regarded 
 as a great question, not only of right, but also of prudence and expediency. 
 Reasons of a general nature, considerations which go back to the origin of 
 our institutions, and other considerations which look forward to our hope- 
 ful progress in future times, all belong, in their just proportions and gra- 
 dations, to a question, in the determination of which the happiness of the 
 present and of future generations may be so much concerned. I have 
 heard no satisfactory vindication of the war on grounds like these. They 
 appear not to have suited the temper of that time. Utterly astonished at 
 the declaration of war, I have been surprised at nothing since. Unless all
 
 122 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. V 
 
 history deceived me, I saw how it Avould be prosecuted when I saw how it 
 was begun. There is in the nature of things an unchangeable relation be- 
 tween rash counsels and feeble execution. 
 
 " It was not, sir, the minority that brought on the war. Look to your 
 records from the date of the Embargo in 1807 until June, 1812. Every 
 thing that men could do they did to stay your course. When at last they 
 could effect no more, they urged you to delay your measures. They en- 
 treated you to give yet a little time for deliberation, and to wait for favor- 
 able events. As if inspired for the purpose of arresting your progress, 
 they laid before you the consequences of your measures, just as we have 
 seen them since take place. They predicted to you their effects on public 
 opinion. They told you that, instead of healing, they would inflame po- 
 litical dissensions. They pointed out to you also what would and what 
 must happen on the frontier. That which since has happened is but their 
 prediction turned into history. Vain is the hope, then, of escaping just 
 retribution, by imputing to the minority of the Government, or to the 
 opposition among the people, the disasters of these times. Vain is the 
 attempt to impose thus on the common sense of mankind. The world 
 has had too much experience of ministerial shifts and evasions. It has 
 learned to judge of men by their actions, and of measures by their con- 
 sequences." 
 
 Recurring to the imputations cast upon the opposition im- 
 putations to which an opposition is commonly subjected he 
 asserted the duty and the right of free discussion in a manner 
 equally worthy of being remembered at all times and under all 
 circumstances : 
 
 " If the purpose be, by casting these imputations upon those who are 
 opposed to the policy of the Government, to check the freedom of inquiry, 
 discussion, and debate, such purpose is also incapable of being executed. 
 That opposition is constitutional and legal. It is also conscientious. It 
 rests in settled and sober conviction that such policy is destructive to the 
 interests of the people, and dangerous to the being of the Government. 
 The experience of every day confirms these sentiments. Men who act from 
 such motives are not to be discouraged by trifling obstacles, nor awed by 
 any dangers. They know the limit of constitutional opposition up to 
 that limit, at their own discretion, will they walk, and walk fearlessly. If 
 they should find, in the history of their country, a precedent for going 
 over, I trust they will not follow it. They are not of a school in which in- 
 surrection is taught as a virtue. They will not seek promotion through 
 the paths of sedition, nor qualify themselves to serve their country in any 
 of the higher departments of its Government by making rebellion the first 
 element in their political science. 
 
 " Important as I deem it to discuss, on all proper occasions, the policy 
 of the measures at present pursued, it is still more important to maintain
 
 1814.] RIGHTS OF DISCUSSION. 123 
 
 the right of such discussion in its full and just extent. Sentiments lately 
 sprung up, and now growing fashionable, make it necessary to be explicit 
 on this point. The more I perceive a disposition to check the freedom of 
 inquiry by extravagant and unconstitutional pretences, the firmer shall be 
 the tone in which I shall assert and the freer the manner in which I shall 
 exercise it. It is the ancient and undoubted prerogative of this people to 
 canvass public measures and the merits of public men. It is a ' home-bred 
 right,' a fireside privilege.' It has ever been enjoyed in every house, cot- 
 tage, and cabin in the nation. It is not to be drawn into controversy. It 
 is as undoubted as the right of breathing the air, or walking on the earth. 
 Belonging to private life as a right, it belongs to public life as a duty ; and 
 it is the last duty which those whose representative I am shall find me to 
 abandon. Aiming at all times to be courteous and temperate in its use, 
 except when the right itself shall be questioned, I shall then carry it to its 
 extent. I shall then place myself on the extreme boundary of my right, 
 and bid defiance to any arm that would move me from my ground. This 
 high constitutional privilege I shall defend and exercise within this House 
 and without this House, and in all places, in time of war, in time of peace, 
 and at all times." 
 
 Passing, then, to the futility of all projects for the conquest 
 of the neighboring British provinces, he proceeded to the 
 connection between the avowed object of the war the de^pnce 
 of our maritime rights and the great purpose for which the 
 Government had been created, the protection and encour- 
 agement of commerce. This purpose, he argued, is defeated by 
 every measure of embargo and restriction, and can be answered 
 in a time of war only by coping with the enemy on the ocean. 
 The speech was closed with an impressive appeal to the House 
 for a change in the mode of carrying on the war, and with an 
 explicit declaration of his own purpose to support measures 
 which he could approve, and such measures only : 
 
 " The faith of this nation is pledged to its commerce, formally and 
 solemnly. I call upon you to redeem that pledge, not by sacrificing while 
 you profess to regard it, but by unshackling it, and protecting it, and 
 fostering it, according to your ability, and the reasonable expectations of 
 those who have committed it to the care of the Government. In the com- 
 merce of the country the Constitution had its growth ; in the extinction 
 of that commerce it will find its grave. I use not the tone of intimidation 
 or menace, but I forewarn you of consequences. Let it be remembered 
 that, in my place, this day, and in the discharge of my public duty, I con- 
 jure you to alter your course. I urge to you the language of entreaty. I 
 beseech you by the best hopes of your country's prosperity, by your regard 
 for the preservation of her Government and her Union, by your own anibi-
 
 124 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. V. 
 
 tion, as honorable men, of leading hereafter in the councils of a great and 
 growing empire ; I conjure you, by every motive which can be addressed 
 to the mind, that you abandon your system of restrictions that you 
 abandon it at once, and forever. 
 
 " The humble aid which it would be in my power to render to meas- 
 ures of Government shall be given cheerfully, if Government will pursue 
 measures which I can conscientiously support. Badly as I think of the 
 original grounds of the war, as well as of the manner in which it has 
 been hitherto conducted, if, even now, failing in an honest and sincere 
 attempt to procure just and honorable peace, it will return to measures of 
 defence and protection, such as reason and common sense and the public 
 opinion all call for, my vote shall not be withholden from the means. Give 
 up your futile projects of invasion. Extinguish the fires that blaze on 
 your inland frontier. Establish perfect safety and defence there by ade- 
 quate force. Let every man that sleeps on your soil sleep in security. 
 Stop the blood that flows from the veins of unarmed yeomanry and 
 women and children. Give to the living time to bury and lament their 
 dead in the quietness of private sorrow. Having performed this work 
 of beneficence and mercy on your inland border, turn, and look with the 
 eye of justice and compassion on your vast population along the coast. 
 Unclinch the iron grasp of your Embargo. Take measures for that end 
 before another sun sets upon you. With all the war of the enemy on 
 your commerce, if you would cease to war on it yourselves, you would 
 still have some commerce. That commerce would give you some revenue. 
 Apply that revenue to the augmentation of your navy. That navy will, 
 in turn, protect your commerce. Let it no longer be said that not one 
 ship of force, built by your hands, yet floats upon the ocean. Turn the 
 current of your efforts into the channel which national sentiment has 
 already worn broad and deep to receive it. A naval force, competent to 
 defend your coast against considerable armaments, to convoy your trade, 
 and perhaps raise the blockade of your rivers, is not a chimera. It may be 
 realized. If, then, the war must be continued, go to the ocean. If you 
 are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre where 
 alone those rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your for- 
 tune points you. There the united wishes and exertions of the nation 
 will go with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, 
 cease at the water's edge. They are lost in attachment to national char- 
 acter on the element where that character is made respectable. In pro- 
 tecting naval interests by naval means, you will arm yourselves with the 
 whole power of national sentiment, and may command the whole abun- 
 dance of the national resources. In time you may enable yourselves to 
 redress injuries in the place where they may be offered ; and, if need be, 
 to accompany your own flag throughout the world with the protection 
 of your own cannon." 
 
 In thus calling upon the Administration to abandon the
 
 1814.] THE EMBARGO MODIFIED. 125 
 
 system of commercial restrictions, and to go to the ocean as the 
 proper theatre of the war, Mr. Webster made it manifest that 
 no half-way measures could receive his support. In a very 
 short time the Administration found it necessary to introduce 
 a proposition to modify the Embargo ; and the vote given upon 
 it by Mr. Webster affords a remarkable illustration of the fidelity 
 and consistency with which he always adhered to his convictions 
 respecting the limits of constitutional powers. He never at any 
 time in his life believed that an embargo, unlimited in dura- 
 tion, and capable of being removed only by an act of Congress 
 assented to by the whole legislative power, is authorized by the 
 Constitution. The existing Embargo, enacted on the 17th of 
 December, 1813, was not exactly of this character, like that of 
 1807 ; but it embraced the whole coasting as well as the whole 
 foreign trade of the United States. The consequence was, that 
 there could be no commerce by water between different States, 
 or between different ports of the same State. In the course of 
 the winter, a population .of seven thousand persons, on the 
 island of !X antucket, were in great extremities for want of the 
 necessaries of life. This island, belonging to Massachusetts, 
 fifteen miles long, and three miles wide, and thirty miles from 
 the main-land, afforded no fuel, and produced scarcely any pro- 
 visions. The inhabitants had been engaged in the whale-fish- 
 ery ever since its first settlement, and had always depended 
 for their supplies upon the nearest towns on the coast. Thirty 
 of its principal citizens were now in the town of New Bedford, 
 unable, in consequence of the Embargo, to reach their families. 
 This perilous state of things, of which it can only be said that 
 it was not (although it should have been) foreseen, required 
 special relief. A bill was introduced to authorize the Presi- 
 dent to grant to the people of Nantucket certain privileges of 
 commerce with the main-land during the existence of the Em- 
 bargo. Mr. Webster voted against it, because he considered 
 that part of the Embargo which interdicted the coasting trade 
 as unconstitutional and void. He never would consent, he said, 
 to pass any law, giving to our citizens a privilege which they 
 enjoyed under the Constitution, and of which they could not 
 be rightfully divested. Seven other members voted with him 
 upon the same ground ; all the other members voting for the bill
 
 126 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. V 
 
 But, before the end of the session, and in less than three 
 months from this modification of the Embargo, Mr. "Webster 
 had the satisfaction of seeing the Administration change its 
 whole course on this subject, and of taking part in what he 
 styled " the funeral ceremonies of the restrictive system." The 
 Embargo of December, 1813, had been passed on the recom- 
 mendation of President Madison, upon the ground that sup- 
 plies found their way to the enemy from our own ports, and 
 that British productions were brought into the United States 
 from neutral countries, and even in British vessels disguised as 
 neutrals. But the experience of only four months demonstrated 
 the entire uselessness, as a war measure, of placing our whole 
 commerce in a condition of paralysis, and also demonstrated 
 its direct effect of depriving the Government of revenue. The 
 President now recommended a repeal of the Embargo. Mr. 
 Calhoun, who led for the Administration on the floor of the 
 House, as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 
 undertook the duty of explaining the reasons for this change 
 of policy. His part was a difficult one to perform ; for the 
 opponents of the Embargo had from the first, and as often as it 
 was renewed, pointed out the consequences which had always 
 attended it. But Mr. Calhoun proceeded in his task with great 
 skill and address. He frankly admitted that, in his own opin- 
 ion, the Embargo was originally fitted to produce an effect on 
 the conduct of the belligerent nations of Europe toward our- 
 selves, so long only as we remained actually at peace with them ; 
 and that it ought to have been abandoned when we went to war 
 with England. This admission of its futility, as a measure of 
 war, made it necessary for him to find, in the condition of 
 things in Europe, when the Embargo was laid, and in the 
 changes which had since taken place in Europe, both a justifi- 
 cation for laying it, and a reason for now abandoning it. In 
 order to find the former, he went back to the state of Europe 
 in 1807, when we first began the restrictive system under Mr. 
 Jefferson, and when, all the European powers being arrayed 
 against England, there was no nation but ourselves interested 
 in the support or defence of neutral rights. As there was then 
 no prospect of producing any impression by it on neutral 
 powers there being no neutrals and as Great Britain might
 
 .814.] REPEAL OF THE EMBARGO. 127 
 
 be made to feel its effects, it was, lie argued, as a means of pre- 
 venting a war with her, a wise and proper measure. Then, 
 inserting gracefully the admission that, as a war measure, the 
 restrictive system, in his own opinion, might have been aban- 
 doned earlier, he proceeded at once to the state of things now 
 existing in Europe, in which there were many nations of great 
 power in a neutral condition, or acting with England against 
 France, interested, like ourselves, in the restoration of neutral 
 rights, with whom it was now our best policy to open com- 
 mercial intercourse. He dwelt particularly on the impor- 
 tance of cultivating the good-will of the Emperor of Russia, 
 who, being now the ally of England, would have an im- 
 portant influence in inducing her to bring her war with 
 us to a termination, in which our objects, of reestablishing 
 neutral rights and the freedom of the seas, would be accom- 
 plished. 
 
 There are few specimens of parliamentary tact, on the 
 records of any deliberative assembly, more ingenious than this 
 speech of Mr. Calhoun in favor of repealing the Embargo of 
 December, 1813. But he forgot, perhaps he wished to forget, 
 that it was the Embargo of December, 1813, which he was 
 about to repeal. He forgot that the very assertion of the Pres- 
 ident, when he recommended this as a w'ar measure, was, that 
 there were neutral nations, under whose flag and through 
 whose ports an indirect commerce between Great Britain and 
 ourselves was then alleged to be going on, which weakened us 
 and strengthened her as belligerents, and which must therefore 
 be suppressed, at whatever expense to those neutral nations. 
 All that Mr. Calhoun said, respecting the importance of concil- 
 iating and helping the nations that were neutrals, in April, 1814, 
 when he proposed the repeal, was true and sound ; but it was 
 just as true and sound in December, 1813, when this Embargo 
 was laid. Moreover, Bonaparte had been driven out of Russia 
 in the winter of 1812-'13 ; and when we laid this particular 
 Embargo of December, 1813, putting an end to all lawful com- 
 merce with all nations, a large part of Northern Europe was 
 preparing to combine against him, and their territories could 
 no longer be used by him as the sphere of his own restrictive 
 policy.
 
 128 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. V. 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Webster rose to answer Mr. Calhoun 
 it was quite natural that he should congratulate his friends on 
 the approaching triumph of their principles, and that he should 
 claim the vote about to be given as a high tribute to the cor- 
 rectness of their opinions and the consistency of their conduct 
 Accepting the issue tendered by Mr. Calhoun in going back to 
 the origin of the restrictive system of embargoes and non-inter- 
 course, Mr. Webster proceeded to say that it was originally 
 offered to the people of this country as a kind of political faith ; 
 to be believed in, but not examined ; to be acted upon, and not 
 reasoned about. To deliberate on it was to doubt ; and to 
 doubt was heretical. It stood upon the trust reposed in its 
 authors, not upon any merit which could be discovered in 
 itself. It had been from the beginning a kind of p-arty super- 
 stition, and, as such, it had been adhered to, as a measure of 
 war, although it was now admitted that it was unfitted for such 
 & purpose. 
 
 He then stated with much force the fundamental objection 
 to this system that had always been urged against it by its 
 opponents, that its measures were ruinous to ourselves, that 
 they were inoperative on others, and that they did not spring 
 from a purely American policy. It was an imitation of the 
 Continental system of France, and was, in fact, a means of 
 cooperation with her in her conflict with England. The com- 
 mencement of the Continental system of restriction followed 
 immediately on the subjugation of Prussia, and the humilia- 
 tion of Russia ; l and our Embargo of 1807 came in, and con- 
 tributed all that we could contribute to make that system 
 effectual. It was now clear that our restrictive policy depended 
 for its success on another and a mightier system. Incapable 
 itself of directly producing any great effect on the interest of 
 England, it might yet contribute to that end by its cooperation 
 with her European enemy. It was now admitted that it must 
 fall, because great changes had taken place. Those changes, 
 Mr. Webster said, were neither more nor less than the over- 
 throw of French power, and the deliverance of nations long 
 oppressed by its despotic spirit. How unnatural, he continued, 
 
 1 At the decisive battle of Austerlitz, tory enabled Napoleon to extort the 
 December 2, 1805, in which a great vie- treaty of Presburg.
 
 1814.] GRAXD ERROR OF THE RESTRICTIVE SYSTEM. 129 
 
 how perverse, how radically false must be a system of measures 
 which has opposed our interests to the general interests of man- 
 kind, and reduced us to that miserable condition that, unless we 
 would wish to see our own Government disconcerted, and its 
 hopes disappointed, we must rejoice, not in the general liberty 
 and prosperity of nations, but in the progress of successful 
 usurpation ! 1 Even without regard to the character of the 
 Government with which this system was uniting us, it was, in 
 its own nature, radically wrong and reprehensible ; for it had a 
 direct tendency to diminish our own independence and self- 
 respect, and to make us rely on the efforts and success of others 
 for the maintenance of our own rights. If it had been seen, at 
 its first introduction, as was now impliedly admitted, that it 
 depended for its success on the condition of European politics, 
 that it owed its support to the continuance of French power 
 over the Continent, and that, with any considerable diminu- 
 tion of that power, it would become futile and contempt- 
 ible the people of this country, he declared, from a senti- 
 ment of national independence, would have rejected it with 
 Bcorn. 
 
 "Whatever may be thought of the motives with which our 
 restrictive system was originally adopted, it must be allowed, 
 I think, that Mr. Calhoun had laid open the ground for this re- 
 tort, and that Mr. Webster assigned the true character to its 
 tendencies and the true objections to it that had always existed. 
 Down to the latest moment, it had constantly been maintained 
 by the supporters of the present and the preceding Administra- 
 tion, that the continuance of this system did not depend on 
 events in Europe ; that to refer to them was uncharitable and 
 unjust ; and that the system must be adhered to, now that we 
 were at war. " But now," said Mr. Webster, " in a moment, 
 in the twinkling of an eye, the whole system is dissolved ; and 
 all its crowds of laws and supplements, and its garniture of 
 
 1 In that heroic address, issued by the nation which, after having patiently 
 the Emperor Alexander to his people, endured all the evils of war, shall suc- 
 announcing the capture of Moscow by the ceed, by the force of courage and virtue, 
 French, there was a prophetic sentiment not only in reconquering its own rights, 
 which foretold the deliverance of Europe but in extending the blessings of free- 
 through the suiferings of Russia : " In dom to other states ; and even to those 
 the present miserable state of the human who have been made the unwilling in- 
 race," said the Czar, " what glory awaits struments of attempting its subjection ! ' 
 10
 
 130 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. V, 
 
 messages, reports, and resolutions of public bodies, are tumbling 
 undistinguished into a common grave." 
 
 This animated but perfectly courteous discussion was con- 
 tinued by a reply from Mr. Calhoun and a rejoinder from Mr. 
 "Webster, the former contending that the war and the restrictive 
 system were both means to the same end the coercion of Eng- 
 land into a disposition to respect the rights of neutrals ; that 
 whether one or the other was to be pursued was a matter of 
 election, to be decided by a sound discretion. He repelled the 
 idea that the House or the Government had cooperated in the 
 views of France, and trusted that Mr. "Webster would believe 
 that, as honorable men, his opponents meant to stand on Amer- 
 ican ground. Mr. "Webster said that he had made no observa- 
 tions respecting motives ; that he had pointed out the necessary 
 tendencies of the system; that we should have asserted our 
 rights by our own strength, and not, even for the purpose of 
 effecting a great object, have resorted to a course of measures 
 dependent for their success on foreign events, which had made 
 our policy so vacillating that our statutes " frowned at each 
 other on the record in the most positive spirit of contradiction." 
 
 The bill for repealing the Embargo and the Non-Intercourse 
 Acts was then passed by a very large majority. 1 
 
 This debate was also marked by an interesting feature that 
 exhibits the then relative positions of Mr. Calhoun and Mr. 
 Webster on the subject of protection to domestic manufactures. 
 The tariff that was at that time in operation as a war tariff was 
 a system of double duties ; the duties having been raised to twice 
 their former standard for the sake of more revenue. But, as 
 they were arranged, they had no special reference to the pro- 
 tection of our own manufactures. The Embargo and ISTon- 
 Intercourse laws, however, had of course operated as a system 
 of very efficient protection ; and, now that they were to be re- 
 pealed, great anxiety was felt as to the effect of that repeal on 
 our manufactures. On the day previous to this debate on the 
 restrictive system, the House had adopted a resolution directing 
 the Secretary of the Treasury to report to Congress, at its next 
 session, a general tariff of duties, conformably to what might 
 then be the situation of the general and local interests of the 
 
 1 April 7, 1814.
 
 1814.] PROTECTION IN 1814. 131 
 
 United States. In his speech introducing the bill to repeal the 
 Embargo, Mr. Calhoun had said, in reference to the fears of the 
 manufacturing interests, that this resolution was a strong pledge 
 that the House would not suffer the manufacturers to be unpro- 
 tected in case of a repeal of the restrictive system ; and that he 
 himself hoped that at all times and under every policy they 
 would be protected with due care. Mr. Webster, in reply to 
 this, said that with respect to manufactures it was necessary to 
 speak with some precision. He was not their enemy ; he was 
 their friend, but he was not for rearing them, or any other in- 
 terest, in hot-beds. He would not legislate precipitately, even 
 in favor of them ; above all, he would not profess intentions in 
 relation to them which he did not purpose to execute. He felt 
 no desire to push capital into extensive manufactures faster 
 than the general progress of our wealth and population propels 
 it. After adding some general remarks on the character and 
 effects of great manufacturing towns, as contrasted with the in- 
 fluences of agricultural pursuits, he closed this part of the dis- 
 cussion as follows : 
 
 " I have made these remarks, sir, not because I perceive any immediate 
 danger of carrying our manufactures to an extensive height, but for the 
 purpose of guarding and limiting my opinions, and of checking, perhaps, 
 a little the high-wrought hopes of some who seem to look to our present 
 infant establishments for ' more than their nature or their state can bear.' 
 It is the true policy of government to suffer the different pursuits of society 
 to take their own course, and not to give excessive bounties or encourage- 
 ments to one over another. This, also, is the true spirit of the Constitu- 
 tion. It has not, in my opinion, conferred on the Government the power 
 of changing the occupations of the people of different States and sections, 
 and of forcing them into other employments. It cannot prohibit com- 
 merce any more than agriculture, nor manufactures any more than com- 
 merce. It owes protection to all. I rejoice that commerce is once more 
 permitted to exist ; that its remnant, as far as this unblessed war will 
 allow, may yet again visit the seas, before it is quite forgotten that we 
 have been a commercial people. I shall rejoice still further when I see 
 the Government pursue an independent, permanent, and steady system of 
 national politics ; when it shall rely for the maintenance of rights and the 
 redress of wrongs on the strength and resources of our own country, and 
 break off all measures which tend, in any degree, to connect us with the 
 fortunes of a foreign power." 
 
 It is important to remember that this was said in 1814,
 
 132 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. V 
 
 when no " hot-bed " system had been, if such was afterward, 
 resorted to. 
 
 This session of Congress ended on the 18th of April, 1814. 
 It was during this winter that Mr. Webster began that long 
 course of practice in the Supreme Court of the United States 
 which was seldom entirely interrupted from that time forward, 
 although there came to be periods when his public and official 
 duties obliged him to make great sacrifices in respect to his pro- 
 fessional emoluments. At this period the court commenced its 
 sessions in the month of February. Its term in the present 
 year was closed about the middle of March. Mr. Webster was 
 employed in several prize cases, none of which, however, in- 
 volved very important questions. 1 We get the following item 
 of interest from his correspondence with his brother : " There is 
 no man in the court that strikes me like Marshall. I have 
 never seen a man of whose intellect I had a higher opinion." * 
 After the adjournment of the court, Mr. Webster went with a 
 few other gentlemen to dine with Judge Washington, at Mount 
 Yernon.* 
 
 1 Correspondence, i., 244. gress. He became a member of the 
 
 2 For some very interesting descrip- court in 1811. 
 
 tions of the other judges of that time, as 8 Letter to E. Webster. ( Correspond- 
 well as of the Chief Justice, see the let- ence, i., 244.) There is an error in the 
 ters of Judge Story, given in his life by date of this letter in the printed copy, 
 his son, Mr. W. W. Story, vol. i., pp. It should be March 29, 1814, instead of 
 166, et seq. These letters were written May. Mr. Webster was not in Wash- 
 before Judge Story was on the bench, ington after the end of the session of 
 and while he was a member of Con- Congress.
 
 1814.1 BURNING OF THE CAPITOL. 133 
 
 CHAPTEE VI, 
 1814-1815. 
 
 EXTRAORDINARY SESSION OF CONGRESS BURNING OF THE CAPITOL 
 BY THE ENGLISH PEACE NEGOTIATIONS THE HABTFOKD CON- 
 VENTION A LAND TAX CONSCRIPTION ATTEMPT TO CREATE A 
 
 NATIONAL BANK. 
 
 THE Thirteenth Congress was assembled by proclamation 
 of the President in an extraordinary session, on the 19th 
 of September, 1814. Grave events had occurred. In the pre- 
 ceding August, the enemy had landed a force fifty miles below 
 Washington, which marched to the city, burned the capitol, 
 the President's house, and some of the other public build- 
 ings, and then retired. The President's message, at the open- 
 ing of the session, took notice of this " destruction of public 
 edifices, protected, as monuments of the arts, by the laws of 
 civilized warfare ; " and, repelling the idea that any disgrace 
 sould attach to ourselves from this occurrence, it proceeded to 
 recapitulate the successes which we had met with elsewhere. 
 Adverting to the great numbers of the militia that had neces- 
 sarily been called into the field, the message recommended an 
 increase of the regular army and a classification of the militia 
 for active service. Adverting to the state of the finances, it 
 called for pecuniary supplies on a scale commensurate with the 
 extent and character which the war had assumed. 
 
 The diplomatic relations of the war had been somewhat 
 changed since the last adjournment of Congress. An offer of 
 mediation by the Emperor of Russia, made in March, 1813, had
 
 134: LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. VL 
 
 been accepted by our Government, and commissioners had been 
 sent to Europe to await the result of this proposal. The Brit- 
 ish Government declined the mediation, and proposed to treat 
 directly with the United States. Accordingly, in January, 
 (1814), a new commission was sent to our plenipotentiaries, who 
 were then at Gottenburg. It was not, however, until August, 
 that the British and American commissioners met, at Ghent ; 
 and when the session of Congress began in September, the nego- 
 tiation was in progress, but with little prospect of a successful 
 result. The measures of the session, therefore, related to the 
 further prosecution of the war or, as must be the case with 
 nearly all measures in a time of war, they related directly or 
 indirectly to the procurement of men and money. 
 
 Mr. Webster's policy was a policy of watchfulness. He was 
 a member of the opposition, but an independent one. Althqugh 
 classed with the Federal party and generally acting with it, he 
 was bound by no party trammels. He was totally unconnected 
 with any measures of the New-England Federalists, which, 
 whether justly or unjustly, were then and have since been 
 regarded as objectionable. He left his home for this session of 
 Congress before the famous " Hartford Convention " was talked 
 
 O 
 
 of or contemplated. 1 When he heard afterward that such a 
 
 1 For the benefit of readers not fa- lieve that they were a knot of trai- 
 ruiliar with our political history, to whom tors. They were, in truth, some of the 
 the name of the " Hartford Convention " most eminent and virtuous citizens of 
 will, of itself, carry no meaning,, it may New England, whose error consisted in 
 be well to explain that this was an as- holding a meeting of prominent and im- 
 sembly of delegates from some of the portant men, in a time of war, to delib- 
 New-England States, which met at Hart- erate secretly on public affairs, when the 
 ford, in Connecticut, in the winter of administration of the Government was 
 1814-'15, and sat with closed doors. It in the hands of the opposite party, 
 was composed of men of very high per- Under such circumstances, they could 
 sonal characters, belonging to the Fed- not " escape calumny." 
 eral party. It was then believed by At different times in Mr. Webster's life 
 their political opponents that their meet- eiforts were made, by persons unfriendly 
 ing had a treasonable object, namely, to to him, to connect him in some way with 
 withdraw the New-England States from this assembly. Among these efforts, it 
 the Union, on account of the war with appears that, about the year 1835, it 
 Great Britain. This purpose has been was rumored that a Mr. Chamberlin, of 
 denied, and explanations have been New Hampshire, had received a letter 
 made ; but the supposed treasonable from Mr. Webster, approving of the Hart- 
 character of the meeting has passed into ford Convention. Mr. Chamberlin had 
 a kind of popular maxim. Although Mr. died ; but his papers were searched, and 
 Webster had no connection with it, and, the letter, or a letter, was found, and 
 in fact, disapproved of it, he never at brought to the city of New York, where 
 any time regarded it as seditious or a caucus was held over it. But, as it 
 treasonable. He knew the chief per- did not contain any mention of the Hart- 
 sons who composed it too well to be- ford Convention, it was not published
 
 1815.] HARTFORD CONVENTION. 135 
 
 meeting was proposed, lie advised the Governor of N" ew Hamp 
 shire not to appoint delegates to it. The State was, in fact, not 
 represented, as a State, in that convention ; although two of 
 the counties on the Connecticut River, a hundred miles from Mr. 
 Webster's residence, sent members to it. Mr. Webster had no 
 connection with it whatever. This will account for a fact men- 
 tioned in the following extract from Mr. Ticknor's MS. " Recol- 
 lections " of Mr. Webster, which gives some interesting sketches 
 of his position and occupations during this session of Con- 
 gress : 
 
 " In January and February, 1815, 1 passed some time at "Washington. 
 t lived at Crawford's Hotel, in Georgetown, which was then a sort of head- 
 quarters of the Federal members of Congress. Mr. King and Mr. Gore, 
 members of the Senate, lived there with their wives, in a kind of state now 
 unknown ; each of them keeping a coach-and-four, and driving every morn- 
 ing to the humble chamber in which the Senate then met in consequence 
 of the destruction of the capitol by the British. Al the same hotel lived 
 Mr. Mason, Mr. Webster, and several other distinguished Federal members 
 of Congress. Mr. "Webster, who had then been in Congress only a little 
 more than two years, was already among its foremost men, and, stood with 
 Gaston and Hanson to lead the opposition in debate, on the floor of the 
 lower House. Most of the Federal members at that time had ceased to 
 visit at the President's house. Mr. "Webster, however, thought it proper 
 to continue to do so, and then and always maintained friendly relations 
 with Mr. Madison, and spoke of him with respect. His society was much 
 sought. His relations with Mr. Gore, dating from the period of his study- 
 ing the law, and his intimate friendship with Mr. Mason, never at any 
 moment interrupted or disturbed, made him* a most welcome member of 
 that brilliant circle, which generally met in the evening in the private par- 
 lor belonging to Mrs. King and Mrs. Gore, which was rather an elegant 
 drawing-room, for the time. 
 
 " As I had passed two days at Hartford, in the same private quarters 
 with Mr. Cabot, Mr. Otis, and several of the principal members of the Hart- 
 ford Convention, then in session, the gentlemen, Mr. Gore and Mr. Mason 
 especially, were very curious to learn from me any thing that I might know 
 respecting that remarkable body. But I had no information to give theiu. 
 I was travelling with Mr. S. G. Perkins, and for that reason alone lived 
 
 These facts were afterward communi- fact stated by Mr. Ticknor, of Mr. Web- 
 
 cated to Mr. Webster by a political op- star's and Mr. Mason's entire ignorance 
 
 ponent. Such was always the fate of of what was going on at Hartford, is new 
 
 attempts to identify him with that meet- and striking. As I shall not again allude 
 
 ing. The impossibility of his having to this topic, I may here refer the reader 
 
 been connected with it, and his dis- to Mr. Webster's speech in reply to Mr. 
 
 approbation of it, are stated in his Hayne ( TPbrX:*, iii., 314, 315), for his views 
 
 Correspondence, vol. L, pp. 11, 184. The respecting the Hartford Convention.
 
 136 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. VL 
 
 with Mr. Cabot and his friends, who communicated none of their secreta 
 to either of us. Mr. Gore, and more especially Mr. Mason and Mr. Web- 
 . ster, expressed their dissatisfaction with the meeting of the convention 
 and more particularly that they received no information by correspond- 
 ence from its members. They gave this as a reason for asking informatior 
 concerning it, from me. 
 
 " Mr. Webster's room was next to Mr. Mason's. They dined at a con- 
 gressional mess in the same house. Mr. Gore and Mr. King and their 
 ladies had a private table together, to which they often invited friends. 
 I heard Mr. Webster several times in the House, not in formal speeches, 
 but in that very deliberate conversational manner, and with the peculiar 
 exactness of phraseology, which marked him as a public debater to the 
 end of his life. He did not fail then, any more than afterward, to com- 
 mand the attention of the House. The subjects on which he spoke related 
 to the common course of business, and were not exciting or particularly in- 
 teresting. I dined repeatedly at the congressional mess, of which he was 
 one. I met him at Mr. Gore's table and elsewhere. In the mess he was 
 very amusing, talking gayly, and as if no care rested upon him. Every- 
 where he was liked as a social companion. 
 
 " He was at this time much occupied with the study of English politics. 
 Volumes of the ' Annual Register,' and the ' Parliamentary Debates,' covered 
 his table ; and while I was in Washington he read through Brougham's 
 ' Colonial Policy of the European Powers,' parts of which he praised to 
 me, while with other portions he was much dissatisfied. When convers- 
 ing with the other members with whom I constantly saw him, he seemed 
 to me to know more about the details of business before the House than 
 any of them. I mean that he appeared to know more what was to come 
 up next, or soon, facts which I was anxious to learn." 
 
 In the first debate of a general character in which Mr. "Web- 
 ster took any part at this session, his position as an opponent 
 of the Administration and its policy was defined with so much 
 precision, that no vote or action of his was likely to be, as in 
 fact none was, at the time, misapprehended or misrepresented. 
 A proposition came before the House at an early period in the 
 session to grant a new land tax of twice the amount of the last 
 one. In assigning his reasons for voting against it, Mr. "Web- 
 ster said that although majorities in legislative bodies some- 
 times believed it to be in their power to place dissenting mem- 
 bers in a situation in which their conduct would be liable to 
 unfavorable construction, there was rarely any serious difficulty 
 attending such occasions, and on the present one there was no 
 difficulty at all. He did not feel himself under any necessity
 
 1814.] TOTE AGAINST THE WAR TAXES. 137 
 
 either of obstructing the passage of the taxes through the 
 House, or of taking upon himself any portion of the responsi- 
 bility of laying them. A case might arise in which it would be 
 for those who had been the minority to say whether the sup- 
 plies should be granted or withheld. This was not such a case ; 
 it was certain, that the taxes would be granted ; and, there- 
 fore, as he had not the power of withholding supplies until a 
 change of measures in carrying on the war could be compelled, 
 he did not think it fit, by adding his vote to the vote of the ma- 
 jority, to be deemed to sanction the measures of the Adminis- 
 tration, through a voluntary support of its plans of finance. 
 He would have the power and strength of the nation called 
 forth and guided by different hands, to compel England to 
 make a peace that would be honorable and fair. But, as he 
 could not have this, and as the supplies did not depend upon his 
 vote, he held himself at liberty not to approve, without reason, 
 the course that was pursued. 
 
 At the time when he so voted against the taxes, the Presi- 
 dent had recently transmitted to Congress information of the 
 state of the negotiation at Ghent. This intelligence did not 
 satisfy Mr. Webster that such a peace was demanded on our 
 part as we ought to demand, or that England meant to accede 
 to such a peace. 1 He did not consider the Administration able 
 to carry on the war successfully, and did not choose by his vote 
 to express his confidence in them. He thought the President 
 ought to be assisted by a much stronger Cabinet ; and, looking 
 at the actual condition of the negotiations at Ghent, he believed 
 that different measures at home were essential to the procure- 
 ment of a peace that should close forever all existing contro- 
 versies. He marked out his course respecting the taxes accord- 
 ,ngly, and assigned his reasons for voting against them. In 
 doing so, he acted in no spirit of party ; in fact, he acted quite 
 as independently of his own party as of the party of the Ad- 
 ministration, for most of the Federal members voted for the 
 taxes. 
 
 As a question of political ethics, 'there can be no doubt that 
 a statesman, in such governments as ours, is perfectly entitled 
 to give effect to his opinions respecting the measures of an act 
 
 1 Correspondence, i., 245.
 
 138 T.IFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. VL 
 
 ministration by voting against taxes, even if they are war taxes. 
 The question whether such a vote, under such circumstances, 
 is right, is totally different from the question whether it will 
 be popular. A mere politician will be very unlikely to vote 
 against war taxes. If he does not, the reason is patent. Ap- 
 plying the standard of popularity, his action in voting supplies 
 is right. Applying a different standard, and supposing the 
 opinions avowed to be honestly held, a vote against war taxes 
 needs no defence. The distinction between the governing 
 motives involves the whole difference between a politician and a 
 statesman ; although all the members of an opposition who vote 
 for supplies to carry on a war may not be mere politicians, and 
 all who vote against them may not be statesmen. "With respect 
 to the judgment to be formed concerning the individual, if he 
 was a person of sufficient elevation and independence of char- 
 acter to assume the risk of unpopularity, we must look beyond 
 that to higher and larger considerations. 
 
 Among the measures that were proposed at this session for 
 obtaining men, a plan for a conscription or compulsory draft , 
 that was much debated in both Houses, at once arrested Mr. 
 "Webster's attention, and he determined to resist it as a usurpa- 
 tion. The Secretary of "War, Mr. Monroe, in his report at the 
 beginning of the session, had recommended a plan for a forcible 
 draught of the whole free male population of the United States, 
 between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, for the purpose of 
 recruiting the regular army. The bill which was introduced 
 in the Senate, and which passed that body, was not exactly of 
 this character, but it was a plan for a classification of the 
 militia, and for a system of drafting individuals, including 
 minors, from the different classes, to be formed into regiments 
 and brigades. Both plans involved the principles of conscrip- 
 tion, and in both Houses the discussion involved the question 
 of the constitutional authority of Congress either to fill the 
 regular army in that mode, or to make a compulsory draft 
 of individuals from the militia of the States. The supporters 
 of the Administration generally asserted these powers in their 
 fullest extent; the members of the opposition denied them. 
 Mr. "Webster's speech on this subject has not been preserved. 
 It was made on the 9th of December (1814), on a motion to in-
 
 1814.] A NATIONAL BANK 139 
 
 definitely postpone the bill, and it was written out by him after- 
 ward. But it was never published, and the manuscript is not 
 now to be found. That Mr. Webster regarded both of these 
 forms of conscription as entirely unauthorized by the Constitu- 
 tion, is apparent from his correspondence, from the arguments 
 of his friends in each of the two Houses, and from the allusions 
 to his opinions made by the friends and the opponents of the 
 measure in the course of the discussion. Neither of the two 
 plans ever took effect, as the public sentiment entirely accorded 
 with the arguments of the opposition. In 1831, Mr. Webster 
 referred with some apparent satisfaction to his agency in de- 
 feating this measure, in these words : " I had a hand, with Mr. 
 Eppes and others, in overthrowing Mr. Monroe's conscription 
 in 1814." l 
 
 A subject to which great political interest was once attached, 
 and one on which Mr. Webster at various times acted a very 
 important part a national bank and the currency of the coun- 
 try now claims the reader's attention. It may be well, there- 
 fore, to preface the narrative of what took place at this session, 
 
 1 MS. letter (see also the printed Cor- vided for by the Constitution, and can 
 respondence, vol. L, pp. 245-248). This reach it in no other way. On this sub- 
 question of the constitutional authority ject, the speeches of Mr. Mason, Mr. 
 of the Federal Government to demand Gore, and Mr. Daggett, in the Senate; 
 compulsory military service of the citi- and of Messrs. Stockton, Grosvenor, 
 zens of the States was discussed with Sheffey, and Cyrus King, in the House, 
 great ability by the opposition, in 1814, are especially valuable. Mr. Mason's 
 and their arguments were unanswered, argument was the most important one 
 In recent times, it has not been suf- that he ever made on a constitutional 
 ficiently considered that the exercise of question. The bill was indefinitely post- 
 such a power displaces the authority of poned in the Senate, on the motion of 
 the States over their militia, and, when Mr. Rufus King, December 28, 1814. Of 
 exercised over minors, that it annihilates this occurrence, Mr. Webster wrote, on 
 the rights of the parent or guardian, the 9th of January : " Mr. King is get- 
 which are exclusively under the control ting a good deal of popularity for hav- 
 of the State. In 1814, the most emi- ing moved the postponement of Giles's 
 nent constitutional lawyers in Congress, bill ; it was accidental and unpremedi- 
 on the opposition side, maintained that tated, and there was no debate. After 
 the Federal power " to raise armies " is, we passed the bill, with amendments, it 
 by the necessary effect of the whole con- was bandied about several days from 
 Btitutional scheme relating to the mili- House to House, on account of the dis- 
 tia, to be regarded as extending only to agreeing votes relative to the amend- 
 the raising of regular armies by con- ments. Being one day before the Sen- 
 tracts of enlistment ; that the citizen ate, and it being known that public 
 owes compulsory military service to his sentiment had terrified the vehement 
 State, in its militia; and that the Fed- Senators, Mr. King made the motion, 
 eral Government has a defined power of Some members happened to be out, it 
 reaching that compulsory service through was immediately put and carried." 
 the organized militia of the States, by ( Correspondence, i., 249. See further, in 
 calling it forth on the occasions pro- the Index, verb. " conscription.")
 
 140 LIFE OF DAXEEL WEBSTER. [On. VI. 
 
 by quoting a part of a memorandum written by him in 1831, 
 which is now in my possession. It explains the leading prin- 
 ciple on which he began and ever afterward continued to act 
 upon this subject : 
 
 " One of the first things which engaged my attention, after I had be- 
 come a member of Congress, was the currency of the country. It had be- 
 come greatly deranged. The old Bank of the United States had expired 
 in 1811, and on that occurrence a great mass of additional banking capital 
 had been put in operation in the several States. Upon the breaking out 
 of the war, most of the State banks had suspended specie payments. This 
 was followed by the greatest irregularity and disorder in the currency of 
 the country. Bank paper was depreciated on a scale rapidly descending 
 from North to South. The banks of Boston paid specie on demand, and 
 of course their paper was equivalent to specie. But the notes of the New- 
 York banks were ten per centum below specie value, those of Philadelphia 
 fifteen, Baltimore twenty, and Washington twenty-five. Taxes, duties, 
 and debts to the Government were everywhere paid in the bills of the 
 local banks. This was undoubtedly all against law, because bank notes 
 were not money, and because, so far as respected custom-house duties, 
 there was an express statute, of long standing, requiring them to be paid 
 in gold and silver coin. One effect of this monstrous derangement of the 
 currency was that, in some quarters, the public burdens were discharged 
 at ten, twenty, or twenty-five per cent, less payment than in -other quarters. 
 Throughout all the debates on the bank question, I kept steadily in view 
 the object of restoring the currency, as a matter of the very first impor- 
 tance, without which it would be impossible to establish any efficient sys- 
 tem of revenue and finance. The very first step toward such a system is to 
 provide a safe medium of payment. I opposed, therefore, to the full ex- 
 tent of my power, every project for a bank so constituted that it might issue 
 irredeemable paper, and thus drown and overwhelm us still more com- 
 pletely in the miseries and calamities of paper money. I would agree to 
 nothing but a specie-paying bank." 
 
 The first Bank of the United States, chartered in 1Y91 for 
 twenty years, had given rise to a fundamental difference of 
 opinion in the Cabinet of President Washington on the question 
 of the constitutional power of Congress to create such an institu- 
 tion. Hamilton was its principal advocate, and Jefferson its 
 principal opposer. In 1811, the party which had originally 
 opposed the bank defeated the renewal of its charter. In 1814 
 -'15, the exigencies of the Administration strongly demanded 
 such an institution, and a bill to create one was introduced. 
 Congress was at that time divided into three parties on this
 
 IS14.] A NATIONAL BANK. 141 
 
 subject. The first consisted of those who were against a bank 
 under any form. The number of these persons was consider- 
 able. They belonged generally to the friends of the Adminis- 
 tration. They voted, therefore, for the bank, or rather with its 
 friends, on all preliminary and incidental questions, but on the 
 final passage they voted against the bill. Accordingly, there 
 was always a body of members who, from their original oppo- 
 sition to any national bank, were at last to be found voting 
 against any project of the kind. 
 
 Second, there was a party among the supporters of the Ad- 
 ministration who were in favor of a bank, provided it should be 
 such a one as they thought would not only regulate the cur- 
 rency and facilitate the operations of Government, but would 
 also afford present and important aids by heavy loans, for which 
 purpose it was to be relieved from the necessity of paying its 
 notes in specie. This party, therefore, was in favor of an irre- 
 deemable paper currency. 
 
 The third party consisted of those who were willing to 
 create a bank with a reasonable amount of capital, compelled 
 always to redeem its notes in specie, and at liberty to judge for 
 itself when it would and when it would not make loans to the 
 Government. "With these Mr. Webster acted. 1 
 
 The bill to incorporate a national bank was first introduced 
 in the Senate, where it was passed by a majority of two votes. 
 As it came into the House, it was a bill which proposed to con- 
 stitute a bank with a capital of fifty millions of dollars, of 
 which four millions only were to be specie, and the residue to 
 consist of Government stocks, then much depreciated. Govern- 
 ment was to have the power to borrow from the bank thirty 
 millions. The notes of all banks south of Kew England being 
 from ten to twenty-five per cent, below the specie standard, 
 specie had disappeared from circulation. On the notes of the 
 proposed national bank specie was not required to be paid until 
 the last payment on its stock had been completed ; and the 
 Government was to have the power at all times to make any 
 regulations which it might think proper in regard to specie 
 payments. As such a bank, in the existing circumstances of 
 
 1 This statement of the condition of verbatim from Mr. Webster's own memo- 
 parties in that Congress is taken almost random.
 
 142 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cfl. VI 
 
 the country, could not go into operation, if it paid specie on its 
 bills, because its specie would be drained at once ; and as the 
 Government, when it had borrowed thirty millions of its paper, 
 must protect it by continuing the exemption from paying 
 specie, the scheme was one to create an irredeemable paper cir- 
 culation, founded on depreciated Government stocks. 1 
 
 The discussion on this bill began in the House on the 9th 
 of December (1814), and was continued with various interrup- 
 tions until the 24th, when it was reported by the Committee 
 of the Whole, amended. Mr. Webster had gone to Baltimore 
 to pass Christmas. He was sent for by his friends, rode to 
 Washington on horseback in the night of Monday, the 26th, 
 and was in the House on the morning of Tuesday, the 27th. a 
 On the 29th, the bill was put on its final passage, and Mr. 
 Webster had just moved its recommitment with certain instruc- 
 tions, when the House adjourned. On the same night, Mr. 
 Brent, a Senator from Virginia, died. Yet BO great was the 
 anxiety to pass this bill, that the House when it assembled on 
 the following day, although the death of Mr. Brent was an- 
 nounced, refused to adjourn until a message came from the 
 Stnate respecting arrangements for the ftmeral, when, on 
 motion of Mr. Pleasants, of Virginia, the bill was laid upon the 
 table. No business was transacted until Monday, the 2d of 
 January. On that day, Mr. Webster made a speech against 
 the bill, on his motion to recommit it with instructions. 
 
 This speech, a vigorous exposition of the bad features of 
 such a bank, is contained in the third volume of Mr. Webster's 
 works, and it is therefore not needful to make extracts from it. 
 It prevented the passage of the bill ; for, although the House re- 
 fused to recommit it, and came to a direct vote on the question 
 of its final passage, the vote stood eighty-one yeas, to eighty 
 nays. Amidst profound silence, the Speaker, Langdon Cheves, 
 of South Carolina, rose, and, after stating briefly but impres- 
 sively his reasons for voting against the bill, announced that 
 it was lost, by a tie. Mr. Calhoun, although not an advocate 
 
 1 A bill of the same character had came before the House on the 9th of 
 
 been rejected by the House on the 28th December. 
 
 of November. It was then introduced * The distance is forty miles. He 
 
 into the Senate, and, having passed that went on horseback because the roads 
 
 body, without any material alteration, it were then very bad.
 
 1815.] A NATIONAL BANK. 143 
 
 for tliis particular bill, was deeply concerned about the situa- 
 tion of the Government, and its humiliating condition from the 
 want of resources to cany on the war. He felt, however, that 
 lie could rely on Mr. Webster's willingness to give the Admin- 
 istration a proper bank, which Mr. Webster had repeatedly 
 avowed in the course of this discussion. As soon as the vote 
 was announced, he walked across the floor of the House to the 
 spot where Mr. Webster stood, and holding out both his hands 
 to Mr. Webster, and telling him that he should rely on his 
 assistance in preparing a new bill, burst into tears, as Mr. Web- 
 ster assured him the assistance should not be withheld. 1 The 
 pledge was personally redeemed ; but the close of the war, 
 which was nearer at hand than was then known to either of 
 them, put an end for a time to discussions about a bank, after 
 some further efforts had been made to create one. 
 
 These efforts followed a motion, made on the day after this 
 bill was rejected, to reconsider the vote. Mr. Webster voted 
 against the reconsideration, but it was carried, and he then 
 voted for the recommitment of the bill to a select committee, 
 in order to have it altered. The new bill, reported by the 
 select committee on the 6th of January (1815), reduced the capi- 
 tal to thirty millions, made many ' important changes in re- 
 spect to the payments of the capital, and struck out the pro- 
 vision which enabled the Government to borrow thirty millions 
 from the bank, with its accompanying power of authorizing a 
 suspension of specie payments. This being a real specie-pay- 
 ing bank, Mr. Webster and his friends voted for it, and it 
 was passed on the 7th of January by a very large majority. 
 After some disagreement between the two Houses, which was 
 finally reconciled, the bill was passed by the Senate and sent 
 to the President, who returned it on the 30th, without his sig- 
 nature, assigning his reasons. The grounds of the " veto " were 
 chiefly two : first, that the capital of the bank, in respect to the 
 media in which it was to be paid, was not well compounded ; 
 second, that, being obliged to pay specie on its bills, it could 
 not furnish a circulating medium that could be relied on during 
 the war, nor furnish loans, or means of anticipating the rev- 
 
 1 My authority for this anecdote is Webster himself, and made a record 
 Mr. Ticknor, who received it from Mr. of it.
 
 144 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. VI. 
 
 enue. The Senate then refused to pass this bill over the 
 " veto," and immediately proposed another, which was in sub- 
 stance like the bill that had been first rejected in the House ; 
 or in other words, it was a bill for a paper bank. On this 
 bill, a new struggle began in the House on the 12th of Febru- 
 ary, and it was much pressed and hurried. But, on the 17th, 
 news of the treaty of peace having been received, the bill was 
 indefinitely postponed. Thus ended for the present the efforts 
 of the Administration to obtain a national bank. On the 3d 
 of March (1815), the Thirteenth Congress expired. 
 
 From this narrative it will be seen that Mr. Webster was 
 not unwilling, during the war, to afford to the Administration 
 a national bank, if they were willing to take one which he 
 thought fit to be created. On the point of constitutional au- 
 thority to create such an institution, Mr. Webster did not differ 
 from President Madison, who, in his " veto " message, held this 
 question to be precluded by repeated acts of all branches of the 
 Government and a concurrence of the general will of the nation. 
 The issue between Mr. Webster and the Administration, there- 
 fore, was wholly on the details of the measure, and chiefly on 
 the question of creating a paper currency not redeemable in 
 specie. Writing to his brother, after the loss of the bill which 
 he was so instrumental in defeating, he said : " A hundred of 
 the narrowest chances alone saved us from a complete paper- 
 money system, in such a form as was calculated and intended 
 to transfer the odium of depreciation from the Government to 
 the bank." 1 Writing after the President had refused to sign 
 the subsequent bill for which he voted, he said : " the Presi- 
 dent has negatived the Bank Bill. So all our labor is lost. I 
 hope this will satisfy our friends, that it was not a bank likely 
 to favor the Administration." * 
 
 This, then, must be considered the starting-point of all Mr. 
 Webster's public conduct on this subject. He had entered Con- 
 gress with a firm opinion that a paper currency, not redeemable 
 in specie on demand, is a source of incalculable evil to the com- 
 munity and the Government. He did not believe that the 
 
 1 Letter to E. Webster, January 22, The meaning of Mr. Webster, in the let- 
 1814. ter last quoted, was, that this was not a 
 
 2 Letter to the same, January 30, bank likely to be in favor with the Ad- 
 1814. (Correspondence, i., 250, 251.) ministration, or to suit it.
 
 1815.J OPINIONS ON THE CURRENCY. 145 
 
 exigencies of war, or any other exigencies, could justify such a 
 departure from all the sound principles of finance ; and he was 
 especially unwilling to create a national institution whose 
 notes, certain to be depreciated, were to be received by the 
 Government in payment of its dues. What he did, and with 
 what success, to bring about a better state of things in this re- 
 spect, will be seen hereafter. 
 
 11
 
 146 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. FCn. VH 
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 1815-1816. 
 
 FOTJBTEENTH CONGEESS NATIONAL BANK SPECIE RESOLUTIONS 
 
 TARIFF OF 1816 DEATH OF ME. WEBSTEE 5 S MOTHEE CHAL- 
 LENGED BY ME. EANDOLPH EETIEE3 FEOM CONGEESS EE- 
 
 MOVAL TO BOSTON. 
 
 IN 1831, Mr. Webster said that he had seen no such Congress 
 for talents as the Fourteenth. 1 It commenced its first ses- 
 sion in December, 1815. Mr. Clay, after taking part in the 
 negotiation of the treaty of Ghent, had returned to Congress, 
 and was again Speaker. Mr. Calhoun had also been reflected. 
 The celebrated John Randolph, of Roanoke, a man of genius 
 and with more than the usual eccentricities of genius, was again 
 in Congress. Mr. Pinkney, then the first lawyer in the United 
 States, and enjoying by far the largest practice at the bar of 
 the Supreme Court, was a member of this Congress until April, 
 when he resigned his seat to accept the mission to Russia. 
 Joseph Hopkinson and John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania ; Alex- 
 ander C. Hanson, of Maryland : Daniel Sheffey, of Virginia ; 
 Henry Southard, of New Jersey ; "William Lowndes, of South 
 Carolina ; William Gaston, of North Carolina ; John McLean, 
 of Ohio ; Samuel R. Betts, of New York ; John Forsyth, of 
 Georgia ; and many other able men were on the roll of a House 
 which, even without the names of Clay, Calhoun, Randolph, 
 Pinkney, and Webster, would have been accounted no ordinary 
 assembly. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster, on opposite sides, 
 
 1 MS. letter.
 
 1816.] NATIONAL BANK OF 1816. 14 J> 
 
 exercised the largest influence on the course of business, al- 
 though Mr. Randolph was a much more frequent speaker than 
 either of them. Mr. Clay participated a good deal in the dis- 
 cussions, especially in Committees of the Whole. Mr. Pinkney 
 made but one speech while he was a member of this House a 
 very profound one, on the treaty power, in reference to a bill to 
 regulate commerce with Great Britain, which was supposed to 
 be necessary in order to carry out the convention of July 3, 1815. 1 
 Mr. Webster, who had been reflected for JSTew Hampshire, 
 did not take his seat until the 7th of February (1816), although 
 he was in Washington in the early part of January with Mrs. 
 Webster. They were recalled by the illness of their little 
 daughter Grace, who had been left with some friends near 
 Boston. On the child's recovery, Mr. Webster returned to 
 Washington, and found the subject of a national bank again 
 before Congress. This was the bill which incorporated the last 
 bank of the United States that was ever created. As Mr. Web- 
 ster found it before the House, it was a bill possessing the same 
 objectionable features which he had opposed in the preceding 
 Congress. Having already quoted from a memorandum writ- 
 ten by him in 1831, in explanation of his course on the former 
 bill, I resort to the same paper for the purpose of using his own 
 words in reference to the present one : 
 
 " On the introduction of the bill to incorporate the present bank, I op- 
 posed its proposed amount of capital fifty millions as being unneces- 
 sarily large, and still more vehemently the power proposed to be given to the 
 
 1 The strange insolence of Mr. Ran- very puerile insults for the mere sake of 
 dolph it can be called by no other giving annoyance. Notwithstanding he 
 name was exercised toward Mr. Pink- boasted himself to be " one of the best 
 ney on this occasion, by commencing shots in Virginia," it is probably due to 
 his reply to that most distinguished the conviction of his partial insanity, 
 person in this way : " I give up to the among those of his contemporaries who 
 gentleman from Maryland I am told he admitted the practice of duelling, that 
 is from Maryland those fanciful and he died in his bed. But he was visited 
 fine-spun theories," etc. At the mo- sometimes with deep and extreme com- 
 ment of this supercilious affectation of punctions, after having outraged all pro- 
 ignorance respecting Mr. Pinkney's rep- priety, which made him break out in 
 resentative character, he stood at the further eccentricities, that were often as 
 zenith of his great fame as a lawyer, touching as his previous conduct had 
 had been Attorney-General of the United been provoking. (See the account of 
 States, and minister to Great Britain, his singular magnanimity and tender- 
 and his name was as much identified ness during and after his duel with Mr. 
 with the State of Maryland and the city Clay, as given in his Life by Mr. Garland ; 
 of Baltimore as it was possible for the and also the correspondence attending 
 name of any man to have a local habita- his challenge of Mr. Webster, given in 
 tion. But Randolph often descended to the present chapter, post.}
 
 148 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. VII. 
 
 President of the United States, to authorize a suspension of specie pay- 
 ments. In both these respects, my opposition, with that of others, was 
 successful: the proposed amount of capital was reduced, and the power to 
 authorize a suspension of specie payments was stricken out. It was also 
 my opinion that the Government should have nothing to do with the ap- 
 pointment of directors, as it had not in the first bank. As the Government 
 itself was to be a large subscriber to the present institution, it was by some 
 deemed reasonable that it should have its proper voice in the annual con- 
 stitution of the board of directors. But I was opposed to the subscription 
 to the stock on the part of the Government, and this, together with the 
 appointment of Government directors, and a hope of other useful changes 
 in the charter, influenced my final vote, which is known to have been 
 against the bill. I was at special pains to convince Congress and the 
 country that a paper bank would be ruinous ; a bank with an inordinate 
 amount of capital, such as fifty millions, dangerous ; and that all hope of 
 restoring the currency of the country, even by means of the best-conducted 
 bank, futile, until the Government itself should execute existing laws, and 
 require payment of debts and taxes in legal coin, or in the paper of specie- 
 paying banks." 
 
 In the speech which Mr. Webster made upon this bill on 
 the 28th of February (1816), he said : 
 
 " It was a mistaken idea which he had heard uttered on this subject, 
 that we were about to reform the national currency. No nation had a better 
 currency than the United States ; there was no nation which had guarded 
 its currency with more care, for the framers of the Constitution, and those 
 who enacted the early statutes on this subject, were hard-money men ; they 
 had felt, and therefore duly appreciated, the evils of a paper medium ; they 
 therefore sedulously guarded the currency of the United States from de- 
 basement. The legal currency of the United States was gold and silver 
 coin. This was a subject in regard to which Congress had run into no 
 folly. What, then, was the present evil ? Having a perfectly sound na- 
 tional currency and the Government have no power, in fact, to make any 
 thing else current but gold and silver there had grown up in different 
 States a currency of paper issued by banks, setting out with the promise 
 to pay gold and silver, which they had been wholly unable to redeem. 
 The consequence was, that there was a mass of paper afloat, of perhaps fifty 
 millions, which sustained no immediate relation to the legal currency of 
 the country a paper which will not enable any man to pay money he 
 owes to his neighbor, or his debts to the Government. The banks had 
 issued more paper than they could redeem, and the evil was severely felt. 
 He declined occupying the time of the House to prove that there was a 
 depreciation of the paper in circulation ; the legal standard of value was 
 gold and silver ; the relation of paper to it proved its state, and the rate 
 of its depreciation. Gold and silver currency is the law of the land at
 
 1816.] THE CURRENCY. 149 
 
 home and the law of the world abroad ; there could in the present state 
 of the world be no other currency. In consequence of the immense paper 
 issues having banished specie from circulation, the Government has been 
 obliged, in direct violation of existing statutes, to receive the amount of 
 their taxes in something which is not recognized by law as the money of 
 the country, and which is, in fact, greatly depreciated. This was the evil. 
 
 " In his opinion," Mr. Webster said, " any remedy now to be applied 
 to this evil must be applied to the depreciated mass of paper itself; it 
 must be some measure that would give heat and life to this mortified mass 
 of the body politic. The evil was not to be remedied by introducing a 
 new paper circulation ; there could be no such thing as two media in cir- 
 culation, the one credited and the other discredited. All bank paper de- 
 rives its credit solely from its relation to gold and silver ; and there was no 
 remedy for the state of depreciation of the paper currency but the resump- 
 tion of specie payments. If all the property of the United States was 
 pledged for the redemption of these fifty millions of paper, it would not 
 thereby be brought up to par ; or if it were, that would happen which had 
 never yet happened in any other country. An issue of Treasury notes 
 would have no better effect than the establishment of a new bank paper. 
 At a period anterior to the reformation of the coin in England, when 
 existing coin had been much debased by clipping, an attempt f had been 
 made to correct the vitiated currency by throwing a quantify of sound 
 coin into circulation with the debased ; the result was, that the sound coin 
 disappeared, was hoarded up, because more valuable than that of the same 
 nominal value which was in general circulation. 
 
 " The State banks not emanating from Congress, what engine could 
 Congress use for remedying the existing evil? Their only legitimate 
 power was, to interdict the paper of such banks as do not pay specie from 
 being received at the custom-house. With a receipt of forty millions a 
 year, if the Government was faithful to itself and to the interests of the 
 people, they could control the evil; it was their duty to make the effort; 
 they should have made it long ago, and they ought now to make it. 
 
 " The whole strength of the Government ought to be put forth to compel 
 the payment of the duties and taxes in the legal currency of the country. 
 In regard to the plan of the proposed bank, he would consent to no bank 
 which to all intents and purposes was not a specie bank ; and in that view 
 he was in favor of the proposed amendment. He expressed some alarm at 
 the stock feature of the bank, which would enable and might induce the 
 existing bank corporations to come forward and take up the whole stock 
 of this national bank. 1 He should be glad to see a bank established 
 
 1 At the foot of the memorandum of ster's handwriting, in reference to the 
 1831, I find the following, in Mr. Web- prediction of excessive speculation in the
 
 150 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTEK. [On. VII 
 
 which would command the solid capital of the country. There were men 
 of wealth and standing who would embark their funds in a bank consti- 
 tuted on commercial specie principles, but who would not associate in 
 such an institution with the stockholders in the country [banks] any more 
 than a good currency would associate with a bad one." 
 
 On the 5th of April, after the bill, which had passed the 
 House, had been returned from the Senate with some modi- 
 fications, Mr. Webster stated his objections to it on account 
 of the participation of the Government in its direction and 
 management. It was passed, however, on that day, Mr. "Web- 
 ster voting against it, and it soon afterward received the signa- 
 ture of the President. Mr. Calhoun immediately introduced a 
 bill to require the collection of the revenue in the lawful money 
 of the United States. This bill was rejected. Mr. Webster 
 then presented his resolutions of April 26, 1816, which required 
 all dues to the Government to be paid in coin, or in Treasury 
 notes, or in the notes of the Bank of the United States. They 
 were adopted by a large majority. His great object in tliis 
 measure is thus stated in the memorandum of 1831 : 
 
 " The peace did not put an end to the disorders of the currency. The 
 State banks did not resume specie payments. The present Bank of the 
 United States was incorporated ; and it was under these circumstances 
 that I brought forward the resolutions of April, 1816. When introduced, 
 they bore a preamble which, I dare say, appears on the Journal, and which 
 may perhaps be worth looking up. This was dropped in the progress of 
 the measure, as it was thought to be unimportant, and as it implied some 
 sort of censure on the past administration of the Treasury. The resolutions 
 had all the desired effect. They brought about an entire change in the 
 currency of the country. Duties and taxes, debts for lands, etc., were then 
 equally borne and equally paid. After some years of unfortunate manage- 
 ment, the national bank took a good direction ; and from that time to this 
 the United States have had a currency perfectly sound and safe, and 
 more convenient, and producing local exchanges at less expense, than any 
 other nation is or ever was blessed with." 
 
 It required no little strength of argument, power of illustra- 
 tion, and force of character, to lead a House, which had just 
 rejected a similar measure in the form of a bill, to assert the 
 
 stock of the proposed bank : " The early enormous subscriptions to the proposed 
 
 history of the bank shows that if it was institution for purposes of speculation, 
 
 not foresight, it was at least singularly and out of all proportion to the real 
 
 fortunate guessing, which predicted ability of the subscribers."
 
 1816.] THE CURRENCY. 151 
 
 same principle in the form of a resolution. But Mr. "Webster 
 had mastered this subject, and he was exceedingly in earnest 
 about it. While he was able to show that the superior sound- 
 ness of the banks in his own section of the country, which paid 
 their bills in specie, was the very cause that made the payment 
 of taxes and duties in that section twenty-five per cent, higher 
 than in other parts of the Union, so long as the Government 
 continued to receive depreciated paper, he was also able 
 to convince the House that this state of things must be 
 changed, or it would aifect the stability of the Government. 
 He said : 
 
 " It is our business to foresee this danger, and to avoid it. There are 
 some political evils which are seen as soon as they are dangerous, and 
 which alarm at once as well the people as the Government. "Wars and in- 
 vasions, therefore, are not always the most certain destroyers of national 
 prosperity. They come in no questionable shape. They announce their 
 own approach, and the general security is preserved by the general alarm. 
 Not so with the evils of a debased coin, a depreciated paper currency, or a 
 depressed and falling public credit. Not so with the plausible and insidi- 
 ous mischiefs of a paper-money system. These insinuate themselves in the 
 shape of facilities, accommodation, relief. They hold out the most fal- 
 lacious hope of an easy payment of debts, and a lighter burden of taxa- 
 tion. It is easy for a portion of the people to imagine that Government 
 may properly continue to receive depreciated paper, because they have re- 
 ceived it, and because it is more easy to obtain it than to obtain other 
 paper, or specie. But on these subjects it is that Government ought to ex- 
 ercise its own peculiar wisdom and caution. It is supposed to possess, on 
 subjects of this nature, somewhat more of foresight than has fallen to the 
 lot of individuals. It is bound to foresee the evil before every man feels 
 it, and to take all necessary measures to guard against it, although they 
 may be measures attended with some difficulty, and not without temporary 
 inconvenience. In my humble judgment, the evil demands the immediate 
 attention of Congress. It is not certain, and in my opinion not probable, 
 that it will ever cure itself. It is more likely to grow by indulgence, while 
 the remedy which must in the end be applied will become less efficacious 
 by delay. 
 
 " The only power which the General Government possesses of restrain- 
 ing the issues of the State banks is, to refuse their notes in the receipts of the 
 Treasury. This power it can exercise now, or at least it can provide now 
 for exercising it in reasonable time, because the currency of some part of 
 the country is yet sound, and the evil is not yet universal. If it should be- 
 come universal, who that hesitates now will then propose any adequate 
 means of relief ? If a measure, like the bill of yesterday, or the resolution
 
 152 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. VII. 
 
 of to-day, can hardly pass here now, what hope is there that any efficient 
 measures will be adopted hereafter ? " 
 
 At this session of Congress, an important change took place 
 in the tariff by the passage of an act which was the first in the 
 series that came afterward to be regarded in South Carolina as 
 oppressive and unconstitutional. Mr. Webster's relation to the 
 tariff of 1816 is to be understood by examining the efforts 
 which he made and the votes which he gave upon the details 
 of the bill. It was an Administration measure, founded chiefly 
 on a scheme prepared and submitted to Congress by the Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, Mr. Dallas, in which the protection and 
 encouragement of manufactures was avowedly the leading ob- 
 ject. It was warmly advocated by the principal members from 
 South Carolina, including Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Lowndes. 
 The bill, as reported by the Committee of Ways and Means, 
 proposed to lay a duty of twenty-five per cent, ad valorem on 
 all cotton and woollen manufactured goods ; which, on motion 
 of Mr. Clay, was increased, as to manufactures of cotton, to 
 thirty per cent. It was apparent to Mr. Webster that such a 
 duty would put an end to the importation of India cottons, a 
 business in which a large amount of shipping was then em- 
 ployed. He was satisfied, too, that a duty so high as that pro- 
 posed would expose the manufacture of cotton goods in this 
 country to the danger of a fluctuating policy, as he did not be- 
 lieve that such a duty could be permanent. The latter effect 
 he thought he could avert; the former he could not prevent, 
 for it had become manifest that those who advocated this meas- 
 ure intended to exclude as many of the foreign fabrics as they 
 could. A duty of even twenty per cent, was sufficient to ex- 
 clude the India cottons, and therefore it was not probable that 
 Mr. Webster could obtain a graduation of the duties to any 
 lower point. He proposed, consequently, to fix the duties on 
 cotton goods at thirty per cent, ad valorem for two years from 
 the 30th of June, 1816, at twenty-five per cent, for the two 
 years next succeeding, and at twenty per cent, after the expira- 
 tion of the last period. If protection was to be given, he wished 
 it to be permanent. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Lowndes were of 
 opinion that an ultimate and permanent duty of twenty per 
 cent, would be sufficient for the protection which they sought,
 
 1816.] A STEAM NAVY. 153 
 
 and Mr. Webster's proposition was agreed to by a large ma- 
 jority. 1 Subsequently, in justice to those who had embarked 
 in the India trade before this great change of policy could have 
 been anticipated, Mr. "Webster advocated and voted for a pro- 
 vision admitting India cottons that might arrive in this country 
 before the 1st of March, 1817, in vessels that sailed from the 
 United States before the 1st of February, 1816, on the payment 
 of a duty of thirty-three and one-third per cent, on their cost, 
 and on twenty per cent, added to their cost. In this shape, the 
 tariff of 1816 went into operation, and under it the importation 
 of India cottons was extinguished. 
 
 "With the same general view of securing such a system as 
 would be likely to be permanent, and would inflict the least in- 
 jury on the navigating interests, Mr. "Webster voted for reduc- 
 tions of the duties proposed by this bill on woollen goods, iron, 
 and hemp. He does not appear to have entered into the dis- 
 cussion on the general principle of protection. Mr. Calhoun 
 asserted its policy, and did not question the constitutional 
 power. Mr. "Webster did not question the constitutional power 
 any more than Mr. Calhoun ; and with respect to tne policy, 
 finding that it was to prevail, he sought to mitigate the effects 
 of so great a change, and to prevent a future reaction. 
 
 Mr. "Webster appears to have taken an active part in but 
 one other measure of this session. This related to a matter 
 which must now be looked upon with singular interest, as it 
 marks the early beginnings of a steam navy, and the concep- 
 tions in regard to it which then prevailed. A proposition was 
 introduced to authorize the building of three steam " batteries." 
 The idea seems to have been 'entertained by the naval commit- 
 tee, and by many other members, that these structures would 
 necessarily be stationary, or nearly so ; and the question was, 
 whether they should by law be required to be built and kept 
 at the mouth of the Chesapeake, or at the mouth of the Missis- 
 sippi. Members objected to its being left in the discretion of 
 the President to direct the place of building and using them 
 One gentleman said that steam-frigates might possibly move 
 
 1 A change was afterward made, be- rem for three years from June 30, 1816, 
 fore the bill finally passed, so as to levy and a duty of twenty per cent, there- 
 a duty of twenty-five per cent, ad valo- after.
 
 [54 LIFE OF DAttlEL WEBSTER. [On. TIL 
 
 from New Tork to Philadelphia, but it would be impracticable 
 to navigate the coast with them to New Orleans, a voyage to 
 which, from any of the other cities, was as difficult and danger- 
 ous as one across the Atlantic. Mr. Webster appears to have 
 better understood what could be done. He had satisfied -him- 
 self, on the statements of experienced persons, that steam-frig- 
 ates could be built to move anywhere. He thought, therefore, 
 that these vessels should be treated as strictly a part of the 
 navy, and be placed entirely under the control of the President. 
 He moved to modify the bill accordingly, and his motion was 
 adopted by a large majority. 1 
 
 Before Mr. Webster left Washington, at the close of this 
 session, he heard of an alarming illness of his mother, who had 
 resided with his brother Ezekiel, at Boscawen, since the death 
 of their father. " If," he wrote to his brother, " she should be 
 living on the receipt of this, tell her, I pray for her everlasting 
 peace and happiness, and would give her a son's blessing for 
 all her parental goodness. May God bless her living or dying. 
 If she does not survive, let her rest beside her husband and our 
 father." The good lady did not survive ; and on the 28th 
 of April she was laid at the appointed place, in the burial- 
 ground at Franklin, where a plain inscription still marks her 
 grave and that of her husband. 
 
 It was during this session that Mr. Webster received a chal- 
 lenge from Mr. Randolph ; the sole instance in which a message of 
 that character was ever sent to him. He was not, at any period 
 of his life, likely to be much embarrassed or disconcerted by a 
 demand of this nature, for he never gave any real occasion for 
 one. He, moreover, held the practice of duelling in great con- 
 tempt. On this occasion, it was apparent to all who witnessed 
 what occurred in the House between Mr. Webster and Mr. 
 Randolph, that the latter had no just ground for requiring an 
 explanation ; for, as soon as it was known that he had sent Mr. 
 Webster a challenge, several gentlemen, friends of both parties, 
 came forward and effected an amicable adjustment of the diffi- 
 culty. The sedate and firm answer of Mr. Webster to Mr. 
 Randolph's message made it apparent that there was no real 
 cause for Mr. Randolph's sensitiveness, and it also disclosed 
 
 1 April 14, 1816.
 
 816.] CHALLENGED BY MR. RANDOLPH. 155 
 
 Mr. "Webster's sentiments respecting this form of obtaining 
 * satisfaction." 1 
 
 [MB. WEBSTEK TO MB. KAXDOLPH.] 
 
 " Sra : For having declined to comply with your demand yesterdaj 
 in the House, for an explanation of words of a general nature, used in 
 debate, you now ' demand of me that satisfaction which your insulted 
 
 feelings require,' and refer me to your friend, Mr. , I presume, as he 
 
 ia the bearer of your note, for such arrangements as are usual. 
 
 " This demand for explanation, you, in my judgment, as a matter of 
 right, were not entitled to make on me ; nor were the temper and style 
 of your own reply to my objection to the sugar tax of a character to 
 induce me to accord it as a matter of courtesy. 
 
 " Neither can I, under the circumstances of the case, recognize in you 
 a right to call me to the field to answer what you may please to con- 
 sider an insult to your feelings. 
 
 " It is unnecessary for me to state other and obvious considerations 
 growing out of this case. It is enough that I do not feel myself bound, 
 at all times and under any circumstances, to accept from any man, who 
 shall choose to risk his own life, an invitation of this sort ; although I 
 shall be always prepared to repel in a suitable manner the aggression 
 of any man who may presume upon such a refusal. 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " DAXIEL WEBSTEK." 
 
 After this note had been delivered to Mr. Randolph, and the 
 whole affair had been adjusted, Mr. TVebsfer, who had kept no 
 copy of his part of the correspondence, wrote to Mr. Randolph, 
 at the close of the session, to request one. The following reply, 
 marked by the generous feelings and morbid characteristics of 
 the writer, reached Mr. Webster on his return to Boston : 
 
 [MK. RANDOLPH TO UK. WEBSTEK.] 
 
 " DAVIS, KUTB MIXES FROM WA8HISGTO*, OS THE ) 
 
 BALTIMORE EOAD, August 30, 1816. j 
 
 " Sra : Tour polite and friendly note was put into my hands this morn- 
 ing, under circumstances that did not permit me to write. I now regret very 
 
 1 I have said in the text that Mr. Web- letter to his son Fletcher, on one of those 
 
 ster held the practice of duelling in great occasions which were formerly so frequent 
 
 contempt I did not deem it necessary to in Washington : " I understand there is 
 
 say that he had also a high moral and reli- a man here from Missouri, a Colonel S., 
 
 gious disapprobation of it As a specimen who means to have a fight with Mr. Ben- 
 
 of the mode in which he was accustomed ton, and, if Mr. Benton will not have a reg- 
 
 to ridicule it, among his friends, the fol- ular duel, intends to fight him exparte." 
 
 lowing piece of drollery may be found in a (Jan. 15, 1836. Correspondence, ii., 1Y.)
 
 156 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. VII. 
 
 much that I did not leave Georgetown with you this morning. I have 
 just dined where you breakfasted this morning, with a most pleasant 
 party. That reflection seems to add to the uncomfortable feeling of 
 solitariness that now assails me. Below you have the 'copy' of the 
 paper which you desired me to forward to you. Accept my acknowledg- 
 ments for the terms in which that request is made, and believe me, with 
 very high respect and regard, 
 
 " Tour obedient servant, 
 
 " JOHN RANDOLPH, of Roanoke." 
 
 The session of Congress terminated on the 30th of April, 
 1816. Before it ended, Mr. Webster had decided upon a very 
 important change in his own life and position ; upon no less a 
 change than to remove from his native State and to retire from 
 public life. He was now thirty-four. He had lived in Ports- 
 mouth nine years, in happiness and success. He had risen to a 
 position of great distinction and usefulness, for so young a 
 man, and all that New Hampshire could bestow upon him was 
 doubtless within his reach. But in his profession the State 
 of his birth had not given him, and could not give him, the 
 field which his talents and the wants of his increasing family 
 required. His local practice in New Hampshire had never 
 been worth more than two thousand dollars a year, and it was 
 scarcely capable of being made to yield a larger income. The 
 loss of all his property by the fire of 1813 had made it neces- 
 sary for him to seek larger resources. Whether he looked for 
 still higher distinction in the political world, at some future 
 time, or meant never to return to it, I do not know ; but I am 
 satisfied that at this period he had not an absorbing taste for 
 public life, or a fixed political ambition. At all events, he 
 appears to have determined to pass some years in exclusive 
 devotion to his profession, and he therefore looked about for 
 the best position for this important object. He hesitated 
 between the cities of New Tork, Albany, and Boston ; but he 
 finally chose the latter; and, having made his decision, he 
 proceeded immediately to cany it out. In June (1816), he 
 went there with Mrs. Webster, to select a house, and in 
 August he removed with his family. 1 
 
 1 The housein which he first resided in northwest of the State-House. It is still 
 Boston was on Mt. Vernon Street, at the standing, just as it was when he entered 
 Bummit of Beacon Hill, and a few rods it more than fifty years ago.
 
 1816.1 DEATH OF LITTLE GRACE. 157 
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 1816-1819. 
 
 CONGRESS IN 1S16-'17 DEATH OF LITTLE GKACE RETIRES FROM 
 
 PUBLIC LIFE BIRTH OF HIS DAUGHTER JULIA POSITION" AT 
 
 THE BOSTON BAR SOCIAL LIFE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 
 
 ROBBERY OF MAJOR GOODRIDGE. 
 
 AT the time when Mr. "Webster took up his residence in 
 Boston, he had numerous engagements in the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, and, as the full term for which he 
 had been reflected as a member of Congress from ~New Hamp- 
 shire had not expired, he went again tq Washington, in De- 
 cember, 1816, accompanied by Mrs. Webster. He took some 
 part in the proceedings of the session until the first week in 
 January, when the illness of their daughter again brought 
 the parents home. This child, always precocious and always 
 delicate, was now to be taken from them. She had been de- 
 clining for some time, and was at length pronounced by the 
 physicians to be in a consumption. I borrow the words of 
 Mrs. Lee, who was rarely absent when sorrow came near to 
 those whom she so loved and honored : l 
 
 " I can hardly trust myself to speak of this child, so little to be relied 
 on are the reports of precocious children. But as I recall some of the 
 oeculiarities of this little girl, she certainly appears, at three and four 
 
 1 The death of this child occurred in Mr. Webster's, died in 1836. Mr. Web- 
 
 January, 1817. A singular fatality seemed ster's eldest grand-daughter, the second 
 
 to attend the name of Grace Webster. A child of his son Fletcher, also bore the 
 
 daughter of Mr. Everett, to whom this nameof Grace, and died in 1844, at nearly 
 
 name was given, a precocious child, like the same age with the first one of the name
 
 158 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 years old, wonderfully intelligent, and a most agreeable companion. There 
 was no one so much in demand as the little Grace her mother's friends 
 constantly sending for her, and delighting themselves with her sweet sim- 
 plicity ; and, if such an expression can be allowed, her infantile sagacity. 
 Her young soul seemed to dwell very near the Author of her being. Her 
 mother once said to a friend, ' I wish I could feel the presence of God as 
 little Grace seems to feel it.' Not only did ' heaven lie about her in her 
 infancy,' but she knew that God was always near her. Another peculiarity 
 was the tenderness she felt for the poor and unhappy. Beggars were fre- 
 quent at this time. There were few relief societies, and begging from door 
 to door was not forbidden. Grace would never consent that an asker of 
 charity should be sent away empty. She would bring them herself into 
 the house, see that their wants were supplied, comfort them with the 
 ministration of her own little hands, and the tender compassion of her 
 large eyes. If her mother ever refused, those eyes would fill with tears, 
 and she would urge their requests so perseveringly, that there was no 
 resisting her. 
 
 " But God's hand soon beckoned her away. Her parents had left 
 Portsmouth for their residence in Boston, and Mr. Webster had gone the 
 second time from New Hampshire to serve a session in Congress, when that 
 insidious disease, to which delicate organizations so often become a prey, 
 began to impair the health of the little Grace. The progress of the disease 
 was so rapid, that her parents had only time to hasten from Washington 
 to their house in Boston, where their child, whose short life had been 
 lived, as it were, on the threshold of heaven, passed with gentle and pain- 
 less steps within the veil which hides from us the great mysteries of the 
 future. Grace woke from a sweet sleep, and asked for her father. He 
 was instantly called, and, placing his arm beneath her, he drew her 
 toward him, when a singular smile of love and sweetness passed over her 
 countenance, and her life was gone. Mr. Webster turned away from the 
 bed, and great tears coursed down his cheeks. I have three times seen 
 this great man weep convulsively. Another time was when death de- 
 prived him of that brother, so tenderly loved, with whom, as we learn 
 from the Autobiography, and from his own lips, there was so close a 
 union, that, till both of them had families, which drew them from each 
 other, there had been between them but one aim, one purse, one welfare, 
 and one hope." 
 
 Mr. Webster went again to Washington, immediately after 
 the burial of his child, and confined himself almost exclusively 
 to kis duties in the Supreme Court. 
 
 At this session, Mr. Calhoun brought forward his plan, 
 which was intended to lay the foundation for a general system 
 of" internal improvements," by setting apart the bonus and divi- 
 dends to be derived from the United States Bank, as p perm a-
 
 1817.] PROFESSIONAL LIFE IX BOSTON. 159 
 
 nent fund for that purpose ; and, at the same time, lie argued 
 elaborately in support of the constitutional power of Congress 
 to make appropriations for such objects. . Mr. Webster voted 
 for the bill on its passage. It was returned by President Madi- 
 son without his approval ; the ground of the " veto" being that 
 the power is not expressly given in the Constitution, and can- 
 not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible 
 latitude of construction, and a reliance on insufficient prece- 
 dents. Mr. "Webster examined the whole subject with care, 
 for the purpose of forming his own opinions upon it, al- 
 though he does not appear to have taken any part in its pub- 
 lic discussion at this time. He reached the conclusion that 
 Congress has power to accomplish or to aid in accomplish- 
 ing the objects which have been commonly designated in our 
 legislative history as " internal improvements ; " a conclusion 
 which was sufficiently manifested by his final vote sustaining 
 Mr. Calhoun's bill against the " veto " of the President. The 
 measure failed to receive the requisite constitutional vote. 1 
 
 The session of Congress was terminated on the 3d of 
 March, 1817 ; and with it ended Mr. "Webster's connection, for 
 the present, with public affairs. As soon as the Supreme Court 
 had risen, he returned to Boston. 
 
 Released from all public cares, he now began a career of 
 great professional distinction. Business of the most important 
 character flowed in upon him, from the natural influence of his 
 high reputation, of his diligence and learning, of his great pow- 
 ers as an advocate, and his many personal accomplishments. 
 The position which he at once occupied at the Boston bar 
 was that of an equal and a competitor with the oldest and most 
 eminent of its members. In a short time he was in the receipt 
 of a very large professional income.* Of his domestic and so- 
 
 1 See the account given by Mr. Web- and as nearly all lawyers, who practise 
 ster, in his second speech on Foofs reso- much as advocates and counsellors, re- 
 lution, of the formation of his opinions ceive more than finds its way into their 
 and the shaping of his political course, account - books, unless they are kept 
 on this and other constitutional ques- with great accuracy, I am satisfied that 
 tions, in 1816, " Teucro duce" (Works, his income, from 1818 until he again en- 
 iii., 297.) tered Congress in 1823, could not have 
 
 2 Mr. Webster's fee-book from Au- been, on an average, much less than 
 pust, 1818, to August, 1819, foots up $20,000 a year. The customary fees of 
 15,181. But as he is known not to have such counsel at that time were about 
 been very careful in keeping accounts, one-half of what they are now.
 
 160 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 cial life, during this period of his retirement from Congress, 
 there are some interesting sketches by Mrs. Lee and Mr. Tick- 
 nor, which will find their appropriate place here, before I com- 
 mence the description of the intellectual labors with which this 
 period was filled. Mrs. Lee writes : 
 
 " Mr. "Webster says in his Autobiography, that after he had finished his 
 session in Congress from New Hampshire, he came to Boston and gave 
 himself Avith diligence to the business of his profession. 
 
 " He was now thirty-five years old, and certainly in the perfection of 
 all the powers of body and mind. The majestic beauty of his countenance 
 was never more striking than at this period. There is a miniature taken 
 at this time, which gives a most agreeable impression of his features, but 
 which those who knew him in the later years of his life would hardly 
 accept as a perfect likeness. The noble expansive brow and deep-set, mel- 
 ancholy eyes do justice to those features ; but the tender, flexible lips, 
 although expressing the sweetness of his character at that period of his 
 life, have not the expression of intense firmness which afterward gave such 
 character to his countenance. 
 
 "As I had the privilege of being often a visitor in his family, a recapit- 
 ulation of the course of his every-day life may be more interesting to you 
 than any thing else. 
 
 "Mr. Webster was always an early riser. There is an eloquent letter 
 which expresses his true feeling upon the influence of the morning hours. 
 Like most of the great and good people we read of, the hours of the 
 early morning were [to him] the most cheerful of the day. The drowsy 
 in his own house were awoke by his joyous voice singing some cheerful 
 carol, such as, 
 
 ' The east is bright with morning light, 
 Uprose the king of men with speed, 1 etc. 
 
 " At breakfast, before the cares of business began, he was cheerful but 
 thoughtful, courteous and genial toward every one ; listening to the prat- 
 tle of the children, and kindly attentive to all their little requests. When 
 he returned, at two or three o'clock, weary from the courts, or from his 
 office, the promptly ready service of Hannah, a woman who had been in 
 his family many years, was always welcome. She knew the sound of the 
 door when opened by Mr. Webster, and it was scarcely closed before she 
 was at his side. He was dependent upon services prompted by affection, 
 and loved those spontaneous offerings which came from the heart. 
 
 "After dinner, Mr. Webster would throw himself upon the sofa, and 
 then was seen the truly electrical attraction of his character. Every person 
 ji the room was drawn immediately into his sphere. The children squeez- 
 ing themselves into all possible places and postures upon the sofa, in order 
 to be close to him ; Mrs. Webster sitting by his side, and the friend in 
 the house or social visitor, only too happy to join in the circle. All this
 
 1819.] SOCIAL LIFE IN BOSTON. 161 
 
 was not from invitation to the children, he did nothing to amuse them, he 
 told them no stories ; it was the irresistible attraction of his character, the 
 charm of his illumined countenance, from which beamed indulgence and 
 kindness to every one of his family. In the evening, if visitors came in, 
 Mr. Webster was too much exhausted to take a very active part in conver- 
 sation. He had done a large amount of work before others were awake in 
 the morning, and in the evening he was ready for that sweet sleep which 
 ' God gives to His beloved.' " 
 
 In January, 1818, Julia, the only daughter of Mr. "Webster 
 who lived to the age of womanhood, was born in Boston, in 
 the house on Mt. Yernon Street which he first occupied in that 
 town. Of his life at this time, Mr. Ticknor observes : 
 
 " Soon after I returned from "Washington, in 1815, 1 went to Europe, 
 and did not come back till 1819. Mr. Webster was then living in Boston 
 in Mt. Vernon Street. Two days after I arrived, I met him at dinner at 
 Mr. Isaac P. Davis's, who then lived in the Wheeler House in Boylston 
 Street. Judge Story, Mr. George Blake, Mr. Willian Sullivan, and a few 
 others, made the party. Such a party could not have sat down together 
 at a private table when I left home. It was what was called ' the era of 
 good feelings.' Mr. Webster had been very instrumental in producing this 
 state of things in the country. Mr. John Lowell, in the summer of 1817, 
 told me, in Paris, that Mr. Webster, in a private visit to Mr. Monroe, just 
 before leaving Washington, when he ceased to be a member of Congress, 
 asked the President to make a visit to the North. The President objected, 
 on the ground that a person of his political opinions would be very un- 
 welcome there. Mr. Webster replied that he thought it would be better 
 if party feeling were diminished in the United States, and that this was a 
 favorable opportunity to diminish it he believed that the President would 
 be kindly received without distinction of party, and that such a circum- 
 stance would tend much to allay all political bitterness. ' The country,' 
 he said, ' was much too busy and too eager in its prosperity, to give much 
 time to quarrelling about things chiefly bygone.' They had much con- 
 versation on the subject. Mr. Webster told the President that he thought 
 he could venture to speak freely, as he had already left Congress, and 
 should in future give his attention to his profession and private affairs. 
 Mr. Monroe thanked him, and said he would consider the matter. The 
 result was, President Monroe's well-known journey to the North. 
 
 " On relating the conversation with Mr. Lowell to Mr. Mason some years 
 afterward, he told me that he was aware at the time of Mr. Webster's 
 course and influence in the matter, and that at his (Mr. Webster's) instance 
 he had personally invited Mr. Monroe to visit him at Portsmouth, and did 
 what he could to make his tour agreeable and useful. 
 
 " At the dinner at Mr. Davis's, Mr. Webster talked a good deal about 
 Europe all I remember of his conversation is, that he had a very accu- 
 12
 
 162 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. VIII 
 
 rate idea of the difference between a European and an American village - 
 of the results of building with destructible materials, like pine wood, or of 
 more lasting materials like brick and stone, and of the effect upon the 
 character of a people, which followed from having the same family for 
 successive generations live in the same place, in narrowing their minds." 
 
 The period which is now to be described extends from the 
 summer of 1817 to Mr. "Webster's return to Congress, in 1823, 
 as a Representative from Massachusetts. It was filled with an 
 extraordinary amount of intellectual activity. It comprehends 
 the celebrated argument in the Dartmouth College case, in the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, which raised him imme- 
 diately to the very highest rank as a constitutional lawyer ; his 
 service in the constitutional convention of Massachusetts, in 
 which his powers as a statesman, a legislator, and a debater, 
 were displayed with singular brilliancy, and employed with 
 singular usefulness ; his discourse at Plymouth, which placed 
 him on the list of the world's great orators ; and a vast variety 
 of professional performances, in every department of jurispru- 
 dence, and embracing nearly every phase of human affairs that 
 can come within the cognizance of courts of justice. In order 
 to give the reader an adequate idea of the amount and char- 
 acter of the intellectual labor that was crowded into these six 
 or seven years of the prime of Mr. "Webster's life, perhaps the 
 best mode will be to describe separately what belongs to his 
 professional and what relates to his other employments. 
 
 The professional reader, who is curious to measure the 
 extent of Mr. Webster's practice during the period to which I 
 now refer, will find the number of causes which he argued, in 
 bane, in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in the Circuit 
 Court of the United States for the First Circuit, and in the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, from 1817 to 1823, by 
 consulting the official reports of those courts for that period. 1 
 These show a very large employment as leading counsel in 
 those three tribunals ; but, of course, they contain no record of 
 the nisiprius business in which he must have been engaged, 
 in some degree commensurate with his employment as an 
 
 1 The volumes of the " Massachusetts " Gallison's Reports," and the first and 
 
 Reports," from the 13th to the 17th, in- second of " Mason's Reports," and of 
 
 elusive, together with the first volume " Wheaton's Reports," cover the period 
 
 of "Pickering's Reports," the second of referred to.
 
 1816.] DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE. 163 
 
 advocate before the courts in J>anc. All this mass of litigation, 
 although leaving its impress on the jurisprudence of the coun- 
 try as every well-debated question does, under a system of law 
 that is founded and depends upon recorded precedents was, 
 with one great exception, unconnected with the relations of the 
 States of this Union to the restraining authority and supremacy 
 of the Constitution of the United States. Such a question was 
 wanting to the complete development of Mr. Webster's power 
 and reputation as a lawyer, and it came from an occasion and 
 a source eminently adapted to call forth his abilities, and to 
 enlist his strongest interest. 
 
 Dartmouth College, at which, as we have seen, he received 
 his academic education, was originally a charity school for the 
 instruction of Indians in the Christian religion, founded by the 
 Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, D. D., about the year 1754, at Leb- 
 anonj in Connecticut. Its success led Dr. Wheelock to solicit 
 private subscriptions in England, for the purpose of enlarging 
 it, and of extending its benefits to English colonists. Funds 
 having been obtained for this purpose from various contributors, 
 among whom the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary for the Colonies, 
 was a large donor, Dr. Wheelock constituted that nobleman and 
 other persons trustees, with authority to fix the site of the col- 
 lege. The place selected was on the Connecticut River, at 
 what is now the town of Hanover, in New Hampshire, where 
 large donations of land were made by the neighboring pro- 
 prietors. A charter for the college was obtained from the 
 crown, in 1769, creating it a perpetual corporation. The 
 charter recognized Dr. Wheelock as founder, appointed him 
 to be the president, and empowered him to name his suc- 
 cessor, subject to the approval of the trustees ; to whom was 
 also imparted the power of filling vacancies in their own 
 body, and of making laws and ordinances for the government 
 of the college, not repugnant to the laws of Great Britain or 
 of the province, and not excluding any person on account of 
 his religious belief. 
 
 Under this charter, Dartmouth College had always existed, 
 unquestioned and undisturbed in its rights as a corporation, 
 down to the Revolution, and subsequently until the year 1815. 
 WTiether from political or personal motives springing up out-
 
 164 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. VIII 
 
 side of the board of trustees of that period, or from some colli- 
 sions arising within the body itself, it appears that, before Mr. 
 "Webster left the State of New Hampshire, legislative interfer- 
 ence with the chartered rights of this college was threatened ; 
 and its president, Dr. Brown, was anxious to secure his influ- 
 ence and services. Mr. Webster, however, declined to take 
 any part in these disputes as they then stood. But, in the 
 following year (1816), the difficulties, which had become mixed 
 with political interests, culminated in a direct interference by 
 the Legislature. In that year an act was passed, changing the 
 corporate name from " The Trustees of Dartmouth College" 
 to " The Trustees of Dartmouth University ; " enlarging the 
 number of trustees, vesting the appointment of some of them 
 in the political bodies of the State, and otherwise modifying 
 the ancient rights of the corporation as they existed under 
 its charter derived from the crown of England. 
 
 A majority of the existing trustees refused to accept or to 
 be bound by this act, and brought an action of trover in the 
 Supreme Court of the State, in the name of the old corporation, 
 against a gentleman, Mr. W. H. Woodward, who was in posses- 
 sion of the college seal and other effects, and who claimed to 
 hold them as one of the officers of the newly-created " uni- 
 versity." The argument in this case was made in the State 
 court, for the college, by Mr. Mason and Mr. Jeremiah Smith, 
 assisted by Mr. "Webster. The decision was against the claim 
 of the college. It was then determined to remove the cause, by 
 writ of error, to the Supreme Court of the United States, under 
 the provisions of the Federal Constitution and laws creat- 
 ing in that tribunal an appellate jurisdiction in cases which, 
 although originating in a State court, involve the construction 
 and operation of the Federal Constitution. This was supposed 
 to be such a case, because it was claimed by the college that the 
 act of the Legislature, modifying its charter, impaired the obli- 
 gation of a contract ; an exercise of power which the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States prohibits to the Legislature of a State. 
 
 As soon' as it was known in JSTew Hampshire that this very 
 interesting cause was to come before the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, the friends of the college, including their other 
 counsel in the State court, unanimously desired to have it com-
 
 1818.] DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE. 165 
 
 initted to the hands of Mr. "Webster. He consented to take 
 charge of it in the autumn of 1817 ; but the cause was not 
 argued at Washington until February, 1818. In the interval, 
 Mr. Webster gave directions relating to the form and contents 
 of the special verdict, which was to be carried up by the writ 
 of error, and had several conferences with the gentlemen who 
 had argued for the college with very great learning and ability 
 in the State court. He was left entirely at liberty to appoint 
 his associate counsel, and he selected Joseph Hopkinson, of 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 To those who might then have been, or to those who may 
 now be uninitiated in the relations of our complex system of 
 Government, this dispute whether the trustees of the college 
 should be one or another set of persons at the command of the 
 State ; whether it should be called by its ancient name, or by a 
 new name affixed to it by the legislative power, might seem a 
 rather trivial subject of litigation, not likely to involve prin- 
 ciples extending into the indefinite future, and reaching to the 
 very foundations of the rights of property. Such, however, was 
 the character of this celebrated cause ; and, in order to exhibit 
 what our constitutional jurisprudence owes to the advocate who 
 carried this case triumphantly through its final arbitrament, it 
 is necessary to refer to the provision of the Constitution which 
 it became his duty to expound, and to the development and ap- 
 plication which it had previously received. 
 
 The framers of the Constitution of the United States, moved 
 chiefly by the mischiefs created by the preceding legislation of 
 the States, which had made serious encroachments on the rights 
 of property, inserted a clause in that instrument which declared 
 that " no State shall pass any expost-facto law, or law impair- 
 ing the obligation of contracts." The first branch of this clause 
 had always been understood to relate to criminal legislation, 
 the second to legislation affecting civil rights. But, before the 
 case of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward occurred, there had 
 been no judicial decisions respecting the meaning and scope of 
 the restraint in regard to contracts, excepting that it had more 
 than once been determined by the Supreme Court of the United 
 States that a grant of lands made by a State is a contract within 
 the protection of this provision, and is, therefore, irrevocable.
 
 106 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [H. VIIL 
 
 These decisions, however, could go but little way toward the 
 solution of the questions involved in the case of the college. 
 They did, indeed, establish the principle that contracts of the 
 State itself are beyond the reach of subsequent legislation, 
 equally with contracts between individuals ; and that there are 
 grants of a State which are contracts. But this college stood 
 upon a charter granted by the crown of England before the 
 American Revolution. Was the State of New Hampshire a 
 sovereign in all respects after the Revolution, and remaining 
 one after the Federal Constitution, excepting in those respects 
 in which it had subjected its sovereignty to the restraints of 
 that instrument bound by the contracts of the English crown ? 
 Is the grant of a charter of incorporation a contract between 
 the sovereign power and those on whom the charter is be- 
 stowed ? If an act of incorporation is a contract, is it so in any 
 case but that of a private corporation ? Was this college, which 
 was an institution of learning, established for the promotion of 
 education, a private corporation, or was it one of those instru- 
 ments of government which are at all times under the control 
 and subject to the direction of the legislative power ? All these 
 questions were involved in the inquiry whether the legislative 
 power of the State had been so restrained by the Constitution 
 of the United States that it could not alter the charter of this 
 institution, against the will of the trustees, without impairing 
 the obligation of a contract. If this inquiry were to receive 
 an affirmative answer, the constitutional jurisprudence of the 
 United States would embrace a principle of the utmost impor- 
 tance to every similar institution of learning, and to every incor- 
 poration then existing, or thereafter to exist, not belonging to 
 the machinery of government as a political instrument. 
 
 The State court of ISTew Hampshire, in deciding this case, 
 had assumed that the college was a public corporation, and on 
 that basis had rested their judgment ; which was, that between 
 the State and its public corporations there is no contract which 
 the State cannot regulate, alter, or annul at pleasure. Mr. 
 Webster had to overthrow this fundamental position. If he 
 could show that this college was a private eleemosynary cor- 
 poration, and that the grant of the right to be a corporation of 
 this nature is a contract between the sovereign power and those
 
 1818.] DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE 157 
 
 who devote their funds to the charity, and take the incorpora- 
 tion for its better management, he could bring the legislative 
 interference within the prohibition of the Federal Constitution. 
 
 It is probable that there was no lawyer in the United States 
 at that moment better qualified to discuss this question than 
 Mr. Webster. He had been from a very early period in his life 
 a great student of English history, and he was thoroughly 
 familiar with the principles of the common law. The question 
 to which class of corporations public or private did this col- 
 lege belong the critical question in the cause was one to be 
 decided on the principles of the common law, as the governing 
 body of jurisprudence by which the Constitution of the United 
 States is to be interpreted, in its application to public or private 
 rights. It affected, too, every institution of learning in the 
 country that had been similarly endowed and founded ; while 
 the particular institution, the fate of which was at stake in the 
 cause, was one which the strongest sympathies of his youth and 
 the fullest convictions of his manhood stimulated him to pre- 
 serve from the control of party politics and the mischiefs of 
 political legislation. Inspired by these motives, he opened the 
 cause, in the argument of which all that is preserved is con- 
 tained in the fifth volume of his works ; a report which gives 
 us only the legal reasoning of a speech that was undoubtedly as 
 remarkable for its beauty, pathos, and eloquence, as it was for 
 its logical power and its wealth of historical and juridical illus- 
 tration. 
 
 Its important positions, stated in their logical order, were 
 these : 1. That Dr. Wheelock was the founder of this college, 
 and as such entitled by law to be visitor, and that he had 
 assigned all the visitatorial powers to the trustees. 2. That 
 the charter created a private and not a public corporation, to 
 administer a charity, in the administration of which the trustees 
 had a property, which the law recognizes as such. 3. That the 
 grant of such a charter is a contract between the sovereign 
 power and its successors and those to whom it is granted and 
 their successors. 4. That the legislation which took away from 
 the trustees the right to exercise the powers of superintendence, 
 visitation, and government, and transferred them to another set 
 of trustees, impaired the obligation of that contract. The argu-
 
 168 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. VIIL 
 
 ments of Mr. Wirt, tlien Attorney-General of the United States, 
 and of Mr. Holmes, for the defendants in error, related chiefly 
 to the points that the charter was not a contract, but a mere 
 appointment to office, the trustees being agents of government, 
 and the property, in fact, given to the public ; that if the 
 charter was a contract, it was not impaired by the legislation, 
 which merely gave the trustees new assistants ; and that Dr. 
 Wheelock was not the founder, as he never gave any thing. 
 Mr. Hopkinson replied, on all these topics, in a speech of much 
 ability. On the conclusion of the argument, the Chief Justice 
 intimated that a decision was not to be expected until the next 
 term. It was made in February, 1819, fully confirming the 
 grounds on which Mr. "Webster had placed the cause. From 
 this decision, the principle in our constitutional jurisprudence, 
 which regards a charter of a private corporation as a contract, 
 and places it under the protection of the Constitution of the 
 United States, takes its date. To Mr. Webster belongs the 
 honor of having produced its judicial establishment. 
 
 "We look back upon a forensic performance like this, which 
 was followed by a judgment affirming its positions, and fixing 
 them among the foundations of our law, so that its principles 
 have become familiar to us, as if the conception and develop- 
 ment of the subject involved less reach of originality and less 
 depth of research and force of reasoning than they really did. 
 But we should judge of the advocate on these critical occasions, 
 in some measure, through the impressions and opinions of those 
 who heard him, and who stood at the same point in our juridi- 
 cal history at which he was himself placed. What they re- 
 garded as a very high intellectual achievement, advancing the 
 law by a great stride toward the perfection of which a human 
 and an artificial system of social rights is capable, we may well 
 accept as such upon their testimony. For, while we observe 
 the excitation of feeling produced by the immediate influence 
 of the speech on those who heard it, we must concede to con- 
 temporaries a superior appreciation of the difficulties that were 
 to be encountered. Tradition, if it has not always placed this 
 performance at the very head of all Mr. Webster's forensic 
 eiforts, has certainly, by the universal testimony of those who 
 heard it, regarded it as one that immediately impressed the
 
 1818.] DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE. 169 
 
 highest intellect of the nation with an adequate sense of his 
 power. But, among all the admiration that it called forth from 
 those who were present, there is nothing more happy or more 
 striking than what was said by Mr. Webster's associate in the 
 cause. "Writing to the president of the college, after the judg- 
 ment of the court had fully sanctioned the arguments of its 
 advocates, and placed it in safety for all future time, Mr. Hop- 
 kinson modestly disclaimed for himself any other merit, in his 
 reply to their opponents, than that of having followed and 
 enforced the positions taken by Mr. "Webster in his opening of 
 the cause. He then added, " I would have an inscription over 
 the door of your building : ' FOUNDED BY ELEAZEK "WHEELOCK, 
 
 BEFOUNDED BY DANIEL WEBSTER." 3 
 
 The most vivid description that is extant of Mr. "Webster's 
 manner on this occasion, was given by a gentleman, who was 
 present, to Mr. Choate, in 1853. 1 I quote it entire : 
 
 "Before going to "Washington, which I did chiefly for the sake of hear- 
 ing Mr. Webster, I was told that, in arguing the case at Exeter, New 
 Hampshire, he had left the whole court-room in tears at the conclusion of 
 his speech. This, I confess, struck me unpleasantly any attempt at pathos 
 on a purely legal question like this seemed hardly in good taste. On my 
 way to Washington, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Webster. We were 
 together for several days in Philadelphia, at the house of a common friend ; 
 and, as the college question was one of deep interest to literary men, we 
 conversed often and largely on the subject. As he dwelt upon the leading 
 points of the case, in terms so calm, simple, and precise, I said to myself 
 more than once, in reference to the story I had heard, ' Whatever may 
 have seemed appropriate in defending the college at 7wm&, and on her own 
 ground, there will be no appeal to the feelings of Judge Marshall and his 
 associates at Washington.' The Supreme Court of the United States held 
 its session, that winter, in a mean apartment of moderate size the capitol 
 not having been rebuilt after its destruction in 1814. The audience, when 
 the case came on, was, therefore, small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the 
 elite of the profession throughout the country. Mr. Webster entered upon 
 his argument in the calm tone of easy and dignified conversation. His 
 matter was so completely at his command that he scarcely looked at his 
 brief, but went on for more than four hours with a statement so luminous, 
 and a chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching so 
 nearly to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him every 
 
 1 Dr. Chauncey A. Goodrich, a pro- Choate at Dartmouth College, July 27, 
 fessor in Yale College. See the eulogy 1853, at the request of the authorities 
 on Mr. Webster, pronounced by Mr. and the students.
 
 170 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. VIIL 
 
 man of his audience without the slightest effort or uneasiness on either side. 
 It was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense of the term ; it was pure reason. 
 Now and then, for a sentence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled 
 into a bolder note, as he uttered some emphatic thought ; but he instantly 
 fell back into the tone of earnest conversation which ran throughout the 
 great body of the speech. A single circumstance will show you the clear- 
 ness and absorbing power of his argument. 
 
 " I observed that Judge Story, at the opening of the case, had prepared 
 himself, pen in hand, as if to take copious minutes. Hour after hour I saw 
 him fixed in the same attitude, but, so far as I could perceive, with not a 
 note on his paper. The argument closed, and I could not discover that he 
 had taken a single note. Others around me remarked the same thing, and 
 it was among the on dits of Washington that a friend spoke to him of the 
 fact with surprise, when the judge remarked, ' Every thing was so clear, 
 and so easy to remember, that not a note seemed necessary, and, in fact, I 
 thought little or nothing about my notes.' The argument ended, Mr. 
 "Webster stood for some moments silent before the court, while every eye 
 was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the Chief Justice, he 
 proceeded thus : 
 
 " ' This, sir, is my case. It is the case, not merely of that humble 
 institution, it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the 
 case of every eleemosynary institution throughout our country of all 
 those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors, to alleviate 
 human misery, and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is 
 more ! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has 
 property of which he may be stripped, for the question is simply this : 
 Shall our State Legislatures be allowed to take that which is not theh 
 own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes 
 as they in their discretion shall see fit ? 
 
 " ' Sir, you may destroy this little institution ; it is weak ; it is in your 
 hands ! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our 
 country. You may put it out. But, if you do so, you must carry through 
 your workl You must extinguish, one after another, all those greater 
 lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radi- 
 ance over our land ! 
 
 " ' It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those 
 who love it ' 
 
 " Here, the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down, 
 broke forth. His lips quivered ; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion ; 
 his eyes were filled with tears, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling 
 to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save 
 him from an unmanly burst of feeling. I will not attempt to give you the 
 few broken words of tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attach- 
 ment to the college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the 
 recollections of father, mother, brother, and all the privations and trials
 
 1817.] ROBBERY OF MAJOR GOODRIDGE. 171 
 
 through which he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it 
 was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief 
 in words and tears. 
 
 " The court-room during these two or three minutes presented an ex- 
 traordinary spectacle. Chief-Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt 
 figure bent over, as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of 
 his cheek expanded with emotion, and his eyes suffused with tears ; Mr. 
 Justice Washington at his side, with his small and emaciated frame and 
 countenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being 
 leaning forward with an eager, troubled look ; and the remainder of the 
 court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, 
 while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds 
 beneath the bench, to catch each look and every movement of the speak- 
 ers face. If a painter could give us the scene on canvas those forms and 
 countenances, and Daniel Webster as he there stood in the midst it would 
 be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. One thing 
 it taught me, that the pathetic depends not merely on the words uttered, 
 but still more on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There 
 was not one among the strong-minded men of that assembly, who could 
 think it unmanly to weep, when he saw standing before him the man who 
 had made such an argument, melted into the tenderness of a child. 
 
 " Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and, fixing^his keen 
 eye on the Chief Justice, said, in that deep tone with which he "sometimes 
 thrilled the heart of an audience : 
 
 " ' Sir, I know not how others may feel' .(glancing at the opponents of 
 the college before him), ' but, for myself, when I see my Alma Mater sur- 
 rounded, like Csesar in the senate-house, by those who are reiterating 
 stab after stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her to turn to me, 
 and say, Et tu quogue mi fill ! And thou too, my son ! ' 
 
 " He sat down. There was a deathlike stillness throughout the room 
 for some moments ; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself, and 
 coming gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and feeling." 
 
 About a year previous to this argument of a legal and con- 
 stitutional question of the highest reach, before a court of law, 
 Mr. "Webster was employed in a totally different sphere of the 
 functions of an advocate, in the defence of two persons before a 
 jury, indicted under circumstances of a remarkable character, 
 whose guilt was almost unanimously assumed by the public, 
 who were unquestionably innocent, and whose safety depended 
 upon a skilful cross-examination of the prosecutor, and a discus- 
 sion of probabilities upon evidence. I allude to the dramatic 
 story of the robbery of Major Goodridge. 
 
 Goodridge was a person of previous good character and re-
 
 172 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. VIIL 
 
 spectable standing, who professed to have been robbed of a 
 large sum of money, at about nine o'clock in the night of De- 
 cember 19, 1816, on the road between Exeter and Newbury- 
 port, soon after passing the Essex Merrimac Bridge, on his 
 way from New Hampshire into Massachusetts. Among the 
 proofs of the robbery was a pistol-shot through his left hand, 
 received, as he said, before the robbers pulled him from 
 his horse ; he and one of his assailants discharging their 
 pistols at each other on the same instant. He was then, 
 according to his account, dragged from his horse, and across 
 a fence into a field, robbed, and beaten until he was sense- 
 less. On his recovery he went back to the toll-house on 
 the bridge, where he appeared to be for a time in a state of 
 delirium. But he had sufficient self-possession to return to the 
 place of the robbery with some persons who accompanied him 
 with a lantern, where his watch, papers, and other articles 
 were found scattered on the ground. On the following day, he 
 went to Newburyport, and remained there ill, at intervals in a 
 state of real or simulated frenzy, for several weeks. Having 
 regained his health, he set about the discovery of the robbers ; 
 and so general was the sympathy for him in a very orderly 
 community, that his plans were aided by the innocent zeal of 
 nearly the whole country-side. His first charge was against 
 the Kennistons, two poor men who dwelt in the town of New 
 Market, New Hampshire, on the other side of the river. In 
 their cellar he found a piece of gold, which he identified by a 
 mark which he said he had placed on all his money, and a ten- 
 dollar note which he also identified as his own. The Kennis- 
 tons were arrested, examined, and held for trial. He next 
 charged the toll-gatherer, one Pearson, as an accomplice ; and 
 on his premises, with the aid of a witch-hazel conjuror, he also 
 found some of his gold and papers in which it had been wrapped. 
 Pearson was arrested, examined before two magistrates, and 
 discharged. He then complained against one Taber, a person 
 who lived in Boston. Finally, he followed a man named Jack- 
 man to the city of New York, in whose house he swore that he 
 also discovered some of his marked wrappers. The machinery 
 of an Executive requisition was put in motion, and Jackman 
 was brought into Massachusetts and lodged in jail. He and
 
 1811] ROBBERY OF MAJOR GOODRIDGE. 173 
 
 Taber, and the Kennistons, were then indicted for the robbery, 
 in the county of Essex. 
 
 So cunningly had this man contrived his story and arranged 
 his proofs, that the popular belief was entirely with him. The 
 witch-hazel part of his evidence probably did not disincline 
 the populace to believe him. But it is even said that there 
 were few members of the county bar who did not regard the 
 case of the Kennistons as desperate. There were some, how- 
 ever, who believed Goodridge's story to be false; and these 
 persons sent for Mr. Webster to undertake the defence of the 
 accused. The indictment against Taber was nol. prosed. 
 That against the Kennistons came on for trial at Ipswich, in 
 April, 1817. They had nothing on which to rely but their 
 previous good character, the negative fact that since the sup- 
 posed robbery they had not passed any money or been seen to 
 have any, and the improbabilities which their advocate could 
 develop, in the story of Goodridge. The theory of the defence 
 was, that Goodridge was his own robber, and had fired the 
 pistol-shot through his own hand. % 
 
 In the power of cross-examining witnesses Mr. Webster had 
 no superior in his day ; and his reputation in this respect doubt- 
 less aided the impression which he produced upon this jury. 
 There were traditions which had come over the border from 
 Xew Hampshire, of his terrible skill in baffling the deepest 
 plans of perjury and fraud, which excited the jury to the 
 closest attention to his method of dealing with Goodridge. 
 They saw his well-concocted story laid bare, in all its improb- 
 able features, while every aid was given to him by Mr. "Web- 
 ster to develop suggestions which could be set off against the 
 theory that the latter meant to maintain. But when all the 
 evidence for and against Goodridge's narrative had been drawn 
 out, and it came to the summing up, there remained two obvi- 
 ous difficulties in the way of that hypothesis. One of them 
 \vas, that no motive had been shown for so strange an act as a 
 man's falsely pretending to have been robbed, and charging the 
 robbery upon innocent people ; the other, that the theory of 
 Goodridge being himself the robber, apparently made it neces- 
 sary to believe that he had proceeded, in his fraudulent manu- 
 facture of proofs, to the extremity of shooting a pistol-bullet
 
 174 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 through his own hand. These were very formidable difficulties ; 
 for the law of evidence, as administered in our criminal juris- 
 prudence, very properly regards the absence of motive for an 
 act, the commission of which depends on circumstantial proof 
 as one of the important things to be weighed in favor of inno- 
 cence ; and as to the shooting, it was certainly in a high de- 
 gree improbable that a man would maim himself, in order to 
 maintain a false statement that he had been robbed and maimed 
 by some one else. But in grappling with these difficulties, Mr. 
 Webster told the jury that the range of human motives is al- 
 most infinite ; that a desire to avoid payment of his debts, 
 if he owed debts, or a whimsical ambition for distinction, 
 might have been at the bottom of Goodridge's conduct ; and 
 that having once announced himself to the community as a 
 man who had been robbed of a large sum and beaten nearly 
 to death, he had to go on and charge somebody with the act. 
 This was correct reasoning, but still no motive had been shown 
 for the original pretence; and, if there had not been some 
 decisive circumstances developed on the evidence, it is not 
 easy to say how this case ought to have been decided. These 
 circumstances made it unnecessary to believe that, although 
 Goodridge himself discharged the pistol which wounded him, 
 he intended that result. His story was, that the pistol of the 
 robber went off at the moment when he had grasped it with 
 his left hand. Yet, according to the testimony of the physi- 
 cians who attended him, there were no marks of powder on his 
 hand ; and the appearance of the wound led to the conclusion 
 that the muzzle of the piece must have been three or four feet 
 from his hand, while there were marks of powder on the sleeve 
 of his coat, and the ball passed through the coat as well as the 
 hand. This state of the evidence justified Mr. Webster's remark 
 that " all exhibitions are subject to accidents. Whether serious or 
 farcical, they do not always proceed exactly as they are designed 
 to do." Goodridge, he argued, intended to shoot the ball 
 through his coat-sleeve, and it accidentally perforated his hand 
 also. This discredited his story more than any thing else, and 
 convinced the jury that, if he found any of his money on the 
 premises of the Kennistons, he placed it there himself. The 
 Kennistons were acquitted. Goodridge returned to the charge ;
 
 1818.] ROBBERY OF MAJOR GOODRIDGE. 175 
 
 Jackinan was put on trial at the next term of the court, and 
 the jury disagreed. At his second trial, Mr. Webster defended 
 him, and he was acquitted. These criminal proceedings were 
 followed by an action for a malicious prosecution, instituted by 
 Pearson against Goodridge. Mr. "Webster was of counsel for 
 the plaintiff in this case. The evidence was now still more 
 clear against Goodridge ; a verdict for a large amount was 
 recovered against him, and the public at last saw the fact 
 judicially established that he had robbed himself. He left 
 New England a disgraced man. No clew to his motive was 
 ever discovered. 
 
 Twenty years afterward, Mr. Webster was travelling in the 
 western part of the State of New York ; he stopped at a tavern, 
 and went in to ask for a glass of water. The man behind the 
 bar exhibited great agitation as the traveller approached him, 
 and when he placed the glass of water before Mr. Webster his 
 hand trembled violently, but he did not speak. Mr. Webster 
 drank the water, turned without saying another word, and 
 it-entered his carriage. The man was Goodridge.
 
 176 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. fCa IX. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 1820-1822. 
 
 MR. CALHOUN'S VISIT TO BOSTON PROFESSIONAL POSITION CON- 
 VENTION TO REVISE THE CONSTITUTION OF MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 THE PLYMOUTH ORATION CASE OF LA JEUNE EUGENIE 
 
 DEFENCE OF JUDGE JAMES PRESCOTT ELECTED TO CONGRESS 
 
 FROM BOSTON. 
 
 IN" the summer of 1820, while Mr. Webster was diligently 
 occupied in the practice of his profession, Mr. Calhoun, 
 who was then Secretary of War, made an official tour to the 
 North, for the purpose of examining the forts and arsenals of 
 the Federal Government. His reception by Mr. Webster in 
 Boston is thus described by Mr. Tieknor : 
 
 " When Mr. Calhoun came to Boston in the summer of 1820, as Secre- 
 tary of War, to examine the arsenals and forts, Mr. Webster, who then 
 lived in Somerset Street, was particularly hospitable and attentive to him. 
 They had always been on good and kindly terms, even during the war, 
 when they were leading in opposite parties. Whatever collisions they 
 might have had on the floor of the House, were all forgotten at the time 
 of Mr. Calhoun's visit to Boston. Mr. Webster was then earnestly devoted 
 to the practice of his profession, but he was unquestionably not without 
 political aspirations. He was much with Mr. Calhoun ; went with him to 
 the arsenal at Watertown, and passed the rest of the only day he could be 
 with him in driving about the neighborhood. A large party of the prin- 
 cipal persons in this portion of the country, I recollect, waited long for 
 them at Mr. Webster's to dinner. Mr. Calhoun talked much and most 
 agreeably at table, and it was evident to all of us that Mr. Webster desired 
 to draw him out and show him under the most favorable aspects to his 
 friends. After dinner, a considerable number of young men, particularly
 
 1820.] WEBSTER AND PINE^EY. 177 
 
 of the young lawyers of the town, came in and were presented to Mr. 
 Calhoun. We all said, ' Mr. Webster wishes Mr. Calhoun to be the next 
 President of the United States ; ' some added, ' He has been driving with 
 him all day, tete-a-tete in a phaeton, and they understand one another.' 
 But the positions of such men are stronger than themselves, and they 
 understand one another without words." 
 
 In the midst of the professional practice which has been 
 partly described in the last chapter, Mr. Webster was called 
 upon to act a very important part in an entirely new sphere of 
 public duty. He had been hitherto known as a leading mem- 
 ber of Congress, and as a very eminent lawyer. In these 
 capacities he had, at the age of thirty-eight, achieved a reputa- 
 tion which can scarcely be regarded as second to that of any 
 man in America, when we take into account both his position 
 at the bar and his position as a statesman. Of all those who 
 were practising in the Supreme Court of the United States in 
 1820, Mr. Pinkney is the person with whom we naturally com- 
 pare Mr. Webster. He was much older than Mr. Webster, 
 and as an advocate and a lawyer he was undoubtedly a very 
 great man inferior to no one who has ever yet addressed that 
 tribunal. That Mr. Webster, before he was forty, became the 
 equal and competitor of Mr. Pinkney, is certainly a fact ad- 
 mitted by their contemporaries, and it marks the position to 
 which Mr. Webster attained by very rapid strides, as if it be- 
 longed to him of right. But Mr. Pinkney added another to the 
 list of distinguished lawyers who have not been equally distin- 
 guished in parliamentary life. His place, as he himself well 
 knew, and as he once said in Congress, was in courts of justice ; 
 and there, in spite of the affectations which covered him with a 
 mantle of small weaknesses, he was regarded, by all who were 
 accustomed to hear him, as a person of prodigious strength. 
 ISTo amount of foppery could obscure the splendor of his intel- 
 lect or intercept the blaze of light which he poured upon his 
 subject, when he forgot, in the earnestness of his reasoning and 
 the vehemence of his elocution, his strange desire to be con- 
 sidered rather an idle and elegant man of fashion than the 
 indefatigable student and laborious lawyer he really was. 1 
 
 1 Mr. Justice Story was in the habit one occasion, when Mr. Webster and Mr. 
 of relating the following anecdote : On Pinkney were opposed to each other in 
 13
 
 178 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. IX 
 
 Neither Mr. Clay nor Mr. Calhoun, who were nearer Mr. 
 Webster's age, was greatly distinguished as a lawyer. -Mr. 
 Calhoun, in fact, never practised the law; and, down to the 
 year 1820, Mr. Clay, who had become very eminent in political 
 life, was known chiefly as a statesman, and had gathered no 
 special laurels at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States. Of Mr. "Webster, therefore, it may be said, at the period 
 to which I now refer, that, when we regard the double reputa- 
 tion which he had acquired on the floor of Congress and in the 
 courts of law, and consider his age, he was the most conspicuous 
 person in the country. All this reputation was now to encounter 
 new hazards, in new and untried fields of intellectual exertion. 
 
 The State of Massachusetts had existed under a free consti- 
 tution of its own creation, since the year 1780. This constitu- 
 tion, the work of John Adams, Samuel Adams, and other 
 patriots of the Revolution, had been made in the midst of the 
 Revolutionary War, and, of course, before the Constitution of 
 the United States. It was in many respects a model of a free 
 representative government, carefully reconciling popular rights 
 with public order ; but the circumstances of the Commonwealth 
 for which it was designed had in forty years undergone some 
 changes. Maine, which had hitherto belonged to Massachu- 
 setts as a part of her jurisdiction, had asked and obtained the 
 consent of the latter to a separation. The necessity which this 
 induced for modifying the representative system, and other 
 exigencies growing out of the progress of society and the rela- 
 tions of the State to the Federal Government, caused the 
 assembling of a convention of the people of Massachusetts to 
 revise its constitution. This body met in Boston in November, 
 1820, and terminated its sessions in January, 1821. Mr. "Web- 
 ster was one of the delegates to it. 
 
 the same cause, the latter had an as- became more and more drowsy ; the 
 
 eociate who was not remarkable for the counsel on the opposite side, the judges, 
 
 brilliancy or importance of his discourse, and the spectators paying a very languid 
 
 This gentleman had been speaking for attention, if any at all. Presently, ceas- 
 
 iome time, opening his cause in a very ing to speak from his own notes, Mr. 
 
 prosing manner, and more than one of stated a new point, and followed it 
 
 the judges had even relapsed into some- by some observations that caused every- 
 thing very like a nod, when Mr. Pinkney body to take up their pens and open 
 was called out. As he left the court, he their ears. At that moment a whisper 
 handed his notes to his colleague. Mr. from Mr. Webster became audible 
 
 went on for some time from his own through the room ' He has got on the 
 
 brief, and the atmosphere of the court armor of Achilles 1 ' "
 
 1820.] MASSACHUSETTS CONTENTION. 179 
 
 A constitutional convention of an American State is a 
 representative body of one chamber, acting for the whole com- 
 munity, in whom resides the power, according to the theory of 
 our institutions, of amending, altering, or abolishing the exist- 
 ing form of the State government and of substituting a new 
 one, subject only to the condition expressly imposed by the 
 Federal Constitution, that the form shall be republican, and to 
 the further implied condition that it shall consist with the rights 
 and authority of the United States. Exercising this ample 
 and original power of moulding the political institutions of 
 society for the purpose, at least, of determining what shall be 
 submitted to the people for their final ratification, such a body 
 eminently demands the highest range of talent and character 
 that the society can furnish. The people of Massachusetts 
 were not unmindful of what they owed to their own interests, 
 or to the science and the cause of good government, in constitut- 
 ing this convention. They wisely excluded no one on account 
 of his present public station. Several of the prominent judges, 
 including Parker, the Chief Justice of the Commonwealth, and 
 both of the Federal judges, Story and Davis, were members. 
 All the learned professions, the merchants, the agricultural 
 classes, the town and the rural populations, were duly repre- 
 sented by a body of delegates whose aggregate weight of char- 
 acter and ability has not been exceeded by that of any assembly 
 that was ever convened in New England. The venerable John 
 Adams, then in his eighty-fifth year, added grace and dignity 
 to the convention as one of its members, and the compliment was 
 paid to him of electing him its president ; but he declined the 
 duty of the chair, and the Chief Justice was then substituted as 
 the presiding officer. The convention was necessarily a large 
 body, because the municipalities of the State, consisting of 
 about three hundred towns, had always claimed and exercised 
 the right of separate representation in all political action, and 
 because their corporate existence, in fact, lay at the foundation 
 of the State itself. The number of delegates for each town was 
 fixed at the number by which it was entitled to be represented 
 in the lower House of the Legislature. This gave a convention 
 of nearly five hundred members. So numerous a body of 
 course embraced elements of decidedly radical as well as of
 
 180 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IX 
 
 strong conservative tendencies. The latter class in general 
 regarded the old constitution as one demanding few alterations 
 or additions ; the former naturally favored innovations ; so that 
 the chief occasions likely to call forth the abilities of the mem- 
 bers would be those which involved the attack or the defence 
 of institutions and principles that lie at the basis of republican 
 government. 
 
 But, although these two tendencies of individual minds, the 
 radical and the conservative, were present in this convention 
 as they must be in every thing that relates to the affairs of 
 society there were peculiar circumstances attending it, which 
 made it a very different sphere for such a man as Mr. Webster, 
 from a parliamentary and legislative body. A public man who 
 leads in the English House of Commons, or in one of our Houses 
 of legislation, national or State, is generally obliged to do so as 
 the head of a party. To a certain extent his opinions and 
 action are restricted by the principles professed by his party, 
 and the objects at which it aims, whether it conducts or opposes 
 the administration of the time. He may, it is true, have occa- 
 sion to deal with questions that go deeper than party opinion, 
 and to appeal to that which is common to all parties ; he often 
 has to win votes from his opponents as well as from those with 
 whom he is politically associated. Still, the existence of parties 
 is not seldom unfavorable to the exhibition and influence of the 
 higher statesmanship, which finds its best field when native 
 genius for political discussion and practical talent for the 
 application of principles to the condition of the whole society 
 can do their appropriate work without the bias and the tram- 
 mels arising from that minor organization in the republic that 
 is constituted by a party. In the Massachusetts Convention of 
 1820 there were fortunately no parties. There was a small 
 minority of highly cultivated and experienced men, who gen- 
 erally acted together, from the natural concurrence of the sen- 
 timents of men of that class ; and they commonly governed the 
 decisions of the whole body. But the convention was chosen 
 and held at a time when there were no political parties in this 
 country acting as strictly defined organizations. It was in 
 what was called " the era of good feeling ; " a current designation 
 of the state of political affairs that existed during the adminis-
 
 1820.] MASSACHUSETTS CONVENTION. 181 
 
 tration of President Monroe, after the old contests and feelings 
 between the Federal and Democratic parties had mostly sub- 
 sided, and before their successors, the National Republican or 
 Whig, and the modern Democratic parties, had been formed. 
 
 This absence of party divisions in the convention was highly 
 favorable to the best interests of the State, and it was especially 
 so to the influence of Mr. Webster and of those who acted with 
 him, upon the institutions of the Commonwealth. It rendered 
 the convention, although an extremely popular body, remark- 
 able for its deliberative character. It was an assembly that 
 listened to and was controlled by argument; that sacrificed 
 prejudice to reason ; and, when it saw the right, decided for it, 
 without the influences arising from the intermixture of party 
 objects. To these fortunate circumstances, and to the power 
 which they gave to such a statesman as Mr. "Webster, it is in a 
 large degree to be ascribed that the political institutions of 
 Massachusetts remain to this day, in many respects, decidedly 
 more conservative than those of many of her sister States, not- 
 withstanding the spirit of her people in political action- is often 
 quite the reverse of what might be argued from the spirit and 
 letter of their constitution. Mr. Webster's activity and success 
 in this convention were thus described by Judge Story, in a 
 letter to a common friend, soon after its session was terminated : 
 
 " Our friend Webster has gained a noble reputation. ... It was a 
 glorious field for him, and he has had an ample harvest. The whole force 
 of his great mind was brought out, and in several speeches he commanded 
 universal admiration. He always led the van, and was most skilful and 
 instantaneous in attack and retreat. He fought, as I have told him, in the 
 ' imminent deadly breach ; ' and all I could do was to skirmish in aid of 
 him upon some of the enemy's outposts. On the whole, I never was more 
 proud of any display than his in my life." * 
 
 Mere ambition, although Mr. Webster certainly was not 
 then or at any other time without ambition, is not to be re- 
 garded as the sole spring that moved this great intellectual 
 energy. He was in the vigor of manhood ; full of talent of the 
 most various kinds ; full of knowledge, as knowledge is derived 
 from books or from the business of life ; with forces within him 
 that were irrepressible, and that carried him forward in every 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. ilason, January 21, 1821. (Life of Jutye Story, i., p. 395.)
 
 182 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IX 
 
 conflict, by their spontaneous action, to the accomplishment of 
 all the good toward which such extraordinary gifts are naturally 
 impelled. At this time of his life there was scarcely ever seen 
 in him any of that solemn repose, amounting to an apparent 
 lethargy, from which in his later years he seemed capable of 
 being aroused only by a strong external pressure. I have heard 
 him described, by those who knew him at this period, as being 
 in manner extremely alert and vivacious, although always 
 dignified and refined. My own recollection of him goes back 
 sufficiently far to enable me to remember the manifestations of 
 power which his countenance, his bearing, and his conversation 
 perpetually gave forth, when he was not absorbed in the ab- 
 stractions of thought or study ; and I can well understand the 
 impressions of those whose recollections were earlier, and which 
 led them to describe him afterward as the most " living " man 
 they had ever known. Yet Mr. Webster was never carried, 
 either by the impulse of great animal spirits or by the force of 
 genius, into the regions of impracticable speculation, or of over 
 refinement in politics, or of mere theories in human affairs. lie 
 could be as acute a dialectician as any man whom he ever 
 encountered ; but his dialectics were never divorced from those 
 actual conditions of society which limit the office of metaphysics 
 in the science of government. 
 
 Among the instances of his application of theoretical reason- 
 ing to the circumstances of the community on whose constitu- 
 tion he was acting, a brief reference only can be made here to 
 some of the more important topics on which he exercised a 
 decisive influence over the deliberations and decisions of the 
 convention. One of these related to the question whether the 
 oath of office ought to be made to embrace any other religious 
 test than is implied in the sanction of the oath itself. 
 
 The constitution of Massachusetts had hitherto required a 
 declaration of belief in the Christian religion as a part of the 
 oath of office. It is not strange that this should have been 
 established by a people whose earliest polity, from the first 
 planting of their colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, 
 approached very nearly to a theocracy. When the constitution 
 of 1780 was formed, the principle of the original equality of all 
 men in respect to civil rights, asserted in the Declaration of
 
 1820.] MASSACHUSETTS CONVENTION. 183 
 
 Independence, led to the recognition of certain personal rights, 
 which the Government, representing the whole people, is bound 
 to secure to each individual of the society in return for his civil 
 obedience and service, and his contribution to the public bur- 
 dens. This principle was embodied in the Bill of Eights 
 which made a part of the Constitution, by asserting the right 
 of all individuals to be protected in the enjoyment of life, 
 liberty, and property, according to standing laws. In progress 
 of time there came to be a vague feeling that the acknowledged 
 rights of persons ought to be deemed to embrace the holding of 
 office ; which, in the actual state of society, they could not em- 
 brace, if the qualification of belief in the Christian religion 
 were required, since it was known that this belief was not 
 universal. Against this feeling there was arrayed another, 
 which had its origin partly in the old connection between 
 church-membership and civil station, and partly in the opinion 
 of certain classes that the constitution of a people who pro- 
 fessed Christianity ought to require of their public officers a 
 declaration of that faith. This feeling was opposed to any 
 relaxation for the sake of making it possible for a few dis- 
 believers to hold public office. 
 
 But, between these two opinions, there was on each side a 
 question that needed a clear examination before it could be 
 determined which of them or whether either of them was cor- 
 rect. On the one hand, is it true that the holding of office is or 
 should be made one of the acknowledged rights of individuals 
 on the same ground with the rights of life, liberty, and prop- 
 erty ? On the other hand, is it necessary to the safety of Chris- 
 tianity, or of civil government, to exclude from office those who 
 are not qualified to profess a belief in that religion ? Mr. Web- 
 ster saw with his usual accuracy that the true answer to the 
 first of these questions reduced the whole matter to an issue of 
 expediency. In making that answer, he vindicated the right 
 of the State to prescribe any qualifications for office that it 
 might see fit to make, by showing that office cannot be claimed 
 by individuals as a personal right, consistently with a freedom 
 of choice in the electors. Practically, he argued, whether a 
 belief in Christianity is or is not required as a constitutional 
 qualification, the people will be governed in their choice by the
 
 V 
 
 1S4 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IX. 
 
 sentiments which the candidates are understood to hold on this 
 as well as on other subjects, and no one can complain. What 
 the people can practically do, without giving just cause for 
 complaint, they have a right previously to say in their funda- 
 mental law that they will do. It is otherwise with the rights 
 of life, liberty, and property, for the protection of which civil 
 society is instituted ; while it is not instituted for the purpose 
 of securing to all individuals a right to hold office. 
 
 Having thus disposed of the claim to office on the ground 
 of right, he placed the question on grounds of expediency, by 
 maintaining, first, that the exclusion of unbelievers is an exclu- 
 sion for that which may involve the conscience ; second, that, as 
 a vast majority of the inhabitants of the State were believers in 
 the Christian religion, it was sufficiently certain, without any 
 constitutional requirement, that such persons would ordinarily 
 be chosen to places of public trust ; third, that a qualification 
 which is practically needless, and is founded in an objection that 
 may involve the consciences of men, is an unnecessary rigor 
 that marks men with opprobrium, and has a tendency to pro 
 scription. As he did not propose to strike from the constitu 
 tion the recognition of the benefits which civil society derives 
 from the institutions of Christianity, he thought that the re- 
 moval of the religious qualification for office could not be mis- 
 construed. These views prevailed with the convention, and 
 this qualification has ever since been abolished in Massachusetts. 
 
 The two most important, however, of the elaborate speeches 
 made by Mr. Webster in this convention related to the basis 
 of the Senate and the independence of the judiciary. With 
 respect to the first of them, taking the whole speech as it was 
 delivered, and as it stands in the report of the proceedings, 
 probably there is not on record, anywhere, a more profound 
 discussion of the principles on which a republican government 
 can be so formed as to embrace means of aifording a distinct 
 protection to property. The problem of founding such a gov- 
 ernment, in part, upon property, without introducing a tendency 
 to oligarchy, was the topic which Mr. Webster undertook to 
 explain on this occasion ; and whoever will examine the whole 
 scope of his argument, and will compare it with what has 
 been written and said elsewhere on the relations of property to
 
 1820.] MASSACHUSETTS CONTENTION. 185 
 
 government observing the illustrations which he drew from 
 what was then taking place in other countries, and the predic- 
 tions which he made will be satisfied of the importance of this 
 speech. The subject came before the convention in consequence 
 of a provision in the constitution of 1780, by which members 
 of the Senate had been chosen in districts in proportion to the 
 amount of taxable property in each district, while members of 
 the House were chosen in proportion to the population of the 
 towns represented. The framers of that constitution had, in 
 this way, met the difficult problem in representative govern- 
 ment, which arises when there are, or can be, no personal dis- 
 tinctions on which to found one of the branches of the legisla- 
 tive power. They selected representation by districts, in pro- 
 portion to taxable property, because this is the only mode 
 in which a difference of origin between two Chambers can be 
 introduced, if the electors of both are to be the same, and the 
 persons to be chosen are to have the same qualifications. In 
 the course of forty years, there had been a considerable increase 
 of the democratic spirit, and it had become necessary ttf answer 
 those who insisted that this arrangement gave an undue advan- 
 tage to the richer districts, and that it was, in principle, incon- 
 sistent with the character of American institutions. The ques- 
 tion was, whether this provision of the old constitution should 
 remain, or whether the representation in both branches of the 
 Legislature should be based on population alone. 
 
 Mr. Webster divided this question into two. They were 
 to inquire, he said, first, whether the legislative department 
 was to be constructed with any other check than such as arises 
 simply from dividing it into two Houses ; secondly, if there was 
 to be another and further check, in what manner should it be 
 created ? He then enforced the necessity, and explained the 
 office, of checks and balances in the legislative department. 
 Their utility, he said, arises from the truth that, in representa- 
 tive governments, that department is the leading and predomi- 
 nating power, whose tendency is to encroach on all the other 
 departments. If all legislative power rests in a single House, it 
 is very doubtful whether any proper independence can be given 
 either to the executive or the judiciary, because there is no suf- 
 ficient safeguard to insure deliberation and caution in its meas-
 
 186 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IX. 
 
 ures. If two Chambers are chosen upon the same basis, by the 
 same electors, and for the same term of office, they will be actu- 
 ated by the same feelings and interests ; they will be substan- 
 tially one body, though two in form. And if all legislative 
 power be in one popular body, all other power, sooner or 
 later, will be there also. There can be no sufficient check "be- 
 tween two Chambers without some difference of origin, or 
 interest, or feeling ; and the great question had been, in this 
 country, where to find, or how to create, this difference in 
 governments entirely elective and popular. 
 
 In the actual circumstances of the State, Mr. Webster said, 
 the question was not whether a representation in one branch, 
 by districts, in proportion to their public taxes, was the best 
 mode of constituting the necessary difference between the two 
 branches, but whether it was- better than no mode ; for the 
 whole practice and spirit of the people were opposed to the 
 introduction of differences in the qualifications of electors, or 
 of the persons to be chosen, or in the manner of making the 
 appointments. They had therefore to consider the question, 
 whether property, not as an element of personal power in pro- 
 portion to the amount of personal possessions, but in a general 
 sense, and in a general form, should have its weight and influ- 
 ence in political arrangements. 
 
 In the discussion of this part of the subject, he exhibited 
 his thorough understanding of the fact that republican govern 
 ment, as it has grown up in this country, rests not more on 
 political constitutions than on the laws which regulate the 
 descent and distribution of property. He maintained then, 
 as he always maintained, that our constitutions are the fruit 
 of the general equality of property which our laws and cus- 
 toms have produced ; an equality which began before we had 
 constitutions, and which fixed the future frame and forms of 
 our governments. In the great central fact of the division 
 of the soil among a multitude of small proprietors, tending 
 constantly to produce a general distribution of all property, lay 
 the truth that, in the distribution of political power, the inter- 
 ests of property may be consulted and provided for, without 
 divorcing them from the interests of the people. In all coun- 
 tries, it is true that, in the absence of military force, political
 
 1820.] MASSACHUSETTS CONVENTION. 137 
 
 power naturally and necessarily goes into tlie hands which 
 hold the property ; in this country, it goes into the hands of 
 the people, because the people, individually, possess property 
 more generally than has been known elsewhere. 
 
 In illustration of the effect produced upon republican insti- 
 tutions by the equal or the unequal distribution of property, Mr. 
 Webster resorted to the instances of England and France. In 
 respect to the former, he pointed out tendencies that we have 
 since seen progressing to very decided results ; and, in regard to 
 the latter, he made a prediction which came afterward to a 
 literal fulfilment. In England, he said, the process of subdi- 
 vision of property, which had begun after the abolition of the 
 feudal system and the introduction of commerce, had been 
 retarded within the last half century. Large estates were 
 growing larger, and the number of those who held no prop- 
 erty was rapidly increasing. This state of things was destined 
 to have a powerful effect on the British Constitution ; because 
 the great inequality of property tended to produce and to in- 
 crease the danger that those who possessed it woulclr be dis- 
 possessed by force ; or, in other words, that the government 
 might be overturned. Another half century has nearly elapsed 
 since Mr. "Webster expressed these opinions ; and we have seen 
 this tendency become the great cause of anxiety to British 
 statesmen, and the controlling reason for changes which have 
 amounted almost to a revolution, thus far fortunately peaceful, 
 but of which we have not yet seen the issues or the end. 
 
 In the case of France, the effect of the distribution of prop- 
 erty upon the stability and forms of the government was, in 
 Mr. Webster's opinion, destined to be not less striking and still 
 more direct, although the process that was going on was 
 the reverse of that which was to be witnessed in England. 
 The law of descents then prevailing in France tended to 
 the minute subdivision of property, and to the creation of a 
 great number of small proprietors. The opinion then gener- 
 ally held in Europe was, that the masses of the people would 
 become too poor to resist the encroachments of executive 
 power. Mr. Webster entertained an exactly opposite opinion. 
 He predicted that if the government did not change the law, 
 the law in half a century would change the government ; and
 
 188 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IX. 
 
 that this change would be not in favor of the power of the 
 crown, as European writers had supposed, but against it. He 
 founded this opinion upon the experience which we have had 
 in this country, that a multitude of small proprietors, acting 
 with intelligence, and the enthusiasm that springs from a 
 common cause, constitute an invincible power, which sooner 
 or later, in the absence of military force, acts upon and controls 
 the political institutions. In six years after this prediction was 
 made, the King of France, at the opening of the Legislative 
 Chambers, declared that the progressive partitioning of lands 
 was essentially contrary to the spirit of a monarchical govern- 
 ment, and would enfeeble the guaranties which the charter had 
 given to his throne and his subjects. 
 
 The Revolution of 1830 followed, and displaced the elder 
 branch of the Bourbons a revolution that was made through 
 the influence of the classes described by Mr. Webster as the 
 small proprietors, who were not content with the guaranties of 
 the charter which the King sought to uphold by legislation 
 that would prevent the minute subdivision of property. 
 
 The contrast which these two examples presented, when 
 placed in opposition to the state of things in this country, 
 appeared to Mr. Webster to furnish another reason for pre- 
 serving to property that distinct means of protection which 
 had been introduced by making it the origin of the check 
 which the construction of the Legislature required. All prop- 
 erty being subject to taxation, for the purpose of maintaining a 
 system of public education, in which the children of the poor 
 can participate equally with the children of the rich, it was 
 entitled to the respect and care of government, because, in a 
 very important way, it aids in sustaining government by paying 
 for the education of the people. 
 
 The effect of this speech and of a very powerful one made 
 by Judge Story, who had preceded Mr. Webster in the dis- 
 cussion, was, that the existing basis of the Senate was retained. 
 It has since been changed : and, whatever may have been the 
 reasons for that change, it has become apparent in Massachu- 
 setts, as it has elsewhere, that, where there is no difference of 
 origin between the two branches of a legislative body, there 
 will be no difference of sentiment and feeling : all will be actu
 
 1820.] MASSACHUSETTS CONVENTION. 189 
 
 ated by the same motives and be under the same influences : 
 and thus the practical value of a division into two Chambers 
 will be greatly diminished by the absence of every efficient 
 check. 
 
 The constitution of 1780, adopting the practice which had 
 been introduced in England, of making judges removable from 
 office by the crown only on an address of Parliament, had 
 made them removable in like manner by the State Executive 
 on an address of the two Houses of the Legislature. At the 
 same time the term of the judicial office in Massachusetts was 
 during good behavior : and there can be no doubt that it was 
 the original purpose of the people to render the judiciary com- 
 pletely independent of the other departments. An error, how- 
 ever, had crept in, which appeared to mar the theory of inde- 
 pendence which the people had intended to establish, and 
 which made that theory practically less operative than it ought 
 to be. It had not been sufficiently considered that the pur- 
 pose of the change in England, from a naked power of removal 
 by the crown to a power of removal on an address o Parlia- 
 ment, was to shield the judges against the arbitrary influence 
 of the crown ; and that this change, while it had avoided one 
 evil, had introduced what was a less but what was still 
 another evil. It had been assumed, in Massachusetts, to be 
 necessary to retain the removal by address, in order to meet, 
 cases of incompetency or personal misconduct; impeachment 
 being regarded as the appropriate remedy for official miscon- 
 duct. If this necessity exists, still, a naked power in a bare 
 majority of the Legislature, to pass an address for the removal 
 of a judge from office, must be allowed to be an imperfection; 
 and this imperfection was increased in the Massachusetts con- 
 stitution of 1780, by the absence of any provision requiring 
 the reasons to be assigned, or admitting the judge to be heard. 
 
 To correct this, Mr. "Webster and others of the most promi- 
 nent members of the convention desired to introduce a pro- 
 vision that would require an address of removal to be passed by 
 the votes of two-thirds of each House. On this proposition Mr. 
 Webster made the speech on the independence of the judi- 
 ciary, which now stands in the third volume of his works. The 
 proposition was not adopted. On its rejection, Mr. Webster
 
 190 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IX. 
 
 immediately introduced a resolution, declaring that no address 
 for the removal of any judicial officer should pass either House 
 of the Legislature, until the causes for such removal are first 
 stated and entered on the journal, and that a copy thereof shall 
 be served on the person in office, so that he may be admitted 
 to a hearing in his defence before each House. This was not 
 adopted. 
 
 On a great many other subjects Mr. Webster took a leading 
 part in this convention. So important, indeed, was his whole 
 action in this body, that it gave him, to use the words of 
 another, " a degree of confidence, respect, and authority, to 
 which few in that ancient Commonwealth could lay claim." ' 
 The mere amount of labor which he performed, in this revision 
 of the constitution of the State, impressed the members and 
 the public not less than the ease and readiness or the com- 
 manding ability which he brought to the work. 
 
 But, while his duties in that convention would seem to have 
 been enough to fill the measure of any man's powers, he was 
 at the same time engaged in writing the celebrated discourse 
 which he delivered at Plymouth, on the two hundredth anni- 
 versary of its settlement, December 22, 1820. It has been 
 already intimated that this was a new and untried field for Mr. 
 "Webster to enter. The orations which he had delivered on the 
 4th of July, nearly all of them before he was five-and-twenty, 
 may be regarded, as he himself once said of them, as boyish 
 performances. The subject of his P. B. K. oration in 1809, 
 which was a merely literary discourse, and that of his address 
 before the "Washington Benevolent Society of Portsmouth in 
 1812, which was purely political, had neither of them ap- 
 proached in grandeur the theme on which he was now to 
 appear in the character of an orator. Nor had he been, since 
 those comparatively unimportant occasions, in the habit of ap- 
 pearing before the public in that character, or of discussing 
 subjects with a view to any other than business purposes. He 
 was known to be the possessor of great eloquence, to be a pro- 
 found and original writer, and master of a singularly correct 
 and perspicuous English style. Still, the construction of one 
 of those capital discourses, which, adapted to the demands of 
 
 1 Philadelphia Quarterly Review, 1831.
 
 1820.] PLYMOUTH ORATION. 191 
 
 a great subject, and an important historical event, shall satisfy 
 the thoughts and feelings at once of the most and the least cul- 
 tivated of a popular audience, and then shall remain, when it 
 comes to be addressed through the press to the wider audience 
 of a nation, a monument of fame to the occasion and the 
 speaker, was what he had not hitherto undertaken. 
 
 ~No occasion or subject, however, could have been presented 
 to Mr. Webster better fitted to call forth his powers as an 
 orator, than the celebration, at the end of two centuries, of the 
 first settlement of New England. A child of New England 
 and her institutions, his nature was yet too large and compre- 
 hensive to permit him to present those institutions to the 
 world in any other light than that in which every observer of 
 human progress, and every admirer of human greatness, can 
 recognize what they have done for America and for mankind. 
 At no part of his life had he any tendency to exalt one por- 
 tion of his country over another ; nor did this occasion demand 
 of him any narrow and local spirit of boasting. It found in him 
 an intellect that could grasp the largest of the relations between 
 the foundation of the civil and religious polity of New England, 
 and the growth and expansion of the United States ; which 
 could describe without exaggeration, and yet with an epic 
 dignity, the peculiar effects of the colonization, planted from 
 England in America, on the knowledge, the sentiments, and 
 the prospects of civilization. 1 
 
 1 1 deem this the appropriate place to ment of express rule and precept, either 
 
 quote Mr. Webster's sentiments respect- of church or state. That always makes 
 
 ing the personal characteristics of the hypocrites and formalists ; it leads men 
 
 early settlers of New England, as I find to rely on mint and cummin. A man 
 
 them expressed in a letter to his nephew, thought it an act of merit, if we may 
 
 Mr. Haddock, written in 1826 : take the blue laws of Connecticut for 
 
 " In regard to the moral character authority, not to walk within ten feet of 
 
 generally of our ancestors, the settlers his wife in their way to church ; as some 
 
 of New England, my opinion is, that they people, nowadays, think it a merit to 
 
 possessed all the Christian virtues, but restrain their daughters from a village 
 
 charity ; and they seem never to have dance ; one is quite as sensible and as 
 
 doubted that they possessed that also, much to do with religion as the other. 
 
 And nobody could accuse their system Indeed, it is the universal tendency of 
 
 or their practice but of one vice, and strong religious excitement, a tendency 
 
 that was religious hypocrisy, of which of our infirm nature, growing out of our 
 
 they had an infusion, without ever being weaknesses and our vices, to run into 
 
 sensible of it. observances and make a strong merit of 
 
 "It necessarily resulted from that external acts. Our excellent ancestors 
 disposition which they cherished, of sub- did not escape the influence of this pro- 
 jecting men's external conduct, in all pensity ; but they had so many other 
 particulars, to the influence and govern- high and pure virtues, that this spot
 
 192 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. IX. 
 
 Nearly fifty years have elapsed since the delivery of this 
 memorable oration ; and of those who heard it, and heard it with 
 minds and tastes sufficiently matured to comprehend and enjoy 
 its power and beauty, there can be but few survivors. I am 
 able, however, to quote from Mr. Ticknor a description which 
 brings the scene and the orator vividly before us : 
 
 " I went to Plymouth on the 21st of December, 1820, with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Webster, Mr. and Mrs. I. P. Davis, Miss Stockton, Mr. F. C. Gray, 
 and Miss Mary Mason. Where we stopped to dine we overtook fifty or 
 sixty persons, among whom were Colonel Perkins, Mrs. S. G. Perkins, Mr. 
 E. Everett, and many others of our acquaintance. Mr. Webster had been a 
 little uninterested during the morning drive, wearied perhaps by his la- 
 bors in the convention, and partly occupied with thoughts of the follow- 
 ing day. But at the little half-way house, where we all crowded into two 
 or three small rooms, we had a very merry time, and Mr. Webster was as 
 gay as any one. In the evening at Plymouth every thing had the air of a 
 fete; the houses of the principal street in one of which we lodged were 
 all lighted up, so that the street itself was illuminated by them, and a band 
 of music went up and down, followed by a crowd, while it serenaded the 
 many strangers already collected from a distance for the great centennary 
 anniversary. Old Mr. Samuel Davis, a sort of embodiment of the Pilgrim 
 traditions of the seventeenth century, and others of the principal inhabit- 
 ants of Plymouth, paid their respects to Mr. Webster in the course of the 
 evening, and made it very agreeable, from the recollections that they 
 brought with them and the conversation that naturally followed. 
 
 " In the morning I went with Mr. Webster to the church where he 
 was to deliver the oration. It was the old First Church Dr. Kendall's. 
 He did not find the pulpit convenient for his purpose, and after making 
 
 8hould not give offence. They were a consequences are extremely useful. It 
 wonderful people. This very failing, of sharpened the sight for the discovery of 
 which I have spoken, leaned so much on political evils. The tea-tax, for example, 
 the virtues of decision, sense of duty, was not oppressive, as a tax ; it was too 
 and the feeling that will bear no com- small for that. It was opposed on prin- 
 promise with what it thinks wrong, that ciple. ' It led or might lead to other 
 I forgive it to them. The determined taxes.' Our fathers acted on system ; 
 spirit with which they resisted every ap- and the inquiry with them was, not 
 proach of what they thought evil, was whether the thing was bearable, but 
 itself a great virtue. ' Of itself it is whether it was right. I verily believe, 
 harmless, but it leads, or may lead, to although I do not like creeds in reli- 
 evil.' This was their answer, and per- gious matters, that creeds had some- 
 haps there is something in it ; but then thing to do with the Revolution. In 
 it may be said of almost every thing, their religious controversies, the people 
 The vice of the argument, as an argu- of New England had always been ac- 
 ment, is, that it proves too much. Eat- customed to stand on points ; and when 
 ing, drinking, sleeping, conversation, are Lord North undertook to tax them, they 
 all equally under its condemnation. But stood on points also. It so happened, 
 though indefensible as a rule of conduct, fortunately, that their opposition to 
 some general consequences followed from Lord North was a point on which they 
 the spirit which accompanied it, which all united.
 
 1820.] THE PLYMOUTH ORATION. 193 
 
 two or three experiments, determined to speak from the deacon's seat 
 under it. An extemporaneous table, covered with a green baize cloth, was ar- 
 ranged for the occasion, and, when the procession entered the church, every 
 thing looked very appropriate, though, when the arrangement was first 
 suggested, it sounded rather odd. The building was crowded : indeed, the 
 streets had seemed so all the morning, for the weather was fine, and the 
 whole population was astir as for a holiday. The oration was an hour and 
 fifty minutes long, but the whole of what was printed a year afterward 
 (for it was a year before it made its appearance) was not delivered. His 
 manner was very fine quite various in the different parts. The passage 
 about the slave-trade was delivered with a power of indignation such as I 
 never witnessed on any other occasion. That at the end, when, spreading 
 his arms as if to embrace them, he welcomed future generations to the 
 great inheritance which we have enjoyed, was spoken with the most at- 
 tractive sweetness, and that peculiar smile which in him was always so 
 charming. The effect of the whole was very great. As soon as he got 
 home to our lodgings, all the principal people then in Plymouth crowded 
 about him. He was full of animation and radiant with happiness. But 
 there was something about him very grand and imposing at the same time. 
 In a letter which I wrote the same day, I said that ' he seemed as if he 
 were like the mount that might not be touched, and that burned with 
 fire.' I have the same recollection of him still. I never saw him- at any 
 time when he seemed to me to be more conscious of his own powers, or to 
 have a more true and natural enjoyment from their possession. 
 
 " At the public dinner the same day, he was not much moved by the 
 great enthusiasm around him, which had chiefly been excited by him- 
 self. At the ball that followed, he was agreeable to everybody and noth- 
 ing more ; but when we came home he was as frolicsome as a school-boy, 
 laughing and talking, and making merry with Mrs. Webster, Mrs. Davis, 
 and Mrs. Rotch, the daughter of his old friend Stockton, 1 till two o'clock 
 in the morning. The next day we came back to Boston, but I remember 
 nothing of the return." 
 
 The Plymouth discourse was not published until about a 
 year after its delivery. Public expectation -had been greatly 
 excited by the accounts of those who heard it, and the com- 
 mendations of the local press. The following letters, addressed 
 to Mr. Webster by two persons widely differing in their mental 
 characteristics, are but specimens of the manner in which it was 
 received. 
 
 [PRESIDENT JOHX ADAMS TO MR. WEBSTER.] 
 
 " MOHTEZELLO, December 23, 1821. 
 " DEAB. Sin : I thank you for your discourse, delivered at Plymouth, on 
 
 1 The first Senator of that family, and dence, father of the late Commodore 
 <rigner of the Declaration of Indepen- Stockton. 
 
 14
 
 194 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IX. 
 
 the termination of the second century of the landing of our fathers. Un- 
 able to read it from defect of sight, it was last night read to me by our 
 friend Shaw. 1 The fullest justice that I could do it would be to tran- 
 scribe it at full length. It is the effort of a great mind, richly stored with 
 every species of information. If there be an American who can read it 
 without tears, I am not that American. It enters more perfectly into the 
 genuine spirit of New England than any production I ever read. The 
 observations on the Greeks and Romans ; on colonization in general ; on 
 the West India Islands ; on the past, present, and future of America, and 
 on the slave-trade, are sagacious, profound, and affecting in a high degree. 
 
 " Mr. Burke is no longer entitled to the praise the most consummate 
 orator of modern times. 
 
 "What can I say of what regards myself? To my humble name, 
 ' Exegisti monumentum aere perennius." 1 
 
 " This oration will be read five hundred years hence with as much 
 rapture as it was heard. It ought to be read at the end of every century, 
 and indeed at the end of every year, forever and ever. 
 
 " I am, sir, with the profoundest esteem, your obliged friend and very 
 humble servant, 
 
 " JOHN ADAMS. 
 
 " The Honorable Daniel Webster." 
 
 [CHANCELLOR KENT TO MR. WEBSTER.] 
 
 " ALBANY, December 29, 1821. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : Be pleased to accept my thanks for the receipt and 
 perusal of your Plymouth Discourse, which came by yesterday's mail. The 
 reflections, the sentiments, the morals, the patriotism, the eloquence, the 
 imagination, of this admirable production are exactly what I anticipated ; 
 elevated, just, and true. I think it is also embellished by a style distin- 
 guished for purity, taste, and simplicity. Excuse me for this once, and I 
 will not trespass in this manner again. I am proud to be able to trace my 
 own lineage back to the Pilgrims of New England, and prouder still that I 
 have been thought deserving of the esteem and friendship of some of the 
 brightest of their descendants. 
 
 " Permit Mrs. Kejit and me to unite in presenting our best respects, and 
 the compliments of the season, to Mrs. Webster, and be assured of the con- 
 stant esteem and regard of your friend and most obedient servant, 
 
 " JAMES KENT. 
 
 " Honorable D. Webster." 
 
 Kespecting subsequent appreciation, it can only be necessary 
 to say that this discourse has become classical in our literature, 
 and that it is generally regarded as the corner-stone of Mr. 
 
 1 William Smith Shaw, founder of ing the administration of the elder he 
 
 the Boston Athenaeum, and for many filled the office of private secretary to 
 
 years its librarian, was a near relative the President. (Ticknor's Life of Pres- 
 
 of the two Presidents Adams, and dur- cott the historian, p. 9.)
 
 1820.] HIS ORATORY. 195 
 
 Webster's fame as an orator. Tn this department he was the 
 founder of his own school, in which no one has become his 
 equal. From that day it became universally known that he 
 who had achieved so much reputation in legislative assemblies, 
 in the forum, and in the councils of the wise in civil affairs, was 
 also to rank among the most eminent of ancient or modern 
 orators; and that whenever men's thoughts and feelings de- 
 manded, for some peculiarly high national festival of the reason 
 and the heart, the interpretation and expression of the loftiest 
 eloquence, they were to turn instinctively to him to fill the 
 noblest cravings of their intellectual natures, and to move the 
 deepest sources of their patriotism. 
 
 "We can only conjecture what the literature of England 
 might have contained if Chatham had been called upon to treat, 
 in a formal, public discourse, such an event as the revolution 
 which finally expelled the Stuarts ; or if Burke had been in- 
 vited to commemorate the defeat of the Armada and all the 
 consequences which flowed from the safety it insured to Eliza- 
 beth's Protestant throne. But it has not been the habit of 
 Englishmen to celebrate the deeds of their ancestors through 
 the eloquence of their greatest living orators, as it has been ours. 
 In this department of demonstrative oratory we have been 
 more prolific than any other nation of modern times. Yast 
 numbers of these productions perish, of course, at their birth. 
 But who would have preferred that this national habit had 
 never been formed, and have been content never to have had 
 the Plymouth Discourse, the first Bunker Hill oration, and the 
 eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, of Daniel "Webster? The 
 question implies a loss for which we can imagine no compensa- 
 tion. Among the remains of ancient oratory there have 
 come down to us a few master-pieces of public speech, in 
 which we admire the consummate specimens of a national elo- 
 quence and the undying fruits of genius. We cannot know 
 whether our own language, after being lost as a vernacular 
 tongue, will be studied as we now study the languages of 
 Greece and Rome. But, if, like them, it has capacities for 
 such preservation, it will be preserved in the productions of 
 its great orators as long as in any other of its forms of prose 
 composition.
 
 196 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. IX. 
 
 After the delivery of the Plymouth Oration in December, 
 1820, the whole of the year 1821 was filled with private and 
 professional pursuits. Mr. "Webster's engagements at this time 
 in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and the Circuit Court 
 of the United States for the first circuit were incessant. In the 
 latter they embraced, among many other causes of no great pub- 
 lic importance, the case of La Jeune Eugenie, a vessel captured 
 by an American cruiser on the coast of Africa, for being engaged 
 in the slave-trade, and sailing at the time of capture under the 
 French flag and French papers. She was claimed, in the pro- 
 ceedings instituted in Boston, by French owners ; and if such 
 was her national character, she could be condemned only upon 
 the ground that the slave-trade was contrary to the law of nations. 
 Mr. "Webster argued that the slave-trade was a violation of the 
 law of nations, first, because it is contrary to the law of nature 
 which is a component part of the law of nations ; and secondly, 
 that, having been prohibited to their own subjects by nearly all 
 civilized nations, it might now be deemed contrary to the con- 
 ventional law of nations. He succeeded in satisfying Mr. Jus- 
 tice Story, before whom the cause was heard, that these were 
 the true principles to be applied to the case ; and accordingly, 
 in May, 1822, that very eminent judge pronounced the elabo- 
 rate opinion which is reported in the second volume of Mason's 
 Reports, and in which he held that the African slave-trade, 
 abstractly considered, is inconsistent with the law of nations, 
 and that a claim founded upon it may be repelled in any court 
 where it is asserted, unless the trade be legalized by the nation 
 to which the claimant belongs. 1 
 
 Another of Mr. Webster's professional engagements during 
 this year consisted in the defence of Judge James Prescott, be- 
 fore the Senate of Massachusetts sitting as a court for the trial 
 
 1 At the time when this case was ar- opinion. The second volume of Dod- 
 
 gued, the case of Le Louis, decided iu son's Reports, containing this judgment 
 
 1817 by Sir William Scott, in which he of Sir William Scott, appears to have 
 
 held that trading in slaves was not a reached this country soon after the ar- 
 
 crime by the universal law of nations, gument of the case of La Jeune Eugenie. 
 
 had not been published in the regular Writing to Judge Story for a loan of the 
 
 reports of the High Court of Admiralty, volume, Mr. Webster said, " I very much 
 
 but the decision was cited and com- fear my Lord Stowell has missed a fig- 
 
 mented on in the argument of the case ure. However, I suppose, as usual, he 
 
 of La Jeune Eugenie, and was directly has given plausible reasons." (Compare 
 
 dissented from by Judge Story in his 2 Dodson, 210, and 2 Mason, 409.)
 
 1822.] ELECTED TO CONGRESS FROM BOSTON. 197 
 
 of an impeachment. Prescott was for twenty years judge of 
 probate for the connty of Middlesex ; and, after a course of 
 generally useful and respectable administration of the duties of 
 that office, he was impeached on charges of having taken illegal 
 fees from persons having business in his court. The charge did 
 not extend to bribery, but only to the taking of fees for official 
 services to which no fee was attached by law, and to the hold- 
 ing of special courts not authorized by statute. The whole 
 prosecution involved only some very paltry sums, received or 
 demanded by the judge doubtless imprudently and indelicately ; 
 and the impeachment itself developed a very strong illustration 
 of the public inexpediency of compensating judges by fees 
 instead of by fixed salaries a practice which was then oliscon- 
 tinued in Massachusetts in relation to all judges except the 
 judges of probate, but which has since been totally changed in 
 that Commonwealth, as it has been elsewhere. The case was 
 attended with a good deal of excitement and prejudice, but the 
 unfortunate judge could scarcely be said to have acted cor- 
 ruptly. Mr. "Webster felt much compassion for him, especially 
 as the articles exhibited against him were somewhat vague. In 
 a very powerful argument, which is preserved among Mr. Web- 
 ster's works, he reasoned with that close and penetrating logic 
 which was so characteristic of him, and which was all that he 
 could bring to bear upon a case whose aspect was bad that the 
 charges had not been set forth and proved with the reasonable 
 accuracy and certainty which the law and the constitution- 
 required. In this respect, the argument will always remain an 
 important source of information concerning the principles of 
 accusation and proof that ought to be followed on the trial of 
 impeachments. Its well-known exordium stands as one of the 
 most impressive specimens of Mr. "Webster's forensic eloquence. 1 
 "While Mr. Webster was engaged in the diligent practice of 
 his profession, from which his emoluments at this time were 
 very large, he was unexpectedly and strongly solicited in the 
 autumn of 1822, by many leading gentlemen in Boston, to 
 become their Representative in the next Congress. A meeting 
 of delegates from all the wards of the city appointed a com- 
 mittee to wait upon him and urge his acceptance of a nomina- 
 
 1 Works, v., 502-545.
 
 198 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. IX 
 
 tion. One of these gentlemen, on the day after this committee 
 was appointed, entered Mr. "Webster's office, and found him 
 reading. " Mr. Webster," said his visitor, " I come to ask you 
 to throw down your law-books and enter the service of the 
 public; for to the public you belong. I know what sacrifices 
 we demand of you, but we must rely on your patriotism. "We 
 cannot take a refusal." l A. few days afterward, a formal 
 requisition, signed by all the committee, was presented to him, 
 and he had to make a decision on this, as I believe it to have 
 been to him, not very welcome application. It is not improb- 
 able that he may have looked forward to a return to public life 
 in some other position than one which he had formerly filled. 
 He had not ceased to take a strong interest in whatever con- 
 cerned the country or in what was passing abroad ; he was con- 
 scious of his own great aptitude for political discussions, and he 
 undoubtedly had that within him for which the exercise of 
 his powers in the walks of his profession, however high they 
 lay along the roads to fame, was not a complete satisfaction. 
 But he had two very good reasons for not being entirely pleased 
 with the invitation of his Boston friends. His circumstances 
 were not so independent as he hoped in a few years more of 
 professional labor to make them ; * and having once served 
 with distinction in the House of Representatives, and volun- 
 tarily retired from it, he did not particularly wish, at the age 
 of forty, to return to that body. But he had become an adopted 
 citizen of Massachusetts, where he had been welcomed with the 
 highest respect and consideration, and he did not think that it 
 became him to reject the proposed honor of representing such a 
 city as Boston in the halls of Congress. He accepted the nom- 
 ination, and was elected that autumn by a very large majority 
 of the votes. 
 
 1 The late William Sturgis, Esq., the clared insolvent, according to the pro- 
 gentleman referred to, was himself my visions of the New-Hampshire law ; and 
 authority for this anecdote. the consequence was, that his father's 
 
 2 It has been stated in a previous debts remained a heavy burden upon 
 chapter that Mr. Webster assumed the him, from which he did not free himself 
 payment of his father's debts. He would until some time after his removal to 
 not suffer his father's estate to be de- Boston.
 
 1823. MB. WEBSTER REEXTERS CONGRESS. 199 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 1823-1824 
 
 REENTEES COXGBESS SPEECH ON THE GEEEK BEVOLUTION 
 TAEIFF OF 1824 PEOPOSED CHANGES IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM 
 
 THE CASE OF GIBBONS VS. OGDEN CANDIDACY OF ME. JOHN 
 
 QUINCY ADAMS FIEST VISIT TO MAESHFIELD REFLECTED TO 
 CONGEESS. 
 
 -if 
 
 ON the return of Mr. "Webster to Congress in December, 
 1823, after a retirement of six years, he brought a great 
 access of reputation ; for, although he had been so long out of 
 public station, he had not been withdrawn from the public eye ; 
 and the opportunities of distinction, which he had foregone by 
 abstinence from political affairs, had been more than compen- 
 sated by the fame which he had acquired as a lawyer and an 
 orator, and which now filled the country. His course was 
 likely to be watched with great interest by all, with some 
 degree of jealousy by a few. The "Federal" party, with 
 which he had acted during his former service in Congress, was 
 no longer an existing organization; and such had been the 
 effect of Mr. Monroe's administration on former political dis- 
 tinctions, that there could scarcely be said to be any well-defined 
 " Republican " party remaining. But the old party feelings, 
 although much abated, had not entirely worn themselves out, 
 nor had the old names wholly ceased to be used. A person of 
 so much distinction, therefore, as Mr. "Webster, who had been 
 regarded as a Federalist, in coming again into Congress, came
 
 '_>(}() LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. X. 
 
 among some who were not likely to forget that he had been 
 their political opponent. 
 
 Mr. Clay was chosen Speaker. Friendly, although not in 
 timate, personal relations had all along existed between him 
 and Mr. Webster; but Mr. Clay had been an ardent leader 
 during the war on the side of an Administration, some of whose 
 measures Mr. Webster had felt it to be his duty to oppose. Mr. 
 Clay was now one of five or six candidates for the presidency 
 from among whom a choice was to be made, but he probably 
 did not count upon the support of Mr. Webster. The latter 
 entertained a sincere respect for Mr. Clay's public character, 
 and regarded him as a liberal and honorable man, not un- 
 friendly in his general feeling ; yet he did not anticipate that, 
 in the organization and arrangement of the affairs of the House, 
 Mr. Clay would venture entirely to disregard old lines of dis- 
 tinction, although he supposed that in his own case the Speaker 
 would not be afraid to shake off any party trammels that might 
 have formerly existed. The result was, that, at the sugges- 
 tion of a former chairman, Mr. Clay placed Mr. Webster at 
 the head of the Judiciary Committee ; an appointment which, 
 under all the circumstances, was the most fit which he could 
 have made, and one that was doubtless made from a sense of 
 its fitness. 
 
 In the presidential election that was then approaching, Mr. 
 Webster felt less interest than he did in another subject. He 
 had long been an anxious observer of the heroic struggle which 
 the Greeks had maintained against their Turkish oppressors ; 
 he had studied the civil and military aspects of the Greek 
 Revolution with the closest attention : he had become satisfied 
 that the Greeks had character enough to carry them through 
 the contest with success ; and he not only felt, in common with 
 the whole people of this country, a warm sympathy in their 
 cause, but he saw, as not many others did, in the principles and 
 policy proclaimed by the allied governments of Europe, and in 
 the general indifference of the statesmen of Europe to the result 
 of this contest, great cause of danger to liberty throughout 
 the world. He determined therefore to do or say something in 
 behalf of the Greeks at an early period of the session. 
 
 Before deciding on the step to be taken, he conferred with
 
 1824.] THE GREEK REVOLUTION. 201 
 
 Mr. Rufus King, Mr. Clay, and other gentlemen, all of whom 
 approved of what he proposed to do. He also consulted the 
 President ; but, as the message, which Mr. Monroe was about 
 to send in to Congress, had taken high ground as to inter- 
 ference by European powers in the affairs of this continent, he 
 was reluctant to have the appearance of interfering in the con- 
 cerns of the other. This did not weigh much with Mr. Web- 
 ster, who thought that " we have as much community with the 
 Greeks as with the inhabitants of the Andes and the dwellers 
 on the borders of the Yermilion Sea." * The message, however, 
 when it appeared, was found to contain an expression of sym- 
 pathy for the Greeks, which was closed with something very 
 like an official statement that they were to be regarded as hav- 
 ing in fact achieved their independence. "From the facts," 
 said the President, " which have come to our knowledge, there 
 is good cause to believe that their enemy has lost forever all 
 dominion over them ; that Greece will become an independent 
 power. That she may attain that rank is the object of our 
 most ardent wishes." * 
 
 After the House had been in session a few days, Mr. "Web- 
 ster introduced the following resolution : 
 
 " That provision ought to be made by law for defraying the expense 
 incident to the appointment of an agent or commissioner to Greece, when- 
 ever the President shall deem it expedient to make such appointment." 
 
 After a few explanatory remarks, he desired that the resolu- 
 tion might He upon the table. It was taken up in Committee 
 of the Whole on the 19th of January. A large and fashionable 
 audience had assembled in the galleries to hear Mr. Webster. 
 It was supposed that he meant to take advantage of the almost 
 universal popular sympathy for the Greeks, and the classical 
 associations of the subject, in order to make a brilliant oration, 
 which would bring him again before the public with renewed 
 eclat* Xothing could have been further from his purpose. 
 The crowds which had come to listen to an anticipated display 
 of rhetoric, or the members who supposed that he contemplated 
 a " move " on the political chess-board, were astonished at the 
 
 1 Correspondence, L, 332, 333. promulgated the famous (so-called) 
 
 * Mr. Monroe's message of December " Monroe Doctrine." 
 2, 1823. This was the message which * Philadelphia Quarterly for 1831.
 
 202 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. X 
 
 development which he made of the subject, and the direction 
 which he gave to it. Instead of addressing himself to the 
 vague sympathies of the popular heart, he proceeded to en- 
 lighten and instruct the public mind, not only of America but 
 of Europe, respecting the principles which had been announced 
 by the " Holy Alliance," as the basis on which they intended 
 to resist the efforts of any people to change their government 
 or their political relations. He analyzed all the European Con- 
 gresses, from that of Paris in 1814, to that of Laybach in 1821, 
 and brought into prominent relief the doctrines which resulted 
 from them that all sovereigns have an interest and a right to 
 control all nations in any attempt which they may make against 
 the government that is over them. He denounced this principle 
 as an infraction of the public law, and maintained that the lib- 
 erty of every civilized people on the globe was concerned in 
 putting it down. 
 
 This state of things, he contended, called emphatically upon 
 us, not for direct interference, but for an expression of our opin- 
 ion in terms that could not be mistaken. The present age was 
 characterized by a tendency to limited governments; the en- 
 lightened part of mankind had very distinctly evinced a desire 
 to take a share, at least, in the government of themselves. But 
 there was an antagonistic principle at work, which, if not 
 resisted, would prostrate the liberties of the whole civilized 
 world. " They are doctrines," said Mr. "Webster, " which have 
 been conceived with great sagacity, they are pursued with un- 
 broken perseverance, and they bring to their support a million 
 and a half of bayonets." 
 
 " It was not by war," he continued, " that we were to 
 propagate our sentiments in favor of the liberties of mankind. 
 Formerly, indeed, there was no means of making an impression 
 on nations but by fleets and armies ; but the age had under- 
 gone a change ; there is now a force in public opinion, which, 
 in the end, will outweigh all the physical force that can be 
 brought against it." 
 
 He then passed to the modern history of Greece, her suffer- 
 ings, and the apathy with which the neighboring nations, pro- 
 fessedly Christian, had looked on ; an apathy, he said, which 
 was a disgrace to Europe. A rapid survey of the progress
 
 1824.] THE GREEK REVOLUTION. 203 
 
 and present condition of the Greek Revolution followed, which 
 brought him to the position taken in the President's message, 
 with which, he contended, his resolution was in entire har- 
 mony, for it proposed nothing but to enable the President to 
 send a commissioner to Greece whenever he should think 
 proper. Its passage would violate no neutrality, break no 
 engagements with the Porte, for we had none ; but it would 
 assure the Greeks of our sympathy, and inspire them with 
 fresh constancy in their struggle. " I cannot say, sir," he con- 
 cluded, " that they will succeed ; that rests with Heaven. But, 
 for myself, if I should hear to-morrow that they have failed, 
 that their last phalanx had sunk beneath the Turkish sciinetar, 
 that the flames of their last city had gone down into its ashes, 
 and that naught remained but the wide, melancholy waste 
 where Greece once was, I should still reflect, with the most 
 heartfelt satisfaction, that I have asked you, in the name of 
 seven millions of freemen, that you would give them, at least, 
 the cheering of one friendly voice." 
 
 When Mr. "Webster had concluded his speech, Mr. Clay laid 
 upon the table a resolution which declared that the people of 
 the United States would not see, without serious inquietude, 
 any forcible interposition by the allied powers in behalf 
 of Spain, to reduce the South- American republics to their 
 former subjection. The discussion then went on upon Mr. 
 Webster's resolution concerning Greece. The cry of " Quixot- 
 ism " was immediately raised, especially by Mr. Randolph, who 
 attacked both Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay with his usual sar- 
 casm. The resolutions of both, he said, led to war. An effort 
 was made to have the committee rise. This called up Mr. 
 Clay, who defended Mr. Webster's resolution as well as his 
 own ; the latter he did not mean to press at that time, but he 
 advocated the passage of the former at once. A long discussion 
 ensued, in the course of which Mr. Clay came out in great 
 force in further defence of Mr. Webster's proposition. He saw 
 that much of the opposition to it was personal, and he at once 
 administered a rebuke to the party feeling which dictated that 
 opposition in his most spirited manner. He said : 
 
 " I know that, at least, some of the objections to the original proposal 
 are occasioned by the source from which it proceeded. There are indi-
 
 204 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTEK. [Cn. X 
 
 viduals in this House who look at the mover of this resolution as if its 
 value or importance were to be measured by inquiring who brought it for- 
 ward. Sir, I have long had the pleasure of knowing the honorable gentle- 
 man who originated this resolution ; I have sometimes had the pleasure 
 of acting with him ; and I would suggest to those to whom I have alluded, 
 that, if they seek to be regarded as the sentinels of freedom, they must dis- 
 regard the source from which any measure favorable to its interest may 
 happen to have proceeded, and must take it upon its own intrinsic merits. 
 If a gentleman, who happens to belong to a different party, in political 
 sentiment, shall bring forward a proposition fraught with liberal principles 
 and noble sentiments, is it to be rejected for his sake? If this is the 
 case, we cease to be Republicans ; and those who act on principles the 
 reverse of ours will be the men who truly deserve that name ; and, sir, if 
 all Republicans must oppose this doctrine, and all Federalists advocate 
 it, I, for one, shall cease to be a Republican, and shall become a Feder- 
 alist." 
 
 Mr. Clay could always be stung by the taunts of Mr. Ran- 
 dolph, and, on this occasion, his indignation kindled all the 
 fires of his eloquence, and pointed it with his utmost scorn, 
 which he doubtless unbridled the more readily, as he was con- 
 scious that a great public sentiment existed behind him, that 
 would justify the adoption of Mr. Webster's resolution. His 
 speech was bold, decisive, and uncompromising. " Go home," 
 he said, in conclusion, " go home, if you dare ; go home, if you 
 can, to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down. 
 Meet, if you dare, the appalling countenances of those who sent 
 you here (he meant no defiance), and tell them that you shrank 
 from the declaration of your own sentiments ; that you cannot 
 tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable 
 apprehension, some indefinable danger, affrighted you ; that the 
 spectres of scimetars and crowns and crescents gleamed before 
 you, and alarmed you ; and that you suppressed all the noble 
 feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national indepen- 
 dence, and by humanity." He could not bring himself to believe, 
 Mr. Clay said, that such would be the feeling of a majority 
 of this House. But, for himself, though every friend of the 
 measure should desert it, and he be left to stand alone with the 
 gentleman from Massachusetts, he would give to the resolution 
 the poor sanction of his unqualified approbation. 1 
 
 1 Annals of Congress- Eighteenth Congress, 1171-1177.
 
 1824.] THE GREEK REVOLUTION. 205 
 
 The discussion was further continued until the 26th of 
 January, when, in consequence of the unwillingness manifested 
 either to adopt Mr. Webster's resolution, or any modification 
 of it, he consented that the Committee of the Whole should rise 
 without taking a vote. But his purpose was answered. He 
 had drawn the attention of the world to the principles on which 
 the Holy Alliance was arrayed against the liberties of nations. 
 His speech, we are told by one who watched its circulation and 
 influence, " besides being printed wherever the English tongue 
 is spoken, has been circulated through South America, and 
 published in nearly eveiy one of the civilized languages of 
 Europe, including the Spanish and Greek." 1 At the time this 
 statement was publicly made (1831), Mr. Webster could- coolly 
 review the object which he had in view in making the Greek 
 speech of 182i. The following note, now before me, in MS., 
 from him to the writer of the article in the Philadelphia Quar- 
 terly, will be read with interest : 
 
 " One word about the Greek speech. I think I am more fond of this 
 child than of any of the family. My object, when the resolution jvas intro- 
 duced, was not understood. It was imagined that, seeing the existence 
 of a warm public sympathy for the suffering Greeks, the purpose was only 
 to make a speech responsive and gratifying "to that sympathy. The real 
 object was larger. It was to take occasion of the Greek Revolution, and 
 the conduct held in regard to it by the great Continental powers, to 
 exhibit the principles laid down by those powers, as the basis on which 
 they meant to maintain the peace of Europe. This purpose made it 
 necessary to examine accurately the proceedings of all the Congresses, from 
 that of Paris, in 1814, to that of Laybach, in 1821. I read those proceed- 
 ings with a good deal of attention, and endeavored to extract the principle 
 on which they were founded. There is nothing in the book * which I think 
 so well of as parts of this speech. Events have shown that some opinions 
 here expressed were well founded. A revolution has taken place, and the 
 people reform their constitution, and then invite an individual to the 
 throne, on condition of governing according to the constitution.* Belgium 
 is doing the same ; Poland is attempting to do the same. This is in the 
 spirit of the English Revolution of 1688 ; but it is 'flat burglary' according 
 to the law of Laybach. 
 
 " I was something of a prophet, too, in regard to the duration of the 
 late French monarchy. See Plymouth Discourse. But enough ; I am 
 
 1 Philadelphia Quarterly for 1831. gentleman to whom the note was ad* 
 * The edition of his speeches, then dressed, 
 recently published, and reviewed by the * The case of Louis Philippe.
 
 206 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. X. 
 
 tired of saying 'I,' 'me,' and ' mine.' My dear sir, if the world cannot see 
 the merits of my illustrious works, why should I (or why should you) 
 trouble ourselves to point them out ? " 
 
 Before leaving the Greek speech, it may be well to say that 
 it was a common complaint among Mr. Webster's friends, at 
 that time, that he took but little pains in the publication of his 
 speeches. On this occasion Mr. Hopkinson wrote to him : 
 
 " You are generally too careless of yourself and your reputation ; and, 
 content with doing a thing well, you have too little solicitude about the 
 proof of it to the world. Your views of the character, object, and extent 
 of the Holy Alliance, have particularly attracted public attention for their 
 strength and novelty in many particulars. Develop yourself fully on this 
 subject ; it is of vast interest, and may be illustrated with great force by 
 their declarations and conduct for the last two years. It is, in one respect, 
 a misfortune for a man to obtain a high eminence of character ; he is re- 
 quired always to maintain it, and this calls for a constant vigilance and 
 effort, which are not always convenient. Besides, few have judgment to 
 know of what a subject is capable, and expect to see the same power dis- 
 played, whether an oak is to be uprooted, or a rose plucked from its bush. 
 I agree with Mr. Randolph, in his surprise that you should find so much 
 to be well said on your resolution. It is only a mind of great resources, 
 with a genius creative and prolific, that could have connected it with so 
 much important and interesting matter. Not one of your opponents has 
 met you fairly on your own ground. Some have treated the resolution 
 as an abstract declaration of war, and others have assumed that it would 
 certainly lead to war ; and thus, mounted on a monster of their own crea- 
 tion, they have gone off at full speed, spreading devastation and terror in 
 their path. It is thus with men who must speak, and can't argue. Of 
 this genus I have seen so many, especially in the great hall of Congress, 
 that I know them from the first jump they take." 
 
 Prompted by this friendly advice, Mr. Webster did prepare 
 a suitable report of this speech, which is substantially the same 
 with that now contained in the third volume of his works. But 
 he pruned the actual speech a good deal when this edition was 
 published, in 1851, and perhaps did it some injustice, as he was 
 apt to do, from the severity with which he occasionally handled 
 his own productions. A contemporaneous report, that appeared 
 in the National Intelligencer, is somewhat more full, although 
 it wants the animation of the first pronoun. 1 
 
 1 This report is repeated in the Annals of Congress, Eighteenth Congress, first 
 session.
 
 1824.] TARIFF OF 1824. 207 
 
 The President's message, at the opening of this session, had 
 recommended a revision of the tariff; and accordingly an 
 elaborate bill was prepared and first reported to the House, 
 which gave rise to a memorable discussion, in which a high 
 protective tariff first received from Mr. Clay (its principal ad- 
 vocate) the name of the " American system." As Mr. "Web- 
 ster's early relation to this subject has sometimes been misun- 
 derstood, it will be necessary to recur to the opinions which he 
 had hitherto held. The reader has already seen that, in 1814, 
 he declared himself not to be in favor of a policy which would 
 force capital into manufactures faster than it would naturally 
 find its way into them without the direct influence of legisla- 
 tion. 1 In 1816, when the principle of protection to domestic 
 manufactures, advocated by Mr. Calhoun, was first introduced 
 into our revenue system as an incidental object of the regula- 
 tion and imposition of duties on foreign goods, Mr. "Webster, 
 as I have already said, confined himself to the procurement of 
 such duties on particular commodities, as would be likely to 
 afford a settled and steady policy in relation to the principal 
 branches of manufacture. From 1816 to 1823 he was, as we 
 have seen, out of Congress. In the mean time, the effect of the 
 tariff of 1816 had been to stimulate the investment of capital 
 still more in manufacturing establishments, especially of cotton 
 and wool, and there were indications that a policy of direct 
 protection and encouragement by the means of still higher du- 
 ties, laid for this express purpose, would be substituted for the 
 tariff then in operation. Under these circumstances a meeting 
 was held in Faneuil Hall in Boston, in 1820, for the purpose 
 of opposing a still further extension of this principle. Mr. 
 Webster, although not in public position at that time, was in- 
 vited to attend and address this meeting, because his general 
 sentiments on the subject were known to be opposed to any 
 other measure of protection than that which is incidental to 
 the collection of sufficient revenue for the wants of Govern- 
 ment, and which can be adjusted from time to time to the par- 
 ticular situation of all the industries of the country. Previous 
 to- this time, the right to afford protection to domestic manu- 
 factures against, foreign competition was placed by its advo- 
 
 1 Ante, chap. v.
 
 208 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. X. 
 
 cates upon the ground that it is a power incidental to the 
 power of laying and collecting revenue ; and Mr. Webster 
 argued, in his speech at Faneuil Hall, that, if protection is an 
 incident to revenue, the incident cannot fairly be carried be- 
 yond the principal, and that duties laid for the mere object of 
 protection are beyond the scope of the power under which it 
 was claimed that they might be imposed. This opinion, so far 
 as the revenue power is concerned as the source of protective 
 duties, Mr. Webster substantially held to the end of his life ; 
 that is to say, if the power of protection is to be inferred solely 
 from the revenue power, the protection can only be incidental. 
 But, when he first expressed this opinion in 1820, Mr. Madi- 
 son's papers and other publications, which throw a great deal 
 of light upon the commercial clause in the Constitution, as in- 
 tended by its framers to embrace the power of protecting 
 domestic industries, had not appeared. This fact is important 
 to be observed, in speaking of Mr. Webster's views of 1820. 
 In what he said in 1820 on the subject of power, he had noth- 
 ing in view but the revenue power. On the question of policy, 
 he did undoubtedly at that time oppose earnestly the further 
 extension of a principle of legislation which would, as he be- 
 lieved, give an artificial stimulus to some branches of industry, 
 operate to the injury of maritime commerce, and introduce 
 among us the system of prohibitions and monopolies which had 
 long been followed, but which were beginning to be questioned, 
 in England. 
 
 From 1820 to 1824, partly in consequence of the changes of 
 capital brought about by the influence of the tariff of 1816 ; 
 partly by the fall of prices everywhere, consequent upon the 
 general peace in Europe, and the efforts to return to a basis of 
 specie payments both abroad and at home, and from other less 
 palpable causes, there was a general commercial depression 
 throughout this country. The opinion was then embraced by 
 some leading minds, especially by Mr. Clay, that the true 
 remedy for this state of things was to encourage still more the 
 development of manufactures among us, and, by a system of 
 high protection, to raise up a larger home market for agricul- 
 tural products generally, and also to bring about the employ- 
 ment of our own iron, hemp, and other articles which are con-
 
 18.J4.] TARIFF OF 1824. 209 
 
 sinned in ship-building, to the exclusion of foreign materials. 
 In seeking for a means of naturalizing the arts in this country, 
 Mr. Clay became satisfied that we " must resort to the same 
 method which the wisdom of other nations had found to be 
 alone effectual, namely, adequate protection against the other- 
 wise overwhelming influence of foreign competition." How 
 far Mr. Clay was personally concerned in arranging the details 
 of the tariff bill of 1824 does not appear; but it is certain that 
 when he came forward and made that measure his own, and 
 laid at its foundation the principle of a high protective tariff, 
 as the means of remedying the existing commercial depression, 
 and of launching the country upon a new career of prosperity, 
 he carried the principle in argument to the full extent to which 
 it had been carried in England, and relied mainly upon the ex- 
 ample of England as his justification. It is also certain that 
 the tariff bill of 1824 as it stood before the House, was so con- 
 structed that many persons, like Mr. Webster, who would have 
 been in favor of some of its provisions had they stood alone, 
 could not vote for others on account of their injurious operation 
 upon interests which they were bound to regard. But the 
 measure was pressed as a whole, and as the establishment of a 
 system, of which the encouragement of manufactures, through 
 the direct operation of high protective duties, was the avowed 
 object and the corner-stone. 
 
 Of course, a measure of this kind, so constructed, and 
 brought forward as a system which was confessedly an imitation 
 of that which was supposed, rightfully or wrongfully, to have 
 created the prosperity of England, encountered opposition. 
 As a matter of course, too, introduced as it was at a time when 
 the navigating interests were laboring under the unfavorable 
 effects produced by the tariff of 1816, when the ship-builder 
 needed to purchase his materials at the lowest possible rates, 
 and when the ship-owner needed all the freights that he could 
 command it must lead those who represented such interests 
 to look carefully at the application of a principle that was now 
 to be carried further than it had ever been carried before. It 
 was equally certain that there must be great differences of 
 opinion upon the question whether the true mode of benefit- 
 ing the agricultural classes of such a country as this, is, to shut 
 15
 
 #10 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. |CH. X 
 
 up the consumption of their products within a home market, 
 or even to create a state of things which has a decided tendency 
 in that direction ; and that there also must be great doubts 
 whether they are benefited by making it necessary for them 
 to abstain from the use of a foreign manufactured article, in 
 order to avoid the payment of a tax which is imposed for the 
 benefit of a domestic manufacturer. But it is no part of my 
 purpose to enter into the discussion of these great questions 
 of political economy, which have not even yet reached a 
 wholly satisfactory solution ; but the general aspects of the 
 subject are here alluded to, as it presented itself in 1824, for 
 the purpose of guarding the reader against any erroneous 
 views of the opinions and course of Mr. "Webster on that 
 occasion. 
 
 The bill of 1824 had been pending for some time in Com- 
 mittee of the "Whole, in a desultory debate on its multifarious 
 provisions and its general principle, when, on the 31st of 
 March, Mr. Clay availed himself of a convenient opportunity 
 to develop the general policy of the measure, and to place 
 himself in the responsible situation of its principal advocate. 
 He began by describing what he considered as a condition of 
 " distress " throughout the country. Characterizing the policy 
 which he meant to recommend, as a " genuine American 
 system," he described those, who thought a foreign market an 
 adequate vent for the surplus products of our labor, as " parti- 
 sans of the foreign policy." He then proceeded to enforce 
 the principle of protection by the example of England, the 
 country in which it had been most steadily and extensively 
 maintained, and combated the objections which had been 
 made to its introduction here, in a speech of astonishing abil- 
 ity, which is perhaps the most perfect summary of the argu- 
 ments in its favor that has ever been placed on the records 
 of our legislation. 
 
 Mr. Webster began his reply to Mr. Clay, by stating that 
 he represented a district that was highly commercial, and 
 deeply interested in manufactures also ; and that such were 
 the complex and conflicting details of this bill, that a vote in its 
 favor would support measures which ought not to be adopted, 
 and a vote against it would oppose measures, some of which
 
 1824.] TARIFF OF 1824. 211 
 
 might be correct. He did not approve of legislation which, for 
 the sake of inaugurating a new system that was to give a great 
 stimulus to manufactures, dealt in this manner with the exist- 
 ing pursuits of the country. But, passing to the general policy 
 of this measure, he took occasion very distinctly to repel the 
 inference that might be drawn from the application made by 
 Mr. Clay of the terms " American policy " and " foreign 
 policy," as marking an invidious distinction between those who 
 favored and those who opposed this bill. A policy, he said, 
 which America never had tried, which was admitted to be 
 drawn from the example of other countries, could not correctly, 
 if names were things, be described as an American policy ; 
 while that which we had hitherto pursued, and which foreign 
 nations had not, was scarcely to be designated as a foreign sys- 
 tem. He then took issue with Mr. Clay in respect to the state 
 of the country, which he regarded as one of depression and 
 not distress, denying that there was cause for so gloomy a 
 representation as had been made. He traced the causes of the 
 existing depression, and argued that this bill was not. calcu- 
 lated to reach them. It was necessary, he said, to know, 
 when new applications were to be made of the principles of 
 protection, how the measure was to operate on all the interests 
 of the country ; what provisions were expected to have the 
 effect of increasing the home market, and what might tend 
 the other way. On these points he had derived little infor- 
 mation from the advocates of the measure. But he could 
 not, he said, on this great subject, espouse a side and fight 
 under a flag. 
 
 Adverting to the case of England, he contended that the 
 policy of restraints and prohibitions was getting out of repute 
 as the true nature of commerce became better understood, and 
 he established this position by numerous citations from English 
 statesmen of eminence, who were even then beginning to ques- 
 tion that 'policy. The reason why exclusion, prohibition, and 
 monopoly were now suffered to remain in the English system, 
 was, he observed, because a thing wrongly done cannot always 
 be undone ; and for the same reason it would be wise in us to 
 take all our measures of this kind with great caution. On this 
 eubject he held that there were substantial distinctions which
 
 212 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. X. 
 
 ought to be observed. One is the distinction between entire 
 prohibition and reasonable encouragement. It is one thing, by 
 duties on foreign articles, to awaken a home competition in the 
 production of the same articles ; it is quite another thing to 
 remove all competition by the total exclusion of the foreign 
 article. There was again a broad distinction between affording 
 reasonable encouragement to manufactures already existing in 
 the country, and by total prohibition raising up manufactures 
 not suited to the climate, the nature of the country, or the state 
 of the population. Although it might not always be easy to 
 apply these distinctions, yet they were sufficiently clear to 
 indicate the true course of policy. 
 
 There were, continued Mr. "Webster, some general objections 
 to Mr. Clay's course of reasoning : 1. He seemed to treat all 
 domestic industry as if it were confined to the production of 
 manufactured articles. It was an error to attribute to certain 
 employments the peculiar appellation of American industry. 
 If one man makes a yard of cloth at home and another raises 
 agricultural products and buys a yard of imported cloth, both 
 are the earnings of domestic industry ; and it is questionable 
 how far it is proper for Government to decide which is the best 
 mode of obtaining the article, or how far it ought to be left to 
 individual discretion. The various interests and pursuits of 
 society should be allowed to flourish and grow together. They 
 might promote manufactures by causing sudden transfers of 
 capital and violent changes in men's occupations, if they chose 
 to disregard the effect on other interests. Without exceeding 
 
 O O 
 
 the bounds of moderation, they might incidentally, through the 
 revenue power, benefit such manufactures as could be most use- 
 fully promoted at home, but his objection was to the immoder- 
 ate use of the power. 2. Mr. Clay had left out of consideration 
 what had already been done for manufactures. The real aspect 
 of the question was, in regard to each branch of manufactures 
 affected by the bill, whether enough had not already been done, 
 and whether more could now be done without great injury to 
 other interests. In illustration of this view of the subject, he 
 closed with an elaborate examination of the existing condition 
 and prospects of the great branches of manufacture, and the 
 effect of the bill upon the navigating and agricultural interests
 
 1824.] TARIFF OF 1824. 213 
 
 His vote was given against the bill, which had a majority of 
 five only in its favor. In the Senate, the bill was materially 
 modified in respect to many of its details, and, when the House 
 finally concurred in these changes, many of Mr. Webster's 
 objections were obviated. 
 
 From this analysis it will be seen in what sense, at this 
 time, Mr. "Webster was a " free-trader " on the one hand, or, on 
 the other hand, what description of a tariff he favored. It is to 
 be remembered that this speech of 1824: was made in answer to 
 an argument by Mr. Clay, in which that gentleman had pressed 
 the theory of protection and its benefits to the utmost verge of 
 the practice of England, and this, too, upon a bill that operated 
 so injuriously upon many great branches of industry, that it 
 could not afterward pass the Senate unchanged. Mr. Webster 
 was obliged, therefore, to present the argument that is opposed 
 to an extreme application of the principle of protection. In 
 theory he doubtless concurred with the general sense in which 
 the current of the age was then beginning to flow, in favor of 
 freedom of commercial intercourse and unrestrained individual 
 action, as the best condition for all nations. But he accepted 
 the fact that we had adopted to a certain extent the principle 
 of protection, and were acting upon it ; and, therefore, in his 
 view, the true policy of all our legislation on this subject was 
 to adjust the revenue in reference to its bearing on domestic 
 industry, so as neither to introduce an artificial stimulus of 
 some favored pursuits nor to cripple others which were left to 
 their own unaided vigor. As a statesman, therefore, in a gen- 
 eral sense, Mr. Webster inclined to the doctrines of what is 
 called " free trade ; " as an American legislator, he was not a 
 " free-trader " in 1824 or at any other period. He resisted such 
 an application and extent of the principles of protection as he 
 thought would be injurious ; but he did not deny the necessity 
 for some continued exercise of that principle, nor did he combat 
 the constitutional power. 1 Whatever may have been the effect 
 
 1 In a letter from Mr. Gore, addressed mation, with true principles and sound 
 
 to Mr. Webster at this time, we may see doctrines, which, if acted upon, would 
 
 how his views on the subject of the tariff promote the individual objects exclusive- 
 
 were regarded by those who had no ex- ly intended to be fostered, at the same 
 
 treme opinions on either side : " I thank time that the other great interests of the 
 
 you for an excellent speech, lately re- community would be preserved. No one 
 
 coived, on the tariff, replete, in my esti- rejoices more sincerely than myself at
 
 214: LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. X. 
 
 of the tariff of 1824 on the pursuits of the country, or on the 
 opinions and conduct of public men, Mr. Webster is not respon- 
 sible for it. 1 
 
 Mr. Webster's position in the House, as chairman of the 
 Judiciary Committee, brought a great variety of subjects undef 
 his immediate cognizance, the most important of which related 
 to certain changes then agitated in respect to the construction 
 and action of the Supreme Court of the United States. There 
 were causes of very considerable anxiety to the friends of the 
 Government, springing from certain dissatisfactions with the 
 relations of that tribunal to the working of the Constitution. 
 The number of the judges had hitherto been seven ; and as 
 their discharge of the circuit duties, as well as of the duty of 
 sitting in bane, had long been a part of the judicial system, 
 and as the growth of the country had rendered some further 
 provision desirable, the question had arisen, what that provision 
 ought to be. At all times this question involves an enlarge- 
 ment of the number of the judges of the Supreme Court, if they 
 are to retain their connection with the circuits, as one alterna- 
 tive, or, as the other, the preservation of a smaller number of 
 the members of that court, and the creation of an independent 
 court, or the appointment of special judges to perform the cir- 
 cuit duties. The disadvantage of a numerous bench for the 
 purpose of sitting as a court of errors in bane, and the disad- 
 vantage of separating the judges of the Supreme Court from 
 the circuits, in order to limit their number, rendered this a 
 matter of great perplexity. These difficulties were inherent 
 in the subject ; there were others, which were perhaps more 
 formidable, arising from the state of men's feelings and opin- 
 ions. 
 
 The function of declaring void and inoperative any law of a 
 State that conflicts with the Constitution of the United States, 
 which was designed by that Constitution to be vested in the 
 
 witnessing your advance in the public tion to which Mr. Webster and others 
 
 mind. There is hardly cavil and carping were willing to assent as a "judicious " 
 
 enough to relieve you from the denuncia- tariff. It was bitterly ridiculed by Mr. 
 
 tion pronounced against him of whom all Clay, who declared that, if the bill then 
 
 speak well." (May 11, 1824. Correspond- before the House did not pass, no other 
 
 ence, i., 351.) could at that session, or probably during 
 
 1 There was a phrase current at that that Congress. (See Annals of Congress ; 
 
 time which described the kind of legisla- Eighteenth Congress, 1st Session.1
 
 *824.] JUDICIAL SYSTEM. 215 
 
 Supreme Federal Tribunal, and for which the Judiciary Act 
 of 1789 had provided the necessary practical means, had, pre- 
 vious to the year 1824, been exercised several times since the 
 origin of the Government, in cases where the law of a State had 
 been sustained by its own supreme tribunal, and where the 
 appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States had been assumed to have been rightfully given by the 
 twenty-fifth section of the Federal Judiciary Act. 1 This ex- 
 ercise of appellate jurisdiction over the decisions of the State 
 courts, in this class of cases, had given no special dissatisfaction 
 in New Jersey, or Maryland, or New Hampshire, the States in 
 which the most prominent cases of its application had arisen ; ' 
 but when, in the cases of Cohens vs. Virginia and Green vs. 
 jBiddle, coming from Virginia and Kentucky, the same power 
 had been successfully invoked, State jealousy and pride were 
 touched to the quick in two of their principal strongholds. 
 The dissatisfaction culminated at this session of Congress in 
 efforts to curtail the authority and limit the action of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States; and at the very time 
 when these efforts were made, the validity of the ste'amboat 
 monopoly of the State of New Tork was pending before that 
 tribunal in the case of Gibbons vs. Ogden. 
 
 Mr. Webster's position, therefore, as chairman of the Judi- 
 ciary Committee, was extremely delicate and responsible. He 
 had to meet propositions looking to important changes in the 
 construction of the Supreme Court and the functions of the 
 judges, and other propositions, which contemplated the ex- 
 tinction or the restriction of its appellate jurisdiction over the 
 State courts. With respect to the former, he entertained then 
 and always a strong opinion that the separation of the judges of 
 that court from circuit duties is entirely inexpedient. He con- 
 sidered that the best mode of affording the relief made neces- 
 sary by the pressure of business upon the circuits, was to 
 appoint circuit judges where that pressure was greatest, and at 
 the same time to have the judges of the Supreme Court per- 
 
 1 The section which declares the cases * New Jersey vs. Wilson, 7 Cranch 
 
 which may be removed from State courts (from Xew Jersev) : McOulloch vs. Mary- 
 
 to the Supreme Court of the United land, 4 Wheaton (from Maryland) ; Dart- 
 
 States, and provides for the mode of ef- mouth College vs. Woodward, 4 Wheaton 
 
 fecting it. (from New Hampshire).
 
 216 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. X. 
 
 form some nisiprius duties. But there was no general concur- 
 rence of opinion on these points at this session, and he could 
 only prevent the adoption of measures which he thought objec- 
 tionable. On the other branch of the subject, he had to oppose, 
 first, a proposed repeal of the twenty-fifth section of the Judi- 
 ciary Act ; and next, a plan requiring the concurrence of a 
 certain fixed number of the judges of the Supreme Court in 
 any decision that should reverse the judgment of a State 
 court on the ground of the constitutional invalidity of a 
 State law. In this opposition he was successful, and this 
 class of cases was left under the provisions of the Judiciary 
 Act of 1789. 
 
 During the most exciting period of the debate of 1824, 
 on the tariff, and while Mr. Webster was himself speaking in 
 the House on that subject, he was suddenly called upon to 
 prepare for the argument of the case of Gibbons vs. Ogden in 
 the Supreme Court, involving the constitutional validity of the 
 laws of New York, which had granted to Fulton and Livings- 
 ton the exclusive navigation of all the waters within the ju- 
 risdiction of that State, by vessels impelled by steam, for a 
 term of years not then expired. Every tribunal in that State 
 to which the question had been submitted, including its 
 " Court of Errors and Appeals," had affirmed that these laws 
 were not an infraction of the constitutional jurisdiction of Con- 
 gress to regulate commerce between the States. The particu- 
 lar injunction issued in the case, at the instance of those holding 
 the monopoly, restrained a vessel that ran between the city of 
 ]STew York and Elizabethtown, in New Jersey. Mr. Webster 
 had not been employed in the cause in the State courts ; but, on 
 its removal to the Supreme Court of the United States, he was 
 retained in it to argue against the validity of the New York 
 laws. The circumstances attending his summons into court 
 in this cause, which was at the time quite unexpected, are 
 thus detailed by Mr. Ticknor in his reminiscences of Mr. 
 Webster : 
 
 " In the spring of 1824, Mr. "Webster was much concerned in the dis- 
 cussion then going on in the House of Representatives at Washington, 
 upon the tariff. One morning he rose very early earlier even than was 
 his custom to prepare himself to speak upon it. From long before day
 
 1824.] GIBBONS VS. OGDEX. 217 
 
 light till the hour when the House met, he was busy with his brief. 
 When he was far advanced in speaking, a note was brought to him 
 from the Supreme Court, informing him that the great case of Gibbons vs. 
 Ogden would be called on for argument the next morning. He wa? 
 astounded at the intelligence, for he had supposed that after the tariff 
 question should have been disposed of, he would still have ten days to pre- 
 pare himself for this formidable conflict, in which the constitutionality of 
 the laws of Xew York, granting a steamboat monoply of its tide-waters, 
 would be decided. He brought his speech on the tariff to a conclusion as 
 speedily as he could, and hurried home to make such preparation for the 
 great law argument as the shortness of the notice would permit. He had 
 then taken no food since his morning's breakfast but instead of dining 
 he took a moderate dose of medicine and went to bed, and to sleep. 
 At ten p. M. he awoke, called for a bowl of tea, and without other re- 
 freshment went immediately to work. To use his own phrase, ' the tapes 
 had not been off the papers for more than a year.' He worked all night, 
 and, as he has told me more than once, he thought he never on any occa- 
 sion had so completely the free use of all his faculties. He hardly felt 
 that he had bodily organs, so entirely had his fasting and the medicine 
 done their work. At nine A. M., after eleven hours of continuous intel- 
 lectual effort, his brief was completed. He sent for the barber and was 
 shaved ; he took a very slight breakfast of tea and crackers ; he looked 
 over his papers to see that they were all in order, and tied them up he 
 read the morning journals, to amuse and change his thoughts, and then 
 he went into court, and made that grand argument which, as Judge Wayne 
 said above twenty years afterward, ' released every creek and river, every 
 lake and harbor in our country from the interference of monopolies.' 
 Whatever he may have thought of his powers on the preceding night, the 
 court and the bar acknowledged their whole force that day. And yet, 
 at the end of five hours, when he ceased speaking, he could hardly be said 
 to have taken what would amount to half the refreshment of a common 
 meal, for above two and thirty hours, and, out of the thirty-six hours im- 
 mediately preceding, he had for thirty-one been in a state of very high in- 
 tellectual excitement and activity." 
 
 Probably, if we possessed as full a report of this argument 
 as that which remains of the Dartmouth College case, we 
 should be inclined to estimate it quite as highly. Certainly the 
 difficulties to be overcome were as great, and the nature of 
 the question demanded as much power of analysis and discrim- 
 ination, and force of reasoning, as were required in the former 
 case. The weight of judicial authority that was arrayed 
 against the side which Mr. Webster had to espouse was far 
 more imposing than in the college case. The question derived
 
 OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn X, 
 
 its chief difficulty from the apparent conflict of jurisdictions as 
 between the State and the national governments, in respect to 
 waters which are confessedly within the territorial limits of a 
 State. But notwithstanding the locality in which these laws of 
 monopoly were to operate, the question was, whether they were 
 consistent with the grant to Congress of the power to regu- 
 late commerce with foreign nations and between the several 
 States. The argument of Mr. Webster established the great 
 positions that the commerce of the Union is a unit ; that its 
 regulation being vested in Congress, there is of necessity some 
 legislative regulation, which is exclusively in Congress, and not 
 concurrently in Congress and the States ; and that a law grant- 
 ing a monopoly of navigation over waters where commerce is 
 carried on, is a law regulating commerce, and is one of those 
 regulations that can be made, if by any authority, only by 
 the authority in which the regulation of that commerce is 
 vested. 
 
 "We have seen that Mr. "Webster did not take a very strong 
 personal interest in the topic that absorbed so much of the 
 attention of members of . Congress at this session the ap- 
 proaching presidential election. On his arrival at Washington 
 in December, 1823, he found the state of things to be this : 
 The candidates were Mr. John Quincy Adams, General Jack- 
 son, Mr. Oalhoun, Mr. Clay, Mr. Crawford, and Mr. Clinton. 
 Each of these gentlemen seemed likely to command so many 
 of the electoral votes as to prevent a choice of any one of them. 
 Mr. Webster was satisfied, therefore, from the first, that the 
 election would devolve upon the House of Representatives. He 
 would have preferred Mr. Calhoun at this time, for the presi- 
 dency, of all the candidates, if there had been a reasonable 
 prospect that he could be elected. As the winter wore on, he 
 saw that Mr. Adams and General Jackson would be the real 
 competitors at last ; and under these circumstances, so far as 
 he gave any advice to his friends at home, it was to cast the 
 electoral votes of New England so as to secure the election 
 of Mr. Calhoun as Yice-President. In March he wrote to his 
 brother, who had much influence in New Hampshire : " I hope 
 all New England will support Mr. Calhoun for the vice-presi- 
 dency. If so, he will probably be chosen, and that will be a
 
 :824.] END OF THE SESSION. 219 
 
 great thing. He is a true man, and will do good to the coun- 
 try in that situation." 
 
 Mr. Webster's labors of this session, in the House, in its 
 committees, and in two legal tribunals, had their effect even 
 upon him, accustomed as he was to such exertions, and strong 
 as was his physical constitution at the age of forty-two. Prob- 
 ably he never passed a winter at "Washington of more constant 
 and severe exertion than this, although he had no such cause 
 for intense anxiety concerning the country as he afterward 
 had, in 1830, in 1842, and in 1850. It was a winter of hard 
 work ; and, when the spring arrived, he admitted its effects. 
 "We have 'had a busy time of it," he wrote to Judge Story, 
 " since you left us. For myself, I am exhausted. When I 
 look in the glass, I think of our old [New-England saying, 
 'as thin as a shad.' I have not vigor enough left, either 
 mental or physical, to try an action for assault and battery. 
 However, the fine weather has come on, I have resumed the 
 saddle, and hope to 'pick up my crumbs' again soon." To 
 his brother, a little later, he writes : " I hope to get away 
 by the 12th of May, and to be at home in season to see 
 you at Dorchester the week before .the General Court meets 
 at Concord. The ensuing summer I shall do nothing but 
 move about and play. I shall certainly spend a fortnight 
 with you at Boscawen, and the rest you may spend with 
 us. August we will pass together on Cape Cod. My wife 
 wants some one to ride about with her, while I am shoot- 
 ing," etc. 
 
 But it was past the middle of June before he could get 
 away. He was detained for some days after the termination 
 of the session, to serve on a committee of investigation into 
 certain charges made by a Mr. Kinian Edwards against the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Crawford. As this tedious 
 business dragged its slow length along, he began to think 
 of the birds that he ought to be following at Cohasset or 
 Chelsea Beach, in company with his friend Mr. George Blake. 
 He was not yet so reduced, he wrote, but that he " could 
 walk with a bit of iron" on his shoulder, and he desired to 
 know whether Mr. Blake was ever found driving with an 
 " umbrella " in his chaise, as that quaint and most agree-
 
 220 LIFE Or DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. X 
 
 able person was accustomed to call his fowling-piece when 
 in its case. 1 
 
 In the autumn of this year (1824), he was again elected 
 a Representative in Congress from the Boston district, by a 
 vote which is recorded in the newspapers of the time as 
 " nearly unanimous." There was in fact no opposition of any 
 importance. 
 
 Mr. Webster had hitherto possessed no permanent coun- 
 try residence, excepting his father's farm in New Hamp- 
 shire, which, in the days when railways were as yet un- 
 known, was at a rather inconvenient distance from Boston. 
 In fact, he did not become the sole owner of this property 
 until some years after this period, although he frequently 
 went there. It was a place always full of tender recollec- 
 tions for him. But the farm was a small one, the rural 
 resources were few ; and, above all, it was remote from 
 the sea, which always had for him very great attractions. 
 " At Franklin," he used to say, " I can see all in two 
 days." 
 
 It was in the autumn of this year (1824) that he first 
 saw the spot on the southeastern shore of Massachusetts 
 which afterward became his favorite home, and with which 
 his name will be long associated ; where, as he often said, 
 he " could go out every day in the year and see something 
 new." This house, situated about a mile from the ocean 
 (which is in full view from it), and surrounded by a farm 
 then embracing one hundred and sixty acres, was the prop- 
 erty of Captain John Thomas. The month of August was 
 passed by Mr. and Mrs. Webster and their children at Sand- 
 wich. On their way to Boston Mr. Webster driving his 
 
 1 The Hon. George Blake, a leading library and papers. Mr. Webster uscil 
 
 member of the Boston bar, for many to say, that ever afterward, whenever 
 
 years United States District Attorney for Mr. Blake had a cause to try, which he 
 
 Massachusetts, was one of Mr. Webster's did not wish to try, whatever was the 
 
 most intimate friends, and a frequent date of its inception, he invariably began 
 
 companion of his field-sports. He was a dilatory motion with the words "May 
 
 a gentleman of many oddities, of excel- it please your honors, the disastrous and 
 
 lent company, not specially diligent in ever-lamented fire in Court Street, which 
 
 his profession, and not always " pre- consumed every one of my papers in this 
 
 pared " for the trial of his causes. In cause, makes it necessary for me to 
 
 the year 182-, the office which he occupied throw myself upon the indulgence of the 
 
 in Boston was burned, and he lost his court," etc.
 
 1824.] 
 
 VISIT TO THE THOMAS FARM. 
 
 221 
 
 wife in a New-England " chaise " they chanced to take the 
 road which passed by the Thomas farm. As they descended 
 the valley, Mrs. Webster was so much delighted by the quiet 
 repose of this old house under its magnificent elm, and by the 
 general beauty of the scene, that she begged her husband to 
 turn in at the gate and pay a visit to the family. The call 
 ended in their being invited to extend their visit to a few 
 days ; and, before they left, an arrangement was made, by 
 which they became, in succeeding summers, regular inmates 
 in the family of Captain Thomas. This continued to be their 
 course of life for several years. 
 
 GREEN HARBOR THE THOMAS ESTATE AT MARSHFIELD.
 
 222 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XL 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 1824-1825. 
 
 VISIT TO ME. JEFFERSON AND MR. MADISON DEATH OF HIS SON 
 
 CHARLES ELECTION OF MR. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AS PRESI- 
 DENT INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS CRIMES ACT OF 1825 COR- 
 RESPONDENCE WITH J. EVELYN DENISON, ESQ. FIRST BUNKER 
 HILL ORATION JOURNEY TO NIAGARA. 
 
 A FTEB, passing the summer of 1824 in the relaxation which 
 -O^- he had promised himself, it was arranged in the autumn 
 that Mr. Webster should make a visit to Mr. Jefferson at Monti- 
 cello, in company with Mr. Ticknor, who had been invited by 
 Mr. Jefferson to assist him in regulating the course of studies 
 at the University of Yirginia. Mr. Ticknor has furnished me 
 with the following account of their journey, and the incidents 
 of their visit to Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison : 
 
 " Early in the autumn of 1824, 1 was one day dining with Mr. Webster 
 at his own house, and talked about passing some time in "Washington the 
 next winter, as I had often done before. I told him that Mr. Jefferson had 
 invited me to meet General Lafayette at Monticello, but that I did not 
 think I should be able to do it. I thought; however, that, in the event of 
 my going to "Washington, I should endeavor, as Mrs. Ticknor would be 
 with me, to take her to Mr. Jefferson's He said he should like to be of 
 the party. I replied that if he were in earnest, and could afford the time 
 for it, I could easily arrange matters so that it would be agreeable for him 
 to go. He held out his hand and said, ' It is a bargain, if you say so.' 
 
 " In consequence of this conversation, I wrote to Mr. Jefferson, inti- 
 mating to him that Mr. Webster might visit Virginia with us. He answered 
 immediately, under date of November 8th : ' Whether Mr. Webster comes
 
 1824.] VISIT TO JEFFERSON 223 
 
 with you, or a 1 one as suits himself, he will be a welcome guest. His char- 
 acter, his talents and principles, entitle him to the favor and respect of all 
 his fellow-citizens, and have long ago possessed him of mine.' 
 
 " We left Washington on the 9th day of December, and went by 
 steamboat to Fredericksburg Landing. At Fredericksburg, a friend had 
 made all the arrangements necessary for the journey, and we set off the 
 next morning in a carriage and four horses and a gig, all very slovenly, 
 after the Virginia fashion. The roads were very bad. The landlord of 
 the house where we dined dropped his knife and fork with astonishment, 
 as he was carving a very nice turkey, when he understood that he was 
 talking with Mr. Webster of Massachusetts ; but he was nothing daunted, 
 and they had a great argument upon the question of internal improve- 
 ment, the Virginian confessing that if the power were not in the Constitu- 
 tion, he wished it was. We were to pass the night at a tavern kept by a 
 Dr. Tyrrel, but the days were short and the roads detestable, and it was 
 long after dark before we reached our destination. Mr. Webster was very 
 amusing, telling stories to keep our spirits up, singing scraps of old songs, 
 and making merry like a boy. Our accommodations for the night were 
 bad enough, but before we went to bed we prepared a note for Mr. Mad- 
 ison, which was to be dispatched the next morning at daylight, and in- 
 formed him of our intended visit, for which President Monroe had pre- 
 pared him. At Orange Court-House, five miles from Dr. Tyrrel's we met 
 our messenger, who brought us a kind welcome from Mr. Madison, and 
 who was accompanied by Mr. Madison's coachman, whom he had sent to 
 show us the way a needful providence, where proper roads were none 
 and landmarks very few. 
 
 " We were very hospitably received. Mr. Madison and Mr. Webster 
 were old acquaintances, and evidently well pleased to see each other again. 
 Mr. Madison talked well, and laid himself out to be agreeable to Mr. Web- 
 ster. After a long and pleasant dinner, as we were going back to the 
 saloon, Mr. Webster said to me, in an undertone, ' Stare hie;" 1 for he was 
 afraid I might say something of going away the next day ; but I had no 
 such intention. We did not talk that evening very late, for we were tired, 
 and late hours wore evidently not the habit of the family. The next 
 morning (Sunday), after breakfast, Mr. Webster and I, accompanied by Mr. 
 Todd, 1 took a ride on horseback of eight or ten miles. When we had 
 passed beyond the limits of Mr. Madison's domain, the country looked 
 pretty cheerless. We rode through woods and across fields, Mr. Webster 
 making himself merry as he had the day before with wondering where 
 ' Phil Barbour's constituents could be,' for this was Mr. Philip Barbour's 
 district. Before we returned, however, we made a visit to Mrs. Barbour, 
 to whom Mr. Webster gave an account of her husband, whom he had left 
 in Washington, which visibly interested her. The dinner that day was as 
 agreeable as the one the day before. Mr. Madison told many stories with 
 
 1 Son of Mrs. Madison, by a former husband.
 
 224 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ck. XL 
 
 much grace and effect. Mr. Webster was much interested in them, espe- 
 cially in those that had a political cast ; for, though every thing of a party 
 nature was avoided between persons whose opinions were so opposite, yet 
 both were too much interested in the country and its history not to talk 
 about its affairs. After we returned to Washington, Mr. Webster told me 
 that he had been very much impressed by Mr. Madison's conversation, and 
 that it had fully confirmed him in an opinion he had for some time enter- 
 tained, that Mr. Madison was ' the wisest of our Presidents, except Wash- 
 ington.' 
 
 " We spent two days at Mr. Madison's, and then went to Mr. Jefferson's, 
 which, though only thirty-two miles off, proved a journey of more than 
 one day. At Charlottesville, before we went up to Monticello, Mr. Web- 
 ster received a letter which changed his appearance and manner the 
 moment he had read it. It was from Mrs. Webster, and gave him bad 
 news of his youngest child, little Charles, who was thought ill, but not 
 dangerously so. The change was the more apparent from his having pre- 
 viously been so gay. Only the evening before, at Mrs. Clarke's tavern, he 
 had said, ' that without intending any compliment to his companions, he 
 would say that he had not felt so free from care and anxious thought, as 
 he did then, for five years.' (I find this in a memorandum made at the 
 time.) 
 
 "We remained at Monticello four or five days, detained one day beyond 
 our purpose by rains and the consequent swelling of the streams, which 
 made travelling difficult in a country where bridges are rare. Mr. Jeffer- 
 son had regular habits and fixed hours for every thing ; but he was 
 very attentive to Mr. Webster, and plainly liked to talk with him. Mr. 
 Webster, on his part, was very respectful to Mr. Jefferson, and led him 
 constantly to converse upon the doings of the old Congress and the 
 period of the Revolution, on both which topics Mr. Jefferson was inter- 
 esting and instructive. Mr. Webster enjoyed these conversations very 
 much, and spoke of them afterward with great satisfaction. 
 
 " One day, after dinner, Mr. Webster told a story of himself, which was 
 characteristic of him, and amused Mr. Jefferson very much. Mr. Jefferson 
 remarked that ' men not unfrequently obtained more credit for readiness 
 in command of their knowledge, and indeed for its amount, than they 
 deserved.' He said it had happened to himself. Mr. Webster replied that 
 he supposed it had happened to most men, and especially to lawyers. He 
 said that, soon after going to Portsmouth as a young lawyer, a blacksmith 
 brought him a case under a will ; he was unable to give him a decided 
 answer, and desired him to call again. Having little to do, he went to 
 work upon the case, and found it a difficult one. He went through all the 
 books in his own little collection, that could give him any light, and then 
 borrowed what he could find relating to the point in question, in the 
 libraries of Mr. Jeremiah Mason, and of Mr. Peyton R. Freeman, a curious 
 black-letter lawyer in Portsmouth. His client called for an opinion, but
 
 1824.] VISIT TO JEFFERSON. 225 
 
 he was unable to give Mm one he had only got far enough into the mat- 
 ter to ascertain that the blacksmith's bequest was either a contingent re- 
 mainder or an executory devise. He sent to Boston and bought Fearne'a 
 Essay on these two subjects, and other books, all together costing him fifty 
 dollars. At last, after a month's hard work, and making out a very elab- 
 orate brief, he gave an opinion favorable to his client's claim, argued the 
 case, won it, and received a fee of fifteen dollars ; all that the amount in 
 controversy would warrant him to charge. 
 
 " Years passed by, and the blacksmith and his case had almost passed 
 away also from his memory. At length, being in New York on his way to 
 Washington, Mr. Aaron Burr sent him a note, saying that he wished to 
 consult him on a legal question of some consequence. Mr. Webster gave 
 him an appointment, and, when Mr. Burr began to explain his case to him, 
 he said that he knew in a moment that it was his blacksmith's case over 
 again. He, however, heard Mr. Burr quietly through, and then, with the 
 blacksmith's brief full in his mind, began to reply. He cited a series of 
 cases bearing on the point, and going back, if I remember rightly, to a 
 leading one in the time of Charles IL Mr. Burr listened to him for some 
 time, and then interrupted him somewhat suddenly, by asking him whether 
 he had been consulted in that case before. ' He evidently suspected,' said 
 Mr. Webster, ' that I must have been of counsel to the other side. I as- 
 sured him that I did not know there was such a case or such parties in tha 
 world till he explained it to me.' Mr. Webster said that he subsequently 
 gave Mr. Burr a written opinion on his case, and made him pay enough 
 for it to cover all his work for the blacksmith and something moreover 
 for Mr. Burr's suspicion that he had been of counsel for the opposite party. 
 He added, ' Mr. Burr, no doubt, thought me a much more learned lawyer 
 than I was, and, under the circumstances of the case, I did not think it 
 worth while to disabuse him of his good opinion of me.' 
 
 "Mr. Jefferson, though then eighty-one years old, rode constantly on 
 horseback in fine weather. One day we rode with him to Charlottesville, 
 about four miles, to visit the buildings for his university, which had not 
 yet gone into operation, but was soon to be opened. It was the last great 
 interest of his life, and Mr. Webster took much pleasure in witnessing the 
 beginning of the enterprise. He did not, however, fail to discover some of 
 the defects of the system ; he especially suggested to Mr. Jefferson that a 
 project he had introduced into his laws for the university, to train the 
 scholars in military exercises with guns made wholly of wood, because he 
 did not think it safe to trust them with the usual fire-arms, would fail from 
 the ridictile of the young men. It proved so. 
 
 " Mr. Webster was impatient of our detention by the weather. He was 
 very anxious to get news of his sick child, and could not hope for any 
 letters till he should reach Washington. He wanted also to know what 
 was going on in Congress ; but Mr. Jefferson took no newspaper but the 
 Richmond Enquirer. With the first fine weather, therefore, we descended 
 16
 
 22Q LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XI 
 
 the mountain. Several of the young gentlemen of the family accompanied 
 us. On the banks of the Rivanna we found many wagons waiting to 
 be ferried over ; the stream was much swollen, and the passage difficult. 
 Many had their turn before us, and, among the rest, a drove of pigs from 
 Kentucky. The ferryman had but one person to assist him an inefficient 
 slave they were both much exhausted, having been at work since day- 
 break. While we were crossing, Mr. Webster, in his usual cheerful man- 
 ner, began to talk to the ferryman, who found it very difficult to stem the 
 sudden turbulence of the stream. ' You find it hard work enough this 
 morning, I think,' said Mr. Webster. * Yes, sir,' said the boatman, ' it puts 
 a man up to all he knows, I assure you.' An apt phrase, which amused 
 Mr. Webster very much at the time, which he was constantly using on all 
 occasions through the rest of the journey, and which he often introduced 
 in speaking and writing in after-years. In this way it has become a com- 
 mon phrase in our part of the country, where few persons know its origin. 
 " Of the rest of our journey back to Washington I remember nothing 
 but that it was uncomfortable from the season of the year, and that Mr. 
 Webster was depressed and anxious from the news he had received from 
 home, and from what he feared he should receive." 
 
 \ 
 To this account, which was written by Mr. Ticknor since 
 
 Mr. Webster's death, I have to add a memorandum of Mr. Jef- 
 ferson's conversation, that was prepared by both these gentle- 
 men at the time of their visit, and which remained private until 
 it was included in the first volume of Mr. "Webster's correspond- 
 ence, published by Mr. Fletcher Webster in 1857. It was dic- 
 tated partly by Mr. Webster and partly by Mr. Ticknor at the inn 
 where they passed the first night after leaving Mr. Jefferson's, 
 Mrs. Ticknor acting as amanuensis, and adding her recollections 
 of Mr. Jefferson's conversation to those of the gentlemen. 1 This 
 paper will be found in the appendix to the present volume. 4 
 
 1 I mention these facts, because the interesting visit ; although it was doubt- 
 ttiographer of Mr. Jefferson has doubted less supposed that the time might arrive 
 the accuracy of Mr. Webster's account when this account of their illustrious 
 of some of Mr. Jefferson's remarks, espe- host, as he appeared in the last year of 
 cially those relating to Mr. Wirt's Life of his life, could with propriety be given to 
 Patrick Henry. The facts are, that what the world. Thirty-two years after the 
 was published in 1857, in Mr. Webster's death of Mr. Jefferson, and five years 
 correspondence as a " Memorandum of after the death of Mr. Webster, this 
 Mr. Jefferson's Conversation," was a very paper was first published. I may be 
 carefully-prepared paper, the result of the permitted to add, what will be con- 
 recollections of three persons, who as- firmed by all who have known them, 
 sisted and corrected each other, and who that, in strength and accuracy of mem- 
 composed the account immediately after ory there have been few men who ex- 
 leaving Mr. Jefferson's house. It was celled the two gentlemen who prepared 
 originally prepared for the purpose of this memorandum, 
 preserving a private record of this most 2 Post, p, et seq.
 
 1824.] RETURN FROM MR. JEFFERSON'S. 227 
 
 After the return of the party from Mr. Jefferson's, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Ticknor left Mr. "Webster in "Washington, and went to 
 Baltimore to pass a short time. The following letter was the 
 first they received from him : 
 
 [MR. WEBSTER TO MR. TICKNOR.] 
 
 " WABHESGTOS, Sunday Evening. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I send you three letters, which have been put into 
 my hands for that purpose to-day. 
 
 "I find that you are really gone; and if I could tell you how sorry I 
 am, I would. I passed the house yesterday, and gave a look to the win- 
 dows, but saw no inviting faces. To-day I have been at home, except an 
 hour passed with Mr. Tazewell. The general 1 has been to see me, and we 
 have had a good long talk. I believe he hopes to catch a sight of your 
 party at Baltimore. 
 
 " If my constituents accuse me of negligence and inattention this ses- 
 sion, I shall lay it all off on Mrs. Ticknor. She had no right, I shall say, 
 to be so agreeable as to draw my attention from the weighty affairs of state 
 while she was here, and to create depression, or a kind of I-am-not-quite- 
 ready-to-go-to-work feeling by her departure. What will State Street say 
 to it, think you, if its affairs should be neglected, although Shakespeare be 
 ever so well read, or all the versions of Sir John Moore's burial revised and 
 corrected ? 
 
 " Please to assure her that I shall put it to'her account, if there should 
 happen any dissatisfactions or disaffections hereafter any mutterings of 
 the ' vital commoners,' or ' petty inland spirits.' To-morrow, we shall have 
 Niagara Chesapeake Canal Cumberland Road and, in the Senate, a 
 discussion on piracy. 
 
 " I have no news from Boston. Our mail is ' due and unpaid.' Send 
 back Wallenstein.* I shall be happy to see him on two accounts : first, on 
 account of himself; second, that I may see whether any of your visages are 
 reflected from his face. 
 
 " I am shocked with the news of Mr. Harper's death. It is a public 
 loss. He was a man of excellent feelings and much cultivation. His mind 
 was rather comprehensive than profound, and his general power persuasion 
 rather than logic. He wrote with much more of purity and of elegance 
 than most of his contemporaries. His heart was true and kind in all cases, 
 and I believe no man more loved or cherished his friends. 
 
 " I hope to hear from you by to-morrow's mail. Give my remembrances, 
 regrets, good wishes, and whatever else is proper, to Mrs. Ticknor and Miss 
 
 1 General Lafayette. the service of the Russian government. 
 
 * Julius von Wallenstein, for several Mr. Ticknor first knew him in Madrid in 
 
 years an attache to the Russian legation 1818, where he held a position corre- 
 
 Ln Washington ; a man of talent, and spending to that which he held in this 
 
 various but irregular culture. He was a country. He was a good deal in Mr. 
 
 German by birth, but had long been in Webster's society.
 
 228 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XL 
 
 Gardiner and to Mr. Wallenstein if he be yet with you but again I say, 
 send him back as soon as you can spare him. 
 
 " I am, my dear sir, most truly yours, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER." 
 
 [MB. TICKNOR TO MR. WEBSTER.] 
 
 " BALTIMORE, Tuesday Evening. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Your kind note of Sunday evening, by the unkind 
 ness of the Baltimore post-office, was put among the F's, and therefore 
 did not reach its destination until this morning, though it was due, and 
 arrived yesterday. Wallenstein, hovever, who went back in the coach, 
 carried you a little note, which I trust you received early in the forenoon ; 
 and which will, at least, serve to assure you that we are not insensible to 
 the kindness you have expressed for us during the last week. . . . General 
 Harper's death has cast a gloom over this city, as such a great loss ought 
 to. Wallenstein will have given you all the details. Old Mr. Carroll 
 fainted when he heard of it ; but is gradually recovering. We have seen 
 Count Menou l several times, who is staying at old Mr. Carroll's to comfort 
 him ; and his feelings, on the loss of General Harper, who was once a great 
 benefactor to him, do him great credit as a good man. . . . Savage says 
 there is no excitement in Boston about the presidential election. Do let 
 us hear from you as often as possible, if it be but a line, written in your 
 place while some Ohio member is prosing ; it will console us, for we have 
 indeed a heavy miss of you. GEO. TICKNOR." 
 
 The child, whose illness cast the coming shadows of grief 
 over Mr. Webster's enjoyment of his tour in Virginia, was born 
 in Boston, on the 3lst December, 1822. He died on the 18th 
 of December, 1824. He was the youngest of Mr. Webster's 
 children ; loved with all the strength of the great heart of his 
 father, and all the affection of the devoted mother.* The fol- 
 lowing letter, from Mrs. Webster to her husband, succeeded the 
 first announcement of their loss : 
 
 MR8. WEBSTER TO MR. WEBSTER. 
 
 " BOSTON, December 28, 1824. 
 
 " I have a great desire to write to you, my beloved husband, but 1 
 doubt if I can write legibly, as I can hold my pen but in my fingers. 8 1 
 
 1 Count Menou was long a refugee hardly impaired the fresh beauty of his 
 
 French resident in Baltimore, and sub- countenance ; but shortly after his death, 
 
 sequently French minister in Washing- when the round contour of his cheeks 
 
 ton. had a little fallen away, his face and head 
 
 9 This child is said to have borne a were like a perfect miniature cast of his 
 
 stronger likeness to Mr. Webster than father. No marble bust can ever present 
 
 either of his other sons. Mrs. Lee says a more perfect likeness of his noble 
 
 of him : " This lovely child indicated sin- father." ( Correspondence, i.) 
 gular attractiveness of mind and charac- 3 In consequence of an injury to the 
 
 ter. His illness was short, and had thumb of her right hand.
 
 1824.] DEATH OF LITTLE CHARLES. 229 
 
 have just received your letter, in answer to William's, 1 which told you that 
 little Charley was no more. I have dreaded the hour which should de- 
 stroy your hopes, but trust you will not let this event afflict you too much, 
 and that we both shall be able to resign him without a murmur, happy in 
 the reflection that he has returned to his Heavenly Father pure as I 
 received him. It was an inexpressible consolation to me, when I con- 
 templated him in his sickness, that he had not one regret for the past, 
 nor one dread for the future ; he was patient as a lamb during all his 
 sufferings ; and, they were at last so great, I was happy when they were 
 ended. 
 
 " I shall always reflect on his brief life with mournful pleasure, and, I 
 hope, remember with gratitude all the joy he gave me ; and it has been 
 great. And, oh, how fondly did I flatter myself it would be lasting ! 
 
 1 It was but yesterday, my child, thy little heart beat high ; 
 And I had scorned the warning voice that told me thou must die.' 
 
 " Dear little Charles ! He sleeps alone under St. Paul's. I cannot ex- 
 press how much I regret that it did not occur to any one of us to have the 
 dear remains of Grace removed. I thought much of it when the tomb of 
 Mr. Sullivan was opened for Mrs. Sullivan's little boy. I regretted you 
 were not here to consult upon the subject. Oh ! do not, my dear husband, 
 talk of your own ' final abode ; ' that is a subject I never can dwelj on for 
 a moment. With you here, my dear, I can never be desolate. Oh, may 
 Heaven, in its mercy, long preserve you ! And that we may ever wisely 
 improve every event, and yet rejoice together in this life, prays your ever 
 affectionate G. W. 
 
 "I ought to mention William's unwearied attention and kindness to 
 dear little Charles. His grief is great at the loss. Poor Nancy came last 
 Friday ; she is much afflicted that she did not come in time to see the 
 dear little boy once more. She begs you to accept her sympathy and 
 love." 
 
 So far as I know, this was the last occasion on which Mr. 
 Webster's emotions found relief in his own verse. It is 
 needless for me to repeat that, even in private, he made 
 no pretensions to be a writer of poetry. Yet, among all 
 the productions in which the idea of the earlier immortality 
 of a child has been mingled with parental grief, I have seen 
 few that are more touching than some of the stanzas which 
 he sent to his wife after he had learned the death of his 
 son:" 
 
 1 Mr. Paige. stanzas, which I have sent to Mrs. Web- 
 
 * In a note to Mrs. Ticknor at Balti- ster. I have made this copy for your 
 
 more, enclosing a copy of these lines, he eyes and your husband's and for no 
 
 said : " I occupied a lonely hour on Sat- other human being's." (MSS. in the au- 
 
 urday evening in composing these little thor's '
 
 230 I'IFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. XL 
 
 " The staff on which my years should lean 
 
 Is broken ere those years come o'er me ; 
 My funeral rites thou shouldst hare seen, 
 But thou art in the tomb before me. 
 
 "Thou rear'st to me no filial stone, 
 
 No parent's grave with tears beholdest ; 
 Thou art my ancestor my son ! 
 And stand'st in Heaven's account the oldest. 
 
 " On earth my lot was soonest cast, 
 
 Thy generation after mine ; 
 Thou hast thy predecessor past, 
 Earlier eternity is thine. 
 
 "I should have set before thine eyes 
 
 The road to Heaven, and showed it clear; 
 But thou, untaught, spring'st to the skies, 
 And leav'st thy teacher lingering here. 
 
 " Sweet seraph, I would learn of thee, 
 And hasten to partake thy bliss ! 
 And, oh ! to thy world welcome me, 
 As first I welcomed thee to this." 
 
 The business of legislation, the demands of society, the 
 responsibilities of the presidential election, then pending be- 
 fore the House, are reflected in his correspondence of this 
 winter, together with the memory of this affliction. He car- 
 ried a heavy heart into most of the scenes in which he par- 
 ticipated during this session. 
 
 [MR. WEBSTER TO MRS. TICKNOR, AT BALTIMORE.] 
 
 " HOUSK OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 17, 1825. 
 
 " Mr. Wallenstein has given me, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, your very kind 
 note, and I cannot well tell you how much it has gratified my feelings. You 
 have inferred nothing, my dear lady, and can infer nothing, of my regard 
 and affection for yourself and your husband, more than the truth, nor 
 equal to the truth. And I beg you to believe that there are none in the 
 world whose regard and kind feelings I wish more to cultivate and 
 secure. 
 
 " Our six weeks' acquaintance has been to me a mixture of high enjoy- 
 ment and severe suffering. The former I owe, mainly, to you and Mr. 
 Ticknor ; the last I take, and would wish to bear, as a common visitation 
 of a kind Providence. Yet I have felt it more than might have been ex
 
 1825.] CORRESPONDENCE. 231 
 
 pected, and my spirits recover slowly. I am sure that Mrs. Webster and 
 yourself are congenial and assimilated spirits, and that she -will cultivate 
 your acquaintance with delight. Let us hope that circumstances may 
 favor an habitual intercourse. At any rate, be assured that the principle 
 of regard and affection will live in my heart. 
 
 " I write this in the House, while Mr. Clay is speaking on the Cumber- 
 land Road. The ladies are all present, inside the House. I have not re- 
 viewed them ; for I am sure there is none of them that I have lately seen 
 or know, unless it may be Mrs. (A. H.) Everett. I see Wallenstein among 
 them, as becomes a diplomatist. Mr. Clay speaks well. I wish you were 
 here to hear him. The highest enjoyment, almost, which I have in life, is 
 in hearing an able argument or speech. The development of mind, in 
 those modes, is delightful. In books, we see the result of thought and 
 of fancy. In the living speaker, we see the thought itself, as it rises 
 in the speaker's own mind. And his countenance often indicates a per- 
 ception before it gets upon his tongue. I have been charmed by observ- 
 ing this operation of minds which are truly great and vigorous ; so 
 that I sometimes am as much moved, as in reading a part of Milton and 
 Shakespeare, by a striking and able argument, although on the dryest 
 subject. 
 
 " Mr. "Wallenstein says you are to leave Baltimore on Thursday. There 
 is, as yet, no Northern mail to-day. Should there be one, and in it letters 
 for you, they shall be forwarded in due season. I shall flatter myself with 
 the hope of hearing from you, not once only, but often, before you reach 
 the little peninsula of Boston. Pray ask your husband if he has written to 
 Dr. Warren. 
 
 " Yours most truly, 
 
 . WEBSTER." 
 
 [FROM MR. TICKNOR, AT BALTIMORE.] 
 
 " BALTIMORE, January 19, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : We think it was rather hard in you to wait till we 
 were just out of the district, and then make a great speech. We have 
 heard all about it, and all Mr. Clay said, and all Mr. Livingston said, and 
 all everybody said in its praise. We had no right to complain of the. 
 speaker's * taking such instant advantage of our absence ; but we thought 
 our own member might have given his constituents a chance to tell of him 
 when they get home. But we will have our revenge of you by reading it 
 twice over in a bad report of it. 
 
 " I spent the last evening at old Mr. Carroll's. He was well and cheer- 
 ful much more remarkably preserved for eighty-eight, than Mr. Jefferson 
 for eighty-two. When he first heard of General Harper's death, the shock 
 reached his mind, and his memory was affected for a few hours ; but his 
 perfect equanimity, which is a chief source of his unvarying health, soon 
 restored him, and he is now able to talk on all subjects as usual and on his 
 
 1 Mr. Clay.
 
 232 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XL 
 
 recent loss with perfect composure. Indeed, as he well said and deeply 
 felt, a loss of this sort at eighty-eight is yery sure to be soon made up. I 
 was much gratified with my visit, and intend to go again this evening, to 
 meet General Lafayette. It is hard> however to go without Anna, for I 
 was more desirous she should see Mr. Carroll than anybody in Baltimore. 
 But she shall see him yet. 
 
 " I entirely forgot to tell you yesterday, that I had written to Dr. War- 
 ren. I did it the day after you told me you would be faithful to the 17th 
 of June, for I remembered the old rule of striking while the iron is hot. I 
 have written too to Mr. Quincy, telling him he may probably have the gen- 
 eral l for July 4th by asking for him. 
 
 " Anna desires her love, and we all desire to hear from you as often as 
 may be. We have few amusements here, for I do not care to go abroad 
 alone, and your letters are as apples of gold set in pictures of silver. 
 
 " Yours always, 
 
 " GEO. TICKNOB." 
 
 [TO MB. TICKNOB, AT BALTEtfOBE.] 
 
 HOTTSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, January 20, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : I owe you for two very kind letters, and the only pain- 
 ful circumstance they mention is Mrs. Ticknor's health. I am truly sorry 
 that any thing should interrupt her enjoyment of the society of Baltimore. 
 You must certainly stay long enough for her to see Mr. Carroll. The op- 
 portunity may not again occur. 
 
 "We are to-day engaged on the canal. Several speeches have been 
 filed in. Mr. Breck is now speaking. It must have been the good Wal- 
 lenstein who wrote you about my little speech for it was a very little one. 
 We think our Eastern candidate grows a little stronger in the prospect of 
 the presidency. As the time draws near, we hear more conversation on 
 the subject; but every thing is yet uncertain. 
 
 " I go to-night to pass the evening with Wallenstein. My friend Dr. 
 Sewall has proposed him as a member of the 'Columbian Institute;' so 
 the doctor and I are going to pick a pheasant's wing on the occasion. 
 
 " I have to-day no letters from Boston and hear little news from that 
 quarter, since the great explosion. Mr. Gannet has gone to-day to Mount 
 Vernon. He left me a card without natation of place, and I know not 
 where to seek for him. 
 
 " Give my best and most true regards to Mrs. Ticknor. I should be 
 glad to read Shakespeare or Mr. Tucker or Mrs. Hutchinson or any 
 thing else to her, that would make her forget the oppression of her cold. 
 I hope to hear from her soon, and hear that she is better. 
 
 " Yours always truly, 
 
 " D. WEBSTEB. 
 
 U I sent you one letter, enclosed, yesterday have none to-day." 
 1 Lafayette.
 
 1825.] CORRESPONDENCE. 233 
 
 [TO ME. TICKNOB, AT BALTIMORE.] 
 
 Tuesday evening, 8 o'clock. 
 
 u MY DEAR SIR : This is all I have for you. I expect, indeed, something 
 further, as "Wallenstein said he should inquire at the P. O. about this time. 
 If it comes, I shall enclose it to you. 
 
 " I have been to dine with Mr. Calhoun. He talked to me, among 
 other things, of your good fortune in picking up a companion on the road 
 of life. I did not think that a subject on which I was bound to quarrel 
 with a Secretary of War, whatever I might think of the matter. Air. Cal- 
 houn is a true man. 
 
 " Shall I learn, to-morrow, when you leave Baltimore ? 
 
 " God bless you and yours ! 
 
 "D. W." 
 
 [FROM MRS. WEBSTER, AT BOSTON.] 
 
 Saturday morning, January 22, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAR HUSBAND : I was sitting alone in my chamber reflecting on 
 the brief life of our sainted little boy, when your letter came enclosing 
 those lines of yours, which to a ' mother's eye ' are precious. Oh, my hus- 
 band, have not some of our brightest hopes perished ! ' Our fairest flow- 
 ers are, indeed, blossoms gathered for the tomb.' But do not, my dear 
 husband, do not let these afflictions weigh too heavily upon you ; those 
 dear children who had such strong holds on us while here, now allure us 
 
 to heaven : 
 
 On us with looks of love they bend, 
 For us the Lord of life implore ; 
 And oft from sainted bliss descend, 
 Our wounded spirits to restore. 
 
 " Farewell, my beloved husband ! I have not time to write more, only 
 to say I regret you have lost the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor's so- 
 ciety, which you so much need. I fear Mrs. Dwight is not much benefited 
 Dy her voyage, so the last accounts appear ; though at first they thought 
 her better. 
 
 " The children are tolerably well, though not free from colds. 
 
 " Your ever affectionate 
 
 " G. W." 
 
 [TO MRS. TICKNOR, AT PHILADELPHIA.] 
 
 HOTTSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, February 4, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAR LADY : I am right glad to find a little place left for me in 
 Mr. "Wallenstein's letter, and to find it so flatteringly filled. I use the pres- 
 ent moment to acknowledge this favor, while Mr. McDuffie is making a 
 very warm speech, I hai dly know why or wherefore ; but it relates to the 
 rules of proceeding in electing a President next week, and he, being a 
 pretty ardent Jackson man, seems inclined to make a kind of Jackson
 
 234 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [_Ca. XI 
 
 speech. I told Mr. "Wallenstein to tell you that I should write you during 
 the first long speech and, depend upon it, the act of writing is, in such 
 cases or most of them, less onerous than the act of listening. The Hall of 
 Congress is an admirable situation to cultivate the powers of an organ 
 which has been generally too much neglected in its education; I mean the 
 ear. Now I have so disciplined this little member that, on being informed 
 that I am not particularly concerned to know what is said, and requested 
 to ' bring me no more reports,' it very faithfully performs its duty, and 
 leaves me quite at ease to pursue any vocation I may choose. The ' en- 
 closed petty spirits ' are left entirely undisturbed by what prevails with- 
 out. This is an admirable improvement on the old maxim, ' Hear with 
 both ears.' I hear with neither. 
 
 " Times have a good deal changed with me, my dear lady, since your 
 departure. The business of Congress has become more urgent the event 
 draws near the session is wearing off I begin to see Twme at the end of 
 no long prospect, and all these things create a little activity and bustle, 
 which serve, in some poor measure, to fill up such portions of time as I 
 usually passed in your house, while you remained here. 
 
 " I am glad to learn that you are entered so favorably into the society 
 of Philadelphia. I think you will find it very intelligent and agreeable ; 
 but am not afraid, nevertheless, that it will lead you to be dissatisfied with 
 a little peninsula running into Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 " Give my love to your husband. There seem to have been proceedings 
 about the college, which must interest him. I hope he is satisfied with 
 the result. Remember me also to Miss Gardiner. 
 
 " Yours most truly, 
 
 "D. WEBSTER. 
 
 " Mr. Sturgis says he had the pleasure of passing a very gratifying 
 hour at your room in Philadelphia. Let me have a letter from you before 
 you leave Philadelphia." 
 
 [TO MB. TICKNOE, AT PHILADELPHIA.] 
 
 February 4, 1825. 
 
 "I have only time to send love. W. has been a little unwell I 
 have not seen him for two days, but expect him this evening. I thought 
 of you all day yesterday, during the storm. I hope you were and are 
 well and safe. I should have felt less concern but for Mrs. Ticknor's cold. 
 " It is confidently believed that New England will give a President, 
 Kentucky concurrente. D. W." 
 
 [TO MB. TICKNOB, AT BOSTON.] 
 
 SENATE, Wednesday, 3 o'clock (February 11). 
 
 " MY DEAR SIB : I have been looking in vain for your promised letter. 
 Be assured, I am anxious to hear from you, and to know how yours and
 
 1825.] ELECTION OF MR. ADAMS. <J35 
 
 Mrs. Ticknor's health is. Pray find or make opportunity to give me a 
 ane. 
 
 " We have just returned from counting the votes and announcing the 
 election. General Jackson arrived here at nine this morning. I have not 
 seen him nor anybody that has seen him. 
 
 " With great love to Sirs. Ticknor, and in the hope of hearing from you, 
 
 " I am yours, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER. 
 " Mr. Quincy has not yet arrived." 
 
 The presidential election of 1825, which is referred to in the 
 last note, should not be passed over without giving at least a 
 brief account of Mr. Webster's relation to it. Of the four prin- 
 cipal candidates, General Jackson had 99 electoral votes, Mr. 
 Adams 84, Mr. Crawford 41, and Mr. Clay 37. Mr. Calhoun 
 had been chosen Vice-President by the electoral colleges, by a 
 very large majority. The election in the House being deter- 
 mined by the votes of States, and the choice being confined by 
 the Constitution to the three highest candidates on the list of 
 the electoral votes, Mr. Clay was not before the House; 'but it 
 soon became apparent that, if he and his friends were to give 
 their votes to Mr. Adams on the first ballot, the choice must lie 
 between Mr. Adams and General Jackson ; but, if they gave 
 their votes to Mr. Crawford, the final choice would be between 
 that gentleman and General Jackson. Mr. "Webster had no 
 strong personal preferences for Mr. Adams ; and, so far as there 
 were any remains of old party distinctions or connections, he 
 was not likely to favor Mr. Adams's election. As one who re- 
 spected the old Federal party and who had himself acted with 
 it, Mr. Webster might have remembered Mr. Adams's efforts to 
 bring it into disrepute ; nor was he, although a Representative 
 from Massachusetts, personally intimate with Mr. Adams. But 
 Mr. Adams had received the electoral votes of all the New- 
 England States, and Mr. Webster felt bound to give effect to 
 this expression of the popular voice in that region, so far as he 
 could consistently with his convictions of what the welfare of 
 the country required. Between Mr. Adams and General Jack- 
 son, moreover, he would have preferred the former, for the prin- 
 cipal claims of the latter on the office were those of a popular 
 military chieftain, a class of men from whom Mr. Webster was
 
 236 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XI. 
 
 always unwilling to select a President. But, of all the promi- 
 nent men then before the country, Mr. Webster would have 
 preferred Mr. Calhoun for the presidency, if he could have had 
 a free and unrestricted choice. He had a very high estimate 
 of Mr. Calhoun's abilities and patriotism, and there was then 
 no fundamental difference in their opinions on great constitu- 
 tional questions. But, in the present condition of things, Mr. 
 Calhoun could not become President, unless the office should 
 be devolved on him by the failure of the House to elect a Presi- 
 dent before the 4th day of March. The election was fixed for 
 the 9th of February. 
 
 Under these perplexing circumstances, Mr. "Webster con- 
 sulted his friends at home, and especially his brother, on whose 
 calm and solid judgment, in all things public or private, he 
 placed great reliance, as to what was proper to be done in two 
 or three contingencies. To his brother he stated the contin- 
 gencies thus : 
 
 1. " If on the first or any subsequent ballot Mr. Adams falls behind 
 Mr. Crawford, and remains so a day or two, shall we hold out to the 
 end of the chapter, or shall we vote for one of the highest ? 
 
 2. If for one of the highest, say Jackson and Crawford, for which ? 
 
 3. Is it advisable, under any circumstances, to hold out and leave the 
 chair to Mr. Calhoun ? 
 
 4. Would or would not New England prefer conferring the power on 
 Calhoun, to a choice of General Jackson ? " l 
 
 The advice which Mr. Webster received, and which entirely 
 concurred with his own judgment, was, that the votes of New 
 England ought to be given to Mr. Adams on the first ballot, 
 and thenceforward steadily, so long as there should be a reason- 
 able chance of his election. Mr. Adams was elected on the 
 first ballot. This result was fortunate for the country ; for, 
 although his election was followed by a charge of corrupt 
 coalition between Mr. Clay and himself, the evils and mischiefs 
 and heart-burnings of that unfounded accusation were not to be 
 compared to the dangers that would have ensued from a pro- 
 longation of the contest. Mr. Webster, who had no particular 
 connection with the interests of Mr. Adams or Mr. Clay, was, 
 of course, never involved in that charge. He never believed 
 
 1 Correspondence, i.
 
 1825.] COURSE OF MR. ADAMS. 237 
 
 that it liad any foundation, although he considered that some 
 of the steps taken by Mr. Clay in repelling it were not well 
 judged. 
 
 There was one interview, and I believe but one, between 
 Mr. Adams and Mr. "Webster, on the subject of this election, 
 which places in a very striking light the objects which Mr. 
 "Webster sought from Mr. Adams, in case of his election, and 
 the extent of the whole understanding between them respecting 
 Mr. Adams's course. Mr. "Webster desired to see an adminis- 
 tration of the Government that would not seek to revive or 
 perpetuate the old party distinctions by a distribution of offices 
 of trust among men called by one party denomination. He 
 thought that the welfare of the country required this abnegation 
 of party, and that it could be sufficiently signified by one clear 
 and distinct case of an appointment of a Federalist to office, 
 which would show that the having been of that party was not 
 to operate as a cause of exclusion. The result would be, that 
 the Administration would be left free to call to the public ser- 
 vice the best ability and the purest character. Entertaining 
 these opinions, Mr. "Webster, on the 3d of February, received a 
 letter from Mr. Warfield, one of the Representatives from Mary- 
 land, who had been a Federalist, and whose political friends at 
 home feared that Mr. Adams would build up again the old land- 
 marks of party distinction. Oppressed with the responsibility 
 of his position in his own delegation since his vote might 
 decide the vote of his State this gentleman desired Mr. "Web- 
 ster's opinion as to the mode in which he ought to act. Two 
 days afterward, Mr. "Webster returned him the following answer : 
 
 [MR. WEBSTER TO MR. WABFIELD.] 
 
 " HOUSE OF EEPBESEXTATITES, February 5, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have received your note of yesterday, and reflected 
 on its contents, and am very willing to answer it, as far as I can, without 
 incurring the danger of misleading you in the discharge of the delicate 
 and important trust belonging to your present situation. 
 
 " I must remark, in the first place, that my acquaintance with Mr. 
 Adams, although friendly and respectful, I hope, on both sides certainly 
 so on mine is not particular. I can say nothing, therefore, on the present 
 occasion by any authority derived from him.
 
 238 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XL 
 
 " Being in a situation, however, not altogether unlike your own, I have 
 naturally been anxious, like yourself, to form an opinion as to what would 
 be the course of his Administration in regard to the subject alluded to by 
 you. For myself, I am satisfied, and shall give him my vote cheerfully 
 and steadily. And I am ready to say that I should not do so if I did not 
 believe that he would administer the Government on liberal principles, 
 not excluding Federalists, as such, from his regard and confidence. 
 
 " I entertain this feeling, not because I wish to see any number of 
 offices, or any particular office, given to those who have been called Fed- 
 eralists ; nor because there is a number of such, or any one, that I par- 
 ticularly desire to see employed in the public service; but because the 
 time is come, in my opinion, when we have a right to know whether a 
 particular political name, in reference to former parties, is, of itself, to be 
 regarded as cause of exclusion. 
 
 " I wish to see nothing like a portioning, parcelling out, or distributing 
 offices of trust among men called by different denominations. Such a pro- 
 ceeding would be to acknowledge and. to regard the existence of distinc- 
 tions; whereas my wish is, that distinctions should be disregarded. 
 What I think just and reasonable to be expected is, that, by some one clear 
 and distinct case, it may be shown that the distinction above alluded to 
 does not operate as cause of exclusion. Some such case will doubtless 
 present itself, and may be embraced probably in proper time and manner, 
 if thought expedient to embrace it, without prejudice to the pretensions 
 or claims of individuals. The Government will then be left at liberty to 
 call to the public service the best ability and the purest character. It 
 will then be understood that the field is open, and that men are to stand 
 according to their individual merits. So far as this, I think it just to ex- 
 pect the next Administration to go. At any rate, it is natural to wish to 
 know what may probably be expected in this regard. 
 
 " "While with these sentiments, which, my dear sir, are as strong in my 
 breast as they can be in yours, I am willing to support Mr. Adams, and to 
 give him my vote and influence, I must again remind you that my judg- 
 ment is made up, not from any understanding or communication with him, 
 but from general considerations ; from what I think I know of his liberal 
 feelings, from his good sense and judgment, and from the force of circum- 
 stances. I assure you, very sincerely, that I have a full confidence that 
 Mr. Adams's Administration will be just and liberal toward Federalists as 
 toward others ; and I need not say that there is no individual who would 
 feel more pain than myself, if you and the rest of our friends should ever 
 find reason to doubt the solidity of the foundation on which this confi- 
 dence rests. 
 
 " NOTE. I read this, precisely as it now stands here, to Mr. Adams, on 
 the evening of February 4th. He said, when I had got through, that the 
 letter expressed his general sentiments, and such as he was willing to have 
 understood as his sentiments. There Avas one particular, however, on
 
 1825.] INTERNAL IMPRO YEMENIS. 239 
 
 which he wished to make a remark. The letter seemed to require him, or 
 expect him, to place one Federalist in the administration. Here I interrupt- 
 ed him, and told him he had misinterpreted the writer's meaning. That 
 the letter did not speak of those appointments called Cabinet appoint- 
 ments particularly, but of appointments generally. With that under- 
 standing he said the letter contained his opinions, and he should feel it 
 his duty, by some such appointment, to mark his desire of disregarding 
 party distinctions. He thought either of them, if elected, must necessarily 
 act liberally in this respect. In consequence of this conversation, I inter- 
 lined, in this letter, the words ' in proper time and manner.' I made no 
 other alteration in it." 
 
 What Mr. Webster's opinions were on the subject of inter- 
 nal improvements, and under what circumstances they were 
 formed in 1816, the reader has seen. At this session a very 
 interesting debate took place in the House upon a bill to pro- 
 vide for the continuation of the Cumberland road to Zanesville, 
 in Ohio ; a national road, commencing at Baltimore, and then 
 completed as far as Wheeling. The bill was opposed by Mr. 
 HcDuffie, of South Carolina, as partial and sectional. He con- 
 sidered that the true course for Congress was to wait .until a 
 general system could be devised and put into operation as a 
 whole, with reference to an expenditure graduated somewhat 
 according to the amount of national revenues paid in the par- 
 ticular region to be benefited. Mr. Webster took part in this 
 discussion, and said that, on this subject, as on all others, he 
 wished to bring to the discussion a right feeling, that is, a truly 
 national feeling. It mattered nothing to him who was to be 
 immediately benefited. Tros Tyriusve, whether an inhabit- 
 ant of the banks of the Merrimac of New Hampshire, or the 
 Merrimac of Missouri, he cared not ; provided he be a sub- 
 ject of our legislation, he has claims, said Mr. Webster, on my 
 impartial consideration. If he had been led, since the discus- 
 sion of 1816, to alter his opinion on any part of the general 
 subject then debated, it was that which respects an equal dis- 
 tribution of the public expenditures through the different parts 
 of the Union according to their population. He doubted ex- 
 tremely the propriety and even the power of Congress to carry 
 on legislation on the principle of balancing the local interests of 
 different sections of the country. If the business of legislation 
 had been committed to Congress at all, the whole subject is in its
 
 240 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XI. 
 
 power and under its discretion. . . . "WTien Congress legislates 
 at all, it must legislate for a whole, not for twenty-four parts. 
 The idea had been brought forward as being calculated to pre- 
 vent a merely local legislation ; but it was, in truth, itself a 
 local idea. Such a system would rest on a foundation essen- 
 tially vicious. When going into a system of improvement, the 
 House has simply to inquire, Where is improvement most 
 needed ? He cared not whether it was beyond the Alleghanies 
 or beyond the Missouri ; wherever it was most needed, there it 
 must first be made. 
 
 Mr. Webster further defended the present object, by con- 
 tending that the opening of these Western roads had a tendency 
 to settle the public lands, which he regarded as a national ob- 
 ject. This again called up Mr. McDuffie, who declared him- 
 self opposed to the policy of selling the public lands at the 
 minimum price of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, 
 when they were fairly worth fifteen dollars per acre, and would 
 sell at that price if the market were not glutted. This policy 
 had the tendency, he said, to drain off the population of the old 
 States, and it was accompanied by an artificial system of grind- 
 ing tariffs to counteract the effect of reducing the population of 
 those States. He drew a somewhat melancholy picture of the 
 impoverishment of the Southern States ; but, so far as that ap- 
 prehended decay depended upon a tariff policy, he did not 
 allude to the South Carolina origin of that policy. Mr. Web- 
 ster replied that he was not in favor of selling the public lands 
 at a price that would throw them into the hands of speculators, 
 but he desired to have them offered at rates that would encour- 
 age their settlement. He did not regard it as desirable to pre- 
 vent the laboring classes of the Eastern States from going to 
 any part of our territory where they could better their con- 
 dition. The emigration was the natural condition of a country 
 densely populated in one part and possessing in another a vast 
 tract of unsettled lands. The plan of the gentleman, he said, 
 went to reverse the order of Nature, vainly expecting to retain 
 men within a small and comparatively unproductive territory, 
 who have " all the world before them where to choose." For 
 his own part, he was in favor of letting population take its own 
 course ; he should experience no feeling of mortification if any
 
 1825.] WESTERN POPULARITY. 241 
 
 of his constituents liked better to settle on the Kansas or the 
 Arkansas, or the Lord knows where, within our territory ; let 
 them go and be happier if they could. " The gentleman says 
 our aggregate of wealth would have been greater if our popu- 
 lation had been restrained within the limits of the old States ; 
 but does he not consider population to be wealth ? And has not 
 this been increased by the settlement of a new and fertile coun- 
 try ? Such a country presents the most alluring of all prospects 
 to a young and laboring man ; it gives him a freehold it offers 
 to him weight and respectability in society ; and, above all, it 
 presents to him a prospect of a permanent provision for his 
 children. Sir, these are inducements which never were resisted, 
 and never will be ; and, were the whole extent of country filled 
 with population up to the Rocky Mountains, these inducements 
 would carry that population forward to the shores of the Pacific 
 Ocean. Sir, it is vain to talk ; individuals will seek their own 
 good, and not any artificial aggregate of the national wealth ; 
 a young, enterprising, and hardy agriculturist can conceive of 
 nothing better to him than plenty of good cheap land." 
 
 How Mr. Webster's course in this Congress was regarded in 
 the West, will appear from the following letter, addressed to 
 him by one of the Representatives of Ohio : 
 
 [FROM THE HON. JOSEPH VANCE.] 
 
 " UKBASA, March 29, 1825. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : From the interest you took during the last Congress 
 in favor of some of the important measures of the West, you have not 
 only a claim on the gratitude of this people, but are entitled to know the 
 political feelings of this section of the Union, both as it respects yourself 
 personally, as well as those growing out of the late presidential election. 
 
 " On my way home I passed through our State diagonally, and was 
 everywhere met by our citizens with that cordiality and good feeling 
 which spoke in a language not to be misunderstood that our stand in favor 
 of Mr. Adams was not only approved but received with a degree of en- 
 thusiasm unequalled in our State since its admission into the Union. 
 This enthusiasm and good feeling was no doubt as much the result of a 
 well-grounded confidence in our political institutions owing to the manner 
 in which the question was settled in the House of Representatives, as it 
 was to that of the elevation of the present incumbent to the chief-magis- 
 tracy of the nation. 
 
 " As it respects yourself, permit me to say, that with our people no man 
 17
 
 242 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XL 
 
 in this nation stands on more elevated ground, and so far from a wish to 
 proscribe any of the old Federal party, their paramount wish is, that tal- 
 ent, integrity, and worth should be the only passport to office, regardless ol 
 party names or sectional distinctions. 
 
 " In conclusion, permit me to say, that, among the many valued 
 friends I have made in Congress, none stands higher than yourself, and 
 that nothing would afford me more pleasure than a conscious ability tc 
 serve you in attaining under this government a standing equal to your 
 merit. 
 
 " Give my respects to friend Baylies, and accept for yourself the sincerr 
 regard of your friend, 
 
 "JOSEPH VANCE. 
 
 " Mr. Webster." 
 
 At this session, Mr. "Webster introduced and carried through 
 the House the Act for amending the criminal code of the 
 United States, which has sometimes been called by his name, 
 and which is now generally referred to as the " Crimes Act of 
 1825." The undertaking was a difficult one ; for it related to 
 a subject on which jealousy of Federal jurisdiction was quite 
 certain to be aroused. The criminal law of the United States 
 had remained substantially where it was left by the first Con- 
 gress that sat under the Constitution. It had very serious de- 
 fects and omissions ; yet these could not be supplied without 
 exciting much opposition. Mr. "Webster, by his address and 
 by the fulness of his learning and experience, succeeded in 
 overcoming that opposition, and the result was the establish- 
 ment of a criminal code for the United States, which forty 
 years of practical working have stamped as one of the great 
 monuments of criminal legislation. 
 
 o 
 
 The new Administration commenced on the 4th of March, 
 1825. Mr. Clay became Secretary of State ; Richard Rush, of 
 Pennsylvania, Secretary of the Treasury ; and James Barbour, 
 of Yirginia, Secretary of War. The following members of Mr. 
 Monroe's Cabinet remained in office : Mr. Southard, of New 
 Jersey, as Secretary of the Navy ; Mr. McLean, of Ohio, as Post- 
 master-General, and Mr. "Wirt as Attorney-General. Mr. 
 "Webster, who, as we have seen, sought nothing for himself or 
 any one else at the hands of the new President, anticipated 
 that this would be a liberal Administration, and considered that 
 .it was his true course to support it.
 
 1825.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. DENISON. 243 
 
 During the years 1824 and 1825, four young English states- 
 men the late Earl of Derby, then Mr. Stanley, Mr. John Evelyn 
 Denison, the present Speaker of the House of Commons, the 
 late Lord Wharncliffe, then Mr. Stuart "Wortley, and the late 
 Lord Taunton, then Mr. Labouchere travelled extensively in 
 this country, and were much in the society of Mr. "Webster and 
 Judge Story. From that period is to be dated a strong friend- 
 ship between Mr. Webster and Mr. Denison, which continued 
 through Mr. Webster's life. I avail myself of Mr. Denison's 
 permission, to print some portions of their correspondence : 
 
 [FKOM MB. 
 
 " XEW YORK, April 27, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAK SIK : We got here last night from our tour in Virginia, 
 which the long distances and bad roads made more of an undertaking 
 than we had anticipated. I write to you, as I promised, without a mo- 
 ment's loss of time, but it is to tell you that all our hopes of another 
 week with you at Boston are over. We have only eight days more on 
 these shores, and intend to sail by the British packet on the 5th. It is 
 not without great regret that I give up this last chance of seeing- you in 
 this country, and I certainly would have contrived it in some way if it 
 were not for the good assurances I have that we shall meet at no very distant 
 period in England, where I may pass much more tune, and many hours of 
 much more leisure in your company, than a hurried visit at Boston now 
 would allow me. Mr. Rufus King's appointment appears to have given 
 very general satisfaction, in which I heartily join, and, out of many reasons, 
 for none more than because I imagine it will fall in well with your views, 
 and further the prospects you once mentioned in a conversation to me. I 
 should be very glad to have this confirmed by you. I have written to our 
 most excellent Judge, 1 as he desired me when we parted at Philadelphia, 
 to tell him the day we sail, and how impossible it is for us to visit Salem 
 again, but I have insisted that this is not to be a solemn leave-taking, and 
 that the vision which now floats before my eyes, of our active and vigor- 
 ous friend surveying his robed, and ermined, and gouty brothers of West- 
 minster Hall, is to be realized. He is to see Lord Eldon on his wool- 
 sack, and we are to wander together through the aisles of Westminster 
 Abbey. 
 
 " I don't know what to expect about the continuance of the session of 
 Parliament after our arrival in England. They have done a great deal of 
 most important business ; but I do not regret my absence from England, or 
 think I could have spent one moment of my time better than in this coun- 
 try. You see we are verifying your predictions to Congress in April, '24, 
 
 1 Mr. Justice Storj.
 
 24:4 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XI. 
 
 as fast as we can reasonably be expected, by our policy at home ani 
 abroad. By the time you pay us a visit, Mr. Robinson will let us make 
 you tipsy on good French wine almost for nothing. The first branch of 
 Huskisson's new proposals for the regulation of colonial trade appears to 
 me the most important measure produced for many years, as well as the 
 most convincing proof of the real disposition of our Government. The 
 way in which the people of England appear to be conducting themselves 
 about the Catholics is still more important. I really believe that an effec- 
 tive cry of ' No Popery ' could hardly now be raised in the country. If it is 
 so, the mighty change can be attributed only to the diffusion of light and 
 knowledge among the people, and to the long and open discussion of the 
 question. The triumph of discussion will be greater in this case, than 
 even in the case of the emancipation of slaves. After this, Right and 
 Truth need never despair. 
 
 " I will not fail to write to you. You will direct me by your letters to 
 the subjects about which you feel the greatest interest. Wortley and La- 
 bouchere desire their best remembrances to Mrs. Webster and you. 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " With great truth and friendship, 
 
 " Most sincerely yours, 
 
 " J. EVELYN DENISON. 
 
 " I find an English road-book brought by accident among some others 
 with us. As it is the best we have, and a late and correct edition, I 
 thought you might like to have it. You may now travel from Liverpool 
 k> London with the same ease as you used to do from Hyde Park corner 
 to the Bank, and learn the names of all the country-seats by the way." 
 
 [TO MB. DENISON.] 
 
 " BOSTON, May 2, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAK SIE : I have received yours of the 27th of April, and most 
 sincerely regret that we shall not see you again among us before you leave 
 our continent. The good Judge will be inconsolable. He is now in 
 Maine, in the discharge of official duties, and will not, I fear, be home in 
 season to write you before your departure. You must try to keep our little 
 Boston alive in your recollections. It will not be disagreeable to you, 
 I hope, when you return to your own country, and to the midst of your 
 own associations there, to know that there are those on this side the 
 globe, wholly unknown to you a year ago, who entertain much regard for 
 your welfare. For me, I shall take care to keep myself in remembrance, I 
 shall contrive pretences to write you often, and I hope to hear from you 
 sometimes. 
 
 " Mr. King's appointment gives very general satisfaction ; I like 
 it very much. He is a gentleman of great worth and respectability, 
 a little too much advanced in life, perhaps, to be expected to remain
 
 1825.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. DENISON. 345 
 
 long in the situation. I think the President's selection fortunate on all 
 accounts. 
 
 " I assure you, my dear sir, it is my fixed intention to see England, 
 within two or three years. No disappointment, not connected with my 
 own health, or that of my family, can be allowed to prevent the accom- 
 plishment of this purpose. Your acquaintance and friendship form not 
 only an additional inducement, but an important reliance and resource, in 
 relation to such a visit. 
 
 " You will doubtless find Parliament still sitting, although many great 
 questions will be disposed of before you will be able to show yourselves at 
 Westminster. I have read the proceedings of the session thus far with 
 great interest, especially Mr. Robinson's speech, on bringing forward the 
 Budget, and Mr. Huskisson's two speeches, on the subject of the proposed 
 changes in the laws of trade. There appears to me to be, in each of these 
 gentlemen, so much clearsightedness, so much enlightened liberality, 
 united to so much general ability, as to fit them well to be leading min- 
 isters in your government at this most interesting period of the world. 
 I regard not only England, but all the civilized states, as greatly their 
 debtors, for having set an example of a policy so wise, and so beneficial, 
 in the intercourse of commercial states. Their success thus far has been 
 greater, I think, than even they themselves anticipated ; and I most sin- 
 cerely partake in the gratification it produces. 
 
 "I hope you will remember to send me any distinguished Parliament- 
 ary speeches that may happen to be separately published. I believe I 
 have not omitted this particular in the memorandum you were good 
 enough to take. I believe I shall not receive, except through your 
 agency, the volumes of Parliamentary Debates, of which you took a 
 note. On this subject, however, I will shortly write you, to your address 
 in London. 
 
 " I shall be very glad of the road-book you mentioned. If the present 
 rage continues, one will need no road-books ; when I arrive at Liverpool, I 
 expect to embark on a railway for London. 
 
 " I beg you to make my best remembrances to Mr. Wortley and Mr. 
 Labouchere. Mention me also to Colonel Dawson, if he be now with you. 
 I saw less of him here than I wished. When you meet Mr. Stanley in 
 England, be kind enough to remember my regards to him. I expect to 
 see a speech from him, yet, before the close of the session. Adieu, my 
 dear sir, and I pray you to be assured of my 
 
 " Faithful friendship and entire esteem. 
 
 WEBSTER. 
 
 " Mrs. Webster desires me to give her farewell to you and your friends, 
 Wortley and Labouchere. She wishes you fair winds, a prosperous voy- 
 age, and a happy meeting with your friends. 
 
 " If Mr. Stratford Canning should return to England, I beg you to 
 make acceptable to him my best regards."
 
 246 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XI 
 
 [FROM MB. DEIUSON.] 
 
 " NEW TOEK, Evening of the 4th (May\ 1825. 
 
 U MT DEAR SIR . I have just got your letter, and cannot refrain from 
 thanking you, and sending you a few more last words from this side the 
 water. I am much gratified by the assurances you give me that I shall not 
 be forgotten by some of your countrymen, in whose remembrances I shall 
 be very anxious and proud to have a place. This year of my life will bo 
 deeply engraven on my memory ; and the "strongest and deepest lines will 
 be those that record the hours spent in your company, and in that of our 
 good Judge and some of your townsmen I will take care of the Parlia- 
 mentary Debates, among your other orders. 
 
 " Wortley and I drove over this morning to Mr. Rufus King's, who had 
 desired to see us before we sailed. We found him in good health and 
 spirits. He told us that he did not look forward to a long stay ; that he 
 had hesitated much, before he accepted the appointment, and that nothing 
 but the strong and pressing language of Mr. Adams, and his own wish to 
 second the President's endeavors to adjust all points of difference between 
 the two countries, and to unite them, as far as in him lay, in one common 
 interest and in mutual good-will, would have induced him to undertake 
 the mission. No man is better fitted to bring about so desirable an event ; 
 and I am much mistaken if he will not find our Government readily and 
 cordially meet him in all his advances. 
 
 " Pray thank Mrs. Webster for her kind wishes, and give her mine for 
 the health and prosperity of all around her. 
 
 " Colonel Dawson joins us in best remembrances. Mr. Canning and 
 Stanley shall have your messages, and I know both will be proud of them. 
 
 " We sail to-morrow in the middle of the day. 
 
 " Yours with sincere friendship, 
 
 " J. EVELYN DENISON " 
 
 [TO MR. DENISON.] 
 
 BOSTON, June 6, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : You perceive that I do not intend to allow you time 
 to forget your Cisatlantic friends before you hear from some of us. I use 
 this opportunity the more cheerfully, as my friend Mr. Button, of this city, 
 goes by the same conveyance, and although I believe he has a letter to you 
 from your very good friend the Judge, and although I believe also you 
 saw him here, I must beg to solicit your attention and regard to him, if he 
 should happen to come where you are in England. He is a very respect- 
 able and worthy man. 
 
 " We all regretted here very much that you and your friends did not 
 come here to give us a parting look. Nevertheless, we have prayed for 
 prosperous gales, and an agreeable voyage for you all. For myself, I have 
 been very quietly at home, since I returned from Washington, but th
 
 825.] CORRESPONDENCE. 24? 
 
 Judge and myself are thinking of making an excursion, to commence in 
 the course of this month, to Niagara. Since the adjournment of Con- 
 gress we have little political news. Mr. Clay is gone to Kentucky, and ex- 
 pects, I believe, to be well received by his friends, notwithstanding some 
 complaints, probably not general, for the support which he gave to the 
 President. We look for Mr. Rush next month. Mr. King has already 
 sailed to take his place. We have hopes of seeing Mr. Addington so far 
 North as this place during the summer. Wallenstein is already at New 
 York. I believe Mr. Hopkinson and Mr. Walsh intend us a visit this 
 month. 
 
 " When you shall have composed yourself, my dear sir, and settled 
 your brain, disturbed as it must be by such a whirl as you have made 
 round so great a part of our continent, I shall hope to hear from you. 
 We have accounts from London to April 21st. Mr. Canning's last speech 
 on the Catholic question is, I think, a most admirable performance. Some 
 men, and he seems to be one of them, show great powers under the pres- 
 sure of great responsibility. Certain it is, that his late parliamentary 
 efforts far exceed any thing which is to be found of his at an earlier date. 
 I go far enough back, of course, to include among his great efforts his 
 speech at Liverpool. 
 
 " I am for the Catholic emancipation ; but I should think, nevertheless, 
 that its friends overrate its utility and importance by about as much as 
 its enemies overrate its mischief and danger. You must excuse this 
 expression of opinion on a matter, of the merits of which I know so 
 little. If the leading speeches on this (and other) subjects should be 
 published in pamphlet form, I should be very glad to have them. I 
 have made an arrangement with Mr. Burdett, bookseller of this place, by 
 which his correspondents in London will receive, pay for, and transmit 
 hither any books which you may procure or order for me. The names and 
 address of these correspondents are, Messrs. Peter, William, and George 
 Wynne, stationers, Paternoster Row. When you took my memoranda, it 
 was left a little doubtful whether I should rely on you to be able to com- 
 plete my set of Parliamentary Debates. My other hope has failed, and I 
 now wish you to take the trouble to order what will complete my set, ac- 
 cording to the minutes taken at Washington. I think of nothing in par- 
 ticular to be added to the list, with which I troubled you, but will thank 
 you to exercise a pretty liberal discretion, in regard to such occasional 
 publications, especially in the department of politics, as you think may in- 
 terest me. I would like well enough to see Sir Egerton Brydges's book. 
 The books, however, which I mean to trouble you to obtain, are only such 
 as I should hardly be able to get otherwise, and therefore I shall not at 
 present swell the list. 
 
 " I pray you to remember me to your fellow-travellers in America. We 
 cherish the hope that you sometimes think of us. Mrs. Webster joins me 
 in remembrance and regard to you. I shall be likely to trouble you often, 
 and trust you will let us know of your safe arrival. I shall expect, of
 
 248 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XI. 
 
 course, that if any friend of yours shall be induced to visit America, you 
 will allow me to be known to him. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, yours very truly and sincerely, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 An association for the erection of a monument to commem- 
 orate the battle of Bunker Hill had been for some time in 
 existence in Boston and its neighborhood, of which Mr. Web- 
 ster was now president. As the fiftieth anniversary of the 
 battle approached the 17th of June, 1825 it was determined 
 that the corner-stone of the monument should be laid on that 
 day, with appropriate ceremonies ; and Mr. "Webster was unani- 
 mously requested by his fellow-trustees to deliver the address. 
 General Lafayette was then making that tour through the 
 United States which became, in its progress, the most remark- 
 able ovation ever given in this country to any man, and the 
 arrangements of his journey were so made as to admit of his 
 being present on this occasion. Among the reminiscences fur- 
 nished to me by Mr. Ticknor, I find the following description 
 of the scene, the orator, and the address : 
 
 " June 17, 1825. Mr. Webster delivered the oration on laying the corner- 
 stone of the Bunker Hill Monument. He was president of the association, 
 and, as such, presided at the meeting of the trustees when he was ap- 
 pointed. On the evening when he was chosen, being present as one of the 
 trustees, he took me aside, and asked me if I supposed all the trustees 
 would prefer to have him deliver the address. I told him I thought there 
 was no difference of opinion on the point. He then asked if I thought it 
 would be well for him to accept, doubting whether he were well fitted for 
 it, or whether the president of the society should be its orator. I told him 
 that I thought he would fulfil public expectation better than any one else ; 
 and that I thought his place rather called on him to perform the duty than 
 otherwise. 
 
 " He often talked with me of the work afterward, and seemed quite 
 anxious about it, especially after it was decided that General Lafayette 
 could be present. A few days before he delivered it, he read it over to 
 me. The magnificent opening gave him much concern ; so did the 
 address to Lafayette ; but about that to the ^Revolutionary soldiers, and 
 the survivors of the battle, he said that he felt as if he knew how to talk 
 to such men, for that his father, and many of his father's friends, whom he 
 had known, had been among them. He said he had known General 
 Stark, and that the last time he saw him was in a tavern, in Concord, not 
 long before he died, when he said to him : ' Daniel, your face is prettj
 
 1826.] FIEST BUNKER-HILL ADDRESS. 249 
 
 olack, but it isn't so black as your father's was with gunpowder at 
 the Bennington fight.' He added, that it seemed to him as if he was 
 peculiarly familiar with those men and those times. 
 
 " The day of the 17th was yery propitious for laying the corner-stone. 
 The occasion and the presence of General Lafayette had brought together 
 immense crowds of people from all parts of the country. The procession 
 was formed at the State-House, in Boston, and, just as it moved, an east- 
 erly breeze came up, that tempered the air delightfully through the rest 
 of the day. "We arrived in good season on the hill, where more than 
 twenty thousand people were collected. The platform from which Mr. 
 Webster spoke was at the bottom, and temporary seats for several thou- 
 sand persons were arranged on the rising hill-side, while, near the brow 
 above, stood a dense black mass, most of whom could hear what was said. 
 His voice was very clear and full, and his manner very commanding. Once, 
 owing to the great press, some of the seats and barriers gave way, and 
 there was a moment of considerable confusion, notwithstanding the efforts 
 of those whose duty it was to preserve order. One of these gentlemen 
 said to Mr. Webster: 'It is impossible, sir, to restore order.' Mr. Webster 
 replied with a good deal of severity : ' Nothing is impossible, sir ; let it be 
 done.' Another effort was made, and silence was obtained. 1 
 
 " The passage about the rising of the monument and the address to 
 the survivors of the battle were the most effective parts of the oration. 
 The shouts at the first were prolonged until it seemed as if they would not 
 stop ; the address brought tears into the eyes of many, and bowed down 
 the heads of the veterans themselves to conceal their emotion. 
 
 " When it was all over, Governor Barbour, of Virginia, said to me : ' If 
 that address had been delivered in Virginia, I should say that the person 
 who made it was sure of the first prize in the national lottery.' 
 
 " The dinner, under the great awning on the neighboring hill, was a 
 scene of much confusion, and, although Mr. Webster, General Lafayette, 
 and some other persons gave toasts, very little was heard of what they said. 
 
 1 I was present (then a boy), in the be called the quantity of his voice. He 
 outskirts of that vast audience, and well had an unusual capacity of chest and 
 remember that, when order was re- vocal organs, and hence his voice was 
 stored, after the confusion described one of extraordinary volume. It was, 
 by Mr. Ticknor, Mr. Webster's clarion moreover, so entirely under his control, 
 voice was distinctly heard at the spot when his vocal organs were in full play, 
 where I stood. His voice, in public that it never broke, however high it 
 speaking, was a very peculiar one. might rise in the scale of its natural 
 Whether speaking in the open air, or compass, or whatever might be the 
 under a roof, he could make himself state of his emotions. At the same 
 heard to a great distance, apparently time, there was a peculiarity about his 
 without much effort, and without being organs of speech that I have heard him 
 unpleasantly loud to those who were describe as a momentary paralysis. It 
 near him. This was partly due to the sometimes happened to him, on rising to 
 quality of his voice, which was naturally speak suddenly, that they utterly re- 
 pitched at a high key, but which was fused to perform their office until moist- 
 tempered by such a richness of tone ened by a slight draught of water. As 
 that it was never in the smallest degree soon as this was done, the inability 
 shrill. It was due also to what might vanished, and did not return upon him.
 
 ^50 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca XI 
 
 In the evening tnere was a grand reception at Mr. Webster's, in Summer 
 Street, Colonel Thorndike, who occupied thei adjoining house, kindly cutting 
 a door to connect Mr. Webster's house and his own, so that the crowd might 
 find room. It was not like the reception immediately after his address at 
 Plymouth, when the spontaneousness with which people gathered round 
 him, and his freedom from all care and responsibility, filled him with such 
 a natural and beautiful excitement. He was on this occasion the host, 
 dignified and agreeable, but nothing more. 
 
 " The address was immediately published. He placed it at the dispo- 
 sition of the Bunker-Hill Monument Association, and I sold the copyright 
 to Billiard & Gray for three hundred dollars. He desired me, as he was 
 going directly to Niagara with Mrs. Webster, Judge and Mrs. Story, and 
 others, to superintend the publication. The day before he went away, he 
 came to see me at my house, about a passage he wanted to alter ; he took 
 the proof-sheet, and went to work, but did not satisfy himself with what 
 he wrote. He grew very impatient ; he thought he could do better by dic- 
 tating ; and walked about the room uneasily, reading the proof-sheet and his 
 changes over and over again, dictating new matter, which satisfied him no 
 better. At last I suggested something as a substitute, and he desired me 
 to put it in writing, throwing himself upon the sofa in a sort of despair. I 
 did as he desired. It took perhaps five minutes, and, when I turned round 
 to read what I had written, I found him fast asleep ; a change not surpris- 
 ing in him, for he could, almost at any time, dismiss any subject, however 
 exciting, and compose himself to sleep. When I waked him, he seemed 
 much relieved to find the matter arranged ; and I did not see him again 
 till he returned from Niagara, long before which time the country was 
 ringing with the power of the oration. From Worcester, however, hp 
 wrote me a note, still troubled about words and phrases." l 
 
 Mr. Fletcher "Webster lias related an amusing anecdote of 
 the place where the first Bunker-Hill Oration was chiefly com- 
 posed before it was committed to paper. By an extract from 
 Mr. "Webster's Autobiography, contained in a previous chapter 
 of this volume, the reader has learned that he was much in the 
 habit of preparing formal speeches in the solitudes of Nature. 
 It seems that the celebrated passage, in which he addressed the 
 surviving veterans of Bunker Hill, was first heard by the trout 
 in Marshpee Brook. Mr. Fletcher Webster says : 
 
 " The Marshpee River flows from a large lake, called Wakeby Pond, 
 in Barnstable County, into the ocean on the southeast coast of Massa- 
 
 1 The passage which troubled him credit enough to Prescott, and, even as 
 
 was that relating to the position of it was altered and printed, it did not 
 
 Colonel Prescott in the battle. As he wholly satisfy some persons, who were 
 
 originally spoke it, he did not give supposed to know much about the battle.
 
 1825.] FIRST BUNKER-HILL ADDRESS. 251 
 
 ehusetta. It is a, short and rapid stream, running in a deep valley, or 
 rather ravine, with high, precipitous sides, covered with a thick growth 
 of small pines, and various kinds of brushwood and shrubs. 
 
 " The only method of fishing it, is by wading along the middle, and 
 throwing under the banks on either side, it being unapproachable other- 
 wise, owing to the trees and underbrush. 
 
 ' It was, as he states in his Autobiography, while middle-deep in this 
 stream, that Mr. Webster composed a great portion of his first Bunker- 
 Hill Address. He had taken along with him that well-known angler, 
 John Denison, usually called John Trout, and myself. I followed him 
 along the stream, fishing the holes and bends which he left for me ; but, 
 after a while, I began to notice that he was not so attentive to his sport, 
 or so earnest as usual. 
 
 " He would let his line run carelessly down the stream, or hold his rod 
 still while his hook was not even touching the water ; omitted trying the 
 best places under the projecting roots of the pines ; and seemed, indeed, 
 quite abstracted and uninterested in his amusement. 
 
 " This, of course, caused me a good deal of wonder, and, after calling 
 his attention once or twice to his hook hanging on a twig, or caught in 
 the long grass of the river, and finding that, after a moment's attention, 
 he relapsed again into his indifference, I quietly walked up near him, and 
 watched. He seemed to be gazing at the overhanging trees, and presently 
 advancing one foot, and extending his right hand, he commenced to 
 speak : ' Venerable men,' etc., etc. He afterward frequently referred to 
 this circumstance, as he does in the above letter." * 
 
 From a brief note now before me, addressed by Mr. Web- 
 ster to Mr. Ticknor, on the day on which he completed the 
 writing of this address, it appears that he was not well satisfied 
 with it, and quite misjudged the effect that it was likely to 
 produce : 
 
 " I did the deed this morning, i. e., I finished my speech ; and I am 
 pretty well persuaded it is a speech that will finish me, as far as reputa- 
 tion is concerned. There is no more tone in it than in the weather in 
 which it has been written ; it is ' perpetual dissolution and thaw.' " 
 
 It would be a work of supererogation if I were to enter 
 upon extended criticisms of Mr. Webster's productions, as they 
 successively arise in the course of his history ; and certainly it 
 is unnecessary for me to endeavor to guide the judgment or 
 mstruct the taste of the reader in respect to this one. He him- 
 self, as perhaps I have already said, was always inclined to 
 
 1 Correspondence, ii., 257, note.
 
 252 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XI. 
 
 regard the Plymouth Discourse as the best of his efforts of this 
 class. In point of breadth, and of the reach to which he car- 
 ried the subject, and in the massiveness of its colossal propor- 
 tions, the Plymouth Discourse may stand at the head of his 
 orations. But the thrilling eloquence of the address to the old 
 soldiers of Bunker Hill, and of the apostrophe to Warren, and 
 the superb reservation of eulogy with which he spoke of and to 
 General Lafayette " reluctant to grant our highest and last 
 honors to the living, honors we would gladly hold yet back 
 from the little remnant of the immortal band " were perhaps 
 unequalled, surely never surpassed by him on any other occa- 
 sion. The consummate skill of composition and delivery, which 
 afterward gave to a supposititious speech of John Adams all 
 the effect of a real utterance of that patriot, in the eulogy at 
 Faneuil Hall, was an exhibition of power of quite another 
 kind. 
 
 The illustrations given by Mr. Ticknor of Mr. "Webster's 
 literary care in respect to this class of his public efforts call for 
 some further remark concerning his habits in this respect. He 
 would sometimes make an important speech in Congress or in 
 court, and pay no attention to the dress in which it might be 
 laid before the world ; insomuch that his friends, as we have 
 seen, often considered him careless about his reputation as a 
 speaker. But, with these formal orations, which he regarded 
 as coming within the domain of scholarship, and on which he 
 was conscious that his fame as an orator was, in part, to rest 
 with present and future generations, he was extremely careful, 
 as they were passing through the press. He would correct 
 them with a severity of taste that was far more rigorous than 
 any standard that the public was likely to apply to them ; and, 
 when he failed to satisfy himself, he would resort to the aid of 
 others. The late Mr. Thomas Kemper Davis, a son of one of 
 his intimate friends, and a good scholar himself, was a student- 
 at-law, in Mr. Webster's office, at the time when he delivered 
 his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. He has told me that, on 
 the morning after its delivery, Mr. Webster entered the office, 
 and threw down the manuscript before him, with the request : 
 " There, Tom, please to take that discourse, and weed out the 
 Latin words." Such was his love of the Anglo-Saxon element
 
 1825.] CAKE OF HIS STYLE. 253 
 
 in our language, that he preferred to avoid a word of Latin 
 origin, if he could do so without impoverishing his style. At 
 the same time, he was a Latin scholar, and a constant reader 
 of the Latin classics. 
 
 There are those who may be inclined to regard this trouble 
 about words and phrases as something a little beneath a great 
 statesman ; and, perhaps, as evincing less of the practical, and 
 of what is sometimes affectedly called the " business " charac- 
 ter of mind, than has been displayed by other eminent men, 
 who have taken, or have been supposed to take, no thought of 
 such refinements. But there are several obvious answers to 
 this kind of cavil, at least when it is applied to Mr. Webster. 
 In the first place, if a thing is to be done, whoever is to do it, 
 it is better to have it done well than ill, in point of manner as 
 well as of substance. In the next place, a man who occupies a 
 very conspicuous public position, is bound to look farther than 
 a merely selfish regard for his own reputation might lead him. 
 The effect of his example on the culture of his time and country 
 is to be considered, in matters of style, as well as in the 
 sentiments that he speaks or writes. Public speaking, in this 
 country, has never been so pure and correct as to make it 
 unimportant whether the best models are or are not found 
 in the performances of those who are regarded as the ablest 
 thinkers and most eloquent speakers of their time. In the 
 third place, demonstrative oratory, in a cultivated age, is one 
 of the departments of letters in which a correct and carefully- 
 polished style, or the want of it, is especially conspicuous. 
 Finally, in the case of Mr. Webster, no one, who is conversant 
 with what he could do and did, as a statesman, a legislator, 
 and a lawyer, will be inclined to rate his business capacities 
 the lower, because he was nice and long in the correction of 
 discourses that were to live after him, and to be read with 
 delight by the lettered and the unlettered in periods very 
 remote from his own. Instead of contracting, it should en- 
 large our estimate of his powers, to know that, while he was 
 capable of moving, or convincing, or instructing men to a 
 degree in which he was not excelled, certainly, by any of 
 his contemporaries, he was not indifferent to the language 
 in which he clothed his thoughts. One great secret of
 
 254 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XL 
 
 h 
 
 the directness with, which he reached the minds of men lay in 
 the simplicity and purity of his style ; a simplicity that was 
 the result of the clearness and vigor of his thought, and a 
 purity that was the result of a highly-cultivated and disci 
 plined taste. 
 
 Mr. Ticlmor observes that, long before Mr. Webster's re- 
 turn from Niagara, the country was ringing with the power of 
 the Bunker -Hill Oration. It was no less rapidly circulated on 
 the Continent of Europe. General Lafayette wrote to Mr. 
 Webster from La Grange : " Your Bunker Hill has been 
 translated in French and other languages, to the very great 
 profit of European readers. My gallant and eloquent friend, 
 Foy, has lived long enough to enjoy it." 1 
 
 The journey to Niagara, mentioned by Mr. Ticknor, oc- 
 cupied the remaining portion of June and nearly the whole of 
 July. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Webster, Judge 
 and Mrs. Story, and Miss Buckminster, afterward Mrs. Lee. 
 Forty-five years ago, when this tour was undertaken, there 
 was, of course, not a single mile of railway between Boston 
 and Niagara. Mr. Webster and his friends travelled in the 
 coaches of that period, and in the passenger-boats of the Erie 
 Canal, which, saving their slowness, were not a disagreeable 
 mode of locomotion. At Albany, Mr. Webster and Judge 
 Story were invited to meet General Lafayette at a public 
 dinner, given to him in the capitol ; and, in the evening, the 
 whole party attended the theatre, where the General was pres- 
 ent, and remained until he had taken his leave to go on board 
 a steamer, and descend the river. 8 
 
 The letters of Mr. Webster, written from Niagara to his 
 friends at home, are nearly all embraced in the first volume of 
 his printed correspondence. They were chiefly addressed to 
 Mrs. George Blake, to whom he endeavored to impart as 
 vivid a description of that sublime spectacle as words can 
 convey. It was the first time he ever looked upon it. The 
 following passage, in one of his letters to Mrs. Blake, may be 
 quoted here, as one of the best specimens of his manner of 
 describing a scene which has awakened similar emotions in 
 all thoughtful minds that have beheld it, while it has per- 
 
 1 Correspondence, i., 400. s Life of Judge Story, i., 455
 
 1825. J VISIT TO NIAGARA. 255 
 
 haps rarely touched such a power of expressing the feelings 
 that it excites : l 
 
 " We went this afternoon a little lower down the river than the upper 
 staircase, almost, indeed, down to the ferry, and, getting out on a rock, in 
 the edge of the river, we thought the view of the whole falls the best we 
 had obtained. If, at the bottom of the staircase, instead of descending 
 farther, we choose to turn to the right, and go up the stream, we soon get 
 to the foot of the fall, and approach the edge of the falling mass. It is 
 easy to go in behind for a little distance between the falling water and the 
 rock over which it is precipitated ; this cannot be done, however, without 
 being entirely wet. From within this cavern there issues a wind, occa- 
 sionally very strong, and bringing with it such showers and torrents of 
 spray, that we are soon as wet as if we had come over the Falls with the 
 water. As near to the fall, in this place, as you can well come, is perhaps 
 the spot on which the mind ia most deeply impressed with the whole 
 scene. Over our heads hangs a fearful rock, projecting out like an unsup- 
 ported piazza. Before us is a hurly-burly of waters, too deep to be 
 fathomed, too irregular to be described, shrouded in too much mist to 
 be clearly seen. Water, vapor, foam, and the atmosphere, are all mixed up 
 together in sublime confusion. By our side, down comes this world of 
 green and white waters, and pours into the invisible abyss. A steady, un- 
 varying, low-toned roar thunders incessantly upon our ears ; as we look 
 up, we think some sudden disaster has opened the seas, and that all their 
 floods are coming down upon us at once ; but we soon recollect that what 
 we see is not a sudden or violent exhibition, but the permanent and uni- 
 form character of the object which we contemplate. There the grand 
 spectacle has stood for centuries, from the creation even, as far as we 
 know, without change. From the beginning it has shaken, as it now 
 does, the earth and the air ; and its unvarying thunder existed before 
 there were human ears to hear it. Reflections like these, on the duration 
 and permanency oi this grand object, naturally arise, and contribute much 
 to the deep feeling which the whole scene produces. We cannot help 
 being struck with a sense of the insignificance of man and all his works 
 compared with what is before us : 
 
 ' Lo ! where it comes like an eternity, 
 As if to sweep down all things in its track I '" a 
 
 After his return from Niagara, Mr. "Webster passed the 
 remainder of the summer and a portion of the autumn (1825) 
 at Sandwich, on Cape Cod. 
 
 1 In the Life of Judge Story is a its incidents more minutely than those 
 series of very interesting letters, written of Mr. Webster, 
 by him on this journey, which describe * Correspondence, i., 389.
 
 256 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. X1L 
 
 OHAPTEE XII. 
 1825-1826. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE AMENDMENT OF THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM SPEECH 
 ON THE CONGRESS OF PANAMA EULOGY ON ADAMS AND JEF- 
 FERSON REELECTED TO CONGRESS. 
 
 ME. WEBSTER arrived in Washington, to attend the first 
 session of the Nineteenth Congress, before the 1st of 
 December, 1825, with a great stock of health and strength, 
 which he had gained at Niagara and at Sandwich. Mrs. Web- 
 ster and the children, Daniel, Julia, and Edward, were all with 
 him. Before entering upon the business of the session, I quote 
 some portions of his correspondence, extending through this 
 winter, and I add to it a letter written by Mrs. Webster, because 
 it will give my readers a pleasing impression of that cultivated 
 and gentle lady, and because it is the only production of her 
 pen among the papers before me. 1 
 
 [MRS. WEBSTER TO MRS. TICKNOR.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, December 24, 1825. 
 
 " I am unwilling a single day should pass, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, with- 
 out telling you how much I feel indebted by the kind interest you take in 
 our welfare. It is indeed pleasant to feel assured that, though absent, we 
 are still remembered, and I have the great happiness of telling you we are 
 all well. We had a very good journey ; having neither heroes nor heroines, 
 no incident worth relating occurred. Julia took a severe cold in the re- 
 nowned city of New York, which, added to the fatigue of the journey, 
 
 1 The letters of Mrs. Webster, quoted first volume of Mr. Webster's corre- 
 in a previous chapter, were printed in the spondence.
 
 1826.] CORRESPONDENCE. 257 
 
 made her look quite ill. I was very unhappy for a time ; but she soon began 
 to mend, and is now very well. Mr. Webster is in very good health. He 
 got a headache yesterday in consequence of his exertions to put out the 
 fire which was discovered in the library of the capitol the night before. 
 As the newspapers, I see, made ' honorable ' mention of him, together with 
 the fire, I need say little about it. 
 
 " Washington is the same as when you were here. I see very little or 
 indeed no change. There are, however, some changes in the inhabitants, 
 and some have changed places all else appears precisely the same. 
 
 " Mrs. Adams looks well in her new station, and the President now and 
 then sheds a tear, which looks benign. 1 Things are under much better 
 regulation in the palace than formerly. There is a little of Northern com- 
 fort. Instead of shivering and shaking in that immense cold saloon, we 
 were shown into a good, warm parlor, with a nice little white damsel to 
 take care of our coats, etc. I said there were no changes in the appearance 
 of things here ; there have been several new houses, which ought not to be 
 passed over, but the distances are so immense they are hardly perceptible. 
 The furniture at the palace below-stairs is precisely as it was. I believe 
 all the appropriations have been confined to the second story. There are 
 many things below that want renewing. I wish I could send you an in- 
 ventory of the furniture as it was when Mrs. Adams came into possession 
 it's a curiosity. ., 
 
 " Mr. Wallenstein I do not see so often as I should like to. His visits 
 unfortunately happen, most of them, when I am out. I saw him, however, 
 yesterday and the evening before ; he was in fine spirits, and very amusing 
 with his remarks upon the ladies. I shall have great pleasure in present- 
 ing him your kind remembrances. My husband, I am sure, will be very 
 happy in giving you his opinion of the President's message, or any thing 
 else which may serve as an apology for writing you. I have much duty to 
 perform in the way of visits this morning, which I must beg you will accept 
 as an apology for this hasty letter. Pray remember me very affectionately 
 to your husband, and give much love and a kiss to little Anna. And 
 believe me very truly and affectionately yours, 
 
 " G. WEBSTER." 
 
 [MR. WEBSTER TO MR. TICKNOR.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, January 8, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : It is a poor return for your kindness to remain so 
 long dumb. Your letter has stood up here before me these three weeks, 
 like another conscience, giving me a rebuke ever and anon. I had thought 
 that for the first month of the session I should have much leisure, and had 
 meditated divers great things. But I have found some small matter or 
 
 1 Mr. Adams was subject to an affec- occasionally had the appearance of weep- 
 tion of the lachrymal duct, and hence he ing. 
 18
 
 258 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XII 
 
 other forever in the way. I stay at home to-day while my wife is gone to 
 hear ' t John, Bishop of Charleston,' preach in the capitol, that I may have 
 time to write to Mr. Denison (England), and yourself, and some othei 
 friends in the United States. 
 
 "Pretty near the whole of Washington is reflected in ' Gales and 
 Seaton ; ' so that there is not much to talk about out of the newspapers. 
 Mr. Adams's mission to Panama is opposed in the Senate, and will be in 
 the House, when the money is asked for. It is not unlikely it may be the 
 first measure which shall assemble the scattered materials of opposition. 
 But I entertain no doubt about the result. From what I learn of the 
 causes which led to Mr. Adams's agreement to the proposal, I am con- 
 vinced he acted right ; and, in addition to that, the popular topics lie on 
 that side. 
 
 " Mr. Clay appears to get on very well in the discharge of his duties. 
 I believe the whole diplomatic corps entertain much respect for him, and 
 what I have seen of his diplomatic correspondence shows great cleverness. 
 
 "I am greatly pleased with your friend Mr. Vaughan. 1 He has been 
 very civil to me, for which I have to thank you. He speaks of you much, 
 and is very desirous to see you. What has continued to puzzle him, he 
 says, is how you could contrive, in so short a time, to master so much 
 Spanish literature. I find he is brother of Mr. Sergeant Vaughan, one of 
 the leading lawyers in England, whose bar speeches Judge Story and I 
 have been reading (like the rest of our brethren) any time these twenty 
 years. The Judge will be pleased with Mr. Vaughan the more, as he is 
 thus collaterally connected with the law. We have a Dutch minister hi 
 the person of Mr. Huygens, apparently a respectable man ; and in other 
 respects the corps remains much as it was. 
 
 "In the way of private affairs, I believe you must rely on my wife for a 
 knowledge of what little there is stirring. The drawing-room is agreed 
 by all to have received great improvement. When I was there it was 
 absolutely warm, within" a very few degrees, to the point of comfort. I 
 even saw gentlemen walking in the great hall of entrance, with apparent 
 Impunity, without their great-coats on ! (This is for Mrs. Ticknor.) We 
 have even dined at the White House a very good dinner and a very good 
 tune. But not liking large dinner-parties at all, I think they are hardly 
 better for having ladies. It is a solemn time, when we are at a dinner- 
 table, where numbers prevent us from being social, and politeness forbids 
 us to be noisy. On the whole, however, the domestic presidential arrange- 
 ments are approved. (For Mrs. Ticknor.) 
 
 " We had a discourse yesterday from Dr. Watkyns, of the Columbian 
 Institute. It was, I thought, a very creditable performance, and will 
 doubtless be printed. 
 
 1 The English minister at Washing- Wellesley, afterward Lord Cowley, at 
 
 ton. Mr Tjcknor knew Mr. Vaughan in whose house they constantly met during 
 
 Madrid m 1818, where that gentleman that summer. He had recently arrived 
 
 was secretary of embassy to Sir Charles in Washington.
 
 1826.] CORRESPONDENCE. 359 
 
 " When you see the Judge, tell him I am in a peck of troubles for want 
 of his promised letter. 
 
 "Adieu ! Have you had any more fires ? With my love to Mrs. T., 
 '* Tours truly, D. W." 
 
 [SCR. WEBSTEK TO MB. TICKNOE.] 
 
 u WASHINGTON, March 1, 1826. 
 
 " MY DEAK Sra : I owe you for two very kind letters ; and, although 1 
 do not pay the debt, it is but fair to acknowledge it. To begin with 
 affairs: I immediately called at the War Department, and suggested an 
 idea about West Point. 1 It was received not only kindly but with much 
 apparent satisfaction and pleasure. As great men are apt to have short 
 memories, I have written a note on the subject, addressed to the Secretary, 
 which will go on file, of course, and will recall the matter to his mind at 
 the proper time. I already envy you and your wife the pleasure of Catskill. 
 
 " Our Philadelphia matter remains as when I wrote you last ; all being, 
 I believe, quiet and gratified. 
 
 " Judge Story was sick on his way and is again a little unwell here. 
 But his present illness is only a little sick headache ; one of the ways, per- 
 haps, in which the great enemy influenza makes his attacks. Wallenstein 
 is mourning according to law, and as well and happy as a man can^be who 
 belongs to an empire that has so suddenly lost a pretty good head and got 
 another rather doubtful one. 4 I speak, however, of those only in this 
 empire whose honors, or whose bread, depend on this same head of the 
 empire ; for, as to the masses, I suppose they care not whose head is lost, 
 so it be not their own. When quite a boy I remember reading some verses 
 of- a song, which had some sense though not much poetry. I have looked 
 for them often since in vain. Their moral is as applicable to emperors as 
 others, more striking of course in the case of the great than of the small. 
 I can recall only these few doggerel lines : 
 
 " ' When you and I are dead and gone, 
 This busy world will still jog on, 
 And laugh and sing, and be as hearty, 
 As if we still were of the party.' 
 
 1 Mr. Ticknor had written to Mr. if the Secretary of War chooses to ask 
 Webster as follows : " And apropos of me to go as a visitor, I should be glad 
 this, I want to see the establishment at of it, because I can in this way get more 
 West Point. Thayer, the superintendent, of the practical details and information 
 was my classmate, and this makes it that will be useful at Cambridge, and be- 
 more interesting to me. In 1822, 1 was sides get it in a more agreeable way. At 
 asked to go as a visitor ; but it was im- any rate, I think I shall be there, whether 
 possible for me, and I declined. Last the secretary sends me his compliments 
 winter Mr. Calhoun asked me again ; but or not, and Thayer will, perhaps, be quite 
 I foresaw what would be the situation of as glad to see me as if I were an official 
 my family, and again declined. Next visitor." 
 
 summer, however, as far as I can now * This alludes to the death of the Em- 
 see, we shall be on the North River peror Alexander of Russia, who was sue- 
 within a week of the examination. I do ceeded by his brother the late Emperor 
 not doubt I shall be present at it; and Nicholas, in December, 1825.
 
 260 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTEK. [Cii. XIL 
 
 This is melancholy, but it is true ; and, if a dead man finds any thing, the 
 autocrat of all the Russias will find it is true. 
 
 " As to politics, we have little stirring. All goes on smoothly except 
 the Panama mission ; that sticks in the Senate. The incongruous mate- 
 rials of opposition assimilate better on that subject than they are likely to 
 on most others. I believe the measure will prevail, however, by a slight 
 majority in the Senate. In our House we shall have a debate on it, and I 
 shall make a short speech, for certain reasons, provided I can get out of 
 court, and provided better reflection should not change my purpose. At 
 present, the H. E. is riding at anchor on the Constitutional Amendment 
 question. I seize the occasion to go ashore and dispatch my concerns in 
 Supreme Court. 
 
 " As to parties, dinners, etc., we have enough and to spare. My wife 
 is a good deal dissipated. So is Mrs. Blake. The ball of the 22d was a 
 grand affair. But I learn that Mrs. "Webster intends to write a dispatch 
 soon to Mrs. Ticknor, which will, of course, discuss all these questions at 
 large. 
 
 " And now of Governor Cass. 1 Lewis Cass is a native of Exeter, New 
 Hampshire. His father was an officer in our army, long ago. Lewis was 
 educated at Exeter ' in my time,' and went with his father to Ohio about 1798 
 or 1800. He there read and practised law took a military command at the 
 commencement of the late war, and, on the peace, was appointed Governor 
 of Michigan. He is what we call in New England a clever fellow, good- 
 natured, kind-hearted, amiable, and obliging. His education was imper- 
 fect ; but he seems to have done something for himself in the Western 
 wilds. He has been here this winter, and I have brightened old chains 
 with him. He is of the age of Saltonstall," who was with him at Exeter, 
 equally good-humored, more talkative, and twice as fat. In Ohio he was 
 always found, I am told, on the side of sound principles. He is probably 
 not overlearned in Indian languages perhaps is superficial but I confess 
 I was astonished to find he knew so much. But I ought to say that I am 
 a total unbeliever in the new doctrines about the Indian languages. I 
 believe them to be the rudest forms of speech ; and I believe there is as 
 little in the languages of the tribes as in their laws, manners, and cus- 
 toms, worth studying or worth knowing. All this is heresy, I know, but 
 so I think. 
 
 " Adieu, my dear sir. Pray remember me most sincerely to Mrs. Ticknor. 
 I go seldom to Williamson's. It is dreary and solitary. Mrs. Webster 
 joins me in her remembrances, and will shortly have the pleasure of 
 writing to Mrs. Ticknor. 
 
 " Adieu. Yours always most truly, 
 
 " D. W." 
 
 Among the topics that required Mr. Webster's immediate 
 
 1 Mr. Ticknor had inquired about 2 The late Hon. Leverett Saltonstall, 
 him. of Salem.
 
 1826.] JUDICIAL SYSTEM. 261 
 
 attention at this session, the judiciary system was the first. Ir 
 the last preceding Congress, he had been able to do nothing 
 more on this subject than to prevent the adoption of measures 
 which he regarded as inexpedient and injurious. It now be- 
 came necessary for him to introduce a bill that should amend 
 the judicial system, as it then existed, in several very important 
 respects. The number of the judges of the Supreme Court was 
 then seven. They were allotted to seven circuits, six of which 
 embraced the Atlantic States. The seventh circuit consisted of 
 the States of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. All the other 
 Western and Southwestern States had only .District Courts, ex- 
 ercising the powers of Circuit Courts. Great complaints came 
 from these States, while upon the Atlantic seaboard there was 
 no pressing necessity for any change. Mr. Webster desired to 
 frame his measure so as to meet the exigencies arising from the 
 great expansion of the country, with as little disturbance as 
 possible to the general principles on which the judicial system 
 had been long conducted. In doing this he proceeded in a 
 mode that was one of his most remarkable characteristics*. He 
 was not at all accustomed, in important public affairs requiring 
 the adjustment of very wide relations, to set forth with previ- 
 ously-fixed opinions, unless some constitutional principle was 
 involved ; nor did he, even in such cases, adopt his opinions 
 hastily. One of his most marked intellectual traits was his 
 deliberate habit of mind and action. He omitted no source 
 or opportunity of information ; he conversed with every well- 
 informed, person who had any idea upon the subject to impart ; 
 he weighed every thing ; he digested the whole with the results 
 of his own observation, experience, and reflection. When he 
 spoke, therefore, as he could speak, with a clearness and precis- 
 ion that were generally felt to be unequalled, it was found that 
 his opinions were wise because they were formed with so much 
 care, and with such comprehensive attention to the opinions of 
 others. Mr. Calhoun once said that he had never seen any 
 man who gave the views of an opponent so fairly as Mr. Web- 
 ster was in the habit of stating an argument to which he in- 
 tended to reply, and that he often stated the position of an 
 adversary better than the adversary himself could have given 
 it. This predominance of intellect over the mere fevers of
 
 262 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIL 
 
 jealous anxiety for display this superiority to the weak trick- 
 ery of misrepresentation gave Mr. Webster, in debate, a very 
 uncommon power. Men felt that, if what he said admitted of 
 an answer, that answer must be made with great care ; that one 
 who had manifestly looked with equal attention on all sides of 
 a subject was not likely to be self-deceived, or to aim at de- 
 ceiving others ; and they yielded their convictions to his argu- 
 ments, because conviction is an intellectual process, that is 
 largely influenced by the feeling that he who seeks to pro- 
 duce it is above the use of sophistry and incapable of unfair- 
 ness. 
 
 He had never more need of these peculiar powers than he 
 had in conducting this judiciary bill through the House of 
 Representatives in the winter of 1825-'26. It was not a meas- 
 ure of a party character ; and, if it had been, he had no special 
 party to rely on. It was a measure affecting the working of 
 the judicial department of the Government, which, as originally 
 organized, the country had outgrown. There were serious dis- 
 satisfactions to be encountered, and there was a great conflict 
 of opinions respecting the proper mode of meeting them. On 
 the one hand, the members of the Supreme Court itself, consist- 
 ing of Marshall, Washington, Todd, Johnson, Story, Duval, and 
 Thompson, judges long accustomed to act together, and thus 
 far generally harmonizing in their views of the constitutional 
 questions arising in the exercise of their appellate functions, were 
 naturally solicitous about the effect of any considerable increase 
 of their numbers. Such an increase, however, was unavoidable, 
 unless the judges were to be separated from the performance 
 of circuit duties. The new measure, therefore was to be car- 
 ried in a manner to conciliate the court, or, at all events, so as 
 to prevent a feeling that the expansion of the system (in order 
 to meet the wants of the great West) was not destined to inju- 
 riously affect the function of the Supreme Court as the con- 
 servative balance-wheel of the Constitution. The measure was 
 to be carried, too, through a House of Representatives, where 
 there were leading and important men, who entertained a good 
 deal of jealousy concerning the power of the court to declare 
 State laws unconstitutional, and who desired to restrict the 
 exercise of that power by a statute provision that would re-
 
 1826.] JUDICIAL SYSTEM. 263 
 
 quire the concurrence of a majority of all the members of the 
 court. There were others who objected to an increase of the 
 number of the judges of the Supreme Court, and still others 
 who wished to make it merely a court in lane, while many 
 were opposed to removing them from all connection with the 
 circuit business. To reconcile these discordant views, and to 
 present a bill that would afford a uniform system to the whole 
 Union, Mr. "Webster yielded to the preference of his committee 
 for an addition of three judges instead of two, the number 
 which he preferred ; provided that six of the ten judges should 
 be a quorum for the transaction of business in the Supreme 
 Court; distributed the judges to ten circuits, comprehending 
 all the States in the Union, and established a Circuit Court 
 for each of them. In this shape the bill was brought before 
 the House on the 22d of December, 1825. The discussion on 
 it continued at intervals for a month. The principal speeches 
 made by Mr. Webster, in opening and closing the discussion, 
 are to be found in the third volume of his Works. They 
 contain opinions upon this subject which I believe he always 
 continued to hold, especially those which relate to the expe- 
 diency of having the judges of the Supreme Court perform 
 circuit duties. The bill, as he advocated it, finally passed 
 the House, on the 25th of January, 1826, and was sent to the 
 Senate. 
 
 But in that body there was no one who favored it and who 
 had the requisite skill and influence to conduct it to a success- 
 ful vote, in an unimpaired condition. The Western members 
 differed about the distribution of the circuits ; and, from this 
 and a real unwillingness to give the Administration the appoint- 
 ment of three new judges, the bill came back to the House so 
 encumbered with amendments, that it was finally lost by the 
 disagreement of the two bodies. Writing to Judge Story in 
 May, while the bill still hung in uncertainty in the Senate, 
 Mr. Webster said : -^ If the bill passes, well ; if not, we have 
 made a fair offer, and the court will remain at seven some years 
 Conger." ' 
 
 That this measure should have been lost for want of West- 
 ern support, is truly surprising. What was thought of it by 
 
 1 Correspondence, L, 405.
 
 264 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [C H . XII 
 
 one of the wisest men in New England, may be seen from the 
 following letter : 
 
 [FROM MR. JEREMIAH MASON.] 
 
 " POBTSMOUTH, February 4, 1826. 
 
 "Mr DEAR SIR : I congratulate you on the success of your judiciary 
 bill. You have certainly carried it through your House handsomely, and 
 had in the end a triumphant majority. The plan for circuit judges might 
 possibly have better suited certain personal views, but, if such a plan had 
 succeeded, there are ten chances to one all such views would, in the end, 
 have been disappointed. On a measure of this importance, such consid- 
 erations ought to have no manner of influence. I was amused with Mr. 
 
 B 's motion, intended, I suppose, for the special benefit of . 
 
 The increased number of judges must, I think, bring additional strength 
 and security to the Supreme Court, where more is wanted, in the determi- 
 nation of constitutional questions. By dividing it among a greater num- 
 ber of individuals, it will lessen the responsibility, which is certainly 
 heavy. The States will be more apt to be satisfied with the decision of a 
 tribunal consisting of an unusual number. When united, the influence of 
 their opinion with the public will be increased by the increased number of 
 judges. The chief danger to be feared is their division in opinions. I 
 trust this will be guarded against in the only way it can be, by the selec- 
 tion of suitable men. This is of vast importance, and ought to be effect- 
 ually attended to. Good judges will do well, under almost any organi- 
 zation, and bad ones will make poor work, however perfect the system 
 may be. In the determination of mere legal questions in the Supreme 
 Court, the increased number of judges can, as I think, do no good, and, 
 should they all be fit for their places, it will do little, if any harm. But, 
 should they, by reason of indolence or incapacity, fall into a habit of 
 determining causes by major vote, or, for the sake of saving labor, of 
 devolving the duty, by rotation, on a single member, the court will be 
 ruined. 
 
 " The most important consequence of this measure is its tendency to 
 satisfy and conciliate the Western States. It will lessen, if not destroy, 
 their antipathy to the Supreme Court. The apparent union of sentiment 
 between the East and West augurs well. The close union which has here- 
 tofore subsisted between the Southern Atlantic and the Western States has 
 done us of the East much mischief. The present auspicious good liking 
 ought to be carefully cultivated. 
 
 "I suppose the Supreme Court, or something else, will prevent your 
 attempting the bankrupt system this winter. "Were I in your situation, I 
 would not attempt it, without pretty good prospect of success. The 
 attempting it and failing would do the public no good, and might do you 
 hurt. Of this, however, you are the best judge. You have often suc- 
 ceeded in what I deemed impossible.
 
 1826.] COXGRESS OF PANAMA. 265 
 
 " I began this with no intention of writing you a political lecture, but 
 of requesting you to have the enclosed letter delivered to Colonel Wil- 
 jams, if he remains still at "Washington, and, if not, to have it sent to him, 
 wherever he may be. I am glad he has the appointment to his present 
 situation, and wish it was better both in grade and emoluments. 
 
 "We have no news except the low state of the thermometer, which 
 makes us rather more stupid than ordinary. Please to give my and Mrs. 
 Mason's best regards to Mrs. Webster, and believe me as ever, 
 
 " Truly yours, 
 
 " J. MASON. 
 
 "Mr. Webster." 
 
 In the spring of 1825, soon after the inauguration of Mr. 
 Adams as President, the Republics of Colombia, Mexico, and 
 Central America invited the United States to be represented at 
 a congress of the American nations to be assembled at Panama. 
 At the time of this proposal, the independence of none of the 
 Spanish- American States had been acknowledged by Spain, 
 and the war between Spain and her former colonies was 
 still going on; no part of these colonies, however, being in 
 the actual occupation of Spanish forces. In reference "to that 
 war, the United States, although recognizing the new govern 
 ments as governments de facto, as in other cases of civil war, 
 had yet maintained from the first a position of neutrality. 
 Still, it appeared to Mr. Adams and his Cabinet that, as there 
 were objects of peculiar concern to the whole of this hemi- 
 sphere, which could be usefully considered in such a meeting, 
 the United States might take part in its discussions without 
 entering into any questions concerning the war, or the belliger- 
 ent operations or relations ; and, subject to that understanding 
 with the three republics which had extended the invitation, 
 and with a general reference to the questions in the considera- 
 tion of which the United States would consent to participate, 
 Mr. Adams accepted the proposal to send commissioners to 
 Panama. On the assembling of Congress in December, 1825, 
 the President nominated Richard C. Anderson, of Kentucky, 
 and John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, as the envoys to be sent 
 to the Congress of Panama, which had already met ; and he 
 asked the House of Representatives for an appropriation to 
 enable him to carry out this diplomatic purpose. 
 
 Such was the simple origin of a proposal which encountered
 
 266 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Gs. XII 
 
 a strong resistance, and led to protracted discussion in "both 
 Houses, and around which the scattered elements of a political 
 opposition to the Administration were first arranged. Intrinsi- 
 cally, the project was not one of great importance ; but it 
 appeared to Mr. "Webster that Mr. Adams had done rightly in 
 accepting the invitation ; and it was quite plain that the Presi- 
 dent had acted within the scope of his constitutional authority, 
 in undertaking to enter into diplomatic relations with a body 
 known to the usages of nations. Still, it is not probable that 
 Mr. Webster would have taken any considerable part in the 
 discussions on this measure, if it had not been for the turn 
 given to it in the House of Representatives, where an effort 
 was made which he regarded as an encroachment on the con- 
 stitutional prerogative of the President, and which, with his 
 characteristic watchfulness over the Constitution, he desired to 
 prevent from becoming a precedent. 
 
 Upon a resolution which merely proposed to declare, as the 
 sense of the House, that it was expedient to appropriate the 
 funds necessary to enable the President to send ministers to 
 the Congress at Panama, Mr. McLane, of Delaware, and Mr. 
 Rives, of Virginia, moved amendments, which undertook to 
 instruct the ministers what they should discuss, consider, or 
 consult upon, with the representatives of other powers whom 
 they were to meet. This led to the speech delivered by Mr. 
 Webster, on the subject of this mission, upon the 14th of April, 
 1826. * It embraces an elaborate explanation of what the Con- 
 gress of Panama was, as a diplomatic body, in the eye of the 
 public law. Mr. Webster showed it to be an assembly of the 
 representatives of certain nations met to deliberate upon their 
 common concerns, in which it was competent to any nation 
 to be represented to whom an invitation was extended ; and he 
 held that the appointment, and the instruction as well as the 
 appointment, of ministers to such a body, was a matter in 
 which the House of Representatives could have no voice. In 
 its discussion of the constitutional relations of the different 
 departments of our Government to diplomatic action, the 
 speech has a general and permanent importance. It also 
 embraces a full exposition of the real meaning and bearing of 
 
 1 Works, iii. 178-217.
 
 1826.] CORRESPONDENCE. 267 
 
 that declaration of Mr. Monroe, respecting the interference of 
 European powers in the affairs of this continent, which lias 
 been popularly called the " Monroe Doctrine." 
 
 [FROM: MR. 
 
 " LONDON, February 23, 1826. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : In writing to you at this moment, I might with justice 
 say, as one of our friends of Rome said of old : ' Cum tot su-stineas, el 
 tanta negotia I should err against the public weal, if I should occupy 
 your time with too long a discourse.' But, in truth, I am too much en- 
 gaged just now myself to commit this fault. What prompts me to write 
 at this moment is, that I was fortunate enough to hear yesterday from Mr. 
 Rufus King that Captain Morris was now in London. With Mr. King's 
 assistance I found him out this morning ; and as he tells me he is about to 
 return to Washington, where he expects to meet you, I cannot let him 
 pass between us without a few lines of friendly remembrance. 
 
 "I received ten days ago the National Intelligencer containing your 
 speech on the introduction of your proposition for the alteration of the 
 judiciary, and about that time the first volume of the ' Debates of Con- 
 gress.' I am much obliged to you for these two proofs of your kind 
 remembrance. It does not fall within the compass of a hurried fetter to 
 enter upon the vast subject of your Supreme Court, the corner-stone of 
 your whole edifice. I congratulate America that so solemn and weighty a 
 subject has fallen into such hands as yours. Tour speech commands my 
 admiration, as your view of the question carries with it my concurrence. 
 I am afraid you have fixed the last rivet in the chains of our friend the 
 Judge. I shall be extremely sorry, indeed, to find that the hope of seeing 
 him amongst his brethren here is utterly gone. Westminster Hall is swept 
 and garnished for his reception, and there are many persons here who 
 would be very happy to make the Judge's acquaintance, and in whose 
 society mutual pleasure would be given and received. 
 
 " I hope you received safely your package of books, and one or two 
 letters that I wrote to you last summer, and that the Judge received a 
 book I sent to him and a letter written early in September, which I believe 
 is the latest communication I can profess to have made. 
 
 "You will have been contemplating, not without astonishment, the 
 extraordinary depression under which our affairs have been, and are labor- 
 ing. Much of what has occurred was clearly foreseen, and plainly pre- 
 dicted by Mr. Huskisson and some others ; the extent to which it has gone 
 (and it has not yet reached its ultimate point) was hardly within the 
 power of human calculation. It happens, very unfortunately for the inter- 
 ests of truth and sound policy, that these embarrassments, concurring in 
 point of time with the alteration in our commercial laws, are by a large 
 and powerful body in this country attributed mainly (though very falsely) 
 to their enactment.
 
 268 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XEL 
 
 " February 28. I wrote so far on the morning of the 23d that after- 
 noon I took Captain Morris with me to the House of Commons, where 
 though no very particular business was expected, fortunately a debate of 
 great interest occurred. I shall leave Captain Morris to describe it to you. 
 The first debate arose on a petition from the city, that a select committee 
 might be appointed to inquire into the causes of the present commercial 
 distress, and to devise, if possible, some remedy for it. This was the 
 ostensible object; the real one was to induce the government to issue 
 exchequer bills as a temporary relief. On this subject, Captain Morris 
 heard Mr. Canning and Mr. Robinson speak shortly ; he heard one dis- 
 agreeable, foolish man coughed down ; he heard a Scotchman, and some 
 country gentlemen, and an alderman or two deliver themselves, each in 
 his particular line. 
 
 " Then followed the question of retracing our steps on the silk laws. 
 The subject itself was one of sufficient importance, and one of great im- 
 mediate interest, from the pressing distress to which all branches of that 
 trade are exposed through their own miscalculations. But much more 
 was meant than met the eye, and through the sides of silk a deadly blow 
 was aimed at the whole system of our new commercial regulations, and at 
 Mr. Huskisson's character and fame. He rose under many disadvantages, 
 at the close of a long debate, with a large party in the House hostile to 
 his views, and with many of his friends faltering in their allegiance. He 
 entered into a general review of the commercial policy of this country, past 
 and present, and made the most masterly statement on the subject of trade 
 that ever was exhibited before Parliament. By this he has accumulated a 
 new load of reputation to his former great character. He has proved him- 
 self true, under the best of all proofs, a pressure of difficulties, and has 
 raised himself to the second place, second only to Mr. Canning, in the 
 House, and in the country. Captain Morris will tell you how his speech 
 was received. If he thinks we were very tumultuous, we were so beyond 
 our ordinary expression. I never recollect a speech received with such 
 loud and unanimous cheering since I have been in Parliament. Certainly 
 upon none have greater consequences depended. If he had failed in his 
 defence for upon his trial he stood before a House of Commons which had 
 already sanctioned his measures I verily believe we might have been 
 driven back step by step to the old fastnesses of selfish prohibition. His 
 speech turned the tide, raised his character higher than it has ever yet 
 stood, and has confirmed his policy even beyond the power of prejudice to 
 overthrow it. I hope this speech will be publish ed, I will take care you 
 have it immediately. 
 
 " I have been greatly delighted by receiving a very long and kind letter 
 from Judge Story this afternoon. He gives me an account of your trip to 
 Niagara, through the State of New York. I think the Trenton falls exceed 
 any scenery of the same dimensions that I am acquainted with, in exquisite 
 finished beauty, and the Falls of Niagara in their way surpass every thing 
 in splendor and awful grandeur. He tells me, too, something of youi
 
 1826.] CORRESPONDENCE. 269 
 
 political existence, of which I had partially informed myself through your 
 papers, and from some private hands. I may well congratulate you on its 
 general features. It is not right to meddle with the affairs of individuals, 
 but I think some politicians have played safer games than a certain young 
 South Carolinian, is he not ? late of the War Department, is now play- 
 ing at "Washington. I must trust to you and the Judge to keep me in a 
 certain degree on a pace with the changes and the progress of your strid- 
 ing country. If I remain stationary for a few years, you will be out of my 
 sight, and it will be then too late to resume the chase. It seems not im- 
 probable that affairs may keep you at home for the present, and that you 
 cannot be spared for your visit here. If so, I shall only look upon it as a 
 pleasure delayed, and not taken away. For I feel sure that you will some 
 day come and afford me the very sincere pleasure of conducting you 
 around this little sea-girt land. 
 
 " Pray, say for me every thing most kind to the Judge, and give him 
 my best thanks for his long and interesting letter. I wish we had him 
 here to let us into the true secret of safe banking ; we have all been rack- 
 ing our brains, and writing pamphlets, and making speeches on this sub- 
 ject, which practically we have certainly not administered welL We hope 
 to go on sounder principles, and pursue them with a steadier course. I 
 shall not answer the Judge's letter immediately, because you will give him 
 my present thanks, and a short interval perhaps may produce something 
 of greater interest. The commission which has been examining into the 
 practice of our Court of Chancery has closed its inquiry, and framed its 
 report. This will be published shortly, and shall immediately be sent for 
 your and the Judge's examination. We shall do nothing this year about 
 the Catholic question, or the Corn Laws. Both will be submitted to the 
 new Parliament next year ; the Corn Laws will probably be taken up by 
 the government, the other has, I fear, made little progress in public 
 opinion. I dare make uo prophecy as to when it may pass, and receive 
 the triple sanction of Parliament. The condition of Ireland in the mean 
 time is decidedly improving, and has already made most essential advances, 
 but it is still such as no Englishman can contemplate without regret and 
 shame, and no Irishman without still more bitter feelings. 
 
 " I am sorry to hear from the Judge's letter that a package of books I 
 sent you, with one included to him, has never reached you. I shall send 
 into the city immediately to make inquiries on the subject. I shall look 
 out for a few pamphlets and books to send you by Captain Morris, who 
 has been good enough to undertake to deliver them to you. 
 
 " I beg you will make my respects to the President, and assure all those, 
 who may be good enough to have kept me in mind, of the grateful remem- 
 brance I entertain of their individual civilities, and of my general reception 
 in the United States. You will know several to whom I would be 
 specially remembered. 
 
 " I have seen Lord Stowell once or twice lately ; he was much flattered 
 by the assurances I felt authorized to give him of the great reputation he
 
 270 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XII 
 
 enjoys amongst you ; he desired his best compliments to the Judge. The 
 chancellor has lately rallied, which, if it was not treason to say so, I am 
 almost sorry for. Believe me, 
 
 " My dear sir, 
 
 " Your sincere friend, 
 
 " J. E. DENISON. 
 
 " Stanley is yet in the country with his wife, Wortley with his wife in 
 town. He moved the address in a good and sensible speech this year. 
 Labouchere is in town, and very well. I met Mr. Addington, too, the other 
 day here, very well. 
 
 " I hear from the office through which the package to you was sent, that 
 it was shipped, and the ship arrived safe at New York, probably in August 
 last. It was sent to the care of Le Roy, Bayard & Co., and is now most 
 likely lying in the custom-house, or some warehouse." 
 
 [TO ME. DENISON.] 
 
 " WASEFNGTON, May 3, 1826. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I received yesterday your letter of the 23d February, 
 and am greatly obliged to you as well for the letter itself as for the valu- 
 able pamphlets with which you accompanied it. We are now within fif- 
 teen or twenty days of the end of our session, and, according to our custom 
 (and I suppose according to yours also), these last days are exceedingly 
 crowded with business. Upon the whole, it has not been a session in 
 which we have dispatched many concerns of great moment. It has been 
 a talking winter. The President's proposition to send ministers to the 
 Congress at Panama has led to endless debates, especially in the Senate. 
 The measure has met with much opposition, by which more was intended 
 than the defeat of the measure itself. Various parties, not likely to act 
 together often, united on this occasion in a close phalanx of opposition. 
 The measure, however, has succeeded by a small majority in the Senate, 
 and a large one in our House. 
 
 "Another long topic has been, a plan for amending the Constitution in 
 the manner of electing President. This grew out of the event of the late 
 election. After much tedious discussion, we leave the matter as we found 
 it. Our other subjects have not been of particular interest. 
 
 " Mr. Randolph was elected last fall a Senator from Virginia. It was 
 unexpected ; but his great devotion to certain political opinions cherished 
 in that State gave him the election. He is a violent opposer of the pres- 
 ent Government, and has conducted his part of- the discussions in the 
 Senate in a way hitherto altogether unknown. The Vice-President has 
 found out that he has no authority to call him to order, or restrain his 
 wanderings ; so he talks on for two, four, and sometimes six hours at a 
 time, saying whatever occurs to him on all subjects. This course, and its 
 indulgence by the presiding officer of the Senate, has produced a very
 
 1826.] CORRESPONDENCE. ^71 
 
 strong sensation throughout the country. It is now said he will sail for 
 England in a few days, to pass the summer. 
 
 " We hear that Mr. King is coming immediately home, on account of 
 ill-health. I regret very much his sudden return. It is quite unseasonable. 
 I hardly know what will be done, not having seen the President since the 
 information arrived. I hope, however, somebody will be sent out to bring 
 pending negotiations to a close, and should not be surprised if, with that 
 view, Mr. Gallatin should be selected. 
 
 " I have read your debates thus far with great and peculiar interest. 
 The questions in your House have been such as are connected with general 
 principles of great importance. In my poor judgment, your friends are 
 clearly right on the currency question, the silk-trade question, etc. On 
 the silk question, Mr. Huskisson's speech is most admirable. I read it in 
 the Courier, but am happy to have it, through your kindness, in a more 
 correct form. I have read it a second time here in my study with real 
 delight, and enjoyed his triumph, when he resumed his seat, almost as much 
 as he himself could have done. Pray, tell him, what I hope he would not 
 be displeased to know, that there are men on this side of the globe who 
 admire his liberal principles, and the singular ability and excellent sense 
 with which he recommends those principles to the adoption of his coun- 
 trymen. His speech on the silk-trade question appears to me, on the 
 whole, his greatest effort ; and next to this I place that which he made 
 several years ago, on what I thought a very wild proposition in your House, 
 for the equitable adjustment of contracts. 
 
 " I entertain no doubt that the prohibition of the circulation of small 
 notes is a good measure, and will produce all the benefit intended by it, 
 although it may have some effect to continue the immediate pressure ; or, 
 rather, it may retard, in some degree, the natural progress of relief and 
 restoration. As it is prospective, however, in its operation, and for the 
 present deferred, perhaps this effect may hardly be perceptible. It is quite 
 true that gold and paper will not circulate together. It is quite true also 
 that two kinds of paper, of different values, cannot circulate together, 
 however small the difference. "We have much experience of this last 
 truth. For example, we have in Massachusetts many country banks, all 
 being incorporated institutions, well regulated, and in good credit. Their 
 notes are payable only where issued. These notes get to Boston ; they pass 
 in the common exchanges, and for all ordinary purposes ; yet, as they are 
 payable fifty or a hundred miles from town, they are not quite so good as 
 notes of the Boston banks. Now, the consequence is, that these country 
 notes fill up the whole circulation. Hardly is there a Boston note to be 
 seen ; and, in order to correct this, it has been found necessary that these 
 country banks should make provision for the redemption of their notes in 
 Boston, as well as on their own counters at home. You will experience, as 
 I should think, the same thing in England, if you establish country banks, 
 making their notes payable only where issued. These notes will be so 
 good that they will be taken, and yet not so good, quite, as Bank of Eng-
 
 272 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIL 
 
 land notes, or the notes of London bankers, 1 because the bank and London 
 bankers will not receive them, in deposit, as cash. They will still pass, in 
 all small payments, at all the shops in London, and the consequence will 
 be that bankers will take them up, at small but different rates of discount, 
 for gold or Bank of England notes. York notes will be at one rate, Welsh 
 notes a little higher, Worcestershire a little lower, etc., according to dis- 
 tance from London." Let me tell you a short story. A year or two ago, a 
 client of mine, a trader, came to my rooms to pay me for a legal opinion. 
 The sum was fifty dollars. He handed me ten five-dollar notes on a coun- 
 try bank, in good credit, but a hundred miles from Boston. He was a 
 good-natured man, and I addressed him thus : ' You give me this fee in 
 country notes ; now, I wish to tell you what I suspect. I suspect that, when 
 you left your counting-house, you filled up a check on a Boston bank, for 
 fifty dollars ; you put it in your pocket, and, on your way hither, you have 
 called at a broker's, sold your check for these country notes, and have 
 received a premium of one or one and a half per cent. say fifty or seventy- 
 five cents, with which it is your intention to buy a leg of mutton for din- 
 ner. Now, sir, that mutton is mine ; you shall not dine at my expense in 
 your own house. The legal opinion which I gave you was not ~below par ; I 
 will not be paid in any thing which is sit down and draw me a check 
 for fifty dollars.' He at once admitted that the process had been as I 
 stated, very nearly. 
 
 "I have, indeed, understood, that heretofore the notes of country 
 bankers would not pass in London. Possibly that may continue to be 
 the case, but I should expect that they would make their way, and, 
 if so, I have no doubt the same evil will be felt, in time, which 
 we have experienced here. But, my dear sir, I am talking upon what 
 you must understand much better than I do, and I will tax you no 
 further. 
 
 " We have a countryman of yours here, a Captain Wylde, of the artil 
 lery, who, I had the pleasure to find, is a Nottingham man, and an 
 acquaintance of yours. 
 
 " I have forgotten to tell you that my books all arrived safe, soon after 
 I wrote you last. I hardly yet know what accident detained them, but 
 they arrived in good time, nevertheless. 
 
 "You have a busy summer before you. I suppose you will be dis- 
 solved next month and have a warm July of it. I should admire to be in 
 England during a general election. It must be an occasion, I should 
 think, in which one could see a good deal of the true Mr. Bull. I trust 
 your Catholic vote will not endanger your seat, as you thought it might if 
 the elections had come on earlier. It would be unkind in your constit- 
 uents to let their resentment, on account of that vote, be felt. I shall con- 
 tinue to rely on your friendship to send me occasionally such speeches, 
 
 1 " I believe your London bankers do 9 " This is, of course, conjectural, but 
 not issue notes." such has been our experience."
 
 1826.] CORRESPONDENCE. 373 
 
 pamphlets, etc., as you may happen to notice, and as you may think inter- 
 esting. 
 
 "Mrs. "Webster is with me here. She commands me to make her 
 remembrances to you. I had occasion lately to write Mr. Stanley, but 
 must beg you to renew as well to him, as Mr. Wortley and Mr. Labouchere, 
 my assurances of regard and attachment. 
 
 " Pray what has become of Colonel Dawson ? 
 " I am, my dear sir, 
 
 " Most truly yours, 
 
 " DAKIEL WEBSTEB. 
 
 "I shall see the good Judge by 25th instant, in his court in Boston. 
 He will be most glad to hear from you." 
 
 [FROM MB. MASOK.] 
 
 "PORTSMOUTH, May 1, 1826. 
 
 "DEAB SIB: I have just received your letter. I regret exceedingly 
 that Mr. Bang is to return so speedily, for many reasons. It is unfortu- 
 nately timed for him. His bad state of health, of which I was before 
 aware, is doubtless the chief cause. If, however, he knew it was deter- 
 mined at "Washington to send Mr. Gallatin out to aid him in his negotia- 
 tions, it is possible that might influence him in requesting leave to return 
 sooner than he otherwise would have done. Unless his feelings toward Mr. 
 Gallatin are now different from what they were ten years ago, it would not 
 be entirely pleasant to be associated with him. 
 
 " It seems to me that you cannot, under existing circumstances, assert 
 your claim at the present time. Should the Government offer you the 
 appointment, I think you ought not to refuse it. But, if I mistake not, it 
 will be thought you cannot at this time be spared from the House of 
 Representatives. And, as far as I understand the state of that body, I am 
 inclined to think your presence there at the ensuing session very im- 
 portant. 
 
 " In my opinion, you have a right to insist that such arrangements be 
 made, if they can be without injury to the public interests, that you shall 
 not be defeated of that appointment eventually, and at a period not more 
 than two years distant. How this arrangement is to be made I do not 
 know. If Mr. Gallatin should be appointed for a special mission, and go 
 out before Mr. King's return, I suppose all the duties of a minister resident 
 would, of course, be devolved on him. I see no inconvenience in such a 
 mission continuing for two or three years, unless there should be some- 
 thing in court etiquette forbidding it. A continuance of two years prob- 
 ably would not be unpleasant to Mr. Gallatin. Should he be appointed as 
 regular minister resident, it may be doubtful whether he would be desirous 
 of returning as soon as may be wished. He remained in France several 
 years after he first began to talk of returning. 
 19
 
 274 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XII. 
 
 " Our Circuit Court sits to-morrow, when I expect from Judge Story a 
 stock of "Washington news. With Mrs. Mason's and my best regards to 
 Mrs. "Webster, and wishing you a safe return home, 
 
 " I am truly yours, 
 
 " J. MASON. 
 
 " I have read your Panama speech, which has reached here. It is all 
 that it should be. It is read with eagerness, and abundantly praised. The 
 opposition can gain nothing on this subject. They misjudged in attempt- 
 ing to attach such vast importance to it. What I chiefly regret in that 
 matter is the course adopted by Mr. McLane. I fear it is an indication of 
 his inclination favorable to the opposition." 
 
 From the commencement of this session of Congress in 
 December, 1825, to its termination in May, 1826, Mr. "Web- 
 ster's occupations were incessant. On the 8th of May he wrote 
 to Judge Story that since the first day of December he had not 
 been an " inch " from his place, till the previous Saturday, 
 when he rode a few miles on horseback. He went home about 
 the middle of May. His health, however, was good, and it 
 well needed to be so, for there was awaiting him, in the near 
 but as yet undeveloped future, another of those occasions on 
 which no voice but his could speak to the country as its 
 emotions demanded. 
 
 On the 4th of July, 1826, John Adams, at Quincy, and 
 Thomas Jefferson, at Monticello, died within a few hours of 
 each other, each conscious of the day that was his last on earth. 
 This extraordinary coincidence, which, it has been well said, is 
 unparalleled in history, produced a most profound impression 
 throughout the country. Commemorative services were every- 
 where held. In Boston the municipal authorities requested 
 Mr. Webster to pronounce a public discourse on the lives and 
 services of these great leaders of the Revolution ; and, in com- 
 pliance with this request, the eulogy which is so well known 
 was delivered on the 2d of August, 1826. Again I must resort 
 to the same pen from which I have borrowed the description 
 of the Plymouth Oration and the Address at Bunker Hill : 
 
 "In 1826," observes Mr. Ticknor, "when Mr. Webster was preparing his 
 discourse in commemoration of Adams and Jefferson, he talked with me 
 much about it. It seemed to embarrass him in several parts, and to satisfy him 
 less in the composition than he had been satisfied in preparing the address 
 on Bunker Hill the year before. He showed me no part of it while he was
 
 1826.] EULOGY OX ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 275 
 
 writing it, but, when he considered it as finished, he read me the whole. 
 Of course, I had nothing but gratification to express. The very day, how- 
 ever, before he was to deliver it, he sent for me early in the forenoon to 
 come to his house (next to Colonel Thorndike's, in Summer Street). He 
 was walking up and down his room when I went in, a good deal excited, 
 and at once proceeded somewhat abruptly to repeat the two speeches 
 attributed to an opponent of the Declaration of Independence and to Mr. 
 Adams in reply to him. He said that he had just written them, and that 
 he was quite uncertain whether they were the best or the worst part of the 
 discourse. I had no doubt about the matter. I told him that I did not 
 know whether they were better than the description of eloquence which 
 preceded them or not, but that there was certainly nothing else equal to 
 them in the whole of it. 
 
 " The next day, the 2d of August, the weather was fine, and the con- 
 course to hear him immense. It was the first time that Faneuil Hall had 
 been draped in mourning. The scene was very solemn, though the light 
 of day was not excluded. Settees had been placed over the whole area of 
 the hall ; the large platform was occupied by many of the most distin- 
 guished men in New England, and, as it was intended that every thing 
 should be conducted with as much quietness as possible, the doors were 
 closed when the procession had entered, and every part of the hall and 
 galleries was filled. This was a mistake in the arrangements ; the crowd 
 on the outside, thinking that some space must still be left within, became 
 very uneasy, and finally grew so tumultuous and noisy that the solemnities 
 were interrupted. The police in vain attempted to restore order. It 
 seemed as if confusion would prevail. Mr. Webster perceived that there 
 was but one thing to be done he advanced to the front of the stage, and 
 said, in a voice easily heard above the noise of tumult without and of 
 alarm within, ' Let those doors "be opened." 1 The power and authority of his 
 manner were irresistible the doors were opened, though with difficulty, 
 from the pressure of the crowd on the outside ; but, after the first rush, 
 every thing was quiet, and the order during the rest of the performance 
 was perfect. 
 
 "Mr. "Webster spoke in an orator's gown, and wore small-clothes. He 
 was in the perfection of his manly beauty and strength ; his form filled out 
 to its finest proportions, and his bearing, as he stood before the vast mul- 
 titude, that of absolute dignity and power. His manuscript lay on a small 
 table near him, but I think he did not once refer to it. His manner of 
 speaking was deliberate and commanding. When he came to the passage 
 on eloquence, and to the words, 'It is action, noble, sublime, godlike 
 action,' he stamped his foot repeatedly on the stage, his form seemed to 
 dilate, and he stood, as that whole audience saw and felt, the personifica- 
 tion of what he so perfectly described. I never heard him when his man- 
 ner was so grand and appropriate. 
 
 " The two speeches attributed to Mr. Adams and his opponent attracted 
 great attention from the first. Soon they were put into school-books, as
 
 276 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XII. 
 
 specimens of English and of eloquence. In time men began to believe 
 they were genuine speeches, made by genuine men who were in the Con- 
 gress of '76 ; and at last Mr. Webster received letters asking whether such 
 was the fact or not. In January, 1846, he sent me from Washington a 
 letter he had just received, dated at Auburn, begging him to solve the 
 doubt. With it he sent me his answer, which is published in his works, 
 saying, ' The accompanying letter and copy of answer respect a question 
 which has been often asked me. I place them in your hands to serve if 
 similar inquiries should be made of you.' 1 Two months after, in March 
 of the same year, he sent me a letter from Bangor, in Maine, asking the 
 same question, beginning the note which accompanied it with these words : 
 'Here comes another; I cannot possibly answer all of them one after 
 another.' Indeed, he continued to receive such letters until the edition 
 of his works was published in 1851, though the matter was repeatedly 
 discussed and explained in the newspapers. The fact is, that the speech 
 he wrote for John Adams has such an air of truth and reality about it, 
 that only a genius like Mr. Webster's, perfectly familiar with whatever re- 
 lates to the Revolution, and imbued with its spirit, could have written it." a 
 
 President Fillmore informs me that he once asked Mr. 
 "Webster, in familiar conversation, what authority he had for 
 putting this speech into the mouth of John Adams, the Con- 
 gress at that period having always sat with closed doors. Mr. 
 Webster replied that he had no authority for the sentiments of 
 the speech excepting Mr. Adams's general character, and a letter 
 he had written to his wife, that had frequently been published. 
 After a short pause, Mr. "Webster added, " I will tell you what 
 is not generally known. I wrote that speech one morning be- 
 fore breakfast, in my library, and when it was finished my paper 
 was wet with my tears." 
 
 [FROM MB. j. B. DENISON.] 
 
 " LONDON, July 11, 1826. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : I received the other day your agreeable and instruo 
 tive letter, through the hands of Mr. J. King. I was very sorry to miss Mr. 
 Dutton ; he came to London while I was engaged in election matters in 
 Staffordshire, and before my return he had left it. Colonel Dawson wag 
 fortunate enough to fall in with him, and I believe explained to Mr. 
 Dutton the cause of my absence, and Wortley's, and Stanley's. You follow 
 the course of our public business so closely, and remark upon it so justly, 
 that it is really superfluous in me to attempt to give you any information, 
 
 1 The answer may be found in his 8 MS. Recollections of Mr. Webster 
 Works, i., 149. by Mr. Ticknor.
 
 1826.] CORRESPONDENCE. 277 
 
 " I predicted truly the effect my Catholic yote would produce at New* 
 castle. I could not have carried my seat without a severe contest and a 
 great expenditure. I declined it under such circumstances ; secured the 
 return of my friend and colleague, Mr. "Wilmot Horton, and myself shall 
 be elected for Hastings at the opening of the session, when the gentleman 
 now returned means to retire. I am happy to say the result of the elec- 
 tions is upon the whole not unfavorable to the Catholic concessions. They 
 have gained in Ireland and lost something in England, and, as far as pro- 
 spective calculations can be relied upon, there will be a majority of about 
 twenty or twenty-five for sending the bill to the Lords. How will they 
 conduct themselves ? If the Parliament sits four sessions, and the House 
 of Commons sends the bill up every session, I am inclined to think the 
 Lords must make a great gulp and swallow it. I was very much obliged 
 to you for the information contained in your letter about the system of 
 banking with you. I am collecting all the information I can on the very 
 important question of the currency. Should I be asking you a very 
 troublesome favor, if I was to beg that you would send me over a detailed 
 account of the banking system in Massachusetts ? I do not mean to put 
 so heavy a tax on your time, as to ask for a description of it under your 
 own hand. But you could perhaps send me the general laws that regulate 
 the banks, and the principles on which they are conducted. How is the 
 paper kept at par? We find here convertibility not to be a sufficient 
 check. How are over-issues controlled or rectified ? Is there any general 
 understanding among the banks, and a mutual interchange and exchange 
 of each other's notes, as is the case in Scotland ? 
 
 " I much regret that I did not look more closely into all this while I 
 was at Boston. Pray furnish me with such facts as may enable me to 
 comprehend the merits of your system, which I know to be so very good. 
 I dined with Mr. Huskisson the other day, and took the liberty of showing 
 him your letter ; he desired me, when I wrote to you, to make you his 
 best compliments, to thank you for your obliging message, and to say how 
 greatly struck he had been with your speech on the tariff, which he had read 
 with the greatest pleasure. I went yesterday to Sadbrook, near Richmond, 
 a villa of Mr. W. Horton's, where Mr. Huskisson dined, and Mr. Randolph, 
 your notorious Virginian. I had not the pleasure of his acquaintance in 
 America, but we had a good deal of conversation in the course of the even- 
 ing, and I brought him back to London in my carriage. He is certainly 
 an extraordinary man ; with a very accurate memory, stored with minute 
 facts. As you and I agree in politics, naturally he and I did not. He 
 astonished me by some of his doctrines about slavery, and by recommend- 
 ing the policy and maintaining the practicability of cutting the throat of 
 every inhabitant of the Island of Hayti. After what I saw in the papers, 
 I expected to see him put on his hunting-shirt, but was disappointed. 
 
 " I leave England the day after to-morrow, cross to Calais or Ostend, 
 and shall pass up the Rhine into Switzerland, where I shall spend two 
 months in the neighborhood of Lausanne with my friend Lord Sandon,
 
 278 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XH. 
 
 who lias taken a country-house for the summer. October and November 
 I shall pass at Paris, and return to look about me in England for two 
 months before the meeting of Parliament. I fear it will be a winter of 
 great distress. Indeed, it must be one of extreme pressure and difficulty. 
 The unprecedented drought has heightened and aggravated every cause 
 of preexisting distress. The hay-harvest, which generally affords employ- 
 ment to so many laborers, has passed over in a few days ; cattle are perish- 
 ing for want of water and pasture; the spring crops, oats, barley, and 
 beans, have failed almost universally. Wheat still looks well, but, after so 
 long a drought, we fear a rainy harvest. Prices are continually falling, and 
 the manufacturing interest does not yet begin to revive ; and add to all 
 this, the potato crop must fail in Ireland. I have drawn you a gloomy 
 but faithful picture of the present state of this country. We cannot quite 
 agree among ourselves as to the cause of all this. Some maintain that it 
 arises purely from overtrading, some purely from the fluctuations in the 
 currency; one proposes a metallic circulation; one a paper circulation, 
 and the more depreciated the better. I much question myself whether 
 great attempts will not be made in Parliament to reconsider the amount 
 of depreciation during the war, and to try to accommodate the present 
 standard of money to that rate. It will be a most important session. The 
 Corn Laws, the Catholic bill, the currency, the new commercial system, will 
 be violently attacked, and almost every weighty matter will come under 
 discussion ; West Indies again, and what is to be done with the colonial 
 Legislatures. I most earnestly hope the negotiations pending between our 
 countries will be speedily and satisfactorily concluded. Your Government 
 has a character in Europe for an encroaching and aggrandizing spirit, 
 which makes it difficult to treat with it on even terms. I wish all men in 
 your country, or at least the prevailing party, held the language that you 
 do. As an American, I think I should be quite satisfied with the tone of 
 dignified importance that you properly think becoming the situation of 
 the United States. As a neutral, I should think stronger language hardly 
 consistent with friendly intercourse. I write freely to you, as I should do 
 to an intimate friend in England. Certainly, my earnest wish is for the 
 establishment of a perfect understanding between the two countries, that 
 would be for the honor and interest of both, as a bad understanding would 
 be injurious to both, and to many of the greatest and most important 
 interests of the world. 
 
 " I was much obliged to you for the speeches you were good enough to 
 Bend me. Mr. Huskisson's speech on the shipping interests of the United 
 Kingdom is not yet published in a separate pamphlet, nor is there any 
 thing very new or worth your attention. 
 
 " I shall be really obliged to you for the information about the Massa- 
 chusetts banks, particularly since some conversation that I have had with 
 Mr. Huskisson about them. If you read the report of the Chancery Com- 
 mission, I should very much value your opinion. I must insist on having 
 the Judge's opinion at length. You may vote upon it in the House of
 
 1826.] CORRESPONDENCE. 379 
 
 Commons, if you please. If you agree in a common judgment, I will con- 
 firm it by my vote, for I am sure I shall not have time to read it myself, or 
 knowledge of the subject, or patience of investigation, to form an opinion. 
 " Thank Mrs. Webster for her kind remembrances, and give all assur- 
 ances of my esteem. I am writing in a great hurry ; it is now midnight, 
 and at four in the morning I am to be on board the steamboat that is to 
 convey me to Calais. You say nothing of your visit to England. If you 
 will come, I don't know but I will enter into a compact to visit you at 
 Boston again, some summer agreed upon between us. 
 " Best remembrances to the good Judge, 
 
 " And believe me 
 
 " Tour sincere friend, 
 
 " J. E. DEXISON." 
 
 [FBOM ME. HOPKESSON.] 
 
 "PHILADELPHIA, August 30, 1826. 
 
 " MY PEAR SIB : I am much obliged by your sending your ' Com- 
 memoration Discourse,' which requires not the partiality of friendship to 
 obtain for it unqualified applause. Mr. Walsh begs me to ofl'er you his 
 suffrage in its behalf. He has briefly noticed it in the Gazette of last even- 
 ing, and wishes me to explain the reason of his not speaking more largely 
 of its merits at this time. He has been for several weeks in deep anxiety 
 and affliction. His excellent wife has been and continues to be struggling 
 with a most distressing, painful, and dangerous malady. I think there is 
 but little hope of her recovery. 
 
 "Mr. Walsh and myself, without any previous communication, were 
 both struck with the circumstance that the argument given against the 
 Declaration of Independence is much stronger than that in support of it. 
 This confirms an opinion I have long held, that, as things then stood, and 
 putting the result out of the case, the strength of all human reasoning was 
 with those who opposed the measure, although every elevated and noble 
 feeling was in favor of it. It was one of those bold and lofty steps which 
 outstripped the process of calculation, and set at naught the conclusions 
 of logic. Great spirits were made for such occasions ; and when they em- 
 bark in them they must firmly resolve to ' sink or swim, live or die, survive 
 or perish.' 
 
 " Remember me affectionately to all your household, but to the lady 
 particularly. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 "Jos. HOPKINSON." 
 
 [FHOM THE HON. RICHARD KUSH.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, August 30, 1826. 
 
 DEAR SIR : Yesterday's mail brought me your discourse in commemo- 
 ration of the lives and services of Adams and Jefferson, pronounced at
 
 280 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. XIL 
 
 Boston on the 2d of this month, and I have just finished reading it. If 
 I were to say that it is able and eloquent, I should give it only the 
 common praise of common productions. It takes much higher rank. It is 
 full of commanding thoughts, full of elevated patriotism, full of profound 
 criticism applied to the great subjects, individual and moral, that you had 
 in hand. It is disencumbered of all that is little, in its facts, of all that is 
 of every day's hearing, in its reflections. The former are well chosen, and 
 we have not too many of them ; the latter are rich, condensed, elementary. 
 There were parts that thrilled me. I read them to my family, and they 
 thrilled them too. The speech beginning at page 88 made my hair rise. 
 It wears the character of a startling historical discovery, that bursts upon 
 us at this extraordinary moment, after sleeping half a century. Curiosity, 
 admiration, the very blood, all are set on fire by it. Nothing of Livy's 
 ever moved me so much. Certainly, your attempt to pass the doors of that 
 most august sanctuary, the Congress of '76, and become a listener and 
 reporter of its immortal debates, was extremely bold, extremely hazardous. 
 Nothing but success could have justified it ; and you have succeeded. 
 
 I pray you, sir, not to regard this letter as idle compliment. I intend 
 it not in that spirit, but only as a momentary record of the true feelings 
 with which I have risen from the perusal of so admirable a specimen of 
 discriminating and philosophical eulogy ; of a composition which I have 
 found all over as animating as it is intellectual. With my thanks for the 
 copy you have had the goodness to send me, I ask permission to tender 
 you the assurances of my high respect and esteem. 
 
 "RICHARD RUSH. 
 
 " Hon. Daniel Webster." 
 
 [FKOM MK. MASON.] 
 
 " POKTSMOUTH, September 3, 1826. 
 
 " MY DEAR Sin : I am truly sorry that I was unable to comply with 
 your advice to be at Cambridge to hear Judge Story's oration. For a fort- 
 night past I have been much indisposed, occasioned by our most extraor- 
 dinary weather. I was fearful it would end in downright sickness. 
 That, I trust, is warded off. I infer from the newspaper reports that the 
 Judge acquitted himself very ably, and to the entire satisfaction of his 
 auditors. 
 
 " Of your oration there seems to be but one opinion. Without saying 
 any thing of its merits, in point of eloquence, I really think you have man- 
 aged the subject with most admirable address, of which no small share 
 was necessary, considering your own situation. I do not see that you 
 have exposed yourself to serious abuse from any quarter. . . . 
 
 "Faithfully yours, 
 
 "J. MASON." 
 
 Mr. Webster was elected to Congress in the autumn of this 
 year, for the third time, as the Eepresentative of the Boston
 
 1826.] ELECTED TO CONGRESS FOR THE THIRD TIME. 281 
 
 district in the Twentieth Congress, by a majority of votes as 
 large as in the preceding elections. He was now nominated 
 and voted for by the " Republican " party ; comprehending 
 that portion of the old Democratic party which supported in 
 general the Administration of Mr. Adams, and which was not 
 merged in the organization then forming for the elevation of 
 General Jackson to the presidency.
 
 382 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XH1 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 1826-182T. 
 
 BANKRUPT LAW CASE OF OGDEN VS. SAUNDEKS DIFFICITLTIES O 
 GEORGIA COLONIAL TRADE SPANISH CLAIMS. 
 
 AT the second session of the Nineteenth Congress, which 
 commenced in December, 1826, Mr. Webster, as chair- 
 man of the Judiciary Committee of the House, reported a bill 
 for the establishment of a uniform system of bankruptcy, which 
 he had founded on a bill received from the Senate at the last 
 session, and into which he had also very carefully incorporated 
 such provisions of the recent English bankrupt law as were 
 applicable in this country. At this precise time, the condition 
 of the question, as to State laws of insolvency discharging debt- 
 ors from their contracts, was, that the Supreme Court of the 
 United States had already decided that such laws are constitu- 
 tionally invalid to discharge contracts made before their pas- 
 sage ; but the question in relation to their effect on contracts 
 made after their enactment was now pending in that court, 
 and was expected to be argued at its approaching session. Mr. 
 Webster said, however, that, whatever might be the decision of 
 this question, it would not deter him from laboring to obtain 
 the adoption of a national system of bankruptcy. The Con- 
 stitution having given to Congress power to regulate this sub- 
 ject, he was always of opinion that there should be a standing 
 bankrupt law, to operate uniformly throughout the country. 
 His bill was read a second time, and referred to a Committee 
 of the Whole, but it was not acted upon.
 
 1826.] THE CREEK INDIANS. 283 
 
 It may be stated in this connection that in the case of 
 Sturges vs. Crowninshield, decided by the Supreme Court of 
 the United States in 1819, it had been held that a State law, 
 which undertakes to discharge debtors from contracts made 
 before its enactment, is a law that impairs the obligation of a 
 contract, and is, therefore, prohibited by the Constitution of 
 the United States. The question presented in the case of 
 Ogden vs. Saunders, which was argued in the Supreme Court 
 at the January term, 1827, and in the discussion of which Mr. 
 "Webster took part, was whether a contract, made after the 
 passage of a State law which undertakes to discharge debtors 
 on a surrender of their property for distribution among their 
 creditors, is not equally within the prohibition of the Federal 
 Constitution. Mr. Webster argued against all this distinction 
 between past and future contracts, maintaining that it was the 
 purpose of the Constitution to prohibit State Legislatures from 
 passing any law impairing the obligation of any contract, and 
 that a law which discharges a debt, whenever contracted, in 
 the constitutional sense impairs its obligation. He contended 
 that Congress alone is vested with authority to discharge from 
 the payment of debts, as Congress, alone can provide the 
 medium in which a debt is to be paid. 1 But a majority of 
 the judges held that an insolvent law of a State does not 
 impair the obligation of future contracts between its own 
 citizens. 8 
 
 At this session it became necessary for Mr. Webster to take 
 a very firm and decided stand in relation to a dangerous con- 
 troversy that had sprung up between the United States and the 
 State of Georgia. In 1825 a treaty had been made between 
 the United States and the Creek Indians, at a place called 
 Indian Springs, by which that tribe had ceded to the United 
 States their title to certain lands lying within the limits of the 
 State of Georgia. If this treaty had taken effect, the lands, 
 pursuant to an agreement between Georgia and the United 
 States, would have become the property of Georgia. But, pre- 
 vious to the period assigned for the operation of this treaty of 
 
 1 See the argument in the case of the majority, and were of the same opin- 
 
 Ogden vs. Saunders. Works, vi., 24, et seq. ion with Mr. Webster in respect to the 
 
 * Chief-Justice Marshall and Mr. Jus- meaning of the Constitution. See 12 
 
 tice Story dissented from the opinion of Wheaton's Reports, 213.
 
 284 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIIL 
 
 Indian Springs, the Creek nation complained to the Govern- 
 ment of the United States that it had been negotiated by per- 
 sons not duly authorized, and that they were dissatisfied with 
 its provisions. A new treaty was thereupon negotiated and 
 ratified, the first article of which declared that the treaty of 
 Indian Springs was annulled. In the mean time, however, the 
 State of Georgia, claiming that the first treaty had operated to 
 vest in her the lands embraced in it, and now contending that 
 the later treaty had not divested that title, and also claiming 
 that, if the former treaty had been annulled, the repeal did not 
 operate upon the whole tract, sent surveyors upon a certain 
 portion of the territory to lay out the lands as part of the prop- 
 erty of the State. By the last treaty, the United States had 
 guaranteed to the Indians protection in all their lands lying 
 beyond a certain line, which was the line over which the officers 
 of the State had now encroached ; and there was an existing 
 law of the United States which punished the acts of citizens of 
 the United States, whether as trespassers or as surveyors, who 
 should interfere to run lines on lands guaranteed by treaty to 
 the Indian tribes. The State had threatened to support its 
 officers by military force, and the Government of the United 
 States had no alternative, if this course were persisted in, but 
 to repel the aggression by the same means. 
 
 In this posture of the affair, President Adams sent a mes- 
 sage to Congress, communicating the facts, intimating with 
 great distinctness what it might become his duty to do, and 
 submitting to Congress to determine whether further legislation 
 was necessary to meet the emergency. 
 
 The reading of this message in the House was followed by 
 an excited discussion, in which Mr. Forsyth, of Georgia, and 
 other members, resisted all reference of it to any committee, but, 
 If it should be determined to refer it at all, they insisted that it 
 should go to a Committee of the Whole, or to a Select Com- 
 mittee, and not to the Committee on the Judiciary. The 
 course of the Administration was denounced as " infamous ; " 
 and it was boldly asserted by a member from Mississippi that 
 his State would extend its legislative power over the Indians 
 within its limits, and at its own pleasure. Mr. "Webster having 
 said that the States would so act at their peril, he was assailed
 
 1826.] THE CREEK INDIANS. 285 
 
 as the organ of the Administration fulminating threats against 
 sovereign States. He then felt it to be his duty to come forward 
 and carry the reference of this message through the House with 
 a firm hand. Repeating the rebuke he had already admin- 
 istered, he explained the peril which a State would incur by 
 resisting the execution of a treaty of the United States, stated 
 both sides of the question between Georgia and the United 
 States with equal fairness, and confessed his willingness to 
 appropriate money to extinguish the Indian title to the lands 
 in controversy. But he demanded a reference of the message 
 to a Select Committee, and carried it without a division 
 of the House. The following extracts from his remarks will 
 exhibit the manner and the spirit with which he met the 
 attack : 
 
 " Mr. Webster said, on rising, that he was not much concerned what 
 course this communication should take, or whether it should be referred 
 to one committee or another ; but he was not contented that it should be 
 supposed, either here or elsewhere, that there existed an entire unanimity 
 of opinion with the gentleman from Georgia on this subject. The^gentle- 
 man from Georgia must know that there were two sides to this question 
 between Georgia and the United States ; and he would tell the gentleman 
 from Georgia that there existed two opinions also, not only on that ques- 
 tion, but on the conduct which that gentleman had designated as ' base 
 and infamous.' 
 
 " This, Mr. "Webster said, was strong language, but not argument. The 
 gentleman had told the House that nothing prevented every thing from 
 going right in Georgia but the interference of the General Government. 
 The gentleman denounced such interference, saying in effect, ' Hands off 
 for the present ; leave the Indians to the remedy of the courts.' But, Mr. 
 Webster said, he would tell that gentleman, that if there were rights of 
 the Indians, which the United States were bound to protect, that there 
 were those in the House and in the country who would take their part. 
 If we have bound ourselves by any treaty to do certain things, we must 
 fulfil such obligation. High words will not terrify us loud declamation 
 will not deter us from the discharge of that duty. For myself, the right 
 of the parties in this question shall be fully and fairly examined, and none 
 of them with more calmness than the rights of Georgia. In my own 
 course in this matter, I shall not be dictated to by any State, or the Rep- 
 resentative of any State on this floor. I shall not be frightened from my 
 purpose, nor will I suffer harsh language to produce any reaction on my 
 mind. I will examine with great and equal care all the rights of both 
 parties. Occasion had been taken on the mere question of reference of 
 this communication, he would not say for argument, but for the assump-
 
 286 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIU. 
 
 tion of a position, as a matter perfectly plain and indisputable, that the 
 Government had been all in the wrong in this question, and Georgia all in 
 the right. For his own part, Mr. "Webster said, he did not care whether 
 the communication did or did not go to a Committee of the Whole on the 
 state of the Union, nor how soon it went there, and was there taken up for 
 discussion. When he went into that committee, he should go there not in 
 a spirit of controversy, nor yet in a spirit of submission, but in a spirit of 
 inquiry, calmly and deliberately to examine the circumstances of the case, 
 and to investigate the rights of all parties concerned. But he had made 
 these few remarks to give the gentleman from Georgia to understand that 
 it was not by bold denunciation, or by bold assumption, that the members 
 of this House are to be influenced in the decision of high public con- 
 cerns. 
 
 " The gentleman from Mississippi had reason to know that he (Mr. 
 Webster) was disposed to use all proper authority of the United States to 
 extinguish Indian titles to lands within the States. But he must tell 
 the gentleman from Mississippi that the States would act on their own re- 
 sponsibility, and at their own peril, if they undertake to extend their legis- 
 lation to lands where the Indian title has not been extinguished. If any 
 such measure was contemplated in the State which the gentleman repre- 
 sented, Mr. Webster hoped that gentleman would lose no time in warning 
 his friends against making any such attempt. The relation which the 
 United States held to these tribes, of parental guardianship over the rem- 
 nant of mighty nations now no more, was a very delicate relation. Its 
 general character was that of protection, and, while every facility was 
 given to the extinguishment of the Indian title, let not that circumstance be 
 so far presumed on that the States should attempt to exercise authority 
 within the Indian limits. Any such course would be attempted at their 
 own responsibility. Mr. Webster concluded by saying that he was ready 
 to do all that could be done to extinguish the Indian title in the States, 
 and particularly in the States east of the Mississippi. But this disposition, 
 common to all parts of the country, should not be so far presumed upon 
 as that any State should undertake of its own mere motion to exercise an 
 authority over the lands to which the Indian title is guaranteed by 
 treaties." 
 
 In the course of this discussion on the Georgia controversy, 
 Mr. Forsyth, speaking of Mr. Webster, referred to " the great 
 and commanding influence which he too often exercises here." 
 That influence had to be again exerted on the introduction of 
 a bill from the Senate regulating the very difficult and com- 
 plicated subject of trade with the British colonies. The bill 
 had been framed, as Mr. Webster thought, with an insufficient 
 comprehension of a system of laws that extended back to the 
 year 1818. It provided that, if, before the 31st of December,
 
 1826.] TRADE WITH THE BRITISH COLONIES. 287 
 
 1827, the English Government should open the colonial trade 
 to us without discriminating duties on their part, the President 
 might issue a proclamation opening the trade on equal terms 
 on our part. But it overlooked the effect of our former legis- 
 lation, which, in the event of an adherence by Great Britain to 
 her present system of exclusion, would, after the 31st of De- 
 cember, open our ports to vessels coming from her colonies 
 without any discriminating duties. In the House an amend- 
 ment was offered, providing that, if no arrangement should 
 take place by treaty before the 31st of December, nor any Act 
 of Parliament, or Order in Council, should meet our offers of 
 reciprocity embraced in this bill, our former laws excluding 
 British vessels from the colonies should be revived, and put in 
 force. Mr. Webster deemed it his duty to have this amend- 
 ment adopted, and adhered to by the House, preferring the 
 defeat of the bill to its passage without the amendment. But, 
 in order to effect this, it was necessary for him to enter upon 
 an elaborate explanation of a matter that was very imperfectly 
 understood. He succeeded in causing the adoption of the 
 amendment, and in subsequently leading the House to adhere 
 to it ; in consequence of which the bill was lost, and a great 
 blunder was prevented. 
 
 At this time, of so much activity in public business, while 
 giving his attention to many subjects not within the ordinary 
 range of a lawyer's studies, and supplying, by the fulness of his 
 knowledge, the deficiencies of others, Mr. Webster, it must be 
 remembered, was engaged in a very large practice in the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, and, when not in "Wash- 
 ington, was constantly employed in his profession elsewhere. 
 He had also been for several years the leading counsel for the 
 prosecution of claims under the Florida Treaty of 1819, for 
 indemnification on account of the spoliations committed by 
 Spanish cruisers on American commerce in 1788-'89. The 
 commissioners appointed to adjudicate these claims sat at 
 Washington at various times from 1821 to 1826. Not only was 
 the investigation long protracted, but the business was ex- 
 tremely intricate, and the labor required for it was proportion- 
 ably great. Mr. Webster had a very large number of the 
 claims committed to his hands, and, when the awards were
 
 288 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIII 
 
 finally made and paid, his fees amounted to about seventy 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 In the winter of 1826 his engagements in the Supreme 
 Court of the United States were unusually heavy. It appears 
 that, among the regularly reported cases of this term, he 
 argued fifteen ; in which number are not included the argu- 
 ments made on motions. 
 
 As this was the period when the transfer of Mr. Webster 
 from the House of Representatives to the Senate began to be 
 considered, some idea should be formed by the reader of the 
 personal sacrifices he was called upon to make by that change 
 of his position. Indeed, by being in public life at all, and, for 
 that reason alone, he failed to do what he might easily have 
 done, that is, to earn the largest professional income of his time 
 in the United States. So long as he continued in the House 
 of Eepresentatives, he could still discharge his public duties, 
 sustain by far the heaviest burden that rested upon the shoul- 
 ders of any one member of that House during Mr. Adams's 
 administration, and yet maintain a remunerating practice in 
 the Supreme Court, and in the special tribunals that from time 
 to time sat in "Washington. But events were approachiog 
 which were to render his position in the Senate one that would 
 make still greater inroads upon his professional income.
 
 1827.1 PUBLIC LIFE BECOMES INEVITABLE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIY. 
 
 182T-1828. 
 
 ELECTED TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES ILLNESS AND 
 
 DEATH OF MRS. WEBSTER AT NEW YOKE HER FUNERAL IN 
 
 BOSTON RETURN OF MR. WEBSTER TO WASHINGTON VISITED 
 BY MR. TICKNOR AND MR. PRESCOTT SPEECH FOR THE REV- 
 OLUTIONARY OFFICERS SPEECH ON THE TARIFF PUBLIC DIN- 
 NER IN BOSTON THE PRESmENTIAL ELECTION PROSECUTES 
 FOR A LIBEL ADDRESS BEFORE THE BOSTON MECHANICS' ASSO- 
 CIATION. 
 
 THE relation of Mr. Webster to the administration of Mr. 
 John Quincy Adams did not, as we have seen, commence 
 as the relation of a partisan. At the time of Mr. Adams's 
 election, by the House of Representatives, parties had not yet 
 formed themselves into a distinct division ; but the " era of 
 good feeling," which had prevailed under Mr. Monroe, was cer- 
 tain to be followed by divisions among the public men of the 
 country, that would lead to the formation of defined parties, 
 animated by a spirit of hostility the more rancorous, because 
 the opposition was to be made up from previously discordant 
 elements, and fragments of former parties, for the purpose of 
 elevating to the presidency a distinguished military chieftain, 
 who had been one of the defeated candidates at the late elec- 
 tion. Mr. "Webster desired to postpone the evil day of such 
 parties as long as possible. His general views respecting the 
 principles on which the administration of the Federal Govern- 
 ment should be conducted had never been those of the extreme 
 20
 
 290 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV 
 
 Federalists, although he had formerly acted with the Federal 
 party ; and, satisfied with the impartial spirit of Mr. Adams, 
 and believing that his administration would be conducted 
 without personal objects, he desired to prolong, if possible, the 
 state of things that had existed under his predecessor. But, as 
 the " scattered elements " began to arrange themselves into a 
 decided opposition, Mr. Webster was drawn more and more 
 into a kind of representative relation to the Administration, 
 in the House, because he stood beyond all comparison the 
 foremost man in that body, and because he was the most im- 
 portant and efficient friend that the administration possessed in 
 Congress. His great talents, learning, and experience made 
 the administration the strongest side of the House in point of 
 ability, as it was numerically the largest. In the Senate, the 
 weight of ability, and perhaps of numbers, was already on 
 the side of the opposition. Certainly, there was no one friendly 
 to the Administration, who could be regarded as filling a posi- 
 tion in the Senate corresponding to that of Mr. Webster in the 
 House, at the termination of the first session of the Nineteenth 
 Congress, in the spring of 1826. 
 
 There soon occurred, however, in the failing health of Mr. 
 Mills, one of the Senators from Massachusetts, a necessity for 
 considering the question whether Mr. Webster should not be 
 transferred to the Senate. The period, therefore, which we are 
 now approaching, is undoubtedly to be regarded as a turning- 
 point in his life ; for, whatever may have hitherto been his 
 inclination or his power to withdraw from all public station, 
 his entrance into the Senate must be considered as having fixed 
 for the remainder of his days, and fortunately or unfortunately 
 for his personal happiness and welfare, his position as a states- 
 man who belonged to the country, and for whom, henceforth, 
 private life was to be a matter of intervals and episodes. We 
 may speculate, with varying conjectures and conflicting feel- 
 ings, on what might have been the course of his existence if he 
 had never entered upon the new career that was awaiting him 
 in the Senate. But the real clew to his life was correctly ex- 
 pressed by one of his friends, the Hon. William Tudor, at this 
 time United States consul at Lima : " I have, in fact, long 
 apprehended," writes Mr. Tudor, " that the business of law and
 
 1827.] ELECTION TO THE SENATE. 291 
 
 politics, and a leading station in both, will abstract you entiiely 
 from the more amiable interests of private life, and make you a 
 huge Colossus, the wonder of contemporaries, and admiration 
 of posterity. But however I may lament such a result, it is in 
 vain to resist destiny. ' Some achieve greatness ; ' and Mrs. 
 Webster and I and I. P. D., and others, who would have liked 
 to have possessed you ourselves, must be content to be chilled 
 in the increasing shadows you cast. Be it so." * 
 
 This complaint, a little querulous, perhaps, on account of 
 long silence toward an old friend, shows how well that friend 
 understood the case of one whose great powers were the real 
 arbiters of his fate. 
 
 Still we shall find that, in proportion as the public life be- 
 came more and more exacting, the private life became more 
 and more full ; that its enjoyments were the more keenly 
 coveted and relished ; that its pursuits and interests became 
 extremely various, and that those who stood in " the shadows " 
 really basked in the sunshine, whenever the world and the 
 world's cares could be shut out. We must, in fact, look fa the 
 requirements of a great nature which no public ambition could 
 satisfy, and no fame could fill, for the key to a life of a totally 
 different character, which led him to the large and pecuniarily 
 unprofitable interests of agriculture, to the exercise of a free 
 hospitality, to the delights of the fowler's gun and the angler's 
 rod, to the society of those who were neither of the great, the 
 distinguished, nor the ambitious, and to the converse and the 
 solace of humble friends, who served him with their homely 
 virtues, amused him by their native originality, and loved him 
 with a love unselfish and unalloyed. When we follow him to 
 the places where his private life was passed, we shall see how 
 much it took to occupy and to gratify such a nature, and we 
 shall find the explanation, if not the excuse, for the fact that, 
 with almost unparalleled opportunities for amassing a great 
 fortune by his profession, he died poor. 
 
 When Mr. Webster left Boston to attend the session of Con- 
 gress, which commenced in December, 1826, it was feared that 
 Mr. Mills was in a very precarious condition of health, and 
 
 1 Letter from William Tudor, dated ing that Mr. Webster had not written to 
 at Lima, November 15, 1827, complain- him in four years.
 
 292 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV 
 
 Borne of the members of the Legislature of Massachusetts, about 
 to assemble, were anxiously considering whom to make his suc- 
 cessor. Mr. Webster, in the following January, having been 
 written to on the subject by one of these members, made the 
 following reply : 
 
 [ME. WEBSTER TO ME. JOSEPH E. SPEAGtTE.] 
 
 "WASHINGTON, January 10, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAE SIE : I am quite obliged to you for your letter, although I 
 confess it has caused me some uneasiness. I cannot persuade myself that 
 the Legislature, under present circumstances, will omit to reelect Mr. Mills. 
 Here, I assure you, we are all of one mind on the subject. We think 
 there is nothing in his health to make it improper, and that every thing 
 else is in favor of it. If the Legislature will not agree to that, I hope the 
 election will be postponed. For mercy's sake, do not weaken our power in 
 the Senate ! When all the Philistines are against us, do let us have all the 
 strength we can have. If Mr. Mills lives, he is second to no man in the 
 Senate among our friends. Why, then, should he be now superseded ? 
 We shall know more of his health in June ; and June is early enough for 
 the election. But, as I will answer for it that he will not hold the office 
 any longer than he is able to discharge its duties, I should hope he would 
 be now reelected. 
 
 " Having so settled an opinion as to what is fit to be done, namely, to 
 re'elect Mr. Mills, or postpone the choice, I really have not thought of what 
 would be best in case neither of these two things can take place. Of that, 
 my dear sir, you can better judge than I. I only say that if you are gov- 
 erned by a disposition to sustain Mr. Adams, and help on the public busi- 
 ness, you will, in all events, elect a man of the very best talents which are 
 at your disposal. I pray you let no local, nor temporary, nor any small 
 consideration induce you to refrain from electing the fittest man that can 
 be found, and that can possibly be prevailed on to take thjp place. The 
 present moment, be assured, is a crisis in the affairs of Massachusetts and 
 all the North. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, very truly yours, 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTEE."' 
 
 On the 13th of February (1827), the State Senate made 
 choice of the Hon. Levi Lincoln, then Governor of the State, 
 for the senatorial term that was to commence in March, and 
 communicated their action to the House. Governor Lincoln, 
 in a communication addressed to the Speaker of the House, 
 declined to be considered a candidate, and the subject, in that 
 branch of the Legislature, was postponed. 
 1 Correspondence, i., 424.
 
 1827.] CORRESPONDENCE. 293 
 
 At that period, the Legislature held two sessions in the year ; 
 and when the June session was approaching, and the action 
 of the State Senate remained without change, it became neces- 
 sary for Mr. "Webster to meet the desire expressed to him by 
 many members of the Legislature, and by many persons at 
 Washington, that he would allow himself to be transferred to 
 the Senate of the United States. His own preference was for 
 Governor Lincoln, as will be seen from the following cor- 
 respondence : ' 
 
 [MB. WEBSTEB TO GOVEKNOK LINCOLN.] 
 
 " BOSTON, May 22, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : It was my misfortune not to see you on your late 
 visit to this place, owing partly to engagements in and out of town, and 
 partly to a misapprehension as to the time of your leaving the city. Dis 
 appointed, then, in the expectation and hope of a personal interview, I 
 now adopt this mode of making a few suggestions to you on a subject of 
 some interest ; I mean the approaching election of a Senator in Congress. 
 The present posture of things, in relation to that matter, is so fully known 
 to both of us, that I need not trouble you with much preliminary observa- 
 tion. I take it for granted that Mr. E. H. Mills will be no longer a candi- 
 date. The question then will be, who shall succeed him ? I need not say 
 to you that you yourself will doubtless be a prominent object of considera- 
 tion in relation to the vacant place, and the purpose of this communication 
 requires me to acknowledge that I deem it possible also that my name 
 should be mentioned, more or less generally, as one who may be thought 
 of, among others, for the same situation. In anticipation of this state of 
 things, and more especially since I have been awakened by its probably 
 near approach, I have not only given it a proper share of my own reflec- 
 tion, but have also consulted with others in relation to it, in whose judg- 
 ment and friendship I have confidence. The result is, that there are many 
 strong personal reasons, and, as friends think (and as I think, too), some 
 public reasons, why I should decline the offer of a seat hi the Senate, if it 
 should be made to me. Without entering, at present, into a detail of these 
 reasons, I will say that the latter class of them grow out of the public 
 station which I at present fill, and out of the necessity of increasing rather 
 than of diminishing, in both branches of the national Legislature, the 
 strength that may be reckoned on as friendly to the present Administra- 
 tion. I hope you will understand what I would now wish to communi- 
 cate, without imputing to me the vanity of supposing that my services to 
 the Administration or to the country, in the House of Representatives, are 
 of any particular importance, or, on the other hand, that it is matter of 
 option with me to change that place for another. I think quite differently
 
 294= LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIV 
 
 in both respects. Nevertheless, however inconsiderable the first of these 
 things may be, and however contingent or improbable the last, they are 
 such as to make it convenient at the present crisis to act upon the one as 
 though it were of some consideration, and to regard the other as if it 
 might probably or possibly happen. To come, therefore, to the main 
 point, I beg to say that I see no way in which the public good can be so 
 well promoted as by your consenting to go into the Senate. This is my 
 own clear and decided opinion; it is the opinion, equally clear and de- 
 cided, of intelligent and patriotic friends here, and I am able to add that 
 it is also the decided opinion of all those friends elsewhere, whose judgment in 
 such matters we should naturally regard. I 'believe I may say, without violat- 
 ing confidence, that it is the wish, entertained with some earnestness, of OUT 
 friends at Washington, that you should consent to he Mr. Milk's successor. 
 Tou will probably, as soon as you arrive here next week, learn the same 
 thing through another channel. I need hardly add, after what I have said, 
 that such also is my own wish. "We are in a crisis, and it requires all the 
 aid that can be mustered. If I have not misunderstood you, on some for- 
 mer occasion, you do not desire a long continuance in your present situa- 
 tion. If so, this occasion is an apt and convenient one to resign it. If you 
 should find your employment at Washington not agreeable, that also may 
 be relinquished, without particular inconvenience, hi a short time. The 
 ' crisis ' will terminate, one way or the other, about the end of the next ses- 
 sion, or by the beginning of the next ensuing. You will then be able to regard 
 your private wishes, probably, as to prolonging your official service there. 
 " A professional engagement will take me to New Tork at the end of 
 this week. I hope to return by the 5th or 6th of June, but possibly may 
 be detained longer. If you wish to address me soon, please enclose your 
 letter to Nathan Appleton, Esq., of this city, and he will forward it to me 
 wherever I may be. Mr. Appleton is one of our few Representatives. He 
 is intelligent and perfectly well disposed, and I shall leave him possessed 
 with my confidence, and with power to communicate my views on this 
 subject to other friends, as convenience may require. He is well known to 
 you, I suppose ; if he is not, you may safely regard him as a man of high 
 honor, and fit to be treated with confidence. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, very truly yours, 
 
 "DANL. WEBSTER. 
 "Hu Excellency Governor Lincoln." 
 
 [GOVEBNOB LINCOLN TO MB. WEBSTER.] 
 
 " WORCESTER, May 24, 1827. 
 
 " To the Hon. DANIEL WEBSTEB, 
 
 " MY DEAR SIB : I hasten, on the moment of the receipt of your letter, 
 to a reply, in the hope that it may reach you before you leave the city on 
 your proposed journey. Believe me, my dear sir, I am strongly impressed 
 with a sense of the confidence and kindness of my friends. Your opinions,
 
 1827.] CORRESPONDENCE. 395 
 
 too, came to me with the added weight of suggestions of friendship. But 
 I have to regret that, under existing circumstances, I cannot feel at liberty 
 to yield a conformity to them. My course, in reference to the subjects to 
 which YOU allude, was originally directed by considerations, over some of 
 which I had no power of control, and others had relation to the situation 
 of friends, and to what I believed was due to public sentiment. The expres- 
 sions of personal disinclination to the office of United States Senator were 
 sincere, and, from the delicacy of my position last year, were called for, and 
 openly and repeatedly made. Indeed, it became necessary for me to say 
 that I should absolutely decline the place, if offered to me. I have since 
 believed and am now confirmed in the opinion (Mr. Mills being out of the 
 question) that the transfer to which you object should be made. In the 
 expression of this sentiment I have no disguise. If the strength and sup- 
 port of the Administration are regarded, it should most certainly be done. 
 To your private interests, it seems to me, it could produce no additional 
 prejudice. The sacrifice of business and of domestic duties and enjoyments 
 is no greater in the one place than the other. To the Administration, 
 this arrangement must be all-important. I consider the deficiency of 
 power in the Senate as the weak point in the citadel, the breach already 
 made in the walls. The force should there be immediately strengthened. 
 No individual should be placed there who was not now in armor for the 
 conflict ; who understood the proper mode of resistance, who personally 
 knew, and had measured strength with the opposition, who was familiar 
 with the political interests and foreign relations of the country, with the 
 course of policy of the Administration, and who would be prepared, at 
 once, to meet and decide upon the character of measures which should be 
 proposed. This, I undertake to say, no novice in the national council 
 could do. At least, I would not promise to attempt it. I feel deeply that 
 I could not do it successfully. I should disappoint the expectations of my 
 friends, and do injustice to the little reputation I might otherwise hope to 
 enjoy. There is no affectation of humility in this, and, under such impres- 
 sions, I cannot suffer myself to be thought of in a manner which may make me 
 responsible for great mischief in defeating the chance of a better selection. 
 
 " As to the objection which I have heard urged from your present situa- 
 tion in the House, it has force, but is yet susceptible of a satisfactory an- 
 swer. Even from the Senate that influence would continue to be felt indi- 
 rectly where it has heretofore been effectually exercised. It could not but be 
 selfish, I had almost said cowardly, in the host which will remain to the 
 side of the Administration in the popular branch, to avoid that respon- 
 sibility which their numbers, and I am well persuaded their talents, will 
 enable them triumphantly to meet. 
 
 " But I have already written more and with greater haste than I should. 
 I have to repeat that I beg not to be considered a candidate for the sta- 
 tion, to which, I feel, that the best and kindest motives of friends would 
 assign me, but which I venture to assure them, upon such explanation as I 
 might more fully offer, they would excuse me this time for declining. In
 
 296 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 this act it will be among the first of my wishes to retain that good opinion 
 with which you have so highly honored me. 
 
 " I shall have pleasure in seeing Mr. Appleton, and hope that he may 
 favor me with an opportunity on my arrival in the city. 
 
 " With sentiments of the most respectful and friendly consideration, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "LEVI LINCOLN." 
 
 [MB. WEBSTEB TO GOVEKNOK LINCOLN.] 
 
 " NEW YORK, May 30, 1827. 
 
 " DEAB SIB : I have received here your letter communicated through Mr. 
 Appleton. I could have very much wished that you might have arrived 
 at a different conclusion on the question of going into the Senate. Never- 
 theless, I see that there is weight in some of the reasons which you men- 
 tion, and I am aware also that there are other considerations, not stated 
 by you, which, however little they affect your own mind, very naturally 
 would create in others regret at your leaving your present situation. 
 Under existing circumstances, I feel it my duty to leave it to others to decide 
 how the place shall be filled. If a satisfactory appointment can be made 
 without removing me from the place I am in, it will be highly agreeable 
 to me ; if it cannot, the matter must be disposed of as others may deem best. 
 " I am, my dear sir, 
 
 " With most true regard, 
 
 " Tour obedient servant, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTEB. 
 " His Excellency Governor Lincoln." 
 
 When the Legislature was reassembled in June, Mr. Web- 
 ster, without any regular nomination from any quarter, was 
 elected to the Senate of the United States, for the term of six 
 years, from the 4th of March, 1827, by large majorities. 1 
 
 The following letters will explain the reasons which led 
 many of his friends to desire his remaining in the Lower House 
 of Congress reasons which the Legislature of Massachusetts 
 felt it to be their duty to overrule : 
 
 [FBOM MB. CLAY.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, 14tfl May, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : I duly received your favor of the 7th instant, and on 
 the interesting subject of it I have conversed with the President. 
 
 1 In the House, Mr. Webster received jority, of members of the old Republican 
 
 202 votes out of 328, and, in the Senate, party of the country, to which the Gov- 
 
 26 out of 39. The Legislature at this ernor and most of the members of the 
 
 time was composed, by a very large ma- Executive Council also belonged.
 
 1827.] CORRESPONDENCE. 397 
 
 " I had previously written to Mr. Silsbee that the pros and cons on 
 the question of your translation from the House to the Senate were so 
 nearly balanced that I thought you might safely pursue the bent of your 
 own inclination. The public interests require you in the House, and you 
 are wanted in the Senate. So far as your personal interests are to be ad- 
 vanced, I incline to think you had better remain where you are. If your 
 place could be supplied in the House, then I should say go to the Senate. 
 Oakley or Sergeant might enable the Administration to get along in the 
 popular branch, but the course of one and the election of the other are un- 
 certain. If neither of them come to our aid, we possibly may do without 
 them, should you be compelled to accept a place in the Senate. The Ad- 
 ministration loses much, directly as well as morally, for want of such abili- 
 ties as you would carry into that body ; directly, by the array of talents 
 on one side (which it must be owned the opposition there exhibits) with- 
 out an adequate counterpoise on the other, which has the effect of dis- 
 heartening friendly Senators; morally, by the extraneous effect on the 
 country of this unequal contest. 
 
 " What the President would be glad to see is, that Mr. Lincoln should 
 come in place of Mr. Mills, as the state of this latter gentleman's health 
 dees not admit of his longer serving ; and if, as it is said to be probable, 
 Mr. Silsbee should resign, in consequence of his being elected Governor, or 
 from any other cause, that you, after the ensuing session, should take his 
 place. But if Governor Lincoln cannot be prevailed upon to accept a seat 
 in the Senate, then the President decidedly prefers your coming in at the 
 next session as Mr. Mills's successor. 
 
 " From McLane I have heard directly nothing. I have hoped that if 
 Delaware should send to the House of Representatives next fall a friend to 
 the Administration, and no very adverse events should occur elsewhere, 
 Mr. McLane might see that it was his interest to adhere to his principles, 
 and disentangle himself from his new associates ; and I had thought that 
 the probability of his adopting a correct course might be influenced by 
 the consideration of his being the leader of one party, instead of being 
 eclipsed in the ranks of the other. But all this is speculation, and, should 
 you go into the Senate, he may still find that his future advancement lies 
 rather on the side of working with you than against you. Unless I am 
 much deceived, Delaware will send to the House of Representatives a 
 friend to the Administration. 
 
 " The recent changes in the British ministry are very great, and they 
 must have been the result of a radical difference of opinion on some im- 
 portant subject. "We have no explanation of them from Mr. Gallatin, from 
 whom I have received no letter subsequent to the resignations. The most 
 obvious cause is that of the Irish Catholics. On the last day of March, 
 Mr. Huskisson remained too unwell to resume the negotiation with Mr. 
 Gallatin. He was trying to settle a preliminary point, respecting our 
 Northeastern boundary, with Mr. Addington, but was able to make very 
 little progress. I should think that the new ministerial arrangements
 
 298 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 would occasion some further delay. I see, therefore, but little prospect of 
 Mr. Gallatin's speedily coming home. 
 
 " I have very little late political news. The meeting in Baltimore was 
 all that we could have desired it to be. The progress of correct thinking 
 in Pennsylvania continues to be encouraging, and in New York our friends 
 are as confident of success as they need be. They are about to establish a 
 newspaper, edited by Mr. Leake, formerly senior editor of the Argus, and 
 I hope they will not fail in that object. It is much wanted. 
 
 "From Kentucky, my friends write me in good spirits. "We shall, 
 however, have warm work there, growing out of our ' Free bridge ' ques- 
 tion, alias the relief system. 
 
 " I have written a short letter to Silsbee, communicating the preceding 
 views in regard to the Senate. 
 
 " I am making efforts to get off to Kentucky in about a fortnight. Un- 
 less there should be some unexpected occurrence, I think I shall go about 
 that time. 
 
 " Yours cordially, 
 
 " H. CLAY. 
 
 "D. Webster, Esq. 
 
 "P. S. Your late speech at Faneuil Hall is all that it should have 
 been. It presents the true condition of the existing state of things, and 
 points out clearly the only correct line of policy. In spite of all the carp- 
 ers, it will have good effect. H. C." 
 
 [MR. SILSBEE TO MR. CLAY.] 
 
 " SALEM, May 23, 1827. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : Absence from home has prevented an earlier acknowledg- 
 ment of your letter of the 15th instant. 
 
 " It has long been proverbial here that ' Boston folks are full of notions,' 
 and the Republicans of the other sections of the Commonwealth have too 
 often found this to be the case with their political friends of the metropo- 
 lis ; but, independent of this natural propensity to pursue a course counter 
 to that of their friends, the divisions which have been evinced in the 
 recent elections may be attributed to other causes, and principally to the 
 recent decisions of the State government upon the bridge and lottery 
 questions, which have caused some excitement throughout the Common- 
 wealth, and much in the vicinity of Boston ; and the opponents of the 
 Administration are unwearied in their efforts to make these divisions sub- 
 servient to their purposes, the effect of which will not be such as may be 
 apprehended at a distance. 
 
 " It is yet quite uncertain who will be elected to the United States 
 Senate in place of Mr. Mills. It seems to be the wish of a large majority 
 of our friends in this town that Governor Lincoln should be the man, but 
 it is apprehended that he will not consent to be a candidate, and it is 
 the opinion of some that he ought not to, while others yet entertain a hope
 
 1827.J CORRESPONDENCE. 299 
 
 that he may be prevailed on to consent to a nomination when he sees (as 
 he -will) that Mr. Mills declines. I have a letter now before me from Mr. 
 Lincoln (in reply to one written to him on the subject), in which he says, 
 ' I know full well that the policy of a transfer from my present office, at 
 this time, is much doubted by a large proportion of our Republican friends ; 
 and the circumstances which existed, and the manner in which I was sus- 
 tained by the people of the Commonwealth, in the late election, impose on 
 me the highest obligation to respect this expression of their sentiments. 
 I, therefore, beg leave to be permitted explicitly to repeat my entire disin- 
 clination to be considered a candidate for the place to which you refer. 
 It is an arrangement to which I cannot consent. There are reasons, both of a 
 public and private character, which I am sure might satisfy you of the 
 propriety of this determination. 
 
 " Notwithstanding this communication, I have promised some friends 
 here that I will see the Governor the moment he arrives in Boston, and 
 endeavor to remove his objections to a nomination, but really I see but 
 little hope of success. If he persists in declining, Mr. Webster will, I 
 think, be selected, though at this moment doubts are expressed of the ex- 
 pediency of removing him from the House to the Senate. So far as. my 
 own feelings are concerned, I should prefer seeing Mr. "Webster in the 
 Senate, at this time, to any individual that could be sent from the State ; 
 but fears are entertained by many that his removal may be productive of 
 more injury than benefit, especially if Mr. Oakley, from New York, should 
 be found in the opposition. The 'divisions and commotions' which now 
 exist in Boston will, I am afraid, operate unfavorably to the removal of 
 Mr. Webster, as many of his constituents are apprehensive that they may 
 not be able, at this time, to elect a Representative with whom they should 
 be satisfied, and some of them think a new election quite too hazardous to 
 be attempted. As soon as the Legislature meets, efforts will be made tow- 
 ard a suitable nomination. No one avowedly unfriendly can succeed. The 
 exertions of the opposition will, therefore, be directed toward, one whom 
 they may think most susceptible of conversion. 
 
 " Anxious as I am to resign, and great as will be the sacrifice to me, 
 both of interest and of inclination, by omitting to do it, yet I shall not 
 resign unless the result of the election about to take place is such as to 
 show, satisfactorily, that it can be done without hazard. 
 
 " With the highest respect, your obedient servant, 
 
 "NATHL. SILSBEE. 
 
 " Hon. Henry Clay." 
 
 [FROM MR. CLAY.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, 28ta May, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I received your favor under date the 18th instant, 
 from Boston. I regret the state of things there which defeated the elec- 
 tion, but it will have no bad effect on the general scale.
 
 300 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIV. 
 
 " Governor Lincoln, I fear, will not be prevailed upon to run as Senator, 
 I transmit you a letter this day received from Mr. Silsbee on that subject. 
 The Governor, I believe, is well apprised of the President's anxious desire 
 that he should be in the Senate. I know not of any further exertions that 
 can be made to induce him to alter his determination. Should he adhere 
 to it, I have ventured to express the opinion that it would be expedient 
 that you should be sent. Should Oakley be friendly, that will abate the 
 objections to your transfer, although, as it regards yourself personally, I do 
 not think they will be entirely removed. 
 
 " The condition of affairs in New Hampshire is to be regretted. But, 
 if you are right in supposing four-fifths of the Republican party in that 
 State to be favorable, Mr. Hill cannot effect much. And sooner or later 
 he must meet with the fate which he merits. I have always supposed that 
 New England, in all its parts, was so friendly as not to leave any doubt 
 of its final decision. I have not a single regular correspondent in New 
 Hampshire. I think Governor Bell (with whom I have occasionally ex- 
 changed a letter) may be entirely confided in. 
 
 " From the West, and from Pennsylvania and Maryland, the current of 
 news continues to run in a good channel. They are getting very warm in 
 Kentucky, but, unless I am entirely deceived, there is no uncertainty in the 
 final issue. 
 
 'I wish to leave here about the middle or last of next week. I shall go 
 by Pittsburg, where I anticipate a cordial reception. 
 
 " I shall be glad to hear from you while you are in New York. 
 
 " The affair of Eio is much less serious in fact than it is represented to 
 be in the papers. I think Mr. Raguet acted rather precipitately. And I 
 hope we shall be able to arrange it satisfactorily. 
 
 " I am always 
 
 " Cordially your friend, 
 
 " H. CLAY. 
 "D. Webster, Esq." 
 
 [FROM THE HON. j. c. WRIGHT, ONE OF THE REPRESENTATIVES 
 FROM OHIO.] 
 
 " STEITBENVILLE, Zlth May, 1827. 
 
 " D. WEBSTER, Esq. : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Tour favor of the 30th ultimo reached me some 
 days since, during my absence of a week attending court, and to 
 the giving certain men the proper political impetus in a neighboring 
 county. This absence has occasioned the delay in acknowledging your 
 letter. 
 
 " I had understood from another quarter that our friends in the ' Bay 
 State had it in contemplation to send you and some other ' strong man ' 
 to the United States Senate. . . . This information had occasioned me to 
 reflect on the probable effect of removing you to the Senate, and had really 
 given me much trouble. It is useless to disguise the fact, your presence in
 
 1827.] CORRESPONDENCE. 301 
 
 the House has been thought essential in sustaining our cause in that body, 
 and although Providence, or exertion, might bring forth men, if you were 
 absent, equal to any emergency, yet no one can say where they are to come 
 from, or point out the men now in the House to supply your place. Your 
 absence will be sensibly felt by our side, and will inspire our adversaries 
 with new hope and courage. Should Oakley be against us, and Phil. 
 Barbour be active and zealous on the same side, they, with McDuffie, 
 Ingham, and Buchanan, aided by the sarcasms of the crazy Randolph, even 
 if Forsyth should be elected Governor and Wickliffe fail, will give us a 
 hard tug. I fear Oakley more than any of them, and am exceedingly 
 anxious to have him with us, though I am yet unable to learn how he is. 
 It is equally useless to attempt to deceive ourselves as to the fact that our 
 opponents array more energetic operating talent on their side in the Senate 
 than we do on ours. I do not intend to disparage our friends there, but 
 the world says, and we have all felt the inferiority of our force in that 
 body. We ought to have there some of our most powerful minds. I have 
 been astonished that New England has not placed in that station some 
 men of more force. But we must look at the body as it is. We must 
 recruit our force there, and where have we the men at command ? You, 
 we want in loth places. It is difficult to see how we can get along in 
 either House without you. In the Senate, there is little hope of renovating 
 the present members, and imparting to them increased moral energy and 
 exertions. In the House, we have, I think, better ground to rest our hopes 
 on our men are younger, have more elasticity of mind, and, perhaps, 
 pressing necessity may bring out talents -and exertions equal to any 
 emergency we shall be called to encounter. If Oakley and Phil. Barbour 
 be warmly against us, they, with McDuffie, Buchanan, and Randolph (with 
 his dreaded sarcasm), even if Forsyth should be Governor, and Wick 
 liflfe have liberty to stay at home, will present a force we cannot despise 
 a force requiring strong power and efficient discipline to conquer. Yet, I 
 incline to the opinion the chance for us in the House is better than in the 
 Senate. And, though not without great distrust of the correctness of my 
 opinion, I think you should go to the Senate. If it be true that Mr. Sils- 
 bee will retire, who will succeed him ? Give us a strong man, and when 
 you are about ' improving the condition ' of the Senate, suppose some of 
 
 you put W out of the humor of continuing any longer, that his place 
 
 may be supplied by M . Who will succeed you ? Boston ought to be 
 
 able to supply one of the first order of intellect. 
 
 " The New-Hampshire plan of sustaining the Administration party, 
 without the aid of Federalists, is certainly injudicious ; the cry of old party 
 names, at this day, is of no use except to demagogues ; honest men ought 
 to discountenance it. I regret your views in Boston were opposed by any 
 local and selfish views those seem to have prevented an election of part 
 of your Representatives. Although your city is denominated ' headquarters 
 of correct principles,' you can't boast much of union in this last election. 
 I hope for the success of the remainder of your ticket on the next trial. I
 
 302 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XI\ 
 
 see Baylies has agreed to try Ms luck again. Cannot one of the Adminis- 
 tration opponents be induced to retire, and the other be elected ? . . . 
 
 " Truly yours, 
 
 " J. C. WRIGHT." 
 
 [FROM THE HON. CHARLES MINER, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA.] 
 
 " WEST CHESTER, June 13, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : The mail last night brought the account of your elec- 
 tion to the United States Senate. How can we possibly spare you from 
 our House ? Who, when the storm is up and the billows roll, can we see 
 at the helm, and each one feel that the vessel is safe ? Well, they need a 
 pilot in the Senate. I have felt that our friends there needed aid of a kind 
 no one is so able to afford them ; for the opposition happen to be strong in 
 talent there. Believing the public good will also be promoted, I con- 
 gratulate you sincerely on this accession to your well-deserved honors on 
 this gratifying testimonial of confidence from your noble State. The feel- 
 ing of my heart is, onward, and may the highest honors be awarded to the 
 greatest merit. 
 
 " With sentiments of perfect respect, 
 
 " CHARLES MINER. 
 
 " Hon. Daniel Webster." 
 
 [TO MR. DENTSON.] 
 
 "BOSTON, July 28, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : It is a great while since you have heard from me , 
 but this you must impute, not at all to forgetfulness, nor altogether to 
 procrastination. I wrote you a long letter at Washington, and when I 
 supposed you had already received it, it was brought back to me, having 
 been dropped in the street by my servant on his way to the Department 
 of State, and taken up by another servant, who kept it for a month or two, 
 on the supposition, I imagine (he being an ignorant black), that it might 
 contain money. 
 
 " The last letter which I had the pleasure to receive from you was 
 dated in April, and forwarded by your brother and Captain Hall. 1 I have 
 not yet had the good fortune to meet either of those gentlemen, but on the 
 strength of your letter I have written to Captain Hall, now in Canada, 
 solicited the honor of his acquaintance, and expressed the hope that we 
 should see him here ; and communicated through him my respects and 
 salutations to your brother. Captain Hall writes me that he will pay us a 
 visit, and I hope he may bring your brother along with him. 
 
 " I thank you for the pamphlets, etc., which you were kind enough to 
 send me. All such things I read with much interest, and shall be more 
 and more obliged by every such instance of your recollection. 
 
 1 Captain Basil Hall.
 
 1827.] CORRESPONDENCE. 303 
 
 " The recent political events in England have produced a good deal of 
 sensation and speculation on our side the Atlantic. It is quite astonishing 
 how extensively the debates and proceedings in your Parliament are read 
 in the United States. Our interior papers, back to the shores of the Mis- 
 sissippi, contain more or less of them, and they everywhere excite some 
 degree of attention. We are very generally on Mr. Canning's side of the 
 question, although we have a suspicion that he does not love us Americans 
 with quits all his heart. The general tenor of his political sentiments, 
 especially so far as they regard the state of the world, and the cause of 
 liberal opinions, and free governments, is, of course, highly acceptable and 
 gratifying to us republicans. For one, however, I regret the secession of 
 some of the ministers who have retired, and I suppose you must also. 
 Among them is Mr. Peel, who seems to have established a high character, 
 as a man of useful and solid talents. I feel pain also that Lord Eldon 
 should not otherwise have terminated his long career. Perhaps something 
 of the professional feeling mingles in my regrets, on his case, for I confess 
 I have the most profound admiration for his judicial character. Nothing 
 in your prints has disgusted me more than the fierceness of some, and the 
 wantonness of others, of the innumerable attacks on the character of the 
 ex-chancellor. Of Lord Bathurst I know nothing, and of Lord Westmore- 
 land I suppose there is not much to be known, except that he is a peer, a 
 respectable person, and with powerful influence of property and connection. 
 These noble lords, I suppose, could be spared, if such were their pleasure ; 
 but I should think it would have been desirable that the Duke of Welling- 
 ton should have remained. Of course, I am a very incompetent judge, but 
 I must say I have seen no proofs of that incapacity which some of your 
 journals charge upon the duke,- in regard to the discharge of official 
 duties. He does not appear to me to be a weak man, and I think his 
 speech in the House of Lords made out a better case than was presented 
 by any of his seceding colleagues. At any rate, considering his un- 
 equalled military achievements, in hours of peril and darkness, your coun- 
 trymen, many of them, will regret an arrangement which appears to place 
 him out of the favor of the crown. 
 
 " I congratulate you most heartily, my dear sir, on your own accession 
 to office, and the career that seems so auspiciously opening before you. 
 I have looked after you in the debates, but have seen little of you this 
 session. Our dates are now only to the 13th June. We do not know yet 
 what the Lords have done with the Corn Law, and perhaps the Lord only 
 knows what they may do. 
 
 " Since you last heard from me, we have become involved in a very 
 warm canvass for the next presidency. General Jackson's friends have 
 made, and are still making, very great efforts to place him in the chair. 
 He is a good soldier, and I believe a very honest man, but some of us think 
 him wholly unfit for the place to which he aspires. Military achievement, 
 however, is a very visible and palpable merit, and on this account the 
 general is exceedingly popular in some of the States. The election will
 
 304 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIV. 
 
 be close, though my present belief is that Mr. Adams will be again 
 elected. 
 
 " The good people here have seen fit to transfer me from the House of 
 Representatives to the Senate. This was not according to my wishes, but 
 a state of things has arisen which, in the judgment of friends, rendered the 
 measure expedient, and I yielded to their will. I do not expect to find 
 my situation so agreeable as that which I left. Mr. Gorham, a highly 
 respectable man, who was also my predecessor, succeeds to my place as 
 Representative from this city. Our next session, we fear, will be stormy. 
 There is nothing new of an exciting character, either in our foreign rela- 
 tions, or our domestic condition ; but the pendency of the President's 
 election is likely enough to produce heats, as it has already created parties 
 in both Houses of Congress. 
 
 " Your excellent friend, the Judge, is very well : I believe he has recently 
 written you. He always speaks of you with great regard and kindness. 
 
 " We have heard, my dear sir, that you are soon to cease writing your- 
 self bachelor. If this be true, it is another topic on which we all send you 
 our congratulations. Mrs. Webster accepts the tender of your remem- 
 brance with pleasure, and bids me reciprocate respect and good wishes 
 from her. 
 
 " Let us not be forgotten by your fellow-travellers in America, but give 
 them our regards, as you may see them. I shall send you a little package 
 of such things as may be most likely to interest you ; and, in the hope of 
 hearing from you ere long, 
 
 " I am, dear sir, 
 
 " Most truly yours, 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 " J. E. Denison, Esq., 
 
 " 2 Portman Square, London. 
 
 " Tour new chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, was born in this town, and 
 christened in Trinity Church July or August, 1772. His mother was a 
 direct descendant from one of the first comers, viz., one of the company of 
 the May Flower, landed on Plymouth Rock, December 22, 1620. So you 
 see there is a little of the blood of the Puritans in him. Being at Ply- 
 mouth the other day, their village antiquarian gave me this last part of 
 the information." 
 
 But the honor which had come to Mr. Webster by the general 
 voice of the people of Massachusetts, and with the approbation of 
 the whole country, was not to be shared by her who had been the 
 proud and happy partner of all his advances in public considera- 
 tion, and who had adorned every circle, private or official, into 
 which he had conducted her, since the day when their lives were 
 united in a little New-Hampshire village. In the summer of 
 1827", Mrs. Webster's health had not been good, but she had
 
 1827.] ILLNESS OF MRS. WEBSTER. 305 
 
 apparently been restored by the air of Sandwich, where they 
 had passed several weeks. When they left Boston in the latter 
 part of November, to proceed to Washington, she was again 
 far from well. Still, it was not then imagined that she was 
 suffering from a fatal malady. The journey to New York 
 increased her debility, and on their arrival in this city, a con- 
 sultation by Dr. Post and Dr. Perkins resulted in a very un- 
 favorable opinion of the case. Its progress to the sad termina- 
 tion, the alternations of hope and discouragement, the patient 
 resignation of the sufferer, and the bearing of him who was to 
 be thus bereaved, are brought vividly before us in the corre- 
 spondence of those two trying months of December and January : 
 
 [TO MB. PAIGE.] 
 
 " NEW TOKK, December 5, 7 P. M., 1827. 
 
 " DEAB WILLIAM : I must now write you more fully upon the afflicting 
 state of Mrs. Webster's health. Dr. Post, a very eminent physician and 
 surgeon, has to-day been called into consultation with Dr. Perkins. Their 
 opinion, I am distressed to say, is far from favorable. I believe they will 
 recommend her return to Boston as soon as convenient. They sem to 
 think that it is very uncertain how fast or how slow may be the progress 
 of the complaint ; but they hold out faint hopes of any cure. I hope I 
 may be able to meet the greatest of all earthly afflictions with firmness, 
 but I need not say that I am at present quite overcome. I have not com- 
 municated to Mrs. Webster what the physicians think. That dreadful 
 task remains. She will receive the information, I am sure, as a Chris- 
 tian ought. Under present circumstances, I should be very glad if you 
 could come here, although I would not wish you to put yourself to too 
 much inconvenience. I should be very glad myself to go to Washington, 
 though it were but for a single day, but I should not do that unless, in the 
 mean time, Mrs. Webster should be on her return. I shall now make no 
 move until I hear from you in answer to this letter. If you come on, I 
 think the best way will be to take the mail stage-coach, with the chance 
 of finding an evening boat at New Haven. You must let Fletcher * know, 
 without alarming him too much, that his mother's health is precarious, 
 and that she will probably return home. I am not yet able to write, as 
 you see, though I think I am getting better. 
 
 " Tours truly, 
 
 " DAJOEL WEBSTER. 
 
 " P. 8. Eight o'clock. I would fain hope that the foregoing is of too 
 alarming a character. I have since seen Mrs. Webster, and told her the 
 
 1 Daniel Fletcher Webster had now continued to be so called occasionally by 
 dropped the name of Daniel, although he some of his father's friends. 
 21
 
 306 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Co. XIV. 
 
 doctors' opinions. She says she still has courage. If you can come on so 
 as to accompany Mrs. Webster home, it will not be necessary that you 
 should set out the very day you receive this. But I shall not myself go 
 to Washington until I hear from you that you can come to take Mrs. Web 
 ster home, if need be." 
 
 [TO MR. TICKNOR.] 
 
 "New TOEK, December 9, 1827. Sunday Evening. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : We have received your very kind letter of the 7th 
 (intended to be brought by Mr. Paige) through the mail. Mr. Paige, we 
 suppose, took the boat, and may probably be kept back by this thick 
 weather. We look for him to-morrow. 
 
 " I am most happy to say that the physicians to-day think Mrs. Web- 
 ster's case is apparently better than when they made a joint examination 
 three days ago. She is certainly far more free from pain, and, in all re- 
 spects, more comfortable. Yesterday, I wrote an urgent letter to Dr. 
 Warren to come here, and see her, if possible. To-day, she consents that 
 that request may be withdrawn for the present, and I have written the 
 doctor accordingly. Will you have the goodness to see him, or send him 
 a note, on receipt of this, by way of caution, lest Ms letter should have 
 happened to miscarry. 
 
 " Our hope now is, that Mrs. Webster, by staying here until Mr. and 
 Mrs. Story come along, may then be able to go with them to Washington. 
 At any rate, we think she must stay until some further change, as rest, 
 quiet, and repose, seem now essential to her. Will you have the goodness 
 to signify this state of things to Judge Story ? I hope to write him myself 
 in a day or two ; but writing is, at present, not easy to me. I am, how- 
 ever, getting along, and so far well that my own case deserves no regard. 
 
 " Mrs. Webster desires her fervent love to Mrs. Ticknor, and her very 
 best regards to yourself. She thanks you both abundantly for your kind- 
 ness and friendly concern. Pray, make my best remembrances to Mrs. 
 Ticknor, and believe me, as I am always, 
 
 " Yours most truly, 
 
 " D.- WEBSTER, 
 
 " Mr. Ticknor." 
 
 [FROM MR. TICKNOR.] 
 
 " BOSTON, Decftriber 10, 1827. 
 
 " MY DKAR SIR : Your packet, covering three letters, came safely yes- 
 terday (Sunday). The one addressed to Mr. Paige, and marked private, 
 was carried home by Daniel, who locked it up unopened ; the one to Dr. 
 Warren was sent to him at once ; and the one from Dr. Perkins to Mr. 
 Paige was opened by Daniel, who afterward brought it to us. The last 
 two have given us very unwelcome news about Mrs. Webster ; but I am 
 happy to find that Dr, Warren looks very cheerfully on the case, though
 
 *827.] ILLNESS OF MRS. WEBSTER. 397 
 
 that is not the professional habit of his mind ; and, when she Arrives here 
 we will do all we can to make the winter comfortable for her. It would 
 relieve her of some of her pain at this moment if she could see how bright 
 Daniel looks at the thought of her coming home, and of his being able, as 
 he expresses it, ' to go and see her every day.' He is gone this morning 
 to let Hannah l know it, and I advised him also to tell Mrs. Lekain, that 
 she might not let her rooms, which are now empty, until your intentions 
 are known. Mr. Paige's visit could not have been better timed, and. 
 indeed, kindness like his is as sure as instinct. 
 
 " We are very glad to hear, from Dr. Perkins's letter, that you would 
 probably be well in three or four days from its date. Pray send us notice, 
 somehow or other, how you get on, when Mrs. "Webster is likely to come, 
 and all other matters about which you know we are anxious to learn. 
 Daniel is quite well, and has interested us very much by the delightful 
 feeling he has shown under his late anxiety, and his present happiness at 
 the thought of seeing his mother again. 
 
 " Remember us particularly to Mr. Paige, who promised to write to us, 
 and remember us most affectionately to Mrs. Webster. Can we do any 
 thing to prepare for her coming ? Let us know, and it shall go hard but 
 vour wishes shall be fulfilled. 
 
 " Tours very faithfully, 
 
 " G. T." 
 
 [TO MRS. TICKNOR.] 
 
 '"NEW YORK, December 11, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAR MRS. TICKNOR : Mr. Paige arrived this afternoon, bringing 
 your very kind letter to Mrs. Webster, for which she desires to return you 
 a thousand thanks. It would fatigue her too much to undertake the 
 answering of it herself, and, therefore, she employs me in the grateful ser- 
 vice. It is very good in you and your husband to remember us in our 
 unfortunate detention here, and to give us so much sympathy for the causes 
 which have produced it. I wrote Mr. Ticknor the evening before last. 
 Yesterday, Mrs. Webster continued better, in a degree answering to the 
 increased hopes of the physicians. She thinks, however, that she must 
 have taken some little cold, as her limb has been uneasy and felt stiff to- 
 day, and she has at times had very severe pain. She hopes that she shall 
 sleep to-night, and be better again to-morrow. She is indeed very sick, 
 and suffers much. Her spirits are, however, pretty good, and she bears all 
 with great fortitude and patience. She is much gratified to see her brother.* 
 
 " As for me, I am yet in-doors, but am tolerably well. If I felt like 
 leaving Mrs. Webster, I could be moving along slowly toward Washington, 
 but I shall wait a little longer, in the hope of leaving her more comfort- 
 able. At any rate, I should return immediately, unless a decidedly favor- 
 able change should take place in her condition. 
 
 1 A favorite servant * Mr. Paige.
 
 308 LTFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XIV 
 
 " Mrs. Webster has also letters from Mrs. Hale and Eliza. Will you 
 send them word that I will write them to-morrow and next day, instead 
 of this evening ; so that you may hear from us daily. This is a pool 
 apology I have for not answering the letters of such friends immediately, 
 but I am not yet so free from my complaint as to make writing entirely 
 easy. The children are well, and pray papa to send their love to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Ticknor and little Anna. 
 
 " I am, my dear lady, with most true regard, yours, 
 
 "D. WEBSTEB. 
 "Mrs. Ticknor." 
 
 On the 13th of December, the symptoms were so far favor- 
 able, that Mr. Webster felt justified in proceeding to Washing- 
 ton, leaving Mrs. Webster in the care of Dr. and Mrs. Perkins, 
 in their own house, and surrounded by other affectionate and 
 devoted friends. 
 
 [TO MB. EZEKIEL WEBSTEB.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, December 17, 1827. 
 
 " DEAB EZEKIEL : I arrived here but last night, and have to say that I 
 left my wife sick at New York. Her complaint, which is partly local, has 
 been of some time standing, but we did not think much of it till lately. 
 I fear now it is dangerous. She was much more comfortable when I left 
 New York than she had been for a fortnight ; but whether permanently 
 better, I know not. Mr. Paige is now there with her, at Dr. Perkins's. 
 If she should get so well as to be able to travel, I shall go back for her. 
 On the other hand, if she grow worse, I must go and stay with her. I 
 know not how Providence will dispose of this threatening case ; but at 
 present it fills me with the keenest anxiety. 
 
 " I find here two letters from you, and have received another to-day. 
 As soon as I have been here long enough to learn what is the state of 
 things, I will write you on political matters. 
 " I find our friends here not despairing. 
 
 " Yours as ever, 
 
 "D. WEBSTEB." 
 
 [TO JUDGE STOBT.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, December 18, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : Yours of the 13th, addressed to New York, has fol- 
 lowed me hither. My own health was so far restored, that, on Thursday, 
 the 13th, I ventured to set forth, and arrived here Sunday evening, the 
 16th, without inconvenience, and with far better health than I had when I 
 left New York. I do not now write myself an invalid. 
 
 " I left Mrs. Webster at New York. Her health was bad, though better 
 than it had been. I know not whether you are acquainted with the nature
 
 827.] ILLNESS OF MRS. WEBSTER. 309 
 
 of her complaint ; though Dr. Warren or Mr. Ticknor -will readily explain 
 it to you. 1 My last letter, December 16th, says she is, on the whole, ' better 
 than at any time before since she caine to New York.' I am still in great 
 hopes of her being able to join me here. Mr. Paige is now with her, and 
 will stay till Christmas. If she should be able to travel, I expect to gc 
 for her, and bring her along. I desired Mr. Paige to keep you informed. 
 
 " Our rooms I found all ready, and in order ; and, notwithstanding 
 Mrs. Webster's illness, they will be kept for her, and for you and Mrs. 
 Story. Our good landlady has done all in her power to prepare for us ; 
 and, if my poor wife had health, I should look forward to a happy session. 
 And, as it is, I hope for the best. You say you shall set out by the 29th. 
 I have given that information this morning to Mr. Silsbee's and Mr. Crown- 
 inshield's families, and they hope only that it may be earlier. I am sure 
 Mrs. Story will find herself pleasantly situated here. As to political affairs, 
 I have not been here long enough to learn much. I find our friends not 
 discouraged. Virginia appears to be showing great strength for the 
 Administration, and many hopes are entertained of her final vote that way. 
 The weather has been so bad, I have as yet seen very few persons since I 
 came here. 
 
 " I am glad Mason succeeded in the Argonaut. It is a good cause, 
 
 whatever Judge P may think of it, and must finally prevail. It would 
 
 not give rise to a serious doubt in any other part of the Union. At least, I 
 think so. 
 
 " I shall write you again shortly ; and, in the mean time, am, with all 
 
 my heart, 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER. 
 " P. S. Remember my regards to Mrs. Story." 
 
 [TO MB. PAIGE.] 
 " WASHINGTON, December 25, Christmas, Noon, 1827. 
 
 " DEAK WILLIAM : Your letter of Sunday has this moment reached me, 
 in which you say Mrs. Webster would be glad if it should be quite con- 
 venient for me that I would come to New York to meet Judge Story ; and 
 I certainly shall do so. I cannot go for a day or two, because my cold ia 
 too severe ; but there is nothing to prevent my setting off so soon as I am 
 quite well. Judge Story wrote me that he should probably set out about 
 the 29th, which is next Saturday. 
 
 " Possibly I may not leave here before Monday, the 31st ; but, even 
 then, I shall be in New York as soon as the Judge. On receipt of this I 
 will thank you to write me, saying whether Mrs. Webster wishes me to 
 bring any of hers or the children's things along with me. Your letter, if 
 written on Friday morning, will be here on Sunday, so that, if I happen 
 to stay till Monday, I shall get it. Probably I shall go off before Mon- 
 
 1 Mrs. Webster's disease was a tumor.
 
 310 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 day ; this depends a little as well on the weather and the state of the 
 public conveyances as on my getting rid of my cold. 
 
 " I hope, if it be not too inconvenient, you will stay till I come, and 
 then we can talk about Grace's going to Boston or "Washington. The tone 
 of your letters, for three or four days, has been so much more favorable 
 than before, that I feel encouraged. It will be dull for her, I fear, to 
 be left by me again, after you are gone ; but, then, I must come here, 
 dispatch some few things, and return to her again. I shall let no busi- 
 ness, public or private, prevent my attention to her, as the first duty. 
 
 " My cold is better to-day ; but still I am not quite well. Indeed, so 
 much of rheumatism, and then so severe a cold, have rather reduced this 
 corporeal system of mine to some little degree of weakness. Two or three 
 days of good weather, which I know not when we shall see again, would 
 do me a great deal of good. 
 
 " You will, of course, send this to Grace, as I shall not write another 
 to-day. 
 
 " Yours always truly, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER. 
 
 " P. S. Again to-morrow. 
 
 " My Christmas dinner is a handful of magnesia and a bowl of gruel." 
 
 [TO MB. MASON.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, December 26, 1827. 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND : I cannot write you now a political letter, but 
 must tell you something about me and mine. I came here the 17th, pretty 
 free from rheumatism, but have since had a violent and obstinate cold, 
 which finally has brought me to keep house. It is now, I think, better- 
 but, it will be two or three days before I shall be well again, at best. Mrs. 
 Webster, as you know, I left in New York, quite sick. She has been per- 
 haps, on the whole, from the time of my departure to the date of my last 
 letter, a good deal more comfortable and free from pain than for the fort- 
 night I was in New York. I cannot say that her substantial cause of 
 illness is better, but Mr. Paige writes on the 23d that he thinks more favor- 
 ably of the future progress and final result of the complaint than I did, 
 when I left New York. It is a tumor of rather anomalous character, and 
 the best surgeons look upon.it with much fear of consequences. It seems 
 to have a tendency to break out ; this they dread, and try to disperse it, 
 although its real character, perhaps, can only be fully known when that 
 shall take place. I would not alarm, myself or my friends unnecessarily ; 
 but, to say the truth, my dear sir, I fear the worst. I shall leave here, if I 
 am well enough, on Saturday, for New York. There I expect to meet the 
 Judge and Mrs. Story. Whether I shall return hither with her, or stay at 
 New York, or endeavor to get Mrs. Webster home, must be decided by the 
 state of things which I shall find existing when I get there. If it should 
 be probable, which the surgeons somewhat incline to suppose, that my
 
 1828.] ILLNESS OF MRS. WEBSTER. 3H 
 
 wife may remain for considerable time without essential change, I do not 
 see that the superior duty of being with her must not lead to the vacation 
 of the situation which I fill here. I should be very glad to hear from you, 
 directed to New York, care of Dr. Perkins, Fulton Street. 
 " I am, dear sir, 
 
 " Most truly yours, 
 
 " DAXIEL WKBSTEK." 
 
 [TO MB. SLLSBEE, HIS COLLEAGUE IN THE SENATE.] 
 
 "NEW YOBK, January 4, 1828. 
 
 "My DEAR SIB: I arrived here yesterday at eleven o'clock, after a 
 very tolerable journey, and without having added any thing to my cold. 
 Indeed, I think it is better than when I left Washington. 
 
 " I find Mrs. Webster more comfortable, on the whole, than I expected. 
 She has now enjoyed more rest and repose, and more freedom from pain, 
 for three days together, than in any equal time since we came here six 
 weeks ago. She has lost flesh since I left her, however, and is now feeble. 
 
 "As to the original cause of her illness, I do not know exactly what to 
 think of it. Some symptoms are certainly a little more favorable. I can- 
 not help getting a little new hope, on the whole, though I fear I build on 
 a slight foundation. , 
 
 " I find here Judge Story and his wife. They are in very good health. 
 He has not looked so well for a long time. It is a great thing to get him 
 out of his study. They set off this afternoon, being anxious to get over 
 the Chesapeake before the boat stops. They will take possession of the 
 rooms at Mrs. Mclntyre's, where I hope to join them soon. Mr. Paige 
 went to Boston yesterday. As soon as he shall be able to return, which I 
 think will be in a few days, I shall return to Washington, if Mrs. Webster 
 remains as comfortable as at present. 
 
 " I am, my dear sir, with most true regard yours, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 " P. S. Mr. Clay's address seems to meet with universal approbation." 
 
 [TO MB. EZEKTEL WEBSTER.] 
 
 u NEW YOEK, January 8, 1828. 
 
 "DEAB EZEKIEL: I came here from Washington on Friday, the 4th. 
 There are so many friends to write to on the subject of Mrs. Webster's 
 health, that I fear I may neglect some ; and hardly know how long it is 
 since I wrote you. William, however, has written occasionally to his 
 friends in your vicinity. 
 
 " I cannot say any thing new in regard to Mrs. Webster. Her case is 
 most serious. It is one of rare occurrence, no physician here, but Dr. Per- 
 kins, thinking he ever saw one like it. The tumor has not yet broken out, 
 but threatens it, and will, doubtless, soon. Its character will be then better
 
 312 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 known and I fear the worst. Dr. Nathan Smith, Dr. Physick, etc., have been 
 written to for opinions and advice ; and I have written an urgent letter to 
 Dr. Warren to come here. After all, the case is very much out of the reach 
 of medical application or surgical aid. . . . Internal remedies do not reach 
 it, and external applications have little effect. The result must be left with 
 Providence ; but you must be prepared to learn the worst. For three or four 
 days she has been more free from pain than for some time before ; but yes- 
 terday she was a good deal distressed again. William Paige went home 
 the day I came. He thinks he can return in a week or ten days, and stay 
 till I make a visit to the court at Washington, if Mrs. Webster should be 
 so as to allow of my leaving her. You will, of course, not alarm your wife 
 and Mrs. Kelly, and Nancy, too much in regard to Grace. There is yet a 
 hope ; but I have thought it best to tell you my real opinion. 
 
 " My own health has suffered from continual colds and catarrhs. 
 Though not quite well even yet, I have no dangerous or bad symptoms. 
 I feel no inflammation of the lungs, or soreness of the chest, nor any febrile 
 symptoms. An epidemic cold is all about here, and I partake in it; but 
 it appears to be getting better, and I have no doubt that two or three 
 clear days would finish it. Julia and Edward are pretty well ; they go to 
 school. Grace and the children desire their best love to Mrs. Webster and 
 the little girls, as well as to you. 
 
 " Yours always truly, 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MB. MASON.] 
 
 " NE-W TOEK, January 15, 1823. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIR : I thank you for your kind and friendly letter, and 
 wish I could feel justified in confirming those favorable hopes which your 
 friendship leads you to form in regard to my sick wife. Would to God I 
 were able to encourage my own hopes, and yours also 1 But I fear, 
 greatly fear, that Providence has not so ordered it. Although she is 
 better one day than another, that is, more comfortable, more free from 
 severe pain, yet I do not see any material change in that which has occa- 
 sioned her illness. . . . 
 
 " After all, my dear sir, we have a ray of hope. I try to keep up my 
 courage, and to strengthen hers ; but it is due to our friendship that I tell 
 you the whole truth. I have endeavored to prepare myself for that event, 
 of all others the most calamitous to me and to my children. 
 
 " I thank you for your advice as to myself, and shall certainly follow 
 it. In all probability I shall stay here for some time yet. I fear circum- 
 stances will not be such as that I can leave, even after Mr. Paige comes, 
 nor am I very anxious to do so. There seems nothing important in Con- 
 gress, and I must try to make some arrangement of my business in court. 
 
 " My health, though not entirely confirmed, is daily improving. I have 
 the remnant of an epidemical cold, a little loose cough and catarrh ; no
 
 1828.] DEATH OF MRS. WEBSTER. 313 
 
 soreness of breast, nor inflammation of lungs, nor any feverish tendency. 
 Be assured, my dear sir, I shall take all possible care of my own health. 
 
 " Ten o'clock, p. M. Mrs. Webster is now asleep, and is free from severe 
 pain, but breathes not easily. She is a good deal inclined to sleep. I 
 leave space to tell you how she may be in the morning. 
 
 " Wednesday morning, eight o'clock. Mrs. "Webster passed rather a com- 
 fortable night. She had less cough than I apprehended, and seems calm 
 and quiet this morning. She thinks she breathes a little easier than yes- 
 terday. Her voice is faint, but natural in its tones. 
 
 " Tours truly, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MR. EZEKLEL, WEBSTER.] 
 
 " NEW YOKK, January 17, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR BROTHER : I cannot give you any favorable news respecting 
 my wife. She is no better, and I fear is daily growing weaker. She ia 
 now exceedingly feeble. Dr. Perkins thinks she has altered very much the 
 last three or four days. 
 
 " The prospect nearly confounds me ; but I hope to meet the event 
 with submission to the will of God. 
 
 " I expect Mr. Paige to-morrow morning. He or I will write you again 
 
 soon. 
 
 " Tours affectionately, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MR. E. WEBSTER.] 
 
 44 Monday Morning, January 21. 
 
 "DEAR BROTHER : Mrs. Webster still lives, but is evidently near her 
 end. We did not expect her continuance yesterday, from hour to hour. 
 
 " Tours affectionately, 
 
 D. W." 
 
 [TO MR. MASON.] 
 
 " Monday Morning, nine o'clock. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Mrs. Webster still lives, but cannot possibly remain 
 ong with us. We expected her decease yesterday from hour to hour. 
 " I received Mrs. Mason's letter, but could not communicate it. 
 
 " Tours, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MR. EZEKTEL WEBSTER.] 
 
 tt Monday, quarter-past two o'cloct 
 
 " DEAR BROTHER : Poor Grace has gone to heaven. She has now just 
 oreathed her last breath.
 
 314 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIV 
 
 " I shall go -with her forthwith to Boston, and, on receipt of this, I hope 
 you will come there if you can. 
 
 " I shall stay there some days. May God bless you and yours I 
 
 " D. WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MB. TICKNOR.] 
 " Quarter-past two o'clock, p. si., Monday, January 21, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR Bin : All is over. My blessed wife has just expired. With 
 the leave of Providence, I shall soon see you, and receive your condolence, 
 " May God bless you. 
 
 "D. WEBSTER. 
 " Mr. Ticknor." 
 
 Mr. Ticknor observes in his Reminiscences : 
 
 "Mr. Webster came to Mr. George Blake's in Summer Street, where we 
 saw him both before and after the funeral. He seemed completely broken- 
 hearted. At the funeral, when, with Mr. Paige, I was making some ar- 
 rangements for the ceremonies, we noticed that Mr. Webster was wearing 
 shoes that were not fit for the wet walking of the day, and I went to him 
 and asked him if he would not go in one of the carriages. ' No,' he said, 
 ' my children and I must follow their mother to the grave on foot. I could 
 swim to Charlestown.' A few minutes afterward, he took Julia and Daniel 
 in either hand, and walked close to the hearse through the streets to the 
 church in whose crypt the interment took place. It was a touching and 
 solemn sight. He was excessively pale." 
 
 Mrs. Webster's remains were placed in a tomb belonging to 
 her husband, beneath St. Paul's Church, in Boston, with those 
 of her children, Grace and Charles. I continue the correspond- 
 ence which followed this event : 
 
 [FROM JUDGE STORY.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, January 27, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I received in the course of the mail your letter an- 
 nouncing the melancholy news of the death of Mrs. Webster. It has sunk 
 Mrs. Story and myself in deep affliction. And, prepared as we were for 
 the heavy intelligence, it came at last with a most distressing power over 
 our minds. We do, indeed, most sincerely and entirely, from our whole 
 hearts, sympathize with you, and partake largely of your sorrows. We 
 have long considered Mrs. Webster one of our best and truest friends, and, 
 indeed, as standing to us almost in the relation of a sister. We have 
 known her excellent qualities, her kindness of heart, her generous feelings,
 
 1828.] CORRESPONDENCE. 315 
 
 her mild and conciliatory temper, her warm and elevated affections, her 
 constancy, purity, and piety, and her noble disinterestedness, and her ex- 
 cellent sense. Such a woman, and such a friend, must be at all times a 
 most severe loss, and to us, at our age, is irreparable ; we can scarcely hope 
 to form many new friendships, and our hope, our dearest hope, was to 
 retain what we had. We have so hoped in vain. I can say with Young, 
 in deep humiliation of soul : 
 
 " ' Oar dying friends come o'er us like a cloud, 
 To damp our brainless ardor, and abate 
 That glare of life, which sometimes blinds the wise.' 
 
 " Of the loss to you, I can and ought to say nothing. I know that, 
 if we suffer, your sorrows must be unspeakable. And I can only pray God 
 to aid you by His consolations, and to suggest to you that, after your first 
 agony is over, her virtues and your own admirable devotion to her cannot 
 but be sources of the most soothing recollection to you. I know well that 
 we may do mischief by intermeddling with a heart wounded by grief; and 
 it must be left to itself to recover its powers, and to soften its anguish. 
 What some of us think of the dead, you may read in the National Intelli- 
 gencer of Saturday. 1 
 
 " In going to Boston, and attending the funeral obsequies, I entirely 
 agree with your own judgment. I should have done the same, jinder 
 like circumstances, as most appropriate to my own feelings and to pub- 
 lic propriety. We have in spirit followed your wife to the grave with 
 you. 
 
 " I do not urge your immediate return here. But yet, having been a 
 like sufferer, I can say that the great secret of comfort must be sought, so 
 far as human aid can go, in employment. It requires effort and sacrifices, 
 but it is the only specific remedy against unavailing and wasting sorrow ; 
 that canker which eats into the heart, and destroys its vitality. If you 
 
 1 OBITUARY (written by Mr. Justice and a large intercourse with society; 
 Story). " On Monday last, at New York, and her conversation diffused a charm 
 where her journey to Washington was which belongs only to the purity and re- 
 arrested by the disease that terminated finement of the best female minds. Her 
 her life, Mrs. Grace Webster, wife of the life was filled up in the conscientious 
 Hon. Daniel Webster, of the Senate of discharge of duty : in devoted attach- 
 the United States. The death of this ment to her family and friends ; in deep, 
 excellent woman has spread a general sincere, and unobtrusive piety; in holi- 
 gloom among her numerous friends, ness of purpose and conduct ; and, in 
 Few persons have been more deserved- affections which, beginning in this world, 
 ly or more universally beloved ; few belong also to eternity. Such a life, too 
 have possessed qualities more attrac- brief indeed for our happiness, ought to 
 tive, more valuable, or more elevating, leave nothing by its close but regrets 
 Her manners carried with them a win- for our own loss, while it should afford 
 ning grace and ease, expressive at once the highest consolations from the con- 
 of benevolence and respect. Her heart nections which it adorned, and the vir- 
 was open to every call of human afflic- tues which it illustrated. To her hus- 
 tion, and her charity was of that Chris- band and children, we too painfully 
 tian power which blesses them that give know that the loss must be irrepar- 
 and them that take. Her talents, natu- able." (National Intelligencer of Janu- 
 rally fine, had been cultivated by study ary 26, 1828.)
 
 316 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER, [On. XTV 
 
 will, therefore, allow me to advise, it would be that you should return here 
 as soon as you can gather up your strength, and try professional and pub- 
 lic labors. Endeavor to wear off that spirit of despondency which you 
 cannot but feel, and which you will scarcely feel any inclination to resist. 
 Saying this, I have said all that I ought, and I know that you can under- 
 stand what is best, better than I can prescribe. 
 
 " Mrs. Story desires her most affectionate regards to you and the chil- 
 dren, and I join in them, being always affectionately 
 
 " Your friend, 
 
 "JOSEPH STORY." 
 
 [TO DB. PERKINS.] 
 
 " BOSTON, Monday, January 28, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIK : You have learned, by Mr. Paige's letter, that we 
 reached Boston on Friday evening ; and, on Saturday, committed Mrs. 
 Webster's remains to the tomb. We used the occasion to bring into our 
 own tomb the coffin containing the remains of our daughter Grace, who 
 died January 28, 1817. My dear wife now lies with her oldest and her 
 youngest ; and I hope it may please God, when my appointed hour comes, 
 that I may rest by her side. 
 
 " Mrs. Bryant came immediately to see me and the children, and mani- 
 fests her kindest sympathy in the calamity which has befallen us. She is 
 an excellent woman, and one whom Mrs. Webster very much regarded and 
 loved. All our friends have received us with a sincerity of condolence 
 and sympathy which we can never forget. The children are well. Daniel 
 will resume his usual residence and occupation in a day or two. Mrs. Lee 
 (Eliza Buckminster), Mrs. Ticknor, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Appleton, and others, 
 have offered, in the most friendly manner, to take care of Julia and Ed- 
 ward for the winter. We have not yet decided how we shall dispose of 
 them. 
 
 " I pray you to give my most affectionate regards to Mrs. Perkins. I 
 never can express how much I feel indebted to her kindness and friend- 
 ship. If Mrs. Webster had been her sister, she could have done no more. 
 
 " In a few days, I intend to set out for Washington. If there should 
 come a flight of snow, so as to make sleighing, I shall immediately im- 
 prove the occasion to get over the hills to New Haven. 
 " I am, dear sir, most truly, 
 
 " Yours always, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MR. MASON.] 
 
 " BOSTON, January 29, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I thank you for your kind letter of yesterday. It 
 would give me great pleasure to see you ; but I do not expect you to 
 make a journey hither at this season. I know also that your engagements
 
 1828.] CORRESPONDENCE. 317 
 
 must be pressing. I am, at present, at Mr. Blake's, with the children. My 
 brother came down yesterday. It is my purpose to stay till toward the 
 end of this week, or to the first of next, according to the weather, and 
 then proceed South. My own health is pretty good, although I feel, in 
 some measure, fatigued and exhausted. I shall travel slowly, and must 
 necessarily stay two or three days in New York. 
 
 "As to my children, I think I shall dispose of them in this town for 
 the present, without inconvenience. Daniel is perfectly well disposed of 
 where he is. Mrs. Lee (Eliza Buckminster) lays claim to Julia, of right, 
 and would be glad of Edward ; also, Mrs. Ticknor, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Apple- 
 ton, and others, have kindly offered to take them. I feel a reluctance to 
 separate these two little ones, but still incline to think the best thing will 
 be to let Julia go to Mrs. Lee's, and turn Edward, for the winter, into Mrs. 
 Kale's little flock. 
 
 " As far as I have thought at all of my future arrangements, my inclina- 
 tion is to make no more change in my course and mode of life than tho 
 event necessarily produces. 
 
 " I think I shall leave orders to have the furniture put up in the house, 
 with the view of taking home the children when I return, and, with the 
 aid of Mr. Paige, keeping the family together. Except, perhaps, that it 
 may be best that Julia should stay principally with Eliza, or in some other 
 family where there is a lady. Yery probably both the little childre'h may 
 pass the summer at their uncle's. 
 
 " I pray you give my most affectionate remembrance to Mrs. Mason. 
 Mrs. Webster spoke of her often, and always with the strongest sentiments 
 of esteem and affection. Her last letter was received, I think, before Mrs. 
 Webster's death ; but when she was not in a condition to read it or 
 hear it. 
 
 " In regard to this calamity, my dear sir, I feel that every thing has 
 conspired to alleviate, as far as possible, the effects of the calamity itself. 
 All was done that could be done ; the kindness of friends had no bounds ; 
 and it is now continued, also, toward me and the children. The manner 
 of the death, too, was, in all respects, such as her dearest friends would 
 
 have wished. 
 
 " Adieu, my dear sir, 
 
 " Yours, always truly, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MB. FLETCHER WEBSTER.] 
 
 " SENATE-CHAMBER, Tuesday, February 17, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR SON ; I have received a letter from you to-day, before I have 
 found time to answer your last. That gave me singular pleasure, as it 
 contained a very gratifying report from Mr. Leverett. 1 I have nothing 
 more at heart, my dear son, than your success and welfare, and the culti- 
 
 1 Master of the Latin School, Boston.
 
 318 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 vation of your talents and virtues. You will be, in the common course of 
 things, coming into active life, when, if I live so long, I shall be already 
 an old man, and shall have but little left in life but my children and their 
 hopes and happiness. In contemplation of these things, I look with the 
 most affectionate anxiety upon your progress, considering the present as a 
 most critical and important period in your life. 
 
 " Such reports, as that last received, give me good spirits ; and, I 
 doubt not, my dear son, that the consciousness that your good conduct 
 and respectable progress in your class, and among your fellows, gives me 
 pleasure, will stimulate your affectionate heart, with other motives, to 
 earnest and assiduous endeavors to excel. I pray Heaven to bless you and 
 prosper you. 
 
 " At present my time is exceedingly occupied between the Senate and 
 the court, and I suppose it will continue so to be till the 3d of March. It 
 is very cold here ; much the severest winter I ever experienced at Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 " Yours most affectionately, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MB. PAIGE.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, Sunday Evening, , 1823. 
 
 " DEAR WILLIAM : I found divers letters of yours here yesterday, and 
 have another to-day ; for all which I thank you. A line from you, as often 
 as you can write one, will always give me pleasure and satisfaction. I 
 sometimes feel as if I were troubling you too much with so much care of 
 the children, and so much attention to my concerns. But I trust you will 
 not suffer me to wear out your patience and kindness. Notwithstanding 
 the blessed spirit, that has so long been the common bond of union be- 
 tween us, is now on earth no more, you will ever be to me one of the near- 
 est and dearest objects in life ; nearer and dearer, indeed, from this very 
 calamity. Enough ! 
 
 " I find Judge Story and his wife very well. Mrs. Story has had the 
 company of Mrs. Lawrence, and has not been therefore lonely. But, alas ! 
 it is not such a winter as she promised herself. I have not been out of 
 the house to-day. A great many people have been to see me. To-mor- 
 row I shall probably go into court. 
 
 " Yours, dear William, 
 
 " Most faithfully, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MR. PAIGE.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, Wednesday Evening, , 1828. 
 
 u DEAR WILLIAM : I have received to-day your letter of Saturday, 
 which makes me feel a good deal better. I have seldom been five days 
 before without hearing from home ; and, although I have lost what
 
 1828.] CORRESPONDENCE. 319 
 
 mainly made home dear to me, there is yet that in it which I love 
 more than all things else in the world. I could not get along with- 
 out cherishing the feeling that I have a home, notwithstanding the shock 
 I have received. You must try to make the children write when you 
 cannot, so that I may hear from some of you ; once every two or three 
 days at least. 
 
 " This morning was devoted to General Brown's funeral ; and I went 
 into court at one o'clock. For some days to come, indeed, as long as the 
 court continues, I expect no leisure. Time has been when I should not 
 have cared much about it ; and, as it is, I shall get through somehow or 
 other. 
 
 " The arrangement you suggested some time ago, as to the children's 
 all dining with you on Sunday, and occasionally with our other friends, 
 pleases me well. I hope they are happy. Edward, I am sure, is as well 
 off as he can be ; and, since you cannot spare him, I am content he should 
 remain where he is. 
 
 " Riley's trunk is here. I shall send it the very first opportunity. He 
 will receive it, I trust, in a week or two. I am sorry to hear Mary is sick, 
 and hope her illness will not be of long duration. 
 
 " Remember me kindly to Mr. Blake. I would write him, if I had 
 time, to-night, but must put it off for a day or two. 
 
 " Give my love to all the children. I wish I had one of them hefe. 
 
 " Good-night. 
 
 " D. WEBSTEB." 
 
 [TO MB. TICKNOB.J 
 
 u WASHINGTON, February 22, 1828, in Supreme Court. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : I find myself again in the court, where I have been 
 so many winters, and surrounded by such men and things as I have usually 
 found here. But I feel very little zeal or spirit in regard to the passing 
 affairs. My most strong propensity is to sit down, and sit still ; and, if I 
 could have my wish, I think the writing of a letter would be the greatest 
 effort I should put forth for the residue of the winter. I suppose, how- 
 ever, that a sort of necessity will compel me to be here for ten days or a 
 fortnight, and to appear to take an interest in the business of the court. 
 My own health, I think, is a good deal better than when I left home. In- 
 deed, it is very good, and I have nothing to complain of in that respect. 
 
 " The Judge and Mrs. Story are getting along very well. She has 
 complained a little of dyspepsia,, but now seems to be well, and enjoys 
 Washington society with reasonable relish. They dine to-day (birthday) 
 at the President's. 
 
 " I hear that my children are frequent visitors at your house, much to 
 their gratification. I know, my dear sir, with how much kindness you 
 and Mrs. Ticknor treat us all ; and feel how greatly we must lean on our 
 friends under our present circumstances. I feel a much greater inclination,
 
 320 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 or, to speak more properly, a much greater necessity, of being at home 
 than ever before ; not at all on account of the children at present, as I 
 know they are well disposed of, but for my own comfort and solace. There 
 is little here to administer that, which I find I most need. But I did not 
 intend, my dear sir, to write you a gloomy letter. My object was mainly 
 to notify my safe arrival, to keep myself in remembrance, and to thank you 
 for all your kind deeds. Both you and Mrs. Ticknor are persons to whom 
 the art of writing is known, and the exercise of it not afflicting. I flatter 
 myself, therefore, that one or the other of you will sometimes favor me 
 with a few lines. I pray you make her my most grateful and kind remem- 
 brance. Mention me also to Mr. and Mrs. Hale. 
 
 " Yours ever faithfully, 
 
 " DANL. WEBSTEB. 
 G. Ticknor." 
 
 [TO MKS. LEE.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, March 15, 1828. 
 
 " DEAR ELIZA : I return you Mr. Parker's l letter, which I have read, 
 as you may well suppose, with great pleasure. Nothing is more soothing 
 and balmy to my feelings than to dwell on the recollection of my dear 
 wife, and to hear others speak of her who knew her and loved her. My 
 heart holds on by this thread, as if it were by means of it to retain her yet 
 here. Mr. and Mrs. Parker were always kind to us, and are among those 
 Portsmouth friends whom time and distance never separated from our 
 acquaintance and affection. Mrs. "Webster had very high esteem for them 
 both. 
 
 " I hear from Mr. Paige and from Julia and from Edward that you are 
 well. Julia has told me all about your party, and how long she sat up. I 
 hear from others, as well as herself, that she is happy as possible under the 
 protection of your care and kindness. You will love her, I know, for her 
 mother's sake, and, I hope, for her own also ; and I trust she v/ill make 
 herself agreeable to your husband. You are kind enough to say that con- 
 cern for Julia need not lead me to forbear any purpose which I might 
 otherwise have of crossing the water. It would be unpleasant, certainly, 
 to leave the children, and especially a little girl of Julia's age ; but I 
 should not feel uneasy about her at all while under your guardianship. 
 There are other considerations, however, which are well to be weighed 
 before I am water-borne. Even if what you allude to were supposed to be 
 at my own option, and, however desirable it might be in itself, times and 
 circumstances may, nevertheless, be such as ' give me pause.' This is all I 
 can say about it at present, except that I am now too old to do any thing 
 in a hurry. I believe this is almost the only time I have alluded to the 
 subject to any one ; and would not wish to be quoted as having said one 
 word respecting it. 
 
 1 Rev. Dr. Parker, a clergyman of brilliant wife, who is again mentioned, 
 Portsmouth, an excellent man, with a post, in the year 1848.
 
 1828.] CORRESPONDENCE. 3 21 
 
 " Mrs. Story left us the day before yesterday. The Judge goes in a day 
 or two. I shall be sorry to lose him, though quite willing to have the 
 court break up. 
 
 " I hare a very kind letter, indeed, from Mrs. Everett, respecting the 
 name of her youngest daughter ; I wish uncle would carry Julia out to 
 see her. 
 
 " Is your husband a document-reader ? I should be glad to send him 
 some of our papers, speeches, etc., but have been afraid he would vote it a 
 bore. Pray give my love to him ; and believe me, as 
 
 " Ever, yours, 
 
 " DAXL. WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MB. HADDOCK.] 
 
 " WAsmxGToif, March. 21, 1823. 
 
 " MY DEAB NEPHEW : I thank you for your kind and affectionate 
 letter, and assure you its suggestions are all in accordance with my own 
 feelings. It does not appear to me unreasonable to believe that the friend- 
 ships of this life are perpetuated in heaven. Flesh and blood, indeed, can- 
 not inherit the kingdom of God ; but I know not why that which consti- 
 tutes a pure source of happiness on earth, individual affection and Jove, 
 may not survive the tomb. Indeed, is not the principle of happiness to 
 the sentient being essentially the same in heaven and on earth ? The love 
 of God, and the good beings whom He has created, and the admiration of 
 the material universe which He has formed, can there be other sources of 
 happiness than these to the human mind, unless it is to alter its whole 
 structure and character ? And, again, it may be asked, how can this world 
 be rightly called a scene of probation and discipline, if these affections, 
 which we are commanded to cherish and cultivate here, are to leave us on 
 the threshold of the other world ? These views, and many others, would 
 seem to lead to the belief that earthly affections, purified and exalted, are 
 fit to carry with us to the abode of the blessed. Yet, it must be confessed, 
 that there are some things in the New Testament which may possibly coun- 
 tenance a different conclusion. The words of our Saviour, especially in 
 regard to the woman who had seven husbands, deserve deep reflection. I 
 am free to confess that some descriptions of heavenly happiness are so 
 ethereal and sublimated as to fill me with a strange sort of terror. Even 
 that which you quote, that our departed friends ' are as the angels of 
 God,' penetrates my soul with a dreadful emotion. Like an angel of God, 
 indeed, I hope she is, in purity, in happiness, and in immortality ; but, I 
 would fain hope that, in kind remembrance of those she has left,' in a 
 lingering human sympathy and human love, she may yet be, as God 
 originally created her, ' a little lower than the angels.' 
 
 " My dear nephew, I cannot pursue these thoughts, nor turn back to 
 
 see what I have written. Adieu. 
 
 "D. W." 
 
 22
 
 322 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 [TO MRS. TICKNOR.] 
 
 li WASHINGTON, March 23, 1828. 
 
 " I received your husband's letter, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, some time 
 ago, and your postscript, and thank you both for taking the pains to think 
 of me. My children write me often, and do not fail to let me know how 
 constant is your kindness toward them. You feel an interest in them, I 
 know, for their mother's sake, and I hope they may be able in due time to 
 awaken a feeling of regard and kindness on their own account. I do not 
 feel over-anxious about them, knowing that they are in safe hands, and 
 well disposed of; yet they necessarily occupy my mind a great deal, and 
 bring reflections and thoughts which I cannot shut out, and which come 
 also through many other channels. I did not intend, however, my dear 
 friend, to write you a melancholy letter, or in depressed spirits ; but so it 
 is, that whenever my mind falls into communion with those whom I know 
 to take a concern in its recent sorrows, it hastens back to the past, and claims 
 to be indulged in the enjoyment of a friend's condolence and sympathy. 
 But of this, no more. 
 
 " My health has become very tolerably good, and, now that the court 
 has closed its session, I do not expect to find myself involved in a great 
 pressure of affairs, and certainly shall do nothing that I am not absolutely 
 obliged to do. 
 
 " It is probable Congress will rise the middle of May. 
 
 " Mr. Ticknor gave me a very good account of Boston matters, up to 
 the date of his letter. There have been some more recent occurrences, 
 about which I know nothing more than the newspapers tell. I allude es- 
 pecially to a great meeting of Federalists, which is said to have taken 
 place to aid General Jackson's election, against Mr. Adams. I did not 
 hear that your husband was there. If he was, he does not appear to have 
 made a speech. 
 
 " I can tell you very little about Washington, as I do not go out, and 
 see nobody except in the halls of Congress. Mr. Vaughan has been two or 
 three times to see me. He looks rather thin and pale, though he counts 
 himself well. Wallenstein is here, a perfect hermit. He does not go even 
 to Congress or the court. His health seems not good, and they say he is 
 in love, which, you know, may either mend or mar it, according to circum- 
 stances. 
 
 " I must pray you to give my love to Mr. Hale's family, with the assur- 
 ance that it shall be one of my first efforts to write to them. I see that 
 Mr. Hale is the president or vice-president of all the internal improve- 
 ments in the Commonwealth. 1 
 
 " Give my love to your husband, and believe me, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, 
 most truly and sincerely yours, 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 " Mrs. Ticknor." 
 
 1 The late Mr. Nathan Hale, one of New England, and editor of the Boston 
 the' founders of the railroad system of Daily Advertiser.
 
 1828.] VISITED BY MR. TICKXOR AND MR. PRESCOTT. 
 
 323 
 
 In the next month Mr. "Webster was cheered by a visit 
 from ^ Mr. Ticknor and Mr. Prescott, 1 which he seems to have 
 anticipated with great pleasure. 
 
 [TO MR. TICKXOR.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, April 18, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAK SIR : I received yours of the 13th this morning, and never 
 executed commission -with more alacrity and pleasure than this of looking 
 up rooms for you and Mr. Prescott. It delights me to hear that you are 
 coming, and I shall certainly keep you a fortnight. 
 
 " The rooms are engaged. They are not strictly in the house I live in, 
 but in the same block, and quite proximate. My landlady has engaged 
 them, and I am to have the pleasure of your company at my table. When 
 you arrive in this far-famed metropolis, please direct the coachman to set 
 down at Mrs. Mclntyre's, Pennsylvania Avenue, nearly opposite Gadsby's 
 National Hotel, a little this side, precisely by the side of a pump, at a 
 large wooden platform which supplies the place of a stepping-stone. In- 
 quire for Mr. Webster. If he is out, ask for Charles , and the rest will 
 
 follow in regular sequence. I shall see that there is dinner for you at 
 two o'clock on Sunday ; and, if that day should not bring you, at four 
 o'clock on Monday. 
 
 " Tours always truly, 
 
 "D. WEBSTER." 
 
 This visit I find alluded to in the following passage of Mr. 
 Ticknor's Reminiscences : 
 
 " In the spring of 1828 I made a short visit in Washington, for the 
 purpose of breaking up a cough which had teased me for some time. 
 Prescott went with me. Mr. Webster provided rooms for us in the house 
 adjacent to the one where he lived, but we shared his parlor and his table. 
 He was much out of spirits, from the death of Mrs. Webster a few months 
 before, but he was very busy and very interesting. There was much talk 
 of his going minister to England, and I think he might have had the place 
 about that time if he had chosen. Talking of it with him one day, he said 
 he could not afford the expense, and besides he thought he was more use- 
 ful in his place in the Senate. I think he believed he could render . the 
 country more service there than anywhere else. Indeed, he intimated as 
 much, more than once, particularly in a conversation with Mr. Storrs, of 
 New York, who, till Mr. Webster undeceived him, believed he had been 
 nominated to the place that very morning. Mr. Webster was undoubtedly 
 right. If he had gone to England then, he could not have made the speech 
 in answer to Mr. Hayne in January, 1830." 
 
 1 The historian.
 
 324 LIFE or DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIV. 
 
 [TO MRS. TICKNOR.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, Friday, five o'clock, May , 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR MBS. TICKNOR : I thank you for your letter, enclosing your 
 husband's. He is dressing to go to the President's, and I shall go with 
 him rather than stay to my lonely dinner. He and Mr. Prescott leave me 
 to-morrow. I shall feel their loss very seriously, I assure you, but I cannot 
 persuade them to stay longer. Nothing resists the attraction of wives and 
 children. 
 
 " You are very kind to tell me about my three little ones. I have the 
 greatest happiness in knowing that they are well, and in feeling how much 
 my friends care for them, and think of them. 
 
 " In next month I hope to see you all. 
 
 " Adieu. Ever very truly yours, 
 
 " D. W." 
 
 "Washington was not the scene from which he could derive 
 the consolations that he needed. He longed for the society of 
 his children and the friends of his home. The following letter 
 to Mrs. Lee expresses the state of his feelings, as the session 
 drew to its close, and his escape became nearer : 
 
 [TO MRS. LEE.] 
 
 "WASHINGTON, May 18, 1838. Suiiday Evening. 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND : Tour very kind letter of the 12th was received 
 to-day. I cannot thank you sufficiently for your goodness and affection 
 toward Julia. Certainly you come nearer supplying her loss than any one 
 else. I believe she loves you best of any ; and it is my wish, my dear 
 friend, that you should make her as much your own as your feelings 
 prompt you to do. She cannot be better than with you, and I incline to 
 leave it very much to your choice how much she shall be with you, and 
 when it is best for her to be elsewhere. You have a right to her, if you 
 choose to have her, which nobody else will ever divide. You have been 
 among our dearest friends from the day of our marriage, and, as Julia is 
 left motherless, I know not what to do for her so well as to leave her with 
 you, whenever it is agreeable to you to have her with you. If you think 
 her education would not suffer, I should be quite willing she should be 
 with you most of the summer ; though I hope to have her with me some 
 of the time. 
 
 " I thank you, my dear friend, for all your kind remembrance and good 
 wishes. Your regard and friendship are among the objects which make 
 nie willing to live longer, and which I shall never cease to value while I
 
 1828.J DESPONDENCY. 335 
 
 do live, you say Mr. Sullivan thought me depressed. It is true. I fear 
 I grow more and more so. I feel a vacuum, an indifference, a want of 
 motive, which I cannot describe. 
 
 " I hope my children, and the society of my best friends, may rouse me ; 
 but I can never see such days as I have seen. Yet I should not repine ; I 
 have enjoyed much, very much ; and, if I were to die to-night, I should 
 bless God most fervently that I have lived. 
 
 " Adieu, my dear friend ; I hope to be in better spirits when I see you. 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTEB." 
 
 This correspondence has been spread before the reader, 
 because nothing else can so well disclose the trial to which this 
 portion of Mr. Webster's life was subjected, as nothing else can 
 so well exhibit his religious nature, his tenderness, and his self- 
 control. ISTor could there be a better tribute to the character 
 of a wife and a mother than the evidence which is here afforded 
 of the blank in his existence which this loss created. The " ap- 
 plause of listening senates " became as nothing to him, when 
 he remembered that it could not be shared by her who had wit- 
 nessed all his triumphs, and whose quick and intelligent sym- 
 pathies had crowned them all. The thought of remaining in 
 public life, with his children cast upon the care of others, rich 
 as he was in friends, oppressed him. His sons might be placed 
 where the work of education could be well performed ; but 
 there was a daughter, inheriting some of the father's intellect 
 and all of the mother's gentleness, whose bereaved condition 
 filled him with anxiety. Yet for them, as for himself, he could 
 see no way but to trust in the vigilant affection of those who 
 loved him for his own sake, until he could determine whether 
 there remained aught for him in the paths of fame that could 
 compensate, in the good he could do his country, for the loss 
 that was to fall on himself and his, by continuing in the public 
 service. 
 
 As the narrative of Mr. Webster's life goes on, it will be 
 seen that while his career was marked by great success, while 
 his reputation as a statesman rose constantly higher and higher 
 before the eyes of men, while the exercise of his public talents 
 afforded him pleasure, and the applause that followed him was 
 a source of happiness, and while new exigencies in public affairs 
 constantly multiplied his distinctions, he was yet a man who 
 suffered perhaps more than the ordinary share of human sor-
 
 326 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIV. 
 
 rows. If we would know what it was that carried him on, to 
 the last, in public life, and prevented him from seeking in a 
 private station for that repose which is at once rest and ob- 
 scurity, we must look for something deeper than mere ambi- 
 tion. Undoubtedly he was ambitious. It would not be a true 
 view of his character or nature to claim for him an exemption 
 from -that attribute, whether it be a virtue or a vice. But it 
 will be found, and it will be allowed, by all who shall under- 
 stand and embrace the whole circle of motives which actuated 
 him at the several most critical periods of his life, when retire- 
 ment from public station came prominently before his thoughts, 
 that we must admit him to have been chiefly controlled by 
 patriotic reasons, or we cannot fully estimate his character. 
 
 There is a low type of supposed wisdom, which always as- 
 signs the actions of public men to a selfish origin, and which 
 complacently assumes that it has sounded all the depths of 
 human nature, when it has made this common suggestion. But 
 such vulgar shrewdness does not penetrate beneath the surface. 
 
 Among the measures of this session was one in which Mr. 
 Webster took a deep interest, notwithstanding his present afflic- 
 tion. This was a bill for the relief of the surviving officers of 
 the Revolution. In the Senate, the discussion on this measure 
 had been watched by him with great solicitude, until it ap- 
 peared that there was likely to be an equal division upon it. 
 He had not intended to speak upon the subject until it was 
 probable that the bill would be lost. He then came forward 
 and delivered the speech now contained in the third volume of 
 his works. 1 The bill became a law. Among the letters ad- 
 dressed to Mr. Webster by the surviving patriots whose cause 
 he had espoused, {he dignity and elevation of the following 
 from General North, of Connecticut, render it too striking to 
 be omitted. All my readers may not be aware that the case 
 of these officers involved an unfulfilled contract on the part of 
 the country, which had remained neglected for more than fifty 
 years. It was this feature of their claim that Mr. Webster 
 especially enforced, in one of the most beautiful and impressive 
 speeches that he ever made. 
 
 1 A speech delivered in the Senate, lief of the Surviving Officers of the Revo- 
 April 25, 1828, on the Bill for the Re- lution. ( Works, iii., 218.)
 
 1828.] TARIFF OF 1828. 337 
 
 f 
 
 [FROM GENERAL NORTH.] 
 
 tt NEAB NEW Los DON, May 13, 1828. 
 
 "Permit me to offer my thanks and grateful acknowledgments to 
 you, sir, and to the other gentlemen of the Senate, who, with you, under 
 adverse circumstances and great discouragements, have steadily and with 
 force advocated the claims of the remaining Revolutionary officers; and 
 for the delicacy with which the unfortunate situation of many of them has 
 been alluded to. During the short period allotted to us, I trust we shall 
 forget whatever has been unpleasant, whatever we may have thought un- 
 just, remembering only the benefits received from those who, had it been 
 possible, would have bestowed a gift without alloy. 
 
 " What may be the ultimate fate of the bill, time will show. Our hope 
 has been long deferred, it may be soon extinguished ; but the soldier of 
 the Revolution possesses that which none can take away the thought of 
 having labored in erecting a temple, under the ample roof of which our 
 posterity may repose in safety, and the oppressed of other climes find 
 shelter. 
 
 " With great respect, 
 
 , " I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 "W. NORTH." 
 
 At this session, a debate took place in the Senate on the 
 subject of the tariff, which was the forerunner of the discus- 
 sions that not long afterward introduced into the Senate the 
 doctrines of " Nullification." The pending bill of 1828 was one 
 making extensive alterations in the existing rates of duties, and, 
 of course, it was filled with multifarious details. The general 
 policy and principle of protection, and the sectional interests 
 affected by it, as well as the propriety of the several changes 
 proposed, entered as usual into the discussion. It was, how- 
 ever, on this occasion, that the assertion was first made, by 
 General Hayne, of South Carolina, that 4he interests of the 
 Southern States had been sacrificed, " shamefully sacrificed," 
 to the selfish policy of other sections, and especially of New 
 England. Mr. "Webster, on the 9th of May, took part in this 
 discussion, principally for the purpose of showing that the 
 original tariff policy, entered upon in 1816, was not a New- 
 England measure ; that the present bill was not one originating 
 with her ; and that some of its provisions were likely to benefit 
 no interests anywhere excepting the interests of the Treasury. 
 This is the second principal sp3ech made by Mr. Webster in
 
 328 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV 
 
 Congress on the subject of the tariff, and it is contained in the 
 third volume of his works. 1 
 
 Several of the provisions of this bill were extremely in- 
 jurious to some of Mr. Webster's constituents, and there were 
 great differences of opinion and feeling concerning it among 
 his immediate fellow-citizens in Boston. But he voted for it, 
 because, finding himself under the constraint of an unpre- 
 cedented mode of legislation, obliged to deal as a whole with a 
 measure containing good and bad provisions relating to differ- 
 ent subjects, he believed that the good preponderated over the 
 evil, having in view the general welfare of the country. His 
 colleague in the Senate, Mr. Silsbee, voted the other way, as 
 did the Representative of the Boston district, Mr. Gorham. 8 
 
 Mr. "Webster returned from the first session of the Twentieth 
 Congress in May, 1828. He was greatly depressed. If it is 
 true, as perhaps it is, that in seasons of such affliction as that 
 from which he now suffered, occupation is one of the best medi- 
 cines to the mind, the remedy is one that requires accompani- 
 ments which he could not have in "Washington. He was neces- 
 sarily separated there from his children, and from the friends 
 who could best minister the solace that he needed. On reach- 
 ing Boston, he gathered his children once more under his own 
 roof; leaving his daughter, however, for the greater part of the 
 time, with Mrs. Lee, in Brookline. He was obliged at once to 
 enter on some professional engagements, and also to accept from 
 his fellow-citizens the compliment of a public dinner, which 
 took place in Faneuil Hall on the 5th of June. 
 
 In this expression of the confidence and respect of his friends 
 and neighbors, all the principal persons in the city participated, 
 and among them were those who disapproved of his vote on the 
 tariff bill of the last session. They respected him* for the up- 
 rightness of his character, and the exercise of his independent 
 judgment ; and it was long, very long, before Boston ever had 
 many prominent citizens who were not ready to give a candid 
 interpretation to any act of his. On this occasion, notwith- 
 standing his general depression, he spoke, in reply to the com- 
 
 1 The first was the speech of April Webster to vote for the bill of 1828 was, 
 1 and 2,1824. (Works, iii., 94.) Ante, that it gave woollens the protection which 
 chap. 9. Congress had pledged itself to give by 
 
 2 The principal reason that led Mr. the law of 1824.
 
 1328.] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 339 
 
 plimentary toast, with his usual spirit, dignity, and force, ac- 
 counting for his vote on the tariff, alluding to the measure for 
 the relief of the Kevolutionary officers, and to the subject of in- 
 ternal improvements. 1 
 
 The following letter from Mr. Clay was received after the 
 dinner : 
 
 [FROM MB. CLAY.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, ISift June, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Notwithstanding your kind permission given me in 
 your letter of the 8th instant, to abstain from addressing you, I cannot 
 deny myself the gratification of expressing the satisfaction which we all 
 felt here with the proceedings and speeches of the Boston dinner. I was 
 particularly delighted with two or three circumstances : 1. The harmony 
 which prevailed in respect to the tariff, or, rather, the acquiescence in the 
 measure. 2. Tour felicitous defence of your vote. 3. The notice, truly 
 national and patriotic, which you took of the great interest of internal im- 
 provements. And 4. The New-England feeling to which you so ur- 
 gently appealed, and which the whole proceedings were well calculated to 
 excite. Good will come of your work. 
 
 " I have a letter from General Porter, who will be here in two or three 
 days. He postpones his decision until he comes here ; but I think it will 
 be to accept. 
 
 " My health continues as it was when you left here. I commence my 
 journey next week, from which I anticipate the best effects. I have been 
 rendered very happy by the company of my only surviving daughter, who 
 joined us a few days ago, and who is one of the best of girls. She brought 
 with her her two children, whom I had never seen. 
 
 " Our news from Kentucky continues good. 
 
 " You will have seen a report on the secret service fund. It was a 
 necessary explanation for the "West. I must be held exclusively respon- 
 sible for its publication, which the President approved at my instance. I 
 hope it will meet your approbation. 
 
 " My best regards to Everett, Gorham, and Mr. J. Mason. 
 
 " Cordially your friend, 
 
 "H. CLAY. 
 
 " D. Webster, Esq." 
 
 Into the excitements of the presidential election, then ap- 
 proaching, Mr. "Webster did not enter. That contest, of a bit- 
 terness then unexampled, in which General Jackson obtained a 
 majority of ninety-five electoral votes over Mr. Adams, and 
 
 1 See the speech in Works, i., 163, et stq.
 
 330 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV 
 
 sixty-seven electoral votes above the number necessary to a 
 choice, was not one in which Mr. "Webster could take an active 
 part. His chief regret at the state of things arose from the 
 fact that persons holding opposite opinions on the constitutional 
 powers of the Government, and on the leading measures of Mr. 
 Adams's Administration, had united to overthrow it. An op- 
 position founded, not on the measures of Government, but on 
 other and chiefly personal causes, he regarded as dangerous and 
 alarming. He foresaw in it that rage for office, and that dedi- 
 cation of the offices of the country as a fund for the reward of 
 personal partisanship, which speedily followed, and which have 
 entered more or less into every succeeding renewal of the con- 
 test for the executive power, bringing us nearer and nearer to 
 that catastrophe in which he feared that this experiment of 
 confederated government would sooner or later end. " It is 
 my opinion, Mr. President," he said, at the dinner in Faneuil 
 Hall, " that the present Government of the United States can- 
 not be maintained but by administering it on principles as wide 
 and broad as the country over which it extends. I mean, of 
 course, no extension of the powers which it confers ; but I speak 
 of the spirit with which those powers should be exercised. If 
 there be any doubts whether so many republics, covering so 
 vast a territory, can be long held together under this Constitu- 
 tion, there is no doubt, in my judgment, of the impossibility of 
 so holding them together by any narrow, local, or selfish system 
 of legislation. To render the Constitution perpetual (which 
 God grant it may be), it is necessary that its benefits should be 
 practically felt by all parts of the country. The East and the 
 West, the ISTorth and the South, must all see their welfare pro- 
 tected and advanced by it. While the Eastern frontier is de- 
 fended by fortifications, its harbors improved, and commerce 
 protected by a naval force, it is right and just that the region 
 beyond the Alleghanies should receive fair consideration and 
 equal attention, in any object of public improvement, interest- 
 ing to itself, and within the proper power of the Government. 
 These, sir, are in brief the general views by which I have been 
 governed on questions of this kind ; and I trust they are such 
 as this meeting does not disapprove." 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Webster was an object of virulent attack
 
 1828.] PROSECUTES FOR A LIBEL. 33} 
 
 from many members of the old Republican party, who had en- 
 tered into the new organization for the support of General Jack- 
 son's claim to the presidency. In this warfare, the persons who 
 assailed him did not evince their " Republican " consistency. As 
 a mere Federalist of a former day, they would have passed him 
 by unmolested, or have courted his favor. Upon all grounds 
 of party consistency, aside from his personal eminence, he was 
 entitled to their respect and confidence. His election to the 
 House of Eepresentatives in 1822 had not been opposed by the 
 Republicans; in 1824, he was unanimously selected as the 
 Republican candidate ; and, in 1826, that party again united in 
 supporting him as their Representative in Congress. When 
 elected to the Senate in June, 1827, he was chosen by a Legisla- 
 ture in which a great majority of the members were of the same 
 Republican party. His whole course, therefore, in the support 
 which he had given to the measures of Mr. Adams's Adminis- 
 tration, had received the sanction of a party which had been the 
 ancient opponents of the Federalists ; for Mr. "Webster, in truth, 
 was regarded as a statesman whose political principles, in re- 
 spect to the constitutional powers of the Government and the 
 proper mode of administering them, were such as in that day 
 were considered to be " Republican." His transcendent abili- 
 ties and patriotism, added to this political sympathy with his 
 opinions on public questions, disarmed, with many of the old 
 " Republicans," the prejudice that might otherwise have arisen 
 from his former connection with the now extinct Federal party. 
 
 Still, there were individuals among his constituents who 
 could not overlook the fact that he had supported Mr. Adams's 
 Administration, and now desired his reelection. It is needless to 
 revive or recall these personal attacks. But, as there was one 
 of them which Mr. "Webster thought fit to bring before a court 
 of law, it is proper that an exact account should here be given 
 of the causes which led him to this departure from a rule which 
 he followed upon all other similar occasions throughout his life. 
 
 In the autumn of 1828, Mr. Webster prosecuted a gentleman 
 of high social standing in Boston by indictment for a libel. 
 The facts were these : During the canvass for the presidential 
 election of that year, there appeared in the party newspapers 
 of the day what purported to be a letter written by Mr. Jeffer
 
 332 LIFE Or DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 son to the Hon. William B. Giles, in 1825, in which Mr. Jeffer- 
 son referred to disclosures made to him by Mr. John Quincy 
 Adams in 1807 or 1808, concerning the action of the leaders of 
 the Federal party in New England at the time of the Embargo. 
 Mr. Adams was stated in that letter to have accused those 
 leaders of the design, in their opposition to the Embargo, of 
 effecting a dissolution of the Union, with a view of uniting the 
 New-England States to the British provinces. 
 
 Mr. Adams immediately caused an article to be published 
 in the National Intelligencer at Washington, denying that he 
 had made such disclosures in any interview with Mr. Jefferson, 
 but admitting that, in a correspondence with Mr. Giles in 
 1807-'8, he had said that he thought the opposition to the Em- 
 bargo would become so open and violent as to require forcible 
 suppression; in which case he had "unequivocal evidence' 1 
 that the Federalist leaders would attempt to form a separate 
 confederacy of New England, and call in Great Britain to their 
 aid ; for he knew it had long been their design to bring about 
 such a dissolution of the Union. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson's letter and Mr. Adams's admissions elicited 
 a great deal of acrimonious discussion and comment both from 
 the political opponents of Mr. Adams and from those who had 
 hitherto been his political friends. In a newspaper published 
 in Boston, under the name of The Jackson JRepublican, there 
 appeared an article, on the 29th of October, 1828, referring to 
 Mr. Webster by name as one of the Federalist leaders who had 
 been charged by Mr. Adams in 1807"-' 8 with this treasonable 
 design. Mr. Webster was naturally indignant at such a use of 
 his name, which pointed at him a charge that Mr. Adams never 
 could have thought of levelling at him ; for, in the time of the 
 Embargo and of the New-England resistance to it, Mr. Webster 
 was a young lawyer in New Hampshire, and had no personal 
 connection with the gentlemen who were named by the article 
 as the obnoxious plotters against the Union, all of whom were 
 citizens of Massachusetts. Mr. Webster's own course, more- 
 over, respecting the Embargo, was well known, or could be 
 easily ascertained ; and, if there was any thing treasonable in 
 the proceedings or design of the subsequent Hartford Conven- 
 tion, it was quite notorious in Boston, in 1828, that he had
 
 1828.] INVITATIONS TO DELIVER ADDRESSES. 333 
 
 never had any thing to do with it, and had disapproved of it. 
 He had other reasons for feeling deeply hurt by the publication. 
 He knew well, as every one else knew, that the New-England 
 resistance to the Embargo was a constitutional resistance ; that 
 the law was subjected to a constitutional test of its validity, in 
 a court of the United States, and was upheld, and that the 
 people who suffered by it submitted. The eminent men who 
 were charged with fomenting treasonable projects had since be- 
 come his personal friends, and his name was now coupled with 
 theirs in an infamous charge, foundec^ on statements said to 
 have been formerly made by a man filling the exalted position 
 of President of the United States, and whose reelection Mr. "Web- 
 ster now favored. In all the tactics of party warfare, there has 
 scarcely been a greater accumulation of personal injustice ; and 
 this injustice was surrounded by circumstances which, in Mr. 
 Webster's opinion, and that of friends who were no way in- 
 volved in the charge, made it his duty to call for the author of 
 the article, and to prosecute him for libel. 
 
 The name of the author was given up by the publishers of 
 the paper, and the grand jury found a bill of indictment against 
 him, which was tried in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massa- 
 chusetts, Chief-Justice Parker presiding, on the 16th and 17th 
 of December, 1828. Before the trial came on, the defence in- 
 timated that the course which they should take would lead to 
 important developments concerning the political period of the 
 Embargo ; but they abandoned this design, and contented them- 
 selves with an effort to show that the article was no libel upon 
 Mr. "Webster, as no malice was intended toward him, the whole 
 being a fair comment on the statements and conduct of Mr. 
 
 o 
 
 Adams. The jury did not agree. Ten were for convicting 
 and two were for acquitting. The case was never pursued 
 further. 1 
 
 Probably it happens to all conspicuous public men to be much 
 importuned by colleges and literary societies to appear as their 
 
 1 A clearer case of libel could not well charge of treason against Mr. Webster, 
 
 exist The name of Mr. Webster had not and did not comment on one made by 
 
 been introduced, nor had he been alluded somebody else. But the whole affair was 
 
 to, in Mr. Adams's correspondence with mixed up with the party feelings of the 
 
 Mr. Giles, or in the letter attributed to day, and it is not surprising that there 
 
 Mr. Jefferson. The writer of the news- should have been two recusant jurymen 
 
 paper article, therefore, originated a on the panel
 
 334 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 " orator " at their anniversaries. Many such, applications, ad- 
 dressed to Mr. "Webster at this time, are now before me, some 
 of them couched in the language of young men, who, in- 
 genuously occupied with the concerns of associations filling 
 a large space in their thoughts, apparently supposed that an 
 "honorary membership " should be a sufficient inducement to 
 draw from a great statesman a very large donation of his time 
 and thoughts ; and sometimes it was added that the invitation 
 was sanctioned by the college " faculty." 
 
 The truth is, the curiosity to see and hear Mr. Webster, in- 
 tense among all classes of our countrymen at all times in his life 
 after his distinction was attained a curiosity that arose not 
 only from his great intellectual reputation and his power as a 
 speaker, but from his singularly impressive aspect and the ma- 
 jesty of his person was not likely to be less strong among 
 those who were engaged in intellectual pursuits, than it was 
 among the general multitude. But, of course, it was necessary 
 to return a civil refusal to nearly all such requests. There did 
 occur, however, occasions when the public importance of his 
 influence, in promoting the objects of particular associations 
 designed to advance popular intellectual culture, made it neces- 
 sary for him to discharge duties that were somewhat foreign 
 from his habitual studies and pursuits. Such was the occasion 
 when he consented to deliver the introductory lecture before 
 " The Boston Mechanics' Association," on the 12th of Novem- 
 ber, 1828. The subject of this discourse was the relations of 
 science with the practical arts. 1 
 
 For similar reasons, he presided in the month of November 
 at a preliminary meeting of the gentlemen who founded the 
 " Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," of 
 which in the following year he became president. 
 
 [FROM MB. CLAY.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, ZUh October, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Although some of the Congressional results in Ohio 
 are to be regretted, my belief is unshaken that we shall get the State by a 
 large majority. The returns in Whittlesey's, Bartlett's, Vinton's, and 
 McClure's districts are not yet fully received. In them, our majorities will 
 
 1 Vide Works, i., 176, et seq.
 
 1828.J ELECTION OF GENERAL JACKSON. 335 
 
 be very great. Trimble will be reelected by many thousands, and he, you 
 know, was the Administration candidate for Governor. 
 
 " My intelligence from Kentucky continues good, very good. I have 
 heard of the safe reception there of what you sent. All has been done, and 
 will continue to be done, that honorable men can or ought to do. 
 
 " I yet think that Mr. Adams will be reelected ; but it is mortifying and 
 sickening to the hearts of the real lovers of free government that the contest 
 should be so close ; and that if Heaven grants us success it will be perhaps 
 by less than a majority of six votes. 
 
 "I thank you for the hint about Mr. B., who has not yet called. 
 " Always cordially your friend, 
 
 " H. CLAY. 
 " D. Webster, Esq." 
 
 The presidential election terminated, as Mr. "Webster had 
 foreseen it would, in the choice of General Jackson. He had 
 not participated in the sanguine belief entertained by Mr. Clay, 
 that Mr. Adams was to be reelected. Still, he had done what 
 he could by diffusing correct information respecting the real 
 merits of Mr. Adams's course ; and it was in a great degree a 
 consequence of his exertions in this way that Mr. Adams re- 
 ceived all the electoral votes of K"ew England. But they were 
 given from what Mr. Ezekiel Webster afterward well described 
 as " a cold sense of duty, and not from any liking of the man." 
 " The measures of his Administration," he added, " were just and 
 wise, and every honest man should have supported them, but 
 many honest men did not, for the reason I have mentioned." 
 
 [FBOM ME. CLAY.] 
 
 " WASHISGTOX, 20th, November, 1828. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIK : As I understand that you are not to be here for a 
 month, I wish to say some things which I had intended for a personal 
 interview. 
 
 " We are beaten. It is useless to dwell on the causes. It is useless to 
 repine at the result. What is our actual position ? We are of the majority 
 in regard to measures ; we are of the minority in respect to the person 
 designated as Chief Magistrate. Our effort should be to retain the ma- 
 jority we have. We may lose it by imprudence. I think, in regard to 
 the new Administration, we should alike avoid professions of support or 
 declarations of opposition, in advance. We can only yield the former, if 
 our principles are adopted and pursued, and, if they should be, our honor 
 and our probity afford a sufficient pledge that we shall not abandon them. 
 To say beforehand that we will support the President-elect, if he adheres
 
 336 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIV. 
 
 to our systems, is to say that we will be honest ; and that I hope is a super- 
 fluous proclamation. On the other hand, if we were now to issue a mani- 
 festo of hostility, we should keep united, by a sense of common danger, 
 the discordant confederates who have taken the field against us. They 
 cannot remain in corps but from external pressure. The dissensions among 
 them this winter, the formation of the new Cabinet, and the inaugural 
 speech will enable us to discover the whole ground of future operations. 
 Above all, I think we ought not to prematurely agitate the question of the 
 succession. The nation wants repose. The agitations of the last six years 
 entitle it to rest. If it is again to be immediately disturbed, let others, 
 not us, assume the responsibility. 
 
 " We shall here all calmly proceed in our various spheres to discharge 
 our duties until the 4th of March. The message is good. It makes no 
 allusion to the late event. Its strongest features are the support of the 
 tariff, and disapprobation of sentiments of disunion. 
 
 "I shall retire to Ashland after the 4th of March, and there consider 
 and decide my future course. I do not mean to look at it until there. 
 
 " You have all my wishes for success in the prosecution against . 
 
 I regretted the publication here which led to the libel ; but most certainly 
 I never supposed you to be alluded to in that publication. In the midst 
 of all the heats of former times, I believed you, as I have since found you, 
 faithful to the Union, to the Constitution, and to liberty. 
 " Under every vicissitude, believe me 
 
 " Sincerely your friend, 
 
 "H. CLAY. 
 " D. Webster."
 
 18S8.1 CORRESPONDENCE. 337 
 
 CHAPTER XY. 
 
 1828-1829. 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT JACKSON DEATH OF MR. EZEKIEL 
 WEBSTER SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 second session of the Twentieth Congress found Mr. 
 -L "Webster, in December, 1828, again in the Senate and in 
 the Supreme Court. Great uncertainty prevailed at "Washing- 
 ton concerning the course likely to be taken by the President- 
 elect. General Jackson remained in Tennessee, answering very 
 few of the multitude of letters that were sent to him, urging 
 him to make a general removal of the incumbents of the public 
 offices. It was not known who were to form his Cabinet. Of 
 this state of " syncope," arising from ignorance of the views of 
 the new President, Mr. Webster writes, in January, 1828 : 
 
 " My opinion is, that, when he comes, he will bring a breeze with him. 
 Which way it will blow, I cannot tell. 
 
 " He will eitfier go with the party, as they say in New York, or go 
 ' the whole hog,' as it is phrased elsewhere, making all the places he can 
 for his Mends and supporters, and shaking a rod of terror at his op- 
 posers. 
 
 " Or else he will continue to keep his own counsels, make friends and 
 advisers of whom he pleases, and be President upon his own strength. 
 
 " The first would show boldness where there is no danger, and decision 
 where the opposite virtue of moderation would be more useful. The latter 
 would show real nerve, and, if he have talents to maintain himself in that 
 course, true greatness. 
 
 " My fear is stronger than my hope. 
 23
 
 238 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTEK. [Cn. XV 
 
 " Mr. Adams is in good health, and complains not at all of the measure 
 meted out to him. 
 
 " Mr. Clay's health is much improved, and his spirits excellent. He 
 goes to Kentucky in March, and, I conjecture, will be pressed into the next 
 House of Representatives. His chance of being at the head of affairs is 
 now better, in my judgment, than ever before. 
 
 " Keep New England firm and steady, and she may make him Presi- 
 dent if she chooses. 
 
 " Sundry important nominations are postponed, probably to know Gen- 
 eral Jackson's pleasure. 
 
 " The above contains all that is known here at this time." 
 
 General Jackson arrived in due time, and the "breeze" 
 which he brought and the direction in which it blew are well 
 known. Mr. Webster was disposed to look on calmly ; and he 
 was certainly much amused with whatever was going on. as 
 well as greatly anxious about what was to ensue. 
 
 [TO MRS. EZEKIEL WEBSTEK.] 
 
 " SENATE-CHAMBER, February 19, 1829. 
 
 11 MY DEAR SISTER : I must begin with apology ; or, let me rather say, 
 with confession ; for, though I am willing to confess great and censurable 
 omissions, I have little to urge by way of apology, and nothing which 
 amounts to justification. Let me pray you, therefore, in the exercise of 
 your clemency, to adopt the rule which Hamlet prescribes for passing judg- 
 ment on the players. Do not treat me according to my deserts, for, if so, 
 ' who would escape whipping ; ' but, according to your bounty and dig- 
 nity, the less I deserve forgiveness, the more will forgiveness exalt you: 
 forbearance and mercy. 
 
 " The children, under your good superintendence, have written me con- 
 tinually, day by day, very good letters. Mr. Paige, also, has been kind, as 
 he always is. 
 
 " Your own letters have completed my circle of domestic correspond- 
 ence, and I must say that it has been very punctual, and highly gratifying. 
 And now what can I tell you worth hearing ? 
 
 " General Jackson has been here about ten days. Of course, the city is 
 full of speculation and speculators. ' A great multitude,' too many to be 
 fed without a miracle, are already in the city, hungry for office. Especially, 
 I learn, that the typographical corps is assembled in great force. From 
 New Hampshire, our friend Hill ; from Boston, Mr. Greene ; from Connecti- 
 cut, Mr. Norton ; from New York, Mr. Noah ; fron Kentucky, Mr. Ken- 
 dall ; and, from everywhere else, somebody else. So many friends ready 
 to advise, and whose advice is so disinterested, make somewhat of a numer- 
 ous council about the President-elect ; and, if report be true, it is a council
 
 1829.] CORRESPONDENCE. 339 
 
 which only ' makes that darker which was dark enough before.' For 
 these reasons, or these with others, nothing is settled yet about the new 
 Cabinet. I suppose Mr. Van Buren will be Secretary of State; but, be- 
 yond that, I do not think any thing is yet determined. 
 
 " For ten or twelve days our Senate has been acting, with closed doors, 
 on certain nominations to office by Mr. Adams. What we have done is not 
 yet known, though one day it will be, probably. 
 
 " The general spirit prevailing here, with the friends of the new Presi- 
 dent, is that of a pretty decided party character. It is not quite so fierce 
 as our New-England Jackson men are actuated by ; still, I think it likely 
 to grow more and more bitter, unless, which is highly probable, the party 
 itself should divide. 
 
 " "We have all read the dispute between Mr. Adams and the Boston 
 gentlemen. Thus far, I believe, the universal feeling is, that Mr. Adams 
 has the worst side of it. I hear, however, that he is about to reply in 
 another pamphlet ! 
 
 The fashionable world is, and has been, full and gay. Crowds have 
 come, and are coming, to see the inauguration, etc. I have been to three 
 parties to wit, Mrs. Adams's last, Mrs. Clay's last, and Mrs. Porter's last. 
 Mrs. Porter, wife of the Secretary of War, is a fine woman, whom we visited 
 at Niagara, when there four years ago. With these manifestations of re- 
 gard for the setting sun and stars, I have satisfied my desire of seeing the 
 social circles. If there should be a ball on the 22d, I shall attend as 
 usual, to commemorate the great and good man born on that day. 
 
 " Judge Story is well, and in his usual spirits. The court is deeply en- 
 gaged, and, as soon as I get rid of these secret sessions of the Senate, I 
 have enough to do in it. 
 
 " We are looking to New Hampshire ; I shall not engage lodgings for 
 you and your husband next winter, till I see the returns. 1 
 [ Conclusion cut off.} 
 
 [TO MRS. EZEKIEL WEBSTER.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, March 4, 1829. 
 " First year of the Administration of Andrew Jackson, and the first day. 
 
 " MY DEAR SISTER : I thank you for yours, received to-day ; and thank 
 you both for the letter itself and for your pardon which it contains, and 
 of which I stood in so much need. Your benignity is memorable and 
 praiseworthy. To be serious, however, my dear sister, let me say, once for 
 all, that I have a very affectionate regard for you, that I am very glad you 
 are my sister, and the wife of the best of all brothers ; and if, like him, I 
 am not the most punctual of all correspondents, I am like him in sincerity 
 and constancy of esteem. If you find in your connection with my own 
 
 1 Mr. E. Webster had reluctantly con- shire for a seat in Congress ; but he was 
 sented to be a candidate hi New Hamp- not elected.
 
 340 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XV. 
 
 little broken circle but one-half as much pleasure as you bestow, you will 
 hare no reason to regret it. Your presence with my children through the 
 winter has relieved me from a pressing weight of anxiety. 
 
 " To-day we have had the inauguration. A monstrous crowd of people 
 is in the city. I never saw any thing like it before. Persons have come 
 five hundred miles to see General Jackson ; and they really seem to think 
 that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger. 
 
 " The inauguration speech you will see. I cannot make much of it, 
 except that it is anti-tariff, at least in some degree. What it says about 
 reform in office may be either a prelude to a general change in office, or a 
 mere sop to soothe the hunger, without satisfying it, of the thousand ex- 
 pectants for office who throng the city, and clamor all over the country. 
 I expect some changes, but not a great many at present. The show lasted 
 only about half an hour. The Senate assembled at eleven ; the judges and 
 foreign ministers came in ; the President-elect was introduced, and all 
 seated by half-past eleven. The Senate was full of ladies ; a pause ensued 
 till twelve. Then the President, followed by the Senate, etc., went through 
 the great rotunda, and all became confusion. On the portico, in the open 
 air, the day very warm and pleasant, he read his inaugural, and took the 
 oath. A great shout followed from the multitude, and, in fifteen minutes, 
 ' silence settled deep and still.' Everybody was dispersed. As I walked 
 home, I called in at a bookstore, and saw a volume which I now send you ; 
 it may serve to regulate matters of etiquette at Boscawen. 
 
 " I hope to write Edward to-night. If not, I shall not fail to do so to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Yours very sincerely and truly, 
 
 " D. WEBSTEB." 
 
 [TO MR. EZEKIEL WEBSTER.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, Sunday Evening, March 15, 1829. 
 
 "DEAR EZEKIEL: The Senate will probably adjourn to-morrow, and 1 
 hope the court will rise, or, at least, will dismiss me by Wednesday or 
 Thursday. I shall be immediately off. My books are in trunks. I shall 
 hear from New Hampshire to-morrow, and dispose of them according to 
 circumstances. If no change takes place in my own condition, of which I 
 have not the slightest expectation, and if you are not elected, I shall not 
 return. This, inter nos, but my mind is settled. Under present circum- 
 stances, public and domestic, it is disagreeable being here, and to me there 
 is no novelty to make compensation. It will be better for me and my 
 children that I should be with them. If I do not come in a public, I shall 
 not in a professional character. I can leave the court now as well as ever, 
 and can earn my bread as well at home as here. 
 
 " Your company, and that of your wife, would make a great difference. 
 I have not much expectation that you will be returned. Our fortune is, as 
 connected with recent and current events, that, if there be opposite chances,
 
 1829.] DEATH OF EZEKIEL WEBSTER. 34^ 
 
 the unfavorable one turns up. You had a snow of five feet, which of itself 
 might turn the election against the well-disposed and indifferent, and in 
 favor of the mischievous and the active. I shall not be disappointed if I 
 hear bad news. 
 
 " I make my point to be home the first day of April, when I trust I 
 shall meet you. "We will then settle what is best to do with the children. 
 I shall want Julia and Edward to stay a little while with me. Edward, I 
 think, should then go to Boscawen. I hardly know what I shall think 
 best to do with Julia. 
 
 " YourSj as ever, 
 
 "D. WEBSTEK. 
 
 " P. S. We have had one important cause here. It is from New York, 
 respecting what is called the Sailors' Snug Harbor. I have made a greater 
 exertion in it than in any other since Dartmouth College vs. Woodward, or 
 than it is probable I shall ever make in another." 
 
 But this was the last of the hopes that turned on the future 
 society of his brother and the excellent lady who had had the 
 care of his children through the preceding winter. Mr. "Web- 
 ster arrived at his own house, in Boston, in the second week in 
 April, 1829. Mrs. Ezekiel "Webster was there, with her eldest 
 daughter. At three o'clock in the morning of the eleventh a 
 messenger brought the sad intelligence, that Mr. Ezekiel "Web- 
 ster had died suddenly on the previous day. His death, which 
 was instantaneous, occurred in the court-house at Concord, 
 New Hampshire, while he was addressing a jury. 1 I borrow 
 the words of his son-in-law, Professor Sanborn, of Dartmouth 
 College : 
 
 " Mr. Webster was speaking, standing erect, on a plain floor, the house 
 full, and the court and jurors and auditors intently listening to his words, 
 with all their eyes fastened upon him. Speaking with full force, and per- 
 fect utterance, he arrived at the end of one branch of his argument. He 
 closed that branch, uttered the last sentence, and the last word of that sen- 
 tence, with perfect tone and emphasis, and then, in an instant, erect, and 
 with arms depending by his side, he fell backward, without bending a 
 joint, and, so far as appeared, was dead before his head reached the floor." * 
 
 He was at the age of only forty-nine at the time of his death. 
 He was a man of high talent, much professional learning, and 
 
 1 He died of a disease of the heart, aware that they ever spoke of it to each 
 of which Mr. Daniel Webster had long other, 
 known the existence, although I am not * Correspondence, i., 42.
 
 342 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cfl. XV. 
 
 great solidity of character. From their earliest youth, the 
 younger and more brilliant of these two brothers was more de- 
 pendent on the sound judgment of the elder, while he lived, 
 than he was on that of any other man with whom he was ever 
 connected. "He has been my reliance through life," is the 
 weighty testimony borne by the survivor to him who had been 
 thus snatched away. The qualities of Ezekiel Webster were of 
 a kind eminently adapted to produce this feeling in one who, 
 however great and wise, was embarked on the stormy sea of 
 public life, and in whom the powers of genius were united with 
 its dangers. The elder brother was a man whose days were 
 passed in the less exciting scenes of a country life ; and if, from 
 a sense of duty, he was sometimes drawn into politics, it was 
 without personal ambition. "While he pursued his profession as 
 a lawyer with diligence and success, he enjoyed the tranquillizing 
 influences of agricultural tastes and knowledge, a department 
 in which his public spirit, his intelligence, and his foresight, 
 were of great service to his native State. 1 At the same time, 
 his intellectual culture was always maintained at the high point 
 at which he left the college, where he received the education 
 that he obtained with so much painful exertion. Indeed, it is 
 said, by those who should know, that his classical attainments 
 and general reading were far more extensive than is common 
 with men engaged earnestly and early in active life. Before 
 his brother left New Hampshire, he was not willing to put him- 
 self forward in the public exhibition of his professional talents ; 
 but, after such a comparison was no longer likely to be sug- 
 gested, he became eminent as an advocate. He was a man 
 
 1 It is worthy of commemoration, provements which are made should owe 
 
 that when Mr. Daniel Webster delivered their existence to chance or accident ? 
 
 his Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Dart- The tillers of the soil have certainly a 
 
 mouth, in 1809, New Hampshire did not right to expect that men of science will 
 
 possess a single agricultural society. On lend them the aids of their knowledge, 
 
 that occasion, after speaking of the like An agricultural society, formed on prin- 
 
 destitution in the matter of historical so- ciples broad enough to embrace such ob- 
 
 cieties, he said : " Is it not still more in- jects of natural history as are connected 
 
 credible that, in a community where agri- with husbandry, is an establishment 
 
 culture is the great leading interest of all which long, long ere this, should have 
 
 classes, no two minds should combine been effected." 
 
 their powers to facilitate its improve- This strong recommendation did not 
 ment ? That there should be no union remain unheeded. Ezekiel Webster be- 
 of effort, no concert, no comparison of came the most active founder and after- 
 experiments ? That all should be left to ward the president of the Merrimac Ag- 
 individual enterprise, and the few im- ricultural Society.
 
 1829.] DEATH OF EZEKIEL WEBSTER. 343 
 
 of strong religions faith and sincere piety. His loss was long 
 and deeply felt by the community in which he had always 
 lived. 1 
 
 In person he was tall, standing nearly six feet ; of a full 
 muscular development, and commanding presence. If the testi- 
 mony was partial, it was sincere : " He appeared to me," Mr. 
 "Webster said, in 1846, " the finest human form that I ever laid 
 eyes on. I saw him in his coffin ; a tinged cheek, a complexion 
 clear as the heavenly light ; " ' and another, less near to him, but 
 who knew him well, speaks of a " magnificent form, crowned 
 with a princely head, that in his last years was thickly covered 
 with snowy hair." * 
 
 Such was the man who, in an instant, was snatched away 
 from a community that had known and trusted and honored 
 him from his earliest manhood. By Mr. "Webster his loss was felt 
 to be irreparable ; nor was it ever repaired. Valued friends, 
 dear and trusted friends, he still had, and others came afterward 
 to be acquired. But that tie that fraternal tie stretching 
 backward to the old days of their self-sacrificing parents, to 
 their youthful struggles for education, to their early successes, 
 and forward into the unbounded mutual confidence of their ma- 
 turer years, could not be replaced. Mr. Webster never sought 
 the advice of any man as he sought that of his brother. At the 
 time of his brother's death he was peculiarly dependent on him, 
 as we have seen. "Was it not true, as I have already said, that 
 he was severely tried ? 
 
 [TO iTE. MASON. J 
 
 " BOSTON, April 19, 1829. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIB : I thank you tor your kind letter. You do not and 
 cannot overrate the strength of the shock which my brother's death has 
 caused me. I have felt but one such in life ; and this follows so soon that 
 it requires more fortitude than I possess to bear it with firmness, and, per- 
 haps, as I ought. I am aware that the case admits no remedy, nor any 
 present relief; and endeavor to console myself with reflecting that I have 
 
 1 I have already referred to the beau- s Letter to Mr. Blatchford, Correspond- 
 
 tiful memoir of Mr. Ezekiel Webster, by ence, ii., 228. 
 
 Professor Sanborn, embraced in the first 8 Quoted by Professor Sanborn, in hia 
 
 volume of Mr. Daniel Webster's Corre- Memoir, 
 gpondence.
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XV. 
 
 had much happiness with lost connections, and that they must expect to 
 lose beloved objects in this world who have beloved objects to lose. My 
 life, I know, has been fortunate and happy beyond the common lot, and it 
 would be now ungrateful, as well as unavailing, to repine at calamities of 
 which, as they are human, I must expect to partake. But, I confess, the 
 world, at present, has for me an aspect any thing but cheerful. With a 
 multitude of acquaintance, I have few friends ; my nearest intimacies are 
 broken, and a sad void is made in the objects of affection. Of what re- 
 mains dear and valuable, I need not say that a most precious part is the 
 affectionate friendship of yourself and family. I want to see you very 
 much, indeed, but know not whether I shall be able soon to visit Ports- 
 mouth. You will be glad to know that my own health is good. I have 
 never, for ten years, got through a winter without being more reduced in 
 health and strength. My children, also, are well. Edward is at Boscawen, 
 where he will probably stay through the summer, or as long as the family 
 may be kept together there. Daniel hopes to go to college in August. 
 Julia proposes to pass the summer, or a part of it, with Mrs. Lee, and must 
 afterward be disposed of as best she may. 
 
 "This occurrence is calculated to have effect on the future course of my 
 own life, and to add to the inducements, already felt, to retire from a situ- 
 ation in which I am making daily sacrifices, and doing little good to myself 
 or others. Pray give my love to your family. 
 
 " Yours, affectionately and entirely, 
 
 WEBSTER." 
 
 A considerable part of the ensuing summer was passed by 
 Mr. Webster in the new cares and duties which the death of his 
 brother devolved upon him. He was now the sole survivor of 
 a large family. The farm at Franklin, thenceforward to have 
 a melancholy attraction for him, because there were the tombs 
 of his parents and of his brothers and sisters, became his own 
 property, by an arrangement with the guardian of his brother's 
 children. His inclination at this time to retire from public life 
 was almost insurmountable. But the depressing feeling, that he 
 was doing little good to compensate for the sacrifices that he 
 was making, was not destined to last long. There was awaiting 
 him one of those opportunities and duties which occur but once 
 in the life of any statesman ; when he was to perform that public 
 service which constitutes, perhaps, the greatest of his senatorial 
 achievements, and which has forever connected his name with 
 the security and perpetuation of the Constitution of the United 
 States. 
 
 There was also awaiting him a very important and happy
 
 1829.] SECOND MARRIAGE. 345 
 
 change in his domestic condition. In the autumn of 1829 he 
 passed a considerable time in the city of New York, for profes- 
 sional purposes, and, of course, he was a much-honored guest in 
 its best circles. Although such a connection was not long an- 
 ticipated, 1 he was married in December, to Miss Caroline Le 
 Roy, the second daughter of Herman Le Roy, Esq., a wealthy 
 merchant, descended from one of the early settlers of New York. 
 This event was thus announced to his eldest son, who was then 
 a Freshman in Harvard College : 
 
 [TO MB. FLETCHER WEBSTER.] 
 
 "NEW YOBK, December^ 1829. 
 
 " MY DEAR SON : You have been informed that an important change 
 in my domestic condition was expected to take place. It happened on 
 Saturday. The lady who is now to bear the relation of mother to you, 
 and Julia, and Edward, I am sure will be found worthy of all your affec- 
 tion and regard ; and I am equally certain that she will experience from 
 all of you the utmost kindness and attachment. She insists on taking 
 Julia with us to "Washington, thinking it will be better for her, and* that 
 she will also be good company. 
 
 " We shall leave New York in about a week. I read your first letter, 
 which gave me pleasure, and hope to have another from you before I leave 
 New York. You will not fail to write me once a week, according to ar- 
 rangement. The enclosed note you will of course answer. If you dispatch 
 your answer at once, without waiting for the keepsake, it will arrive here 
 before our departure. Let it come enclosed to me. The 'keepsake' ia 
 an elegant gold watch. You must send for it to Mr. Paige, by a careful 
 hand. Mr. Paige will not be home under ten days from this time. 
 
 " I hope, my dear son, that I shall continue to hear good accounts 
 of you. 
 
 " I am always, with much affection, your father, 
 
 "D. WEBSTER." 
 
 1 [To Mrs. E. WEBSTER.] " I parted I ever saw it, and she is much at- 
 
 with you, I think, the first day of Oc- tached to her new mother. With this 
 
 tober, not at all foreseeing what was to last personage I am sure you will be 
 
 happen to myself in so short a time, pleased. You will find her amiable/ 
 
 I am now here settled down for the affectionate, prudent, and agreeable ; as 
 
 session, with Mrs. Webster and Julia, these are good, sober words, you must 
 
 When I left home I did not expect to take them as used for what they ought 
 
 bring Julia farther than New York, to mean, and not as the rhapsody of 
 
 She was to have returned with Mr. a new husband. It will not be many 
 
 Paige ; but Mrs. Webster chose to have months, however, I hope, before I shall 
 
 it otherwise, and I believe it is much bring her and yourself face to face, and 
 
 better as it is. Julia seems exceed- then you can judge for yourself." (Cor- 
 
 ingly happy. Her health is better than respondtnce, i., 484.)
 
 346 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XV. 
 
 In the month of June of this year occurred the visit of Mr. 
 Wirt to Boston, on a professional engagement, in which he was 
 employed as the leading counsel against Mr. Webster, in a cause 
 of some importance in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. 
 Mr. Wirt's gratification at his reception by Mr. Webster is ex- 
 pressed in the warmest terms in his letters, given in his Life by 
 Mr. Kennedy. 1 
 
 1 Kennedy's Life of Wirt, ii., 268-272.
 
 1830.] POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE. 
 
 CHAPTEK XYI. 
 
 1829-1830. 
 
 TOWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE NULLIFICATION THE IWC 
 
 SPEECHES ON FOOT'S RESOLUTION REPLY TO HAYNE. 
 
 AT the first session of the Twenty-first Congress, one 
 of the subjects that earliest demanded Mr. Webster's 
 anxious consideration was the President's supposed power to 
 remove the incumbents in public office without consulting the 
 Senate. The inauguration of General Jackson had been fol- 
 lowed by a sweeping change in the executive 'offices, not only 
 in all the departments at "Washington, but throughout the 
 country. The state of things thus produced at the capitol 
 was entirely without precedent ; for, while it had always been 
 understood, since the origin of the Government, that, with 
 every change of the person of the President, the new Executive 
 was at liberty to select new heads of the principal departments, 
 because those officers form what is by usage called the " Cabi- 
 net," it had never been customary to regard the subordinate 
 places as a fund for the reward of personal partisans, or to re- 
 move faithful and competent public servants merely because 
 their political opinions did not coincide with those of the suc- 
 cessful party. The wise forbearance that had been exercised by 
 most of our former Presidents had left in the several subor- 
 dinate stations a body of trained and experienced men, who 
 possessed the knowledge of official business essential to the suc- 
 cessful working of any government, and who were, in general, 
 men of unexceptionable characters. This degree of permanency
 
 348 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVI. 
 
 of official life in "Washington formerly had an important influ- 
 ence on the prosperity and growth of the city ; for men who felt 
 that they were secure in their places so long as they properly 
 discharged their duties to the Government, could afford to seek 
 permanent homes for their families where their salaries were 
 earned. All this was suddenly changed ; and it was changed 
 with a disregard of the claims of meritorious public servants, 
 and with the employment of excuses to effect their removal 
 from office, on which all candid men, of whatever political con- 
 nection, must now look back with regret and disapprobation, 
 as a course alike unworthy of those who then assumed the 
 administration of the Government, and injurious to the future 
 welfare of the country. In multitudes of cases it was not pre- 
 tended that there was any other cause for the removals than 
 the demands of party. It was a very common occurrence for a 
 secretary, at the head of one of the departments, to inform a 
 subordinate that no complaint could be made of the manner in 
 which he had discharged his duties, but that the place was 
 wanted for a political or personal friend ; and, where this kind 
 of frankness was not used, the private and trivial and casual 
 conversation of some inferior clerk, involving an alleged disre- 
 spect toward the new President, and often reported anony- 
 mously, was duly laid before the Cabinet, and gravely acted 
 upon. 1 In the course of the first two years of General Jack- 
 son's first presidency he made two thousand removals from office. 
 The influence of this new method of administration on the 
 material prosperity of the city of Washington was the least of 
 the evils that attended it. The opponents of President Jack- 
 son's government saw in it a long train of public mischiefs ; and 
 scarcely any wise man will now question that they were right. 
 But whether this credit will be generally conceded to them or 
 
 1 I state these miserable facts, with- ment will hereafter consider themselves 
 
 holding names and particulars, on the as only visitors among us, and not make 
 
 authority of a letter, written to Mr. Web- any investment in real estate. We al- 
 
 ster by a private citizen of Washington, ready realize the influence of this feeling. 
 
 in no way connected with the Govern- 
 
 ment. It bears date in May, 1829; so ... I could not have believed that your 
 
 soon had the " reform " done its work, predictions were so correct, and that 
 
 The writer describes a total suspension your foresight was so extensive as I now 
 
 in the business of erecting private houses, find it to have been." But it is scarcely 
 
 and observes : " Confidence hi the stabil- necessary for me to quote private testi- 
 
 ity of office is so much shaken, that the mony to that which has long been histor- 
 
 olerks and other officers of the Govern- ical and notorious.
 
 1830.] POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE. 349 
 
 not, they considered it their duty to subject to close public 
 scrutiny the question whether the President possesses, under 
 the Constitution, power to remove a subordinate civil officer 
 without assigning a cause to the Senate, and without taking its 
 assent. 
 
 It must be regarded as a strong proof of Mr. Webster's fair- 
 ness of mind, and of his unwillingness to assert an extreme 
 principle for party objects, that, in the midst of such a state of 
 things as had been produced by the course of General Jackson's 
 Administration, he approached this question with very great 
 deliberation, and, finally, formed opinions concerning it con- 
 trary to his original views. If the question, in 1830, had been 
 entirely new, he would have held that the power of removal, 
 as a distinct power, and as residing in the President alone, 
 does not exist. This was his own opinion, as it was also that 
 of Chancellor Kent, apart from the construction that had been 
 put upon the Constitution by some precedents, by a declaratory 
 resolution of Congress, in if 89, and by an acquiescence of Jialf 
 a century. It is true that Mr. Webster might have argued 
 down the precedents, which were not numerous, and not of 
 great force ; while the cases before him were enormous in 
 number, and flagrantly unjust ; some of them comprehending 
 men of entire fitness and capacity, who, to official merit, added 
 the strongest of claims upon the country for Revolutionary ser- 
 vices. He might have contended that the congressional con- 
 struction of the Constitution, by the First Congress, besides 
 being wrong in the abstract, had been given when no such 
 sweeping and irresponsible power, as was now exercised, had 
 ever been claimed for the President ; and he might have urged 
 that the public acquiescence had never related to any but ex- 
 treme cases of public exigency, arising from incapacity or mis- 
 conduct. But it was not his habit to be ingenious in con- 
 sidering how the Constitiition ought to be construed. He felt 
 bound to remember that the Constitution expressly provides 
 for the action of the Senate only when an appointment is to be 
 made ; and although it may fairly be argued that this power 
 of appointment determines the pleasure of the appointment when 
 all else is silent, and, consequently, that the President alone 
 cannot terminate an appointment, and call upon the Senate to
 
 350 
 
 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [Ca. XVI. 
 
 confirm a new nominee without making the cause of the re- 
 moval of the old incumbent a part of the question of such new 
 appointment ; yet, that this course of reasoning, although 
 strictly logical, was too abstract to countervail what had oc- 
 curred since the Constitution went into operation. He there- 
 fore, in what he said in the Senate in 1830, and ever afterward, 
 refrained from denying the President's power to remove from 
 office without the consent of the Senate ; and maintained that 
 the abuses of this power were mischiefs to be corrected by 
 public sentiment ; or, in a case of extreme corruption, by the 
 power of impeachment. This was the view of Mr. Madison, 
 who held that the President's power exists in cases of clear and 
 absolute necessity, but that its exercise in any other case is an 
 abuse. 1 
 
 1 The most plausible ground on which 
 to vindicate the political application of 
 the too famous maxim, that " to the vic- 
 tors belong the spoils," is this Parties 
 are organized in free and elective gov- 
 ernments, in order to give effect in ad- 
 ministration to certain political opinions, 
 which those who lead in political action 
 sincerely hold to be essential to the pub- 
 lic interest, which is a much larger ob- 
 ject than the individual interest of any 
 office-holder. The public patronage is a 
 powerful means of influencing men to 
 labor for the success of certain political 
 opinions ; and, if the power to use it 
 for this purpose exists in the constitu- 
 tional arrangements of official power, 
 such use is legitimate, because the pa- 
 tronage, in the hands of those who use it, 
 is an instrument for the promotion of 
 tde public good according to the judg- 
 ment of those who have the official right 
 to shape the measures of Government. 
 Without considering how far this reason- 
 ing borrows aid from the maxim that 
 the end justifies the means a rule that 
 is wholly unprincipled, and generally pro- 
 ductive of mischief when it is resorted 
 to it is clear that it overlooks some 
 pery important things which are true, 
 and assumes some things which are not 
 true. In the first place, it makes no ac- 
 count of the direct tendency of such a 
 principle of action to render the political 
 principles of parties matters of subordi- 
 nate, and the enjoyment of public pa- 
 tronage a matter of primary, concern 
 with the electors. We know, as a mat- 
 
 ter of fact, that candidates have been 
 elected who would not have succeeded, 
 and that parties have triumphed whose 
 principles would not have received the 
 sanction of the people, if this kind of cor- 
 ruption had been kept out of our elec- 
 tions. We know this, because we know 
 that there have been successful candi- 
 dates who were without superior merit, 
 and successful parties whose principles 
 and measures were unworthy of popular 
 support, and have proved to be mis- 
 chievous. In the next place, this rea- 
 soning disregards the fact that the offices 
 of a great government will be less well 
 filled when they are made a reward for 
 the party services of the most active and 
 energetic politicians ; for the simple rea- 
 son that this class of men will rarely em- 
 brace the most competent of those who 
 may desire public office as a means 
 of livelihood. In the third place, fre- 
 quent and periodical changes in all the 
 administrative offices of a great govern- 
 ment deprive it of the strength that is 
 derived from accumulated official experi- 
 ence and knowledge, and render any 
 proper system of promotion impracti- 
 cable. Finally, a general degradation of 
 the tone of political discussion and ac- 
 tion is sure to take place under a gov- 
 ernment in which the public patronage 
 is thus used. All these evils our ex- 
 perience has proved ; and when they are 
 connected, as they are, both as cause 
 and effect, with the system of nominat- 
 ing candidates for the chief executive 
 office by party conventions, on the prin
 
 1830.] NULLIFICATION. 35! 
 
 But a far deeper question one that concerned the particular 
 interests of no party, and that involved, in truth, the continued 
 existence of the Government soon but not unexpectedly 
 claimed of Hr. Webster services of a very peculiar character. 
 It may be justly said of General Jackson, that if he \vas not the 
 only man in the country who, in the executive office, could 
 have met the crisis of 1830-'33 as it required to be met, yet that 
 it was fortunate for the country that a person of his inflexible 
 firmness and perfect courage was then in the office of Presi- 
 dent ; and it should for similar reasons be said of Mr. "Webster, 
 that he was better fitted than any other man in the Union to 
 encounter in debate the new doctrines that now threatened the 
 overthrow of the Constitution, and that it was, therefore, as for- 
 tunate that he was still a member of the Senate as it was that 
 General Jackson was President. If he had not been there, 
 it can scarcely be imagined that the hands of the Executive 
 could have been strengthened by the public refutation of a 
 heresy which threatened a direct obstruction to the laws of 
 the United States ; a refutation that was the necessary forerun- 
 ner to executive action, in a Government largely dependent 
 upon popular opinion and inevitably influenced by it. 
 
 It is difficult to account for the origin and growth of what 
 were called the doctrines of nullification, which originated in 
 South Carolina, without touching upon the peculiar mental 
 characteristics of one of her statesmen, who was their reputed 
 author, and who, by his great abilities, the purity of his per- 
 sonal character, and the persuasiveness of his address, exercised 
 a vast influence over many of the public men of his time. 
 
 ciple of availability, it is impossible to no one would be hardy enough to justify 
 deny, and not easy to exaggerate, the in- this use of the public money. How, 
 jury that has been done to our political then, is the practice any more to be jus- 
 institutions. That injury is a direct refu- tified which makes use of the whole 
 tation of the claim that the success of body of existing and necessary offices as 
 the principles of a party is an object that a fund for the reward of partisan ser- 
 justifies the use of such means of attain- vices on a change of parties ? As a gen- 
 ing it. Xor is it true, as the justifi- eral rule, it may be quite right for an ad- 
 cation assumes, that such means are ministration, in case of a vacancy, to 
 within the legitimate control of those prefer a political supporter to a political 
 who hold the executive power for the opponent But this is a very different 
 time being. If a party in power were to proceeding from the creation of thou- 
 inake a great and unnecessary increase sands of vacancies, in order to bring the 
 of public offices, by regular enactment influence of public station and of the 
 of law, for the purpose of securing the public money to bear on future elec- 
 predominance of its political principles, tions.
 
 352 
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [Cn. XVI. 
 
 In May, 1828, a meeting of the South Carolina delegation 
 in Congress was held in "Washington, at the rooms of General 
 Hayne, one of the Senators of that State, to concert measures 
 against the tariff and the protective policy which it embodied. 
 From the history of the times, and the disclosures subsequently 
 made, it is apparent that some violent things were said at this 
 meeting, but it broke up without any definite plan. In the course 
 of the following summer, there were many popular meetings 
 in South Carolina, largely attended, at which the tariff of 1824 
 was treated as an act of despotism and usurpation, which ought 
 to be openly resisted. The tone of these meetings was not un- 
 like that which has since been heard elsewhere, when laws of 
 the United States have been distasteful to local feelings or in 
 conflict with local interests. They occasioned anxiety and 
 regret among the friends of the Union throughout the country, 
 though nothing more. But, in the autumn, the Legislature of 
 South Carolina adopted an " Exposition and Protest," l which 
 
 1 In a memorandum now before me, 
 in Mr. Webster's handwriting, I find the 
 following analysis of this document : 
 
 "But the most bold and imposing 
 form in which the doctrine of nullifica- 
 tion has been presented, is doubtless to 
 be found in the Exposition and Protest 
 of the Legislature of South Carolina in 
 December, 1828. It seems to have been 
 judged expedient at that time to put 
 forth the nullifying power of the State in 
 bold relief. This exposition is a labored 
 argument for the power of nullification ; 
 and, whatever may be thought of its train 
 of reasoning, its conclusions and results 
 are at least clearly stated. Its purpose 
 is not disguised. The general under- 
 standing assigns its authorship, not to 
 the committee, but to a distinguished 
 citizen of South Carolina, holding at pres- 
 ent a very high place in the Government 
 of the United States. 
 
 " The doctrines clearly announced in 
 it are : 1. That it is a most erroneous and 
 dangerous proposition to maintain that 
 the Supreme Court of the United States 
 has constitutional authority to decide on 
 the extent of the powers of a State gov- 
 ernment; its decisions being final only 
 when applied to the authorities of the 
 departments of the General Govern- 
 ment. 2. That ' universal experience ' 
 (lest we should seem to do the distin- 
 
 guished author injustice, we cite the very 
 words) that ' universal experience, in 
 all ages and countries, teaches that power 
 can only be met by power, and not by 
 reason and justice, and that all restrictions 
 on authority, unsustained by any equal 
 antagonist power, must forever prove 
 wholly insufficient in practice. Such,' he 
 adds, ' also has been the decisive proof 
 of our own short experience.' 3. That 
 the right of judging and finally deciding 
 on the extent of their own powers is an 
 essential attribute of sovereignty, of 
 which the States are not and cannot be 
 divested. 4. That power being divided 
 between the General Government and the 
 State governments, it is impossible to 
 deny to the States the right to decide on 
 the infraction of their own rights, and the 
 proper remedy to be applied for their cor- 
 rection. 5. ' But the existence,' here 
 we quote the very words again, lest it 
 should seem incredible that such a posi- 
 tion had been taken ' but the existence 
 of the right of judging of their powers, 
 clearly established from the sovereignty 
 of the States, as clearly implies A VETO 
 
 OR CONTROL ON THE ACTION OF THE GEN- 
 ERAL GOVERNMENT, on contested points 
 of authority ; and this very control is the 
 remedy which the Constitution has pro- 
 vided to prevent the encroachment of the 
 General Government on t/ie reserved rights
 
 1830.] NULLIFICATION". 
 
 353 
 
 gave form and substance to the doctrines which thenceforward 
 became known as "Nullification." In order to understand 
 them, however, as a theory of the Federal Constitution, it is 
 necessary to state the theory to which they are opposed, and to 
 overthrow which they were brought forward. 
 
 The Government of the United States, under the Constitu- 
 tion, had hitherto been administered upon the principle that 
 the extent of its powers is to be finally determined by its 
 supreme judicial tribunal, not only when there is any conflict 
 of authority between its several departments, but also when the 
 authority of the whole Government is denied by one or more of 
 the States. According to the view of the framers of the Consti- 
 tution, the General Government was endowed with a judicial 
 department, and the Constitution and the laws passed in pur- 
 suance of it were made the supreme law of the land, for the 
 very purpose of withdrawing from the States all final cogni- 
 zance of questions relating to the extent of the powers of Con- 
 gress. If there had been any opinions supposed to have been 
 entertained by important persons, that were in conflict with 
 this theory, prior to 1830, that supposition perhaps had its 
 origin in erroneous constructions of the public documents in 
 which such opinions were alleged to be found. For example, 
 the famous Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, which 
 had asserted the right and duty of the States to interpose, in a 
 case of " deliberate, palpable, and dangerous " exercise of powers 
 not granted to the General Government by the Constitution, 
 had not distinctly asserted, as the opinion of their authors, that 
 there could be a constitutional interposition by a State, in the 
 shape of resistance to the execution of a law enacted by Con- 
 gress, whenever the State believed such a law to be an exercise 
 of power not warranted by the Constitution. If, on the other 
 hand, there was language in those resolutions which seemed to 
 
 of ike States. 1 6. The practical result of mittee do not in the least doubt, and 
 the foregoing doctrines is then stated in they are equally clear in the existence of a 
 the following words : ' That there exists necessity to justify its exercise, if the Gen- 
 a case (the tariff) which would justify the eral Government should continue to per- 
 interposition of this State, and thereby sist in its improper assumption of powers 
 compel the General Government to aban- belonging to the State ; which brings 
 don an unconstitutional power, or to them to the last point which they pro- 
 make an appeal to the amending power pose to consider When would it be 
 to confer it by express grant, the com- proper to exercise this high power ? ' '' 
 24
 
 354 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. XVI, 
 
 imply a right to resort to forcible resistance, their principal 
 authors had not sanctioned an interpretation which would look 
 to any other right of resistance than that which is commonly 
 described as the right of revolution, and which is allowed to be 
 held in reserve by all communities against acts of intolerable 
 oppression. 
 
 But aside from the authority of these resolutions an author- 
 ity that was doubtful, because their interpretation was not clear 
 there had been no important assertion of the principle that a 
 State can determine for its citizens whether they are to obey an 
 act of Congress, by asserting its unconstitutional character, and 
 that the right to do this is implied as a right inherent in a 
 State, under the Constitution, and results from the nature of 
 the Government. This, however, was what the advocates of 
 nullification now undertook to establish. The remedy which 
 they sought, against acts which they regarded as usurpations, 
 was not revolution, and not the breaking up the Union, as they 
 claimed ; but it was a remedy which they held to exist within 
 the Union, and to have been contemplated by the people of the 
 States when they established the Constitution. How far they 
 considered such a theory compatible with the continued exist- 
 ence of the Union, I am not aware that they undertook to ex- 
 plain. Having obtained the means of resisting one exercise of 
 authority by the General Government, it was clear that the 
 same rule would serve to defeat any other. 
 
 Such was the foundation and such was the doctrine of the 
 asserted right of nullification. It assumed that the Constitu- 
 tion, by reserving to the States, or the people, all the powers 
 not vested in the General Government, contemplated some 
 means of checking and controlling the action of that Govern- 
 ment on contested points of authority. It assumed that the 
 Constitution, being only a compact between sovereign States, 
 all questions respecting the extent of the powers conferred by it 
 necessarily touched the extent and nature of the powers re- 
 served to the States. It assumed that the right of judging and 
 finally deciding on their own reserved powers was an essential 
 attribute of sovereignty of which the States had not been and 
 could not be deprived ; and hence it declared that the control 
 by State interposition was the remedy which the Constitution
 
 1830.] NULLIFICATION. 
 
 355 
 
 had contemplated to prevent the encroachments of the General 
 Government on the reserved rights of the States. 
 
 Although the Legislature of South Carolina had thus pro- 
 pounded a theory of resistance, and held that there was then a 
 case in the tariff which would justify a resort to it, no steps 
 were yet taken toward the immediate exercise of the asserted 
 power. Whether these doctrines were introduced afterward 
 into the Senate of the United States, as in the nature of a 
 warning, or were brought there without premeditation, it is 
 a fact that, on the 29th of December (1829), Mr. Foote, a 
 Senator from Connecticut, introduced a resolution to inquire 
 respecting the sales and surveys of the Western lands. Mr. 
 Webster was then absent from Washington, but he took his 
 seat in the Senate two days afterward. An important discus- 
 sion of this resolution took place, which continued at intervals, 
 but without eliciting any thing of special interest, until the 19th 
 of January. On that day, General Hayne, of South Carolina, 
 delivered an elaborate speech, calling in question the conduct 
 of the New-England States toward the interests of the West ; 
 accusing them of a selfish design to retard the growth of the 
 Western States a design originating, he said, in the policy of 
 the tariff, which required the New-England States to keep their 
 population from emigrating to the new States ; and endeavor- 
 ing to show that there existed a natural sympathy between the 
 Southern and Western States, upon the distribution and sale of 
 the public lands, which ought to make those sections natural 
 allies against the tendencies and consequences of the tariff 
 policy. 
 
 Such a tone had seldom been heard in the Senate. What- 
 ever may have been the political sins and failings of New Eng- 
 land, a narrow and illiberal policy toward the West had not 
 been one of them ; and it was quite new in the Senate of the 
 United States, at that day, N to hear appeals made to a supposed 
 identity of sectional interests between the South and the West, 
 on account of any injustice toward either of them on the part 
 of the Eastern States. Mr. Webster entered the Senate ^from 
 the Supreme Court just as Mr. Hayne rose to speak. His en- 
 gagements in the court were at that time pressing and impor- 
 tant, and he had no thought of taking part in this debate on
 
 356 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVI 
 
 the public lands. 1 But Mr. Hayne's speech he considered 
 worthy of a reply, and, as soon as that gentleman had finished, 
 he rose to answer it. Mr. Benton, however, after compliment- 
 ing Mr. Hayne on his speech, moved an adjournment, to which 
 Mr. "Webster consented. The latter, of course, was entitled to 
 the floor on the next day. 
 
 On that day, the 20th of January, Mr. Webster delivered 
 his first speech on Foote's resolution, which is now contained in 
 the third volume of his works. The notes for this speech all 
 that were ever made were prepared in the night of the 19th, 
 or more probably on the morning of the 20th. a They are now 
 before me. They occupy, loosely written, three sheets of ordi- 
 nary letter-paper. The speech, as it was delivered and report- 
 ed, fills more than twenty pages of the octavo volume. It did 
 not follow closely the written notes. On the contrary, the 
 notes contain minute and accurate references to the history of 
 the public lands and the legislation concerning them, which no 
 one, not as familiar with the subject as Mr. Webster was, could 
 have gathered at a single sitting. It seems to have been his 
 purpose, in making these notes, to place before his own mind 
 the historical facts from which he was to argue, rather than to 
 place those facts in their details before the Senate. But one of 
 his principal purposes, in making the speech, was to repel the 
 charge made by Mr. Hayne, that the Government, especially so 
 far as it might have been under the lead of New England, had 
 acted with a narrow and illiberal policy toward the West. He 
 had no thought of provoking a discussion on the power of the 
 General Government to establish tariffs for the protection of 
 manufactures, or on the authority of the Government to enforce 
 
 1 The important controversy between before most people were abroad. In 
 John Jacob Astor and the State of New Washington, he could be frequently seen 
 York was to come on in the Supreme in the market-house, before any other in- 
 Court on the 20th, and the argument was, habitant of the city, conversing with the 
 in fact, begun on that day. This contro- tradesmen there, and securing the best 
 versy is known as the case of Carver's choice from their stalls. Every butcher, 
 Lessee vs. Astor, and is reported in the and fisherman, and country produce- 
 fourth volume of Peters's Reports, dealer, white or black, man or woman, 
 
 4 Mr. Webster was always an early free or slave, knew him well. Perhaps 
 riser. It was his habit, when he had any they did not know to what themes his 
 important work to do, to rise about four early morning chats with them were 
 o'clock in the morning, light his own parentheses. It was at such times, how- 
 fire, and continue his occupation until ever, that his important labor was chiefly 
 the hour of breakfast, or until he chose performed before people in general had 
 to go out, as he was very fond of doing, begun the day.
 
 1830.] REPLY TO HAYNE. 357 
 
 its laws against the opposition of States ; although he did in- 
 cidentally allude to the prevalence of opinions and feelings, in 
 some quarters, adverse to the Union, which, he said, had caused 
 him regret, and which he hoped the gentleman from South 
 Carolina did not share. 
 
 On the following day, January 21st, Mr. Chambers, of Mary- 
 land, moved an adjournment of the debate, as it was well known 
 that Mr. "Webster had urgent business which required him to 
 be in the Supreme Court. Mr. Hayne objected, saying : 
 
 " He saw the gentleman from Massachusetts in his seat, and presumed 
 he could make an arrangement that would enable him to be present here 
 during the discussion to-day. He was unwilling that this subject should 
 be postponed, until he had an opportunity of replying to some of the ob- 
 servations which had fallen from the gentleman yesterday. He would not 
 deny that some things had fallen from the gentleman which rankled here 
 (touching his breast), from which he would desire at once to relieve him- 
 self. The gentleman had discharged his fire in the face of the Senate. He 
 hoped he would now afford him the opportunity of returning the shot. 
 
 " Mr. Webster : I am ready to receive it. Let the discussion proceed." 
 
 Mr. Benton then rose and finished a speech, in reply to Mr. 
 "Webster, which he had commenced on the previous day. An 
 adjournment of the Senate was then moved and negatived. 
 
 Mr. Hayne then commenced his reply to Mr. Webster, 
 which, in consequence of an adjournment of the debate, he did 
 not finish until Monday, the 25th. His speech ranged through 
 a great variety of topics. He assailed Kew England ; called in 
 question Mr. "Webster's consistency, and depreciated the patriot- 
 ism of Massachusetts. He then concluded with a highly-in- 
 genious and acute exposition and assertion of the doctrines of 
 nullification. One part of the speech was caustic and extremely 
 personal ; the residue was argumentative and able so able, 
 that without immediate refutation it would have done mis- 
 chief. 
 
 Mr. "Webster took notes while Mr. Hayne was speaking, 
 and manifestly intended a rejoinder. As soon as Mr. Hayne 
 had concluded, he rose, but an adjournment of the Senate 
 was moved, which gave him the floor for the next day. 
 This discussion had now been going on for so long a time, 
 that strangers had come to the capital on purpose to wit-
 
 358 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XV JL 
 
 ness it. "When the Senate-chamber was opened on the morn- 
 ing of Tuesday, the 26th of January, the galleries, and even the 
 floor, therefore, were crowded. Ladies were admitted to the seats 
 of the members, and such was the extraordinary eagerness to hear 
 Mr. "Webster, that all rules had to give way to the interest and 
 importance of the occasion. The House of Representatives was 
 so deserted, that no business could be transacted, although the 
 Speaker remained in his chair. Every inch of available space 
 within the Senate-chamber, for sitting or standing, was occu- 
 pied, and the crowd extended out into the lobbies and down the 
 staircases, far beyond the sound of Mr. "Webster's voice. He 
 has himself said that he " never spoke in the presence of an 
 audience so eager and so sympathetic." 1 In truth, that great 
 assembly, composed of many of the most intelligent and culti- 
 vated men and women of the land, felt that, on that day, the 
 Constitution of the United States was on trial. 
 
 On this occasion Mr. Webster again had but a single night 
 in which to make preparation to answer the really important 
 parts of the preceding speech of his opponent ; for that speech 
 was not concluded until a late hour of the session of the 25th, 
 and it was on that day that General Hayne made his argument 
 on the constitutional right of State nullification of the laws of 
 the United States. Such written preparation as Mr. Webster, 
 in fact, made for the speech that is called his " Second Speech 
 on Foote's Resolution," and which embraces the celebrated 
 answer to the doctrines of nullification, was made after the 
 adjournment of the Senate on the 25th, and before the hour of 
 its assembling on the next day. These notes are also now before 
 me. Like those which he prepared for the " First Speech on 
 Foote's Resolution," they are written with great brevity on 
 common letter-paper, and extend through five sheets. The 
 printed speech, as reported by a stenographer, fills seventy 
 pages of the octavo edition of Mr. Webster's Works.* The notes 
 
 1 Correspondence, i., 494. this speech, in short-hand, were taken 
 
 * It was reported by Joseph Gales, by Mr. Gales, the senior editor of the 
 
 Esq., the senior editor of the National National Intelligencer. They were writ- 
 
 Intelligencer, who, aware of the impor- ten out by another hand, and the report 
 
 tance of the occasion, and being himself was most remarkably accurate. It was in 
 
 an accomplished stenographer, was un- the possession of Mr. Webster a part of 
 
 willing to intrust this duty to any other one day for revision, and then the speech 
 
 hand. In the memorandum above re- was sent to the press." I believe the re- 
 
 ferred to, Mr. Webster says : " Notes of port is still in the possession of Mrs. Gales.
 
 1830.] EEPLT TO HATXE. 359 
 
 contain no hint of the impressive exordium with which the 
 speech was opened. They commence with the words : 
 
 " No man hurt. If his ' rankling' is relieved, glad of it." 
 
 " I have no ' rankling,' fear, anger, consciousness of refutation." 
 
 " No ' rankling,' original or received bow not strong enough." 
 
 It has been said that Mr. Webster needed no prepara- 
 tion to answer the heresy of nullification. In one sense this 
 is true. From his first entrance into public life, he had 
 been familiar with the historical facts on which any true 
 theory, respecting the nature of the Constitution of the United 
 States, must be based. His opinions on the subject had been 
 formed long before the crisis of 1830-'33 had arisen ; and if it 
 is to be suggested that those opinions were such as were usu- 
 ally held by the best minds in Xew England, it is to be remem- 
 bered that they constitute the sole ground on which the su- 
 premacy, claimed by the Constitution as the supreme law of the 
 land, can be maintained. His long experience, too, in the 
 argument of constitutional questions at the bar of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, commencing in 1819, had given 
 him a training in the handling of such subjects which few 
 men have possessed who have ever taken part in them ; and 
 he had, what few great lawyers have ever had, the power of 
 adapting himself as effectively to parliamentary as to forensic 
 discussion. So far, therefore, as the exigencies of this occasion 
 required any study of the fundamental principles of our Consti- 
 tution, Mr. Webster's preparation was made long before this oc- 
 casion arose. But the marshalling of his subject in the order in 
 which it was necessary to treat it, the special answers required 
 by the special arguments of his adversary the conception and 
 the framework of the speech all this did require labor, and 
 that labor was performed after the adjournment of the Senate, 
 late on the 25th, and before it reassembled on the 26th. 
 
 At the conclusion of Mr. "Webster's argument, on the 26th 
 of January, General Hayne, who had taken notes, rose to reply ; 
 and although one of his friends proposed an adjournment, he 
 declined to avail himself of it, and addressed the Senate for a 
 short time upon the constitutional question. Mr. Webster then 
 rose again, and, after alluding to the " vain attempt " of his
 
 3 (JQ LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVI 
 
 opponent to "reconstruct his shattered argument," restated 
 both sides of the controversy with great force, giving General 
 Hayne the benefit of that clear setting forth of the position of 
 an adversary which none could do better than Mr. Webster, 
 and which none could doubt was the strongest method of stat- 
 ing it ; and then following it step by step with the appropriate 
 answer. This was the reduction of the whole controversy into 
 the severest forms of logic. 
 
 Mr. Webster's " Second Speech on Foote's Resolution," com- 
 prehending the memorable reply to General Hayne, has been 
 compared to the oration of Demosthenes on the Crown. That 
 it is the masterpiece of American as that is of Grecian debate, 
 is, perhaps, not questioned. There is, too, some further parallel 
 between them. The speech of the great Athenian was the 
 public defence of a policy with which his own reputation had 
 been identified for a period of twenty years ; and this personal 
 element, mingled with a grand patriotism that is exceeded 
 in no recorded language, gives to it, as we read, even now, 
 scarcely less than the interest with which it must originally 
 have been heard. The American statesman was not, indeed, 
 called upon to vindicate his claim to a civic crown ; but he had 
 to defend his own character and fame as a man, in repelling an 
 attack made at once upon himself and upon the region of the 
 country which he immediately represented, and to show that 
 the course of the Government, whose existence was threatened 
 by the doctrines advanced by his opponent, and his own par- 
 ticipation in that course, had been national, just, and pa- 
 triotic. 
 
 The first portion, therefore, of this speech, may well be com- 
 pared to the oration of Demosthenes, and it will not suffer by 
 the comparison. But here the parallel ends : for the American 
 speech was no funeral eloge over the dead body of public free- 
 dom, as the Athenian's was over the lost liberties of Athens and 
 of Greece. Demosthenes spoke to his countrymen when he 
 could only speak of what once was, when he could recount what 
 he had wished to strive against Philip, who was dead, and when 
 the living and terrible son of Philip, then conquering the world, 
 could crush Athens, and all that Athens sheltered, as he had 
 crushed Thebes. The American statesman, on the contrary,
 
 1830.] REPLY TO HAYNE. 361 
 
 had to deal not only with the past, but with the present and the 
 future ; for he was to show that, if the principles asserted by his 
 opponent were a true explanation of the political Constitution 
 of the country, we had no Constitution, we had made no ad- 
 vance from the inter-state league of the Revolutionary period, 
 and the Government of the United States, notwithstanding its 
 nominally direct legislative authority, existed at the pleasure 
 and was subject to the control of each State. In this respect 
 in the fact that the accepted character of a great government 
 turned on an argument to be made by a single statesman in a 
 public body this speech is unlike any other in the history of 
 parliamentary or popular eloquence. 
 
 That such was the crisis is apparent from all that had gone 
 before, from all that was then transpiring, and from all that has 
 since followed. If the doctrines asserted by the statesman of South 
 Carolina had not been triumphantly answered in that very debate, 
 it would have been in vain to point to the general fact that the 
 Constitution of the United States had hitherto been adminis- 
 tered upon the principle that its powers are held directly of the 
 people, and that they are not subject to the control of the State 
 governments. Such had been, doubtless, the generally-received 
 judicial and administrative interpretation; but the opposite 
 theory had been now brought forward in a very imposing form ; 
 in fact, in an attitude of direct resistance taken by a State, sup- 
 ported with great dialectic ability by men of high and pure 
 personal characters. It is true that no action could have been 
 taken by the Senate, as a sequel to this debate, to affirm or to 
 reject the South Carolina doctrine ; for the discussion was really 
 foreign to the question actually pending. But the introduction 
 of the doctrine into the Senate had fixed upon it the attention 
 of the whole country, and when Mr. Webster spoke, he spoke 
 to the popular tribunal and the public judgment, as well as to 
 the administrators of every branch of the Government. Ac- 
 cording to his success or his failure in convincing the under- 
 standings of men that the principles of State interference and 
 nullification were wrong, the Government would thenceforward 
 be able or unable to enforce its laws through its own judicial 
 interpretation of their constitutional validity, and to maintain 
 or not to maintain the Union in case of future forcible attempts
 
 362 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XYL 
 
 to break it up; since these issues in truth depended, for all 
 future time, upon the popular acceptance of the one or the other 
 theory of the Constitution, as well as upon the convictions of 
 the public men of the country respecting the real merits of this 
 controversy. The results that, as we now know, followed this 
 discussion, make it apparent that the responsibility of Mr. Web- 
 ster's position embraced all that is here ascribed to it. 
 
 He comprehended and felt this in its full force. But he was 
 always equal to the occasion, whatever it might be, and respon- 
 sibility always stimulated his powers in proportion to the pres- 
 sure that came upon him. As he approaches this part of the 
 subject, he is evidently conscious that he is about to speak to 
 the sense of the w r hole nation, and he frames his argument so 
 that it may be comprehended by all intelligent men, as well as 
 by publicists and statesmen; using in this consciousness a 
 " studied plainness of speech." Throughout the argumentative 
 portions of this grand division of the speech, he employs no 
 reasoning that is not level to the understanding of a popular 
 tribunal, although he is speaking in the presence of a singularly 
 intelligent audience, and is addressing himself immediately to 
 a body of Senators ; and it is one of the most remarkable pecu- 
 liarities of this speech that, upon a constitutional question of 
 fundamental law, it satisfies alike the technical and the untech- 
 nical intellect. Nothing short of this could have accomplished 
 the work he had to do ; for we can now see that, if the argu- 
 ment had failed to convince the popular mind, the Constitution 
 of the United States would ere this have been numbered among 
 the things that were. 
 
 The celebrated peroration of this speech has been criticised 
 as too elaborately rhetorical ; and Mr. Webster once made this 
 criticism himself. But it is, in the first place, quite certain that 
 it was unpremeditated, and was drawn from him in the excite- 
 ment of feeling caused by the evident sympathies of the great 
 and eager audience, of both sexes, that drank in every word 
 that fell from him, with an interest so intense that the pleasure 
 and the pain of listening struggled strangely in their breasts. 
 The very meagre notes from which he spoke contain nothing to 
 show that he had previously wrought out the magnificent pas- 
 sage at the close of the speech which was soon ringing from all
 
 1830.] 
 
 REPLY TO HAYNE. 
 
 363 
 
 the college platforms of more than half the Union. 1 In the next 
 place, it is to be observed of this and other passages of similar 
 eloquence interspersed through the argument of this speech 
 of which his "brief" affords no sign that if they had been 
 the work of the most artistic closet preparation, he could have 
 done nothing better adapted to fix popular attention upon the 
 speech, and especially to give it that hold upon the popular 
 heart, and that interest for the educated youth of the country, 
 which caused it *to do its work in after-years, and led the na- 
 tional intellect into the appreciation and acceptance of its po- 
 litical doctrine. These results would scarcely have followed if 
 there had gone forth nothing more than an argumentative dis- 
 cussion of principles, however logical and convincing the state- 
 ment, without those bursts of feeling, highly ornamented and 
 rhetorical as they are, which sustain the interest and carry along 
 the attention of the common reader. Tet, from the notes which 
 he used, one would have expected to hear nothing but a very 
 
 1 The writer of a life of Mr. Webster, 
 published in the " American Biographical 
 Library," has made the following asser- 
 tions : 
 
 "A very foolish endeavor has been 
 made, by some of Mr. Webster's friends, 
 to create the impression that the great 
 orations and speeches which have carried 
 his celebrity all over the world were 
 made with little effort and trifling prepa- 
 ration. Even so judicious a writer as 
 Mr. Everett seeks to confirm the state- 
 ment of Mr. March, that the reply to 
 Hayne was the result of at most a few 
 hours' reflection, and that all the notes 
 he made for it were contained upon one 
 side of a sheet of paper. This latter 
 statement is true, so far as the notes 
 from which he spoke are concerned ; but 
 the general impression conveyed in these 
 representations is unjust to Mr. Webster, 
 and calculated to induce very injurious 
 theories and habits in the minds of the 
 young. Mr. Webster had prepared him- 
 self for that debate with all his usual 
 care. He knew a fortnight beforehand 
 the points that would be made, the posi- 
 tions that would be assumed, and the 
 parties that would be assailed. And we 
 have no doubt that all those magnificent 
 passages, which live in the memory and 
 glow in the heart of all who read them, 
 were prepared beforehand with the ut- 
 most care, and the nicest discrimination 
 
 in the choice of words. And the same 
 thing is certainly true of many other of 
 his celebrated speeches." 
 
 I have no theories to maintain con- 
 cerning Mr. Webster's capacity to make 
 the speech hi question with compara- 
 tively little written preparation. His 
 general habits, in this respect, varied a 
 good deal, but he invariably wrote much 
 less than most public speakers commonly 
 do, unless he was to pronounce one of 
 those formal discourses, which are al- 
 ways written ; and, when these came to 
 be printed, he corrected and polished 
 them with great care. With regard to 
 the Reply to Hayne, as well as the First 
 Speech on Foote's Resolution, I have 
 given the facts, not only from my own 
 examination of the public records, but 
 also from a detailed memorandum which 
 I possess, in Mr. Webster's own hand- 
 writing, stating the whole history of that 
 debate. In this paper he says : " It is evi- 
 dent that the occasion was unexpected ; " 
 and when he adds that he " made such 
 preparation as is usually made for such 
 subjects," he refers to each of the briefs 
 which he prepared at the times I have 
 mentioned in the text. These were the 
 notes which he used in speaking, so far 
 as he used any; and he afterward pre- 
 sented them to Mr. Ticknor. What, 
 then, are the proofs that these were the 
 only notes which he made in preparing
 
 364 
 
 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [On. XVI. 
 
 dry discussion of a constitutional question, with perhaps a little 
 play of fancy concerning the allusion to Banquo's ghost and the 
 march of the South Carolina militia upon the custom-house. 
 Perhaps one of the most efficient means which he employed to 
 bring the position of his opponent to the appreciation of common 
 minds was the introduction, among the severer forms of logic, of 
 a lighter tone of illustration, by running out the practical ap- 
 plication of the South Carolina doctrine into the results and 
 the inconvenient vulgar consequences of mere treason. If ridi 
 cule be not always the test of truth, it certainly is, when logi 
 cally correct in its argument, and used without personal dis- 
 courtesy, a very powerful auxiliary. 
 
 The effect of this speech upon the country, that immediately 
 followed its delivery, it is not easy for us at the present day to 
 measure. We are to remember that this was the first time that 
 the two opposite views of the nature of the Constitution had 
 come into public discussion in Congress, and that the political 
 
 those speeches? The proofs are: 1. 
 That he had no time to make any other 
 written preparation for either speech. 2. 
 When he gave these notes to Mr. Tick- 
 nor, he gave them as all that he had put 
 on paper before speaking. 3. They are 
 precisely the kind of notes which a 
 speaker of great practice usually prepares 
 when he has to make an important speech 
 on the following day; and the internal 
 evidence shows that they are the notes 
 from which he spoke. 
 
 To say of Mr. Webster's reply to 
 Hayne that he "knew a fortnight be- 
 forehand the points that would be made, 
 the positions that would be assumed, and 
 the parties that would be assailed," con- 
 tradicts the recorded history of the de- 
 hate, and Mr. Webster's own testimony. 
 ThaJ he knew previously the general 
 grounds on which the nullifiers claimed 
 to rest their theory of the Constitution, 
 is certainly true. But Mr. Hayne's 
 argument was very far from being a 
 common-place repetition of what had 
 been uttered or printed by others ; his 
 points could not have been anticipated, 
 nor could the persons or parties whom 
 he was to assail have been previously 
 known. 
 
 With regard to the opinion of this 
 writer, that " all those magnificent pas- 
 sages which live in the memory," etc., 
 "were prepared beforehand with the ut- 
 
 most care," etc., I have reason to believe 
 that none of them were prepared before- 
 hand, but that they were elaborately cor- 
 rected on Mr. Gales's report, after they 
 were spoken. There is no note or sign 
 of the magnificent imagery of the pero- 
 ration to the second speech on the writ- 
 ten brief. When Mr. Webster, in utter- 
 ing that peroration, depicted " the gorge- 
 ous ensign of the Republic still full 
 high advanced, its arms and trophies 
 streaming in their original lustre," there 
 was floating in his mind Milton's sublime 
 description of the unfurling in the lower 
 regions of 
 
 "Th' imperial ensign, which, full high ad- 
 vanced, 
 
 Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, 
 With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, 
 Seraphic arms and trophies." 
 
 There is no doubt whatever that he 
 used this image in speaking, with more 
 or less adoption of Milton's language ; 
 and I have reason to know that, after the 
 speech was delivered, a friend asked him 
 to look at Milton's lines, and that he did 
 so, and corrected the passage as it now 
 stands. (For a very graphic description 
 of the scene, and Mr. Webster's manner 
 on this occasion, see an extract from Mr. 
 March, in the Biographical Memoir by 
 Mr. Everett, in Works, i., 92-97. Com- 
 pare March's Reminiscences of Congress, 
 132-148.)
 
 1830.] REPLY TO HAYNE. 355 
 
 relations of several eminent men were such as to make this and 
 the three following years an era of great peril. Mr. Calhoun, the 
 real author of the doctrine of State nullification a man whom 
 Mr. Webster always regarded as the ablest of the public men 
 whom he had ever been called to oppose, and whose personal char- 
 acter always commanded his entire respect had been chosen 
 Vice-President of the United States at the time when General 
 Jackson became President ; and, as Yice-President, he, of 
 course, occupied the chair of the Senate during this debate. 
 He was naturally regarded by his friends as the probable suc- 
 cessor of General Jackson ; and, in the event of the death of 
 the President, he would be the constitutional incumbent for the 
 residue of the official term. But the relations of General Jack- 
 son and Mr. Calhoun were not friendly, notwithstanding their 
 official positions, and the fact that they had been elected to 
 them by the same general political combination. Mr. Van 
 Buren had become the head of General Jackson's Cabinet, as 
 Secretary of State, and it was well known that he was the per- 
 son whose aspirations to the presidency General Jackson was 
 most disposed to favor. Mr. Calhoun, however, was strong in 
 friends, and, in his own State, his sway over the minds of a 
 large majority of her people was supreme. His opinions, on 
 the expediency of protective tariffs, and on the constitutional 
 power of Congress to impose and enforce them, had undergone 
 a complete revolution ; and he had, in the full conviction that 
 Congress was not likely to abandon them, constructed for him- 
 self, and for those who followed him, the theory of State nulli- 
 fication as the last and only remedy against their oppressive 
 operation. General Hayne, in the debate of 1830, although a 
 man of undoubted ability and accomplishments, was the mouth- 
 piece of Mr. Calhoun. 
 
 When, therefore, this memorable discussion took place, there 
 was, in these personal relations, and in the immediate subject 
 on which the doctrine of nullification was first asserted, cause 
 for great anxiety on the part of friends of the Union every- 
 where, and this anxiety was heightened by the character of the 
 constitutional question. For it is not to be denied that there is 
 much plausibility in the argument that makes the Constitution 
 a compact between sovereign States, of whose infraction they
 
 366 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVi. 
 
 are to judge ; and although it is an argument which omits to 
 give due weight to that part of the Constitution providing for 
 a judicial arbiter of its own, with the express intention of with- 
 drawing such questions from the final cognizance of the States 
 themselves, and which also deals imperfectly with some of the 
 other very important facts respecting the origin of the Consti- 
 tution, it was by no means clear, beforehand, how far the 
 popular mind of this country could be relied upon to embrace 
 and give effect to its appropriate refutation. 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that this speech of Mr. "Web- 
 ster should have been more extensively read, within the six 
 months following its delivery, than any other speech that had 
 been made in Congress since the establishment of the Consti- 
 tution. Men, everywhere, were aware that a new and startling 
 doctrine, respecting the Constitution, had assailed its very foun- 
 dations, and they were eager to possess and to understand the 
 answer to it ; knowing well that, if that answer were not com- 
 plete, their own minds, and the minds of others, would be left 
 in a painful and perilous uncertainty. Yast numbers of Mr. 
 Webster's speech were therefore published and circulated in 
 pamphlet editions, after all the principal newspapers of the 
 country had given it entire to their readers. The popular 
 verdict, throughout the Northern and Western and many of 
 the Southern States was decisive. A great majority of the 
 people of the United States, of all parties, understood, appre- 
 ciated, and accepted the view maintained by Mr. Webster of 
 the nature of the Constitution, and the character of the gov- 
 ernment which it establishes. 
 
 A singular occurrence, which took place during this debate, 
 presents a striking proof of the practical operation of certain 
 opinions held by the statesmen of South Carolina on the 
 powers of the Federal Constitution. Perhaps it may, in part, 
 account for the introduction of some of the topics on which 
 Mr. Webster deemed it necessary to reply to General Hayne, 
 in his first speech on Foote's Eesolution. It has generally been 
 overlooked in the various accounts which have been given of 
 this great discussion. 
 
 Among the earliest of the railroad enterprises projected 
 in this country, was one in South Carolina, to extend from
 
 1830.] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. 367 
 
 Charleston to the western boundary of the State, at a point 
 opposite to the city of Augusta, in Georgia. It was a scheme 
 in which were embarked some citizens of South Carolina, who 
 did not share the constitutional opinions of their congressional 
 representatives concerning the power of Congress to promote 
 what were called " internal improvements," and who believed 
 that this enterprise embraced relations which made it a proper 
 object for the exercise of that power. The petition of the 
 corporation of the " South Carolina Canal and Railroad," ask- 
 ing a Government subscription to its capital stock, was sent 
 to Mr. Webster, to be presented in the Senate, accompanied 
 by the following letter from the president of the company, 
 which sufficiently suggests the reasons for asking his aid, and 
 fully explains the grounds on which the directors of the corpo- 
 ration believed they were entitled to the assistance of Congress. 
 It will be observed that the letter is dated early in January. 
 The petition was presented in the Senate, by Mr. Webster, on 
 the 18th, the day before that on which General Hayne made 
 his first speech to which Mr. "Webster felt called upon to- reply : 
 
 [FROM: THE HOX. WILLIAM: 
 
 " OFFICE OP THE SOUTH CAEOLINA CAJ.AL A?TD BAILEOAD COMPANY, ) 
 " CHARLESTON, 9th January, 1830. ) 
 
 " The Hon. DANIEL WEBSTER, 
 
 " United States Senate. 
 
 " SIR : The directors of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Com- 
 pany have instructed me respectfully to request from you the favor to 
 present their petition to the Senate of the United States, praying the Gen- 
 eral Government in furtherance of the objects of their institution. 
 
 "The subject is fully developed in the petition and documents accom- 
 panying it, which will be presented to you by General Hayne, of this State, 
 and we trust every point of difficulty touching the completion of this 
 work, and our ability to effect that object should the General Govern- 
 ment aid the enterprise to the extent prayed for, will be removed by 
 Colonel Blanding, of this State, at present on a visit to the city of "Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 " In soliciting your aid hi behalf of our institution, it is due to the gen- 
 tlemen who are Senators from our State, to inform you that objections 
 predicated on constitutional grounds will induce them to oppose the object 
 of our petition, and some reluctance to present it, therefore, must be ex- 
 perienced, on which we are not inclined to trespass. 
 
 " The quality of the enterprise as it relates to the General Government is 
 obviously calculated to acquire for it the most indulgent consideration. The
 
 368 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVI. 
 
 purpose is not less to give a particular direction to the produce of this and 
 a sister State, than to procure for commercial operations certainty and con- 
 fidence. The deepening of our bar, or improving the facilities of our port, 
 would not more certainly advance the interests of the merchant than in com- 
 municating assurance of a prompt execution of their orders. The present 
 season, with almost all the past, evidence the uncertainty and losses incident 
 to an exclusive reliance on our rivers for the transportation of produce. 
 For, until within a very few days, this harbor has been crowded with ships, 
 and our country warehouses with cotton the planter and the merchant 
 incurring heavy charges, and deprecating the disappointments and delays 
 to which they are subjected. In a military point of view, the contem- 
 plated road will subserve highly-essential objects. The United States 
 arsenal at Augusta would be rendered more generally and promptly useful, 
 and confer protection, when under present circumstances the emergency 
 would pass, before the relief required from it could be obtained. Still 
 more important would be the facility of transporting troops from the dense 
 population of the interior to the Atlantic border of our State. These 
 advantages are not unworthy of the patronage of the General Government, 
 whether they refer to foreign invasion or domestic insurrection. As a 
 post-road, its benefits will be most extensively conferred, nor will it admit 
 of doubt that, in a much shorter period than works of such magnitude 
 have hitherto been accomplished, it will, under the fostering care of the 
 General Government, be made to constitute a link of union with the rising 
 States of the West, attaching them more strongly, through the powerful 
 influences of interest, to their Atlantic brethren. These, however, are sub- 
 jects on which we will not dilate. 
 
 " Should you, sir, approve our purposes, believing that the General 
 Government does legitimately possess the power to aid works (of great 
 public utility) in the way intimated, you will confer an obligation which 
 we shall most sensibly feel, by bestowing on it the acknowledged influences 
 of your attention and talents. We would gratefully add yours to the 
 name of the patrons of our infant institution, and the record of the service 
 will be found in the general advantage resulting to our city and State. 
 
 " With sentiments of high consideration, 
 " I remain, sir, 
 
 " Your most obedient servant, 
 
 " WM. AIKEN, 
 " President South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company." 
 
 The following report of Mr. "Webster's remarks, on present- 
 ing this petition, is taken from the " Register of Debates : " 
 
 " Mr. Webster said he rose to present the petition of ' the South Caro- 
 lina Canal and Railroad Company,' praying Congress to authorize a sub- 
 scription, on the part of the Government of the United States, of two 
 thousand five hundred shares of the capital stock of that company. The
 
 '830.] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. 3Gp 
 
 railroad, contemplated by the petitioners, was to extend from Charleston 
 to Hamburg, in the vicinity of Augusta ; and the petition sets forth the 
 practicability of the intended work. The enterprise was certainly one of 
 a very laudable nature, such as had, in other instances, met encouragement 
 and assistance from the Government of the United States, and it was with 
 pleasure that he presented it to the consideration of the Senate. It had 
 been confided to his hands from no disrespect, certainly, toward the hon- 
 orable gentlemen who were Senators from South Carolina, but solely be- 
 cause the petitioners were unwilling to trespass on the reluctance which 
 the honorable Senators from South Carolina naturally felt, or might be 
 supposed to feel, to presenting petitions for aid from the Government of 
 the United States in cases in which their known opinions, as to the con- 
 stitutional powers of Congress, would oblige them to oppose the prayer of 
 the petitioners. For his own part (Mr. Webster said), it was well known 
 that, during the whole time in which he had had any connection with 
 Congress, he had been uniformly in favor of what was called internal im- 
 provement, when applied to objects of sufficient magnitude and importance 
 to be properly called national And, while he admitted the necessity of 
 great caution and wisdom in the exercise of the power, he must still say 
 that every day convinced him more and more of the necessity of such 
 exercise in suitable cases. He would take occasion to add, that he was a 
 thorough convert to the practicability and efficacy of railroads, pe be- 
 lieved that the great results which the power of steam had accomplished, 
 in regard to transportation by water, were not superior to those which it 
 would yet accomplish in regard to transportation by land. The only 
 doubt was as to the amount of cost ; and that was a point which expe- 
 rience would shortly solve, he hoped satisfactorily. He would only add, 
 that while he felt pleasure in presenting this petition, he looked forward 
 with equal pleasure to the time, he hoped not distant, when it would be 
 his duty, in conjunction with his colleagues, to ask a subscription by Con- 
 gress to the Massachusetts railroad, a contemplated work, which, if ex- 
 ecuted, would facilitate intercourse between several States, and be felt, in 
 its beneficial effects, all the way from the Bay of Massachusetts to the 
 mouth of the Ohio. "When the proper time should come, he doubted not 
 the Senate, and the other branch of the Legislature also, would give to 
 the enterprise such aid and assistance as it should be entitled to by the 
 consideration of its magnitude, and its obvious public utility and im- 
 portance." 
 
 Mr. Webster then presented the petition, and it was referred 
 to the Committee on Roads and Canals. 
 
 I now add some further selections from Mr. "Webster's cor- 
 respondence during a part of this session a correspondence 
 that lies before me in such masses, that it is difficult to adjust 
 my space to what may be the demands of my readers. 
 25
 
 370 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XYl 
 
 [FROM MR. CLAY.] 
 
 " ASHLAND, Qth January, 1830. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I offer you hearty congratulations on a late event, 
 which I hope, and have no doubt, will conduce to your happiness. The 
 most favorable accounts of Mrs. Webster reach me from all quarters. You 
 have avoided an erroi too frequent, in second marriages, of a great dis- 
 proportion in the ages of the parties. Rumor says that the late event is 
 the prelude to another, that of your removal to New York. 1 
 
 " I am about proceeding to New Orleans, where I purpose passing a 
 portion of the winter with my daughter and son-in-law. The effect of a 
 southern climate will be agreeable, and I trust may prove beneficial to my 
 health, which, though improved, still requires care. I shall be thus placed 
 farther than- ever from the scenes now passing at Washington. My corre- 
 spondents there keep me pretty well informed of the actual state of things ; 
 but as yet no important movements appear to have been made in either 
 branch of Congress. I am curious to know the issue of the nominations, 
 which, if not already, must be shortly sent in. One of the strangest among 
 them, from this quarter, is that of . I had hoped that the appoint- 
 ment of minister to Mexico would have been conferred on , a most ex- 
 cellent fellow, and one of good capacity. But these are not the times in 
 which such men are employed. 
 
 " Cordially your friend, 
 
 " H. CLAY. 
 
 " The Honorable D. Webster." 
 
 [PROM THE HON. J. H. PLEASANTS, OF VIRGINIA.] 
 
 " EICHMOND, 4th March, 1830. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : Permit me to congratulate you on your speech, on the 
 great sensation it has produced in this quarter, so nattering to your feel- 
 ings, and its effects so honorable to the consistency of your public conduct, 
 and your ability to defend it. The knowledge that you have completely 
 vindicated yourself, floored your antagonist, and gained a complete victory 
 :SO far as argument goes, is nearly universal. . . . 
 
 " I am, sir, with great respect, 
 
 " JNO. H. PLEASANTS." 
 
 [FROM GOVERNOR LINCOLN.] 
 
 " WORCESTER, March 17, 1830. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I cannot consent to forward the accompanying official 
 papers without improving the same opportunity to express to you my 
 grateful sense of your kind recollection and attention, in transmitting vari- 
 
 1 For this rumor I believe there was no sufficient foundation.
 
 1830.] CORRESPONDENCE. 37] 
 
 ous documents during the present session of Congress, and especially copiea 
 of your speeches on Mr. Foote's resolution. As a New-England man, I 
 thank you for the able defence of this much-abused part of the country ; 
 as a citizen of Massachusetts, I thank you for the vindication of her char- 
 acter for patriotism, for attachment to the Federal Union, for services, sac- 
 rifices, and undeviating and devoted regard for the interest of a common 
 cause and country and as a Republican ay, and as an old-fashioned Jef- 
 ferson Republican, too ! I feel the weight of obligation to you for assert- 
 ing the consistency of principle and the integrity of purpose with which 
 we oppose despotism in every shape, and however exercised whether from 
 a foreign source or under the abuse of domestic authority. If any thing 
 can rouse the people of the United States to a sense of their danger, and a 
 timely protection of themselves and their free institutions, it must be the 
 appeals to their intelligence and virtue which have been addressed to them 
 from the Senate-chamber. I pray God they may be effectual. They hav<- 
 awakened attention, and there must be safety in the result. . . . 
 " With great respect and esteem, most truly, 
 
 " Your obedient and obliged servant, 
 
 "LEVI LINCOLN. 
 " To the Hon. Daniel Webster." 
 
 [FROM MR. TICKNOR.] 
 
 "April 4, 1830. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : The enclosed letter will sufficiently explain itself. It 
 is only necessary to add that Mr. Allston wrote it without any request "or 
 suggestion from any one ; that the opinion he expresses in it of Greeubugh's 
 talent is one entertained by all the artists in this quarter; and that neither 
 Allston nor myself has any interest in Greenough except on account of his 
 genius. Verplanck, I understand, has been written to on the same subject, 
 and probably Everett, Gorham, and some other of our friends, would be 
 influenced by Allston's opinion in such a matter that is, if it ever comes 
 to the question whether anybody shall *be employed to make a statue 
 of Washington. But enough of this. Allston's letter contains the 
 whole. 
 
 " Judge Story is at home and well, with two words to say to his friends, 
 and no more. From him, more distinctly than we knew it before, we have 
 heard of your great labors this winter, and the burdensome occupation of 
 your time. But I trust Congress will rise early in May, that you may be 
 relieved and come home to us before you are worn down by the hot 
 weather. 
 
 "I had a letter from you some time since, and a copy of your truly 
 great speech, for both of which I desire to thank you. If your health 
 should freely permit, I hope you may, on some suitable occasion, make 
 another speech this session. I hope it for two reasons : in the first place, 
 it seems to me that the nation is in a condition to listen to the discussion
 
 372 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVI. 
 
 of such questions as it is your peculiar province to discuss, there being 
 now no great party questions or interests to excite the passions of men 
 and absorb their attention; and, secondly, because I am sure they are 
 disposed to listen respectfully and carefully to whatever you may say. 
 It seems to me, therefore, that it is an occasion to speak for the 
 public good. 
 
 "But I hear you have more letters every day than you can read, and so 
 I will not add to the oppression of the number. 
 
 " Yours very faithfully, 
 
 GEO. T . 
 
 " K. Gilinore, of Baltimore, knows Greenough, and would, I think, in- 
 terest himself in his behalf. Greenough's plan was the one adopted for 
 the Bunker Rill monument." * 
 
 [TO MR. TICKNOK.J 
 
 " WASHINGTON, April 8, 1830. 
 
 "Mr DEAB SIR: If Congress should proceed so far, in my time, as to 
 vote a statue to Washington, I will make an effort for Greenough. But at 
 present the business has proceeded no further than a report. I have no 
 belief any thing will be done. After this faint ebullition of national grati- 
 tude and national pride, the whole subject will probably sleep another ten 
 years. " See nations slowly wise," etc. 
 
 "I have read Tom Moore's first volume of Byron's life. "Whatever 
 human imagination shall hereafter picture of a human being, I shall be- 
 lieve it all within the bounds of credibility. Byron's case shows that fact 
 sometimes runs by all fancy, as a steamboat passes a scow at anchor. I 
 have tried hard to find something in him to like besides his genius and his 
 wit, but there was no other likeable quality about him. He was an incar- 
 nation of demonism. He is the only man, in English history, for a hundred 
 years, who has boasted of infidelity, and of every practical vice, not included 
 in what may be termed (what his biographer does term) meanness. Lord 
 Bolingbroke, in his most extravagant youthful sallies, and the wicked Lord 
 Littleton, were saints to him. All Moore can say is, each of his vices had 
 some virtue or some prudence near it, which, in some sort, checked it. 
 Well, if that were not so in all, who would escape hanging ? The biog- 
 rapher, indeed, says his worst conduct must not be judged of by the ordi- 
 nary standard ! And that is true, if a favorable decision is looked for. 
 Many excellent reasons are given for his being a bad husband, the sum of 
 which is that he was a very bad man. I confess, I was rejoiced then, I am 
 rejoiced now, that he was driven out of England by public scorn ; for hia 
 vices were not in his passions, but in his principles. He denied all religion 
 
 1 This letter, and Mr. Webster's reply the late Horatio Greenough, and placed 
 to it, which follows, relate to the statue in front of the Capitol, 
 af Washington, afterward executed by
 
 1830.] CORRESPONDENCE. 373 
 
 and all virtue from the house-top. Dr. Johnson says there is merit in main- 
 taining good principles, though the preacher is seduced into violation of 
 them. This is true. Good theory is something. But a theory of living, 
 and of dying, too, made up of the elements of hatred to religion, contempt 
 of morals, and defiance of the opinion of all the decent part of the public, 
 when, before, has a man of letters avowed it ? If Milton were alive, to 
 recast certain prominent characters in his great epic, he could embellish 
 them with new traits, without violating probability. 
 
 " Walter Scott's letter, toward the end of the book, is much too chari- 
 table. 
 
 " I find in one of Lord Byron's letters a suggestion that a part or the 
 whole of ' Robinson Crusoe ' was written, while in prison, by the first Lord 
 Oxford (Robert Harley), and by him given to Defoe. Is there any such 
 suggestion anywhere else ? I do not believe it. Defoe's (his true name 
 was Foe) other works show he could write 'Robinson Crusoe.' Harley 
 has left no proof of his capacity for such a work. While on the subject 
 of books, whither I have strayed, I know not how, allow me to say there 
 is one I want to see. It is Johnson's ' Shakespeare.' I covet a sight of 
 that book, just as S. J. left it. His first edition was about 1765 or '66. 
 Did he publish a second ? Tou are not only a man for books in general, 
 but for Shakespeare in particular, and can tell me. If you have the 
 book, I shall get a reading of it ; if you have it not, I wish you, would 
 order it on my account, the next time you write Mr. Rich. I suppose the 
 first edition was folio, but know not. 
 
 " We have the April number of the North American here, and I have 
 run over its articles. I think them good, generally speaking, but am not 
 satisfied with that on Mr. Jefferson's correspondence. Early diplomatic 
 history is interesting. 
 
 " I shall make no more speeches. What I have done, even, was not 
 with malice prepense. Make our best regards to Mrs. Ticknor, and believe 
 
 me always truly yours, 
 
 "D. WEBSTER." 
 
 [FKOM MB. STOBEB, OF OHIO.] 
 
 " Crscis* ATI, OHIO, April 11, 1830. 
 
 " MY DEAB, Sra : Our friend Judge Burnet will hand you the retainer 
 for our city, and I will, at an early day, transmit you a full statement of 
 the case. 
 
 " I have just been relieved from a few weeks' session of our court, and 
 feel too much fatigued to prepare so full a history of the matters involved 
 hi our suit as I wish. 
 
 " It has yielded me the most umningled pleasure to read, in your late 
 address in the Senate, the defence of our fathers, and the principles of our 
 fathers. There cannot be a New-Englander whose soul has not kindled up 
 within him, whose energies have not been awakened, if he has perused
 
 374 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. Xvi. 
 
 your triumphant vindication of his country and his countrymen. If there 
 is a recreant spirit, let him go down to infamy with the 'scavenger' 
 whom you have ' damned to everlasting fame.' Thank Heaven, we hold 
 but few of these degenerate men in our political communion, and we should 
 be an exception to all governments if we did not ; yet it gives us in the 
 West great cause for exultation that no son of New England, who has left 
 the land of his nativity and cast his lot with the people of any other State, 
 has ever publicly vilified his country. There has been something so sacred 
 connected with early associations that it has protected his birthplace from 
 moral and political profanation. If the blow has been struck, the parri- 
 cide is not an emigrant. 
 
 "The intimation in your letter, that you had strong hopes of visiting 
 us during the summer or autumn, has been communicated to many of your 
 friends. I say friends, for we all claim you, and we anticipate the pleasure 
 of welcoming you to a 'free and independent State,' whose prosperity 
 and happiness have been mainly secured by the intelligence and wisdom of 
 Nathan Dane, of Beverly. 
 
 " Shall I ask the favor of you to transmit me Mr. Clayton's speech, if 
 it is published in pamphlet. The ' rari nantes in gurgite vasto" 1 of the 
 opposition I can read in the newspapers. 
 
 "I am, very respectfully and truly, yours, 
 
 "BELLAMY STOKER." 
 
 [FROM MR. CLAY.] 
 
 " ASHLAND, %)th April, 1830. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I received to-day your very acceptable favor of the 
 18th instant. The copies of the speech to which it refers have not been 
 received, but probably will come safe to hand. If they do not, it is to be 
 hoped that the seed may not fall on barren ground. I congratulate you 
 on the very great addition which you have made during the present ses- 
 sion to your previous high reputation. Your speeches, and particularly 
 that in reply to Mr. Hayne, are the theme of praise from every tongue ; 
 and I have shared in the delight which all have felt. I trust that they will 
 do much good. It is a great consolation to the honest patriot that, what- 
 ever may be his own fate, his principles will stand, and his country, 
 sooner or later, derive the benefit of their illustration and establishment. 
 To that consolation you will be eminently entitled. 
 
 " I have attentively observed the course of measures and events in and 
 out of Congress. If all shall not have been, much will be, done to bring 
 the public mind back to soberness and truth ; and I yet see no cause of 
 despair. It is greatly to be regretted that the Senate has not better ful- 
 filled its high duties incident to the power of appointment. It ought to 
 have rejected all nominations made to supply persons dismissed for politi- 
 cal cause ; all to replace those whom they approved at the last session
 
 1830.] CORRESPONDENCE. 375 
 
 most of the printers, and most of the members of Congress. If it has left 
 undone some things which it ought to have done, we ought to be thankful 
 for some of its rejections. Those of Lee and Hill are especially entitled to 
 the public gratitude ; and I hope it will place us under a similar obliga- 
 tion for the rejection of Kendall and Noah. 
 
 The importance of rejecting certain nominations does not consist in the 
 exclusion merely of unworthy men from office, although that is far from 
 being a minor object; but it shows that Jackson is not infallible nor invul- 
 nerable. The character of an eminent public man resembles a fortification. 
 If every attack is repelled, if no breach on any point be made, he becomes 
 impregnable. : But if you once make a breach, no matter how small, the 
 work may.be carried. Considering how many of his recommendations in 
 his opening' message. have failed, or are likely to fail, if to their defeat 
 could be added that of some of his more obnoxious nominations, it seems to 
 me that the effect on the public would be very great. Indeed, whatever 
 may be the result of his nominations not disposed of at the date of your 
 letter, the effect of his miscarriages has been considerable. He still shows 
 game, appears stout and strong ; but I think his strength is that of the 
 buck, mortally wounded, who springs boldly forward while he is inter- 
 nally bleeding to death. 
 
 "In this view of the matter, I must respectfully doubt that policy 
 which would surrender to his party their undisturbed course on any sub- 
 ject respecting which they were believed to be wrong. Success too often 
 sanctions ; and their success, in reference to the defeat of the power of in- 
 ternal improvement, for example, would, I fear, tend to produce acquies- 
 cence in the surrender of the power. If, indeed, they can defeat, at pres- 
 ent, the power, after all proper exertions by our friends, good might result 
 from that. "We should have done our duty ; and the great body of the 
 nation would then see that it was not our fault that they did not get the 
 benefit of the exercise of the power ; and that, if they wished for that, they 
 must support us. 
 
 " My observation induces me to believe that there is a great reaction in 
 respect to the present administration ; and that the exercise of the power 
 of patronage is condemned by a vast number of the Jackson party as well 
 as by our own friends. It is true, as you justly remark, that there is less 
 public disapprobation expressed of the dismissions than could have been 
 expected. But, I believe, nevertheless, that it exists very extensively. I 
 speak confidently on this subject as it regards the valley of the Mis- 
 sissippi. 
 
 " I have noticed the movements at Harrisburg and Albany. The 
 former, if we are rightly informed, was an abortion ; and the latter may, I 
 
 suppose, be considered as essentially Mr. V. B 's. That Jackson will be 
 
 again a candidate is highly probable. If he can unite in his support Vir- 
 ginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, opposition to his election will be 
 vain. If either of those States can be detached from him, he may be 
 beaten. "What is the probability of their union ? You are better judges at
 
 376 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. XVL 
 
 Washington than I can be. My information from the western part of 
 Pennsylvania is very flattering ; and something may come out of the late 
 celebration of Mr. Jefferson's birthday. 
 
 " In considering the expediency of using my name in opposition to 
 General Jackson, I desire that every interest and feeling which I may be 
 supposed to cherish in respect to myself should be entirely discarded. The 
 question ought to be examined and decided exclusively in reference to our 
 cause, and, which is the same thing, the great interests of our country. No 
 personal or private considerations ought to have the smallest influence in 
 its determination. If I could make an honorable retreat from public life, 
 forever, it would cost me much less effort to do so than will be believed. 
 
 "After saying so much, it is scarcely necessary to add that I shall 
 acquiesce most cheerfully acquiesce in whatever line of policy my 
 friends may mark out at Washington. 
 
 " There are three courses : 1. Assuming that Jackson will be a candi- 
 date, to abandon all opposition to his reelection ; 2. To hoist our banner, 
 and proclaim, prior to the close of the present session, our candidate ; 3. 
 To wait until the next session of Congress. 
 
 " I shall not discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each. My 
 friends at Washington are more competent, from their superior informa- 
 tion, and more impartial than I am, to compare and weigh them. 
 
 " Even if the second of the suggested courses should be deemed ex- 
 pedient, the question would not be free from difficulty as to the time when 
 and the place where our candidate should be announced. . . . 
 
 " I shall be glad to hear from you again before the session closes. 
 " I am, ever truly your friend, 
 
 " H. CLAY. 
 
 " D. Webster, Esq." 
 
 {TO MR. DENISON.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, May 10, 1830. 
 
 " 1 begin, my dear sir, by confessing my faults. It is long since I 
 wrote you, and I have no apology but the evil habit of omitting to-day 
 that which may be done to-morrow. Let me assure you I never forget 
 you, nor lose sight of you ; from the moment when you last wrote me, 
 when you were just going, but did not go, on a little 'family party' to 
 India, to the present, whether in office or out, I have kept a watchful eye 
 upon you. My friend Mr. Rush spoke of having seen you in his late visit 
 to England ; and I am indebted to you for a copy of your brother's very 
 sensible and manly dissertation on confederacies, received last autumn. 
 
 " For the four years (or five, I believe, it may be) since I saw you, my 
 own fortunes have been no otherwise remarkable than as I have experi- 
 enced domestic changes. I am now the husband of another wife. 
 
 Some three years ago our good people thought I had become old 
 and grave enough for a Senator ; wherefore they transferred me to thai
 
 1830.] CORRESPONDENCE. 377 
 
 House of Congress. "Mr. Gorham became my successor as representative 
 from Boston. 
 
 " Our political affairs just now are destitute of any particular interest. 
 We have our party quarrels our ins and our outs, our likes and dislikes 
 and we change men and dynasties ; but the Government still keeps on, 
 and holds us thus far safely together. Our foreign relations, like those of 
 our neighbors, are very quiet. We should be glad you would let us into 
 your colonial trade ; but, if you do not, we shall not quarrel with you on 
 that account. Expensive living, heretofore, the great reduction of prices 
 now, and the vast overstock of supply of every kind beyond the demand, 
 produce, what we call here, hard times; and the country is at present 
 divided in relation both to the cause and the remedy. A portion of the 
 South lays all the evil to the tariff"; the Middle States deny this. The 
 former insist on the repeal of all protecting duties; the latter warmly 
 resist it ; and the New-England States, though not originally in favor of 
 the protecting policy, having now become deeply interested in manufac- 
 turing establishments, are not inclined to change back again. All New 
 England, or all with few exceptions, voted against the tariff of 1824. It 
 is now nearly unanimous against repeal or reduction. But I must send 
 you a speech of mine to explain this ; and I will relieve you from further 
 detail here, leaving you to be edified by the speech aforesaid. You will 
 see strong symptoms of oppugnation in the South, especially in South 
 Carolina. There is, however, I trust, no great danger of violent irregu- 
 larities. The tariff will not at present, certainly, be either repealed or 
 reduced. 
 
 " Your friend Judge Story has been made a professor of law, and has 
 gone to live at Cambridge. He and his brothers of the bench left us a 
 month ago. The Chief Justice, now almost as old as Lord Mansfield at 
 his retirement, enjoys excellent health, and seems to experience no decay 
 of mind or faculties. We shall break up here in all this month, and, 
 for one, I shall be very glad to be off. Summer and sea-shore are a 
 coincidence of time and place very favorable to my health and enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 " I shall pack up our blue-book, a speech or two of the session such 
 as I think will best bear reading across the Atlantic add one of my own, 
 and ask the favor of Mr. Vaughan to put them together with this letter 
 in the way of reaching your hand. When you see Mr. Stanley, Mr. Wort- 
 ley, Mr. Labouchere, and Colonel Dawson, pray assure them that we hold 
 them in fresh remembrance on this side of the globe. Let not my past 
 Dmissions forfeit me your future kindness. Pray make my most respectful 
 compliments to Lady Charlotte ; and believe me ever, my dear sir, with 
 " Sincere and true regard, 
 
 " Cordially yours, 
 
 " DANL. WEBSTER. 
 " J. E. Denison, Esq., 
 
 " 2, Portman Place, London."
 
 378 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn XVi. 
 
 In the summer and autumn of 1830, Mr. "Webster was 
 engaged, with the Attorney-General of Massachusetts, in one 
 of the most remarkable criminal prosecutions on record. The 
 following is a summary of the facts : 
 
 On the morning of the 7th of April of that year, the town of Salem 
 was thrown into a state of intense excitement by the intelligence that Mr. 
 Joseph White, one of the wealthiest and most respectable citizens of that 
 town, a retired merchant, eighty-two years of age, had been found mur- 
 dered in his own bed. This gentleman was not known to have an enemy ; 
 a large amount of money and other valuable property in the house was 
 left undisturbed, and popular conjecture was baffled in its attempt to 
 assign a motive for this atrocious crime. Meetings of the citizens of 
 Salem were called ; a committee of vigilance was organized, consisting of 
 twenty-seven of the most reputable citizens of the town, and every effort 
 was made to ferret out the perpetrators of this enormity. For a long time 
 the most persistent investigations of the ministers of justice were unavail- 
 ing; but at length a rumor came to the ears of the vigilance committee of 
 Salem that a prisoner, by the name of Hatch, in the jail at New Bedford, 
 seventy miles away, had thrown out some intimations that he could let light 
 into this strange mystery. The Attorney-General immediately had the man 
 brought up before the grand jury, and on his testimony an indictment was 
 found against .Richard, Crowninshield, of Danvers, for the murder; and 
 several associates of his, including his brother George, were indicted on 
 the testimony, of. othfer witnesses.- Richard Crowninshield was a dark and 
 desperate, character, '.a man -who shunned the public ways, but was well 
 known as..a:co'ol; and. stfbtle villain. . 
 
 .; About t;wx), weeks after the arrest of this desperado and his com- 
 panions,; Gapta'in Joseph J. Knapp, a shipmaster and merchant of good 
 character, ireceived a strange note from a man in Belfast, Maine, signing 
 himself. Charles, Grant, Jr., which threw out vague intimations and threats 
 of exposure if a demand for money which the note conveyed was not com- 
 plied- with. L *The writer of this mysterious letter said : ' I merely tell you 
 that-I amlacquaihted with your brother Franklin, and also the business he 
 was transacting for you on the 2d of April last ; and that I think that you 
 was very .'extravagant in giving one thousand dollars to the person that 
 would execute, the business for you.' This letter was a complete riddle to 
 Captain rKnaipp", and he showed it to his son, N. Phippen Knapp, a young 
 lawyer of Salem, who was equally at a loss to understand its meaning. 
 Captain .Knapp", with this son, then set out to consult his other sons, John 
 Francis Knapp and Joseph Jenkins Knapp, Jr., who resided in Wenham. 
 The wife of Joseph J. Knapp, Jr., was the daughter of a niece of the late Mr. 
 White,. who, had acted as his housekeeper prior to the murder. When the 
 letter from the mysterious Grant was shown to this son Joseph, he said it 
 'contained a devilish lot of trash,' and told his father to hand it over to
 
 1830.] THE KXAPP TRIALS. 379 
 
 the committee of vigilance. This blundering disposition of the letter on the 
 part of young Joseph Knapp was the first step in a train of evidence which 
 brought himself and his brother Frank to the gallows. No sooner had the 
 committee of vigilance received Grant's letter, than they sent a trusty mes- 
 senger to Maine to find out the writer. This proved to be one Palmer, 
 who had served a term in the State prison, and had associated with the 
 Crowninshields during some part of the preceding winter, having been 
 concealed in their father's house at Danvers. On the 2d of April, he 
 said, he saw Frank Knapp and a young man by the name of Allen ride up 
 to the house, and afterward go away in company with the Crowninshields ; 
 and when they returned, he heard George Crowninshield tell Richard that 
 Frank Knapp wished them to undertake to kill Mr. White, and that J. J. 
 Knapp, Jr., would pay them one thousand dollars for the job. Palmer 
 said he had been asked to be concerned in the matter, but had declined. 
 
 There had already been a strange occurrence connected with these 
 Knapps since the murder, but the excitement then prevailing in the com- 
 munity had not allowed public attention to rest on it. A report had been 
 circulated that, on the night of the 27th of April, Francis and Joseph 
 Knapp had been attacked by highway robbers, on their way from Salem 
 to "Wenham, and had escaped with their lives only after a desperate 
 struggle. The account of this bold attempt at highway robbery, in a 
 hitherto undisturbed community, was published in the newspapers of 
 Salem, as reported by the Knapps, with the comment that ' these gentle- 
 men are well known in this town, and their respectability and veracity are 
 not questioned by any of our citizens.' It afterward appeared, however, 
 that this story was a pure fabrication, intended to divert attention from 
 the real perpetrators of the murder at Salem ; but, with the usual impru- 
 dence of guilt, the criminals only furnished additional ground for suspicion 
 by this improbable and gratuitous narrative. 
 
 On the testimony of Palmer, a warrant was issued for the arrest of 
 John Francis Knapp and Joseph J. Knapp, Jr., and they were held in cus- 
 tody to await a thorough investigation of the evidence in their case. On 
 the third day of his imprisonment, Joseph Knapp made a full confession. 
 He had found that Captain White, by his will, intended to leave to his 
 (Knapp's) wife but fifteen thousand dollars, while he supposed that if 
 Captain White died intestate she would inherit one-half of his property as 
 the sole representative of his sister, although a brother of Mr. White had left 
 four sons, all of whom were living. Under this impression, he determined 
 to destroy the will, and to compass the death of the old man. Frank 
 agreed to hire an assassin, and Joseph was to pay one thousand dollars for 
 the bloody service. The agent employed was Richard Crowninshield, who 
 entered the house on the night of the 6th of April by a window which had 
 been prepared by the care of Joseph Knapp for the purpose, and made his 
 way to the chamber of Mr. White, where he dealt him a deadly blow on 
 the temple with a bludgeon, and then gave him no less than thirteen stabs 
 with a dagger. So coolly did he accomplish his devilish purpose, that,
 
 380 WFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVI. 
 
 as he afterward declared, lie paused to feel the old man's pulse to see if 
 life was extinct. While this horrid business was going on in the house, 
 Frank Knapp was waiting the issue ; but Joseph had that day got posses- 
 sion of the will, and gone home to Wenham, leaving the perpetration of 
 the crime in the hands of his hirelings. 1 
 
 When Richard Crowninshield learned that the Knapps were in cus- 
 tody, and that Joseph had made a confession, he committed suicide by 
 hanging himself to the bars of his cell with a handkerchief. A special 
 term of the Supreme Court was held at Salem on the 20th of July, and 
 continued in session till the 20th of August, with a brief intermission. 4 
 Indictments for murder were found against John Francis Knapp as prin- 
 cipal, and Joseph J. Knapp, Jr., and George Crowninshield, as accessories. 
 The Attorney-General obtained the assistance of Mr. Webster in conducting 
 the prosecution, and, at the trial of Francis Knapp, in August, leave of the 
 court was asked and obtained that he might assist in the management of 
 the case, and close the argument on the part of the government. The 
 prisoners were defended by Mr. Franklin Dexter and Mr. W. H. Gardiner, 
 advocates of great learning and ability, who omitted no exertions which 
 could help the case of their clients. Francis Knapp was convicted of the 
 murder, as principal, and sentenced to death. Joseph Jenkins Knapp, 
 charged with being an accessory before the fact, was tried at the Novem- 
 ber term of the court, and was convicted and sentenced to share the fate 
 of his brother. On this trial also Mr. Webster assisted the law officers of 
 the State. George Crowninshield proved an alibi, and was acquitted. 
 
 Mr. "Webster's appearance for the prosecution, on these 
 trials, gave rise to some complaints on the part of the pris- 
 oner's counsel, as it was supposed that he was retained for 
 the purpose by Mr. Stephen White, who was a nephew and 
 residuary legatee of the gentleman murdered. The facts are 
 these : The Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General were 
 both persons quite advanced in years, and they desired Mr. 
 Webster's services on the trials. On the trial of John Francis 
 Knapp as principal, leave was obtained from the court that Mr. 
 "Webster should aid the law officers of the State, and no objec- 
 
 1 A peculiar circumstance about this vict, was a remarkable instance of the 
 
 strange murder was the series of blunders want of sagacity of criminals ; and, finally, 
 
 of which Joseph Knapp was the victim, the will which he had seen, and which he 
 
 In the first place, his mother-in-law would carried away on the day of the murder, 
 
 not be heir to more than one-fifth of was not the last will of Captain White. 
 Captain White's property at best ; the * Capital trials in Massachusetts al- 
 
 ruse of the highway robbery was a ways take place before, at least, three 
 
 stupid piece of business ; the giving up judges of the " Supreme Judicial Court," 
 
 of Grant's letter to the committee of the highest court of the State ; so thai 
 
 vigilance, when he might easily have de- points of law are ruled upon the trial bj 
 
 stroyed it and hushed up the Maine con- more than one judge.
 
 1830.] THE KNAPP TRIALS. 381 
 
 tion was interposed by the prisoner's counsel. But, in address- 
 ing the jury, Mr. Dexter complained that Mr. Webster had 
 been brought there to " hurry the jury against the law and 
 beyond the evidence." It does not appear, however, that on 
 this trial any suggestion was publicly made that Mr. "Web- 
 ster had received, or was to receive, a fee from any private 
 quarter. In opening his argument to the jury, Mr. Webster 
 said that " although he could well have wished to shun this 
 occasion, he had not felt at liberty to withhold his professional 
 assistance, when it was supposed that he might be in some 
 degree useful in investigating and discovering the truth respect- 
 ing this most extraordinary murder," and that " in that court 
 nothing could be carried against the law, and an intelligent and 
 just jury could not by any power be hurried beyond the evi- 
 dence." ' 
 
 On the trial of Joseph Knapp, as accessory, the prisoner's 
 counsel (the same gentlemen who had defended Francis Knapp) 
 objected to Mr. Webster's appearance for the government. 
 They referred to a statute, which placed public prosecutions 
 under the direction and control of the law officers of the State, 
 and which prohibited them from receiving any fee or reward 
 from or in behalf of any prosecutor. They stated that they 
 " had understood that Mr. Webster was to receive a compen- 
 sation for his services from a private prosecutor, and they 
 questioned the right of a private individual to retain counsel to 
 aid the law officers of the government in effecting a conviction 
 for a crime punishable with death." Mr. Webster rose and 
 said that " he appeared solely at the request of the Attorney- 
 General, and without any pecuniary inducement." These are 
 the statements of what occurred, as they are found in the offi- 
 cial report. 9 On the following day, the court delivered its 
 opinion on the application, through Mr. Justice Putnam, as 
 follows : 
 
 " In the present case, Mr. Webster avows that he is induced to aid the 
 Attorney-General merely at his request, and without any other considera- 
 tion, so that this case presents the question whether a counsellor may, at 
 the request of the Attorney-General, be admitted to aid him in the prose- 
 cution, without any pecuniary consideration being paid to him, or any 
 
 1 Works, vi., 51, 52. s 10 Pickering's Reports. *7Y.
 
 382 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVI. 
 
 other consideration which may be supposed to influence him, excepting a 
 disinterested regard for the public good. And we all think that, under 
 these circumstances, the application should be granted. 
 
 " It is to be recollected that, at the trial of John Francis Knapp, Mr. 
 Webster was, at the request of the law officers, appointed to aid them, and 
 that there was no objection then made by the prisoner's counsel. And 
 although that appointment strictly was for the then pending trial, yet, if 
 the other trials had followed immediately, the counsel for the government 
 would have had reason to suppose that they were to receive his assistance 
 in those trials, unless good objections should have been made. It is said 
 by the law officers that the preparations for this trial have been made 
 under similar circumstances, and no objection was made to this measure 
 until the jury were empanelled." 
 
 On the same day on which this decision was pronounced, 
 Mr. Webster wrote to Mr. Justice Story in these words : 
 
 " SALEM, Wednesday, one o'clock. 1 
 
 " MY DEAB SIE : J. J. Knapp's trial commenced yesterday.* The A. M. 
 yesterday was occupied in empanelling a jury; the p. M. mainly in debat- 
 ing whether the Attorney-General had a right to bring in other counsel ; 
 on this question their honors deliberated, and this morning agreed to let 
 me in, I having stated to them that I appeared at the request of the 
 Attorney-General, and had not received, and should not receive, any fee in 
 this case, which, of course, was and is true. This A. M. has been employed 
 in discussing the admissibility of the confessions, and the court holds the 
 point under advisement. I expect they will be ruled out." 2 . . . 
 
 It is quite evident that the court understood Mr. Webster 
 as denying that he had received or expected any fee in the case 
 then on trial. The application before the court involved no 
 inquiry into the relations in which Mr. Webster had stood 
 in the case of Francis Knapp, who had been tried, convicted, 
 and sentenced three months previously ; and Mr. Webster's 
 own report of his language on the trial of Joseph Knapp is, 
 that he had not received, and should not receive, any fee in 
 that case. Judge Story was connected by marriage with Mr. 
 Stephen White, the supposed private prosecutor, and doubtless 
 knew under what circumstances Mr. Webster originally came 
 
 1 In the first volume of Mr. Web- context shows that the letter was writ- 
 
 ster's Correspondence, published in 1857, ten on the second day of Joseph 
 
 by Mr. Fletcher Webster, the date of Knapp's trial, and this was Novem- 
 
 this letter is given as of August 11, ber 10th. 
 1830. This ia clearly an error. The 2 Correspondence, i., 506.
 
 1830.] THE KXAPP TRIALS. 333 
 
 into the case of Francis Knapp, the principal, and that in the 
 case of Joseph Knapp, the accessory, Mr. "Webster's statement 
 was strictly true. Moreover, in the case of Francis Knapp, 
 Mr. Webster assisted the Attorney-General at his request, and 
 without any previous fee, or promise of a fee, from any quarter ; 
 although I believe it to be true that, after the trial and con- 
 viction of Francis Knapp, Mr. Stephen White oifered Mr. Web- 
 ster, and the latter received, pecuniary compensation for his 
 services on the trial of Francis. 
 
 The circumstances which led to the request for Mr. Web- 
 ster's services on these trials were entirely unprecedented. Jo- 
 seph Knapp was the person who instigated the murder. He 
 had two objects to accomplish : one to destroy a will which it 
 was known Captain White had executed, and which gave the 
 greater part of his property to his nephew Stephen ; the other, 
 to kill Captain White before the destruction of his will could 
 be known to him. In the event of Captain White's dying in- 
 testate, Joseph Knapp supposed, erroneously, that his mother- 
 in-law would inherit a moiety of the estate. Through the 
 agency of his brother Frank, he hired Richard Crowninshield 
 to kill the testator, and himself abstracted a will (but not the 
 last will) from a strong-box in the chamber of the deceased, and 
 prepared the house for the entrance of the assassin. The three 
 were, therefore, concerned in a joint conspiracy to compass the 
 death of Captain White, and, after the confession of Joseph, 
 the details of this conspiracy, and the part played in it by each 
 of them, became known to the Attorney-General, who obtained 
 the confession by promising immunity to Joseph, on condition 
 that, when brought into court as a witness for the State, he 
 should testify fully and truly. But, after the suicide of Crown- 
 inshield, it became necessary to convict Frank Knapp as a prin- 
 cipal in the murder; for, as the law of Massachusetts then 
 stood, no one could be convicted as an accessory until there had 
 been a conviction of some one as principal. But, when it was 
 found that Frank was to be put on trial as a principal, Joseph 
 retracted his engagement with the Attorney-General, and re- 
 fused to testify. This was done upon the calculation that, as 
 Crowninshield alone had entered the house, the prosecution 
 would not be able to prove that Frank's participation amounted
 
 384 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVI. 
 
 to that of a principal in the murder. He was no nearer to the 
 house, at any time, than a distance of three or four hundred 
 feet ; and, although he was in the street at the rear of the house, 
 at some time during the night, and at a position from which he 
 could see when all the lights were extinguished, it was very 
 doubtful if the prosecution could show, by independent testi 
 mony, whether he was there before Crowninshield entered, or 
 while the latter was within the house, or when he came out. 
 In order to convict Frank as a principal, it was necessary for 
 the prosecution to convince the jury that he was present in the 
 street at the time of the murder, aiding and abetting the person 
 who dealt the fatal blow. To produce this conviction, Mr. 
 "Webster put forth all his strength, and it was all needed. No 
 one of less ability in the handling of evidence could have suc- 
 ceeded in satisfying the jury that Frank Knapp was present at 
 the murder for the purpose of rendering aid, if necessary. Mr. 
 Webster's argument rested mainly on two positions : first, that 
 there was a conspiracy to murder the deceased, and that Frank 
 Knapp was one of the conspirators ; second, that, as a conspira- 
 tor, he was present in the street, by agreement, to countenance 
 and aid the perpetrator. This would make him a principal. The 
 force of Mr. Webster's argument convinced the jury that Frank 
 was, in this sense, present at the murder. 1 But the fact was other- 
 wise ; and if Joseph Knapp had not refused to testify, and had 
 told the whole truth, neither of them would have suffered for 
 the murder. It would then have appeared that, at the time 
 Crowninshield started to commit the murder, he told Frank to 
 go home and go to bed ; that Frank did so ; but that he after- 
 ward rose, from anxiety to know what had been done, went 
 toward Captain White's house, and met Crowninshield, after 
 the murder had been committed. If Frank had not been con- 
 victed as principal, Joseph could not have been convicted as 
 accessory. 
 
 On the trial of Joseph Knapp, as accessory before the fact, 
 Mr. Webster's task was of an entirely different nature. Having 
 refused to testify on the trial of his brother, Joseph had for- 
 feited his right to the immunity promised to him by the Attor- 
 ney-General, and was, therefore, rightfully put upon trial him- 
 
 1 Mr. Webster's address to the jury is contained in his Works, vi., 41-105.
 
 1830.1 THE KNAPP TRIALS. 3y 
 
 self. But he could not be convicted without the use of the con- 
 fession which he had made under the promise of favor. Mr. 
 "Webster had to satisfy the court that the confession was admis- 
 sible, although made under these circumstances. He argued 
 that, as against himself, the prisoner's confession was admissi- 
 ble, because made freely and voluntarily ; for, having obtained 
 the Attorney-General's promise of immunity before he made 
 the confession, he had no motive falsely to accuse himself, al- 
 though he might have a motive falsely to accuse his accomplices. 
 The court permitted the confession to go to the jury. Mr. Web- 
 ster then had to convince the jury that the confession was credi- 
 ble. The prisoner was convicted, 
 
 Nothing was more remarkable in Mr. Webster than the 
 manner in which he kept distinct, in his own person, the char- 
 acters of the statesman and the lawyer. A stranger, hearing 
 him in the forum, would not have imagined him to be any thing 
 but a lawyer ; one who should have heard him in the Senate 
 would rarely have suspected that he was one of the very first 
 lawyers of his time and country. It was always observed of 
 him, by his contemporaries of the bar, that he brought into the 
 forum neither the habits of mind, the modes of reasoning, nor 
 the kinds of eloquence, which belong to the discussions of 
 statesmen ; nor did he carry into the Senate the peculiarities 
 of reasoning and analysis and proof which are alone effective 
 in judicial tribunals. In the latter, his great renown as a 
 public man no doubt helped to fasten the attention of judges 
 and jurymen, and sometimes aided the ascendancy which his 
 intellect enabled him to obtain over the intellects of those he 
 addressed. But Mr. Webster was generally encountered at the 
 bar by men who were able to overcome any influence of this 
 kind, by rendering it necessary for him to exert all his powers 
 in the mode which the forensic habit demands, and which is 
 peculiar to the discussions in courts of justice. His ability to 
 do so was never affected by the habits acquired in legislative 
 bodies. On the trials of which I have here given an account, 
 he produced convictions of the prisoners because of this power 
 to discharge the functions of a lawyer, as if he were never any 
 thing but a lawyer. 
 
 26
 
 3ft LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XVIL 
 
 CHAPTEK XYII. 
 
 1830-1831. 
 
 ME. WEBSTER'S POPULARITY CHARACTER OF GENERAL JACKSON 
 MR. CLAY'S CLAIMS TO THE PRESIDENCY ANTI-MASONRY 
 DINNER TO MR. WEBSTER IN NEW YORK GIVES UP A JOURNEY 
 TO THE WEST NOMINATION OF MR. CLAY AS THE CANDIDATE 
 OF THE NATIONAL REPUBLICANS RELIEF OF INSOLVENT DEBT- 
 ORS OF THE UNITED STATES MISCELLANEOUS CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 "TTT^E are now arrived at the period in Mr. "Webster's life 
 V V when he began to be considered, by a part of the people 
 of the North and the West, and by many in the South who 
 were politically opposed to the reelection of General Jackson, 
 the most suitable person to be brought forward as a candidate 
 for the presidency. Aside from the public questions which were 
 about to separate the people of the United States into two par- 
 ties, many of the best minds in the country had come to place 
 their hopes for the success and perpetuity of its institutions 
 upon the power and the willingness of the nation to call to the 
 chief magistracy a statesman whose extraordinary civil services, 
 whose intellect, whose broad national politics, and whose mod- 
 eration and elevation of character, pointed him out as the most 
 fit person in the Union to be intrusted with the executive 
 office. It is quite unnecessary for me to insist that this was 
 not an undue partiality. We have to deal with facts ; and it is 
 one of the facts which constitute Mr. Webster's justification for. 
 allowing himself to be drawn into that long candidacy, in re- 
 spect to which he was destined to be always unsuccessful, that
 
 1831.] POPULARITY. 337 
 
 some of the best and wisest men of his time men who had the 
 least that was selfish and the least that was local in their polit- 
 ical wishes and conduct originally awakened this desire in 
 his breast. It will not be questioned, by even the most phil- 
 osophic or the most severe judgment, that the ambition was a 
 worthy one. To preside over the government of a great country, 
 by the suffrages of a free people, and to attain that position 
 without mean compliances, and through the public confidence 
 and respect, might well be admitted by any man to be among 
 the objects for which he lived. Nor were there wanting to Mr. 
 "Webster, from the first, large elements and striking proofs of 
 that popularity for which mere politicians will look, in the 
 selection of a leader under whose political banner they may 
 seek to array themselves. "Wherever he went, the popular 
 interest in him was sure to manifest itself; not only because of 
 his intellectual celebrity, but because he was everywhere re- 
 garded as a man who was serving the country from profound 
 convictions respecting its true policy, and with a wise and far- 
 seeing devotion to the Union and the Constitution. His, opin- 
 ions, sentiments, and character, were as well known in the re- 
 motest "West, or in the farthest South, as they were in New 
 England. Every man in the country j who read any thing of 
 public interest in the current political affairs of the nation, had 
 read his most important Congressional speeches. Every such 
 man knew how he had voted on questions that concerned the 
 general interest, and could tell almost with certainty where he 
 could be found on any question that was likely to arise. From 
 quarters very remote from the region which he represented, 
 and from a great variety of associations, whose members could 
 scarcely hope that he would ever visit their locality, or evince 
 a personal interest in their affairs, and who could have had no 
 special political motive, there came to him expressions of a 
 desire for the honor of enrolling him among their nominal patrons 
 or members. If such evidences of popularity mean any thing 
 and, undoubtedly, they mean a great deal, both in the calcula- 
 tions of mere political managers and in the judgments of those 
 who look for solid proofs of the estimation in which a states- 
 man is held by his contemporaries Mr. "Webster undoubtedly 
 possessed them in an abundance that would make them impor-
 
 388 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVII. 
 
 tant to any body. They now lie before me in forms so numer- 
 ous and so various the spontaneous and untainted expressions 
 of popular respect that the details would inconveniently en- 
 cumber my pages if they were to be set forth. 1 
 
 General Jackson's administration of the Government com- 
 menced and was continued under circumstances that produced in 
 him two opposite tendencies. He was elected to the presidency 
 through the agency of that class of public men who were most 
 disposed to a strict construction of the powers of the Federal 
 Constitution ; and it so happened that many public questions 
 arose in the first term of his official service, which involved 
 the assertion or the denial of specific powers of the utmost im- 
 portance. At the same time, he was called to encounter a 
 doctrine which threatened the entire overthrow of the Consti- 
 tution; and the arguments by which this doctrine was sup- 
 ported were, to a considerable extent, the same with those 
 which lead to a denial of the particular powers that came 
 into prominent consideration during this period. General 
 Jackson finally saw that it was his duty to defend the Con- 
 stitution from the heresy of State " nullification ; " and, when 
 the crisis came, he executed that duty with all the firm- 
 ness that belonged to his character. But he did not see 
 
 1 Among these indications of popular from many different States, both in and 
 strength to use the cant of politics I out of New England. Such applications, 
 know of none that can be more signifi- too, came from numerous popular socie- 
 cant, because there can be none more ties in no way connected with the col- 
 genuine and unalloyed, than the numer- legiate institutions, and in whose objects 
 ous requests which came to Mr. Webster Mr. Webster could scarcely be expected 
 from associations that were not political to take an active part. Whether it was 
 in their character, to permit the enroll- the great Bible association, whose head- 
 ment of his name among their honorary quarters were in the city of New York, 
 members, or to address them upon the or a society of the angling-rod, who wet 
 subjects which formed the objects of their their lines in the streams of the Ohio, 
 organization. Of these, I should select and from all kinds of associations that 
 those coming from the colleges scattered might be classed in dignity and irnpor- 
 through our country, as aifording a very tance between these two extremes, the 
 striking evidence that a public man, who solicitations and invitations were con- 
 elicited such proofs of regard from the stantly accumulating. If it is true that, 
 young who were coming forward into in many such cases, the chief object was 
 the ranks of educated life, or from the to draw public attention by a great name, 
 older guides of public opinion, had laid let it be remembered that the recognized 
 a very broad foundation for what is power of that name to move public at- 
 commonly called " popularity." I have tention is a very weighty proof of what 
 counted a very great number of such might have been done by it in political 
 communications, at this period, coming action, if the right steps had not been 
 from the most eminent as well as the thwarted by untoward causes or by the 
 least known of such institutions, and notorious doctrine of " availability."
 
 1831.] RELATIONS WITH THE PRESIDENCY. 339 
 
 with equal clearness that the rules of constitutional interpre- 
 tation are closely connected with the political doctrine that 
 maintains the supremacy of the Constitution as a fundamental 
 law ; or that the Constitution itself provides for an authorized 
 judicial interpreter, whose decisions respecting the extent of 
 its powers ought to be his guide ; or that a uniformity of inter- 
 pretation and action, from the time of the origin of the Consti- 
 tution to any given period, ought to be regarded, under a Gov- 
 ernment like ours, as the best evidence alike of the national 
 will and of the just construction of such an instrument. In all 
 these respects, he and his supporters belonged to one political 
 school, and his opponents to another. Moreover, there grew up 
 in his time, partly as the effect of his own imperious temper, to 
 which the food of adulation was abundantly administered, and 
 partly from the loose ideas of the Presidential office that then 
 prevailed among his followers, very enlarged views of executive 
 discretion. A man of his temperament, whose purposes were 
 patriotic, and whose intentions always were to promote the 
 glory and welfare of his country, but who had not been, much 
 accustomed to consider the boundaries of departmental power, 
 was very likely to embrace the idea of a sovereignty of the 
 people, acting through the President in the control of all the 
 operations of Government. General Jackson did embrace it. 
 He had been elected by an immense popular majority, and he 
 came to regard himself as the direct and immediate constitu- 
 tional representative of the people, forgetting that, under a fixed 
 constitution, which distributes political functions among distinct 
 departments, and grants specific powers to each, the present 
 popular will on any particular subject has no just relation to 
 the authority of any one of those departments, as it can have no 
 just influence in determining what are the constitutional powers 
 of the whole Government. 
 
 These well-known facts and truths are alluded to here, for 
 the purpose of showing why Mr. Webster could not become a 
 general political supporter of President Jackson, or of any one 
 of those who might be made the succeeding candidate of the 
 same party. But why was it, posterity will ask, that this very 
 eminent statesman was never presented to the suffrages of his 
 countrymen, for the highest office in their Government, by the
 
 390 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XT II. 
 
 political party who shared his opinions, and with whom he 
 acted ? The civil history of this country, for the two and twenty 
 years commencing in 1830 and ending in 1852, must furnish 
 the answer to this question. In that period Mr. Webster acted 
 a great and a very conspicuous part. Whether it in truth de- 
 tracts any thing from his just fame that he never became the 
 candidate of his party for the office of President of the United 
 States, will depend on the judgment that may be formed re- 
 specting his own relation to the causes which prevented his 
 selection. If it is true that he was right in the public conduct 
 which lost him the support of those on whom he had claims of 
 the highest nature ; if his well-earned popularity waned through 
 the influence of that which was in him a merit and not a fault ; 
 if he served his whole country with soundness of judgment and 
 singleness of purpose, at cost to himself; if events have shown 
 that in matters of moment he made no mistakes, sacrificed no 
 principles, was true to his own character, and would have 
 averted great evils from his country if his advice had been fol- 
 lowed no one can regret, for him, that an ambition which he 
 unquestionably possessed was never gratified. 
 
 It is important to a correct view of Mr. Webster's whole 
 conduct on the subject of the presidency, that he was from the 
 first always willing to admit the claims of Mr. Clay while there 
 was any prospect that the selection of Mr. Clay as a candidate 
 would be wise. In the winter of 1829, after the first election 
 of General Jackson, as the reader has seen, he wrote to his 
 brother that, if New England could be kept firm and steady, 
 she could make Mr. Clay President, if she should choose to do 
 so. 1 In the spring of 1830, after General Jackson had been in 
 oflSce a year, he wrote from Washington to Mr. Pleasants, of 
 Virginia, in reference to the course of the opposition, in these 
 words : 
 
 " As to future operations, the general idea here seems to be this : to 
 bring forward no candidate this year, though, doubtless, the general im- 
 pression is, that Mr. Clay stands first and foremost in the ranks of those 
 who would desire a change. I do not think there is the least abatement 
 of the respect and confidence entertained for him. As to the other Western 
 gentleman whom you mention, he must not be thought of, for he is not 
 
 1 Ante, chap. zvi.
 
 1831.] AXTIMASONRY. 39! 
 
 with us. Depend upon it there is a negotiation in train to bring him out 
 as Vice-President, to run on the ticket with Mr, Calhoun. In my opinion, 
 he has very little weight or influence in the country, and that is fast de- 
 clining. Our friends in the West will quit him, of course, in that event, 
 as he must give up their interests. I write now to say that two things 
 must not be omitted when we speculate on the future ; first, that General 
 Jackson will certainly be a candidate again, if he live and be well ; I say 
 certainly I mean only that I have no doubt of it. Second, that we can- 
 not now foresee what events will follow from what is passing in Pennsyl- 
 vania and New York, on the subject of antimasonry. This matter, be 
 assured, is not to be disregarded." ' 
 
 This was written to a gentleman of much political activity 
 in the ranks of the opposition, after Mr. "Webster had electrified 
 the whole country by his defence of the Constitution, at the 
 very time when he was an object of the strongest popular inter- 
 est, and when he might well have been justified if he had 
 availed himself of the demonstrations made toward him, so as 
 selfishly to advance his own claims as the leader of a party 
 which was to seek the overthrow of the party of the Adminis- 
 tration. But he placed himself in no such attitude ; jon the 
 contrary, he carefully observed the evidences of Mr. Clay's 
 position in the public regard, willing, if necessary, to follow 
 that gentleman as the person who might displace from the 
 Government a party whose principles he could not espouse, and 
 restore it to what he believed to be its true policy. But his 
 attention was very early arrested by the formidable disturbance 
 of all political calculations that was about to be made by the 
 antimasonic movement a phenomenon that requires a brief 
 explanation. 
 
 This popular agitation had its origin in the excitement 
 produced by the abduction and supposed murder of one Mor- 
 
 1 Correspondence, L, 492. " While they are thus arraying them- 
 He had previously written to Mr. selves for battle, that is Calhoun and 
 Mason, in February, 1830, as follows: Van Buren, there are two considerations 
 " Calhoun is forming a party against which are likely to be overlooked, or dis- 
 Van Buren, and as the President is sup- regarded by them, and which are mate- 
 posed to be Van Buren's man, the Vice- rial to be considered. 1. The proba- 
 President has great difficulty to separate bility that General Jackson will run 
 his opposition to Van Buren from oppo- again ; that that is his present pur- 
 sition to the President. Our idea is to pose, I am quite sure. 2. The extraor- 
 let them pretty much alone ; by no means dinary power of this antimasonic party, 
 to act a secondary part to either. We especially _ in Pennsylvania." (Corre- 
 never can, and never must support either, spondence, i., 488.)
 
 392 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVII. 
 
 gan in 1826. 1 The masonic lodge that he had left was sup- 
 posed to be responsible for this act. This agitation spread 
 through the country, drawing largely from the ranks of those 
 who were opposed to the reelection of General Jackson. The 
 party that led, and should have comprehended, all the effective 
 opposition to Jackson, had taken the name of National Repub- 
 licans. Being of recent origin, and having never yet acted in 
 a general election, it was not very thoroughly organized. It 
 was to hold a national convention, however, in December of 
 this year (1831), at Baltimore, for the purpose of nominating its 
 candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. JSTo doubt 
 would have been felt anywhere respecting the selection of Mr. 
 Clay as its candidate for the first office, if it had not been for 
 this antimasonic excitement. But Mr. Clay was what was 
 called, in the cant of the time, an " adhering Mason," that is to 
 say, having been a member of a Masonic lodge, he had not 
 chosen to withdraw from it, and to renounce Masonry. The 
 new party that had undertaken a crusade against the Freemasons 
 was violently intolerant and prescriptive. It had grown to be 
 powerful, as a third party, in the States of JSTew York and 
 Pennsylvania, and to be capable of doing much injury else- 
 where to the cause of those who desired a change in the admin- 
 istration of the General Government. Some honest and high- 
 minded men had been drawn into it, led away by imaginary 
 evils that were believed to be the fruits of Freemasonry ; spec- 
 ulating and intriguing politicians had joined in, and were using 
 it ; and the whole mass of those who constituted its rank and 
 file were acting under a delusion about an institution which 
 had no possible relation to the questions of national polidy that 
 should alone have absorbed their attention in a national 
 election. 
 
 Mr. "Webster regarded this movement from the first with 
 
 1 William Morgan was abducted from other side, the Masons asserted that the 
 the village of Batavia, in the western whole story was a fraud, and that the 
 part of the State of New York, and was man was still living. That he was ab- 
 Bupposed to have been sunk in the ducted and drowned, because of his sup- 
 waters of Lake Ontario. On the one posed treachery to the obligations of 
 side it was charged that he was about to Masonry, was, I suppose, not doubted 
 print a book, revealing the secrets of by impartial people who attended to the 
 Masonry, and that for this treachery the material facts at the time they trans 
 Masons had murdered him. On the pired.
 
 1831.] ANTIMASONRY. 393 
 
 serious concern. He knew that it was formidable, but he was 
 always unwilling to make it an issue in national politics. He 
 had never been a Mason ; and he did not believe that in modern 
 society there is any real necessity, in order to subserve any use- 
 ful purpose, for secret societies with pass-words and cabalistic 
 ceremonies. He was, in fact, disposed to consider the Masonic 
 institutions as objectionable, so far as they imposed on their 
 members duties to each other that might conflict with their 
 general duties as citizens. But, as a national statesman, it was 
 impossible for him to consent to the introduction, among the 
 important questions of national politics, of an issue so irrelevant 
 to the great concerns of the country as that presented by anti- 
 masonry. He was willing to go as far as in honor he could go, 
 to reconcile this schism in the body of those who sought to take 
 the Government out of its present hands ; but he was not will- 
 ing to forego the hope of electing a President upon the prin- 
 ciples professed by the National Republican party, and thus 
 founding a political organization that would be permanently 
 useful to great national ends. 
 
 He was solicited to discourage the nomination of Mr. Clay 
 at Baltimore. Great efforts were made to convince him that 
 Mr. Clay could not be elected, in consequence of the determina- 
 tion of the antimasons not to vote for him. Their leaders made 
 known to Mr. Webster this determination in the winter of 1830- 
 '31, and their purpose to nominate a candidate of their own. 
 Gentlemen in different parts of the country, who earnestly de- 
 sired the election of Mr. Clay, also informed Mr. Webster of the 
 dangers attending the rise, the progress, and the prescriptive 
 spirit of this new organization. His own opinion concurred 
 with theirs, that, if this movement went on, it would very 
 seriously endanger the election of Mr. Clay. He knew that his 
 own claims were equal at least to those of Mr. Clay, and he 
 received constant assurances from many important persons that 
 there was nothing they so much desired as to make him Presi- 
 dent of the United States, if he could in any way produce a 
 union between the National Republicans and the antimasons. 
 
 Under these circumstances, Mr. "Webster, had he chosen to 
 do so, might have said to the friends of Mr. Clay, that the latter 
 could not be elected ; and that, if defeated in 1832, he could
 
 394 LIJFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVIL 
 
 not again be brought forward as a candidate in 1836. To the 
 antimasons he could hare said, that no one but himself had the 
 smallest prospect of being elected in opposition to General 
 Jackson, and that their project of nominating Mr. Wirt as their 
 candidate was futile. He might thus have caused himself to 
 be presented as a candidate on whom both branches of the op- 
 position could unite ; and, from the mass of correspondence that 
 is before me, I am authorized to say that this view was pre- 
 sented to him again and again. 
 
 "What, then, were the reasons that prevented Mr. "Webster 
 from seeking the Baltimore nomination, to the exclusion of Mr. 
 Clay? 
 
 It has already been said that Mr. Webster had hopes for the 
 country, which looked to the success of a party founded on def- 
 inite principles that concerned the interests of the country. 
 He considered Mr. Clay as a suitable leader of that party ; and, 
 although he had seen reason, during the past year, to regard 
 Mr. Clay as less strong politically than he had formerly been, 
 he was aware that Mr. Clay had a large body of attached 
 friends throughout the Union, whose defection, if caused by a 
 rejection of his claims to the Baltimore nomination, would ren- 
 der it impracticable to preserve the National Republican party 
 and to make it useful to the country. Moreover, he had long- 
 known that Mr. Clay expected this nomination, and that he 
 cherished the sanguine belief that he could be elected. They 
 had been in a free and friendly correspondence on the subject. 
 
 But Mr. Webster could not forego all the public demonstra- 
 tions of respect and admiration that were tendered to him at 
 this period, merely because of this pending nomination for the 
 presidency. At the close of the session of Congress, a public 
 dinner was given to him in the city of New York, which was 
 intended as a special recognition of the services he had rendered 
 to the country and to its constitutional law, in the debate of 
 1830 on the doctrines of nullification. Circumstances had 
 made it inconvenient for him to accept this compliment until 
 after the adjournment of Congress, in March. 1 With great fit- 
 ness to the nature of the occasion, Chancellor Kent was selected 
 to preside. In the following introductory speech, proposing 
 
 1 The dinner was given March 10, 1831, at the City Hotel.
 
 1831.] PUBLIC DINNER AT NEW YORK. 395 
 
 the health of Mr. Webster, he avoided all topics of a party 
 character : 
 
 " Xew England has been long fruitful in great men, the necessary con- 
 sequence of the admirable discipline of her institutions ; and we are this 
 day honored with the presence of one of x those cherished objects of fier 
 attachment and pride, who has an undoubted and peculiar title to our 
 regard. It is a plain truth, that he, who defends the Constitution of his 
 country by his wisdom in council, is entitled to share her gratitude with 
 those who protect it by valor in the field. Peace has its victories as well 
 as war. We all recollect a late memorable occasion, when the exalted 
 talents and enlightened patriotism of the gentleman to whom I have 
 alluded were exerted in the support of our national Union, and the sound 
 interpretation of its charter. 
 
 " If there be any one political precept preeminent above all others, and 
 acknowledged by all, it is that which dictates the absolute necessity of a 
 union of the States under one government, and that government clothed 
 with those attributes and powers with which the existing Constitution has 
 invested it. We are indebted, under Providence, to the operation and 
 influence of the powers of that Constitution for our national honor abroad, 
 and for unexampled prosperity at home. Its future stability depends upon 
 the firm support and due exercise of its legitimate powers in all their 
 branches. A tendency to disunion, to anarchy among the members, rather 
 than to tyranny in the head, has been heretofore the melancholy fall of all 
 the federal governments of ancient and modern Europe. Our Union and 
 national Constitution were formed, as we have hitherto been led to believe, 
 under better auspices, and with improved wisdom. But there was a deadly 
 principle of disease inherent in the system. The assumption by any mem- 
 ber of the Union of the right to question and resist, or annul, as its own 
 judgment should dictate, either the laws of Congress, or the treaties, or 
 the decisions of the Federal Courts, or the mandates of the Executive 
 power, duly made and promulgated, as the Constitution prescribes, was a 
 most dangerous assumption of power, leading to collision and the destruc- 
 tion of the system. And if, contrary to all our expectations, we should 
 hereafter fail in the grand experiment of a confederate government, extend- 
 ing over some of the fairest portions of this continent, and destined to act, 
 at the same time, with efficiency and harmony, we should most grievously 
 disappoint the hopes of mankind, and blast forever the fruits of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 " But, happily for us, the refutation of such dangerous pretensions on 
 the occasion referred to was signal and complete. The false images and 
 delusive theories, which had perplexed the thoughts and disturbed the 
 judgments of men, were then dissipated, in like manner as spectres disap- 
 pear at the rising of the sun. The inestimable value of the Union and the 
 true principles of the Constitution were explained by clear and accurate 
 reasonings, and enforced by pathetic and eloquent illustrations. The
 
 396 LIFE (jf DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVIL 
 
 result was the more auspicious, as the heretical doctrines, which were then 
 fairly reasoned down, had been advanced by a very respectable portion of 
 the Union, and urged on the floor of the Senate by the polished mind, 
 manly zeal, and honored name of a distinguished member from the 
 South. 
 
 " The consequences of that discussion have been extremely beneficial. 
 It turned the attention of the public to the great doctrines of national 
 rights and national union. Constitutional law ceased to remain wrapped 
 up in the breasts, and taught only by the responses, of the living oracles of 
 the law. Socrates was said to have drawn down philosophy from the 
 skies, and scattered it among the schools. It may, with equal truth, be 
 said that constitutional law, by means of these senatorial discussions and 
 the master genius that guided them, was rescued from the archives of our 
 tribunals and the libraries of lawyers, and placed under the eye and sub- 
 mitted to the judgment of the American people. Their verdict is with us, 
 and from it there lies no appeal." 
 
 Mr. Webster spoke for an hour and a half on this occasion, 
 entirely with reference to the dangers to which the Constitution 
 was exposed, and to some of the interesting and important inci- 
 dents connected with its history. 1 He did not deem it fit to 
 use this opportunity to " break ground " against the Adminis- 
 tration, as some of his friends elsewhere had desired ; for the 
 crisis had not fully passed by, and it was essential that he, who 
 was now universally regarded as the " Champion of the Consti 
 tution " in the halls of Congress, should be in a position to 
 render to the Administration of General Jackson all the aid it 
 could need or would receive from him in the future possible 
 collision with the party of nullification. He spoke with refer- 
 ence t to this matter as follows : 
 
 " Seeing the true grounds of the Constitution thus attacked, I raised 
 my voice in its favor, I must confess, without preparation or previous 
 intention. I can hardly say that I embarked in the contest from a sense 
 of duty. It was an instantaneous impulse of inclination, not acting 
 against duty, I trust, but hardly waiting for its suggestions. I felt it 
 to be a contest for the integrity of the Constitution, and I was ready 
 to enter into it, not thinking or caring, personally, how I might come 
 out. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I have true pleasure in saying that I trust the crisis has, 
 m some measure, passed by. The doctrines of nullification have received 
 a severe and stern rebuke from public opinion. The general reprobation 
 of the country has been cast upon them. Recent expressions of the most 
 
 1 The speech is contained in the first volume of his Works, 195-215.
 
 1831.] GIVES UP A WESTERN TOUR. 397 
 
 numerous branch of the national Legislature are decisive and imposing. 
 Everywhere, the general tone of public feeling is for the Constitution. "While 
 much will be yielded everything, almost, but the integrity of the Con- 
 stitution and the essential interests of the country to the cause of mutual 
 harmony and mutual conciliation, no ground can be granted, not an inch, 
 to menace and bluster. Indeed, menace and bluster, and the putting forth 
 of daring, unconstitutional doctrines, are, at this very moment, the chief 
 obstacles to mutual harmony and satisfactory accommodation. Men cannot 
 well reason and confer and take counsel together about the discreet exer- 
 cise of a power with those who deny that any such power rightfully exists, 
 and who threaten to blow up the whole Constitution if they cannot other- 
 wise get rid of its operation. It is matter of sincere gratification, gentle- 
 men, that the voice of this great State has been so clear and strong, and 
 her vote all but unanimous on the most interesting of these occasions in 
 the House of Representatives. Certainly, such respect to the Union be- 
 comes New York. It is consistent with her interests and her character. 
 That singularly prosperous State, which now is, and is likely to continue to 
 be, the greatest link in the chain of the Union, will ever be, I am sure, the 
 strongest link also. The great States which lie in her neighborhood agree 
 with her fully in this matter. Pennsylvania, I believe, was loyal to the 
 Union, to a man ; and Ohio raises her voice, like that of a lion, against 
 whatsoever threatens disunion and dismemberment. This harmony of 
 sentiment is truly gratifying. It is not to be gainsaid that the union of 
 opinion in this great central mass of our population, on this momentous 
 point of the Constitution, augurs well for our future prosperity and 
 security." 
 
 Immediately after this dinner, however, it became neces- 
 sary for Mr. "Webster to decide what he should do in regard to 
 a long contemplated journey to the "West, where he had never 
 been, and where the desire to see him was exceedingly strong 
 among the people at large. 1 Such a tour, at this time, however, 
 was very likely to be regarded with jealousy by the friends of 
 Mr. Clay ; for the question, in relation to the expediency of Mr. 
 Clay's nomination by the National Republicans, was an exceed- 
 ingly delicate one ; and Mr. "Webster's purposes, in making this 
 journey, would certainly have been liable to misconstruction. 
 He decided not to undertake it, although it was urged upon him 
 with much earnestness, and although its present renunciation 
 was a postponement of his own long-cherished desire to see the 
 Western States, and to converse with their people. He sub- 
 
 1 The letters on his files, at this time, tremely numerous and pressing. He gave 
 begging him to visit the West, are ex- up the journey with great reluctance.
 
 398 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVIL 
 
 etituted for this tour a journey through the State of New York 
 and to the Canadas. 
 
 As the time approached for the decision of the question 
 whether Mr. Clay should be presented as the candidate of the 
 National Republicans, or whether such a concession should be 
 made to the antimasons as would enable them to dictate the 
 candidate to the whole opposition, and thus to reduce the char- 
 acter of that opposition to the level of their own unimportant 
 issues, Mr. Webster made up his mind concerning his personal 
 duty. He advised against that concession, and did all he could 
 to dissuade influential persons who were delegates to the Balti- 
 more Convention, and who would there have insisted on the 
 nomination of Mr. Wirt instead of Mr. Clay, from attending that 
 body. To the suggestions that were made to him, that, it' Mr. 
 "Wirt were chosen President, he could have any place in the 
 Cabinet that he might desire, with the advantage of being the 
 agreed candidate to succeed Mr. Wirt, or that he could now 
 place himself in a position to command the support of the whole 
 body of those who were opposed to General Jackson and his 
 party, he gave no countenance. The following selections 
 from his correspondence during the period that immediately 
 preceded Mr. Clay's nomination fully explain his course in 
 this respect : 
 
 LFROM MR! JOSEPH GALES.'] 
 
 "Jfcm;A27, 1831. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I have regretted, since writing you a few days ago, that 
 I did so at all ; and especially as, under the excitement of surprise, I may 
 have considered Judge Spencer more committed to the scheme of his son 
 than he is. I regret it the more since I see, by the account of the dinner, 
 how you prize his political and personal character. I desire to state more 
 precisely how far I suppose the matter to have proceeded. . . . 
 
 " Of all men (I can say in writing what I would not to your face) I 
 should prefer you to any other for the presidency. I hope in God the 
 time will come which will give to that station ' one Roman more.' At 
 present Mr. Clay is so prominently before the public, and so identified with 
 Western feeling (as you will find him), and, through you and other friends, 
 BO acceptable to the East, and so qualified by experience, and so allied, 
 
 1 The senior editor of the National ical consequence then and for a long 
 Intelligencer, and a person of great polit- period afterward.
 
 :S31.] CORRESPONDENCE. 399 
 
 and, as it were, endeared by late associations, that we must go for him if 
 we go alone. I, for one, cannot bear the idea of any other being thought 
 of by those who approve his politics ; and, I believe, I cannot mistake in 
 supposing your views to be the same, though only this day I have been 
 told that the contrary is reported. 
 
 " Can nothing be done to save New York ? Are there no high-minded 
 men, who, like you, are not Masons, and who can say, we, too, are anti- 
 masons, but we cannot sacrifice our country to our prejudice against a sect, 
 not more persecuting, in the main, than any religious sect in the country ? 
 Being no Mason myself, and always considering its mummeries absurd, I 
 may be believed when I give it this character. Let me beg of you to do 
 what you can to heal this division among our friends. Could it be done, 
 the day would be ours ! 
 
 " Most respectfully, I am, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 "Jo. GALES, JB. 
 
 " P. S. I would not copy the report of your speech by ' a steno- 
 grapher,' which has come on in the Daily Advertiser and the Commercial 
 of to-day. A speech of an hour and thirty-five minutes reported in the 
 compass of a column ! I admire your gallantry (and good conduct, too) 
 in vindicating and eulogizing the fame and character of Hamilton. Few 
 men at this day are magnanimous enough to dare it. 1 , 
 
 [FKOM JUDGE SPEKCER.] 
 
 "NBAR ALBANY, April 19, 1831. 
 
 " MY' DEAR SIR : You will recollect that I promised to write you, when 
 I had the high gratification of seeing you in New York, and partaking of 
 the dinner given to you for your patriotic and unrivalled efforts in defence 
 of the Constitution ; and I cannot omit saying that, on no former occasion 
 during my life, have I been more honored or gratified. You will believe 
 me when I say that my motives for attending that dinner were my high 
 and sincere regard for you, and also to give my support to the doctrines 
 you advanced, and which gave rise to the dinner. Little, indeed, did I ex- 
 pect, because I feel that I did not merit, the delicate but high compliment 
 paid to me conjointly with Chancellor Kent ; and I beg you to accept the un- 
 feigned assurances of a most grateful heart that the impression is indelible. 
 
 " I did myself the pleasure of calling on Mrs. Webster the last week, 
 and gave her some assurance that I should visit Boston during the season ; 
 and was pleased to learn that you and she contemplated a visit to this 
 part of the State during the summer, and have her promise to see us. 
 
 " The result of the New- York charter election is auspicious, and will 
 
 1 The allusion here is to the magnifi- scribed the power of Hamilton over the 
 cent passage in the speech at the New- national resources. (See Works, i., 198, 
 York dinner, in which Mr. Webster de- et seq.)
 
 400 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ce. XVIL 
 
 have great influence on our fall elections. Indeed, I perceive everywhere 
 indications of returning sobriety and good sense on the part of the people, 
 and am encouraged in the hope and belief that the public will appreciate 
 justly the abominations of the present administration of the General Gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 " But, my dear sir, I am pained to tell you that, after several inter- 
 views with leading antimasons, if they are correctly informed, and I fear 
 they are, the antimasons in this State will never support Mr. Clay. We 
 know he cannot renounce his Masonic principles without ruin and dishonor, 
 and they say that unless he does he cannot be nominated. Antimasonry 
 is gaining rapidly in this State, and they feel conscious of their strength 
 and importance. I think they will make nominations, in September, of 
 candidates for President and Vice-President. Some of them, I have reason 
 to believe, are favorable to me for the latter office ; but I shall remain per- 
 fectly passive, being a Mason of the third degree, but not having attended 
 a lodge in more than thirty years, but determined to remain, as I have 
 been, perfectly neutral between the Masons and antimasons. 
 
 " If the tickets of electors are nominated in this State (the election 
 being by general ticket, and determined by a plurality), I fear that Jack- 
 son electors would be chosen. Should that event appear probable, the only 
 course to be pursued to prevent that result would be for the opponents of 
 Jackson to vote for the antimasonic ticket. This would probably, and I 
 think certainly, defeat the choice of Jackson electors, and bring the .choice 
 into the House. How it would be decided there, or whether any choice 
 would take place, depends on the result of elections to be held this spring 
 and summer. I merely give you some loose speculations founded on the 
 present state of things. 
 
 " Having mentioned my own name to you, who were among the first to 
 suggest the idea, I need scarcely say to you that I am incapable of playing 
 any deceptive game, or acting at all with a view to my own election. I 
 am as indifferent to the subject as any man can be ; if I can be serviceable 
 to the country, I am nothing loth to be so, but any office must come un- 
 sought by me. 
 
 " I heartily concur in the election of Mr. Clay, not that I think him the 
 only fit, or even the fittest, man for the station of President (for he has 
 erred in judgment on some very important points), but because he seems 
 to be called for by the great mass of those opposed to Jackson ; and union 
 is essential to success. Lest I should be misunderstood in imputing to 
 him errors, I do not mean his general principles of government, but those 
 that are of a personal character, such as his acceptance of the office of 
 Secretary of State under Mr. Adams, and his duel with Randolph, etc., etc. 
 
 " You will, I am sure, excuse me for thus trespassing on your time. In 
 the hope and expectation of seeing you somewhere or somehow during the 
 summer, believe me, 
 
 " Most sincerely yours, 
 
 "A. SPENCER."
 
 1831.] CORRESPONDENCE. 40] 
 
 [FROM: COMMODORE STOCKTON.] 
 
 , August 19, 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : "We have had recently but little communication on the 
 subject of politics, and this letter may not perhaps be acceptable. 
 
 " The present posture of public affairs, however, tempts me to commu- 
 nicate to you some views which I, in common with many friends here and 
 at the South, entertain. Mr. Calhoun's friends, I presume, no longer hope 
 for his success ; his last address to the public has, in my opinion, settled 
 that matter. Mr. Clay cannot, in my poor opinion, succeed. The popu- 
 larity of General Jackson is on the wane. If you can get back to your 
 free-trade notions of 1824, and to the old Federal doctrine in relation to 
 the judiciary, and to some point on the subject of internal improvement 
 where the funds of the nation may be used safely for that purpose, without 
 encouraging the system of ' log-rolling,' so dangerous to all honest legis- 
 lation, your chance is good. 
 
 " Most truly, 
 
 "R. F. STOCKTON." 
 
 On the back of this letter is the following indorsement, in 
 Mr. Webster's hand-writing : 
 
 " Answered August 25. Glad to receive his letter. As to getting back, 
 difficulty is not in my position, but in that of the country. Country .cannot 
 go back cannot bear violent change. Said at the time (1824) I would not 
 vote to change back again. 1 As to judiciary, never altered my opinions, 
 that it is in danger." 
 
 [FBOM MB. GALES.] 
 
 "WASHINGTON, October 19, 1831. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I do not know that I am able, in reply to your late favor, 
 to afford you any encouraging information. The nomination of Mr. Wirt, 
 as far as I can perceive, will produce no defection from the ranks of Mr. 
 Clay's friends, but rather seems to have rallied them to his support. If the 
 antimasons do not eventually also support him, they will have the honor 
 of reflecting General Jackson ; for, as to yielding to the fanatical spirit of 
 that party which excludes all non-conformists from public employ, from 
 the jury-box, the witness-stand, and the communion-table, the thing is too 
 revolting, if it were possible. But the fact is, that, if our convention were 
 to yield every thing, it would accomplish nothing for the country. The 
 strength of Mr. Clay is not transferable. You will find, in the end, that he 
 has a strength in some States greater than the cause. 
 
 1 This refers, of course, to the tariff, see, and can see how it must have ex- 
 
 I have not been able to obtain from the pressed the character of this statesman, 
 
 representatives of Commodore Stockton whose opinions were never varied to suit 
 
 Mr. Webster's full answer. But what it the exigencies of nominations, at any 
 
 was in substance the reader can easily time in his whole career. 
 27
 
 402 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER [On. XVIL 
 
 "If we have been forbearing, it is because we would not incur the 
 reproach of sacrificing the cause to our own personal feelings. "We have 
 
 been deeply mortified at the course of Mr. R , Mr. A , Mr. Wirt (if, 
 
 in fact, he be with them), and such persons as Mr. B and Mr. S , 
 
 who have sacrificed to their pride and supposed personal interest their 
 principles and their friends. We are most unfortunate in finding in the 
 front rank against us those who ought to have led our own forlorn hope. 
 You may have heard before now that your own name was used as authority 
 
 for the impossibility of electing Mr. Clay. Mr. B denied to me having 
 
 used it ; but it was used by somebody. is the father of the intrigue 
 
 which procured the nomination of Mr. Wirt, which was literally made de 
 tails circumstantibus, as Mr. Walsh says, with the hope of forcing the De- 
 cember Convention to take a candidate of their selection. If there be any 
 mischief brewing in which he could have a hand, this promising young 
 gentleman is always at the bottom of it. He is the serpent that tempted 
 Mr. Wirt, whether he succeeded in seducing him or not, of which I am not 
 yet certain. Poor Mr. R ! 
 
 "The worst that can befall us is that the antimasons will force the 
 reelection of General Jackson. This is bad enough, to be sure ; but is it 
 not better than to subject the nation to the rule of a frantic fanaticism, or 
 of still more frantic Jacobinism, by the name of Nullification, even under 
 the cloak of Free Trade ? The General has a decent Cabinet at last (though 
 I have no sympathy whatever even with them), and it may be hoped would 
 not be allowed. furtTier to disgrace the country. We do not feel so confident 
 of what would happen under an antimasonic or nullification dynasty, and 
 would rather ' bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. 
 
 " We hope yet for the best. The antimasonic party, I think, except in 
 Vermont, is not on the increase ; in some parts it is on the wane. If it can 
 feel this, and especially if Mr. Wirt can feel it, there is yet a faint hope for 
 our cause. But, if there be not, let us die with harness on our backs, 
 having the consolation at least of the company of a noble army of martyrs. 
 
 " Upon these views, or any other, I shall be happy to have the advan- 
 tage of your information and counsel. They are my own purely, made up 
 in toy daily rides between my cottage and my office. 
 
 " With true respect and the highest consideration, I am 
 
 "Yours faithfully, 
 
 " Jo. GALES, JR. 
 "Hon. D. Webster." 
 
 [FROM JUDGE SPENCER.] 
 
 " ALBAJTT, November 24. 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I am very much obliged by your friendly letter of the 
 16th, and finding that we concur in opinion that, from my opinions, my 
 attendance on the Baltimore Convention would not be advisable, I shall 
 mot attend.
 
 1831.] CORRESPONDENCE. 403 
 
 " I hope I may be mistaken in believing that Mr. Clay's nomination en- 
 sures the reelection of General Jackson. I cannot, even in deference to 
 you, renounce the belief that, were Mr. Clay to decline, and should Mr. 
 "Wirt be nominated at Baltimore, he would probably be elected. I can 
 easily conceive that some of our friends may now declare their preference 
 of Jackson over Mr. Wirt, yet I do not believe, unless they are insane, they 
 would execute their threats. 
 
 " I feel anxious not to be misunderstood in recommending the course I 
 have, and I believe you do me justice. It appeared .to me that the first 
 and greatest object was to defeat the reelection of General Jackson, and 
 that our proceedings were to be subservient to that end. I believed, and 
 yet believe, that every well-informed man must be sensible that Mr. Clay 
 cannot be elected, because, in his support, the votes of the great body of 
 General Jackson's opposers cannot be united, for various causes, but prin- 
 cipally from the prevalence of antimasonry in this and several other States. 
 I may labor under false impressions as to some of the States, but I think 
 I know something of this State, and here I know he cannot get the elec- 
 toral vote. 
 
 " I did not think Mr. Clay's friends so irrational as to persevere in nomi 
 nating him, when his defeat and consequent depression were so apparent. 
 
 " I could not perceive any reasonable objection to Mr. Wirt or his prin- 
 ciples. Indeed, I thought that his nomination was a providential act to 
 save the nation from further dishonor and injury, and that all mfcn who 
 detested Jackson and his administration would cheerfully unite in his 
 support. 
 
 "I do not understand it to be the antim'asonic creed, 'that antima- 
 sonry alone is a principle broad enough to save the country and maintain 
 the Government.' Their creed is that the practical evils of Masonry, as 
 illustrated in New York, are of such an alarming nature, and so vitally 
 concern all good government, that it must be put down by public opinion. 
 They think, and certainly with a show of reason, that this can be done in 
 no other way than through the ballot-boxes. Mr. Wirt expressly disclaims 
 every thing like persecution, or making Masonry or antimasonry a test for 
 office. In short, as I understand the matter, he has done all that they ever 
 expect of him ; he has borne his testimony to the supremacy of the laws 
 and the free course of justice. 
 
 " It is undoubtedly true, as you suggest, that, even in New York, the 
 high Masons will not support Mr. Wirt, and would not under any circum- 
 stances; this we disregard, because their defection would be more than 
 compensated by antimasons from the Jackson ranks. 
 
 " I hope a part at least of New England will be found, a year hence, 
 sound in Mr. Clay's support, but I confess your recent election, especially 
 after Governor Lincoln's satisfactory letter, gives demonstration somewhat 
 alarming as regards your own State. 
 
 " It is our duty to offer up earnest supplications ' for long life to all 
 good men in office.' Bad men, however, have a remarkable tenacity of
 
 404 LIF E OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XVII. 
 
 life, and I fear they will live long enough, not, indeed, absolutely to rain 
 the country, but to bring on disorders and confusion, to put us back, God 
 only knows how long. We may live to see the Bank of the United States 
 put down and the judiciary destroyed. We now see, and feel, too, the 
 many evils already pressing on us by the misrule of this corrupt, mean, and 
 wicked Administration. 
 
 " I have one consolation : I have done all I could to avert these evils. 
 " I may avail myself of your kind invitation to write you, and I cer- 
 tainly will if I can say aught useful or interesting. 
 " With high respect and regard, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "A. SPENCER. 
 " Hon. Daniel Webster." 
 
 The National Republican Convention, which.' assembled at 
 Baltimore, nominated Mr. Clay for the Presidency, with great 
 unanimity and enthusiasm, and placed the name of John Sar 
 geant, of Pennsylvania, on the same ticket for the Yice-Presi- 
 dency. I am indebted to one of the members of that body, 
 the Hon. Hiram Ketchum, of New York, an intimate and 
 much-loved friend of Mr. Webster, for the following state- 
 ments : 
 
 " I have no letters from Mr. Webster in respect to Mr. Clay's nomina- 
 tion for the Presidency in 1831, but, previous to that nomination, I had 
 very full and free conversations with him in respect to it. He did not 
 favor the nomination of Mr. Clay, and I know that he desired the nomina- 
 tion for himself. I then, as in all subsequent time, was in favor of Mr. 
 Webster's nomination ; but National Republican friends here, with whom 
 I acted, overruled my preference, and I was compelled to say so to Mr. 
 Webster himself. He acquiesced, and the Convention, of which I was a 
 member, unanimously, by open nomination, every man rising in his place 
 and naming his candidate, put Mr. Clay in nomination for President, and 
 John Sargeant for Vice-President. During the session of the Convention 
 Mr. Webster passed through Baltimore, on his way to Washington, and 
 visited one of its sessions. After the convention had finished its work, 
 quite a large number of its members, I among them, went to Washington. 
 Mr. Webster and Mr. Nathan Appleton, then a member of the House of 
 Representatives from Massachusetts, invited us to meet Mr. Clay at dinner. 
 Several distinguished persons were present ; among them, the late Alex- 
 ander H. Everett, Governor Bradish, Senator Johnson, of Louisiana, etc. 
 I think there was very little confidence in the success of our ticket, yet I 
 went into the canvass with all the ardor of youth. Mr. A. H. Everett, on 
 that visit, dined with Mr. John Quincy Adams, who made no allusion to 
 the work of the Convention."
 
 1831.] CORRESPONDENCE. 44,5 
 
 The session of Congress which, followed this nomination of 
 Mr. Clay for the Presidency was not an eventful one. The only 
 subject in reference to which Mr. Webster made any considera- 
 ble exertion was that of a bill for the relief of insolvent debtors 
 of the United States, introduced and carried through the House 
 by Mr. Buchanan; to whose zealous devotion to this object, 
 and his successful lead in its accomplishment, Mr. "Webster paid 
 a high compliment in the Senate. After the termination of the 
 session, the following correspondence took place between them 
 in reference to the bill, which had become a law : 
 
 [FROM MR. BUCHANAN.] 
 
 " LAITCASTEK, September 13, 1831. 
 
 ." DEAB SIR : I enclose you the copy of a letter which I have addressed 
 to the Secretary of the Treasury, because I have taken the liberty of using 
 your name in it. If you consider the reference incorrect, it will afford me 
 pleasure to correct it immediately. In looking over your remarks on the 
 bill for the relief of insolvent debtors, I was forcibly struck with the lib- 
 eral and kind expressions which you used in relation to my exertions in 
 the House. Rest assured that they are duly appreciated by me, and that I 
 consider it ' praise, indeed, to be praised by you.' 
 
 " Should your recollection correspond with mine in relation to this bill, 
 if you thought proper to interpose, a word from you would have a pow- 
 erful effect in correcting the error into which the Attorney-General and 
 Secretary of the Treasury have fallen. 
 
 " Please to present my respectful compliments to Mrs. Webster, and be- 
 lieve me to be truly yours, 
 
 " JAMES BUCHANAN. 
 
 " Hon. Daniel Webster." 
 
 [TO MR. BUCHANAN.] 
 
 "Bosios, September 24, 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your 
 letter of the 18th instant, enclosing the copy of one from yourself to the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, relative to the construction of the act of the last 
 session for the relief of certain insolvents. Your communication furnished 
 me with the first information of the construction, proposed to be put on 
 that act, at the departments. I confess I am quite surprised by it. No 
 such construction ever occurred to me as being possible, nor was ever sug- 
 gested, to my knowledge, by any one. The language of the act appears to 
 me to be, as it was intended it should be, general, and unambiguous. I 
 must acknowledge I can see no ground, upon which its application can
 
 406 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVII 
 
 be restricted in the manner proposed, -which I am quite sure would be, as 
 you say, quite at war with the intentions of every one of those who con- 
 curred in the law. 
 
 " With the most unfeigned respect for the opinions of the Attorney- 
 General, I cannot persuade myself to think that he has taken the right 
 view of the provisions of the act. If he has done so, we were very clumsy 
 
 law-makers. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, with regard, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MB. BUCHANAN.] 
 
 " BOSTON, September 34, 1831. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : The decision at the Treasury, on our (or more properly 
 on your) act of the last session, astonished me. I had never dreamed of 
 any such thing. If you think the enclosed expression of opinon will do 
 any good, you are at liberty to communicate it. 
 
 " I thank you for your kind and friendly expressions ; and, as I did you 
 no more than justice, in regard to your agency in the passing of the Insol- 
 vents' Relief Bill, I trust I shall on no occasion do you less. I would ex- 
 press the hope of seeing you at Washington, in the winter, if it were not 
 that such an expression might imply an expectation that you are not to be 
 elsewhere at that time. Not knowing at all how that may be, I must con- 
 fine myself to the tender of general good wishes, and to the assurances of 
 esteem and regard. 
 
 "D. W." 
 
 The following letters relate to the purchase of his father's 
 farm; to the fragment of his autobiography which he wrote 
 this year ; to the strong interest which he took in the removal 
 of Mr. Jeremiah Mason to Boston, and to the marriage of his 
 brother-in-law, Mr. Paige. 
 
 [TO HIS NEPHEW, MR. C. B. HADDOCK.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, February 6, 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR NEPHEW : I heard from you at the early part of the session, 
 and have omitted to answer longer than I intended. I was at Salisbury 
 after I saw you, and gave directions about the farm. I think it best to put 
 an end to separate interests there as soon as convenient. I suppose you 
 have by this time obtained your license to sell. My hope and expectation 
 now are to be in Boston the first day of April ; perhaps a little earlier. 
 If you could arrange the sale for about the middle or 20th of April, I could 
 conveniently attend it, as I propose to visit Salisbury in that month. In
 
 1831.] CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 407 
 
 May and June I doubt whether it mil be in my power. If events come 
 about according to my wishes, I hope to run away to Ohio about the 1st 
 of May. 
 
 "Partly on my own motion, and partly at the request of friends, I have 
 been putting into writing something of my early history, dates, incidents, 
 etc., touching early years. I have not made much progress, nor is there, 
 indeed, much to be said, but I have run over a few sheets of paper. It has 
 occurred to me, in connection with this subject, to suggest to you the ex- 
 pediency, as of your own motion, of writing to Rev. Dr. Wood, of Bos- 
 cawen, who, I hope, is yet living. He may have few or no incidents to 
 relate, but his general recollection may possibly be worth preserving. I 
 need not enlarge ; you will understand me. It may be well to tell him 
 that the object is to preserve materials, not to be used in his lifetime or 
 mine. I wish he would say something of my brother, whom he knew so 
 well and so long. 
 
 " The book, 1 1 have seen. It is well enough, except the awful face, which 
 seems to be placed in the front of the volume, like a scarecrow in a corn- 
 field, to frighten off all intruders. 
 
 " Pray, let me hear from you, and tell me all you have to say, de omni- 
 lua rebus. We have a most severe winter here ; this is as frosty a morning 
 as might become the neighborhood of Kearsarge. Mrs. Webster desires 
 her regards, and I am 
 
 " Dear Charles, always truly yours, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MR. MASON.] 
 
 "NEW TOEK, AprU^, 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I came here Saturday, to bring my wife back to Bos- 
 ton, after spending a few days here with her friends. Having leisure this 
 p. M., I incline to give it to the purpose of writing to you ; but I am not 
 about to speak on the subject of the resignation of our wise ministry at 
 Washington, or any other public subject. It is to talk of yourself. Before 
 I left home last fall, I had resolved to make one more effort to bring you 
 up to Boston. For particular reasons then existing, I was induced to post- 
 pone the mentioning of the subject. I write now simply to execute that 
 intention ; and to entreat you, earnestly, to consider the expediency of 
 such a measure. I will not presume to enter into the considerations which 
 recommend it, at least in my opinion ; but I will say that my opinion is 
 strong and decisive on the point. I am persuaded a removal will add to 
 your happiness, and that of your family. You will find as much profes- 
 sional employment as you may wish to engage in ; and you will find your- 
 self surrounded by warm friends, who estimate you as you deserve to be 
 estimated. Your boys are now provided for. Your daughters are better 
 
 1 A volume of Mr. Webster's speeches.
 
 408 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVII. 
 
 at Boston than Portsmouth ; at Boston, you will find associations, topics, 
 congenial minds, and objects of greater interest than now surround you. 
 New York, perhaps, might be still better. But Boston is something. 
 
 " I am persuaded you dislike the idea of removal, and that that is the 
 main obstacle. But that is a thing of a week. Once settled, and all that 
 thing is over. 
 
 " My dear sir, although it would add greatly to my happiness that you 
 should come to Boston, I would not advise it, certainly, if I did not think 
 it would promote yours, and promote it greatly. Indeed, I reproach my- 
 self for not having urged this point with you oftener. I wish to do it now 
 with earnestness ; I am sure I do it with sincerity. 
 
 " Ever truly and affectionately your friend, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MBS. A. P. WEBSTER. 1 ] 
 
 " BOSTON, June 14, 1831. 
 
 ' MY DEAR SISTER : Tour letter has come to hand quite apropos. It 
 is our intention to set off on Thursday morning for Boscawen, by way of 
 Nashua village. Weather being favorable, we may be expected Thursday 
 afternoon at Nashua, and shall be happy to have you go north with us. I am 
 tinder the necessity of being at Concord at noon on Friday, so that I shall 
 be obliged to put you to the distress of an early rising on that day. In ad- 
 dition to Mrs. Webster, Julia will come along. Edward begins to beg 
 hard to go, and, as his mother is on his side, he also may prevail. We shall 
 have room for you. This is a great day with us, as Mr. Paige is to be 
 married this evening. 
 
 " The dawn is overcast, etc." 
 
 " The happy pair set out to-morrow or next day for the Springs, the 
 Falls, and other points of the grand tour. 
 " Give my best regards to Mrs. Abbott. 
 
 " Yours always affectionately, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER. 
 
 "P. S. Julia wrote you yesterday, so that, probably, your house- 
 hold will learn our intentions, that is to say, provided you have left a 
 secretary to attend to your correspondence." 
 
 In the course of this year, Mr. "Walsh, the editor of the 
 Philadelphia Quarterly Review, desired to have an article re- 
 viewing Mr. Webster's recently published speeches. It was 
 written for him, at the request of Judge Story, by Mr. Ticknor, 
 and appeared in his eighteenth number. It was subsequently 
 
 1 Then at Nashua.
 
 1831.] CORRESPONDENCE. 409 
 
 reprinted, and largely circulated in pamphlet. The following 
 correspondence relates to the article and the reprint : 
 
 [TO MB. TICKNOB.] 
 
 " Saturday Morning. 
 
 " DEAB SIE : I received a copy of the Quarterly, but, before I had read 
 the article, lent it to Mr. Button. He has returned it with this note. 
 Yesterday, I went carefully through the article. It is all that I could 
 possibly desire. There is nothing that need be changed. If it should be 
 printed separately, room would be more at command, and there are pos- 
 sibly one or two points which might be a little more expanded. I have 
 made some attempt to see you ; which I shall renew so soon as the ' all- 
 conquering sun shall intermit his wrath.' I hope you are alive to-day. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " D. W " 
 
 [TO MB. TICKNOR.] 
 
 " Thursday Morning. 
 
 " DEAB SIB : I believe things will be put in train for a reprint, and, as 
 you have leisure, will beg of you to think of the expediency of expanding 
 two topics a little more. 
 
 " 1. The nullification topic, about which we have conversed. 
 " 2. The finance topic, with a pretty cogent page or two, in favor 
 of maintaining the national bank. 
 
 " In mustering over some old papers the other day, I found a speech, on 
 the subject of the present bank. I did not stop to read it, and, like every- 
 body else, had quite forgotten it. It may contain something. I will send 
 it to you on my return. 
 
 " "We are off at nine o'clock for Boscawen. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " D. WEBSTEB. 
 "Mr. Ticknor." 
 
 [TO MB. TICKNOB.] 
 
 1831. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : I have had time to add but very little to the sheets 
 you have already had, and no time to read over any thing. But I will en- 
 deavor between this and nine o'clock this p. M. to bring the important 
 
 narrative down to 1816. 1 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " D. WEBSTEB. 
 
 1 The autobiography, which was, from Mr. Ticknor, to whom it was entrusted 
 its first inception, in the possession of sheet by sheet, as it was written.
 
 ilO LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVII 
 
 " N. B. I have seen no such Congress for talents as the fourteenth. It 
 commenced its first session December, '15, and terminated its second March, 
 '17. If you nm over the Journal, you will see that the House of Repre- 
 sentatives was particularly strong. 
 
 " I do not know whether there is any thing of mine, Congressional, 
 earlier than my return to Congress in 1823, of interest, beyond what you 
 have. 
 
 " I had a hand, with Mr. Eppes and others, in overthrowing Mr. Mon- 
 roe's conscription, 1814, and [there is] a long speech on that subject, in 
 manuscript. 1 But I do not think it worth while to notice it. 
 
 " So of my resolutions in 1813. They were right our Government was 
 completely cajoled by France, but whether it is worth while to allude to 
 that now, I know not, but I doubt whether it is. I will be at home thi 
 evening, if you want to talk, and will send me word. 
 
 " D. W." 
 1 The speech is now lost.
 
 1832.] THE TARIFF SYSTEM. 411 
 
 CHAPTEK XYIII. 
 
 1831-1832. 
 
 MODIFICATION OF THE TARIFF BILL TO RENEW THE CHARTER OB 
 
 THE BANK PRESIDENT JACKSON'S " VETO " SPEECH ON THE 
 
 PRESIDENT'S OBJECTIONS REJECTION OF MR. VAN BUREN AS 
 
 MINISTER TO ENGLAND REPORT ON THE APPORTIONMENT OF 
 
 REPRESENTATIVES FIRST PURCHASE AT MARSHFIELD. 
 
 THE session of Congress which commenced in December, 
 1831, and extended to July, 1832, was fruitful in events 
 and in discussions that were to affect the country for a long 
 period of time. It was at this session that an effort was made 
 to overthrow the tariff system; that the bill to renew the 
 charter of the Bank of the United States was passed by Con- 
 gress and " vetoed " by the President ; and that the Senate re- 
 fused to confirm the nomination of Mr. Van Buren as Minister 
 to Great Britain. 
 
 The tariff system under which the manufactures of the coun- 
 try had been carried on since 1824 had established the general 
 principle of protection as a settled policy. On this ground, and 
 because the legislation of Congress had strongly tended to force 
 capital into manufactures, Mr. Webster supported the system. 
 He was unwilling to go back, because he was satisfied that the 
 industrial pursuits of the country could not bear the change. 
 In the winter of 1831-'32, the subject was first introduced into 
 the Senate by Mr. Clay, who offered a resolution, declaring that 
 the duties on imported articles, which did not come into com- 
 petition with similar articles made or produced in the United
 
 412 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVIII. 
 
 States, ought to be forthwith abolished, except the duties on 
 wines and silks, and that these ought to be reduced. He pro- 
 posed that the Committee of Finance be instructed to report a 
 bill accordingly. 
 
 Mr. Clay was led to this step toward the abolition and re- 
 duction of certain classes of duties by the fact that the public 
 debt was nearly extinguished, and that the Government would 
 no longer need such a revenue as it was now receiving. But he 
 meant to take the step without abandoning the principle of pro- 
 tection. Accordingly, in the elaborate speech which he deliv- 
 ered in support of his resolution, he declared, repeatedly and 
 emphatically, that this principle was not to be surrendered, 
 either by a sudden or a gradual abolition of the duties on the 
 protected articles. A long and occasionally angry discussion 
 ensued a gathering of the clouds that portended the coming 
 storm. The political party which, in general, supported the 
 Administration of General Jackson, and which intended to 
 reelect him to the Presidency, was then divided into two sec- 
 tions, in the Senate, on the subject of a protective tariff. One 
 of these sections adhered to the protective system ; the other 
 was bitterly hostile to it. The latter was led by Mr. Hayne, of 
 South Carolina, who, in answering Mr. Clay, reopened the whole 
 subject, attacking both the policy and the constitutional right 
 of protection, and throwing out many intimations of the dangers 
 that threatened the Union if the protective system should be 
 retained. He did not, however, again directly introduce the 
 doctrines of nullification. 
 
 As the discussion proceeded, the subject became complicated 
 with that of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, and 
 with the question, to what committee Mr. Clay's resolution 
 should be sent. At length, with many other propositions, the 
 whole subject was referred to the Committee on Manufactures. 
 Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, chairman of that committee, re- 
 ported a bill to reduce the duties on certain articles which were 
 not in competition with articles manufactured in this country, 
 and reserving the other subjects for a further report. This was 
 assailed by the antiprotection party as a virtual indorsement 
 of Mr. Clay's plan, and a confirmation of the protective system. 
 Another long and exciting discussion followed, and, on the sng-
 
 1832.] DISCUSSION ON THE TARIFF. 
 
 gestion of constitutional doubts whether a bill for reducing 
 duties could originate in the Senate, the bill, on the 30th of 
 March, 1832, was laid upon the table, to await the action of the 
 House of Representatives. 
 
 A bill from the House afterward came into the Senate, which 
 made considerable changes in the existing duties. In the Senate 
 it was amended, and on these amendments the two houses dis- 
 agreed ; but the result of a conference was that the bill was 
 finally passed, the Senate receding from its amendments. It 
 reduced the duties to what might be called a revenue standard, 
 on many articles, leaving woollen and cotton goods and iron as 
 they previously stood. It was, therefore, denounced by Mr. 
 Hayne as an adherence to the protective system, which, he said, 
 it recognized as the settled policy of the country. It was, he 
 asserted, " neither more nor less than the resolution of the Sen- 
 ator from Kentucky reduced to the form of a law." He con- 
 cluded with the declaration that " the hopes of the South are at 
 an end, and, as far as their prosperity is dependent on Federal 
 legislation, their ruin is sealed." 
 
 In all this discussion Mr. Webster took no other part than 
 to intervene occasionally for the proper adjustment of particular 
 duties, and to express his disapprobation of the manner in which 
 the conference committee of the Senate had receded from an 
 amendment raising the existing duties on woollens. He was, 
 in truth, watching this discussion with great but almost silent 
 anxiety, as he well knew it to be the forerunner of events in the 
 South that he had long anticipated as possible, and because the 
 relations to this subject of many of the supporters of the Ad- 
 ministration were to have a serious effect on the future peace 
 of the country. Mr. Calhoun occupied the chair of the Senate 
 as Yice-President. Upon some remark by Mr. Clay concerning 
 his opinions, in the course of this debate, he broke the silence 
 of the Chair so far as to say that he held the protective system 
 to be unconstitutional. He had already put forth a pamphlet, 
 which contained a labored defence of nullification, which Mr. 
 Webster regarded as " far the ablest and most plausible, and 
 therefore the most dangerous, vindication of that particular form 
 of revolution which has yet appeared." 1 Mr. Calhoun had 
 
 1 Correspondence, i., 526.
 
 414 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVIII. 
 
 been elected Yice-President by the same conglomerate party 
 that had elected General Jackson to the presidency ; and what 
 the effect of an attempt at nullification of the tariff might be 
 upon that -party, and upon the course of the Administration, 
 was at this moment entirely problematical. To enter, there- 
 fore, at this time, upon a labored defence of the principle of 
 protection, and the constitutional right of Congress to enforce 
 it, appeared to Mr. Webster both superfluous and inexpedient. 
 He was himself in no degree responsible for its original intro- 
 duction into the policy of the country ; and now that there were 
 a considerable number of the leading friends of the Administra- 
 tion in Congress determined to continue it a number suffi- 
 ciently large, when added to the votes of the opposition, to up- 
 hold it as the decisive determination of Congress he con- 
 sidered it to be rather his duty to forecast the measures by 
 which the authority of Congress was to be upheld against the 
 threatened nullification, and by which the President and his 
 supporters should be induced and enabled to encounter that re- 
 sistance. 
 
 But there were other discussions and measures of this session 
 in respect to which Mr. Webster felt obliged to take a part that 
 necessarily prevented any close political sympathy, at this time, 
 between him and the President, or the President's party, which 
 might otherwise have sprung out of Mr. Webster's refutation, 
 in 1830, of the doctrines of nullification. He was not only 
 acting with the opposition, which had nominated Mr. Clay for 
 the presidency, but, at the very beginning of that long warfare 
 respecting the Bank of the United States, which was now about 
 to enter so largely into the politics and the legislation of the 
 country, his convictions respecting the utility and necessity of 
 such an institution led him to support the application of the 
 existing bank for a renewal of its charter, and, consequently, 
 to encounter the hostility which General Jackson directed 
 against it. 
 
 It is quite unnecessary, to any elucidation of Mr. Webster's 
 course on this subject, to inquire who was responsible for the 
 original antagonism between President Jackson and the bank. 
 On the one side, it was charged that the Administration had 
 been foiled in an attempt improperly to control the election of
 
 1832.] CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE BANK. 415 
 
 a local board of directors of one of the branches of the bank 
 for electioneering purposes. On the other side, it was said that 
 the managers of the bank had entered the field of politics for 
 the purpose of using it as an instrument to defeat the reelection 
 of General Jackson, and that its application for a renewal of its 
 charter at the present session of Congress, more than three 
 years before its charter would expire, was designed to embarrass 
 the Administration with a question on which its friends would 
 be divided, and to throw that question into the excitements of 
 the presidential election in such a manner as to make it operate 
 in favor of the prospects of Mr. Clay. Into these personal con 
 troversies Mr. Webster did not choose to enter. I have discov- 
 ered no evidence, either in public or private sources, that he 
 advised an application for the renewal of the bank charter at 
 the present session ; but he was undoubtedly of opinion that, if 
 the bank was not to be continued, the period was not a day too 
 long to enable it to wind up concerns of such vast magnitude, 
 affecting the interests and business of the whole country. He 
 told the Senate that he desired to have the question treated as a 
 great public subject ; to have it considered as statesmen Should 
 consider it, and with as little mixture as possible of all minor 
 motives. He reminded them of the fact that, two years and a 
 half previously, the President of the United States had called 
 the attention of Congress to the subject of the continuance of 
 the bank ; that this invitation had been more than once re- 
 peated ; that the subject had been everywhere discussed, and 
 that the public interest now demanded a decision upon it. 
 
 The truth in respect to the course of President Jackson on 
 this subject is that, when the bill for continuing the charter of 
 the bank was brought into Congress at this session, it was not 
 known that he entertained opinions hostile to the constitutional 
 power of Congress to create such an institution. If he had such 
 opinions, they were not known to his own political friends in 
 Congress any more than they were to his opponents ; and there 
 was, therefore, no reason, on this or other grounds, to anticipate 
 that the bill would not meet his official approval. Accordingly, 
 Mr. Webster, in the first speech which he made on this subject, 
 on the 25th of May (1832), entered into no direct argument on 
 the point of constitutional power, but confined himself almost
 
 4:16 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVIII. 
 
 wholly to the expediency of renewing the charter. He did, 
 however, express an opinion on the power of the States to create 
 banks of issue, which had an important bearing on the duty of 
 Congress to regulate and control the paper currency of the coun- 
 try, by maintaining a bank capable of having this effect. As 
 an original question, unaffected by the practice of forty years, 
 he considered it very doubtful whether the States had any con- 
 stitutional authority to authorize the circulation of bank paper. 
 The Constitution having conferred upon Congress exclusive 
 power to provide and regulate the metallic currency, it was, in 
 Mr. "Webster's view, necessary to regard this power as including 
 that of deciding how far any other currency should take its 
 place, or act as its substitute, and what the substitute was to be. 
 Congress can only do this through the agency of a bank estab- 
 lished by its authority. Beyond the statement of this position, 
 and its appropriate illustrations, he did not enlarge upon any of 
 the constitutional aspects of the subject, but confined his argu- 
 ment to the necessity and usefulness of the bank, treating the 
 question as purely one of public, national, and universal interest, 
 and making no allusion whatever to any of the party topics 
 connected, or supposed to be connected, with it. The speech is 
 contained at length in the third volume of his works, and is very 
 important. 
 
 Able and instructive as it was, on all the financial and pru- 
 dential questions embraced in the question of continuing the 
 bank, it was followed, in a few days, by another speech, which 
 contained some very profound and searching views respecting 
 the power of Congress to confer on the States authority to tax 
 a franchise created by Congress in the exercise of its constitu- 
 tional powers. This topic came into consideration in conse- 
 quence of an amendment of the charter of the bank, offered by 
 Mr. Moore, of Alabama, to authorize the States to tax the offices 
 and branches of the bank, according to the amount of their 
 loans and issues, as other banks or other property are liable to 
 taxation. It will be remembered that the Supreme Court of 
 the United States had decided, in reference to the existing 
 charter, that the States could not tax the bank or its branches ; 
 and it was now proposed that this power should be expressly 
 given to the States. Mr. "Webster resisted this proposition, not
 
 1832.] CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE BANK. 417 
 
 only because it would enable the States to drive the bank out 
 of their limits, but because he did not admit that Congress has 
 the power to confer upon a State authority to tax a franchise 
 created by Congress for national purposes. His argument on 
 this subject, condensed into a single sentence, rested upon the 
 position that the restraint against taxing a national franchise 
 is imposed upon the States by the Constitution, and not by 
 any law which Congress may enact ; that, as the restraint 
 does not originate with Congress, but with a higher author- 
 ity, viz., the Constitution, Congress cannot dispense with or 
 remove it. On this point he expressed himself with great 
 earnestness, and he succeeded in preventing the adoption of 
 the amendment. 1 
 
 The bill to continue the charter of the bank passed both 
 Houses of Congress by decisive majorities, 2 and was sent to the 
 President. He returned it without his signature, and with a 
 message assigning his reasons for not approving it. This 
 " veto " message for the first time made known to the country 
 that General Jackson held the bank to be unconstitutipnal ; 
 and that he held himself at liberty to act upon this opinion, 
 against the whole current of congressional legislation on the 
 
 O o C-J 
 
 subject, and against an express decision of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States. It opened a chasm between the Presi- 
 
 1 This very striking argument appears vanced that the States have no constitutional 
 
 . v. 1 , .> ,,4.4.*:, ~f nv,; Q f power to establish banks of circulation, but 
 
 to have arrested the attention of Chief- Sever that Congress might not introduce into 
 
 Justice Marshall, who, m acknowledg- the charter a restraining principle, which 
 
 ment of the receipt of Mr. Webster's might prohibit branches altogether, or re- 
 
 >pphps on thp hank wrntp a<* fol quire the assent of a State to their introduc- 
 
 speecnes on the bank, wrote as ^ Qr a principle which might sn bject them 
 
 lows : to State taxation. This may be considered 
 
 -, not as granting power of taxation to a State, 
 
 [FROM CHIEF-JUSTICE MARSHALL.] for a g ^ te pOB ! e sses that power, but as with- 
 
 " RICHMOND, June 6, 1832. drawing a bar which the Constitution opposes 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I thank you very sin- to the exercise of this power over a franchise 
 
 cerely for the copy, with which you favored created by Congress for national purposes, 
 
 me, of your speeches on the bill for renewing unless the constitution of the franchise in its 
 
 the charter of the Bank of the United States, creation has this quality engrafted on it. I, 
 
 I need not say that I consider an accommoda- however, am far from undertaking to dissent 
 
 tion of the tariff question itself as scarcely from your proposition ; I only say it is new, 
 
 more interesting to the country than the pas- and Iponder on it. 
 
 sage of that bill. Your argument presents "With great and respectful esteem, lam 
 the subject in its strongest point of view, your obedient servant, ^ 
 nnd to me seems unanswerable. Mr. Ritchie, J. MARSHALL. 
 in his Inquirer, informs the people of Vir- "P. 8. I only meant to express my obh- 
 einia that Mr. Tazewell has refuted you com- gation for your attention, and I have betrayed 
 pletely. This he may have done, in the opin- myself into the politics of the day. 
 ion of Mr. Ritchie. I have not seen Mr. 2 The vote in the Senate stood 28 to 
 Tazewell's speech, and do not understand O A u WP orp all awarp of what we owe 
 from the Inquirer whether his refutation ap- 20 - , w , e ^ re , a . 11 aw .' 
 plies to your speech in favor of the bill, or to to the admirable pilotage which carried 
 that against the amendment offered by Mr. us through the Senate." (General T. Cad- 
 Moore. By the way, your argument against wallader to Mr. Webster, July 7, 1832 
 that amendment is lounded in an idea which " """' 
 to me is quite novel. I had often heard it ad- Mo.) 
 28
 
 4J8 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XVIIL 
 
 dent and Mr. "Webster which could never be filled or passed ; 
 for the doctrines of the message were diametrically opposite to 
 all the views respecting the powers of Congress, and respecting 
 the office of the Supreme Court as the interpreter of the Con 
 stitution, which Mr. Webster had held from his first entrance 
 into public life, and which were as inseparable from his public 
 character as they were thoroughly incorporated into all his in- 
 tellectual habits. As he had taken the leading part in conduct- 
 ing the bill through the Senate, it appeared to devolve on him 
 to examine the grounds of the veto message. There was little 
 probability that the bill could obtain the requisite constitutional 
 vote of two-thirds of the members of each House, in order to 
 make it a law notwithstanding the objections of the President. 
 But the doctrines of the message could not be passed by in 
 silence. 
 
 The speech which Mr. Webster delivered on these doctrines, 
 upon the llth of July (1832), was grave, and as courteous tow- 
 ard the President as could be demanded, but it was exceedingly 
 plain and emphatic. It was not answered then, nor has it ever 
 been answered since. The position taken by the President, that 
 every official, who takes an oath to support the Constitution, 
 swears to support it " as he understands it," and that, if he un- 
 derstands it differently from the construction that has been 
 given to it by the Supreme Court of the United States, he is at 
 liberty, in his official action, to follow out his own convictions, 1 
 was, it is right to say, refuted by Mr. Webster. It has never 
 commended itself to the sound judgment of the most enlightened 
 portion of the nation, of any party ; and, although it has been 
 occasionally reasserted by public men, in justification of par- 
 ticular acts, it has never been successfully defended. In the 
 excitement of the time, the party that followed General Jack- 
 
 1 The following is the position of when it may be brought before them for 
 
 President Jackson's celebrated "veto" judicial decision. The opinion of the 
 
 message : " Each public officer, who takes judges has no more authority over Con- 
 
 an oath to support the Constitution, gress than the opinion of Congress has 
 
 swears to support it as he understands over the judges ; and on that point the 
 
 it, and not as it is understood by others. President is independent of both. The 
 
 It is as much the duty of the House of authority of the Supreme Court must not, 
 
 Representatives, of the Senate, and of the therefore, be permitted to control the 
 
 President, to decide upon the constitu- Congress, or the Executive, when acting 
 
 tionality of any bill or resolution which in their legislative capacities, but to have 
 
 may be presented to them for passage or only such influence as the force of their 
 
 approval, as it is of the supreme judges, reasoning may deserve."
 
 1832.] CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE BANK. 419 
 
 son yielded their assent to this doctrine, because it was advanced 
 ~by him ; but it did not become a permanent dogma in their 
 political creed, and it will never attain that rank in the opin- 
 ions of any party that means to give a just effect and operation 
 to the provisions of the Constitution. 
 
 In order to a correct understanding of the grounds of Mr. 
 Webster's denial of the President's position, it is proper to ex- 
 plain the precise situation to which the President applied the 
 claim of the Executive to judge of the constitutional validity of 
 laws presented for his approval. The existing charter of the 
 bank had been pronounced by the Supreme Court to be a valid 
 law, duly enacted under the Constitution. It was, therefore, a 
 statute, in force as the law of the land, when a bill was sent to 
 the President to continue it for a further term of years beyond 
 its existing limitation. The President refused to sign this bill, 
 upon the ground that the original charter was unconstitutional. 
 A large part of the message was taken up with an argument to 
 refute the decision of the Supreme Court affirming the con- 
 stitutional validity of a law now in operation. The claim of 
 the President thus came to be, that the Executive, when called 
 upon in his legislative capacity to sign a bill continuing a law 
 that has been pronounced constitutional by the Supreme Court, 
 is at liberty to deny that it is, or was, a valid law, and there- 
 fore ought not to be continued. Taken in connection with the 
 language of the message, and its broad position respecting the 
 meaning of the oath to support the Constitution, this doctrine 
 was regarded by Mr. Webster as disorganizing and revolution- 
 ary ; for it could be extended to the execution of laws, just as 
 readily as to their reenactment or continuance, and would leave 
 every public officer to judge what laws he would carry into 
 effect. 
 
 Mr. Webster never denied that the President, when called 
 upon to decide whether a law is to le enacted, may apply his 
 own judgment to the question whether it is within the scope 
 of the Constitution, although all other branches of the Govern- 
 ment have repeatedly decided that similar laws are constitu- 
 tional. He did, indeed, always hold that decisions of the 
 Supreme Court have a greater force, in concluding questions of 
 constitutional power, than is accorded to them by simply weigh-
 
 420 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XVIII. 
 
 ing tlieir reasoning. In his view, the Supreme Court was 
 created for the express purpose of acting as the official inter- 
 preter of the Constitution ; yet he did not deny that, when a 
 law is proposed to be enacted, all who are to perform a part in 
 that enactment must judge of its constitutional validity, for the 
 purpose of governing their legislative action. But this was not 
 the limit to which the President confined himself. He claimed 
 the right to say that an existing law, pronounced constitution- 
 ally valid by the Supreme Court, was constitutionally invalid, 
 and for this reason to refuse to sign a bill continuing it in force, 
 He, or the writer of the message, failed to see that there is a 
 clear distinction between such a case and a case where the 
 President is called upon, in his legislative capacity, not to con- 
 tinue a law that has been expressly pronounced constitutional 
 by the Supreme Court, but to act upon a law on the same sub- 
 ject that has not itself been submitted to the adjudication of 
 that tribunal. Overlooking this distinction, the message took 
 an extreme and untenable ground, which makes the official 
 oath to support the Constitution nothing but a declaration 
 that it is to be supported as the person taking the oath 
 understands it, in respect both to laws that have been 
 enacted and have been directly adjudicated as constitutional 
 by the Supreme Court, and in respect to laws that are to 
 be enacted and have not been subjected to that judicial re- 
 vision. 
 
 Such, in substance, was the commencement of the famous 
 controversy between President Jackson and the Bank of the 
 United States a controversy that was destined to agitate the 
 country for many years. Mr. Webster's early relation to it was 
 limited to what I have now described. From convictions of 
 public duty, he carried the bill, to recharter the bank, through 
 the Senate. From convictions of what he owed to the Consti- 
 tution and its just interpretation, he resisted the doctrines of 
 the "veto" message. Time has made all that was personal 
 or merely political in these controversies of very little im- 
 portance. But it has not seen the powers of Congress to 
 create banking institutions, as those powers were maintained 
 by Mr. "Webster, finally abandoned or renounced by the na- 
 tion ; nor has it seen a national sanction given to the doc-
 
 1832.] REJECTION CF MR. VAN BUREN. 421 
 
 trine that the constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States are not binding upon the other depart- 
 ments of the Government, in respect to the matters which 
 they decide. 
 
 On the 20th of July, 1829, Mr. Yan Buren, Secretary of 
 State in General Jackson's first Cabinet, gave instructions to 
 Mr. McLane, then going to the court of England as minister of 
 the United States, on the subject of colonial trade. By the con- 
 vention of 1815, reciprocity of intercourse was established be- 
 tween the United States and Great Britain, but this arrangement 
 was not extended to the British West Indies. The result was the 
 passage of various discriminating and retaliatory acts on both 
 sides. At length, in 1825, the English Parliament passed an 
 act, offering reciprocity in the West India trade, so far as the 
 mere carrying-trade was concerned, to all nations that might 
 accept the offer within one year. The Administration of Mr. 
 John Quincy Adams did not avail itself of this offer, preferring 
 to accomplish by treaty the free admission of our products into 
 the British islands for consumption, and not regarding the 
 admission of our vessels as an object that ought to be severed 
 from that of our productions. This purpose had not been 
 accomplished when Mr. Adams went- out of office, and the 
 direct trade between the United States and the British West 
 Indies remained closed in consequence of the mutually re- 
 taliatory legislation. Mr. McLane was instructed by Mr. Yan 
 Buren to reopen this subject, and in these instructions the 
 Secretary said : 
 
 " The opportunities which you hare derived from a participation in 
 our public counsels, as well as other sources of information, will enable you 
 to speak with confidence (as far as you may deem it proper and useful so 
 to do) of the respective parts taken by those to whom the administration 
 of this Government is now committed, in relation to the course heretofore 
 pursued upon the subject of the colonial trade. Their views upon that 
 point have been submitted to the people of the United States, and the 
 counsels by which your conduct is now directed are the result of the 
 judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late Admin- 
 istration was amenable for its acts. It should be sufficient that the claims 
 set up by them, and which caused the interruption of the trade in ques- 
 tion, have been explicitly abandoned by those who first asserted them, and 
 are not revived by their successors. If Great Britain deems it adverse to
 
 422 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XVIU 
 
 her interests to allow us to participate in the trade with her colonies, 
 and finds nothing in the extension of it to others to induce her to 
 apply the same rule to us, she will, we hope, be sensible of the pro- 
 priety of placing her refusal on those grounds. To set up the acts of 
 the late Administrations as the cause of forfeiture of privileges which 
 would otherwise be extended to the people of the United States, would, 
 under existing circumstances, be unjust in itself, and could not fail to 
 excite their deepest sensibility. The tone of feeling which a course so 
 unwise and so untenable is calculated to produce would, doubtless, be 
 greatly aggravated by the consciousness that Great Britain has, by order 
 in council, opened her colonial ports to Russia and France, notwith- 
 standing a similar omission on their part to accept the terms offered 
 by the act of July, 1825. You cannot press this view of the subject 
 too earnestly upon the consideration of the British ministry. It has bear- 
 ings and relations which reach beyond the immediate question under 
 discussion. 
 
 " I will add nothing as to the impropriety of suffering any feelings, 
 that find their origin in the past pretensions of this Government, to have 
 an adverse influence upon the present conduct of Great Britain." 
 
 On the dissolution of General Jackson's first Cabinet, Mr. 
 Van Buren was appointed by the President as minister to 
 Great Britain. He had gone abroad, and been accredited by 
 the government to which he was sent, before his nomination 
 could be acted upon by the Senate. The instructions which he 
 had given to Mr. McLane were regarded by the whole opposi- 
 tion as an appeal to the favor of the British Government, 
 grounded upon reflections on the past conduct of the preceding 
 Administration in a matter of foreign intercourse, and convey- 
 ing intimations that those now in power in this country did not 
 intend to assert pretensions which had by their assertion de- 
 prived us of privileges accorded to other nations. For these 
 reasons, Mr. Yan Buren's nomination was rejected by the Sen- 
 ate. The part taken by Mr. Webster in this rejection may be 
 fully understood by examining his remarks explanatory of the 
 vote he intended to give. 1 He placed that vote entirely upon 
 ;he party tone and character which he found in the instruc- 
 tions given by Mr. Yan Buren, as Secretary of State, to Mr. 
 McLane, in reference to a claim advanced by our Govern- 
 ment in diplomatic intercourse. Speaking of Mr. Yan Buren'a 
 letter, he said : 
 
 - Works, Hi., 357, el seq.
 
 1832.] REJECTION OF MR. VAN BUREX. 423 
 
 " Sir, I submit to you, and to the candor of all just men, if I am not 
 right in saying that the pervading topic through the whole is, not Amer- 
 ican rights, not American interests, not American defence, but denunciation 
 of past pretensions of our Government, reflections on the past Administra- 
 tion, and exultation and a loud claim of merit for the Administration now 
 in power. Sir, I would forgive mistakes ; I would pardon the want of 
 information ; I would pardon almost any thing where I saw true patriotism 
 and sound American feeling; but I cannot forgive the sacrifice of this 
 feeling to mere party. I cannot concur in sending abroad a public agent 
 who has not conceptions so large and liberal as to feel that, in the presence 
 of foreign courts, amidst the monarchies of Europe, he is to stand up for 
 his country, and his whole country ; that no jot nor tittle of her honor 
 is to suffer in his hands ; that he is not to allow others to reproach either 
 his Government or his country, and far less is he himself to reproach 
 either; that he is to have no objects in his eye but American objects, 
 and no heart in his bosom but an American heart; and that he is to 
 forget self, and forget party, to forget every sinister and narrow feel- 
 ing, in his proud and lofty attachment to the republic whose commission 
 he bears. 
 
 " Mr. President, I have discharged an exceedingly unpleasant duty, the 
 most unpleasant of my public life. But I have looked upon it as a duty, 
 and it was not to be shunned. And, sir, however unimportant may be the 
 opinion of so humble an individual as myself, I now only wish* that I 
 might be heard by every independent freeman in the United States, 
 by the British ministry and the British king, and by every minister 
 and every crowned head in Europe, while," standing here in my place, 
 I pronounce my rebuke, as solemnly and as decisively as I can, upon 
 this first instance in which an American minister has been sent abroad 
 as the representative of his party, and not as the representative of his 
 country." 
 
 It has often been said that this rejection of Mr. Yan Buren 
 was a political mistake on the part of the opposition; and 
 doubtless it was made afterward to contribute to his subsequent 
 elevation to the presidency. But Mr. Webster's participation 
 in it is to be judged, not by the lower standard of political ex- 
 pediency, in reference to which the rejection may have been a 
 political error, but by the higher standard of public propriety, 
 in reference to which Mr. Yan Buren's letter to Mr. McLane 
 was clearly open to the complaints that were made of it. Mr. 
 Webster was, of course, aware that, by voting against the nomi- 
 nation of Mr. Yan Buren, he might give to a political opponent 
 the benefit of a grievance. But he considered the preservation 
 of an elevated and national tone in our diplomacy to be a thing
 
 424 
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [On. XVIII. 
 
 of too much consequence to allow him to avoid a disagreeable 
 duty. Whatever may be the opinion with which the criti- 
 cisms upon Mr. Yan Buren's course are now viewed, there 
 can be no doubt that this occurrence has had an impor- 
 tant influence in restraining the introduction of party dif- 
 ferences into the diplomatic relations of our Government 
 with foreign powers, and that it has taught other Secreta- 
 ries to remember that they represent the nation and not 
 the parties or factions into which it may be at any time 
 divided. 1 
 
 1 Among the forgotten topics of this 
 affair was the origin of what Mr. Van 
 Buren in his letter to Mr. McLane called 
 "the past pretensions of this Govern- 
 ment." This related to the claim for a 
 free reciprocity in the colonial trade ; a 
 claim which had been, in fact, advanced 
 by Mr. Monroe's Administration. One 
 of the objects of the law passed by Con- 
 gress, in 1823, was to prevent Great 
 Britain from availing herself of our pro- 
 ductions sent circuitously through her 
 colonial ports. For this purpose, the 
 third section of that law enacted that, on 
 proof being given to the President that 
 goods imported in the British colonial 
 ports in American vessels were subjected 
 to no other duties than the like goods 
 imported into the same ports " from else- 
 where," the President might, by proc- 
 lamation, establish the same privilege 
 for British colonial importations into our 
 ports. In the discussion on Mr. Van 
 Buren's nomination, it was said that the 
 effect of this provision was not under- 
 stood, at the time of its passage, as 
 demanding a free reciprocity. Mr. 
 Van Buren was a member of the Sen- 
 ate, when the act of 1823 was passed. 
 To clear up this point, Mr. Webster 
 wrote to Mr. Barbour the following 
 letter, and received the subjoined an- 
 swer : 
 
 " WASHINGTON, February S, 1832. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIK : I send you a newspaper, 
 containing the remarks of General Smith, in 
 the Senate, on Mr. Van Buren's nomination, 
 for the purpose of drawing your attention to 
 that part of them in which he speaks of the 
 act of March 1, 1823. 
 
 "He seems to think, as you will perceive, 
 that the important provision, respecting 
 equality of duties, contained in that act, 
 passed unnoticed by any one. Such a thing 
 is, of course, exceedingly improbable, since 
 it is the main provision in a principal section 
 oi' the act. I am told, too, by those who were 
 
 here at the time, that not only was this pro- 
 vision perfectly well understood in Congress, 
 but that it attracted the notice of persons not 
 in Congress ; and that, as soon as the bill was 
 printed and published, and while yet on its 
 
 Bissage, the British minister suggested to the 
 epartment of State his views of it. 
 
 " I have looked for the debate in the Sen- 
 ate on this bill. All I have been able to find 
 is in the National Intelligencer of the 26th or 
 27th of February, if I rightly remember the 
 day. It is there stated that the bill was in- 
 troduced by you, as Chairman of the Commit- 
 tee of Foreign Relations, and its principles 
 and provisions explained; and that Messrs. 
 Smith, Lloyd, etc., took part in the discussion 
 of its details. My object now is, to inquire 
 whether you are able to recollect what oc- 
 curred in the Senate respecting this provision 
 of the third section of the bill ; and whether 
 that third section, with the word ' elsewhere.' 
 and all its other words, was explained by you, 
 and its object stated, in your general speech 
 on introducing the bill ? 
 
 " You will see that one of the gentlemen's 
 remarks would seem to imply that / was 
 present at the passage of the bill, and was 
 silent. In this, as well as in other particu- 
 lars, it would have been better, perhaps, if 
 the worthy member had been a little more 
 distrustful of his own memory. I was not a 
 member of either House of Congress when the 
 bill passed. 
 
 "I pray you to accept, my dear sir, assur- 
 ances of my cordial regards. 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 "Hon. James Barbour, 
 
 " Barboursville, 
 "Orange Co., Va." 
 
 [TO MR. WEBSTER.] 
 
 BALTIMORE, February 17, 183'J. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : Tour letter of the 8th iu 
 stant was received by me just as I was 
 Betting out for this place to visit my fam- 
 ily. I avail myself of the first moment 
 which circumstances afford to furnish my 
 reply. 
 
 "Although I am aware that one should 
 speak with diffidence of events long past, of 
 which there is no memorial but a frail mem- 
 ory^ still, from my peculiar relation to the 
 subject-matter of your inquiry, I think I can 
 speak with some degree of confidence as to 
 the facts regarding which yon ask for infor- 
 mation. You are aware that, immediately 
 after the war, the United States determined
 
 1832.] 
 
 APPORTIONMENT OF REPRESENTATIVES. 
 
 425 
 
 A great deal of attention was given by Mr. Webster at this 
 session to the subject of the apportionment of representatives to 
 the several States. By the rule hitherto followed, and now 
 proposed to be repeated under the census of 1830, by a bill 
 which came from the House, a ratio was adopted, giving one 
 representative for a fixed number of persons. This representa- 
 tive ratio was proposed by the present bill to be forty-seven 
 thousand seven hundred. The application of the ratio to the 
 several States left much larger unrepresented fractions, or 
 residuary numbers, to some of the smaller States than it left 
 
 to adopt perfect reciprocity as a fundamental 
 principle of its commercial intercourse with 
 all nations that while Great Britain had 
 reluctantly yielded to this principle in our 
 Intercourse with her European possessions, 
 she pertinaciously refused it in our trade with 
 the West India colonies, and her efforts were 
 incessant to mould the intercourse to her 
 peculiar advantage. It is also known to you 
 that our minister at London at that time con- 
 tinually impressed on the American Govern- 
 ment that, so long as we permitted, without 
 resistance, a course of things to l)e pursued 
 PO injurious to us and so beneficial to Great 
 .Britain, remonstrance would be in vain. Our 
 "remedy was to be found only in a vigorous 
 countervailing policy. I happen to know 
 that this was the opinion of both Mr. Madison 
 and Mr. Monroe. Hence the commencement 
 of the war of regulations between the two 
 powers a policy which was then, I may say, 
 universally approved of, judging by the votes 
 in both Houses on the bill which was first 
 enacted on the subject ; and it was also be- 
 lieved in the sequel that to this course was to 
 be ascribed the relaxation, on the part of 
 Great Britain, of her exclusive pretensions. 
 Eventually, in the session, '22-3, the progress 
 of affairs called fora new enactment. At that 
 time it was my lot to be the Chairman of the 
 Committee oi the Senate on Foreign Rela- 
 tions. The bill as it passed, I believe, was 
 furnished by the Administration. When it 
 was presented to the committee, our attention 
 was drawn to these same notorious words 
 ' from elsewhere ; ' we understood them in 
 the sense which has ever been ascribed to 
 them. I was directed, however, by the com- 
 mittee to have an interview with the Secre- 
 tary of State, for the purpose of ascertaining 
 if our interpretation of these words was the 
 one designed, and also to obtain all the infor- 
 mation in the possession of the Administra- 
 tion, and its views on the whole matter. I 
 obeyed their instructions fcy calling on Mr. 
 Adams, and communicating the wishes of the 
 committee. He went fully into the matter. 
 First, by stating that the policy on which the 
 bill was formed was the result of the deliber- 
 ate consideration of the whole Cabinet, and 
 had its unanimous approbation. He pro- 
 ceeded to develop the reasons which nad 
 brought them to that result. These, it is un- 
 necessary to state. It may be proper, how- 
 ever, to refer to one of them as connected 
 with the more particular object of your in- 
 quiry. Were the words, said he, ' from else- 
 where,' stricken out, it would leave to Great 
 
 Britain the power of fixing such high dis- 
 criminating duties in favor of the products 
 of her continental colonies tliat similar prod- 
 ucts of the United States, it was to be feared, 
 would be sent to the ports of these colonies, 
 to profit by a fictitious naturalization so as to 
 be relieved from the burden of the alien duty, 
 and from thence to be transported in British 
 bottoms to the places of consumption, and 
 therehy Great Britain would monopolize the 
 whole of the navigation between the conti- 
 nent and her islands to our entire exclusion. 
 Mr. Adams closed his remarks by saying he 
 would ask the President, to bring the subjecj 
 again under the consideration of the Cabinet, 
 and that, if in two or three days I would call 
 again, he would inform me of the 'result of 
 their deliberations. 1 did so, and he informed 
 me that they were unanimous in advising the 
 adoption of the measure, and in particular 
 the words ' from elsewhere.' The committee 
 was convened again, and I communicated all 
 the information I had obtained. As well as 
 I recollect, they unanimously recommended 
 reporting the bill. I think I cannot be mis- 
 taken in saying that Mr. Rufus King was a 
 member of the committee. When we reflect 
 on his very extensive capacity, and his inti- 
 mate and profound knowledge of our com- 
 mercial affairs, to say nothing of other most 
 respectable members of the committee, it 
 furnishes a very satisfactory assurance that 
 so important a measure could not have passed 
 without a due consideration and a perfect un- 
 derstanding of tlie subject. It devolved on 
 me, from my relation to the committee, to 
 present to the Senate the whole subject, and 
 all the information which the committee had 
 obtained that duty I discharged. I am, 
 therefore, at a loss to conjecture on what 
 ground the assertion, that it was little under- 
 stood, is to rest ; and I heard with surprise 
 that a deliberate enactment of the United 
 States of America in Congress assembled was 
 stigmatized as a silly pretension. Although 
 I cannot speak from my own knowledge of 
 the course of the British minister in re- 
 gard to the measure during its pendency in 
 Congress, yet, I believe, from my recolleo 
 tions. that he did express his opinions on 
 it. 
 
 "I hope to be in Washington on next 
 Monday, when I promise myself the pleasure 
 of seeing my mends, among whom I take 
 great pleasure in permitting myself to believe 
 I may rank you. 
 
 " I offer you my respects. 
 
 BABBOTJK."
 
 426 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Co. XVIII. 
 
 to the larger ones ; and, as the process produced a House of 
 two hundred and forty members, the assignment of members 
 made by the bill to the several States gave to ISTew York, for ex- 
 ample, forty members, while she was entitled, out of the whole 
 mass presented by the number two hundred and forty, accord- 
 ing to her population, to but thirty-eight. Forty members for 
 the State of New York gave her eight times as many mem- 
 bers as the process assigned to Vermont, although her popula- 
 tion was not eight times that of Yermont by more than three 
 hundred thousand. These and many other glaring inequalities, 
 operating throughout the Union, led Mr. Webster to make a 
 very careful examination of the whole subject, in order to dis- 
 cover a rule that would better effect the purpose of the Consti- 
 tution. The mandate of the Constitution required representa- 
 tives and direct taxes to be apportioned among the several 
 States according to their respective numbers, but limited the 
 number of representatives to not more than one for every thirty 
 thousand, and allowing, however, at least one member to every 
 State, although its representative population might fall short 
 of thirty thousand. But the Constitution prescribed no pro- 
 cess by which its mandate was to be carried out. Mr. Webster 
 considered that the true course was, to regard the Constitution 
 as directing an equality of representation between the States, 
 as near as may fie, since absolute equality is impracticable. He 
 embodied his views in an elaborate report, which he made to 
 the Senate on the 5th of April. It is contained in the third 
 volume of his works. 1 Its principles were not adopted by Con- 
 gress at that time, but they were carried out under the census 
 of 1850. 
 
 His principal object in this report, and in the amendment 
 which he proposed to the bill as it came from the House, was 
 to get rid of the idea that the Constitution requires or author- 
 izes Congress, in apportioning the representation of the States, 
 to adopt a fixed integer or any common number of constitu- 
 ents for every member of the House. Such a process neces- 
 sarily results in fractions or residuary numbers, and renders 
 it exceedingly difficult, and sometimes impracticable, to at- 
 tain that approximate equality which the Constitution con- 
 
 1 Works, iii., 369.
 
 1832.] PURCHASE OF THE MARSHFIELD ESTATE. 427 
 
 templates. On this subject lie received the concurrence of 
 Chancellor Kent, expressed in the following letter : 
 
 [FROM CHANCELLOR KENT.] 
 
 " NEW YORK, April 21, 1832. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I have perused the report you made to the Senate, and 
 sent me, on the apportionment of representatives. Its clear and severe 
 logical reasoning has struck me forcibly. I am not a mathematician, and 
 not well versed in the application of divisors. I have looked at the Con- 
 stitution and your argument again and again, and I see nothing unconsti- 
 tutional, but great justice and reason in your amendment, and the prin- 
 ciple on which it is founded, that Congress are bound to apportion among 
 the States according to numbers as near as may ~be. Perfect equality is 
 impracticable, and the allowance of a representative to fractions exceeding 
 a moiety of the ratio would seem to me to make the best approximation ; 
 and that the results and irregularities in the bill, as it came from the other 
 House, were unjust and intolerable. So it strikes me ; and I see no infrac- 
 tion of any rule in the Constitution, but a conformity to its spirit and 
 equity (which is equality), in the amendment. 
 
 "JAS. KENT. 
 
 " Hon. D. Webster. 
 
 " Be so good as to send me one copy out of the five thousand copies of 
 Mr. Clay's land papers." 
 
 In the course of this year Mr. Webster became the owner 
 of the estate at Marshfield, which I have already said was the 
 place of his summer residence after 1824. As Captain Thomas 
 approached the age of seventy, the care of his farm became 
 irksome to him. His means were not large, and it was thought 
 best for his children that he should sell this property. Mr. "Web- 
 ster purchased it in the autumn of 1831, but the deed was not 
 taken until April, 1832. ]STor would Mr. "Webster then consent 
 that Captain Thomas should leave the house. The old gentle- 
 man continued, in fact, to live there until his death, which 
 occurred on the 27th of July, 1837, at the age of seventy- 
 three. While he lived, Mr. Webster continually spoke of the 
 affairs of the farm as if it were still the property of its former 
 owner ; saying, " Captain Thomas has this," or " Captain 
 Thomas is going to do that," while it was Mr. Webster who 
 ordered, and Mr. Webster who paid ; for the fees of the great 
 lawyer went lavishly into extensive plantations, noble barns,
 
 428 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XVIII 
 
 and many other improvements. But the family of Captain 
 Thomas did not continue to reside there as the result of any 
 bargain. It was simply Mr. Webster's wish that they should 
 remain. " Captain Thomas and Mrs. Thomas," he used to say, 
 " are a part of Marshfield, and it can never be the same with- 
 out them." Hereafter we shall see this feeling extending itself 
 to their children.
 
 1832.] NULLIFICATION. 429 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 1832-1833. 
 
 NULLIFICATION CONDUCT OF SOUTH CAROLINA SPEECH AT WOR- 
 CESTER IN OCTOBER, 1832 REELECTION OF GENERAL JACKSON 
 SIR. CALHOUN'S POSITION THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION 
 MR. CLAY'S COMPROMISE BILL THE FORCE BILL MR. WEB- 
 STER'S VIEWS OF THE PROPER COURSE TO BE PURSUED 
 DEBATE WITH MR. CALHOUN ON THE NATURE OF THE GOV- 
 
 - 
 
 ERNMENT PRESIDENT JACKSON'S VISIT TO NEW ENGLAND 
 
 MR. WEBSTER'S VISIT TO THE WEST GENERAL JACKSON'S 
 SENSE OF MR. WEBSTER'S SERVICES^-CORRESPONDPNCE. 
 
 MR. WEBSTER was well advised, when, at the dinner given 
 to him in Xew York, in March, 1831, he intimated that 
 the crisis of nullification was not wholly passed by. Congress 
 met in December, 1831, and adjourned in March, 1832, without 
 surrendering the policy of protection, and without renouncing 
 the constitutional power to lay duties of discrimination for the 
 purpose of fostering American manufactures. Notwithstanding 
 the general acceptance of the views maintained by Mr. Webster 
 in the debate of 1830, concerning the nature of the Constitu- 
 tion, many of the statesmen, and a majority of the people of 
 South Carolina, adhered with unshaken pertinacity to the con- 
 viction that a State can constitutionally and rightfully arrest 
 the operation of an act of Congress within her own limits, 
 when she believes that it transcends the powers of Congress. 
 Events were now to bring this doctrine to the test of an actual 
 collision ; and, according as that collision should be met by the
 
 430 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 General Government, the Constitution would be freed in all 
 future time from further hazards to its authority, or the neces- 
 sary assertion of that authority might have to be undertaken at 
 some future period amid the perils and sufferings of civil war. 
 What, part Mr. "Webster acted in this emergency, what were hi? 
 opinions respecting the steps that ought to be taken, and the 
 attitude in which the Government ought to be left in reference 
 to this whole subject, must now be explained. 
 
 In ]STovember, 1832, a State convention assembled at Co- 
 lumbia, in South Carolina, and adopted an ordinance declaring 
 the revenue laws of the United States to be null and void 
 within the limits of that State ; and making it the duty of the 
 Legislature to pass such State laws as would be necessary to 
 carry the ordinance in question into effect from and after the 
 1st of February, 1833. The Legislature assembled on the 27th 
 of November, and the Governor laid before them the ordinance 
 of the convention, now become " a part of the fundamental law 
 of South Carolina." In his message, he said that " the die has 
 been at last cast, and South Carolina has at length appealed to 
 her ulterior sovereignty as a member of this confederacy, and 
 has planted herself on her reserved rights. The rightful exer- 
 cise of this power is not a question which we shall any longer 
 argue. It is sufficient that she has willed it, and that the act 
 is done; nor is its strict compatibility with our constitutional 
 obligation to all laws passed by the General Government, 
 within the authorized grants of power, to be drawn in question, 
 when this interposition is exerted in a case in which the com- 
 pact has been palpably, deliberately, and dangerously violated. 
 That it brings up a conjuncture of deep and momentous inter- 
 est is neither to be concealed nor denied. This crisis presents 
 a class of duties which is referable to yourselves. You have 
 been commanded by the people, in their highest sovereignty, to 
 take care that, within the limits of this State, their will shall 
 be obeyed. . . . The measure of legislation which you have to 
 employ at this crisis is the precise amount of such enactments 
 as may be necessary to render it utterly impossible to collect, 
 within our limits, the duties imposed by the protective tariffs 
 thus nullified." He proceeds : " That you shall arm every 
 citizen with a civil process, by which he may claim, if he
 
 1832.] NULLIFICATION. 43! 
 
 pleases, a restitution of his goods, seized under the existing im- 
 posts, on his giving security to abide the issue of a suit at law ; 
 and, at the same time, define what shall constitute treason 
 against the State, and, by a bill of pains and penalties, compel 
 obedience, and punish disobedience to your own laws, are 
 points too obvious to require any discussion. In one word, you 
 must survey the whole ground. You must look to and provide 
 for all possible contingencies. In your own limits, your own 
 courts of judicature must not only be supreme, but you must 
 look to the ultimate issue of any conflict of jurisdiction and 
 power between them and the courts of the United States." 
 
 In prompt compliance with this and other recommendations 
 in the Governor's message, the Legislature passed acts providing 
 for the replevin of goods that might be seized under the revenue 
 laws of the United States ; inflicting heavy punishments upon 
 any persons who might undertake to execute those laws ; and 
 raising military forces to resist the collection of the revenue of 
 the United States, and to repel any efforts of the General Gov- 
 ernment to coerce the State into a submission to their execution. 
 On the 20th of December the Governor issued his proclamation, 
 giving notice that he was ready to accept the services of volun- 
 teers for this purpose. Thus the whole revenue system of the 
 United States was obstructed, and apparently overthrown, in 
 South Carolina ; so that, if these measures were left without 
 being defeated and suppressed, foreign merchandise, of any de- 
 scription, could be introduced into the ports of that State with- 
 out the payment of any duties whatever. No period was as- 
 signed for the operation of this state of things. Nothing was 
 left for the United States by this State legislation but uncondi- 
 tional submission. In an address, however, issued by the Con- 
 vention of South Carolina to the people of the United States, 
 they said : " Having now presented, for the consideration of the 
 Federal Government, and our confederate States, the fixed and 
 final determination of this State in relation to the protecting 
 system, it remains for us to submit a plan of taxation in which 
 we would be willing to acquiesce, in a spirit of liberal conces- 
 sion, provided we are met in due time and in a becoming spirit, 
 by the States interested in the protection of manufactures." 
 
 Mr. TVebster had to perform a very delicate duty, before the
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 meeting of Congress, which, while it would present to the coun- 
 try the grounds on which he called in question the general policy 
 of the Administration, would signify what was to be expected 
 of that Administration in regard to the impending collision 
 with South Carolina. It was highly important, on the one hand, 
 that, in criticising the conduct of the Administration, he should 
 not place himself in such a position toward it that his aid could 
 not be sought when the time should arrive for asserting the just 
 authority of the Constitution ; and, at the same time, it was, on 
 the other hand, equally important that the country should un- 
 derstand that he did not consider the Constitution free from 
 dangers arising from the course of the Administration itself. 
 It was his habit, when requested to address bodies of men assem- 
 bled for the purpose of promoting the objects of party organiza- 
 tion, to speak with great circumspection, to seek to influence 
 public opinion, and, through public opinion, to act upon men in 
 official stations. Such an opportunity presented itself by the 
 assembling of a political convention of the National Republican 
 party of Massachusetts, at Worcester, on the 12th of October 
 (1832), preparatory to the annual elections in that State, and to 
 the presidential election, in which, it will be remembered, Mr. 
 Clay was the candidate of this party. 
 
 In his speech on this occasion, Mr. "Webster called the atten- 
 tion of the country, and of General Jackson himself, to the atti- 
 tude in which the latter stood in reference to some of the powers 
 of the Constitution. After adverting to the fact that, in South 
 Carolina, the execution of the revenue laws of the Union was 
 openly threatened with resistance, and that in Georgia a decree 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States, directing the deliv- 
 erance of individuals held in prison by the State authorities, 
 was set at naught, he proceeded to show that the manner in 
 which the President had treated the powers of the Constitution 
 was signally unfavorable to their present execution and their 
 future stability. He contrasted the President's annual message 
 of 1830, which asserted the constitutional power to protect and 
 foster domestic manufactures, with the recent " veto " message, 
 which treated laws of protection as " a prostitution of our gov- 
 ernment to the advancement of the few at the expense of the 
 many ; " and he adverted to the fact that the tariff act of 1S24-,
 
 1832.] NULLIFICATION. 433 
 
 now the object of attack in all the warfare waged against the 
 protective policy, was voted for by the President, who was then 
 a Senator in Congress. Taking the present opinions of the 
 President, however, as more important than any question of his 
 personal consistency, Mr. "Webster believed that they were hos- 
 tile to the constitutional power of Congress to establish and 
 maintain the system of protection, in whole or in part. The 
 presidential election, which occurred soon afterward, resulted 
 in the defeat of Mr. Clay, and in the reelection of General Jack- 
 son by a very great majority of the electoral votes. 1 
 
 "Whatever might have been General Jackson's personal opin- 
 ions respecting the tariff, a duty was cast upon him which he 
 certainly exhibited no desire to avoid. He regarded the ordi- 
 nance of South Carolina and the acts of her Legislature as suffi- 
 cient notice to him that the collection of the revenue was to be 
 forcibly resisted in that State ; and, on the 10th of December, 
 he issued his celebrated proclamation, which, adopting entirely 
 the views that had been maintained by Mr. Webster (in the de- 
 bate of 1830) concerning the nature of the Constitution and the 
 powers of Congress, directed the officers of the revenue to dis- 
 charge their several duties, warned the people and authorities 
 of South Carolina of the consequences of their resistance, and 
 frankly making known that, in his opinion, the time had arrived 
 when the alleged inequality of laws, " which," he said, " may 
 have been unwisely, not unconstitutionally passed," could be 
 removed, he expressed the hope that they would retrace their 
 steps. At the same time, he distinctly and firmly informed 
 them that the acts which they meditated were treason, that the 
 laws of the United States must be executed, and that all oppo- 
 sition to them must be put down. 
 
 It had become apparent, before the assembling of Congress 
 in December, that the public men of South Carolina, who con- 
 trolled the action of the State, were resolved to maintain the 
 asserted right of nullification. Mr. Calhoun had been elected 
 to the Senate of the United States, and had determined to re- 
 Bign the vice-presidency, and to take his seat in that body. 
 
 1 Mr. Clay obtained Massachusetts, Ima was given to Mr. Floyd, of Virginia. 
 
 Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, General Jackson had all the other States 
 
 Maryland, and Kentucky forty-nine excepting Vermont, which voted for Mr. 
 
 electoral votes. The vote of South'Caro- Wirt two hundred and nineteen votes. 
 
 20
 
 434 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ce. XIX 
 
 His pamphlet on the right of nullification, in the form of a letter 
 to the Governor of South Carolina, was regarded by Mr. Web- 
 ster as a paper that required an answer. It was his purpose to 
 make that answer in a similar form, by addressing a public letter 
 on the subject to Chancellor Kent ; l but the announcement of 
 Mr. Calhoun's intention to be upon the floor of the Senate at 
 the approaching session led Mr. Webster to prefer encountering 
 his doctrines there. 
 
 Mr. Webster was on his way to Washington, in the month 
 of December, after the proclamation had been issued for several 
 days. At an inn in New Jersey he met a traveller, to whom he 
 was not known, and of whom he inquired the news. The stranger, 
 who was fresh from Washington, answered that General Jackson 
 had made a proclamation, taken altogether from Mr. Webster's 
 speech of 1830, in reply to General Hayne. The proclamation was 
 written by Mr. Edward Livingston, then Secretary of State." On 
 his arrival at Philadelphia, Mr. Webster met there Mr. Clay, who 
 informed him that he had prepared a plan for settling the tariff 
 difficulty, which he would make known to Mr. Webster when 
 they reached Washington. He did not learn it, however, directly 
 from Mr. Clay, but a copy of Mr. Clay's intended bill, in the 
 handwriting of Mr. Clay, was placed in Mr. Webster's hands 
 by a third person, in the early part of the session. It contained 
 a preamble, reciting that differences of opinion on the policy of 
 protecting manufacturing industry, by duties on similar articles 
 when imported, were agitating the public mind, and threatening 
 serious disturbances, which it was desirable to prevent. The 
 first section then proposed to enact that the existing tariff laws 
 should remain in force until March 3, 1840, and that then all 
 should be and " hereby are " repealed. The second section pro- 
 vided that, until March 3, 1840, no higher or other duties than 
 those now existing shall be laid ; " and from and after the afore- 
 said day, all duties collected upon any article whatever of for- 
 eign importation shall be equal, according to the value thereof, 
 and solely for the purpose and with the intent of providing such 
 
 1 Correspondence, i., 526. of New York. This and some other pa- 
 
 * MS. memorandum by Mr. Webster, pers derived from Mr. Webster will be 
 in thepossession of Hon. Hiram Ketchum, cited hereafter as " Ketchum MS."
 
 1833.] MR. CLAY'S COMPROMISE. 435 
 
 revenue as may be necessary to an economical expenditure of 
 the Government, without regard to the protection or encourage- 
 ment of any branch of domestic industry whatever" "When 
 Mr. Clay offered his bill, however, in the Senate, the words here 
 printed in italics were not embraced in it, and other modifica- 
 tions were made, as will be seen hereafter. But, either with or 
 without these words, the measure was not one that could receive 
 Mr. Webster's support. For the original introduction of the 
 policy of protection he was in no degree responsible. But it 
 had been made the policy of the country ; and, since the tariff 
 act of 1824, the great stimulus it had given to manufactures 
 had caused very large masses of capital, and also a great aggre- 
 gate of smaller amounts, to be invested in establishments which 
 represented not merely the interests of the rich, but the interests 
 of those who could by no means be classed in that category. It 
 was no longer a question, in Mr. "Webster's view, as it was in 
 1817, whether an original policy of free trade is best for such a 
 nation as ours. That question had been settled ; a long course 
 of legislation had established the opposite policy ; and it was, 
 therefore, with Mr. Webster simply a question whether, for the 
 mere purpose of conforming his present public conduct to theo- 
 retical opinions which he had expressed seventeen years before, 
 in a very different state of things, he should lend his aid to over- 
 turn a system, in the continuance of which he believed the in- 
 terests of the country to be now deeply involved. 
 
 Moreover, with respect to the constitutional power of Con- 
 gress to so collect its revenues as to discriminate in favor of our 
 domestic industry a power which Mr. "Webster never at any 
 time questioned, and which was all that he ever contended for 
 much important information, respecting the purposes of those 
 who founded and the people who ratified the Constitution, had 
 been added to what was known when the policy of protection 
 was first resorted to. In 1830-'33, there was no prominent 
 statesman in the party with which Mr. "Webster acted who 
 doubted the existence of this power; and least of all men did 
 he doubt it. There were, in truth, many important men in the 
 opposite party, who held it as firmly as he did, and upon the 
 same grounds. 
 
 There was still another reason why Mr. "Webster could not
 
 436 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 be a party to any abandonment of this policy, or to any renun- 
 ciation of the constitutional power. The laws of the Union 
 were resisted. The whole revenue system was, in South Caro- 
 lina, threatened with direct nullification. The President of the 
 United States had a duty to perform, which he could not per- 
 form unless his hands were strengthened by appropriate legisla- 
 tion. At such a time to undertake a modification of the exist- 
 ing laws, which would carry in itself an immediate or prospective 
 renunciation of the constitutional power on which those laws 
 had been passed passed with the concurrence of men who dif- 
 fered about almost every thing else appeared to Mr. Webster 
 to be highly inexpedient and dangerous. In all the discussions 
 on Mr. Clay's " compromise " measure, as, when introduced, it 
 came to be regarded, and in all the changes that it underwent 
 from Mr. Clay's original plan, it will be seen that Mr. "Webster's 
 chief objection was aimed at what he regarded as an unwise 
 and unworthy surrender of a constitutional power, as an unjusti- 
 fiable attempt to control its future exercise, and as an impracti- 
 cable effort to settle the degree of protection which it would be 
 necessary to afford to the manufacturing industry of the country 
 at the end of eight or nine years. 
 
 The situation of affairs at Washington in the early part of 
 the session was thus described by Mr. Webster to two of his 
 friends : 
 
 [TO MB. WM. SULLIVAN.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, January 3, 1833. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIR : I am glad to receive your letter. We are surrounded 
 with difficulties here, of various sorts ; and it is not a little uncertain how 
 we shall get out of them. At the present moment, it would seem that 
 public opinion, and the stern rebuke by the Executive government, had, in 
 a great measure, suppressed the immediate danger of nullification. As far 
 as we see the results of the legislation of South Carolina, her laws limp far 
 behind her ordinance. For aught that appears, nothing will interrupt the 
 ordinary collection of duties, after February 1st, unless some individual 
 chooses to try the nullifying remedy. If any importer should suffer a 
 seizure to be made, and should endeavor to replevy, under the State pro- 
 cess, the collector would probably not deliver up the goods to the sheriff, 
 nor suffer his own goods to be taken in withernam. This, probably, would 
 bring on a trial of strength. 
 
 " But our more imminent danger, in my opinion, is that, seizing on the
 
 1833.] CORRESPONDENCE. 437 
 
 occasion, the anti-tariff party will prostrate the whole tariff system. You 
 will have seen the bill reported by Mr. Verplanck. Great and extraordi- 
 nary efforts are put forth to push that bill rapidly through Congress. It 
 is likely to be finally acted upon, at least in the House of Representatives, 
 before the country can be made to look on it in its true character. On the 
 other hand, our friends will resist it, of course, and hold on to the last. A 
 vigorous opposition will, at least, it may be hoped, be made, and, as I be- 
 lieve, produce the necessity, on the part of the supporters of the measure, 
 to make some beneficial amendments in it, before even it can get through 
 the House of Representatives. 
 
 " Under these circumstances, it seems to me it would be extremely useful 
 that the Legislature of Massachusetts should express its temperate but firm 
 opinion, first against the doctrine of nullification ; secondly, on the viola- 
 tion of the public faith, which would be perpetrated by this thorough and 
 sudden prostration of the protective system. 
 
 " On this ground of vested interest we can make, if well sustained at 
 home, the most efficient stand against the threatened ruin. We mean to 
 occupy this ground, and to make the most of it. 
 
 " If the bill were now in the Senate, it would not pass ; but, how far 
 individuals may be brought over by party discipline in the drill of a month, 
 it is impossible to say. 
 
 " I do not believe the President himself wishes the bill to pass. J2 
 contra, I fancy he would prefer the undivided honor of suppressing nullifi- 
 cation now, and to take his own time hereafter to remodel the tariff. But 
 the party push on, fearing the effect of the doctrines of the proclamation, 
 and endeavoring to interpose, and to save Carolina, not by the proclama- 
 tion, but by taking away the ground of complaint. 
 
 " But against this, again, there is some degree of undercurrent, because 
 there are some who think that surrendering the tariff to the menaces of 
 nullification would be voting a triumph to Mr. Calhoun, at the expense of 
 Mr. Van Buren's expectations, etc. 
 
 " I shall be glad to hear from you and other friends, especially if you 
 
 can give me any good advice. 
 
 " Tours ever truly, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO CHIEF-JUSTICE LIVERMORE, OF KEW HAMPSHIRE.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, January 5, 1833. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Tour letter of December 29th is received, and has 
 given me pleasure. I regard you, my dear sir, not only as an acquaintance 
 of many years' standing, but also as one whose countenance and kindness 
 were important to me in youth. I shall be sure to send you any thing 
 which I may think you would like to receive, and I beg of you not to take 
 the trouble to acknowledge receipts. It will be quite enough that I under- 
 derstand generally that such communications are welcome.
 
 438 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIX. 
 
 " The impression here to-day seems to be that nullification has assumed 
 a less threatening aspect ; at least, the danger of immediate collision ap- 
 pears less. The act passed by the Legislature of South Carolina to carry 
 the ordinance into effect does not come up to the ordinance. It may happen 
 that, notwithstanding the ordinance and the act, things may go on much 
 as they have done. 
 
 " Nothing is more uncertain than the fate of the new Tariff Bill. It will 
 pass the House if the President desires it ; but that is doubtful. If it were 
 now in the Senate, it would be postponed from indisposition to act again 
 on that subject so soon ; but I do not know what will be done with it 
 should it come to us a month hence. 
 
 " It is sometimes said that, in so changing a world, if people will but 
 stand still, others, sooner or later, will come to them. Were you not struck 
 with this truth in seeing the proclamation ? 
 " I am, dear sir, 
 
 " With constant regard, yours, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 In his annual message, at the opening of the session, Presi- 
 dent Jackson had suggested that it might become necessary for 
 him to recommend certain measures to enable him to meet the 
 threatened resistance to the laws of the Union. On the 16th 
 of January he sent a special message to Congress, communi- 
 cating, officially and in detail, what had occurred in South Caro- 
 lina, and recommending the measures which he deemed neces- 
 sary to meet the emergency. 1 He asked that provision might 
 be made, that whenever, by unlawful combination or obstruc- 
 tion, in any State or port, the collection of duties had become 
 impracticable, the President should be authorized to change the 
 collection districts and ports of entry, and to establish the cus- 
 tom-house at some secure place, where vessels and cargoes could 
 be detained in the custody of the collector until the duties were 
 properly paid or secured, and to protect that custody by the 
 employment of the land and naval forces. To shield the officers 
 so acting from suits in the State courts, he asked that provision 
 be made for the removal of such cases to the Federal tribunals, 
 where they should be tried and determined as if they had been 
 originally instituted there. Mr. Calhoun had now taken his 
 seat in the Senate. On the motion to refer the message to the 
 Committee on the Judiciary, he made some remarks that ex- 
 hibited a great deal of feeling, and indicated his purpose to con- 
 1 Mr. Webster was apprised of this message before it was sent.
 
 1833.] THE "FORCE BILL." 439 
 
 test strenuously the propriety of the President's course. The 
 message, however, was quietly referred to the Judiciary Com- 
 mittee, and in less than a week their chairman, Mr. Wilkins, 
 reported a bill, " further to provide for the collection of duties 
 on imports," which became known and has since been called 
 the celebrated "Force Bill." Its consideration was fixed for 
 Monday, the 28th of January, as the special order of the day. 
 Mr. Calhoun, appreciating what was impending, immediately 
 made a movement to interpose what he denominated a " plea 
 in bar," against this use of force. He offered certain resolu- 
 tions, for the purpose of testing the principles on which the bill 
 rested, expressing his views of the nature and extent of the 
 powers of the Federal Government. 1 They were ordered to be 
 printed. Mr. Calhoun pressed them on the consideration of the 
 Senate. Mr. "Webster professed his readiness to meet the dis- 
 cussion at any proper time, but did not think they should be 
 allowed to interfere with the progress of the bill. They were 
 laid on the table, and the revenue collection bill was proceeded 
 with ; Mr. Calhoun saying that he had a deep conviction of the 
 truth of his propositions, and Mr. Webster replying in hfs seat, 
 " I do not doubt it." 
 
 The " Force Bill," when originally introduced into the Senate, 
 
 1 The following are the resolutions : " Jlesolved, That the assertions that the 
 
 " Eesdwcl, That the people of the several P. e P le of these United States, taken collet 
 
 States composing these United States are \ velv as .J n ^ " ldua j a , ar ? ^PYj J e 7 r 
 
 united as parties to a constitutional compact, oeen. uiiitea or , 01 ine HOC 
 
 to which fa people of each State acceded as compac , and as such are now formed into 
 
 a separate sovereign community, each bind- one nation or people, or that they have ever 
 
 \n<r VtBf-if hv Ha own nartir-ntar ratifirtinn been so united in any one stage of their po- 
 
 iSSffihVunUTSf ^ScTtteJSdSSS litical existence; that the people of the se^ 
 
 is the bond, is a 'union between the States ^Sl$^:fc&ff 
 
 ;v//Tht th, ,POT>IP of thi several that the allegiance of their citizens has-been 
 SteteV? tfn'nited hv the cTnstHntional coS transferred to the General Government ; that 
 tes, tni , unitea nytne const om- ^^ ha ^ a narto ^ .>, tllo ^ oh t n f r>nnishin<r 
 
 delegated to that Government, for that pur- 
 
 to be exercised by its own separate Govern- 
 
 wonld make its discretion, and not its consti- J" v . to 
 
 measure of redress.
 
 440 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 was wholly an Administration measure. Its conduct through 
 the Senate was left principally to the charge of Mr. Grundy, of 
 Tennessee ; but many of General Jackson's friends recoiled from 
 its support. In this condition of things, other aid became essen- 
 tial ; and, among the President's friends in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, there was much inquiry as to " where Mr. "Webster 
 was." Several of these gentlemen sought and obtained personal 
 interviews with him. At length, as the discussion proceeded in 
 the Senate, Mr. Webster being absent, from engagements or ill 
 health, a member of the President's Cabinet visited him at his 
 lodgings, and earnestly requested him to take an active part in 
 the defence of this measure, and in preparing and making all 
 necessary amendments to it. 1 
 
 In a few days Mr. "Webster appeared in his place in the Sen- 
 ate, and found this bill an object of attack from some of the 
 Administration members. Having interposed for the purpose 
 of saying a few words against a motion to postpone the bill, 
 and urging that the Senate continue its discussion until all who 
 desired had been heard upon it, Mr. King, of Alabama, said 
 that, if the Senator from Massachusetts wished to deliver his 
 sentiments upon the bill, he should be happy to listen to him at 
 any length. Mr. Webster simply replied that he appreciated 
 this kindness, but that, under existing circumstances, he had no 
 disposition to address the Senate on this bill, then or at any 
 future time. 2 As the bill was now the special order for each 
 day at 12 o'clock, it was called on the following day (February 
 8th), when Mr. Webster rose and said : 
 
 " He wished to interrupt the course of the debate for a single moment, 
 in order to set one matter right, if he could. Since a warm controversy 
 was rising, he thought it but proper that we should understand between 
 what parties the controversy existed. 
 
 " Soon after the declaration of war by the United States against Eng- 
 land, an American vessel fell in at sea with one of England, and gave in- 
 formation of the declaration. The English master inquired, with no little 
 warmth of manner and expression, why the United States had gone to war 
 with England. The American answered him, that difficulties had existed 
 for a good while between the two Governments, and that it was at length 
 thought in America to be high time for the parties to come to a better un- 
 derstanding. 
 
 1 Ketchum MS. * July 7th.
 
 1833.] THE "FORCE BILL." 441 
 
 " I incline to think, Mr. President, that a war has broken out here, 
 which is very likely, before it closes, to bring the parties to a better under- 
 standing. But who are the parties ? Will you please to remember, sir, 
 that this is a measure founded in Executive recommendation ? The Presi- 
 dent, charged by the Constitution with the duty of executing the laws, 
 has sent us a message, alleging that powerful combinations are forming to 
 resist their execution ; that the existing laws are not sufficient to meet the 
 crisis ; and recommending sundry enactments as necessary for the occasion. 
 The message being referred to the Judiciary Committee, that committee 
 has reported a bill in compliance with the President's recommendation. 
 It has not gone beyond the message. Every thing in the bill, every single 
 provision, which is now complained of, is in the message. Yet the whole 
 war is raised against the bill, and against the committee, as if the com- 
 mittee had originated the whole matter. Gentlemen get up and address 
 us, as if they were arguing against some measure of a factious opposition. 
 They look the same way, sir, and speak with the same vehemence, as they 
 used to do when they raised their patriotic voices against what they called 
 a 'coalition.' 
 
 " Now, sir, let it be known, once for all, that this is an Administration 
 measure ; that it is the President's own measure ; and I pray gentlemen to 
 have the goodness, if they call it hard names, and talk loudly against its 
 friends, not to overlook its source. Let them attack it, if they choose to 
 attack it, in its origin. 
 
 " Let it be known, also, that a majority of the committee reporting the 
 bill are friends and supporters of the Administration ; and that it is main- 
 tained in this House by those who are among its steadfast friends of long 
 standing. 
 
 " It is, as I have already said, the President's own measure. Let those 
 who oppose it, oppose it as such. Let them fairly acknowledge its origin, 
 and meet it accordingly. 
 
 " The honorable member from Kentucky (Mr. Bibb), who spoke first 
 against the bill, said he found in it another Jersey prison-ship ; let him 
 state, then, that the President has sent a message to Congress, recommend- 
 ing a renewal of the sufferings and horrors of the Jersey prison-ship. He 
 says, too, that the bill snuffs of the alien and sedition law. But the bill is 
 fragrant of no flower except the same which perfumes the message. Let 
 ami, then, say, if he thinks so, that General Jackson advises a revival of 
 the principles of the alien and sedition laws. 
 
 " The honorable member from Virginia (Mr. Tyler) finds out a resem- 
 blance between this bill and the Boston port bill. Sir, if one of these be 
 imitated from the other, the imitation is the President's. The bill makes 
 the President, he says, sole judge of the Constitution. Does he mean to 
 say that the President has recommended a measure which is to make him 
 sole judge of the Constitution? The bill, he declares, sacrifices every 
 thing to arbitrary power ; he will lend no aid to its passage ; he would 
 rather ' be a dog and bay the moon, than such a Roman.' He did not say
 
 442 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIX. 
 
 ' the old Roman.' Yet the gentleman well knows that, if any thing is sac- 
 rificed to arbitrary power, the sacrifice has been demanded by the ' old 
 Roman,' as he and others have called him ; by the President whom he has 
 supported, so often and so ably, for the chief magistracy of the country. 
 He says, too, that one of the sections is an English Botany Bay law, except 
 that it is worse. This section, sir, whatever it may be, is just what the 
 President's message recommended. Similar observations are applicable to 
 the remarks of both the honorable gentlemen from North Carolina. It is 
 not necessary to particularize those remarks. They were in the same strain. 
 
 " Therefore, sir, let it be understood, let it be known, that the war 
 which these gentlemen choose to wage, is waged against the measures of 
 the Administration, against the President of their own choice. The con- 
 troversy has arisen between him and them, and, in its progress, they will 
 probably come to a distinct understanding. 
 
 " Mr. President, I am not to be understood as admitting that these 
 charges against the bill are just, or that they would be just if made 
 against the message. On the contrary, I think them wholly unjust. 
 No one of them, in my opinion, can be made good. I think the bill, 
 or some similar measure, had become indispensable, and that the Presi- 
 dent could not do otherwise than bring it to the consideration of Con- 
 gress. He was not at liberty to look on and be silent, while dangers 
 threatened the Union, which existing laws were not competent, in his 
 judgment, to avert. 
 
 " Mr. President, I take this occasion to say that I support this measure, 
 as an independent member of the Senate, in the discharge of the dictates 
 of my own conscience. I am no man's leader ; and, on the other hand, I 
 follow no lead but that of public duty and the star of the Constitution. I 
 believe the country is in considerable danger ; I believe an unlawful com- 
 bination threatens the integrity of the Union. I believe the crisis calls for 
 a mild, temperate, forbearing, but inflexibly firm execution of the laws ; 
 and, under this conviction, I give a hearty support to the Administration 
 in all measures which I deem to be fair, just, and necessary. And, in sup- 
 porting these measures, I mean to take my fair share of responsibility ; to 
 support them frankly and fairly, without reflections on the past, and with- 
 out mixing other topics in their discussion. 
 
 " Mr. President, I think I understand the sentiment of the country on 
 this subject. I think public opinion sets, with an irresistible force, in favor 
 of the Union, in favor of the measures recommended by the President, and 
 against the new doctrines which threaten the dissolution of the Union. I 
 think the people of the United States demand of us, who are intrusted 
 with the Government, to maintain that Government, to be just, and fear 
 not ; to make all necessary and suitable provisions for the execution of the 
 laws, and to sustain the Union and the Constitution against whatsoever 
 may endanger them. For one, I obey this public voice ; I comply with 
 this demand of the people. I support the Administration in ineasure8 
 which I believe to be necessary ; and, while pursuing this course, I look
 
 1833.] MR. CALUOUX'S POSITION. 443 
 
 unhesitatingly, and with the utmost confidence, for the approbation of the 
 country." 
 
 The Senators, who were thus put upon their good behavior 
 toward the President of their own choice, made disclaimers of 
 their belief that the President had asked for such powers ; and 
 one of them, Mr. Bibb, commenting on the first and fifth sec- 
 tions of the bill, expressed his doubt whether any President 
 would have had the " daring effrontery " to ask for such powers, 
 and desired to know what was the " secret connection " between 
 the message and the bill. Mr. Webster replied that there was 
 nothing in the bill which was not recommended in the message ; 
 and then, looking at Mr. Bibb, he added, " I will tell the gen- 
 tleman that the President has had the ' daring effrontery ' to 
 ask for these powers, no matter how high may be the offence." 
 
 This evidence that Mr. Webster was to act with the Admin- 
 istration, in upholding the execution of the laws and the author- 
 ity of the Constitution, caused dismay in several quarters. To 
 the Administration Senators who were inclined to resist the 
 passage of the bill, the revelation of Mr. "Webster's purpo'se, and 
 of his complete accord with the President, showed that their 
 opposition would be fruitless, and that their attempt to throw 
 the onus of the bill upon Mr. Webster would not succeed. The 
 well-known determination of General Jackson's character, act- 
 ing in the same direction with Mr. Webster's forensic power, 
 and his weight in the country, gave Mr. Calhoun much un- 
 easiness. He saw that great forces were closing around him, and 
 that his position was one of much peril. But he was a very able 
 tactician, and having, as Mr. Webster thoroughly believed he 
 had, undoubting confidence in the truth of the positions he had 
 taken in his resolutions, he was very anxious to bring on their 
 discussion in the Senate before the " Force Bill " could pass. 
 But, before this could be done, he had reason to be alarmed. It 
 became known that General Jackson had used, in private, very 
 strong language in regard to the leaders in the South Carolina 
 movement. In periods and scenes of excitement, he had not 
 always been willing to wait for the due course of law, and his 
 temperament was well understood to be one that might sud- 
 denly visit the leaders of nullification with extreme personal 
 danger. He had received great provocation ; for, on the llth
 
 444 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 of January, a series of resolutions, adopted by the Legislature 
 of South Carolina in answer to his proclamation, had been laid 
 before the Senate of the United States, bitterly denouncing 
 him, and breathing a spirit of open defiance. His resentments 
 were never slow to kindle, and, on this occasion, he took no 
 pains to conceal them. In this attitude of affairs, Mr. Calhoun 
 sought the interposition of Mr. Clay. An interview took place 
 between these gentlemen, at which Mr. Calhoun obtained the 
 promise of Mr. Clay's interference. 1 On the llth of February, 
 the " Force Bill " being still pending, Mr. Clay announced in the 
 Senate that on the following day he should introduce a bill to 
 modify the tariff. 
 
 This sudden and unexpected movement changed the entire 
 aspect of affairs. Up to this moment, it was not imagined that 
 there could be in the Senate more than two parties in reference 
 to the question of executing the revenue laws as they stood : 
 the one consisting of all who held to the duty of upholding the 
 authority of the Government, and the other comprehending those 
 who meant to resist it. It now appeared to be Mr. Clay's purpose 
 to take an intermediate position, by removing what was put for- 
 ward by South Carolina as the grievance which justified her re- 
 sort to nullification. The dangers attending this step were man- 
 ifest. On the one side, it might cause the Administration to be 
 placed in the apparent attitude of asking for unnecessary powers, 
 and might throw upon them the odium of seeking the personal 
 humiliation and political ruin of Mr. Calhoun and his friends. 
 On the other side, considering the attitude taken by South 
 Carolina, her threats of resistance, and her military preparations, 
 a sudden reversal of the long-established policy of Congress, by 
 a repeal or modification of the laws which she proposed to 
 resist, was not unlikely to be claimed as a triumph of the prin- 
 ciples which Mr. Calhoun had advanced as the true theory of 
 the Constitution. To Mr. "Webster, this movement of Mr. 
 Clay left nothing but the consideration of what was most fit to 
 be done when a State had announced her purpose to obstruct 
 the execution of the laws of the Union. He could not join in 
 Mr. Clay's proposed " compromise," for he had, in the most 
 
 1 My authority for this statement is lated to me the particulars of the inter 
 the late Mr. Crttenden, who once re- view.
 
 1833.] MR. CLAY'S COMPROMISE. 44.5 
 
 public manner, expressed his opinions that the hands of the 
 Executive ought at once to be so strengthened by legislative 
 action, that the threatened nullification could be met by peace- 
 ful means and judicial remedy, but that, if force were ever re- 
 sorted to, South Carolina must be the aggressor. He considered 
 the future stability of the Government involved in this crisis, 
 and he had reason to know that the Executive Department, 
 while desirous, as he was, to avoid the dire result of civil war 
 by every means that did not sacrifice the just authority of the 
 Constitution, had determined firmly to maintain that authority. 
 
 It is now necessary to go back to an earlier period in the 
 session, in order to see what had taken place in the House of 
 Representatives on the subject of the tariff. On the 27th of 
 December, Mr. Yerplanck, of !N^ew York, from the Commit- 
 tee of Ways and Means, to which was referred a part of the 
 President's annual message relating to the finances and to a 
 further reduction of the revenue, reported a bill to reduce 
 and otherwise alter the duties on imports. This bill was 
 called up on the 8th of February, and was under 4iscus- 
 sion in the House when Mr. Clay offered his own bill in the 
 Senate. 
 
 Mr. Clay began his speech, on the introduction of his bill, 
 by declaring it to be his purpose to save the tariff, which he 
 believed to be in imminent danger, and which, even if it should 
 be preserved during the present session, must, he thought, fall 
 at the next. He therefore sought, he said, to find some prin- 
 ciple of mutual accommodation, in order to satisfy, as far as 
 practicable, both the friends and the opponents of the tariff, to 
 increase the stability of legislation, and, at some distant day, to 
 bring down the rate of duties to that revenue standard for 
 which the adversaries of the tariff had long contended. This, 
 he maintained, was not an abandonment of the constitutional 
 power of protection, but a suspension of it. If the power and 
 the principle of protection were to be preserved, it was neces- 
 sary, he said, to carry now some measure of modification, with 
 the assent of all parties ; and if that assent were now yielded, 
 the circumstances of the transaction would afford a guaranty that 
 future legislation would give all the protection that could be 
 reasonably required. To secure such a guaranty, concessions
 
 446 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 must be made on both sides ; and he claimed that his measure 
 was founded on the great principle of compromise which had 
 given birth to the Constitution itself, and which had always 
 regulated the affairs of the Union. 
 
 Alluding next to the attitude of South Carolina, Mr. Clay 
 said that at the commencement of the session he felt a very 
 strong repugnance to any legislation on this subject, believing 
 that South Carolina had arrogantly demanded of Congress at 
 once to abandon a system which had long been the settled 
 policy of this country. But he had since found that South 
 Carolina was making only an experiment; to prevent by a 
 course of legislation, not by force, the execution of the laws of 
 the Union within her limits, in order to have the question of 
 constitutional power determined by the courts. After express- 
 ing his belief that the course of the State was both wrong and 
 impracticable, he concluded by deprecating strongly any action 
 by Congress at the present session that might plunge the coun- 
 try into a civil war ; and, making an eloquent appeal to a 
 spirit of mutual forbearance and conciliation, he asked leave to 
 introduce his bill. 
 
 When read, the bill was found to contain the following pro- 
 visions : It proposed to enact that, on all existing duties which 
 exceeded twenty per cent, on the value of the articles on which 
 they were laid, the excess should undergo a certain reduction at 
 every period of two years until September 30, 1842, at which 
 time, by the process of reduction, the excess over twenty per 
 cent, would be extinguished ; that until September 30, 1842, 
 the existing duties, as proposed to be modified, should be col- 
 lected ; that after that date all duties upon imports should be 
 paid in cash, and be laid for the purpose of raising such revenue 
 as may be necessary to an economical administration of the 
 Government, and that for that purpose they should be equal 
 upon all articles according to their value ; that until otherwise 
 directed by law, from and after September 30, 1842, the rate 
 of duties shall be twenty per cent, ad valorem, reserving, how- 
 ever, power to raise the rate in the event of war with any 
 foreign power. The bill also enlarged and modified the free 
 list, especially in relation to raw materials and articles used in 
 manufactures.
 
 1833.] MR. CLAY'S COMPROMISE. 447 
 
 Before the bill had been formally read, however, but after 
 Mr. Clay had explained its provisions, Mr. Webster rose and 
 said: 
 
 " That as, by its title, the bill appeared to be a bill merely to modify 
 the existing revenue laws, it could hardly be rejected as a bill for raising 
 revenue, which ought to originate hi the other House, since there are many 
 particulars in which all the existing revenue laws might be modified, with- 
 out raising more or less revenue. As the bill has not been read (said Mr. 
 Webster), we seem to know no more of it, regularly, than its title purports. 
 That title describes a bill which may constitutionally originate hi the Sen- 
 ate ; I shall, therefore, vote for the leave. 
 
 " But I feel it my duty, Mr. President, to say a word or two upon the 
 measure itself. It is impossible that this proposition of the honorable 
 member from Kentucky should not excite in the country a very strong 
 sensation ; and, in the relation in which I stand to the subject, I am anx- 
 ious, at an early moment, to say that, as far as I understand the bill, from 
 the gentleman's statement of it, there are principles in it in which I do not 
 at present see how I can ever concur. If I understand the plan, the result 
 of it will be a well-understood surrender of the power of discrimination, or 
 a stipulation not to use that power, in the laying of duties on imports, 
 after the eight or nine years have expired. This appears to me to be a 
 matter of great moment. I hesitate to be a party to any such stipulation. 
 The honorable member admits that, though there will be no positive sur- 
 render of the power, there will be a stipulation not to exercise it ; a treaty 
 of peace and amity, as he says, which no American statesman can here- 
 after stand up to violate. I propose, so far as depends on me, to leave all 
 our successors in Congress a free to act as we are ourselves. 
 
 " The honorable member from Kentucky says the tariff is in imminent 
 danger ; that, if not destroyed this session, it cannot hope to survive the 
 next. This may be so, sir. This may be so. But, if it is so, it is because 
 the American people will not sanction the tariff; and if they will not, why, 
 then, sir, it cannot be sustained at all. I am not quite so despairing as 
 the honorable member seems to be. I know nothing which has hap- 
 pened within the last six or eight months changing so materially the 
 prospects of the tariff. I do not despair of the success of an appeal to 
 the American people, to take a just care of their own interests, and not 
 to sacrifice those vast interests which have grown up under the laws of 
 Congress. 
 
 " But, sir, out of respect to the economy of the time of the Senate, I 
 will pursue these remarks no further at present ; but I will take an oppor- 
 tunity to-morrow to lay on the table resolutions expressing my general 
 opinions on this interesting subject." 
 
 On the next day (February 13th), Mr. "Webster offered the 
 following resolutions, which were ordered to be printed :
 
 448 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cu. XIX. 
 
 " Resolved, That the annual revenues of the country ought not to be 
 allowed to exceed a just estimate of the wants of the Government ; and 
 that, as soon as it shall be ascertained, with reasonable certainty, that the 
 rates of duties on imports, as established by the act of July, 1832, will 
 yield an excess over those wants, provision ought to be made for their 
 reduction ; and that, in making this reduction, just regard should be had 
 to the various interests and opinions of different parts of the country, so 
 as most effectually to preserve the integrity and harmony of the Union, 
 and to provide for the common defence, and promote the general welfare 
 of the whole. 
 
 " But, whereas it is certain that the diminution of the rates of duties 
 on some articles would increase instead of reducing the aggregate amount 
 of revenue on such articles ; and whereas, in regard to such articles as it has 
 been the policy of the country to protect, a slight reduction on one might 
 produce essential injury, and even distress, to large classes of the commu- 
 nity, while another might bear a larger reduction without any such con- 
 sequences ; and whereas, also, there are many articles the duties on which 
 might be reduced, or altogether abolished, without producing any other 
 effect than the reduction of revenue : therefore, 
 
 " Resolved, That, in reducing the rates of duties imposed on imports by 
 the act of the 14th of July aforesaid, it is not wise or judicious to proceed 
 by way of an equal reduction per centum on all articles ; but that as well 
 the amount as the time of reduction ought to be fixed, in respect to the 
 several articles, distinctly, having due regard, in each case, to the ques- 
 tions whether the proposed reduction will affect revenue alone, or how far 
 it will operate injuriously on those domestic manufactures hitherto pro- 
 tected especially such as are essential in time of war, and such, also, as 
 have been established on the faith of existing laws and, above all, how 
 far such proposed reduction will affect the rates of wages and the earnings 
 of American manual labor. 
 
 "Resolved, That it is unwise and injudicious, in regulating imposts, to 
 adopt a plan, hitherto equally unknown in the history of this Government, 
 and in the practice of all enlightened nations, which shall, either imme- 
 diately or prospectively, reject all discrimination on articles to be taxed, 
 whether they be articles of necessity or of luxury, of general consumption 
 or of limited consumption; and whether they be, or be not, such as are 
 manufactured and produced at home ; and which shall confine all duties 
 to one equal rate per centum on all articles. 
 
 " Resolved, That, since the people of the United States have deprived 
 the State governments of all power of fostering manufactures, however 
 indispensable in peace or in war, or however important to national inde- 
 pendence, by commercial regulations, or by laying duties on imports, and 
 have transferred the whole authority to make such regulations, and to lay 
 such duties, to the Congress of the United States, Congress cannot surren- 
 der or abandon such power compatibly with its constitutional duty ; and, 
 therefore,
 
 1833.] MR. CALHOUN'S OPINIONS. 449 
 
 "Retohed, That no law ought to be passed on the subject of imposts, 
 containing any stipulation, express or implied, or giving any pledge or 
 assurance, direct or indirect, which shall tend to restrain Congress from 
 the full exercise, at all times hereafter, of all its constitutional powers, in 
 giving reasonable protection to American industry, countervailing the 
 policy of foreign nations, and maintaining the substantial independence 
 of the United States." 
 
 On the two following days, Mr. Webster was prevented, by 
 the discussion on the " Force Bill," from addressing the Senate 
 on his tariff resolutions. On the 15th, the " Force Bill " being 
 under consideration, Mr. Calhoun commenced the great speech 
 in which he resisted the passage of that bill, developed his views 
 on the nature of the Constitution, and the right of State nullifi- 
 cation, as embodied in his resolutions, and explained the atti- 
 tude taken by South Carolina. The doctrine of this very able 
 speech maintained the Union to be a confederacy of sovereign 
 States, in contradistinction to a consolidated Government ; that 
 the States, being sovereign having reserved all powers not 
 granted to the General Government reserved to themselves, 
 among other powers, that of judging of any infractions qf the 
 Federal compact, which power, from the necessity of the case, 
 could exist nowhere else ; and that, when a State, in its sover- 
 eign capacity, has solemnly pronounced an act of the General 
 Government to be unwarranted by the Federal Constitution, 
 the paramount allegiance of the citizens of the State is due to 
 her authority, and she stands between the citizen and the 
 Federal Government to protect him from the consequences of 
 resistance. As an exposition of the doctrines of nullification, 
 this speech was of a far higher order than that of General 
 Hayne, to which Mr. "Webster replied in 1830. It was the 
 embodied result of all Mr. Calhoun's political studies and teach- 
 ings of many years ; and it is not to be doubted that it sowed 
 the seeds which in another generation produced the opinions 
 that made the right of secession from the Union a firm political 
 faith, which multitudes of men have sealed with their blood on 
 the battle-fields of a civil war. The occasion on which the 
 speech was made was the last time when these doctrines came 
 prominently into discussion on the floor of Congress ; the last 
 in which they were to be subjected to that forensic ordeal, 
 which was to fix the convictions of a majority of the nation on 
 30
 
 i50 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIX 
 
 the one side or the other, before they were to be, at some un- 
 known day, submitted to the final and dread arbitrament of 
 arms. 
 
 Mr. "Webster felt the full importance of the occasion, but 
 he felt also the great Yantage-ground he had gained by the 
 debate of 1830. His reply to General Hayne had been accepted 
 as conclusive, not merely by the quarter of the country which 
 he represented, and the political party with which he was con- 
 nected, but by a large part of the people in the Central and 
 "Western States, and by many of the ablest public men in the 
 party to which he did not belong. Moreover, the doctrines 
 which he then maintained respecting the Constitution had been 
 adopted by the President of the United States in the most im- 
 portant state paper that had proceeded from his Administra- 
 tion, and had thus received the full sanction of an Executive 
 who was the head of the largest and most powerful party in 
 the Union. As might have been expected, therefore, the 
 speech in reply to Mr. Calhoun was far less rhetorical than that 
 in reply to Mr. Hayne. The thesis was substantially the same ; 
 but the subject was not so new as on the former occasion, and 
 there was not the same feverish anxiety in the public mind 
 respecting the result of the debate. 
 
 As soon as Mr. Calhoun had concluded, Mr. "Webster rose 
 and delivered the speech which now stands in the third volume 
 of his works, under the title, " The Constitution not a compact 
 between sovereign States." It comprehended and maintained 
 the following propositions : 
 
 " 1. That the Constitution of the United States is not a league, con- 
 federacy, or compact between the people of the several States in their sov- 
 ereign capacities ; but a government proper, founded on the adoption 
 of the people, and creating direct relations between itself and indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 " 2. That no State has authority to dissolve these relations ; that 
 nothing can dissolve them but revolution ; and that, consequently, there 
 can be no such thing as secession without revolution. 
 
 " 3. That there is a supreme law, consisting of the Constitution of the 
 United States, and acts of Congress passed in pursuance of it, and treaties ; 
 and that, in cases not assuming the character of a suit in law or equity, 
 Congress must judge of and finally interpret this supreme law so often as 
 it has occasion to pass acts of legislation ; and, in cases capable of assum-
 
 1833.] MR. WEBSTER'S REPLY TO MR. CALHOUN. 451 
 
 ing, and actually assuming, the character of a suit, the Supremo Court of 
 the United States is the final interpreter. 
 
 " 4. That an attempt by a State to abrogate, annul, or nullify any act 
 of Congress, or to arrest its operation within her limits, on the ground 
 that, in her opinion, such law is unconstitutional, is a direct usurpation on 
 the just powers of the General Government, and on the equal rights of the 
 States, a plain violation of the Constitution, and a proceeding essentially 
 revolutionary in its character and tendency." 
 
 Perhaps there is no speech ever made by Mr. "Webster 
 that is so close in its reasoning, so compact, and so power- 
 ful. Whoever would understand that theory of the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States which regards it as the enact- 
 ment of a fundamental law, must go to this speech to 
 find its best and clearest exposition. Whoever would know 
 the doctrine that enabled the Government of the United 
 States, thirty years later, to call forth the physical energies 
 of a population strong enough to encounter and to pre- 
 vent the dismemberment of this Union by the secession 
 attempted in 1861, and finally suppressed in 1865, ,must 
 find it in the position maintained by Mr. Webster in 1830 
 and 1833. 
 
 But what was then taking place in the Senate of the United 
 States rendered it morally certain that at some future time this 
 great issue would be transferred from the arena of forensic dis- 
 cussion to the theatre of war. The idea of putting into the 
 hands of the Executive the means of compelling obedience to 
 the laws of the Union, and at the same time of modifying those 
 laws so as to retract the principle on which the authority of the 
 Union had been asserted and was now resisted, was regarded 
 by Mr. Webster in a very different light from that in which it 
 presented itself to Mr. Clay. Gifted with powers of persuasion 
 that have rarely been excelled by any statesman in our annals, 
 that distinguished person embraced with eagerness the part of 
 a pacificator, and was led on by the captivating thought that 
 he could put an end to all future dangers by removing the 
 causes of present discontents. This is a mode of action, in free 
 governments, which has succeeded, and has failed, according to 
 the degree in which essential principles have been preserved, or 
 relaxed, in dealing with factious resistance. It is a mode of
 
 452 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cs. XIX. 
 
 action in respect to which statesmen of equal purity and patriot- 
 ism will differ, according to their estimate of what is involved 
 in present concessions, and of what will remain for the assertion 
 and vindication of authority in future. Between Mr. Webster 
 and Mr. Clay, on this occasion, there was precisely such a dif- 
 ference. Posterity must judge, will judge, the motives of each 
 of them, with equal liberality. The one aimed at a great set- 
 tlement of an immediate difficulty, by calling on the contend- 
 ing parties to make mutual sacrifices. The other believed that 
 the proposed settlement surrendered fatally a principle of 
 the Constitution. It was not the reduction of duties to which 
 Mr. Webster objected ; it was to the effort to bind the Govern- 
 ment not to exercise the power of discrimination in raising its 
 revenues on imports, and to the enactment of such a stipulation 
 in the face of a threatened resistance to an important constitu- 
 tional power, which Mr. Clay held to be as clear as Mr. "Web- 
 ster or any one else. How far Mr. "Webster had grounds for 
 his opinion, will be seen from the further history of this mem- 
 orable discussion and its consequences. 
 
 The discussion between Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster 
 would seem to have convinced Mr. Clay that a vote from him 
 against the passage of the " Force Bill" would be unbecoming. 
 He would not speak in its favor, and he so declared in the Sen- 
 ate. While he admitted that such a law might with propriety 
 be upon the statute-book, he declined to vote for it. It was 
 finally passed on the 20th of February. 1 
 
 The previous action of the Senate on Mr. Clay's bill to 
 modify the tariff act of 1832 had resulted, on the 13th of Feb- 
 ruary, in referring it to a select committee, of which Mr. Clay 
 was chairman. On the 19th, it was reported with amendments. 
 On the 21st, the amendments were adopted by the Senate. On 
 the 22d, on motion of Mr. Clay, the principle of home valuation 
 was added, and on the 24th the bill was engrossed. Before this 
 occurred, Mr. Webster had suggested that it was not a bill that 
 3ould originate in the Senate, as it was a -money bill, whether 
 it increased or diminished the revenue. Mr. Clay combated 
 
 1 Mr. Tyler, of Virginia, alone re- hour of the evening session on the 20th. 
 
 corded his vote against the passage of Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay withdrew from 
 
 this bill. The votes in its favor were the Senate before the final vote was 
 
 thirty-two. The vote was taken at a late taken on the bill.
 
 1833.] OPPOSES THE COMPROMISE. 453 
 
 this position, and regretted that there should be any disposition 
 to oppose a measure of conciliation and compromise. On the 
 25th, the question being on the final passage of the bill, Mr. 
 AYebster addressed the Senate in opposition to it. 
 
 Of this speech, there is but a meagre account remaining. 
 The reason that led Mr. Webster to refrain from putting it 
 afterward into a full report will be seen hereafter. But enough 
 remains to inform us that he resisted its passage upon the fol- 
 lowing grounds : First, that it undertook to bind future Con- 
 gresses, in respect to the measure of protection to be given to 
 domestic manufactures. Second, because it reduced the duties 
 on the protected articles below twenty per cent, ad valorem, 
 while it prohibited their being raised above that rate. Third, 
 because it surrendered, and would be claimed to have surren- 
 dered, the constitutional power of protection. Fourth, because 
 it gave up specific duties, and adopted a system of valuations, 
 which he regarded as objectionable. Practically, he contended 
 that this measure surrendered the interests of all the smaller 
 capitalists, and made concessions in favor of the overgrown 
 monopolists. As a measure of finance, he considered it in- 
 efficient, and did not anticipate that it would be acquiesced in 
 as a permanent settlement. "With respect to the attitude of 
 South Carolina, he said that, if her object was merely to enter 
 into a law-suit with the United States, there was no necessity 
 for this sacrifice of great interests. In conclusion, he said that, 
 when the point of necessary revenue should become known, any 
 Congress would be able to make a tariff that would suit the 
 country, if the constitutional power to discriminate were not 
 given up. 
 
 Mr. Clay closed the discussion, in reply to Mr. "Webster, 
 and enforced the passage of the bill in an impassioned and 
 eloquent speech. On the 26th, the Senate bill being still 
 pending, Mr. Clay suggested that the House of Representa- 
 tives had just then passed a similar bill, and, as this would 
 obviate the constitutional objection to his own bill, the Sen- 
 ate, on his motion, adjourned. 
 
 "What had occurred in the House of Representatives was the 
 introduction, by Mr. Letcher, of the same bill then pending in 
 the Senate. It was passed rapidly through the forms of the
 
 454 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 House, without the allowance of amendments, and, on the 26th, 
 was sent to the Senate for its concurrence. 
 
 On that day Mr. Calhoun called up his resolutions on the 
 nature and power of the Government, and commenced an elabo- 
 rate reply to Mr. Webster, reasserting the doctrines of State 
 nullification. Mr. Webster immediately rejoined, terminating 
 the discussion as follows : 
 
 " Mr. President, turn this question over, and present it as we will 
 argue it as we may exhaust upon it all the fountains of metaphysics 
 stretch over it all the meshes of logical or political subtlety it still comes 
 to this: Shall we have a General Government? Shall we continue the 
 union of the States under a Government, instead of a league f This is the 
 upshot of the whole matter ; because, if we are to have a Government, that 
 Government must act like other governments, by majorities ; it must have 
 this power, like other governments, of enforcing its own laws and its own 
 decisions ; clothed with authority by the people, and always responsible to 
 the people ; it must be able to hold its course, unchecked by external in- 
 terposition. According to the gentleman's views of the matter, the Con- 
 stitution is a league ; according to mine, it is a regular popular Government. 
 This vital and all-important question the people will decide, and, in deciding 
 it, they will determine whether, by ratifying the present CONSTITUTION AND 
 FRAME OF GOVERNMENT, they meant to do nothing more than to amend 
 the articles of the old Confederation." 
 
 The Compromise Tariff Bill finally passed the Senate on the 
 1st day of March, Mr. Webster, with fifteen other Senators, 
 voting against it. 1 
 
 In 1838, Mr. Webster wrote the following private letters to 
 a friend, for the purpose of explaining his own course on this 
 subject, and in order that there might remain a permanent 
 record of his sentiments in regard to it sentiments which I 
 happen to know he never changed : 
 
 [TO MR. KETCHUM.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, Monday Morning, January 18, 1838. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : In December, 1832, on my way to Washington, I fell in 
 with Mr. Clay at Philadelphia. He then told me he had conceived a 
 plan for quieting the tariff question, which he would communicate to me 
 when we should reach Washington. In the early part of the session I 
 learned what the plan was. It was first explained to me by Mr. Letcher, 
 to whom I expressed my astonishment at hearing of any intention, by Mr. 
 
 1 The votes in its favor were twenty-nine
 
 1833.] MR. CLAY'S COMPROMISE. 
 
 455 
 
 Clay, to bring forward such a proposition. It was a good deal talked 
 over, privately, among friends. Mr. Clay put the proposed bill into the 
 hands of Mr. Davis, my present colleague, then in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives. Mr. Davis handed it to me, in Mr. Clay's hand-writing, and I 
 copied it ; and that copy you have. When the bill was afterward intro- 
 duced, those words which you speak of were left out. The bill was dis- 
 cussed in the Senate, referred to a committee (of which I was one), and 
 again reported to the Senate ; and it became understood that it would 
 pass the Senate. I had, however, suggested that it was not a bill which 
 could constitutionally originate in the Senate ; and, this opinion appear- 
 ing to gain ground, the proceeding in the Senate stopped all at once, and 
 Air. Letcher introduced the measure into the House, had it referred to the 
 Committee of the Whole, as the rules require, but with instructions to 
 report the same bill, without amendment, back to the House. This was done 
 accordingly ; the bill immediately passed ; came to the Senate, and passed 
 there also. In a day or two I will send you a copy of the bill, as air. Clay 
 first introduced it into the Senate, and such other facts, from the journals, 
 as may place you in possession of the exact history of the bill. But if you 
 will look at the law, as it now stands, you will find that it completely 
 negatives all idea of protection : 
 
 1. Because it expressly confines revenue to the wants of Government. 
 
 2. Because it expressly rejects discrimination, which is the only true 
 and practical mode of protection. 
 
 Tours truly, 
 
 " DAJOEL WEBSTER. 
 " Mr. Ketchum." 
 
 [TO ME. KETCHTJM.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, January 20, 1838. 
 
 MY DEAB SIR : I enclose you a copy of Mr. Clay's bill, in 1833, as 
 originally prepared by him. The copy was made by me, from the original, 
 in Mr. Clay's own handwriting. Some alterations took place before the 
 measure was formally brought forward, as others, during its progress in 
 Congress. Nevertheless, if you examine the law, it is now, in truth, an 
 attempt by Congress to surrender the protecting power, and strike it out 
 of the Constitution. I opposed this bill in every stage, and so did three- 
 fourths of the tariff interest in both Houses. All the South went for it ; 
 Mr. Clay's personal friends went for it, and a few good men from the 
 North and the Centre, from various motives, went for it also ; for example, 
 Mr. Bell, of New Hampshire, and Mr. Frelinghuysen. 
 
 " The bill passed at the end of the session. I took my notes, etc., 
 along with me, and, staying a day or two at Philadelphia, sat down to 
 wnte out my speech at length. A friend happened to come in, and, find- 
 ing out what I was about, dissuaded me from it. He said the act was 
 done, the thing was settled ; and the publication of my speech would only
 
 456 LIFE OF DAXIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 prove a wide difference to exist among friends. I acquiesced, which I 
 have ever since regretted. When I reached New York, I had conversation 
 on the subject with Mr. C. King. I left with him my notes. I wish they 
 could now be had. I think he once told me he could lay his hands 
 on them. This copy of Mr. Clay's original proposition I wish you to 
 preserve. I can send you, if you wish it, a list of ayes and noes 
 on the passage of the bill in both Houses. All Massachusetts went 
 against it. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTEK." 
 
 The Ordinance of South Carolina, which undertook to nullify 
 the revenue laws of the United States, was never repealed. That 
 State rested satisfied, as Mr. Webster said she would, with what 
 she had gained ; satisfied that she had extorted from Congress at 
 least a suspension of the power to discriminate in favor of domes- 
 tic manufactures when levying duties on foreign merchandise. 
 When it is remembered that this concession was contemporane- 
 ous with the assertion on the floor of Congress of the doctrine of 
 State nullification, we can see that the public men who ruled 
 the action of South Carolina had no reason for regarding the pas- 
 sage of the " Force Bill " as a defeat, and no special cause for 
 putting that measure to the test of execution. As years flowed 
 on, the teachings of Mr. Calhoun became the political creed of 
 her rising youth. They led directly to the belief in the right of 
 State secession from the Union a belief that, in the succeeding 
 generation of public men in the South, spread far beyond her 
 own limits. Had she been told by the unanimous voice of the 
 country, as represented in Congress, that no concessions could 
 be made to her menaces, we cannot now say that the theory 
 of nullification and its cognate doctrines would not have con- 
 tinued to have advocates and followers. But it is not probable 
 that such a theory could have attained the proportions which it 
 afterward reached, or that it would ever have culminated, as it 
 did at the end of another quarter of a century, in an attempted 
 disruption of the ties that bound the Southern States to the 
 Union. In seeking for the explanation of revolutionary move- 
 ments, we are too apt to regard them as inevitable, and to con- 
 sider that they have flowed from events and causes independent 
 of the conduct of men and parties. But all who would under- 
 stand Mr. Webster's opinions on this momentous subject, or who
 
 1833.] NULLIFICATION. 457 
 
 would do him justice all who may be inclined to think that 
 he leaned on this occasion too strongly to the side of authority, 
 and too little to the side of conciliation must endeavor to 
 stand where he stood, and to look, as he looked, into the 
 future. They must recognize what presented itself to his con 
 victions ; which was no less than the certainty that the South- 
 ern quarter of the Union would not alone be the theatre of fac- 
 tious resistance to law ; that the day would come when that 
 section would have cause to invoke and depend upon the same 
 principle of supremacy in the Constitution which he had now 
 so signally displayed and vindicated ; and that, if this principle 
 were weakened now, the character of the Government, at 
 some distant day, would have to be asserted by more than the 
 power of argument. All, too, who would rightly estimate his 
 subsequent career, must learn how this occurrence threw upon 
 him, afterward, the necessity, in following out his constitu- 
 tional principles, of encountering the popular feeling of his 
 own community, when it arrayed itself in opposition to the 
 just authority of the fundamental law. He now saw j<r or be- 
 lieved that he saw, that authority remitted to an uncertain 
 future, in which the prevalence of error would be wider, the 
 motives for discontent would be multiplied, and the love of the 
 Union would be enfeebled. For the exigencies of that hour, 
 which he always feared was in store for us, he made all the 
 preparation that any human intellect could make, by the main- 
 tenance and elucidation of the principles on which he believed 
 that the political institutions of this country rest. He was 
 never called to look upon that scene of fraternal strife in 
 which those principles had to be enforced in the shock of 
 armies. He prayed that such a scene might never open on 
 his vision ; and his prayer was heard. But he always feared 
 that it would come, and it did come. 
 
 [TO MR. PEKBY, OP SOUTH CAROLINA.] 
 
 " BOSTON, April 10, 1833. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I was gratified by the receipt of your letter of the 
 1st of this month, and thank you for the favorable and friendly sentiments 
 which you express in regard to an effort of mine, at the late session of 
 Congress, in a cause which I deemed all-important to the country, and to
 
 i58 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 which I had already learned you were as much devoted as myself. I am 
 not at all surprised, my dear sir, at the opinions you express, as to the 
 ultimate object of those who have raised the flag of nullification. Circum- 
 stances, full of meaning, attracted my attention to it early ; and, in De- 
 cember, 1828, I became thoroughly convinced that the plan of a Southern 
 Confederacy had been received with favor by a great many of the political 
 men of the South, especially of your State. 
 
 " I agree with you also entirely in the opinion that the danger is 
 not over. A systematic and bold attack, now but just begun, will be 
 carried on, I apprehend, against the just and constitutional powers of 
 the Government, and against whatsoever strengthens the Union of the 
 States. 
 
 " For my own part, I look forward to an animated controversy on 
 these points for years to come ; and if we can sustain our side of the con- 
 troversy, my dear sir, with success, as I hope and believe we may, we shall 
 transmit to posterity an inheritance above all price. 
 
 " I do not apprehend any further difficulty with Georgia. There was 
 not the slightest reference to the Georgia case in my mind, or ever, as far 
 as I know, in that of any other gentleman, in preparing and passing the 
 bill for the better collection of the revenue. It is true that some of the 
 provisions of the bill ought, in my judgment, to be permanent. If they 
 had previously existed, the idea of putting the doctrines of nullification 
 in practice, in the mode recently adopted at least, would probably not 
 have been entertained. I have expected what I see now publicly an- 
 nounced, that the effort will be to repeal this law so soon as Congress 
 shall assemble. 
 
 " It is probably expected that, since the occasion has passed by, many 
 will be willing to repeal the law, although they were in favor of its pas- 
 sage at the time ; and it is hoped that, by the repeal of this act, it may be 
 considered as decided that Congress is hereafter to take no step to execute 
 any laws which are resisted by State authority. 
 
 " The high regard which I feel for the patriotic gentlemen with whom 
 you act in your State, and the respect which I have been led to entertain 
 for yourself, induce me, my dear sir, to express a wish to hear from you, 
 on the interesting subjects which at present occupy the public attention, 
 whenever your convenience may allow. 
 
 " With friendly salutations, I remain, 
 
 " Tour obedient servant, 
 
 ,. WEBSTER." 
 
 The reader may now turn from these public events, in which 
 Mr. "Webster performed so conspicuous and important a part, to 
 the following letter from his daughter, at this time of the age 
 of sixteen, written with much of the father's admirable sim- 
 plicity and correctness of style a style which he may be said
 
 1833.] CORRESPONDENCE. 459 
 
 to have imparted to all his children, for Fletcher, Julia, and 
 Edward, all wrote through life the same unaffected and easy 
 English that belonged to him. The mention of her brother 
 Fletcher's " part " at " exhibition " relates to a college per- 
 formance. He was graduated from Harvard College in the 
 autumn of this year : 
 
 [FROM MISS JULIA WEBSTER.] 
 
 " BOSTOH, March, 3, 1833. 
 
 "MY DEAR FATHER: I received your beautiful present a few days 
 since, and was very much pleased with it. I think it contains some very 
 fine faces, and I like the stories much better than those usually found in 
 "souvenirs" or "annuals." Tour letter preceded it a few days, and I 
 beg you, my dearest father, to accept your little daughter's best thanks 
 for them both. 
 
 " I am staying with Cousin Eliza, and am passing my time most pleas- 
 antly. I find it very convenient as regards my school, as I am never late 
 now, which used sometimes to be the case. I have not commenced any 
 new study since I last wrote you. I think I should like to study Italian 
 very much, as I have not much to do. 
 
 " I hope we shall soon see you in Boston, as Congress has risen ; and 
 we are very anxious to see you at home once more. Although spring has 
 in reality begun, you would not imagine it to' be so by the weather, which 
 is intensely cold ; the ground is covered with snow, and the thermometer 
 last night was eleven degrees below zero. 
 
 " Fletcher dined with us yesterday, it being Saturday. I suppose you 
 have heard he is to have a part at the next exhibition. Dr. and Mrs. 
 Kirkland dined here to-day ; the latter had, as usual, a good deal to say. 
 I saw Edward yesterday ; he was very well. 
 
 " I went, on Wednesday, with Cousin Eliza to hear a lecture on hiero- 
 glyphics, delivered by Mr. J. Pickering. It was very interesting ; but he 
 did not tell us as much upon the principal subject as I should Have liked 
 to have heard. A considerable part of it was upon the necessity of atten- 
 tion, which he addressed principally to his younger hearers. 
 
 " I heard two very good sermons to day from Mr. Greenwood, one of 
 which I shall make an abstract of for my composition. It was upon the 
 resignation of the Shunamitish woman when she lost her only son. 
 Cousin Eliza says she wishes you would come home, for she thinks if you 
 were here we should not think any more of the snow or the cold, for it 
 would make sunshine in Boston. She also unites with me in a great deal 
 of love to you ; and, believe me ever, dear father, 
 
 " Your affectionate daughter, 
 
 " JULIA WEBSTER."
 
 60 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 [TO MISS JULIA WEBSTER.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, March 9, 1833. 
 
 " MY DEAR DAUGHTER : I have this moment received your letter of the 
 3d instant. It is so kind and good a letter that I will not omit for a 
 moment to answer it, although I am expecting a summons to go directly 
 into court. Notwithstanding your mother's absence, I have felt quite 
 easy about you since I learned you were to spend your time at Cousin 
 Eliza's. Everybody is happy where she is. 
 
 " I am glad to hear that Fletcher has a part at exhibition. You do not 
 mention the time ; I fear it will be before I get home. 
 
 "We have the same cold weather here, at least in some degree, of 
 which you speak. The last ten days have been the severest part of the 
 winter. Some signs of relenting begin now to appear. 
 
 " I heard yesterday from your mother in New York. I have written 
 her, preferring that she should meet me in Philadelphia, as I shall be 
 obliged to stay there on business for a day or two. 
 
 " The court will rise about the fifteenth, and, by the end of next week, 
 say by the sixteenth, I hope to take leave of Washington. 
 
 " I must pray you to remember me most kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Lee. 
 Give my love also to Edward and to Uncle Paige and Aunt Harriette, not 
 forgetting the amiable Miss Paige. 
 
 "Adieu, my dear daughter. 
 
 " Ever your most affectionate father, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 Mr. Webster returned to Boston at about the middle of 
 April, to make preparation for his long-intended journey to the 
 West. He soon heard, however, of General Jackson's proposed 
 visit to the Eastern States, and was a good deal embarrassed by 
 the probability of his own absence from Boston at the time of 
 the President's arrival. He wrote to General Cass, the Sec- 
 retary of War, to explain the cause of his intended absence, 
 from whom he received the following answer, and to whom he 
 wrote again in reply : 
 
 [PROM GENERAL CASS.] 
 
 "WASHINGTON, April 17, 1833. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have just received your kind letter, and sincerely 
 thank you for your recollection of me. I think the President will visit 
 New England this season ; if he does, he will leave here about the first of 
 May, and he is desirous that I should accompany him. I shall accordingly 
 io so ; and I presume we shall be in Boston not far from the 20th of June.
 
 183S.J JOURNEY TO THE WEST. 461 
 
 I cannot ask you to postpone your intended journey till after this time, as 
 it might expose you to much inconvenience. Still, I will confess to you 
 that the hope of meeting you, and of revisiting with you the scenes and 
 friends of our youth, has dwelt upon my mind since we first conversed 
 together on the subject. Nothing could give me greater pleasure than 
 such an occasion ; and, if more pressing engagements should require your 
 absence at the time I have mentioned, I shall look forward at a future day 
 to realize this hope. 
 
 " "With sincere regard, I am, my dear sir, 
 
 " Truly your friend, 
 
 "Lewis CASB." 
 
 [TO GENERAL CASS.] 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have received your letter of the 17th instant. A 
 journey to the West has long been in contemplation by me, but I have not 
 yet been able to accomplish it. Every other year the session of Congress 
 has been so far protracted as to forbid the undertaking for that season, and 
 professional duties have allowed me no leisure, hitherto, in the intervening 
 years. In addition to these causes, the political state of things has, for 
 some time, been such that the motive and objects of such a tour would 
 have been very likely to be misinterpreted and misunderstood. 
 
 "In this last respect, the present moment seems favorable ; 'and, as 
 I have found myself able to make the necessary arrangements with my 
 professional engagements, I have thought it not well to defer longer the 
 execution of that which has been already a good while postponed. 
 
 " Nevertheless, I am very unwilling to miss your visit to New England : 
 and, although I might even make that sacrifice in the hope that you would, 
 as you suggest, hereafter repeat your visit, I still feel great reluctance in 
 being from home when the President comes to Massachusetts. In the first 
 place, it would give me pleasure to see him, and to extend to him and his 
 party the hospitalities of my house, as well as to unite with my friends and 
 neighbors in such manifestations of respect as are due to him ; and, in the 
 next place, my absence on such an occasion, when it was known that a visit 
 from him to this part of the country was intended, may be liable to much 
 misconstruction. 
 
 " I am inclined, therefore, at all events, to be at home by the time the 
 President reaches Boston. My plan has been to return by the 1st of July, 
 if I shall not be able to accomplish all I intend, and return earlier than that 
 day. But, under present circumstances, I shall abridge the extent of my 
 travels, so as to be able to return to Boston by the 20th of June. 
 
 " D. W." 
 
 Mr. Webster arrived at Albany, 'accompanied by his wife 
 and daughter, and by his friend Mr. Stephen White, in the 
 latter part of May. Agriculture was, as I have said, one of his
 
 462 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIX. 
 
 passions ; and at Albany lie was a delighted visitor of the cele- 
 brated farm of Mr. Buel. From Albany the ladies returned to 
 Boston, and Mr. Webster went on his way to the West. On the 
 4th of June he was at Utica, where all political distinctions were 
 forgotten by the citizens in their manifestations of respect to this 
 great man, whom few could have ever before seen, and whom 
 all were anxious to honor. He tarried long enough in the rich 
 valley of the Genesee to examine and enjoy its magnificent agri- 
 culture, strongly contrasting with that of less fertile New Eng- 
 land. On his arrival at Buffalo he was invited to a public din- 
 ner, but declined it, preferring an unrestrained and unceremo- 
 nious intercourse with the citizens of the place. He was present 
 at the launching of a steamboat that was to be called by his 
 name, and the local courts that were in session at the time were 
 adjourned in honor of the event. Here, too, he received an ad- 
 dress from the mechanics and manufacturers, to which he replied 
 in some remarks expressing his views of the tariff policy. At 
 Columbus he declined another public dinner, but at Cincinnati 
 he was obliged to accept one that was tendered to him by a gen- 
 eral meeting of the citizens, held at the Exchange on the 15th 
 of June. The dinner took place a few days afterward. The 
 toast expressed the feelings of a great company of intelligent 
 persons toward " the profound expounder of the Constitution, 
 the eloquent supporter of the Federal Union, and the uniform 
 friend and advocate of the Western country." Mr. Webster 
 spoke in reply for more than an hour, but the speech is not 
 preserved. 
 
 At Cincinnati, invitations of the most earnest kind poured 
 in upon him from the surrounding States. But it was impos- 
 sible for him to go farther. The cholera was then prevailing 
 in many of the Western towns, and the season was so far 
 advanced that he deemed it prudent to return through Penn- 
 sylvania. Before he left Cincinnati, he received the subjoined 
 cordial letter from Mr. Clay : 
 
 [FBOM MB. CLAY.] 
 
 " ASHLAND, Ytth June, 1833. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : The mail brought me to-day your letter of the 
 10th, from Columbus, and also the intelligence of your safe arrival in
 
 1833.] JOURNEY TO THE WEST. 463 
 
 Cincinnati. I had been tracing in the papers your progress with much 
 interest. 
 
 " I regret extremely that you should find us, in so many places, suffering 
 with cholera. Its visit to Lexington has been frightful. Its mortality 
 there has been exceeded in degree at no other point in the United States, 
 New Orleans, perhaps, excepted. The shops and stores and principal hotel 
 have been all closed. The pestilence, within the two or three last days, 
 has considerably declined, and in a few more will, I think, have disap- 
 peared. Happily, in a family of about sixty, we have as yet sustained no 
 loss, and are not sure that we have had one case of genuine cholera. 
 
 " I shall be mortified and disappointed if you do not visit Kentucky and 
 Lexington ; but I hardly know how to advise you. You will certainly go 
 to Louisville, where there is no danger. At that place daily intelligence is 
 received from Lexington, and you can hear whether there has been such an 
 abatement of the cholera as to enable you to visit us without hazard. I 
 hope the state of things will admit of your coming, and I request that you 
 and Mr. White will come directly to Ashland, and any other gentlemen, if 
 there be any other in your party, where, judging from the past, you will be 
 secure, if the disease should even continue to prevail at Lexington. It is 
 not at Frankfort, the principal intermediate point, and where, as every- 
 where else, your visit has been anticipated with great pleasure. 
 
 " As for myself, I shall not leave home for the North until between the 
 10th and loth July, if I go at alL 
 
 " Poor Johnston's untimely fate has filled me with grief. I fear Mr. 
 White has not survived. 
 
 " Favor me with a line from Louisville as to your movements ; and be- 
 lieve me always faithfully, 
 
 " Your friend, 
 
 "H. CLAY. 
 
 " The Honorable D. Webster. 
 
 " P. S. I write in duplicate to Louisville and Cincinnati." 
 
 He left Cincinnati on the 20th of June. In Pennsylvania, 
 at "Washington, and at Pittsbnrg, public dinners awaited him, 
 both of which he accepted. At the latter place, the demon- 
 stration was of a very imposing character. Of the whole tour, 
 the National Intelligencer, of the 13th of July, said : " Mr. 
 "Webster has wrought little less than a miracle upon the party 
 feuds and divisions of the Western country. He has fairly ex- 
 tinguished the one and obliterated the other ; " and it spoke of 
 the complete political amalgamation perceptible in the list of 
 the committee which invited him to Nashville, the home of 
 President Jackson, in Tennessee. It was a time of very bitter 
 political divisions, and these divisions in the "West were of the
 
 464 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 most extreme character. But men forgot their divisions, forgot 
 their personal and party rancors, wherever Mr. Webster came, 
 and, where he could not come, they united frankly and earnestly 
 in expressing their regrets that any circumstances whatever 
 should have prevented them from manifesting their respect and 
 regard for him. These multiplied public proofs of the consider- 
 ation in which he was held by large numbers of his political oppo- 
 nents were looked upon with much jealousy by a certain class of 
 their associates in the East. When connected with what soon be- 
 came known respecting the sentiments of the President himself, 
 and of some of the principal statesmen about him, toward Mr. 
 Webster, these occurrences stimulated a purpose to prevent the 
 latter, if possible, from acquiring further influence with General 
 Jackson. This purpose found the means by which it could be 
 accomplished. The following memorandum, dictated by Mr. 
 Webster in 1838, discloses, in the concluding sentence, the 
 peculiar topic that was made the means of opening a new sub- 
 ject of difference between him and the President, which would 
 render it necessary for him to oppose with renewed vigor the 
 measures into which the Administration was led. 
 
 " General Jackson took an early opportunity to thank Mr. Webster person- 
 ally for his support of the Administration on this occasion [the " Force 
 Bill "] ; and Mr. Livingston expressed his own sense, and that of General 
 Jackson's friends, repeatedly, and in warm terms. Before the end of the ses- 
 sion, a member of the Senate, of General Jackson's party, asked Mr. Webster 
 to look at a list of applicants for an office from the Eastern States. This Mr. 
 Webster declined, as he did not wish to place himself under any obligation. 
 In May, 1833, Mr. Webster set out on a journey to the West, and returned in 
 June [July]. On his return, he met Mr. Livingston hi New York, who was 
 then preparing to depart on his mission to France. It was understood at 
 that time, in private and confidential circles, that, before leaving Wash- 
 ington, Mr. Livingston had frequent conversations with General Jackson 
 respecting Mr. Webster, and expressing the hope that he would be able to 
 continue his support of General Jackson's Administration. These conver- 
 sations were stated to Mr. W. On many points of what was then the pro- 
 posed future policy of the Government, there was no great difference of 
 opinion ; but there was an irreconcilable difference on the great question 
 of the currency." x 
 
 1 Ketchum MS. It has been stated " Force Bill," the President's carriage was 
 by Mr. Everett that, on the day when Mr. sent to Mr. Webster's lodgings, with a 
 Webster replied to Mr. Calhoun on the message borne by the President's private
 
 1833.] APPROVAL OF GENERAL JACKSON. 465 
 
 Mr. Webster knew in the summer of 1833, before he went 
 on his journey to the "West, that the President had determined 
 to remove the public deposits from the Bank of the United 
 States as soon as he could effect it. But he could not speak 
 publicly of this information ; and, therefore, when he had 
 occasion, at Pittsburg, to refer to the President, he con- 
 fined himself to that part of his conduct which related to 
 his action against the " Xullifiers," on which Mr. "Webster 
 said : 
 
 " Gentlemen, the President of the United States was, as it seemed to 
 me, at this eventful crisis, true to his duty. He comprehended and under- 
 stood the case, and met it as it was proper to meet it. While I am as 
 willing as others to admit that the President has, on other occasions, 
 rendered important services to the country, and especially on that occa- 
 sion which has given him so much military renown, I yet think the 
 ability and decision with which he rejected the disorganizing doctrines 
 of nullification create a claim, than which he has none higher, to the 
 gratitude of the country and the respect of posterity. The appearance 
 of the proclamation of the 10th of December inspired me, I confess, with 
 new hopes for the duration of the Republic. I regarded it as" just, 
 patriotic, able, and imperiously demanded by the condition of the coun- 
 try. I would not be understood to speak of particular clauses and 
 phrases in the proclamation ; but I regard its great and leading doctrines 
 as the true and only true doctrines of the Constitution. They constitute 
 the sole ground on which dismemberment can be resisted. Nothing else, 
 in my opinion, can hold us together. While these opinions are maintained, 
 the Union will last ; when they shall be generally rejected and abandoned, 
 that Union will be at the mercy of a temporary majority in any one of the 
 States. 
 
 " I speak, gentlemen, on this subject without reserve. I have not 
 intended, heretofore and elsewhere, and do not now intend here, to stint 
 my commendation of the conduct of the President in regard to the proc- 
 lamation and the subsequent measures. I have differed with the Presi- 
 dent, as all know, who know any thing of so humble an individual as my- 
 self, on many questions of great general interest and importance. . . . But 
 all these differences afforded, in my judgment, not the slightest reason for 
 opposing him in a measure of paramount importance, and at a moment 
 of great public exigency. I sought to take counsel of nothing but 
 patriotism, to feel no impulse but that of duty, and to yield not a lame and 
 hesitating, but a vigorous and cordial support to measures, which, in my 
 
 secretary. The carriage being at the him to the Senate-chamber. - (Biographi- 
 
 door at the time when Mr. Webster was cal Memoir, prefixed to Mr. Webster's 
 
 about to go to the Capitol, it conveyed Works, L, 109.) 
 31
 
 466 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 conscience, I believed to be essential to the preservation of the Con- 
 stitution." 
 
 The present chapter may be closed with some selections 
 from Mr. Webster's private correspondence during the winter 
 and spring of this year : 
 
 [FROM MB. j. E. 
 
 " OSSINGTON, NEVTAEK, January 21, 1833. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : It is a long time since I have written to you, and I 
 say it with the more shame, as in the interval I have received a very 
 friendly letter from you. I trust our friendship is sufficiently deep-rooted 
 not to suffer materially from an occasional drought. We have had two or 
 three years of difficulties and troubles, and of great labor and anxiety to 
 all connected in any way with public affairs. You have been moving on 
 for the same time in a course of even prosperity which I have rejoiced to 
 contemplate, and sometimes, perhaps, allowed myself to envy. The late 
 movements in your affairs have excited, of course, great interest in this 
 country. The latest document I have seen is General Jackson's proclama- 
 tion. I cannot bring myself to believe that your differences will be allowed 
 to run to very extreme lengths. My sense of the justness of public opinion 
 throughout the United States, and of its uncontrollable power, convinces 
 me that you will settle the question in dispute without violence, and cer- 
 tainly without a dissolution of your Federal Government. In both coun- 
 tries just now separation is the cry. I prove my confidence in American 
 good sense in confessing that I think Governor Hamilton and nullification 
 will be more easily settled than O'Connell and repeal. 
 
 " The subject and the occasion will be worthy of your powers, and I 
 look forward with delight to their display, instructing your countrymen 
 and mankind. 
 
 " We are breathing in this country more freely and calmly than we 
 have done for some years ; a sort of repose after the excitement of the 
 great fight for reform, and the celebration of the victory in the elections. 
 I have been tossed about among two or three constituencies, and am at 
 last quietly settled among my neighbors as the representative of the south 
 division of the county of Nottingham. My colleague is Lord Lincoln, the 
 eldest son of the Duke of Newcastle; he has had a public education at 
 Eton and Oxford, and, with a very good disposition, is much more a man 
 of the world than his father, and likely to keep out of scrapes, and to lead 
 an easier life. Our friend Wortley, who took a decided Tory line, is 
 thrown out of Parliament and public life for the present, Stanley is. as 
 you know, a Cabinet minister and Secretary for Ireland. Labouchere is a 
 Lord of the Admiralty, and I occupy the place of an independent country
 
 1833. J CORRESPONDENCE. 467 
 
 gentleman, and M. P. for my own county. I declined taking office undei 
 Lord Grey \vhen I had the offer of Secretary for Indian Affairs. I ac- 
 quiesced in the Reform Bill, and supported it through all its leading pro- 
 visions, but declined further identifying myself at that time with ita 
 authors. We now stand at the commencement of a new era ; and the first 
 question will be, whether the impulse given to the movement party (to use 
 a French phrase) can be resisted by those who gave the first impulse to 
 the movement. Can Lord Grey and his colleagues put a drag-chain on 
 their own car? I shall lend them all my. aid to enable them to do BO. 
 Great changes in church and in almost every department must and ought 
 to follow. But the check wanted is no further change in the constitution 
 of the House of Commons. The movement party cries out for the ballot, for 
 triennial Parliaments, for household suffrage. At present I am quite sure 
 the mass of the country, nine-tenths of the property and education and 
 respectability, do not want further change, but, on the contrary, entirely 
 deprecate it. A very great deal turns on the discretion of the Government, 
 and I am not sure that of that quality there is in some of its members a 
 very large stock. 
 
 " I wish you would enlighten me on the ballot. I did not, while in 
 America, pay very much attention to its real working and effect. I heard 
 various opinions about it, but did not examine them minutely. Some 
 said the ballot did not effect secrecy, that people's votes were still known. 
 What should you say about it ? 
 
 "I am very curious, too, about the success of some of your experiments 
 in prison discipline. How does the plan adopted at Auburn answer? 
 Perhaps you could get our friend the Judge to write me a letter on this 
 subject. 
 
 " I hope you have not given up all idea of paying us a visit here. It 
 would give me the greatest pleasure to see you, and I would devote my- 
 self to you to make your time pass as agreeably as I could. 
 
 " With my best remembrances to the Judge, and to any of my friends 
 who may keep me in their memory, 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " J. E. DENISON." 
 
 [TO MB. PAIGE.] 
 
 " WAsmnGTOif, Friday, P.M., March, 5, 1833. 
 
 " DEAR WILLIAM : I give you great joy at the birth of a daughter ! 
 There is no event on which I could more sincerely congratulate you. A 
 daughter is one of Heaven's best and sweetest gifts to man. It delights 
 me to hear of her dark hair, dark eyes, and high forehead, although it 
 costs me an involuntary tear, by the recollection of poor little Grace. My 
 dear sir, I share your feelings, and partake your joy. May a thousand
 
 468 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XIX. 
 
 blessings hover over the little stranger ! I beg to be most particularly re- 
 membered to Harriette. -What a new world this has become to her by the 
 events of a year ! Pray give her my love. 
 
 " I shall write a note forthwith to the Judge, 1 and send Charles off with 
 it. I met Mr. Appleton between the House and my seat in the Senate, he 
 bringing me the news, I carrying it to him. So you see the young lady 
 makes a stir in Washington already. I thank you for your continued 
 attention to my land matters, etc. 
 
 "I would be glad to help poor Edward along with his hard lessons, if 
 I were at home. Tell him to keep good courage. Making Latin is hard 
 work, but it will grow easier. 
 
 " Tours most truly always, 
 
 " D. WEBSTEK." 
 
 [TO MB. PAIGE.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, March 10, 1833. 
 
 " DEAK WILLIAM : I have been exceedingly glad to hear from you from 
 day to day, with accounts of Harriette and Miss Paige. I rejoice to think 
 that, by the time you receive this, Harriette will be at the head of her own 
 
 table again; for 
 
 1 What is a table, richly spread, 
 Without a lady at its head ? ' 
 
 '' Although not a passionate lover of children, that I know nothing 
 about, yet I really long to see this little specimen of humanity. 
 
 " Mr. Appleton and Mr. Button seem much pleased with the result of 
 the sales. They think it was better than was to be expected. They both 
 perused the catalogue, etc., many an hour, while I read the newspapers. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Dutton leave us on Monday next. 
 
 " I hear that Mrs. Webster was at Baltimore last night ; and, while I 
 write this, I am expecting every moment to see her. Charles keeps watch 
 at the door. 
 
 " Pray dispatch Mr. White by the 15th. I want to see him, but do not 
 let the girls suppose I am desirous of seeing them. 
 
 "P. S. Six o'clock. Mrs. Webster came into this great city at three, 
 with Mrs. Edgar, Herman Newbold, and Mr. Hamilton Fish. All well. 
 
 " I write to Mr. White by this post ; if he shall have left you, you may 
 sither send it after him to New York, or put it into the fire, no matter which. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " D. W." 
 
 [TO MR. PAIGE.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, Tuesday Morning, April S4, 1833. 
 
 " DEAR WILLIAM : I have received yours respecting the lining of the 
 chaise. I do not like a dark lining ; such linings look hot in summer, and 
 
 1 Judge Story, uncle to Mrs. Paige.
 
 1833.] CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 in winter I go in a sleigh. I reject blue; therefore, the body and carriage 
 being dark, I suppose a light drab would not answer, and dark drab looks 
 dull. On the whole, I am for a brown, or a claret, though, if I know what 
 a claret is, it is rather darker than I should like, yet I think it will do very 
 well. Please ask Harriette whether it shall be a claret or a brown, and 
 decide according to her response, as I hope she will sometimes do my new 
 chaise the honor to take a drive in it. 
 
 " I hear that Mr. "White and daughters left Baltimore yesterday morn- 
 ing. Of course, Mr. A. and Mrs. White did not reach them there. They 
 will, doubtless, overtake them this night at Philadelphia. I am happy to 
 say that my letters this morning, dated Sunday morning, represented Mrs. 
 Jones as a great deal better. 
 
 " Tours truly, 
 
 " D. WEBSTEB."
 
 470 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. , CH. XX. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 1833-1834. 
 
 MR. WEBSTER'S FINANCIAL VIEWS REMOVAL OF THE GOVERNMENT 
 DEPOSITS FROM THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES MR. CLAT 5 8 
 
 RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE MR. WEBSTER*S REPORT ON THE 
 
 REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS INTRODUCES A BILL TO MEET THE 
 CRISIS THE PRESIDENT'S PROTEST AGAINST THE RESOLUTIONS 
 OF THE SENATE SPEECH IN ANSWER TO THE PROTEST PER- 
 SONAL RELATIONS TO THE BANK RISE OF THE WHIG PARTY. 
 
 ^ I ^HE " irreconcilable difference on the great question of the 
 -*- currency," between Mr. Webster and the Administration 
 of General Jackson, is a topic that requires to be carefully un- 
 derstood by the reader. To this understanding, a statement of 
 Mr. "Webster's opinions on the subject of the currency is here 
 essential. 
 
 He was in Congress when the last bank of the United States 
 was created, in 1816, and, after an interval of five or six years, 
 he had been in public life ever since. The opinions which he 
 held in 1816, respecting the duty of the General Government 
 toward the currency of the country, and concerning the means 
 of discharging that duty, had been confirmed by the whole ex- 
 perience of the period that had since elapsed. His financial 
 system rested, for its corner-stone, on the principle that the 
 Government should not permit its revenues to be paid in any 
 bank-paper that was not in fact as well as in theory convertible 
 at once into specie. This he regarded as the only efficient means 
 of repressing a circulation of depreciated paper money. He
 
 1833.] FINANCIAL VIEWS. 471 
 
 caused this principle to be acted on by the Government, and it 
 had been successful through the whole period of seventeen 
 years. To a national bank, with a suitable capital, carefully 
 guarded against the suspension of specie payments, either at the 
 dictation of the Government or by its own action, he was not 
 opposed in 1816. He believed then that the paper of such a 
 bank could be made eminently useful in the exchanges of the 
 country, and that it could be an important fiscal agent of the 
 Government, relieving it of the necessity of moving great 
 masses of specie from one part of the country to another when- 
 ever payments were to be made or balances were to be settled. 
 But, so far as such a system rested upon the use of credit, or 
 involved the use of credit, it was with Mr. "Webster a cardinal 
 principle that the paper instruments of that credit should be 
 based on immediate convertibility into specie at the pleasure 
 of the holder. This point being secured, he held that there was 
 no reason why the Government should use gold and silver, ex- 
 clusively, in its own transactions. On the contrary, from the 
 magnitude of the public transactions, and their relation to the 
 commercial exchanges of the country, he held it to be essential 
 that there should be a mixed currency, alike capable of use by 
 the Government and by individuals, consisting of specie and of 
 bank paper securely representing specie. The existence of the 
 State banks, with the power of issuing paper for a circulating 
 medium, he regarded as an evil ; but as an evil which it was 
 better to regulate than to endeavor to suppress. Such regula- 
 tion, of an indirect nature, could be exercised by a national 
 bank, the effect of whose operations would be to limit the area 
 over which the paper of such local banks would circulate, and 
 thus their tendency to make excessive issues would be checked. 
 Mr. "Webster was not, therefore, what is called a " hard- 
 money man," in the sense which banishes all paper circulation ; 
 but in the sense that admits of the use of bank-paper, and yet 
 which requires it, by suitable provisions of law, to be kept 
 always and practically at the par of its nominal specie value, 
 he was, as he always claimed to be, a " bullionist." Although 
 the Bank of the United States, chartered in 1816, had some 
 features which, as we have seen, caused him to vote against it, 
 its operation and effect, coupled with the influence of his specie
 
 472 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XX. 
 
 resolutions of the same year, had been entirely successful in 
 producing a sound state of the currency. We have his recorded 
 opinion, expressed in 1831, that " the United States have had 
 a currency perfectly sound and safe, and more convenient, 
 and producing local exchanges at less expense, than any other 
 nation is, or ever was, blessed with." * 
 
 It is not probable that this condition of the currency would 
 have been disturbed, if political events had not intruded an 
 element of a personal nature into the question of renewing the 
 charter of the Bank of the United States. General Jackson 
 had refused his assent to a bill for renewing the charter of the 
 bank, in 1832, previous to the election in which he was again a 
 candidate for the presidency. He believed that the bank had 
 entered the political field for the purpose of preventing his re- 
 election ; and he came to the discharge of the duties of his 
 second presidency with a determination to prevent the bank 
 from obtaining any prolongation of its existence. The belief 
 which he and some of his friends entertained, naturally led to 
 the conviction that a moneyed institution, possessed of so large 
 a capital, and having certain practical powers over the whole 
 paper- circulation of the country, was a dangerous instrument, 
 capable of political uses, and therefore capable of abuse. The 
 effect of this conviction was, when it came to be acted on, to 
 place a great moneyed capital in a struggle with the Executive 
 Government for the retention of the privileges which it had 
 enjoyed, and for which it claimed to have paid, and to be still 
 paying, an ample equivalent in the benefits which its incorpo- 
 ration and its use, as regulated by law, conferred on the Gov- 
 ernment and the country. Whatever might be the result, the 
 controversy was one that must necessarily cause great mischiefs 
 to the public ; for it was a controversy that could scarcely be 
 tried upon its true merits, and it was very likely to lead to 
 measures that were merely experimental and tentative, because 
 there could be no transition from the existing financial system of 
 the Government to another equally sound, convenient, and safe, 
 while there was so much difference of opinion as to what the 
 substitute ought to be, and while the immediate changes were 
 so liable to be dictated by personal and party considerations. 
 
 1 Ante, chap, vii., p. 150.
 
 1833.] CONTINUES IN THE OPPOSITION. 
 
 473 
 
 From this unfortunate attitude, and from the exposure to be 
 led into immediate steps disastrous to the country, Mr. Webster 
 would have saved the Administration of General Jackson, if he 
 could have done so. There could have been no doubt enter- 
 tained by any one that Mr. "Webster's general system on the 
 financial questions involved was the correct one. But an im- 
 partial consideration of principles was out of the question in 
 the state of feeling which then existed. The President and 
 many of his friends had come to entertain the belief that the 
 bank must be compelled to wind up its affairs, and surrender 
 its existence ; and, consequently, that other modes of treating 
 the relations between the Government and the currency, and 
 of transacting the fiscal business of the United States, must be 
 resorted to. 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Livingston, in the summer of 1833, held 
 the important conversation with Mr. Webster, in the city of 
 !N"ew York, which developed the only irreconcilable difference 
 between the latter gentleman and the Administration, as its 
 future policy was stated to him, it is quite easy to see what that 
 difference was. In the first place, Mr. Webster did tfot ap- 
 prove of the refusal to continue in existence the Bank of the 
 United States ; nor did he believe that, if the Executive hostility 
 were not directed against it, it would be misused for political 
 purposes. In the next place, he knew that the condition of the 
 currency, dependent on the practical benefits secured by the 
 operation of the bank, was perfectly sound and healthy ; he held 
 that this condition ought not to be disturbed by experimental 
 efforts to find some other mode of managing the public finances ; 
 and that it could not be disturbed without producing universal 
 commercial derangement and distress. He saw that the Admin- 
 istration, if the determinations of the President were persisted 
 in, would be committed to a course of measures that were far 
 more likely to be dictated by accidental circumstances, than 
 they were to be the steps of a comprehensive policy that per- 
 ceived distinctly the objects at which it meant to aim, and that 
 grasped the principles on which a new system was to be based, 
 BO as to bring them into operation without serious injury to the 
 business interests of the community. In the result Mr. Web- 
 ster proved to be right. What the President was determined
 
 i74 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XX. 
 
 to prevent was, the renewal of the bank charter. What he did 
 not foresee, and had not settled, was, the system that was to 
 take its place. 
 
 It is probable that Mr. Livingston, in his conversation with 
 Mr. Webster, must have alluded to the plan, which the Presi- 
 dent had already entertained, of removing the Government 
 deposits from the Bank of the United States. At all events, 
 Mr. Webster was aware of it, although it was not publicly 
 known at the time of the interview between those gentlemen. 
 The fact was, however, that, in the previous May, the Presi- 
 dent had consulted his Cabinet in regard to this measure, at a 
 time when Mr. Louis McLane was Secretary of the Treasury. 
 Two of the Secretaries had given written opinions in favor of 
 the removal, and two had given their written opinions against 
 it. Mr. McLane, by whom alone the removal could be ordered, 
 was opposed to it. He was induced to accept a diplomatic ap- 
 pointment, and Mr. William J. Duane, of Pennsylvania, was 
 made Secretary of the Treasury on the 29th of May. Although 
 his known opinions were against the bank, he did not accept 
 the office with a pledge that he would order the removal of the 
 deposits, if required to do so. 
 
 This was the attitude of the Executive Department when 
 the President went on his tour to the Eastern States, at a time 
 when Mr. Webster was absent from home. The President left 
 Washington early in June, remained in Boston and its neigh- 
 borhood through that month, and reached Washington on his 
 return on the 4th of July. Before his return, his purpose to 
 have the deposits removed from the bank had become irrev- 
 ocably fixed. If Mr. Webster had been in Boston during 
 the President's visit, the latter would have had an opportunity, 
 if he bad chosen to use it, to sound Mr. Webster on the subject ; 
 or, if that is to be regarded as an improbable occurrence, it 
 could scarcely have happened that the President, with the gen- 
 eral confidence which he felt in Mr. Webster, and his acknowl- 
 edged obligations to him, would not have held conversations 
 with him that might have cleared the Executive mind of many 
 delusive ideas, and rendered it less open to the influence of per- 
 sons who had an object in misleading it. For, that General Jack- 
 son was misled when he was induced to take this step that it
 
 833.] REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS. 
 
 475 
 
 was a step fraught with incalculable mischiefs to the country, 
 and that it impelled the President into measures that ultimately 
 cost his party the control of the Government can now be seen 
 with entire distinctness. All these consequences could have 
 been pointed out by Mr. Webster, if General Jackson had been 
 wise enough to have consulted a statesman who was personally 
 disposed to aid him in what concerned the welfare of the coun- 
 try, and whose advice would have been given on purely public 
 grounds. Undoubtedly, General Jackson's victory, as it has 
 been accounted, over the Bank of the United States, has been 
 regarded by many as his most famous civil achievement, and as 
 entitling him to the gratitude of his contemporaries and of pos- 
 terity. But this is a subject which has more than one side. 
 "We are here concerned with the view taken of it by Mr. "Web- 
 ster, and with his action in regard to it. 1 
 
 By the charter of the bank, which was still in force as a law 
 of the land, the moneys of the United States were required to 
 be deposited in the bank or its branches, subject to a power of 
 removal in the Secretary of the Treasury, who was required 
 immediately to lay his reasons for such removal before Con- 
 gress, if in session at the time, and, if Congress was not in ses- 
 sion, as soon as it had assembled. In consideration of being 
 made the depositary of the public funds, the bank had paid to 
 the Government a million and a half of dollars, and had bound 
 itself to make the necessary transfers of the public money, 
 
 1 It is a remarkable fact, now gener- President who ever propounded the idea 
 
 ally overlooked, that President Jackson, of an executive bank founded on the 
 
 who came into office in March, 1829, and revenues and credit of the Government ; 
 
 who announced hi his inaugural address second, that the plan to which he resorted 
 
 that the great object of his Administra- after he had removed the public deposits 
 
 tion would be the reform of abuses, from the Bank of the United States, 
 
 which he specified, did not mention the namely, to unite certain State banks in a 
 
 Bank of the United States as unconsti- fiscal agency for the Government for the 
 
 tutional, unnecessary, or dangerous. In collection and disbursement of its reve- 
 
 his annual message of December, 1829, nues, was in substance the same kind of 
 
 he advanced the opinion that the true executive bank which he recommended 
 
 bank for the use of the Government of the in December, 1829. Moreover, it was a 
 
 United States would be one founded on the system which, without any sanction of 
 
 revenues and credit of the Government it- law, brought the whole money power of 
 
 *f(f. When, therefore, it is claimed for the Government under the direct manage- 
 
 General Jackson, as the great merit of ment and control of the Executive. It 
 
 his official career, that he severed the certainly effected no divorce of the Gov- 
 
 Government from all connection with a ernment from banking institutions ; al- 
 
 bank, and taught us the dangers of such though it did divorce the connection be- 
 
 a connection, two things should be re- tween the Government and one particular 
 
 membered : First, that he was the first bank.
 
 476 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XX. 
 
 throughout the country, for the payment of the public creditors, 
 without any charge or allowance on account of differences of 
 exchange. Although, at the last session of Congress, the bank 
 had failed, in consequence of the President's opposition, to ob- 
 tain a prolongation of its charter, the present charter would 
 not expire until the year 1836, and the legal and fiscal rela- 
 tions between the bank and the Government remained un- 
 changed. 
 
 Soon after the return of the President to Washington, it 
 began to be publicly rumored that an irresponsible cabal was 
 trying to induce him to order the removal of the public de- 
 posits from the Bank of the United States, and to place them 
 in certain selected State banks. Before the end of July, it was 
 announced in the official newspaper that an agent had been 
 appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury, under the direction 
 of the President, to ascertain from the State banks in the prin 
 cipal cities on what terms and in what manner they would be 
 willing to perform the services hitherto rendered by the Bank 
 of the United States, if the Government should think proper to 
 remove the deposits. This inquiry was actively conducted in 
 August and September. On the 18th of September, the Presi- 
 dent read a paper to his Cabinet, announcing the final con- 
 clusions of his own mind, and the reasons on which they were 
 founded. In this paper, he made known to them that the 
 measure was his own, and that he assumed the responsibility 
 of it. He did not require their concurrence, but he made it 
 very plain that he would not brook opposition. He named the 
 first day of October as the period when the removal was to take 
 place, or sooner, provided the necessary arrangements could be 
 made with the State banks. 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Duane, believing that 
 the law referred to his judgment, and not to the judgment of 
 the President, the question whether the custody of the public 
 moneys should at any time be changed, and not concurring in 
 the President's reasons for this act, declined to order the re- 
 moval. 1 The President dismissed him from office on the 23d 
 
 1 That there was no reasonable ground apparent from the fact that, at the recent 
 for the apprehension that had been ex- session of Congress in the winter of 1832- 
 sited in the breast of the President, is '33, the House of Representatives, after in
 
 1833.] REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS. 477 
 
 of September, and on the same day, Mr. Taney, afterward 
 Chief Justice of the United States, was appointed Secretary of 
 the Treasury. Before this occurrence, namely, on the 20th, 
 the official newspaper was authorized to state that the deposits 
 would be removed from the Bank of the United States and 
 placed in the State banks as soon as the necessary arrangements 
 could be made. This intelligence was received in the city of K"ew 
 York, the commercial centre of the United States, on the 21st, 
 with extraordinary sensations of alarm and reprehension. On the 
 26th, Mr. Taney signed an official order removing the deposits. 
 
 There was no existing law authorizing the selection of the 
 State banks as custodians of the public money, and no author- 
 ity in the Secretary of the Treasury to make contracts with the 
 State banks for the performance of the duties of fiscal agents of 
 the Government, excepting as such a power could be inferred by 
 remote implication from the Secretary's authority to change the 
 custody of the public funds when Congress was not in session 
 
 When these occurrences afterward became known to the 
 country, it appeared very plainly that while a Secretary pf the 
 Treasury was in office who held it to be his duty not to remove 
 the deposits until Congress could consider the propriety and 
 expediency of the step, the President had determined that the 
 removal should be made, and that he changed the officer in 
 order to secure obedience to his will. It also appeared that the 
 President had considered no other plan for the custody of the 
 public funds and for the performance of the fiscal agency for 
 the Government, hitherto performed by the Bank of the United 
 States, and regulated by the law contained in the charter of 
 that bank, except that the custody and the fiscal agency should 
 be intrusted to certain State banks, to be selected by the 
 Executive. When this measure was resolved on and executed, 
 the project which was afterward developed, for dispensing with 
 all bank agency, and conducting the fiscal operations of the 
 Government by the direct action of the Treasury, as well as the 
 further plan of making gold and silver the sole medium of cir- 
 culation, had not become parts of the Administration scheme. 
 
 vestigation, had pronounced the bank to When Mr. Taney assigned his reasons 
 
 be a well-conducted institution, and had for removing the deposits, he did not 
 
 expressed the opinion that the public rest his justification upon the charge that 
 
 moneys were entirely safe in its keeping, they were not in safe custody.
 
 478 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XX. 
 
 When, therefore, Congress assembled in December, the 
 country was undergoing the effects of this sudden change in 
 the relations of the Government to the Bank of the United 
 States, and had entered upon the experiment of substituting 
 State banks for the performance of the various duties imposed 
 by law upon the national institution. The removal of the pub- 
 lic deposits from the Bank of the United States was imme- 
 diately followed by a contraction of its loans, and a general 
 panic ; and so great was the commercial distress, that, as soon 
 as Congress was assembled, memorials from all quarters of the 
 country were poured upon its tables urging a restoration of the 
 public moneys to the institution to which the law had confided 
 them. The experiment, too, of making use of the State banks 
 as fiscal agents of the Government had already failed to com- 
 mand the public confidence, while it had pushed the selected 
 banks into a position in which they were certain to become the 
 instruments of wild speculation in the hands of their managers, 
 which was to ruin many of them in the end, entailing a long 
 course of disasters upon the several communities within the 
 spheres of their operation. 
 
 Yet the condition of the public mind was at the very time 
 of these events in some respects favorable to the change. Per- 
 haps no man has ever held the office of President of the Uni- 
 ted States with more personal power than General Jackson. 
 Among great masses of the people there was such a conviction 
 of his patriotism and honesty, that, while they disapproved of 
 his acts, and saw their arbitrary or illegal character, they gave 
 him credit for wisdom and integrity in his ends, and were will- 
 ing to overlook the objectionable character of his means. Over 
 the public men who belonged to his political party, and over 
 the party itself, he exercised an almost absolute sway. Few 
 dared to withstand a will that was at once so inflexible and so 
 imperious. He was, too, a great and most adroit politician in 
 the personal management of those whom he had occasion to 
 influence ; knowing well when to restrain and when to un- 
 bridle his own temper, and holding its manifestations under the 
 guidance of an instinct that enabled him to perceive when they 
 would be useful, or when they would be misapplied. It must 
 ever be regarded as a striking proof of the mere power -which
 
 1833.] FINANCIAL CRISIS. 479 
 
 he exercised over the people of this country, that two such 
 statesmen as Mr. "Webster and Mr. Clay put forth the exertion 
 of every faculty that they possessed, each in his own character- 
 istic way, to convince the people that the measures of Gen- 
 eral Jackson were often wrong, both in point of constitutional 
 authority and in point of present expediency ; and yet he al- 
 ways carried them, and the great men who opposed them had 
 to wait for the recognitions of the future, and for that popular 
 conviction which comes only after public suffering has enforced 
 the truth. 
 
 On the assembling of Congress, Mr. "Webster was chosen 
 chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance. He had made 
 up his mind that there was but one course that ought to be 
 pursued. Congress, he thought, would have to act for the relief 
 of the country from the prevailing and increasing distress. It 
 would have to regulate, in some form, the custody of the public 
 money, and not leave it to the discretionary control of the 
 Executive. He did not believe in the capacity of the State 
 banks to fulfil the functions which had been performed by the 
 Bank of the United States ; and he foretold with the utmost 
 distinctness how that incapacity would, as it did, reveal itself. 
 Although he held that the only suitable remedy for the existing 
 state of things was, to continue the national bank in existence 
 for a short period beyond its present charter, until Congress 
 could more deliberately determine on the financial system best 
 adapted to the wants of the country and of the Government, he 
 considered it to be the first duty of Congress to act upon the 
 reasons assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury, in his official 
 report, for the removal of the deposits, and to vindicate its own 
 authority over the subject against the assumption by the 
 Executive of powers not vested in it by the Constitution and the 
 laws. This action, he maintained, should not be allowed to be 
 mixed with or influenced by the question whether there was or 
 was not to be in the future a national bank. At the same time, 
 he did not hesitate to declare his own opinion to be, that a na- 
 tional bank, in some form, was a national necessity, and that the 
 period could not then be foreseen when it would cease to be so. 
 But the first thing to be done was to decide whether the de- 
 posits should be restored to the Bank of the United States, or
 
 480 
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [On. XX. 
 
 whether they were to be left in the custody of the Secretary 
 of the Treasury without the sanction and regulation of law. 
 These were the opinions with which Mr. "Webster entered the 
 Senate at this momentous session. 
 
 On the 26th of December, Mr. Clay introduced two resolu- 
 tions, the first of which declared that the President, by dismiss- 
 ing the late Secretary of the Treasury because he would not, 
 contrary to his own sense of duty, remove the public deposits 
 from the bank, and by appointing his successor to effect such 
 removal, which had been done, had assumed the exercise of a 
 power over the Treasury not granted to him by the Constitu- 
 tion and the laws, and dangerous to the liberties of the people. 
 His second resolution pronounced the reasons assigned by the 
 Secretary of the Treasury for the removal unsatisfactory and 
 insufficient. 1 During a long and excited discussion which en- 
 
 1 The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. 
 Taney, assumed the ground, first, that 
 the power to remove the deposits was 
 vested in him, and that Congress, under 
 the stipulations in the charter of the 
 bank, could not direct it to be done ; sec- 
 ond, that the exercise of his power did not 
 depend merely on the safety of the pub- 
 lic money in the hands of the bank, nor 
 on the fidelity with which it had con- 
 ducted itself, but that he had the right, 
 and that it was his duty, to remove the 
 deposits whenever the public interest or 
 convenience would be promoted by the 
 change. He assumed, as the basis of 
 his action, that the refusal of the Presi- 
 dent, at the former session, to assent to 
 the bill renewing the charter, and his re- 
 election since, had settled the question 
 that the charter was to expire on the 3d 
 of March, 1836. On these premises, his 
 reasons were, that the public interest 
 required that the deposits should not be 
 continued in the bank to the close of its 
 existence ; and that the bank had been 
 guilty of actual misconduct, which chief- 
 ly consisted in its attempt to influence 
 the late elections. He claimed that the 
 power to remove the deposits from the 
 Bank of the United States carried with 
 it the power to select other depositaries, 
 and to make contracts with them. The 
 State banks which he had selected for 
 this purpose were, he said, by agree- 
 ments among themselves, "providing a 
 general currency at least as sound as that 
 of the Bank of the United States, and [one 
 
 that] will afford facilities to commerce, 
 and in the business of domestic exchange, 
 quite equal to any which the community 
 
 heretofore enjoyed Every object," he 
 
 continued, " which the charter to the 
 present bank was designed to attain, may 
 be as effectually accomplished by the 
 State banks." Nothing could more 
 strongly mark the entirely empirical 
 character of this measure than this haz- 
 ardous assertion ; and that it was made 
 and acted on, exhibits the power of party 
 over the judgments of public men in a 
 very striking light. The whole expe- 
 rience of the country for forty years had 
 demonstrated that the State banks were 
 incapable of doing for the community 
 and the Government what the Secretary 
 here claimed for them ; and a very short 
 period was now again to demonstrate the 
 same thing. The truth is, that of disin- 
 terested advisers who understood this 
 subject, General Jackson had not one in 
 his Cabinet. If there was ground for 
 the opinion that a national bank, consti- 
 tuted as the existing bank was, and with 
 such powers over the currency, was an 
 instrument that could be used for politi- 
 cal purposes, the true corrective for 
 statesmen to apply did not require the 
 commission of such a blunder as sudden- 
 ly throwing the public deposits into the 
 hands of the State banks, upon the de- 
 lusive idea that they could make a re- 
 liable national currency by the operation 
 of their contracts with each other. I am 
 aware that General Jackson's justifica-
 
 1833.] 
 
 REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS. 
 
 481 
 
 sued upon these resolutions, memorials on the subject were 
 frequently presented, coming from every part of the country, 
 representing the general commercial olistress; assigning the 
 removal of the deposits as the cause, and praying Congress to 
 direct their restoration to the Bank of the United States. The 
 friends of the Administration in the Senate denied the exist- 
 ence, in any extraordinary degree, of monetary pressure, and 
 asserted that these memorials were dictated by party spirit, or 
 were got up at the instance of the bank. Day after day the 
 Senate resounded with charges and counter-charges, inter- 
 mingled with debates of great ability and scope on some of the 
 financial questions involved. In this attitude of affairs, Mr. 
 Webster had occasion, on the 20th of January, to present a 
 series of resolutions passed by a public meeting in Boston, which 
 was attended by members of both the political parties, and con- 
 
 tion depends upon the suggestion that 
 this bank was so powerful and so deter- 
 mined to perpetuate its power, that it 
 was necessary to destroy it by an ex- 
 treme measure, coute que coute, and that 
 nothing less than a direct blow such as 
 he aimed at it, would have answered the 
 necessary purpose. But leaving out of 
 consideration entirely the personal feel- 
 ings in which his hostility to the bank 
 was said to have originated, the true 
 answer to this suggestion is, that what- 
 ever may have been the aims of the 
 Bank of the United States, and the 
 conduct of its chief manager, before 
 the removal of the deposits, its charter 
 could have been extended, or another 
 bank could have been created, under 
 provisions which would have obviated all 
 the supposed political dangers. The 
 bank that was presided over by Nicholas 
 Biddle never did, and never could have, 
 exercised so much power as to prevent a 
 statesman like Mr. Webster from incor- 
 porating into its renewed charter, or into 
 the charter of another bank, all the ne- 
 cessary safeguards which the purity of 
 elections and the independence of public 
 men may have required. Mr. Webster was 
 always ready to do this, and no one can 
 doubt his ability, with his long experience 
 and his thorough acquaintance with the 
 subject of public finance, to have formed 
 a national bank that would have con- 
 tinued the advantages of a sound national 
 currency, without being capable of being 
 32 
 
 made the political instrument of a party. 
 But such were the prejudices and the 
 state of crimination and recrimination 
 excited at once by the step taken by the 
 Administration, that Mr. Webster, in 
 whose impartiality and uprightness the 
 nation would in any other condition of 
 the public mind have been entirely dis- 
 posed to confide, could effect nothing be- 
 yond leaving upon record, for future 
 guidance, the evidence that his own 
 principles on these financial questions 
 were the true ones. The result was that 
 experiment after experiment, to which 
 this and the succeeding Administration 
 were led, failed to accomplish any thing 
 of importance in reference to the cur- 
 rency ; that a state of prejudice on the 
 question of a national bank was per- 
 petuated until it became impossible to 
 create one ; that a great national emer- 
 gency afterward found us without a na- 
 tional currency other than gold and sil- 
 ver, and drove the Government into the 
 issue of a currency consisting of its own 
 paper divorced from all relation to the 
 precious metals excepting that which was 
 to be measured by its speculative value 
 as a promise to pay ; and that we have 
 never yet reached the means by which 
 the paper issues of private corporations 
 can be maintained as a national currency 
 at a par with gold and silver, or even be 
 made a general medium of exchange, 
 without being enforced by the direct 
 credit of the Government itself.
 
 482 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [CH. XX. 
 
 eisted of men engaged in all the active pursuits of life, rec- 
 ommending, as the appropriate remedy for the present com- 
 mercial distress, a restoration of the relation in which the bank 
 had heretofore stood to the Government. His remarks, in 
 presenting these resolutions, were exceedingly grave and 
 pointed, but without any asperity. He dealt with the present 
 condition of things as a crisis fraught with the most important 
 issues for the Government and the community. The great evil, 
 he said, arose from the new attitude in which the Government 
 had placed itself toward the bank. Every thing was in a false 
 position. The Government, the Bank of the United States, 
 and the State banks, were all out of place, deranged, separated, 
 and jostling against each other, each acting on the defensive, 
 and the public interest crushed between the upper and nether 
 millstones. All this should have been foreseen. It was idle to 
 say that these evils might have been prevented by the bank, if 
 it had exerted itself to prevent them. The quarrel was an un- 
 necessary one ; and it was one that had given a great shock to 
 the whole currency system of the country, deranging the inter- 
 nal exchanges, which had hitherto been accomplished by the 
 Bank of the United States with great facility, and at a rate 
 unprecedentedly cheap. 
 
 The public moneys, he continued, were now out of the Bank 
 of the United States, and in the custody of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury, without regulation of law, to be kept where he 
 pleased and as he pleased. This state of things Congress could 
 not suffer to remain. His own opinion was, that the deposits 
 should be restored to the Bank of the United States. This 
 question was entirely unconnected with the controversy whether 
 that bank should be rechartered or any new one created. But 
 looking beyond the question of the immediate custody of the 
 public funds, he asked, What is to take the place of the bank as 
 a means of exercising that salutary control over the currency 
 of the country which it was the unquestionable purpose of the 
 Constitution to devolve on Congress? There were but four 
 opinions or suggestions as to what might thereafter be expected 
 or attempted. One was, to leave things as they stood, with the 
 whole subject under the control of the Executive ; another, to 
 .do away with paper entirely, leaving only a metallic currency.
 
 1834.] REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS. 4g3 
 
 Both of these he dismissed as impracticable. There remained 
 only the rechartering of the present bank, or the creation of a 
 new one. The last could not be effected before March, 1836. 
 Entertaining the opinion that a well-conducted national insti- 
 tution was essential to guard against the excessive issues of 
 nearly four hundred State banks, and to furnish a sound and 
 uniform currency to every part of the United States, he was 
 ready to recharter the present bank, with such modifications as 
 would meet and reconcile the different states of opinion on the 
 subject, so as to remove all reasonable grounds of jealousy in 
 all quarters. These suggestions, he declared, were made with- 
 out the knowledge of the bank, and with no understanding or 
 concert with any of its friends, or with any one heretofore op- 
 posed to it. In conclusion, he demanded of those who proposed 
 to continue the discussion concerning the removal of the de- 
 posits, to let the country see their plan for the final settlement 
 of the present difficulties. 
 
 Such in substance were the views that were repeated by Mr. 
 Webster more than once, as he had occasion to speak upen the 
 several memorials or resolutions of public bodies that were 
 presented by others or by himself. He tendered to the oppo- 
 nents of the bank, to the Administration, and to the country, 
 all his aid in reconstructing the bank so that the general sense 
 of the people would be satisfied that the Government would 
 have a safe depositary for the public treasure, an important 
 auxiliary in its financial operations, and a sound national cur- 
 rency, without the possibility of political abuses of the powers 
 conferred. 
 
 But it soon became apparent that his aid for this purpose 
 was not wanted by those who had the power to obstruct any 
 such healing measure. On the 30th of January, it became 
 evident, from some remarks made by Mr. Wright, one of the 
 Senators of Xew York, that the Administration had determined 
 that the public moneys should remain in the State banks, and 
 that the public revenues should be collected through their 
 agency ; that no law on the subject should be passed, and that 
 the point was to be established that Congress has no power to 
 create a national bank. This aroused all Mr. Webster's energies. 
 From this date he entered into the discussion of the whole sub-
 
 484 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XX 
 
 ject witli the utmost earnestness. It is impossible to give here 
 a detailed account of the speeches which he made in the course 
 of this discussion, which lasted until the adjournment of Con- 
 gress in June, 1834, occupying a part of nearly every day. 
 Between the 20th of January and the close of the session, he 
 addressed the Senate on this subject sixty-four times, besides 
 making the report of the Committee on Finance in relation to 
 the Secretary's reasons for the removal of the deposits, and 
 delivering his great speech in answer to the Protest which the 
 President sent to the Senate. In these various speeches there 
 is embraced a most extensive range of subjects ; comprehending 
 practical questions of finance and currency, an exposition of 
 the constitutional relations between the different departments 
 of our Government, and a searching and profound analysis of the 
 office of those checks and balances which the principles of civil 
 liberty have established as barriers against the encroachments 
 of arbitrary power. How all this should have grown out of 
 the mere executive act of removing the public moneys from the 
 custody of one bank into that of several other banks, can be 
 understood only by observing the character of the pretensions 
 asserted by the Executive Department, and the necessity that 
 existed for resisting them. The merely financial and prudential 
 features of this controversy would not alone have called out such 
 a discussion of the principles on which Mr. Webster put forth his 
 peculiar powers. But the President's act rendered it necessary, 
 in Mr. "Webster's opinion, for the Senate to express its firm and 
 decided condemnation. This drew from the President claims 
 of executive authority so high and transcendent, that an answer 
 to them became necessary for the future preservation of the 
 principles of constitutional government. The whole attitude 
 of affairs was not unlike some of the collisions between Charles 
 I. and his Parliament, and it produced discussions that are not 
 less important than were those memorable debates, in which 
 the prerogatives of the crown came into conflict with the rights 
 of the legislature. 
 
 On the 4th of February, Mr. Clay's second resolution, cen- 
 Buring as unsatisfactory and insufficient the Secretary's reasons 
 for removing the deposits from the bank, was referred to the 
 Committee on Finance. On the 5th of February, Mr. Webster
 
 1834. J BILL TO RESTORE THE DEPOSITS. 435 
 
 brought in the report of the committee. It embraced a full 
 and elaborate examination of the legal relations between the 
 Government and the bank, the powers of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury, and the reasons which he had assigned for the re- 
 moval. It negatived the claim of the Secretary to an absolute 
 and unqualified control over the question of removal, and main- 
 tained that the provision of the law which required him to give 
 an account of his reasons to Congress, constituted Congress the 
 final judge, by way of appeal, of all his reasons, both as they 
 affected the interests of the bank and the interests of the pub- 
 lic. After an elaborate examination of the Secretary's reasons, 
 the report concluded with a recommendation that the resolution 
 referred to the committee be adopted by the Senate. It was 
 finally voted upon on the 28th of March, and was carried by 
 twenty-eight yeas against eighteen nays. Immediately after- 
 ward, Mr. Clay modified his first resolution, which was then 
 passed by twenty-six yeas against twenty nays, in the following 
 terms : " That the President, in the late executive proceedings 
 in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself 
 authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, 
 but in derogation of both." 
 
 It had become apparent to Mr. "Webster, before the middle 
 of March, that while he and those who acted with him could 
 carry a measure through the Senate, nothing could be done for 
 the relief of the country, unless the President and a majority 
 of the House of Representatives would concur in what might 
 be proposed. The Administration would do nothing. It was im- 
 portant, therefore, that no one should be able to say that what 
 was to be proposed by an opponent of the Administration would 
 insure the continuance of the Bank of the United States , and it is 
 important now, to those who mean to understand Mr. Webster's 
 course on this subject, to know that he meant to give that bank 
 no claim to a renewal of its charter, by the bill which he intro- 
 duced on the 18th of March. It was the purpose of this bill to 
 give the Bank of the United States sufficient time to wind up 
 its affairs, without distressing the public by a too rapid collec- 
 tion of its debts ; to have the public deposits restored to it after 
 the 1st of July, subject to removal at any time by order of Con- 
 gress ; and to reserve to Congress perfect liberty to create any
 
 486 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [_Ca. XX. 
 
 new bank at any time after March, 1836. lie also proposed, 
 in order to increase the circulation of gold and silver, that, 
 when the States would direct their own banks not to issue notes 
 of a less denomination than five dollars, Congress should direct 
 the Bank of the United States to issue no notes below twenty 
 dollars. This he regarded then, and always, as a very impor- 
 tant object. On asking leave to introduce this bill, he delivered 
 an impressive speech, which is to be found in the fourth volume 
 of his "Works, and which he closed as follows : 
 
 " I have thus, sir, stated my opinions, and discharged my duty. I set, 
 the country laboring and struggling and panting under an enormous 
 political evil. I propose a remedy which I am sure will produce relief, if 
 it be adopted, and which seems to me most likely to obtain support. And 
 now, sir, I put it to every member of Congress, how he can resist this 
 measure, unless by proposing another and a better. Who, among the 
 agents and servants of the people assembled in these Houses, is prepared, 
 in the present distressed state of the country, to say that he will oppose 
 every thing and propose nothing ? For one, sir, I can only say that I have 
 been driven to this proposition by an irresistible impulse of obligation to 
 the country. If I had been suddenly called to my great reckoning in an- 
 other world, I should have felt that one duty was neglected, if I had had 
 no measure to recommend, no expedient to propose, no hope to hold out 
 to this suffering community. 
 
 " As to the success of this bill, sir, or any other, I have only to repeat 
 what I have so often said, that every thing rests with the people them- 
 selves. In the distracted state of the public counsels, any measure of 
 relief can only be obtained by the decisive demand of the public will. 
 
 " By an exercise of executive power, which I believe to be illegal, and 
 which all must see to have been injurious, by an unrelenting adherence to 
 the measure which has thus been adopted, in spite of all consequences, 
 and by the force of those motives which influence men to support the 
 measure, though they entirely disapprove it, the country is brought to a 
 condition such as it never before witnessed, and which it cannot long bear. 
 But it is not a condition for despair. Nothing will ruin the country, if the 
 people themselves will undertake its safety, and nothing can save it, if 
 they leave that safety in any hands but their own. 
 
 " "Would to God, sir, that I could draw around me all these twelve 
 millions of people ! Would to God that I could speak audibly to every 
 independent elector in the whole land ! I would not say to them, vainly 
 and arrogantly, that their safety and happiness require the adoption of any 
 measure recommended by me. But I would say to them, with the sin- 
 cerest conviction that ever animated man's heart, that their safety and 
 happiness do require their own prompt and patriotic attention to the
 
 1834.J PRESIDENT JACKSON'S PROTEST. 487 
 
 public concerns their own honest devotion to the welfare of the State. I 
 would say to them that neither this measure, nor any measure, can be 
 adopted except by the cogent and persisting action of popular opinion. I 
 would say to them that the public revenues cannot be restored to their 
 accustomed custody, that they cannot be again placed under the control 
 of Congress, that the violation of law cannot be redressed, but by manifes- 
 tations, not to be mistaken, of public sentiment. I would say to them that 
 the Constitution and the laws, their own rights and their own happiness, 
 all depend on themselves ; and, if they esteem these of any value, if they 
 were not too dearly bought by the blood of their fathers, if they be an 
 inheritance fit to be transmitted to their posterity, I would beseech them, 
 I would beseech them, to come now to their salvation." 
 
 But it was impossible even for Mr. "Webster to remove the 
 vast weight of executive will which obstructed every measure 
 that sought to change the present state of things. The Presi- 
 dent had determined that nothing should be done. In this de- 
 termination he was supported by a great party, in which some 
 acted from conviction, some gave up their convictions, and all 
 were fearful that any yielding would be accounted a political 
 victory over their chief; yet it is as certain as the motives of 
 any statesman can be made certain by what he aims to do, and 
 by the spirit in which he acted, that Mr. Webster, throughout 
 this controversy, sought no political victory over General Jack- 
 son. He regarded the President as a man who had precipi- 
 tated the country, needlessly, into a condition from which it 
 was necessary that it should be rescued. To rescue it, he 
 would have given his aid to the President, cheerfully and 
 frankly, as he gave it in the crisis of nullification. But, unfor- 
 tunately, the state of things was such that he could reach the 
 mind of the President only as he could reach the mind of the 
 country, namely, from his place in the Senate ; and, whatever 
 was uttered there, came to the President's ear mingled with the 
 utterances of those to whom he felt personal hostility, and was 
 associated to him with the obnoxious bank. Demonstration, 
 argument, eloquence, could effect nothing. Mr. Webster did 
 not press his bill to a vote, because a vote of the Senate, sus- 
 taining it, would have led to no practical result. 
 
 Another event, too, of a character entirely unprecedented, 
 soon obliged Mr. Webster to deal with this whole controversy 
 in a manner in which he had not hitherto treated it. He had
 
 188 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XX. 
 
 concurred in the vote of the Senate which had censured the 
 control assumed by the President over the public funds as a 
 violation of the Constitution ; and, as the reader has seen, he 
 had, in a formal report, recommended the expression of that 
 opinion by the Senate. On the 17th of April the President 
 sent to the Senate a protest against that proceeding. This was 
 a document written with great ability, and with a sustained 
 dignity. The character and station of the President, and his 
 vast popularity and influence, gave to the doctrines embraced 
 in it an importance which they could not have had if advanced 
 from any other source. 
 
 Our country, in the different vicissitudes through which it 
 has passed, has exhibited very striking proofs of the manner in 
 which the popular power forces its way into the working of our 
 Constitution, alternately raising and depressing the spheres of 
 its several departments. "When the executive office has been 
 filled by a man of strong characteristics and great popularity, 
 it has been exalted into an undue and unconstitutional pre- 
 dominance over the Legislature. When the President has not 
 been a man of extraordinary force of character, and the popular 
 sympathy has been with Congress, the tendency in the other 
 direction has been equally marked, and Congress has absorbed 
 the executive powers, besides exercising its own. It is justly 
 to be claimed as one of the great merits of all that Mr. "Webster 
 has left to us, that his whole public career was mainly occupied 
 in expounding the Constitution ; that his doctrine was never par- 
 tial or defective ; that he gave no distorted interpretations ; that 
 he elevated no department at the expense of any other ; that 
 he comprehended and ever kept in view the just relations of 
 all parts of the Constitution ; and that he regarded its observ- 
 ance as paramount to all other considerations. 
 
 General Jackson's Protest embraced claims ol executive 
 power and views of the presidential office, which had never 
 been asserted before since the Constitution was established. 
 Nothing so closely resembling the prerogatives of English kings, 
 as they were held in former ages, had ever been broached 
 in this country. Construing the Constitution of the United 
 States as if it had intended, by vesting the executive power in 
 the President, and by placing in his hands the power of
 
 1834.] PRESIDENT JACKSON'S PROTEST. 489 
 
 appointment to office, to give him discretionary control over 
 all subordinate executive officers, the Protest claimed it to be 
 the right and duty of the President, by virtue of his general 
 executive power, to supervise and control the Secretary of the 
 Treasury in relation to the custody of the public funds. It 
 thus appeared that, in the judgment of the President, the law 
 establishing the bank did not, and could not, change the rela- 
 tion between the President and the Secretary ; and that, not- 
 withstanding the law had vested in the Secretary the power 
 to determine whetiher the public funds were to be removed 
 from the bank, on reasons to be rendered to Congress, the 
 President could interpose his own judgment, order the Secre- 
 tary to remove the deposits, and dismiss him from office if he 
 did not comply. It was upon this ground, chiefly, that the 
 President denied the right of the Senate to censure his act ; 
 and that he protested against that censure as an unwarrantable 
 interference with the executive power. 
 
 A true judgment cannot be formed respecting this contro- 
 versy, without remembering that the law had prescribed a 
 duty to be performed by the Secretary, and to be performed 
 in a particular manner. The President did not deny this; 
 but he claimed that his paramount ' executive authority en- 
 abled him to control the Secretary, if the latter did not act 
 in the execution of the law as the President thought he should 
 act. It would be difficult to imagine a case in which a law ol 
 Congress could more explicitly vest in a subordinate officer a 
 function to be performed by him, independent of the President, 
 than had been done in this case. The issue, therefore, between 
 the President and the Senate was, whether the general execu- 
 tive power of the President is of such a character that legisla- 
 tion cannot direct a subordinate officer to perform duties which 
 are executive in their nature, without subjecting that officer, 
 in the performance of those duties, to the control of the 
 President. 
 
 This issue, in the excitements of the time, was more or less 
 obscured by the collateral topics and personal criminations that 
 attended its discussion. A debate followed the reading of the 
 President's Protest, which did not satisfy Mr, Webster's concep- 
 tions of the manner in which it should be met. He was re-
 
 i9Q LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. |_ CH - xx - 
 
 luctant to enter again into the subject, for the occurrences of 
 the last session were fresh in his recollection, and he did not 
 desire, from public reasons, to be obliged to make further oppo- 
 sition to General Jackson, whose hands he had recently sought 
 to strengthen against a dangerous attack upon the Constitu- 
 tion. But the Constitution itself was ever the first object in 
 his thoughts, the one constant motive of all his public acts, 
 whenever its meaning and operation were called in question. He 
 regarded the President's ideas of the nature and extent of his 
 authority as entirely untenable. The personal popularity of the 
 President, who had advanced this claim, made it the more neces- 
 sary, in Mr. Webster's opinion, that it should be answered upon 
 its own merits, and in a becoming spirit. After listening for 
 some days to a very unprofitable and angry discussion in the 
 Senate, he wrote to Mr. Jeremiah Mason : " I fear I shall be 
 obliged to make a speech on the Protest. I have heard nothing, 
 as yet, which puts the case on such grounds as you and I should 
 approve." The result was the delivery of his speech on the 
 President's Protest, which is printed in the fourth volume of his 
 Works. 1 
 
 How entirely it was in his power to lift himself above .the 
 heated atmosphere of party, in the discussion of topics that 
 involved constructions of the Constitution, this speech is a 
 signal proof. The most important of the doctrines asserted by 
 the Protest related to the nature ot the executive power, which 
 the Constitution vests in the President, and to the relation of 
 the power of appointment to the general executive function. 
 According to the Protest, the supreme executive of the Consti- 
 tution is a department in which is vested all the authority for 
 executing the laws that can exist in any government. As the 
 laws are to be executed by public agents, the Protest derived 
 the power of their appointment from the general executive 
 power ; and from the same source it deduced the power of 
 removing them from office. Hence it appeared to be the view 
 of the Protest, that the appointing power, being originally and 
 inherently in the Executive, and including the power of re- 
 moval, remained absolutely in the hands of the President ex- 
 cept so far as the Constitution has restrained it. From this 
 
 1 Delivered May 7, 1834.
 
 1834.J THE PRESIDENT'S PROTEST EXAMINED. 49! 
 
 position, it followed that the Legislative Department cannot 
 impose upon an inferior officer the performance of duties which 
 are executive in their nature, so that he shall be beyond the 
 control of the President, who may remove him from office 
 at pleasure. Reasoning from these premises, and assuming, 
 further, that the custody of the public money is an executive 
 function belonging to the Executive by force of the constitu- 
 tional creation and nomination of that department the Pro- 
 test, which claimed authority in the President to control all 
 public officers holding the public funds, necessarily asserted 
 that Congress could not place the money of the Government 
 where its custody was not at all times subject to the will of the 
 President. 
 
 Mr. Webster's answer to this doctrine presents a view of the 
 Constitution which must at all times be regarded as of the 
 utmost importance. After adverting to the fact that, in all our 
 American constitutions, as in other governments, the general 
 distribution of powers into the legislative, the executive, and the 
 judicial, does not of itself fix precise definitions, he proceeded 
 to show that the Constitution of the United States, in confer- 
 ring powers on all the departments, proceeds by specific enu- 
 meration, and not by general definition of what constitutes legis- 
 lative, executive, or judicial power. The general principle of 
 the distribution is, he said, of inestimable value, but the Con- 
 stitution does not give a general definition of the executive any 
 more than of the legislative or the judicial power. "We are to 
 seek for the extent and scope of each of these departments in 
 the specific powers which the Constitution confers upon them. 
 Following this rule, it will be found that the denomination of 
 the Executive Department does not necessarily confer upon it 
 the power of appointment ; but that this power is the subject 
 of a specific grant, to be exercised under certain restrictions, 
 and in a prescribed mode ; nor does it follow, from the Presi- 
 dent's power to appoint public officers, that they are, and must 
 be, under the Constitution, removable at his pleasure, so that 
 Congress cannot regulate the tenure of office. 
 
 The doctrine of the Protest, that the custody of the public 
 money belongs, by the Constitution, to the Executive, was all 
 founded on the asserted power of the President over those who
 
 492 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XX. 
 
 might be appointed to hold that custody. It amounted, there- 
 fore, to the practical denial of all power in Congress to place 
 the public treasure in the hands of officers whom the President 
 could not control ; and this claim was asserted in it in express 
 terms. Having shown that the Constitution did not vest in 
 the President absolute control over all public officers, so that 
 Congress cannot prevent the removal of an incumbent by the 
 President, Mr. "Webster contended that, whether the individual 
 officer is to be changed by the President, or is to be removed 
 only as Congress may prescribe by law, it is entirely competent 
 for Congress to direct that whoever is in the office shall perform 
 its duties without the interference of the President. If the 
 President may change the officer, the duties of the office remain, 
 and they must be performed by the successor, as Congress has 
 by law directed them to be performed. This had been the 
 state of the case in regard to the public deposits, which the law 
 had directed to be kept in the bank, subject to removal by the 
 Secretary, for reasons which he was to render to Congress. But 
 the President had not left this duty to be performed by the 
 officer as the law required it. He had removed one officer who 
 would not, to make room for another who would, change the 
 custody of the public money ; and he had publicly declared it 
 to be his own act, and to have been done at his command. That 
 command, rested upon the paramount control of the supreme 
 Executive Magistrate over all public officers and upon the fur- 
 ther claim that the custody of the public money is necessarily 
 an executive function, was what Mr. Webster regarded as a 
 violation of the Constitution, because of its encroachments on 
 the powers of the Legislature. 
 
 That the Senate, as one of the branches of the legislative 
 power, had an unquestionable right, and was bound by its 
 duty, to defend the legislative power, and that it could do so 
 by an expression of its opinion on any act of the Executive 
 which it deemed an encroachment, Mr. Webster held to be 
 clear. 
 
 The residue of this speech was devoted to a refutation of 
 the doctrine put forth by the Protest, that the President is 
 responsible for the conduct of all executive officers, and may 
 discharge them when he is no longer willing to be responsible
 
 1834.] PERSONAL RELATIONS TO THE BANK. 493 
 
 for their acts. Misled by foreign analogies, as Mr. Webster held 
 the writer of the Protest to have been, it was necessary to point 
 out that our American constitutions are not checks imposed 
 upon a preexisting authority, but that they are grants of specific 
 powers, for the extent of which we are to look to the grants 
 themselves. In this portion of the speech he has left the most 
 important guide that we possess for the discussion of our Amer- 
 ican questions of constitutional power, by keeping in view the 
 broad distinction between our systems and the precedents or 
 analogies drawn from foreign states. 
 
 The excitements of the period in which this speech was de- 
 livered have passed away, and another generation has succeeded. 
 More than thirty years have elapsed since General Jackson, by 
 the mere force of his will, could cause a great party to accept, 
 for the moment, the doctrines of his remarkable protest. But 
 there is not one of those doctrines that has survived the tem- 
 porary passions which gave them a brief political ascendency. 
 They have received no subsequent sanction from the people 
 of this country. As constructions of the Constitution^ or as 
 explanations of the nature of our institutions, and the dis- 
 tribution of political functions, they have been, in fact, re- 
 jected ; and they stand in our political history in no other 
 rank than that which belongs to assertions of power that have 
 derived their force from the peculiarities of individual charac- 
 ter, backed by the personal devotion of a party to whose gen- 
 eral political creed they were as uncongenial as they were to the 
 spirit of the age, and to the provisions of the fundamental law 
 of the land. 
 
 But the personal and temporary triumph of General Jack- 
 son was complete ; for, while the Senate recorded their re- 
 jection and official condemnation of the doctrines of his pro- 
 test, there was no legislation effected, at this session of Con- 
 gress, restoring the public deposits to the Bank of the United 
 States, or controlling in any way the financial experiment 
 which the Executive Government was determined should be 
 tried. 
 
 Before leaving this subject of the Bank of the United 
 States, it is proper to refer to a base attempt that was made to 
 fasten upon Mr. "Webster an imputation of interested motives.
 
 194 Li ^ E OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XX. 
 
 It is rare that a slander of this kind does no mischief. Contem- 
 porary refutation or rejection seldom does the work of complete 
 vindication to all whom the imputation has reached. There is, 
 to this day, a vague popular belief that Mr. Webster was under 
 an extraordinary personal bias toward the bank, which colored 
 all his opinions, and influenced his acts on this occasion. It is 
 so clearly my duty to him, and to the influence of his public 
 principles, to notice this imputation, that my readers will ex- 
 pect no other reason to be assigned for laying before them the 
 facts. 
 
 It had happened to Mr. Webster, in former years, to be 
 employed by the bank, in his professional capacity, to argue 
 important causes in the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 He was one of the counsel for the bank in the celebrated case 
 GtMoOuUooh vs. Maryland, as early as 1819, which involved 
 the question of the power of the States to tax the bank or its 
 branches ; and he had been engaged by the bank in other 
 causes in subsequent years. He was not a professional adviser 
 of the bank, in relation to its application, in 1831-'32, for a re- 
 newal of its charter. His correspondence with Mr. Biddle, its 
 president, at that time and subsequently, is in my hands ; and 
 it was solely in his public capacity, as a Senator of the United 
 States, who held that the public interest demanded the exist- 
 ence of such an institution, that he wrote to Mr. Biddle for 
 information, or received any letters from him. In his former 
 occasional relation of an advocate, in certain causes in which 
 the bank had an interest, all men could see that the weight of 
 obligation must have been on the side of the bank ; and it must 
 have required a high degree of credulity and prejudice for any 
 man to have supposed that it was a matter of any personal im- 
 portance to Mr. Webster whether this bank was to be continued 
 in existence, or whether its capital was to take some other form 
 of investment, unless he was one of its debtors. But there is 
 always, among a part of mankind, a great amount of both 
 credulity and prejudice. What it received and listened to on 
 this occasion had an origin ; and, as not unusually happens, the 
 imputation became transformed in shape and substance, until 
 what was originally intended as a charge of having received 
 exorbitant fees as counsel, amounting to bribes for his public
 
 1834.J PERSONAL RELATIONS TO THE BANK. 495 
 
 influence, was converted into the statement that he was an ex- 
 traordinary debtor to the bank. For neither of these imputa- 
 tions was there any rational foundation. Mr. "Webster was too 
 wise and circumspect, and too great a man, to place himself 
 under peculiar obligations to any corporation which might 
 have interests liable to be acted upon by him in his public 
 capacity ; and it is my firm belief that he never was influenced, 
 in any public act or opinion, by any private relation that may 
 have subsisted even between himself and any portion of his 
 immediate constituents or of his personal friends. I am 
 not unconscious of what this remark implies ; and here- 
 after I shall proceed to justify it, in relation to another 
 topic, concerning which full information will be given to 
 my readers. At present, I must ask their attention to the 
 miserable origin of the particular charge that is here ad- 
 verted to. 
 
 On the ITth of March, 1834, the Yice-President, Mr. Yan 
 Buren, communicated to the Senate a paper containing the 
 proceedings and resolutions of a meeting, held in Tork County, 
 Pennsylvania, by " friends of the Administration," in favor of 
 the removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United States, 
 and against the recharter of that institution. Mr. Webster had 
 been furnished with evidence, from the same locality, that this 
 paper misrepresented the sentiments not only of the bulk of the 
 people in the county, but of the persons who attended the meet- 
 ing ; and he presented this evidence to the Senate. A discus- 
 sion thereupon ensued, in the course of which Mr. Poindexter, 
 of Mississippi, made known the fact that, when this paper 
 reached the hands of the Yice-President, it contained, as part 
 of its preamble, a gross libel on Mr. Webster, which had been 
 stricken from it before it was presented by the Chair. Ex- 
 planations were then made, from which it appeared that the 
 Yice-President had pointed out the offensive paragraph to the 
 Senators from Pennsylvania, and that it had been stricken 
 out by them. It was read in the Senate, Mr. Webster himself 
 calling for it, and was in these words : 
 
 " One word in conclusion. Daniel Webster, now a Senator, and a 
 champion of the bank, was, at its creation, a member of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives. Then the bank was not his client, and he was opposed to
 
 496 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XX. 
 
 it. His unbiassed opinion, as a representative of the people, was in direct 
 opposition to what he now holds ; but now he is ' concerned for the bank ' 
 (in legal phraseology), and no doubt finds it a good fat client, as it has 
 already disposed of more than fifty thousand dollars in the shape of fees. 
 In 1816 he was alarmed at the dangerous powers such an institution could 
 make its own, and he raised his voice for a sounder currency than mere 
 ' promises to pay,' with nothing wherewith to fulfil such promises. He 
 then said, ' Gold and silver currency was the law of the land at home, and 
 the law of the world abroad ; and that, in the present state of the world, 
 there could be no other currency.' " 
 
 Mr. "Webster, thereupon, rose and said : 
 
 " That he had been infonned that a statement of the proceedings of 
 this meeting would be presented, and that it would present an altogether 
 false account of it ; and he was requested to lay the evidence of this mis- 
 representation before the Senate. He had been told, at the same time, 
 that there was one part of the paper, about to be presented, which con- 
 tained matter scandalous in reference to himself. He had said then, what 
 he had always felt, that he felt much reluctance in laying this evidence 
 before the Senate, because he should have regarded it as more consistent 
 with self-respect to have taken no notice of such idle and ridiculous scan- 
 dal. He had consented, however, to lay the paper in his hand before the 
 Senate, knowing that the sentiments of the respectable citizens of York 
 would be misrepresented here by this truly miserable statement of the pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 " He considered it due to the Vice-President to say, that he was this 
 morning informed by that gentleman of the offensive character of the refer- 
 ence to himself. He had told the presiding officer he was aware of the 
 existence of the offensive paragraph, and that he considered it unimpor- 
 tant whether it was read or not. The presiding officer had said that the 
 paragraph was highly improper, and that he would not present the pro- 
 ceedings unless this part of them was stricken out. When the paper was 
 read, he had not heard the offensive clause, and, of course, he concluded 
 that it had been expunged. As to the resolutions, he had not read them, 
 or seen them, until to-day. He considered them as obnoxious to the 
 charges which the Senator from Mississippi had alleged against them. 
 They did contain offensive imputations as to members of the Senate. But, 
 as this was a subject which would take up some time, he would, if the 
 gentleman from Mississippi had no objection, move to lay the proceedings 
 on the table, to give the Senators from Pennsylvania time to look into the 
 character of the statement. If they should afterward determine to renew 
 the motion to refer and print, the further discussion of the matter might 
 then take place." 
 
 A debate, however, followed upon the question of receiving
 
 1834.] PERSONAL RELATIONS TO THE BANK. 497 
 
 the paper at all, in the course of which the Yice-President and 
 the Senators from Pennsylvania made further explanations of 
 their respective agencies in having the paper modified before it 
 was sent to the Senate. On all sides the greatest respect was 
 manifested toward Mr. Webster ; and those who caused the 
 offensive paragraph to be stricken out were very explicit in 
 their declarations that they had assumed a questionable respon- 
 sibility in relation to a paper that fell within the category of 
 petitions, because it contained grossly indecent imputations 
 against a member of the Senate. It was finally rejected by a 
 decisive vote. 
 
 Such were the contemptible source and shape of the charge 
 that Mr. Webster was acting under a bias as the paid advocate 
 of the bank, and such was the manner in which this charge 
 first came into public notice. It was a charge made by low 
 politicians of a distant borough, prompted or unprompted, and 
 calling themselves "friends of the Administration." It was 
 not much more than a twelvemonth since that Administration 
 had been obliged to ask this great statesman's aid in a perilous 
 crisis of its affairs ; and well might public men of honor and 
 character, who were in his presence, blush for the baseness of 
 their partisans. But official rebuke of "such a slander does not 
 kill it. It possesses a vitality that can adapt itself to other 
 shapes ; and it soon came to be said, that although the charge 
 that the bank was his " client " could not shake public confi- 
 dence in Mr. Webster, the fact that the bank was his " creditor" 
 was, at all events, good ground of attack. In this form the cal- 
 umny has still perhaps living believers. 1 They may be gratified 
 to know, under his own hand, precisely what his pecuniary rela- 
 tion to the Bank of the United States was then, and had been 
 previously. Two letters are extant, in which he has taken 
 notice of this form of the imputation. One of them was ad- 
 dressed to Mr. Everett, who was at the time serving on a com- 
 mittee of the House of ^Representatives to investigate the con- 
 dition of the bank. It has been published heretofore. The 
 
 1 I am inclined to think that, in re- sometimes heard Mr. Webster's indebt- 
 spect to sums, the supposed disburse- ment to the bank stated at the sum of 
 mentsof the bank, in the shape of /<*, fifty-six thousand dollars, by persons 
 assumed by the politicians of " York," who were children when the events de- 
 became, traditionally, loans. I have scribed in the text occurred. 
 83
 
 498 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XX. 
 
 other was a private letter, in answer to a gentleman in "New 
 Hampshire, an old college friend of Mr. "Webster, but a political 
 opponent, who had occasion, in the autumn of this year, to bor- 
 row money at the Branch Bank of the United States, in Boston. 
 I believe it has not been made public before. 
 
 [TO MB. EVERETT.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, April 26, 1831. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I am obliged to you for your letter of the 23d. If, in 
 the course of your investigations, the committee should incline to notice 
 my name, I wish you to state, on my authority, that I never had any particu- 
 lar or unusual accommodation from the bank to the amount of a single 
 dollar ; that, since I went to Boston, in 1817, 1 have kept my account and 
 done my necessary banking business at the Boston office ; and notes, bills 
 of exchange, etc., etc., with my name on them, have been collected and 
 discounted, etc., as often as occasion required, precisely as would have 
 been done in the case of any other person, and not otherwise. I hear re- 
 ports of mortgages, standing loans, etc., etc., between the bank and my- 
 self, in all of which there is not a single word of truth. I never gave the 
 bank any mortgage, and never had any standing loan or any other accom- 
 modation, except in the way of discount of bills and notes, as at other 
 banks. 
 
 "As to Mr. Connell's notes, etc., they arose in a strictly professional 
 transaction. He obtained the agency of the claims of our Boston mer- 
 chants and insurance offices under the French treaty. They made it a con- 
 dition of the bargain, that he should secure my professional services in all 
 cases ; and, having the agency for a vast amount of other claims, Mr. Cou- 
 ncil engaged my professional aid in the whole as matter of contract, and 
 the notes were given in pursuance of this contract. 1 That is the whole 
 matter. You may make any use of these facts, public or private, which 
 you deem proper. . . . 
 
 " Yours truly ever, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MR. HTTBBARD.] 
 
 "BOSTON, November 18, 1834. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have received your two letters. The note accom- 
 panying the last I have indorsed, and sent to the bank, where it will be 
 doubtless discounted, according to your wishes. 
 
 " Will you allow me to say, my dear sir, that I had one objection, 
 
 1 This refers to professional services distribute the money to claimants undei 
 before the commissioners appointed to the treaty.
 
 1834.] RISE OF THE WHIG PARTY. 
 
 499 
 
 though a trifling one, to indorsing your note. You know what stories 
 have been circulated (and nowhere more diligently than in New Hamp- 
 shire) of my pecuniary obligations to the Bank of the United States, heavy 
 mortgages, etc., etc. Now, the truth is, that the bank never discounted or 
 advanced to me a cent in the world, except in the ordinary way as they 
 have done for others ; and, at this moment, the indorsement of your note, 
 and one other signed by another gentleman, constitutes nearly, if not en- 
 tirely, my whole liability to the bank ; and, to put an end to such slan- 
 ders, and to have been enabled myself to say that the bank did not hold 
 my name for a dollar, I should, perhaps, if you had lived here, have sug- 
 gested to you the obtaining of some other name instead of my own. But, 
 as you lived in the country, it might have been inconvenient to you ; and, 
 after all, I suppose there would be just as much libellous matter published, 
 let the facts be one way or the other. Mr. Frothingham will probably 
 write you. I hope you will find the rogue that took such liberties with 
 your name. 
 
 " Yours with regard, 
 
 " DANL. WEBSTER. 
 " Hon. Henry Hubbard, 
 
 " Charlestown, New Hampshire." 
 
 It was at this period that the term " Whigs " sprang into 
 use, as a designation of that portion of the people who were 
 opposed to the high prerogative ideas of the executive office 
 which General Jackson and his friends maintained, and who 
 sought to uphold the proper functions of the Legislature 
 against executive encroachments. The party which had sup- 
 ported Mr. Clay for the presidency in the election of 1832, 
 known as National Republicans, naturally remained in oppo- 
 sition to his successful rival. But the name of their party had 
 never been significant of any well-defined political principles, 
 and it was no longer suited to the circumstances of the times. 
 In those circumstances, it was now felt instinctively that, in 
 the existing struggle between the parties actually arrayed 
 against each other, and in the principles and doctrines of 
 those who were in power, there was a peculiar fitness in the 
 revival of a term which, on both sides of the Atlantic, had 
 been historically associated with the side of liberty against 
 the side of power. This revival of the name of Whigs was 
 sudden, and it was a spontaneous popular movement. In 
 progress of time, it enabled the public men who were lead- 
 ing the opposition to the party of the Administration to con-
 
 500 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XX. 
 
 solidate an organization of distinct political principles, and 
 to strengthen it by accessions from those who had found 
 reason to be dissatisfied with the opinions prevailing among 
 the friends of the President. From this period, in all his 
 party relations, Mr. "Webster was known as one of the great 
 leaders of the Whigs.
 
 1835.1 NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY, IN MASSACHUSETTS. 5Q1 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 1834-1835. 
 
 NOMINATED FOE THE PRESIDENCY BY THE WHIGS OF MASSACHU- 
 SETTS VARIOUS POPULAR DEMONSTRATIONS IN OTHER STATES 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE ANTIMASONS OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 GENERAL HARRISON NOMINATED BY THE WHOLE OPPOSITION 
 
 IN PENNSYLVANIA DIFFICULTIES WITH FRANCE WAR AVERT- 
 ED DEFEAT OF THE FORTIFICATION BILL FRENCH SPOLI- 
 ATIONS BEFORE 1800 SPEECH ON THE POWER jF REMOVAL 
 FROM OFFICE MR. BENTON 5 S " EXPUNGLNG " RESOLUTION 
 REGULATION RESPECTING TREASURY DRAFTS ON THE DEPOSIT 
 BANKS. 
 
 SUCH a session of Congress as that described in the last 
 chapter could have had no other effect than to develop 
 parties, and to bring about a designation of candidates for the 
 presidency. The separation of Mr. Calhoun from General 
 Jackson, long since complete, and the avowed wishes of the 
 latter to make Mr. Yan Buren his successor, left scarcely any 
 doubt that Mr. Yan Buren would be the candidate of the party 
 which supported the Administration. Among the opposition, 
 Mr. "Webster was the person most naturally to be regarded as 
 the first choice. Mr. Clay was scarcely in a position to be 
 selected a second time, immediately after his unsuccessful can- 
 didacy of 1832 ; and if he was to be regarded as out of the 
 question, on this occasion, the opposition had no statesman 
 who was for a moment to be compared to Mr. Webster, in re- 
 spect to ability, to past services, to reputation, and to popular-
 
 502 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXI. 
 
 ity. The tendencies of thoughtful men in different quarters of 
 the Union toward Mr. Webster, in the summer and autumn of 
 1834, are abundantly proved by the mass of correspondence 
 that lies before me, which shows that nothing was wanting to 
 the opposition, in order to have made him their candidate, but 
 a compact organization, and a definite unity of political objects. 
 But the opposition was composed of heterogeneous materials. 
 The National .Republican party of 1832 had been embarrassed 
 by antimasonry. The Whig party, which was substantially 
 identical with the National Republican, was now embarrassed 
 by the same cause ; for men who earnestly desired to change 
 the administration of the national Government, and who con- 
 demned the measures of General Jackson and his political sup- 
 porters, still thought it necessary to worry themselves and to 
 vex the politics of the country about " secret societies," to 
 maintain a special party for this purpose, and to withhold their 
 cooperation from all public men who did not regard this topic 
 as of the first importance. 
 
 In Massachusetts, where the party of General Jackson, 
 which now became known as the Democratic party, had never 
 been very strong, there was an almost universal desire to take 
 some step which would place Mr. Webster in a position to be 
 regarded through the country as the candidate of the whole 
 opposition. But the Whigs had not yet devised for themselves 
 the machinery of a national nominating convention. No such 
 meeting was contemplated ; and, if it had been contemplated, 
 the existence of the third party of Antimasonry would have 
 been a serious obstacle to its harmonious action. The only 
 step that could be taken by the Whigs of Massachusetts was, 
 to nominate Mr. Webster for the presidency by a legislative 
 caucus. In the Legislature they were the strongest of all the 
 parties in numbers and in weight of character ; and it was sup- 
 posed at this time that such a nomination, proceeding from 
 Massachusetts as the general voice of her people, would be fol- 
 lowed by similar movements in other States. 
 
 The following letters, selected from Mr. Webster's most 
 confidential correspondence with his personal friends, relate to 
 this movement and its consequences :
 
 1835.] PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION. 593 
 
 [TO MR. MASON.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, January 1, 1835. 
 
 " DEAR SDR : Whether it is or will be best for Massachusetts to act at 
 all on the subject of a nomination, is a question which I leave entirely to 
 the judgment of others. I cannot say that I have any personal wishes 
 about it, either one way or the other. A nomination by Massachusetts 
 would certainly be one of the highest proofs of regard which any citizen 
 can receive. As such, I should most undoubtedly esteem it. But, in the 
 present condition of things, and with the prospects which are before us. a 
 nomination is a questionable thing to one who is more desirous of preserv- 
 ing what little reputation he has than anxious to grasp at further distinc- 
 tion. I have made up my mind, however, to be passive, and shall be 
 satisfied with any result. 
 
 " But I have a clear opinion on one point ; and, as I promised you to 
 communicate my sentiments freely, I will state that opinion frankly. It 
 is, that if Massachusetts is to act at all, the time has come. I think the pro- 
 ceeding, if one is to be had, should be one of the first objects of attention 
 when the Legislature assembles. In Ohio, Mr. McLean is already nomi- 
 nated, I presume, according to late accounts. Many Whigs, who do not 
 prefer him, fall into the measure (in Ohio) simply because they have no 
 other choice. It is expected, or at least hoped, that New Jersey will sec- 
 ond this nomination. Movements are in preparation in other places ; but, 
 as far as I know, nothing is yet proposed anywhere in which there could 
 be a general union, or in which Massachusetts would be likely to agree. 
 
 " If a resolution to make a movement in Massachusetts should be 
 adopted, not only should the thing itself be done as soon as practicable, 
 but in the mean time notice of the intention should be given to friends in 
 the neighboring States, and especially in New York, that they may pre- 
 pare for it. Let us know here the moment any thing is determined on. 
 
 " It looks at present as if Mr. Clay would not do or say any thing. He 
 declares himself in nobody's way ; but still it is evident that his particular 
 friends are not prepared to act heartily and efficiently for anybody else. 
 
 " Be sure to burn this letter, and assure yourself also that I write such 
 
 letters to nobody else. 
 
 " Tours truly, 
 
 "D. WEBSTER. 
 
 " The committee of the House of Representatives will not report in 
 conformity to the recommendation of the message on French affairs. 
 Probably no report will be made, till further intelligence from France." 
 
 [FROM MR. ABBOTT LAWRENCE.] 
 
 " BOSTON, January 5, 1835. 
 
 "MY DEAR SIR : I wish I could see you for ten minutes, that I might 
 say to you many things that cannot be written. Yet, I cannot omit the
 
 504 LIFE Or DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXI, 
 
 present time to say that I have been called upon within the last few days 
 by many prominent individuals (your particular friends), who would be 
 glad to know your wishes in relation to the future. 
 
 " There is a strong disposition to make a nomination early, by a Legis- 
 lative caucus, of President of the United States. This will take place be- 
 yond a doubt, and it is to be hoped other States may follow in the course 
 of the winter. Supposing such an event to take place, is it your intention 
 to resign your seat in the Senate ? If you have not made up your mind on 
 this point, your friends here hope you will not do so without very mature 
 deliberation, as your services in the Senate appear to be almost indispen- 
 sable during this and the next session of Congress. I know full well that 
 your sacrifices have been great, and I am the last individual to require of 
 you a continuance of them if, in your judgment, your interests are to be 
 promoted by retirement ; at present I am not clear upon this point. There 
 is hardly any thing, I believe, that your friends will not be ready to do 
 in either case, whether you remain or whether you retire. I ask now, 
 in candor and frankness, and in perfect confidence, as I have consulted 
 with but one individual, in case your sacrifices professionally can be made 
 more reasonable, whether you do not think it will be best, all things con- 
 sidered, to remain in your present situation till we see how matters stand 
 a year hence, and then take such a course as circumstances may make ex- 
 pedient. I do not see that it is incumbent on you to resign in conse- 
 quence of your nomination ; perhaps, however, I may not see the whole 
 ground. Others, I find, have the same opinion. 
 
 " You have doubtless marked out a course of action for yourself. I 
 would not certainly undertake to divert you from it, as you have much 
 more practical wisdom upon these matters than myself. I esteem the 
 point at which you have arrived, however, one of vast moment to the coun- 
 try as well as to yourself, and feel an indescribable interest, that nothing 
 should be done by which yourself or your friends shall hereafter feel that 
 a mistake was made at this particular period of your political life. 
 
 " If you can do yourself politically more good by retirement, you can 
 promote the good of the country by the same course. I leave the subject 
 with a hope that, whatever your decision may be, it will be one which will 
 lead to a life devoted to the public interest. This should be your destiny, 
 and your friends ought injustice to do for you all that may be required. 
 
 " I remain, dear sir, 
 
 " Truly yours, 
 
 "A. L." 
 
 [TO MK. MASOK.] 
 
 "WASHINGTON, January 10, 1835. 
 
 " DEAB SIB : I have received your letter of the 4th. It seems gen- 
 erally understood here, that a nomination will be forthwith made in 
 Boston. The proceedings in Ohio seem to make it necessary ; and I believe
 
 1835.] PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION. 505 
 
 friends here have found it expedient to signify to gentlemen in differ- 
 ent parts of the country what may be expected to transpire in Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
 " On the subject of Senator, I have said little, and nothing publicly ; 
 as all the gentlemen who have been named are quite fit for the place, 
 and would do credit to the State. Since you ask my private opinion, 
 however, I am willing to say, in entire confidence, what I think about the 
 question. 
 
 "There is no man who can come into the Senate, in my opinion, 
 with so much prospect of being useful as Governor Davis. He is well 
 known here, stands high in reputation for talents, and enjoys universal 
 confidence as a man of honor and probity. And, if a candidate, such is 
 his popularity at home, that I suppose he would be elected by general 
 consent. 
 
 " Then, the objection arises, which you mention, from the difficulty of 
 finding a successor to him in his present office. 1 This objection is serious, 
 and they who are on the spot can best judge whether it be insurmount- 
 able. I have heard nobody much talked of for Governor, in case Mr. Davis 
 should be Senator, but Mr. E. Everett. It has been thought his nomina- 
 tion would bring back a great portion of the Antimasons to a union with 
 the Whigs. Certainly, that is a very important object. We need our 
 whole strength in Massachusetts, and a cordial cooperation of the Anti- 
 masons in Massachusetts, in other things, would have igreatly beneficial 
 effects in New York and Pennsylvania. 
 
 " I have no question that Mr. Everett would make a perfectly safe 
 Governor. He has been here ten years, and no man has acted with 
 more faithfulness toward friends, or more devotion to the good cause. 
 I should entirely confide in his integrity and ability in the govern- 
 ment of the State. He has good principles, good feelings, good as- 
 sociations, and is no more likely to appoint a bad judge, for instance, 
 or do any other thing leading to great public mischief, than Governor 
 Davis himself. 
 
 " How extensively Mr. Everett may be thought of, I do not know. He 
 is mentioned frequently here, in case Governor Davis should come to the 
 Senate ; and I have seen letters from home which suggest the same thing. 
 If practicable, a pacification of the antimasonic question is, doubtless, 
 highly desirable. 
 
 " I send you Mr. Clay's report. The committee of the House will not 
 report at present ; and nothing will be done here till we hear further from 
 France. 
 
 " We are almost frozen up here. The weather is cold and the snow 
 deep, quite beyond all my experience. 
 
 " Tours with great truth and sincerity, 
 
 " DAIUEL WEBSTEB. 
 
 " Hon. Mr. Mason." 
 
 1 Governor of the State.
 
 506 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXL 
 
 [TO MB. MASON.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, January 22, 1835. 
 
 " DEAR SIB : I have received yours of the 14th. There has been some 
 impatience here, in regard to proceedings in Boston, on account of the daily 
 inquiries by friends in other quarters, as to what might be expected ; but 
 I presume things have gone on as fast as they well could. 
 
 " Mr. McLean's nomination appears to take but little. It is coldly re- 
 ceived even in Ohio; so much so, indeed, that General Harrison's friends 
 are holding meetings in that State, for the purpose of bringing Mm for- 
 ward. Letters received to-day, from Columbus and Cincinnati, ask ur- 
 gently what is doing or to be done in Massachusetts. 
 
 " The schism in the Jackson party proceeds. It appears to me that 
 nothing is likely to stop its progress. If we WMgs had union and energy, 
 we have now before us a prospect no way discouraging. 
 
 " You will have heard of a duel to-day between Mr. Wise, of Virginia, 
 and his predecessor, Mr. Coke. I hear the former is badly wounded. I 
 am busy in the court. Mr. Taney is yet before us. Probably will not be 
 confirmed ; but that is not certain. 1 
 
 " Tours truly, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER. 
 " Mr. Mason." 
 
 [TO MR. MASON.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, February 6, 1835. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIB : It is true that I have looked forward to the events 
 which the approaching election might bring about as likely to furnish a fit 
 occasion for my retirement from the Senate. I have fixed on no particular 
 time, nor made, indeed, any such determination as may not be changed by 
 the advice or wishes of friends. As I am now placed, I shall certainly not 
 leave my place till the time arrives when I may think that its relinquish- 
 ment will not be unsatisfactory to Massachusetts. 
 
 " I do not affect, my dear sir, to desire to retire from public life, and to 
 resume my profession. My habits, I must confess, and the nature of my 
 pursuits for some years, render it more agreeable to me to attend to politi- 
 cal than to professional subjects. But I have not lost all relish for the 
 bar, and can still make something by the practice ; and, by remaining in 
 the Senate, I am making sacrifices which my circumstances do not justify. 
 My residence here so many months every year greatly increases my ex- 
 penses, and greatly reduces my income. You know the charge of living 
 here with a family ; and I cannot leave my wife and daughter at home, 
 and come here and go into a ' mess ' at ten dollars a week. 
 
 " I find it inconvenient to push my practice in the Supreme Court while 
 
 1 The nomination of Mr. Taney, as succeed Chief-Justice Marshall, was ai 
 Chief Justice of the United States, to this time before the Senate.
 
 1835.J GENERAL POPULARITY. 507 
 
 a member of the Senate ; and am inclined, under any view of the future, 
 to decline engagements hereafter in that court, unless under special cir- 
 cumstances. These are the reasons that have led me to hope for a fit occa- 
 sion of leaving the Senate; when I can quit with the approbation of 
 friends, I shall eagerly embrace the opportunity. In the mean time, I 
 shall say nothing about it. 
 
 " I ought this spring to go to the West, as far at least as Kentucky and 
 Indiana. I am fully persuaded it would be a highly useful thing. My 
 friends urge it upon me incessantly, and I hold back from promising com- 
 pliance with their wishes only from an unwillingness to lose six weeks more, 
 after the session closes. On this point, however, as nothing is decided, I 
 say nothing at present. There will be no cause in court, I think, to detain 
 me after the 3d of March. 
 
 " We have nothing new here. A base attempt has been made to ascribe 
 the madness of Lawrence : to the speeches, etc., of the Senate. An inquisi- 
 tion, if it may be so called, has been had upon Lawrence by two physi- 
 cians, who have signed a report, and returned it to the marshal. It proves 
 a clear case of insanity. The report will not be published so long as its 
 publication can be withheld. 
 
 " We shall pass through the Senate a pretty good bill for reorganizing 
 the post-office. 
 
 " I saw lately a strange letter from Washington in the Boston^ Gazette, 
 about an express from the New York Whigs, and a coldness between Mr. 
 W. and Mr. Clay. Both stories are equally and entirely groundless. There 
 has been no express here from New York. On the contrary, all the Whig 
 papers of the city (except Noah's) will soon be out (or we are misinformed) 
 in the direction you would desire. 
 
 "Yours truly, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER. 
 
 "Mr. Mason." 
 
 The nomination contemplated by the "Whigs of Massachu- 
 setts was made in February. Mr. "Webster had a strong body 
 of friends in Pennsylvania, who desired him to come among 
 them immediately after the adjournment of Congress. He 
 was in Harrisburg on the 19th of March, where the Legis- 
 lature was in session, and received from a committee of the 
 members an invitation to a public dinner, which was tendered 
 as a mark of respect for his public services and his character as 
 an American statesman. This honor he felt obliged to decline. 
 In August, being at Bangor, Maine, on a professional engage- 
 ment, he accepted an invitation to a public entertainment, and 
 afterward addressed an immense concourse of people who had 
 
 1 A person who attempted to assassinate the President.
 
 508 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXL 
 
 come from far and near to see and to hear him. In October 
 occurred the imposing ceremony of the presentation to him, by 
 his fellow-citizens of Boston, of a massive silver vase, in the 
 presence of an audience of four thousand persons. 1 In Novem- 
 ber, he received an invitation to a public dinner from leading 
 citizens of Philadelphia, and in December there came another 
 from Baltimore ; both of which he declined. From Vermont, 
 from New York, from Ohio, from Louisiana, and from many- 
 other regions remote from New England, there came letters, 
 often numerously signed, expressing the hopes of the writers 
 that an opportunity might be secured for electing him to the 
 presidency. This opportunity seemed most likely to be afforded 
 by the action of the opposition in Pennsylvania. Public meet- 
 ings were held in the counties of Chester and Alleghany, in 
 November, to elect delegates to a State convention. In the 
 former, the Whigs and Antimasons united, and appointed dele- 
 gates in favor of the nomination of Mr. Webster. In the latter, 
 the meeting was chiefly composed of Antimasons, but they in- 
 structed the delegates to vote for the nomination of Mr. Web- 
 ster in the State Convention. But here the objectionable prac- 
 tice of interrogating public men, who were supposed to be can- 
 didates for public position, came into unfortunate activity. 
 Men of entire honesty of purpose and of great respectability, 
 ardently desiring to make Mr. Webster President of the United 
 States, could not content themselves with the sufficiency of his 
 character as a statesman, with his known sentiments on all 
 really important public questions of the time, but they thought 
 it necessary to press him on the point of Masonry. They 
 wanted him to be their candidate, but they wanted him to be 
 an Antimasonic candidate. Accordingly, the Pennsylvania 
 State Committee of this party, as well as lesser organizations 
 of the same kind, addressed to him specific and pointed in- 
 quiries as to his opinions about secret societies, and what he 
 should deem the duty of a Chief Magistrate in respect to ap- 
 pointments to office. 
 
 This was undoubtedly one of the greatest trials of this 
 peculiar kind to which Mr. Webster was ever subjected ; and, 
 in order to show why it was so, and to exhibit the manner in 
 
 1 This vase is now deposited in the Public Library of the city of Boston.
 
 1835.] AOTIHASONRY. 509 
 
 which it was met, some explanation of the state of things in 
 Pennsylvania, at this time, is here necessary. The Whigs of 
 Pennsylvania were acting with great pradence, for the Anti- 
 masonic party was large, excited, and jealous. Without a co- 
 operation of these two branches of the opposition, neither Mr. 
 Webster nor any other man could obtain the popular vote of 
 the State. Mr. Webster's Whig friends, therefore, although 
 they regarded all this excitement on the subject of Masonry as 
 eminently unnecessary, were very willing, and indeed earnest, 
 to have him satisfy the sentiment to any reasonable extent. 
 
 On the other hand, he had many warm friends among the 
 Antimasons, whose private communications to him revealed the 
 intensity of their desire to have him made the candidate of their 
 party, but who did not perceive that they exacted from him a 
 pledge which it would have been unbecoming in him to give. 
 To gratify such a body of men, on the eve of a very important 
 election, without sacrificing his own character, was certainly a 
 delicate task. It is not needful to ask the judgment of my 
 readers as to the success with which Mr. Webster could play 
 the part of a politician ; but I can give the means of deter- 
 mining his rank as a statesman and a patriot. The conven- 
 tions, the ballots, the parties of this and every other period of 
 his life, are among the dead things of the past. His character 
 remains one of our great and imperishable treasures, to which 
 we may point as a proof that our institutions sometimes pro- 
 duce men who can act with dignity and independence. 
 
 In the public answer which he made to the Antimasons of 
 Pennsylvania, he did not hesitate to say that he regarded secret 
 societies, the members of which take upon themselves extraor- 
 dinary obligations, and are bound together by secret oaths, as 
 objectionable ; and he commended highly the sentiment which 
 the Antimasons had adopted, of " the supremacy of the laws." ' 
 But to the inquiry of what he would deem the duty of a Chief 
 Magistrate in making appointments to office, he made no an- 
 swer. This topic he reserved for a private letter to one of the 
 gentlemen who had addressed him. Let it be understood that 
 Mr. Webster earnestly desired to be President of the United 
 States ; that he wished to receive the nomination and support 
 
 For the public letter, see his published Correspondence, voL ii.
 
 510 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXI. 
 
 of his Antimasonic friends in Pennsylvania ; and that it would 
 have been quite easy for him to have caused it to be be- 
 lieved, in that particular region, that as President he would 
 appoint none but Antimasons to office ; which was in fact 
 what he was desired to say. 
 
 [TO MESSBS. WALLACE AND OTHEKS.] 
 
 " BOSTON, November 30, 1835. 
 
 " GENTLEMEN : I have received your letter of the 16th instant. A de- 
 sire to know my opinions concerning any public question, which proceeds 
 from so highly respectable a source, would at all times command my re- 
 spectful and prompt attention. Before the receipt of your letter, however, 
 a correspondence had taken place between friends of yours in another part 
 of Pennsylvania and myself, on the same general subject. That corre- 
 spondence, I presume, is to be laid before the convention at Harrisburg, 
 and may render a particular answer to your letter unnecessary. I will ob- 
 serve, however, that on the subject of all secret societies, bound by secret 
 oaths, I concur entirely with what I suppose to be the sentiments of the 
 Antimasons of Pennsylvania, as I have said on various occasions hereto- 
 fore ; and there can be no question of the constitutional right of those, who 
 believe secret societies to be either moral or political evils, to seek to re- 
 move those evils by the exercise of the elective franchise, as well as by 
 other lawful means. The expediency of such exercise of the elective fran- 
 chise, in a given case, must be decided by the electors according to their 
 own sense of the magnitude of the evils which they seek to remove, and a 
 conscientious regard to those other great interests of the community which 
 are more or less affected by every exercise of that franchise. 
 
 " I pray you, gentlemen, to accept the assurance of my personal regard 
 and cordial good wishes. 
 
 "Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen, 
 
 "DANL. WEBSTEB. 
 
 " To Messrs. J. Wallace and others." 
 
 [TO w. w. IB WIN.] 
 
 " BOSTON November 30, 1835. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : I enclose you copies of a letter received by me from 
 xuernbers of your State Committee, and my answer. 
 
 " If my letter to yourself and your associates had not appeared to super- 
 sede the necessity, I should have found no difficulty in answering the first 
 two questions proposed to me in this letter. But I should doubt the pru- 
 dence of directly replying to the third ; because, in the situation in which 
 I stand, that question might appear to others to be little else than asking
 
 1835.] POLITICAL MOVEMENTS. 5H 
 
 me whether, on the happening of a certain event, I would confine myself 
 to Antimasons in nominations to office. Although the question, in form, 
 asks only what I think would be the duty of a Chief Magistrate, yet, in 
 effect, it might be thought, or represented, as a mere request of a promise 
 from me. I wish, my dear sir, you would take occasion to explain this 
 point, in conversation, with the writers of the letter, and with other friends. 
 What a Chief Magistrate must do, and ought to do, so far as he is elected 
 on Antimasonic principles, and in regard to portions of the country where 
 those principles prevail, can be no matter of doubt to you or to me, or to 
 any man who reflects, and who means to act with candor and honesty tow- 
 ard those who support him. 'I hope no one hesitates to believe that I 
 am altogether incapable of disappointing, in that respect, any natural and 
 just expectations which friends may form. But it does not consist with 
 my sense of duty to hold out promises, or any thing that might be re- 
 garded as equivalent to promises, particularly on the eve of a great elec- 
 tion, the results of which are to affect the highest interests of the country 
 for years to come. I authorize you, my dear sir, to make the substance of 
 this letter known to your friends and mine ; but it is still to be regarded, 
 of course, as a private and confidential letter. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTEB. 
 
 " Wm. "W. Irwin, Esq., at Harrisburg, Pa." 
 
 - 
 
 On the 16th of December separate State conventions of the 
 Whigs and the Antimasons assembled at Harrisburg. In the 
 latter, nearly all men admitted that Mr. "Webster was their first 
 choice. But, alas for these nominating bodies, men could not 
 act upon the conviction that a statesman of preeminent abilities 
 and character was the fittest nay, the only fit person to be 
 designated for the presidency. To use the cant of these occa- 
 sions, with which the private letters of the time are filled, they 
 " could not carry him ; " and it appears that the reason most 
 generally assigned was that he had been a Federalist. The 
 nomination was given to General William Henry Harrison, of 
 Ohio, whose popularity, founded on the part he had taken in 
 the late war with England, was supposed to be sufficient to en- 
 counter the pretensions of Mr. Yan Buren. On the following 
 day the Whig Convention adopted the nomination of General 
 Harrison. A private letter, written on the spot, expressed the 
 indubitable fact that this step only increased the chances of Mr. 
 Van Buren's election. 
 
 But to return. Mr. Webster was in his place in the Senate
 
 512 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXI. 
 
 at an early period of the session which began in Decem- 
 ber, 1834. It was the middle period of General Jackson's 
 last Administration ; and matters of great moment were 
 pending in relation to our foreign as well as our domestic rela- 
 tions. There was no small danger of a war with France about 
 an affair of money ; and the whole subject of the custody and 
 regulation of the public funds remained as it was left at the end 
 of the last session. 
 
 Rarely have two great nations incurred a more unnecessary 
 danger of coming to blows than did the United States and 
 France in the year 1835. By a convention concluded in 1831, 
 the French Government had bound itself to pay the Govern- 
 ment of the United States twenty-five millions of francs, to 
 liquidate certain claims of citizens of the United States ; * and 
 on the 2d of February, 1833, the first instalment of this sum 
 became due. A bill of exchange was drawn by the Secretary 
 of the Treasury on the French Minister of Finance for the 
 amount of the instalment, and was sold to the Bank of the 
 United States. On its presentation at the French Treasury, 
 payment was refused, on the ground that the Legislative Cham- 
 bers had made no appropriation to meet the instalment. The 
 bill was taken up in Europe for the honor of the Bank of the 
 United States, and was returned to this country protested. The 
 bank claimed the usual damages of the Government, as in any 
 other case of a protested bill which had been sold by the drawer. 
 In his annual message at the commencement of the session of 
 Congress in December, 1833, President Jackson made an official 
 communication on the subject, and stated that he had dispatched 
 an envoy to the French Government to attend to this matter, 
 in regard to which he had received assurances that, at the next 
 meeting of the Chambers, the subject would be presented and 
 satisfactorily disposed of. The" President added that, if ho 
 should be disappointed in the hope that he entertained, the sub- 
 ject would again be brought to the notice of Congress, " in such 
 a manner as the occasion may require." 
 
 Perhaps it would have been well to have confined this affair, 
 at first, to diplomatic action ; since, in its attitude at that time, 
 
 1 These claims were for spoliations 181Y. The French spoliations before 1800 
 committed on our commerce from 1800 to were not embraced in this convention.
 
 1835.] DIFFICULTIES WITH FRANCE. 
 
 513 
 
 there was nothing for Congress to do in regard to it, and the 
 course of the French Government might be susceptible of satis- 
 factory explanation. 
 
 The Government of King Louis Philippe was at this time 
 hampered by a truculent and turbulent opposition. That op- 
 position contrived to make the treaty unpopular. When the 
 President's message of December, 1833, was received in Paris, 
 there was a general outcry against the execution of the treaty 
 under what seemed a menace. Although the subject was several 
 times brought before the Chambers, it was not until the month 
 of April, 1834, that a vote upon it was obtained, and then the 
 appropriation necessary to carry the treaty into effect was re- 
 fused. 1 The ministry then dispatched a national vessel to this 
 country, bearing the assurances of the King that, as soon after 
 the election of new members as the charter would permit, the 
 Chambers should be called together, and that the whole influ- 
 ence of the Executive Government should be exerted to procure 
 the necessary appropriation, in season to be communicated to 
 our Government before the assembling of the present Congress. 
 The new Chambers met on the 31st of July, but the subject was 
 not acted upon, and they were prorogued to the 29th of De- 
 cember. New assurances were given to the President by the 
 King's Government that, at the ensuing session, the appropria- 
 tion should be pressed. 
 
 This was the situation of the affair when President Jackson 
 made his annual message of December, 1834. He laid before 
 Congress the entire history of the negotiation, commented with 
 a good deal of severity on the conduct of all branches of the 
 French Government, and recommended that a law be passed 
 authorizing reprisals upon French property, in case provision 
 should not be made for the payment of this debt at the ap- 
 proaching session of the French Chambers. This message was 
 received in Paris early in January (1835). It was there, of 
 course, regarded as a threat. The French minister at "Wash- 
 ington was recalled, and, on the 13th of January, Mr. Livings- 
 ton, our minister at Paris, was informed that his passports were 
 at his disposal. At the same time, the French ministry intrc- 
 
 1 The Due de Broglie, who was then the Minister of Foreign Affairs, immediately 
 resigned. 
 
 84
 
 514 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXI. 
 
 duced into the Chambers a bill for the necessary appropriation. 
 What ensued can be best described by quoting the following 
 private letter, addressed to Mr. Webster from Paris, by one of 
 his personal friends and constituents, the Hon. Thomas H. Per- 
 kins, of Boston : 
 
 [FROM THE HON. THOS. H. PERKINS.] 
 
 " PARIS, April 21, 1835. 
 
 " Hon. DANIEL WEBSTER : 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I have been here some days, and shall leave to-morrow 
 for Italy, to return to England in September, and hope to see you before 
 you go South. Our question was brought before the Chambers on the 9th 
 or 10th, and, until the last day of the discussion, it was doubtful how the 
 question would go. It was passed on Saturday, with an amendment that 
 I presume will defeat the payment of the stipulated sum, as it is not prob- 
 able that the President will make an apology for the words used toward 
 France. There is a great sensation among the people in general against 
 America, as they believe every thing that has been asserted by the opposi- 
 tion, who have handled us ' without mittens.' The opposition consider the 
 amendment as the success of their efforts. Has France a right to demand 
 of the Executive the amende honorable for words addressed to the American 
 people? I should think not. At any rate, they have paid us well in 
 words, as there has been nothing left unsaid that could dishonor the coun- 
 try. They say we are not in a situatioja to go to war ; that we are too 
 avaricious to abstain from intercourse with them ; and that we shall be 
 glad to accept the amendment, which I hope will not be the case. My 
 own opinion is, that many of the opposition would be glad of a war. 
 There are, I am told, thirty general officers in the Chambers, and many 
 naval men. The only thing that would bring them to accede to the pay- 
 ment, without conditions, would be a non-intercourse act, and making the 
 manufactures or products of France liable to confiscation, if attempted to 
 be introduced, after a given time, and that should be no longer than to 
 enable goods already ordered to get home. A great part of this Chamber, 
 and, indeed, of France out of the manufacturing towns, are ignorant of 
 the fact that the United States take more than one-third of all they export 
 to all countries. Non-intercourse would drive the manufactures of Lyons, 
 Rouen, etc., into Switzerland and Germany, and create great distress in 
 France generally. What the course of Mr. Livingston will be, I do not 
 know. It is said he will go home in the Constitution, now in the Channel. 
 I have not seen him since the action of the Chambers. Our latest dates 
 are to the 16th from America. If there is no extra session, you will know 
 all before you are called upon to act. 
 
 u Ministers have doubtless acted in good faith toward us in this 
 matter, and I have no doubt the King would rather the bill had passed
 
 1835.J 
 
 DANGER OF WAR WITH FRANCE. 
 
 515 
 
 without any condition, but they were afraid to act upon the bill with- 
 out accepting the amendment. 
 
 " Your friend and servant, 
 
 "T. H. PEBKEUB." 
 
 Before these occurrences could be known in this country 
 indeed, as soon as the President's message of December was 
 communicated to Congress the Senate's Committee on Foreign 
 Affairs, of which Mr. Clay was chairman, determined that it 
 would be inexpedient and improper to adopt the President's 
 recommendation ; and, on the 14th of January, the Senate, by 
 a decisive vote, sanctioned the determination of their committee. 
 The course of Mr. Webster, on this occasion, is sufficiently ex- 
 plained by the following letter, written by him in February : 
 
 [TO MR. WILLIAM: SULLIVAN.'] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, February 23, 1835. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : . . . There are three parties in Congress on this question : 
 the Jackson party proper, which, like its chief, feels very warlike ; the 
 
 1 This gentleman had written to Mr. 
 "Webster, on the 21st of February, as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "You know by the papers that went last 
 night (if in no other way) that a Senator is 
 chosen. You know probably, to-day, that the 
 ministers are recalled. I am reminded of a 
 country milliner who was called to a duchess; 
 to prepare herself for the interview, she in- 
 quired what she must say, and was answered, 
 'Your Grace.' Wherefore, on coming into 
 the presence, she courtesied, and said : ' God 
 bless us, and what is provided for us ! ' . . . 
 There is here to-day much of that sort of feel- 
 ing which one may suppose to exist among 
 persons who dw ell around the base of Vesu- 
 vius or .<Etna, when the black smoke begins 
 to ascend, and sparks to fly. Oar Executive 
 has no metre, to announce what is to come 
 next, any more than a burning mountain has, 
 to disclose when the lava will run, in what 
 course, or in what quantity. Deplorable as a 
 war with France would be in the present con- 
 dition of the world, it is much more to te 
 dreaded from its effects on our own institu- 
 tions. In the feverish state of the slavehold- 
 ing South, what will its duties and interests 
 seem to itteJf to be ? What is to be the char- 
 acter, and the will, of the military power to 
 be embodied in this country, and by whom is 
 its physical force to be directed, and to what 
 objects ? How entirely uncalled for is all this 
 combination of probable evils ! You stand 
 acquitted of all responsibility, eminently. If 
 your speech at Worcester, in October, 1832, 
 could have found its way to the understand- 
 ing of the country, things would not have 
 been as they are. Is there not some reason 
 to fear that restive, unquiet France, and per- 
 plexed England, and vindictive Spain, may 
 
 think a good opportunity haa arisen to dis- 
 pose of that ' food for gunpowder ' which a 
 long peace necessarily prepares in Europe, 
 and which must be sent abroad, to prevent 
 mischief at home. Then, in what condition 
 is this country for a violent or protracted 
 struggle, even if another class of rulers had 
 the power. This yon know better than any- 
 body, but every thinking man in Massachu- 
 setts knows that this State was never in a 
 worse condition to meet such a crisis. The 
 pulpit, peace societies a sickly sort of phi- 
 lanthropy a bad militia system, mischiev- 
 ously perverted, have combined to extinguish 
 the noble spirit of independence, and to palsy 
 the power of self-defence, which once gave 
 Massachusetts a proud preeminence. Add to 
 this (as I know from what I saw in the long 
 session of the nominating committee at Wor- 
 cester, October, 1833), there is not a man in 
 the State on whom one-quarter of the quali- 
 fied voters would combine, and to whom they 
 would give the direction of its affairs. I re- 
 member to have heard you say, on one occa- 
 sion, ' Providence may be better to us than 
 our fears ; ' and, if not, I must again say, 
 with the milliner, ' God bless us, and what is 
 provided for us.' . . . 
 
 " I was interrupted here by an old gentle- 
 man named Goodhne, who is one of your ad- 
 mirers, and to whom (he says) you once gave 
 four or five books. He has closed a some- 
 what long, profitless, and tedious discourse, 
 with a phrase which I think I may well use 
 to close a letter to which, perhaps, you may 
 give a like character: 'I hope yon will not 
 impute any thing that I have said to any thing 
 worse than weakness.' 
 
 "Your respectful friend, 
 
 "WM. SCTJJVAX. 
 
 " Hon. Mr. Webster."
 
 516 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. XXI. 
 
 Southern anti-Jackson men, who seem to me to be in the other extreme 
 witness Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Poindexter, who speak of the whole matter 
 only as a debt, and recommend an action of assumpsit, instead of war, etc. ; 
 and then there is the rest of us, who desire to say and do nothing to en- 
 courage France in her neglect of our rights, and who are not willing, 
 nevertheless, to hazard the peace of the country without absolute necessity. 
 We wish to show to France that there is but one sentiment in the United 
 States as to the justice of our side of the question ; one sentiment as to 
 the propriety of insisting on the fulfilment of the treaty, but, at the same 
 time, a great reluctance to come to an open rupture, and, in order to avoid 
 that, a disposition to give France full time to consider well of her course." 
 
 Two days before this letter was written, lie had occasion to 
 interpose in a somewhat earnest discussion which sprang up on 
 the presentation of one of the memorials on the subject, and 
 which he thus quieted : 
 
 " Mr. Webster said he was surprised that such a debate should arise on 
 a motion to print a memorial, considering the importance and delicacy of 
 the question, and the state of the information before the Senate. He was 
 not in his place, not having come from the committee-room, when his col- 
 league presented the paper, but he found, from remarks of gentlemen since 
 he had taken his seat, that the occasion had been taken to express strong 
 opinions on the subject of our relations with France. He hoped, most sin- 
 cerely, the discussion would not be pursued at present. If it were, he 
 should be quite obliged to express his own sentiments, because he was 
 bound to say that they differed from the sentiments which had already 
 been uttered by those for whom he entertained much respect. He could 
 not consider the question between us and France a mere question about a 
 debt a controversy only about so much money. He thought, certainly, 
 that the question was of a much graver and higher character. He was 
 anxious, most anxious, to preserve the peace of the country, without sacri- 
 ficing, at the same time, its honor and dignity. He still hoped that these 
 objects were not incompatible ; he still trusted that peace might be main- 
 tained, without discredit or reproach, and without sacrificing any right, or 
 any interest of this country, or any of its citizens. That, however, de- 
 pended much on the course adopted by others. But, at present, the Senate 
 was in no condition to discuss or consider this high subject. No official 
 communication was before them. All they had was a paragraph from a 
 French newspaper. It seemed to him, in all points of view, to be much 
 wiser to wait till official communications shall be received, in the usual and 
 regular way. He earnestly hoped the discussion would not proceed." 
 
 But this affair connected itself with another measure, in re- 
 gard to which Mr. Webster felt it to be his duty to take a very
 
 1835.] LOSS OF THE FORTIFICATION BILL. 517 
 
 decided stand. On the last night of the session (March 3d), 
 the annual appropriation bills being under consideration in the 
 Senate, a message was received from the House of Bepresenta- 
 tives, proposing to amend one of the Senate's amendments to 
 the Fortification Bill by adding the following section : 
 
 " That the sum of three millions of dollars be, and the same is hereby, 
 appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, 
 to be expended, in whole or in part, under the direction of the President 
 of the United States, for the military and naval service, including fortifi- 
 cations and ordnance and increase of the navy : provided such expendi- 
 tures shall be rendered necessary for the defence of the country prior to 
 the next meeting of Congress." 
 
 This proposition, which led to the loss of the whole Fortifi- 
 cation Bill, was instantly opposed by Mr. Webster, upon the 
 two plain grounds, that it had not been recommended or asked 
 for by the Executive, and that the proposed grant specified no 
 objects to which the money was to be applied. He rested both 
 of the objections upon provisions of the Constitution. He 
 spoke with great earnestness and animation. The result was, 
 that the Senate rejected the amendment. The House then sent 
 another message, insisting on its amendment, and the Senate, 
 on Mr. "Webster's motion, adhered to its refusal. The entire 
 Fortification Bill failed to become a law, in consequence of the 
 neglect of the House to act on the report of a committee 
 of conference, through which Mr. "Webster proposed to make 
 specific appropriations for arming the fortifications, and repair- 
 ing and equipping the ships-of-war. 1 
 
 1 Mr. "Webster, from the committee of of Mr. Webster, the Senate adopted the 
 
 conference, reported that the two com- following resolution : 
 mittees had agreed, in lieu of the amend- Resolved, That a message be sent to the 
 
 ment of the House, to recommend the honorable the House of Representatives, re- 
 
 adoption of the following appropria- 3&XMf2iSS l**.^ 
 
 tions : greeing votes of the two Houses on the 
 
 " As an additional appropriation for arm- amendment of the House to the amendment 
 
 in? the fortifications of the United States, of the Senate to the bill respecting the forti- 
 
 three hundred thousand dollars. flcations of the United States. 
 
 "As an additional appropriation for the ^ g^te tnen waited still a good 
 
 repairs and equipment of the ships-of-war iu 
 
 of the United States, five hundred thousand while longer, and, not hearing, sent still 
 
 dollars." another message, informing the House 
 
 The House having possession of the that they, the Senate, had no further 
 bill and papers, the Senate could not act business before them. No answer corn- 
 on the report until it heard from the ing to this message, the Senate, after wait- 
 other House. ing a considerable time longer, and hearing 
 
 After waiting some time, on motion nothing from the bill, adjourned tine die.
 
 518 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXI, 
 
 From these statements, the reader will understand the atti- 
 tude of the French question, and the position which the Senate 
 occupied in relation to military preparations, at the close of the 
 session in March, 1835. Mr. Webster's personal relations to 
 these subjects will be resumed in the next chapter. 
 
 At this session he brought before Congress the subject of 
 French spoliations on American commerce, committed before 
 the year 1800. This was a judicial question between citi- 
 zens of the United States and their own Government ; for these 
 claims on the Government of France had been released on 
 the part of the United States in the convention of 1800, by 
 a mutual renunciation of all adverse claims between the two 
 countries, which left the American sufferers in the position of 
 parties whose right to demand indemnity from France had 
 been, for public and national reasons, cut off by their own Gov- 
 ernment. The whole subject was fully examined by Mr. Web- 
 ster in a speech which he delivered on the 12th of January 
 (1835), and which is printed in the fourth volume of his Works. 
 Before its delivery, he was charged, in a letter written from 
 Washington to a newspaper in Albany, with having a direct 
 personal interest in these claims, as counsel employed upon a 
 contingent compensation. He caused a friend in Albany to 
 demand of the editor the name of the writer ; but no infor- 
 mation could be obtained beyond the fact that the letter was 
 written by a member of Congress. When he rose to speak 
 upon the subject, he took occasion to say that he had never 
 been retained, or even spoken to, as counsel, in the course of 
 his life, in relation to these claims. He was placed by the Sen- 
 ate at the head of the committee on this subject, at the last ses- 
 sion, without his own wish and without his own knowledge. 
 
 At this session, also, he made a very important speech on 
 the President's power to appoint and remove public officers, 
 upon a bill that was intended to reduce the influence exerted 
 by the Executive through the public patronage. In this speech 
 he took occasion to express fully his views of the construction 
 given to the Constitution in 1789, by which Congress had then 
 decided that the power of removal belongs to the President as 
 the Executive. It has already been said that, as an original 
 proposition, Mr. Webster did not concur in this construction.
 
 1835.] THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION. 5^9 
 
 He now placed upon record the grounds of his dissent from it. 
 So far as the decision of 1789 implied a power of removal in 
 the President separate from the action of the whole appointing 
 power, which consists of the President and the Senate, he held 
 that the decision was wrong ; that Congress possesses the power 
 to regulate the tenure of all offices the tenure of which is not 
 fixed by the Constitution ; and that it is competent for Con- 
 gress to provide, as a regulation of that tenure, that the incum- 
 bent shall be removed only on reasons to be stated by the Presi- 
 dent to the Senate, and to be acted upon by both. 1 But, while 
 he held that it is in the power of Congress to reverse the de- 
 cision of 1789, which so construed the Constitution as to 
 separate the power of removal from the power of appointment, 
 he did not deny that under that construction the President 
 possesses such a separate power, or propose to take it away. The 
 bill which he now advocated, and which he considered sufficient 
 to check the abuses of the power, required that when a nomi- 
 nation should be made by the President to the Senate, to fill a 
 vacancy in an office caused by the President's having removed 
 the former incumbent, the fact of the removal should be stated 
 to the Senate at the same time when the new nomination is 
 made, with a statement also of the reasons for making the 
 removal. 
 
 On the 18th of February, Mr. Benton introduced a resolu- 
 tion to expunge from the Journals of the Senate its resolution 
 of March 28, 1834, concerning the President's assumption of 
 powers over the public revenue. On the last day of the session, 
 the Senate, by a vote of thirty-nine to seven, struck out of Mr. 
 Benton's resolution the words, " ordered to be expunged from 
 the Journals." Mr. Webster immediately rose and said that 
 this great vote had accomplished all that he had ever desired 
 respecting this expunging resolution. Thereafter, propositions 
 to pass resolutions inconsistent with that originally adopted on 
 this subject must be met when they should arise. But the 
 offensive and illegal act of tampering with the Journal of the 
 Senate had now been most happily defeated by a nearly unani- 
 mous vote. He concluded with a motion, " which," he said, 
 
 1 The speech is contained in the Compare Madison's Works, iv., 342, 343, 
 fourth volume of his Works, 179-199. 368, 385.
 
 520 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. L CH - 
 
 " I forewarn friends and foes that I shall not withdraw " that 
 Mr. Benton's resolution be laid upon the table. This was car- 
 ried by a vote of twenty-seven to twenty. 
 
 The occurrences of the last session had convinced Mr. Web- 
 ster that the Bank of the United States could not be rechar- 
 tered ; that the experiment of making use of the State banks 
 as fiscal agents of the Government must go on ; and that, the 
 day of argument being now passed, the new system must await 
 the unerring result of experience. A bill to regulate the de- 
 posits of the public money being before the Senate, he took 
 occasion to say that sooner or later the time must come when 
 the country would feel the fullest, conviction of the necessity for 
 a national bank. But he did not purpose to propose another, 
 until public opinion had demanded it. At present the ability 
 of the State banks to furnish a circulating medium, or a safe 
 system of exchanges capable of taking the place of those of the 
 Bank of the United States, could not be tested, for the whole 
 circulation of that bank was still employed in assisting the 
 operations of the Treasury, facilitating exchanges, and enabling 
 the deposit banks themselves to make use of a medium of uni- 
 versal credits. "WTien the time should arrive for the substitu- 
 tion of the notes of the deposit banks in the place of the twenty 
 millions of universally accredited paper of the national institu- 
 tion, the " experiment " of the Administration could be put 
 upon its trial. What was likely to happen, however, was al- 
 ready foreshadowed. Treasury warrants drawn on the deposit 
 banks had already begun, in a few cases, to be paid in current 
 bank notes, which could not have the same value in all parts of 
 the Union. To stop this on the threshold, he proposed and 
 carried a provision making it illegal, and requiring the Treasury 
 drafts on the deposit banks to be paid in gold and silver, if the 
 holder should demand it. 1 
 
 1 February 26, 1835. Works, iv., 200.
 
 1835.1 INDEPENDENCE OF TEXAS. 
 
 521 
 
 CHAPTEE XXII. 
 1835-1836. 
 
 THE INDEPENDENCE OF TEXAS ACHIEVED ME. WEBSTER 5 S DESIRE 
 TO HAVE HER REMAIN A STATION BY HERSELF EAELY 8PD2IT 
 
 OF THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT OPINIONS OF ME. WEBSTER 
 
 ON THE WHOLE SUBJECT OF SLAVEEY TREATMENT OF THE 
 
 PETITIONS FOE ITS ABOLITION IN THE DISTEICT OF COLUMBIA 
 
 " INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS " ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ^ TEXAN 
 
 INDEPENDENCE LOSS OF THE FOBTTFICATION BILL AT THE 
 PREVIOUS SESSION MB. WEBSTEfi's DEFENCE OF HIS OWN 
 
 COUESE AN UNPUBLISHED SPEECH CUSTODY OF THE PUBLIC 
 
 FUNDS REGULATION OF THE DEPOSIT BANKS DISTBD3UTION 
 
 OF SURPLUS EEVENUES SETTLEMENT OF THE DIFFICULTY 
 WITH FRANCE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1836. 
 
 ~\ /TR. WEBSTER is now to be observed in the position of a 
 -i-*J- public man formally proposed as a candidate for the 
 presidency of the United States by the State which he repre- 
 sented in the Senate. In what degree his public conduct was 
 influenced or affected by this position the reader can judge. 
 Topics were to come under discussion in Congress, in respect 
 to which it was certainly in his power to conciliate popular sen- 
 timent in regions very far from JS"ew England ; and there was 
 no man in public life, at that day, whose words were carried 
 farther, whose acts were more closely observed by the people 
 of the United States, or whose sentiments were more likely to 
 be known, when they were uttered, among both friends and op- 
 ponents. In the remote Southwest, an excitement had already
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [H. XXII 
 
 arisen, wliicli was to test the strength of his character as a 
 statesman, as it had not been tested or tried before. 
 
 The inhabitants of Texas were at this time engaged in the 
 revolutionary war with Mexico, by which they had undertaken 
 to establish their independence. The large emigration from 
 the United States which had for some time been flowing into 
 Texas, the sympathies which this emigration created between 
 the people on our southwestern frontier and the people of that 
 province, and the prospect of its separation from Mexico, at- 
 tracted Mr. "Webster's attention from the first, and gave him 
 much anxiety. This whole subject appeared to him to be likely 
 to bring into our politics new causes of embarrassment, and new 
 tendencies to dismemberment. 1 The opinion, thus early formed, 
 was based upon the consideration that the people of Texas, 
 after driving out the Mexican power, must either be made a 
 separate nation, or seek to become a part of the United States ; 
 that, however they might succeed for a time in maintaining 
 the former character, the emigration that had entered Texas 
 would make it a slaveholding country ; that if it continued an 
 independent nation, it would be one to which our Southern 
 States would have strong tendencies whenever causes might 
 spring up that would lead them to seek a separation from the 
 Union ; and that if Texas sought to become a part of the 
 United States, its absorption into the Union would occasion 
 new embarrassments, arising from the addition of an enormous 
 territory to the slaveholding region of our confederacy, that 
 could not take place and continue without bringing the North- 
 ern and Southern sections of our country, sooner or later, into 
 collision, on the floor of Congress, in relation to the whole sub- 
 ject of slavery. There were, therefore, in his view, from the 
 very first, serious difficulties to be encountered, springing from 
 the success of the Texan Revolution. The course which he felt 
 it to be his duty to take was one to be determined by a balance 
 of all the evils arising out of the situation. He was very soon 
 convinced that the paramount interests of the United States 
 would be best secured by having Texas remain a distinct na- 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Everett. ( Correspond- and practically established the indepen- 
 nce, ii., 19. May 7, 1836.) The decisive dence of Texas, was fought on the 21st 
 battle of San Jacinto, which secured of April, 1836.
 
 1836.] INDEPENDENCE OF TEXAS. 523 
 
 tion ; that, if she could maintain herself in this character, we 
 should avoid the internal dissensions that would be almost cer- 
 tain to follow her incorporation into the Union ; and that, how- 
 ever it might be feared that her separate nationality would 
 create some centrifugal tendencies in our Southern States tow- 
 ard her, such tendencies could be more easily encountered than 
 the sectional collision which would be the sure consequence of 
 her addition to the Union. It will be found, accordingly, that 
 these views were the key-note of his whole policy on this sub- 
 ject, and that, so far as he could exercise any influence, publicly 
 or privately, upon events, that influence was always exerted to 
 promote the separate nationality of Texas, after she had suc- 
 ceeded, by the battle of San Jacinto, in expelling the Mexican 
 power from her borders. Soon after that event, he received 
 the following very graphic letter from Judge Catron, of Ten- 
 nessee : 
 
 [FKOM JUDGE CATKON.] 
 
 "NASHVILLE, 12th June, 1836. 
 
 " MY DEAK SIB : An expression of yours in the Senate, when speaking 
 of the propriety of recognizing the independence of Texas, has made a 
 very strong impression in this country that England may endeavor to gain 
 a footing in Texas by purchase from Mexico. 1 A large meeting was holden 
 here yesterday, which resolved that Congress and the Executive should 
 forthwith, and before the close of the session, recognize the independence 
 of Texas ; and use the means to end the war ; and extend our boundary 
 west, that is, acquire the country. This is proposed in effect, though not in 
 terms. 
 
 "England will be drawn into the Texan war in this wise : The Mexi- 
 can is driven from Texas with a terror upon him inconsistent with further 
 fighting there. If the matter would end at this, it would be well. But 
 the spirit is abroad through the whole valley of the Mississippi to march 
 upon Mexico. All may emigrate to Texas who will. It is lawful. All 
 who choose may buy Texas lands. This is lawful. The golden city pre- 
 sents temptations strong as in the days of Cortez. Men and money are to 
 be had the former in excess to march upon it in the fall. The Mexican 
 population consists of, say 7,000,0003,000,000 native Indians an encurn- 
 
 1 Mr. Webster had said in the Senate, European power should ever be per- 
 
 on the 23d of May, that he had received mitted to establish a colony on the 
 
 some information from a respectable American Continent. He had no doubt 
 
 source, which turned his attention to the that attempts would be made by some 
 
 very significant expression used by Mr. European government to obtain a cession 
 
 Monroe in his message of 1822, that no of Texas from the Government of Mexico.
 
 524 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIL 
 
 brance, the like number of the mixed blood, worthless, or nearly so, as de- 
 fenders, and one million of Spanish descent unmixed, who are poor sol- 
 diers, and divided at that between the parties of the priests and liberals. 
 During the whole of the Mexican civil war, hardly a battle was fought re- 
 spectable as a foraging skirmish of a well-appointed army of respectable 
 size. Mr. Justin Chambers informs me (now here) that the companies of 
 native Indians, and often of the mixed blood, are marched to the seat of 
 war handcuffed by pairs, with a common chain extending through the 
 middle, and when brought into battle put in front, with orders to shoot 
 them in rear if they give way ! That convicts always are managed in thia 
 wise, and were at the taking of the Alamo. There is not a boy, ' whose 
 quiver and bow is scarcely terror to the crow,' in this great valley but 
 believes this, be it strictly correct or not ; and hardly one that does not 
 ardently long to be of the army that is to conquer the priests, and divide 
 the ill-gotten gold of the temple to get his slice of the great lamp in the 
 cathedral, or a foot's length of a silver pillar, and fame besides. It is 
 not supposed there will be fighting enough for tolerable sport. My belief 
 is, that this is but too true ; but, whether true or fallacious, the effect must 
 be the same. If the war continues, Texas will endeavor to conquer Mexico. 
 England will aid the latter to resist ; will aid her to invade Texas in turn ; 
 and depend on it, when she puts her hand into this work, Mexico shares 
 the fate of India. 
 
 " Whether this be an evil-brooding fancy, you are the better judge ; if 
 not, now is the time for us to act as a preventive means. The object of 
 this scrawl is to give the state of temperament in the West uncontrollable 
 as the Mississippi. It may be of use. 
 
 " The young fellows who fought in the battle of San Jacinto are drop- 
 ping in daily, and are followed by crowds of young and old for hardly 
 any of us have escaped the felicity of having divers young kinsmen there 
 of whom we are most anxious to hear and the first question is, ' How did 
 he fight ? ' with glistening eyes. ' Aye, aye I ' says the father, ' I thought so.' 
 The boy may have run away, as many did ; he is now the hero of the 
 family, and all follow him who choose. No monk is needed to preach 
 the crusade. The interference of yourself and Northern friends to 
 check it would, I feel very sure, be a great service to the country. 
 That the recognition of Texas, and the ending of the war, is the 
 proper course, all must concur, and that another equal opportunity, 
 after the close of the present session of Congress, to fix our boundary 
 west of the Colorado, will present, I think no well-informed man will 
 believe. 
 
 " Most sincerely, I have 
 
 " The honor to be your 
 
 " Friend and obedient servant, 
 
 " J. CATKOJST. 
 
 " To the Hon. D. Webster, 
 Washington."
 
 1836.] EARLY SPIRIT OF THE ABOLITIOXISTS. 525 
 
 There were reasons less observed at this moment by the ex- 
 cellent man who wrote this letter than they were by Mr. Web- 
 ster, which made it inexpedient for the United States to seek 
 the acquisition of Texas. The agitation for the abolition of 
 slavery was recently begun ; and Mr. Webster had means of 
 knowing in what spirit it had been begun, by many who had 
 embarked in it, as well as the nature of the feeling which it was 
 to touch in the breasts of the people of the North. An official 
 letter from one of the antislavery societies addressed to him 
 during the winter of 1836, transmitting to him some petitions 
 for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, which 
 they wished him to present to the Senate, now lies before me ; 
 and, as the persons who subscribed and sent these petitions were 
 among his constituents, they had a right to ask him to present 
 them. It is quite apparent, however, from this letter, that the 
 persons who caused it to be written intended to make no allow- 
 ance for the feelings or apprehensions of the people of the slave- 
 holding States ; that the " Abolitionists " would, under no cir- 
 cumstances, refrain from pressing their points ; that, if it should 
 be found that Congress was unable, from any restrictions in the 
 cessions by Maryland and Virginia, to abolish slavery in the 
 D r strict of Columbia, they intended to petition Congress to re- 
 move the seat of government ; and that they designed to effect 
 " the speedy and entire abolition of slavery," by the use of 
 " moral means." ' On all these points the letter was explicit, 
 and it expressed the desire of the Antislavery Society that their 
 determinations might be fully known. Mr. Webster knew, 
 therefore, that an agitation had begun, which was to aim at a 
 great organic change in the domestic relations of States which 
 had never committed this subject to the control of the General 
 Government, and that this agitation must inevitably make 
 itself felt in the halls of Congress. Already the blunder had 
 been committed of calling in question the right of citizens to 
 petition Congress on this subject. Already there were mani- 
 festations of a purpose to exclude from the public mails, in the 
 slaveholding States, printed matter in relation to slavery. Two 
 opposite forces in the opposite sections of the Union were thus 
 
 1 MS. letter from the corresponding slavery Society to Mr. Webster, January 
 secretary of the Massachusetts And- 13, 1836.
 
 526 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cfl. XXII. 
 
 arraying themselves for that long conflict that was finally to 
 shake, if not to overthrow, the Constitution of the United States. 
 Let it be remembered, therefore, that, at the very first moment of 
 the success of the Texan Revolution, Mr. "Webster had fixed his 
 attention upon the dangers that would attend her absorption 
 into this Union ; and let it also be remembered what were the 
 contemporaneous occurrences and tendencies that made him so 
 unwilling to encounter that result. 1 
 
 Having touched upon this topic, it is proper to indicate here 
 the cardinal principles on which his course in regard to it was 
 shaped from the first. In the first place, he held that all the 
 guaranties which the Constitution had given to slavery, as a 
 domestic institution of States in the Union, were to be strictly 
 and faithfully observed ; and, while he regarded it as a political, 
 social, and moral evil, he did not allow that political action 
 upon it, where it was not under the jurisdiction of the Federal 
 Government, by citizens of non-slaveholding States, was legally 
 or morally justifiable. In the second place, he maintained that 
 any enlargement of its area, by the addition, of new slavehold- 
 ing States, was at all times and under all circumstances a ques- 
 tion that concerned the whole Union ; fit to be acted upon by 
 Congress, and in his opinion never to be consented to. In the 
 third place, he considered the existence of slavery in the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia as a matter wholly under the control of Con- 
 gress, to be acted upon always with reference to the effect of 
 such action upon the harmony and stability of the Union. But 
 beneath all these opinions upon specific questions, lay his deep, 
 abiding conviction that the Constitution of the United States 
 was so founded in mutual concessions between the opposing 
 interests and feelings of the. two grand sections of the Union, 
 that it could not be preserved but by acting under and admin- 
 istering it according to the letter of its provisions ; and that 
 when either section sought for additional advantages, not stipu- 
 lated for in its formation, or when either refused to abide by 
 any of its compacts, there could be no security for it in the 
 future, and no means of preventing the dismemberment which 
 the loss of its security must entail. 
 
 All men, who are accustomed to consider the boundary 
 
 1 See the speech at Xiblo's Saloon iu Xew York. ( Works, i., 343, 354.)
 
 1836.] TREATMENT OF PETITIONS. 527 
 
 wliich a statesman must regard as the line that forbids him to 
 act upon purely moral considerations, will recognize in these 
 opinions the just limitations of political conduct. An Ameri 
 can statesman, living and acting in the period of Mr .Webster's 
 public life, might well regard slavery as an evil, and a great moral 
 wrong ; he might even concur in the favorite phrase of those 
 who assailed it as the " sum of all villanies," if he saw reason 
 so to characterize it. But the question on which posterity are 
 to judge Mr. Webster on which many of his contemporaries 
 were never willing to judge him fairly is whether he could 
 take part as a public man in administering the Constitution o 4 
 the United States without acting up to his convictions of what 
 it required at his hands. Few men, in all our history, have 
 said more impressive things respecting the wrong of slavery 
 and its inherent evils than he has. No man in our history has 
 been more uniformly faithful as a statesman to the letter of the 
 fundamental law, to the obligation of public compacts, and to 
 the dictates of that public policy which results from the pro- 
 visions of a fixed constitution. Let it be determined r by the 
 fair judgment of mankind, whether such a character is marked 
 by any inconsistency. 
 
 A debate on the reception of petitions for the abolition of 
 slavery in the District of Columbia commenced in the Senate 
 on the 7th of January, and was continued at intervals until the 
 llth of March. A great effort was made to prevent their being 
 received at all ; but the final decision of the Senate was to re- 
 ceive them, and then immediately to reject their prayer, with- 
 out any reference to a committee. Mr. Webster voted against 
 this method of action. 1 He had not participated in the long 
 and excited discussion which preceded the vote, choosing to 
 reserve the expression of his opinions upon the course proper to 
 be pursued, until the Senate had made its decision. But he at 
 once proceeded to give an opportunity for reversing it. On the 
 16th of March, he presented two petitions which had been sent 
 to him from Massachusetts, and another from Michigan ; and 
 he then stated with great distinctness that, while the Govern- 
 ment of the United States had no control whatever over slavery 
 in the States, ho held it to be entirely clear that Congress had 
 1 The vote was thirty-four for the immediate rejection and six against it.
 
 528 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca XXII. 
 
 full control over it in the District of Columbia ; that the prayer 
 of these petitions was, therefore, not one that could be sum- 
 marily rejected on the ground of want of power to deal with 
 the subject ; that the proper course to be taken with them was 
 the usual course, namely, to refer them to a committee for con- 
 sideration ; and that in his opinion a report upon the subject, 
 fairly discussing it in all its bearings, would produce a proper 
 effect both in and out of the Senate. One of the Southern 
 Senators who followed him referred to his having placed 
 himself " at the head of the petitioners." He then rose and 
 replied : 
 
 " The gentleman cannot be allowed, sir, to assign to me any place or 
 any character which I do not choose to take to myself. I have only ex- 
 pressed an opinion as to the course which it is prudent and wise in us 
 all to adopt in disposing of these petitions. 
 
 "It is true that, while the question on the reception of the petitions 
 was pending, I observed that I should hold back these petitions till that 
 question was decided. It is decided. The Senate has decided to receive 
 the petitions ; and, being received, the manner of treating them necessarily 
 arises. The origin of the authority of Congress over this District, the views 
 and objects of the States in ceding the territory, the little interest which 
 this Government has in the general question of slavery, and the great mag- 
 nitude which individual States have in it, the great danger to the Govern- 
 ment itself of agitating the question here, while things remain in their 
 present posture in States around us these, sir, are considerations all 
 intimately belonging to the question, as I think, and which a competent 
 committee would naturally present to the Senate and to the public. 
 
 "Mr. President, I feel bound to make one further remark. Whatever 
 gentlemen may think of it, I assure them that these petitions, at least in 
 many cases, have no factious origin. Such may be the origin of some of 
 them. I am quite sure it is not of all. Many of them arise from a sense 
 of religious duty ; and that is a feeling which should be reasoned with, 
 but cannot be suppressed by a mere summary exercise of authority. I 
 wish that all reasonable men may be satisfied with our proceedings ; that 
 we may so act in regard to the whole matter as shall promote harmony, 
 strengthen the bonds of our Union, and increase the confidence both of the 
 North and the South in this Government." 
 
 His advice was not followed. The capital error was com- 
 mitted of treating this subject of the abolition of slavery in the 
 District of Columbia as a question that was not to be discussed 
 in the legislative body which had plenary jurisdiction over it, 
 and which was necessarily liable to be approached, in regard
 
 1836.] SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 529 
 
 to it, by citizens of the United States, acting with various 
 motives and purposes, but acting in the exercise of a right that 
 could not be questioned. From this moment Mr. Webster saw 
 that a great opportunity was lost. He would have had the 
 subject so dealt with as to show to the whole country the clear 
 line of its duty in regard to the institution of slavery as it ex- 
 isted in the States. He was well convinced that, if this occa- 
 sion were suffered to pass without such a course of action as he 
 recommended if the Northern feeling, in regard to the pres- 
 ence of slavery at the seat of Government, was to be met by a 
 refusal to consider the subject at all a long agitation, con- 
 stantly growing stronger, would produce a chronic irritation 
 and alarm in the slaveholding States. He was fully aware that 
 the introduction of Texas into the Union was already looked to 
 as a means of increasing the political power of that section ; 
 and he knew that here would be a fresh provocative to the 
 Northern sentiment, which was even now but too strongly 
 stimulated by the efforts made to suppress it. But the wrong 
 step was taken taken against his earnest warning. His mo- 
 tion to refer the petitions was laid upon the table. Nothing 
 remained for him, therefore, but to watch, as he had always 
 watched, and to guard, as he had always guarded, against all 
 attempts to give unwarrantable interpretations to the Con- 
 stitution ; and to prevent, so far as he could, the operation 
 of causes that plainly tended to the increase of feelings which 
 would assuredly weaken the bonds of the Union. It is cer- 
 tainly probable that, if the Senate had seen fit to refer these 
 petitions to a committee, he would have been willing to under- 
 take such a discussion as he desired should occur. Who can 
 estimate the effect that would have followed, at that day, from 
 a report proceeding from his pen, or a speech by him, on the 
 topics which he desired to have treated ? The result was that 
 slavery, in the District of Columbia, was left until it could no 
 longer be safely or successfully handled ; it was left for thirty 
 years as a perpetual cause of irritation, affording its own fuel 
 to the flames that from other and similar sources kindled the 
 fires of civil war. 
 
 Among the prominent occurrences of this session, which 
 indicated the increasing irritation on the subject of slavery, 
 35
 
 530 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Ca. XXIL 
 
 and the causes wliicli produced it, must "be ranked Mr. Calhoun's 
 bill concerning " Incendiary Publications." It proposed to pro- 
 hibit the deputy-postmasters from delivering any printed mat- 
 ter touching the subject of slavery in States whose laws pro- 
 hibited the circulation of such matter. Mr. Webster did not 
 found his opposition to this measure on a denial of the evil 
 complained of. He had not, he observed, a word to say 
 against the objects of the bill ; but, with constitutional law- 
 yers, there was a great difference between the object and the 
 means of carrying it into effect. His objection went to the 
 means. Looking to the provision of the Constitution, which 
 prohibits Congress from passing any law abridging the freedom 
 of speech or of the press, he concluded that Congress had not 
 the power to decide, from the character of a paper, whether it 
 should be earned in the mail or not. Such a decision would 
 be a direct abridgment of the freedom of the press. This 
 was certainly a most important suggestion ; and, perhaps, an 
 equally important one was directed by Mr. "Webster against 
 the provision of the bill which looked to the destruction of 
 papers, supposed to be prohibited by the laws of the States, 
 if not withdrawn, on notice to the sender, within a certain 
 time. This, it was proposed, should be done by the deputy- 
 postmasters. Mr. Webster maintained the point that a paper 
 sent in the mail is the property of the person to whom it is 
 sent. If it is property, it cannot be destroyed without " due 
 process of law," that is, without judicial trial. To make a 
 deputy-postmaster the judge of whether it is such a property 
 as the person to whom it is sent can lawfully possess, would be 
 to constitute him a judicial officer to determine a question of 
 property. He also considered the law unnecessary, because 
 the States had full power to punish the deputy-postmasters for 
 circulating incendiary publications in violation of their laws. 
 Similar views were maintained by other Senators, especially by 
 Mr. Clay, who made a strong opposition to the bill. It was 
 rejected by a decisive vote. 
 
 On the 1st of July the Senate adopted a resolution, reported 
 by Mr. Clay from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, declaring 
 that the independence of Texas ought to be acknowledged by 
 the United States, whenever satisfactory information should be
 
 1836.] LOSS OF THE FORTIFICATION BILL. 531 
 
 received that it had in successful operation a civil government 
 capable of performing the duties and fulfilling the obligations 
 of an independent power. Mr. Webster advocated this course, 
 and voted for the resolution, which was, in fact, unanimously 
 adopted. 
 
 At this session the President, in his annual message, alluded 
 to the loss of the Fortification Bill at the close of the last ses- 
 sion, and said that " much injury and inconvenience have been 
 experienced in consequence of " it. He added that " this failure 
 was the more to be regretted, not only because it interrupted 
 and delayed the progress of a system of national defence, pro- 
 jected immediately after the last war, and since steadily pur- 
 sued, but also because it contained a contingent appropriation, 
 inserted in accordance with the views of the Executive, in aid 
 of this important object, and other branches of the national de- 
 fence, some portions of which might have been most usefully 
 applied during the past season." 
 
 This was the first intimation that had ever been given that 
 the three million appropriation proposed by that bill was " in 
 accordance with the views of the Executive ; " and even this 
 did not go so far as to suggest that the appropriation had been 
 asked for or recommended by the Executive at the time it had 
 passed the House of Representatives. The censure implied in 
 the President's remarks fell, of course, upon the Senate ; and 
 for the Senate's rejection of the appropriation Mr. Webster was 
 more responsible than any one else. 
 
 On the 14th of January, therefore, of the present session, 
 he delivered a speech, embracing an elaborate account of all the 
 facts attending the loss of the bill on the last night of the pre- 
 vious session, and restating the grounds of his opposition to it. 
 He reminded the country that the proposed appropriation did 
 not come before Congress with any Executive recommendation, 
 and that its character was such that it would have vested in the 
 President a naked discretion as to its expenditure, without speci- 
 fication of object or purpose, to the entire exclusion of the ex- 
 ercise of all judgment on the part of Congress. He then said : 
 " The honorable member from Ohio, 1 near me, has. said that, if 
 the enemy had been on our shores, he would not have agreed to 
 
 1 Mr. Ewing.
 
 532 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXII 
 
 this vote. And I say, if the proposition were now before us, 
 and the guns of the enemy were pointed against the walls of the 
 Capitol, I would not agree to it." 1 
 
 On the 22d of January, a resolution was introduced into the 
 House of Representatives for the appointment of a committee 
 to inquire into the facts attending the loss of the Fortification 
 Bill of the last session. In the course of the discussions on this 
 resolution, Mr. "Webster's remark, which is above printed in 
 italics, was commented on with much severity. Although this 
 was quite unparliamentary, Mr. "Webster prepared himself to 
 make a reply to it in his place in the Senate. He very delib- 
 erately wrote a speech, in defence of his observation, which he 
 intended to read to the Senate at the first opportunity ; but he 
 was dissuaded from it by friends, who considered it both unne- 
 cessary and inexpedient. The paper, however, is preserved; 
 and I make some extracts from it, of a very interesting char- 
 acter, which show his adherence, under all emergencies, real or 
 pretended, to the requirements of the Constitution : 
 
 " Mr. President, I have no intention of entering again into this debate. 
 The resolution itself, expressing the propriety of defending the country, I 
 am quite ready to support by my vote, and, as to the various topics which 
 have been discussed, I am willing to leave them without further remark 
 from me. 
 
 "It might appear, however, affectation of dignity, rather than true dig- 
 nity itself, were I to take no notice whatever of certain extraordinary 
 occurrences which have taken place since I addressed the Senate on the 
 14th of January. 
 
 " In my speech, on that day, I gave my reasons for having opposed the 
 vote of the three millions, on the last evening of the last session. I placed 
 that opposition on constitutional grounds. I insisted that the proposed 
 grant of money had no specified object; that it had no limit, within the 
 broadest interpretation of whatever might be called military service ; that 
 it conferred on the President the power of deciding whether armies should 
 be raised, or whether navies should be maintained, although these powers 
 are expressly confided by the Constitution, not to the President, but to 
 Congress ; that, under this vote, the President might build shi ps, or buy 
 ships, or levy troops, or do any thing which he might choose to think that 
 the military service required. 
 
 " I endeavored to show that this mode of proceeding was, in no just 
 sense, an appropriation of money ; that it appeared rather to be a surrender 
 of our own powers and our own duties to Executive discretion ; that it 
 
 1 A speech, Works, iv., 205.
 
 1836.] AN UNPUBLISHED SPEECH. 533 
 
 was against fundamental principles, and the whole spirit of the Constitu- 
 tion ; that it was a dangerous inroad on the Constitution, as it vested every 
 power, great and small, respecting the military and naval service, in the 
 President alone, without specification of object or limitation of purpose, 
 and to the exclusion of the exercise of all judgment on the part of Con- 
 gress. 
 
 " Holding this opinion of the proposed grant, fully believing it to be 
 repugnant to plain constitutional injunctions, and a most alarming exten- 
 sion of the Executive authority, I declared that I could not agree in it ; 
 and added these remarks : ' The honorable member from Ohio, near me, has 
 said that, if the enemy had been on our shores, he would not have agreed to this 
 vote. And I say, if the proposition were now before us, and the guns of the 
 enemy were battering against the walls of the Capitol, I would not agree to it. 
 
 " ' The people of this country have an interest, a property, an inheritance, 
 in this instrument, against the value of which forty capitals do not weigh the 
 twentieth part of one poor scruple. There can never be any necessity for such 
 proceedings hut a feigned and false necessity, a mere idle and hollow pretence 
 of necessity ; least of all can it be said that any such necessity actually existed 
 on the 3d of March. There was no enemy on our shores; there were no guns 
 pointed against the Capitol; we were in no war, nor was there a reasonable 
 probability that we should have war, unless we made it ourselves.' 1 
 
 " Now, sir, whether I was right or wrong in my judgment of the true 
 character of the proposed grant, no man, of common intelligence and 
 common candor, can infer any thing from these remarks of mine but a con- 
 viction on my part of the great impropriety of the grant, a full belief that 
 it was inconsistent with constitutional provisions, and a fixed resolution to 
 prefer the safety and integrity of the Constitution to every political interest. 
 I had only repeated, in other language, the sentiment of the gentleman from 
 Ohio, to which nobody had thought of taking any exception. 
 
 " Gentlemen might say I was mistaken ; that the proposed vote did not 
 violate constitutional provisions ; that it did not dangerously extend Ex- 
 ecutive power and discretion ; all this gentlemen might say, and, undoubt- 
 edly, those gentlemen did so think who agreed to the vote themselves. 
 
 " But there is no member of the Senate who will say that, if he himself 
 had honestly entertained the opinion which I expressed, he would have 
 supported the grant, either to save the Capitol or to preserve any other 
 public interest. 
 
 " No gentleman can say so, without admitting that he regards the in- 
 tegrity of the Constitution as a subordinate matter, a thing which may be 
 surrendered in a political emergency like that of war and invasion. Every 
 man must see that my expression was merely one of preference for the Con- 
 stitution of the country over all other interests, and its preservation an 
 object so vital, so paramount, in my judgment and feeling, as not to be 
 hazarded in any emergency, real or pretended. This, sir, every man must 
 see to have been my meaning, and my only meaning, and, if he is an honest 
 man, he must acknowledge and admit it. ...
 
 534 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXII. 
 
 " Sir, if I am guilty of idolatry toward any object on earth, it must be 
 found in the homage I bear to the Constitution of the United States. I 
 have been bred in the reverence and in the love of that Constitution. 1 
 think I have some knowledge of its history, its spirit, and its principles ; 
 but, however that may be, I am sure I have ample knowledge of its bless- 
 ings in the prosperity which it has spread around us all at home, and in 
 the national distinction which, under its fortunate star and beneficent 
 guidance, we have attained abroad. These are the grounds of my attach- 
 ment to it. 
 
 " It is not, sir, that this Constitution, or the Government established 
 under it, has ever enriched or particularly benefited me or mine. I have 
 never held an office, unless it be an office to represent the people in one or 
 the other branch of this Legislature. I have received no favors, and asked 
 no favors, at any time, or from any hand. Not one of those in whose 
 veins there runs a drop of blood kindred to my own has enjoyed office, or 
 profit, or patronage, or favor of any kind, under this Government. 
 
 " I have, sir, devoted no small labor, I have given the best years of my 
 life, I have sacrificed professional emolument, and I have done all this 
 cheerfully, for the honor of serving the people in Congress, with no other 
 object than to secure their favor and confidence, and a desire, I hope not 
 too ambitious, of being numbered among those who have done something, 
 in their day and generation, to uphold the free institutions of the country, 
 and to maintain the bond of our happy and glorious Union. 
 
 " With this unaffected attachment to the Constitution, with this sedu- 
 lous care for it, with a habit, I confess, which leads me, on every great 
 measure, and especially on every new and extraordinary proposition, to 
 consider, first and mainly, its bearing on that great security for our liberties 
 and our Union, I saw a grant of money to the Executive proposed at the 
 last session, which I thought inconsistent with its fundamental provisions, 
 and dangerous to its permanent safety. So thinking, I said in my place, 
 the other day, that I could not have voted for it if the enemy were batter- 
 ing against the Capitol ! And, so thinking, could I so vote, even in that 
 state of things ? Could any honest man, holding my sentiments, so vote, 
 in that or any other emergency ? . . ." 
 
 The financial measures of this session attracted a large share 
 of Mr. Webster's attention, not merely from his position as 
 .chairman of the Finance Committee, but because he saw and 
 foretold the approaching bankruptcies and distress which were 
 to overspread the country, in consequence of the condition into 
 which its currency had been brought. But it was not in his 
 power, or in that of any other, opponent of the Administration, 
 wholly to prevent the mischiefs which he predicted. The con- 
 dition of things was most extraordinary. By the President's
 
 1836.] USE OF PUBLIC FUNDS FOR SPECULATION. 535 
 
 refusal to continue the Bank of the United States, and by the 
 removal of the deposits to the custody of certain State banks, 
 the public funds were now under the control of the Executive. 
 By the veto of the Land Bill of 1833, a bill which was de- 
 signed to prevent an accumulation of money in the Treasury, 
 there was now a large surplus, which was growing larger. These 
 effects had led to a great increase in the number of the State 
 banks, over whose excessive issues of paper money there was 
 no existing check. These evils, Mr. Webster said, were begun, 
 and could no longer be averted. They flowed from the dispo- 
 sition to submit every thing to the will of the Executive, and 
 to permit the constitutional powers of Congress to lie dormant, 
 because the Executive would not allow them to be exercised. 
 In reference to this tendency, he said that the future historian 
 of recent events in this country would find no topic more promi- 
 nent and important than a review of the doctrines which had 
 been advanced with regard to Executive power, and the means 
 employed to increase it. 1 
 
 In the latter part of April he brought this state of things to 
 the attention of the Senate, in a striking manner, when speak- 
 ing upon Mr. Benton's resolution to require payments for the 
 public lands to be made in gold and silver. Two measures, he 
 said, were then before the Senate, of the highest importance : 
 one to diminish the public fund, the other to secure its safety. 
 He desired to know what was to be done with these proposi- 
 tions. It was absolutely essential that the public money should 
 be more equally distributed over the country than it then was. 
 
 The disposition which had prevailed among the supporters 
 of the Administration, at the last session, to leave the public 
 moneys on deposit in certain State banks, selected by the Ex- 
 ecutive, without regulation of law, now began to be relaxed. 
 The effect of placing such large amounts of money in the hands 
 of institutions not originally organized to receive and manage 
 them had been, to stimulate a spirit of wild speculation, which 
 was now, in fact, using the public money to buy up great quan- 
 tities of Government lands in the West, paying for them with 
 funds borrowed of the deposit banks, which, on being received 
 at the land-offices, were again transferred by the Treasury, to 
 
 1 Works, iv., 245.
 
 ,536 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXII, 
 
 be again deposited in the selected banks in the Eastern cities. 
 It had become apparent that, at the end of the present year, 
 the Government would have on hand a large surplus ; but this 
 surplus was in the hands of agents, who were under no regula- 
 tion of law. Before the end of May, Mr. Webster had satisfied 
 himself, by careful inquiry, that, at the close of the year, this 
 surplus would amount to $40,000,000. Its existence in the 
 hands of a few banking companies was of no real advantage to 
 men engaged in regular business of any kind. Men in the ordi- 
 nary avocations of life, whether commercial or agricultural, 
 were subjected to embarrassment and difficulty in their pur- 
 suits, being unable to procure the facilities that were ex- 
 tended to speculators, whose employment of money which, 
 in fact, belonged to the Government, resulted in the ex- 
 change of the public lands for unsound and unavailable bank 
 credits. 
 
 Mr. Webster, as it has abundantly appeared, was in no de- 
 gree responsible for this state of things. But he was not un- 
 willing to give all his aid to counteract its mischiefs. He did 
 not, indeed, believe that the State banks, as depositaries of the 
 public money, could, by any thing that Congress might do with 
 them, be made to furnish a sound general currency for the 
 country, or a system of internal exchanges equal to the wants 
 of the commercial community. He said that the deposit-bank 
 system never could become the permanent system of the coun- 
 try, by any regulation that Congress could apply to it. Never- 
 theless, regulation was indispensable to prevent certain gross 
 evils that were now apparent and pressing. Without assuming 
 any lead in relation to a system which he disapproved, either 
 in what might be done or omitted respecting it, he made known 
 his opinions on two very important points when a bill to regu- 
 late the deposits of the public moneys was before the Senate. 
 These opinions related to the increase of the deposit banks, so 
 as to prevent the accumulation of large amounts of the pub- 
 lic money in a few favored banks ; to certain restraints to 
 be imposed on the Secretary of the Treasury to prevent him 
 from ordering funds from one bank to another, for any other 
 reason than the exigencies of the public service ; and to 
 a requirement that each deposit bank should have at all
 
 1836.] SETTLEMENT OF THE FRENCH QUESTION. 537 
 
 times an amount of specie bearing a certain proportion to its 
 debts and liabilities. These three regulations would, he said, 
 bestow on these banks some power of useful action ; although, 
 having never been originally designed for any thing but local 
 purposes, they could never be made into a perfect general sys- 
 tem for the regulation of the currency of the country, and the 
 facilitating of domestic exchanges. In relation to the disposi- 
 tion that ought to be made of the great surplus which it was 
 quite certain the Government would have at the close of the 
 year, while he held it to be on all accounts desirable to reduce 
 the amount of money in the Treasury, he had an insuperable 
 objection to the introduction of a settled practice of distributing 
 the surplus revenues of the General Government among the 
 States. " I cannot reconcile myself," he said, " to the spectacle 
 of the States receiving their revenues, their means even of sup- 
 porting their own governments, from the Treasury of the 
 United States. If, indeed, the Land Bill could pass, and we 
 could act on the policy, which I think the true policy, of re- 
 garding the public lands as a fund belonging to the people of all 
 the States, I should cheerfully concur in that policy, and be 
 willing to make an annual distribution of the proceeds of the 
 lands, for some years at least. But, if we cannot separate the 
 proceeds of the lands from other revenue, if all must go into 
 the Treasury together, and there remain together, then I have 
 no hesitation in declaring now that the income from customs 
 must be reduced. It must be reduced, even at the hazard of 
 injury to some branches of manufacturing industry; because 
 this, in my opinion, would be a less evil than that extraordinary 
 and dangerous state of things in which the United States would 
 be found, laying and collecting taxes for the purpose of dis- 
 tributing them, when collected, among the States of the 
 Union." 
 
 He limited himself, therefore, on this occasion, to a provision 
 for depositing with the States the surplus that might be in the 
 Treasury at the end of the present year ; and for this purpose 
 he introduced an amendment which in substance became a part 
 of the law as it was finally passed. 
 
 Concerning the French question, it is only necessary to say 
 that the President, on the 15th of January, recommended par-
 
 538 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXII. 
 
 tial non-intercourse with France ; but that soon afterward the 
 Government of Great Britain offered its mediation, and that 
 through this intervention the whole affair was finally adjusted. 
 Congress adjourned on the 4th of July, and Mr. Webster 
 went immediately to Marshfield, where he remained through the 
 summer and autumn. "When the time for the general election 
 drew near, it was understood in Massachusetts that a great 
 majority of its citizens demanded the choice of presidential 
 electors who would cast the vote of the State for Mr. Webster ; 
 although the want of cooperation elsewhere, arising from the 
 imperfect organization of the Whig party, rendered it impos- 
 sible that he should be chosen President. As soon as it was 
 known that the body of electors, through whom this compli- 
 ment was intended to be paid to him, had been appointed by 
 the votes of the people of the State, the following correspond- 
 ence took place between Mr. Webster and the gentleman who 
 was placed at the head of the electoral body : 
 
 [TO ME. SILSBEE.] 
 
 " BOSTON, November 15, 1836. 
 
 " MY DEAK SIR : It appears highly probable that the election of yes- 
 terday has terminated in the choice of yourself and the other gentlemen on 
 the same list as electors of President and Vice-President of the United 
 States in behalf of the State of Massachusetts. 
 
 " This result, the relation in which I have stood to the people of the 
 commonwealth during the contest, and events which have transpired or 
 are anticipated in other States, have rendered it proper in my judgment 
 that I should address you this letter to be laid before the electors when 
 they shall assemble. 
 
 " My purpose is to say that, in the discharge of their high and most in- 
 teresting trust, it is my earnest wish that they should act with entire free- 
 dom from all considerations merely personal to myself; and that they 
 should give the vote of the State in the manner they think most likely to 
 be useful in supporting the Constitution and laws of the country, the union 
 of the States, the perpetuity of our republican institutions, and the im- 
 portant interests of the whole country ; and in maintaining the character 
 of Massachusetts for integrity, honor, national patriotism, and fidelity to 
 the Constitution. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, with sentiments of the truest esteem, your friend and 
 obedient servant,
 
 1836.1 RECEIVES THE ELECTORAL VOTE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 539 
 [FBOM MB. SXLSBEE.] 
 
 " SENATE-CHAJIBEE, BOSTON, December 27, 1886. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIR : I have only time to say to you that, at the meeting of 
 the electors yesterday afternoon (for organization, etc.), your letter was 
 laid before them, and well received by all of them it will appear, with the 
 further proceedings of to-day, in the newspapers of to-morrow. The con- 
 sultation which took place between the members of the college yesterday 
 was such as to leave no doubt on my mind that the vote of the members 
 will be unanimous for yourself as President, and Mr. Granger as Vice- 
 President. In great haste, 
 
 " Tours truly, 
 
 "NATH. SILSBEE. 
 
 "Hon. D.Webster. 
 
 " One, P. M. The votes have been taken, and declared as above."
 
 540 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIIL 
 
 CflAPTEK XXIII. 
 1836-183T. 
 
 THE h SPECIE CTECULAE " A " CONSTITUTIONAL CUEEENCY " ME. 
 
 BENTON'S EXPUNGING EESOLUTION ME. WEBSTEE'S PEOTEST 
 SLAVEEY IN THE DISTBICT OP COLUMBIA EECEPTION OF PETI- 
 TIONS FAEMING OPEEATIONS PEOPOSES TO EESIGN HIS SEAT 
 
 EECEPTION IN NEW YOEK SPEECH AT NEBLO's SALOON 
 
 JOURNEY TO THE WEST SPECIAL SESSION OP CONGEESS IN 
 THE AUTUMN OF 1837 ME. VAN BUEEN's FINANCIAL POLICY 
 
 CONTEOVEESY WITH ME. CALHOUN TEXAS SEEKS ADMISSION 
 
 INTO THE UNION. 
 
 THE subjects of currency and finance, which had occupied 
 so much of the attention of Congress and the country 
 since the summer of 1833, still predominated over all others, 
 when Congress assembled in December, 1836 ; and they were 
 to be left by General Jackson to his successor, in an unfor- 
 tunate legacy of temporary expedients, the effects of which 
 were finally destined to bring their political opponents into 
 power. Mr. Yan Buren had been elected President, and it 
 was understood that the policy, which had governed the ad- 
 ministration of affairs since the experiment was instituted of 
 dispensing with the agency of a national bank, was to be con- 
 tinued. In July of the year 1836, there was a large amount 
 of the public money lying in the deposit banks, the accumula- 
 tion of the customs receipts and the receipts at the land-offices. 
 With the professed object of checking speculation in the public 
 lands, of discouraging the excessive issues of bank paper, and of
 
 1836.] A CONSTITUTIONAL CURRENCY. 541 
 
 increasing the specie currency, the Secretary of the Treasury, on 
 the llth of July, issued the famous " Specie Circular," which di- 
 rected that nothing but gold and silver should, after a certain 
 period, be received at the land-offices, in payment for the public 
 lands. The operation of this requirement, in the actual condi- 
 tion of the currency, was the reverse of its ostensible and in- 
 tended purpose. The tendency was first to drain the specie of 
 the country into the vaults of the deposit banks, by means of 
 the land-offices, and then to keep it moving backward and for- 
 ward through the country in masses. As this weakened the 
 banks which were not depositaries of the public funds, and thus 
 obliged them to curtail their loans, it produced a great scarcity 
 of money in regions where money was most wanted. On the 
 assembling of Congress in December, the internal exchanges of 
 the country were much deranged, and a general suspension of 
 specie payments by the banks seemed inevitable at no distant 
 period. There was, therefore, an immediate necessity for rid 
 ding the country of this Treasury order ; which had, in fact, no 
 authority of law, since the Secretary of the Treasury had never 
 been empowered to discriminate in respect to the media for 
 payments at the land-offices and the custom-houses. In prac- 
 tical operation, too, it had no other effect than to increase the 
 evils arising from the want of some competent regulator of the 
 currency actually in use throughout the country. 
 
 Upon a resolution introduced into the Senate, at an early 
 period of the session, to rescind the " Specie Circular," Mr. "Web- 
 ster delivered a speech on the 21st of December, which is now 
 important chiefly for two reasons : First, because it contains a 
 clear and succinct statement of his opinions respecting the con- 
 stitutional relations of the General Government to whatever 
 circulates as money ; secondly, because it exhibits the mode in 
 which an excessive circulation of bank notes results from a dis- 
 turbance in the domestic exchanges, and is at the same time a 
 cause of that disturbance. "With regard to the relations of the 
 Government to the circulating medium, he held that the legal 
 standard of value, established in the regulated coin, can never 
 be displaced ; * but that an exclusive circulation of gold and 
 
 1 The whole argument which denies any thing but gold and silver a legal ten- 
 the constitutional possibility of making der, or of substituting any other stand-
 
 542 
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [Cn. XXIII. 
 
 silver is impracticable. He considered that a mixed currency, 
 partly coin and partly bank notes, the notes not issued in ex- 
 cess, and always convertible into specie at the will of the holder, 
 is, in the present state of society, the best practicable currency ; 
 but that it is always to be remembered that, in a great com- 
 mercial country, bills of exchange necessarily perform a large 
 part of the duty of currency, and hence arises the necessity of 
 considering their function in the operations of business as a 
 part of the currency. To prevent an excessive issue of bank 
 notes, which even their convertibility into specie will not al- 
 ways check, and to prevent the effect of overtrading which will 
 sometimes introduce great amounts of exchange not represent- 
 ing actual transactions of business, require the constant care, 
 watchfulness, and superintendence of Government. The power 
 of coinage, and the power and duty of regulating commerce, 
 both external and internal, gave the Government of the United 
 States, in his opinion, a rightful control over the whole mass 
 
 ard of values, is stated in a single para- 
 graph of this speech, with a strength, 
 simplicity, and cogency, that have never 
 been surpassed : " But what is meant 
 by the ' constitutional currency,' about 
 which so much is said ? What species 
 or forms of currency does the Constitu- 
 tion allow, and what does it forbid ? It 
 is plain enough that this depends on 
 what we understand by currency. Cur- 
 rency, in a large, and perhaps in a just 
 sense, includes not only gold and silver 
 and bank notes, but bills of exchange 
 also. It may include all that adjusts ex- 
 changes and settles balances in the oper- 
 ations of trade and business. But if we 
 understand by currency the legal money 
 of the country, and that which consti- 
 tutes a lawful tender for debts, and is the 
 statute measure of value, then, undoubt- 
 edly, nothing is included but gold and 
 silver. Most unquestionably there is no 
 legal tender, and there can be no legal 
 tender, in this country, under the author- 
 ity of this Government, or any other, but 
 gold and silver, either the coinage of our 
 own mints or foreign coins, at rates regu- 
 lated by Congress. This is a constitu- 
 tional principle, perfectly plain, and of 
 the very highest importance. The States 
 are expressly prohibited from making 
 any thing but gold and silver a tender in 
 payment of debts ; and although no such 
 express prohibition is applied to Con- 
 
 gress, yet, as Congress has no power 
 granted to it, in this respect, but to coin 
 money and regulate the value of foreign 
 coins, it clearly has no power to substi- 
 tute paper, or any thing else, for coin, 
 as a tender in payment of debts and in 
 discharge of contracts. Congress haa 
 exercised this power fully in both its 
 branches. It has coined money, and 
 still coins it ; it has regulated the value 
 of foreign coins, and still regulates their 
 value. The legal tender, therefore, the 
 constitutional standard of value, is estab- 
 lished, and cannot be overthrown. To 
 overthrow it would shake the whole sys- 
 tem. But if the Constitution knows only 
 gold and silver as a legal tender, does it 
 follow that the Constitution cannot toler- 
 ate the voluntary circulation of bank 
 notes, convertible into gold and silver at 
 the will of the holder, as part of the actual 
 money of the country. Is a man not 
 only to be entitled to demand gold and 
 silver for every debt, but is he, or should 
 he be, obliged to demand it in all cases ? 
 Is it, or should Government make it, un- 
 lawful to receive pay in any thing else ? 
 Such a notion is too absurd to be serious- 
 ly treated. The constitutional tender is 
 the thing to be preserved, and it ought 
 to be preserved sacredly, under all cir- 
 cumstances. The rest remains for judi- 
 cious legislation by those who have com 
 petent authority."
 
 1836.] A CONSTITUTIONAL CURRENCY. 543 
 
 of whatever circulates as money. From the peculiar condition 
 of things in which he was then speaking a condition which 
 was yet to continue some time longer, and to end in great dis- 
 aster this control was entirely surrendered by the national 
 Government to the eight-and-twenty States then composing the 
 Union, and sixty or eighty millions of banking capital had 
 been added to the whole mass since 1832 ; a thing that he had 
 foreseen and foretold. Up to this point the great prosperity 
 of the country, and the increase of its property, had prevented 
 a depreciation of the currency, and the banks still maintained 
 specie payments. But in the absence of any means of national 
 control over the currency, and in the want of any national sys- 
 tem of exchanges, the office of which must be supplied by send- 
 ing masses of bank notes from place to place, he said that there 
 must be an unnatural increase of paper circulation ; an excess 
 which had been foreseen, which the deposit-bank system had 
 been entirely incapable of preventing, and which could not be 
 prevented unless the national Government should exercise the 
 powers conferred upon it. For the administration jof the 
 finances of the country, for the facility of internal exchanges, 
 and for the due control and regulation of the actual currency, he 
 still held a national institution, under proper guards and limits, 
 to be the best means within the reach of Congress. With re- 
 spect to the mode of removing the obnoxious Treasury circular, 
 he was indifferent. A bill was passed for this purpose, but at so 
 late a period in the session, that the President did not return it, 
 and it failed to become a law. But two days before the bill was 
 passed, Mr. Webster presented a petition, signed by fourteen 
 or fifteen hundred mercantile firms in the city of Xew York, 
 praying for the establishment of a national bank. On this 
 occasion he reiterated his opinion that this would be found to 
 be the true remedy for the existing disturbance in the monetary 
 affairs of the country, and that the claim of power which the 
 Administration had asserted, to use banking corporations in 
 the fiscal concerns of the Government, necessarily conceded the 
 power to create such corporations. But he repeated his deter- 
 mination not to make any movement toward the establishment 
 of a national bank until public opinion should call for it. He 
 acknowledged that the impression hostile to such an institution
 
 LIF E OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIIL 
 
 had become so general, that any action upon it in Congress 
 would then be in vain. But he said that experience on these 
 subjects would be likely to make the country wiser than it then 
 was. 
 
 The resolution introduced by Mr. Benton during the last 
 session, " for expunging " from the Journals of the Senate its 
 resolution of December 26, 1833 which pronounced the control 
 assumed by the President over the Treasury unwarranted by 
 the Constitution and the laws was now again brought forward 
 under circumstances plainly indicating that it was to be passed. 
 In any period of our history that has since elapsed, or in any 
 that may occur hereafter while this form of government con- 
 tinues, it is not probable that intelligent and impartial men 
 have been, or will be, able to deny that either House of Con- 
 gress, holding the opinion that the Executive had usurped a 
 legislative function, could rightfully express that opinion in the 
 form in which the Senate in 1833 recorded in its Journal its 
 opinion of the acts of President Jackson. Having recorded 
 that opinion, the Constitution made the record sacred and in- 
 delible. Men might differ about the original propriety or 
 justice of the record ; but the Senate had decided on the 
 question of right by passing the resolution. It stood among 
 the recorded proceedings of the Senate ; and the Constitution 
 peremptorily required each branch of the Legislature to keep a 
 Journal of its proceedings. But now, in deference to the Presi- 
 dent, who was soon to go out of office, his friends, who held a 
 majority of votes in the Senate, resolved to have the Journal 
 brought into the Senate by its secretary, and directed him to 
 draw " black lines " around the obnoxious resolution, and to 
 write across it, in " strong letters," the words " expunged by 
 order of the Senate, this 16th day of January, in the year of our 
 Lord 1837." 
 
 A proceeding so fantastic and theatrical could scarcely have 
 been perpetrated in any other than a time of high party excite- 
 ment, or from any other than party motives. To obliterate 
 from history the fact that the Senate of 1833 had expressed a 
 certain opinion of some of the President's acts, was of course 
 impossible ; and if the Senate of 1837 desired to soothe the feel- 
 ings of the President by expressing their opinion that he had
 
 1836.] THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION. 545 
 
 been unjustly censured, the two conflicting opinions might 
 have gone down to posterity, and the last would have stood as 
 a reversal of a legislative proceeding which is brought about 
 by a change of men or of sentiments. But the friends of 
 the President sought for what they considered an imposing 
 form of stigmatizing the original record ; and, in seeking for 
 the means of doing this, they selected a mode which in express 
 terms they dominated an "expunging" of the resolution from" 
 the " Journal," and thus plainly violated the Constitution. But 
 for this, it is not at all probable that Mr. Webster would have 
 said any thing on the subject. What his opinions were respect- 
 ing the original resolution had been fully made known at the 
 time ; and now, in all the discussion which ensued upon Mr. 
 Benton's resolution to expunge the record, he took no part, 
 either to vindicate his former vote, or to go over the grounds 
 which had led to the action of the Senate in 1833. But when 
 the debate on Mr. Benton's proposition was closed, and it was 
 about to be voted on, he rose in his place, and, in behalf of his 
 colleague, Mr. Davis, and himself, read a solemn protest against 
 the meditated violation of the Journal of the Senate. This 
 paper will stand as long as the act against which it was directed 
 shall be known marking the character of a transaction by 
 which a part of the original Journal of the Senate was sought 
 to be stricken out of existence ; presenting " to the common- 
 sense and understanding of mankind " the plain meaning of 
 the constitutional injunction which required the Senate " to 
 keep " its Journal ; and holding up to the view of future times 
 the spectacle then exhibited, of respectable States instructing 
 their representatives to vote for a mutilation of the records of 
 
 one of the Houses of Congress. 
 
 , 
 
 " Mr. President : Upon the truth and justice of the original resolution 
 of the Senate, and upon the authority of the Senate to pass that resolution, 
 I had an opportunity to express my opinions at a subsequent period, when 
 the President's Protest was before us. 
 
 " Those opinions remain altogether unchanged. And now, had the Con- 
 stitution secured the privilege of entering a protest on the Journal, I should 
 not say one word on this occasion ; although, if what is now proposed 
 shall be accomplished, I know not what would have been the value of such 
 a protest, however formally or carefully it might have been inserted in the 
 body of that instrument. But, as there is no such constitutional privilege, 
 36
 
 546 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIIL 
 
 I can only effect my purpose by thus addressing the Senate ; and I rise, 
 therefore, to make that protest in this manner, in the face of the Senate, 
 and in the face of the country, which I cannot present in any other form. 
 
 " I speak in my own behalf, and in behalf of my colleague ; we both 
 speak as Senators from the State of Massachusetts, and, as such, we 
 solemnly protest against this whole proceeding. 
 
 " We deny that Senators from any other States have power or authority 
 to expunge any vote or votes which we have given here, and which we 
 have recorded agreeably to the express provision of the Constitution. We 
 have high personal interest, and the State whose representatives we are 
 has also a high interest, in the preservation entire of every part and parcel 
 of the record of our conduct as members of the Senate. 
 
 " This record the Constitution declares shall be kept ; but the resolu- 
 tion before the Senate declares that this record shall be expunged. 
 Whether subterfuge and evasion, and, as it appears to us, the degrading 
 mockery of drawing black lines upon the Journal, shall or shall not leave 
 our names and our votes legible, when this violation of the record shall 
 have been complete, still the term ' to expunge,' and the term ' to keep,' 
 when applied to a record, impart ideas exactly contradictory ; as much so 
 as the term ' to preserve,' and the term ' to destroy.' A record which is 
 expunged is not a record which is kept, any more than a record which is 
 destroyed can be a record which is preserved. The part expunged is no 
 longer part of the record ; it has no longer a legal existence. It cannot 
 be certified as a part of the proceedings of the Senate for any purpose of 
 proof or evidence. The object of the provision in the Constitution, as we 
 think, most obviously is, that the proceedings of the Senate shall be pre- 
 served in writing not for the present only ; not until published only, be- 
 cause a copy of the printed Journal is not regular legal evidence ; but pre- 
 served indefinitely ; preserved, as other records are preserved, till destroyed 
 by time or accident. 
 
 " Every one must see that matters of the highest importance depend 
 on the permanent preservation of the Journals of the two Houses. What 
 but the Journals show that bills have been regularly passed into laws, 
 through the several stages ; what but the Journals show who are members, 
 or who is President, or Speaker, or Secretary, or Clerk of the body ? What 
 but the Journals contain the proof necessary for the justification of those 
 who act under our authority, and who, without the power of producing 
 such proof, must stand as trespassers ? What but the Journals show who 
 is appointed, and who rejected, by us, on the President's nomination ; or 
 who is acquitted, or who convicted in trials on impeachment ? In short, 
 is there, at any time, any other regular and legal proof, of any act done by 
 the Senate, than the Journal itself? 
 
 " The idea, therefore, that the Senate is bound to preserve its Journal 
 only until it is published, and then may alter, mutilate, or destroy it at 
 pleasure, appears to us one of the most extraordinary sentiments ever ad- 
 vanced. We feel grateful to those friends who have shown, with so much
 
 1837.] THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION. 547 
 
 clearness, that all the precedents relied on to justify or to excuse this pro- 
 ceeding are either not to the purpose, or, from the times and circum- 
 stances at and under which they happened, are in no way entitled to re- 
 spect in a free government, existing under a written Constitution. But 
 for ourselves, we stand on the plain words of that Constitution itself. A 
 thousand precedents elsewhere made, whether ancient or modern, can 
 neither rescind, nor control, nor explain away these words. The words 
 are, that ' each House shall keep a Journal of its proceedings.' No gloss, 
 no ingenuity, no specious interpretation, and tuuch less any fair or just 
 reasoning, can reconcile the process of expunging with the plain meaning 
 of these words, to the satisfaction of the common-sense and honest under- 
 standing of mankind. If the Senate may now expunge one part of the 
 Journal of a former session, it may, with equal authority, expunge another 
 part, or the whole. It may expunge the entire record of any one session, 
 or of all sessions. 
 
 " It seems to us inconceivable how any men can regard such a power, 
 and its exercise at pleasure, as consistent with the injunctions of the Con- 
 stitution. It makes no difference what is the completeness or incomplete- 
 ness of the act of expunging, or by what means done ; whether by erasure, 
 obliteration, or defacement ; if by defacement, as here proposed, whether 
 one word or many words are written on the face of the record ; whether 
 little ink or much ink is shed on the paper ; or whether some part, or the 
 whole, of the original written Journal may yet by possibility be traced. If 
 the act done be an act to expunge, to blot out, to obliterate, to erase the 
 record, then the record is expunged, blotted out, obliterated, and erased. 
 And mutilation and alteration violate the record as much as obliteration 
 or erasure. A record, subsequently altered, is not the original record. It 
 no longer gives a just account of the proceedings of the Senate. It is no 
 longer true. It is, in short, no Journal of the real and actual proceedings 
 of the Senate, such as the Constitution says each House shall keep. 
 
 " The Constitution, therefore, is, in our deliberate judgment, violated 
 by this proceeding, in the most plain and open manner. 
 
 " The Constitution, moreover, provides that the yeas and nays, on any 
 question, shall, at the request of one-fifth of the members present, be en- 
 tered on the Journal. This provision most manifestly gives a personal 
 right, to those members who may demand it, to the entry and preservation 
 of their votes on the record of the proceedings of the body not for one day 
 or one year only, but for all time. There the yeas and nays are to stand 
 forever, as permanent and lasting proof of the manner in which members 
 have voted on great questions before them. But it is now insisted that 
 the votes of members taken by yeas and nays, and thus entered on the 
 Journal, as a matter of right, may still be expunged, so that that, which it 
 required more than fourth-fifths of the Senators to prevent from being put 
 on the Journal, may, nevertheless, be struck off, and erased the next mo- 
 ment, or at any period afterward, by the will of a mere majority ; or, if 
 this be denied, then the absurdity is adopted of maintaining that this pro-
 
 548 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXIIL 
 
 vision of the Constitution is fulfilled by merely preserving the yeas and 
 nays on the Journal, after having expunged and obliterated the very reso- 
 lution, or the very question, on which they were given, and to which alone 
 they refer ; leaving the yeas and nays thus a mere list of names, connected 
 with no subject, no question, no vote. We put it to the impartial judg- 
 ment of mankind, if these proceedings be not in this respect also directly 
 and palpably inconsistent with the Constitution. 
 
 "We protest in the most solemn manner that other Senators have no 
 authority to deprive us of our personal rights, secured to us by the Con- 
 stitution, either by expunging, or obliterating, or mutilating, or defacing 
 the record of our votes, duly entered by yeas and neas ; or by expunging 
 and obliterating the resolutions or questions on which these votes were 
 given and recorded. 
 
 "We have seen, with deep and sincere pain, the Legislatures of re- 
 spectable States instructing the Senators of those States to vote for and 
 support this violation of the Journal of the Senate; and this pain is 
 infinitely increased by our full belief and entire conviction that most if 
 not all these proceedings of States had their origin in promptings from 
 Washington ; that they have been urgently requested and insisted on, as 
 being necessary to the accomplishment of the intended purpose ; and that 
 it is nothing else br\t the influence and power of the Executive branch of 
 this Government which has brought the Legislatures of so many of the 
 free States of this Union to quit the sphere of their ordinary duties, for 
 the purpose of cooperating to accomplish a measure, in our judgment, so 
 unconstitutional, so derogatory to the character of the Senate, and marked 
 with so broad an impression of compliance with power. 
 
 " But this resolution is to pass. We expect it. That cause which has 
 been powerful enough to influence so many State Legislatures will show 
 itself powerful enough, especially with such aids, to secure the passage of 
 the resolution here. 
 
 " We make up our minds to behold the spectacle which is to ensue. We 
 collect ourselves to look on in silence, while a scene is exhibited which, if 
 we did not regard it as a ruthless violation of a sacred instrument, would 
 appear to us to be little elevated above the character of a contemptible 
 farce. This scene we shall behold, and hundreds of American citizens, as 
 many as may crowd into these lobbies and galleries, will behold it also ; 
 with what feelings I do not undertake to say. 
 
 " But we protest, we most solemnly protest, against the substance and 
 against the manner of this proceeding; against its object, against its form, 
 and against its effect. We tell you that you have no right to mar or mutilate 
 the record of our votes given here, and recorded according to the Con- 
 stitution ; we tell you that you may as well erase the yeas and nays on any 
 other question or "resolution, or on all questions and resolutions, as on this ; 
 we tell you that you have just as much right to falsify the record, by so 
 altering it as to make us appear to have voted on any question as we did 
 not vote, as you have to erase a record, and make that page a blank in
 
 1837.] SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 549 
 
 our votes, as they were actually given and recorded, now stand. The one 
 proceeding, as it appears to us, is as much a falsification of the record as 
 the other. 
 
 " Having made this Protest, our duty is performed. We rescue our 
 own names, character, and honor from all participation in this matter; and 
 whatever the wayward character of the times, the headlong and plunging 
 spirit of party devotion, or the fear or the love of power, may have been 
 able to bring about elsewhere, we desire to thank God that they have not, 
 as yet, overcome the love of liberty, fidelity to true republican principles, 
 and a sacred regard for the Constitution, in that State whose soil was 
 drenched to a mire by the first and best blood of the Kevolution. Massa- 
 chusetts, as yet, has not been conquered ; and, while we have the honor to 
 hold seats here as her Senators, we shall never consent to the sacrifice 
 either of her rights or our own ; we shall never fail to oppose what we 
 regard as a plain and open violation of the Constitution of the country ; 
 and we should have thought ourselves wholly unworthy of her if we had 
 not, with all the solemnity and earnestness in our power, protested against 
 the adoption of the resolution now before the Senate." 
 
 The reception of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the 
 District of Columbia was again the subject of an excited discus- 
 sion at this session. The former action of the Senate, in re- 
 fusing to give such petitions a hearing, had greatly increased 
 their number. They now came from many quarters of the 
 country from which they had not come before ; and it was ap- 
 parent to most persons that the refusal to hear and to make a 
 report on these petitions was the principal cause of the inunda- 
 tion that now came upon the Senate. On the 6th of Februaiy 
 a great many of them were presented, and among them were 
 some that had been sent to Mr. "Webster. In presenting them, 
 he repeated the opinions that he had expressed at the last session, 
 especially in regard to the duty of the Senate to refer them, not 
 only because this was a right which the petitioners could de- 
 mand, but because it was wise to admit that right. At the 
 same time, he declared that he meant to express no opinion 
 on the expediency of legislating for the abolition of slavery 
 in the District, a subject which he thought ought to be dis- 
 cussed by those who were most concerned in it. 
 
 But the representatives of the slaveholding States were now 
 greatly excited, and thoroughly averse to any consideration of 
 a petition which touched the institution of slavery in any of its 
 aspects. Mr. Calhoun, who thought that the door ought to be
 
 550 LIF E OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIII. 
 
 peremptorily shut, obtained a ruling from the Chair, 1 that any 
 objection made to the reception of a petition raised the ques- 
 tion of reception, without a motion not to receive. As these 
 petitions were successively presented, objections were made, and 
 the question being stated on the reception, a motion to lay this 
 question on the table carried the petition with it. In this way 
 a large majority of the Senate thought fit to avoid a direct vote 
 on the reception and reference of the petitions a course which 
 was as little adapted to allay the agitation then rising as the 
 former rejection of the prayer of the petitions.* It was very 
 apparent to Mr. Webster that the Senate would have to recede 
 from this position, or to take another and further step in the 
 wrong direction ; and that, if it did the latter, an irretrievable 
 error would be committed. What occurred in the next session 
 will disclose the grounds of this opinion. 
 
 But, in the midst of this busy and important session, his 
 thoughts were often away at " Green Harbor," with the 
 " Thomases," with his fields, his cattle, his loads of " kelp," and 
 his crops. Besides the original homestead of the Thomas family, 
 he had, ere this, become the owner of several other properties, 
 adjoining or near, and he had for several years been a system- 
 atic, although, it must be owned, a very expensive, farmer. The 
 *' temptations " to which he alludes in the following letter must 
 not be ascribed to political aspirations. He was at this time 
 meditating a dim project of a great farm in the West, and a 
 retirement to it from professional and public life a phantom 
 of his brain that will reappear hereafter. But the truth un- 
 doubtedly is, that Marshfield owed its power to retain him, 
 whenever he balanced its poorer soil against the richness of the 
 prairies, to the attractions of the sea, and to the local associa- 
 tions with which that old "Pilgrim" region is filled. It is the 
 neighborhood over which the company of the Mayflower and 
 their immediate descendants first spread themselves, and their 
 names, their lands, and their graves, are everywhere around. 
 His own blood was not immediately of theirs, but he was of a 
 kindred stock, and his feelings were always strongly moved by 
 the traditions that clung to the soil where the sturdy Puritans 
 
 1 Mr. King, of Alabama, President of 2 Mr. Webster, of course, voted against 
 the Senate pro tempore. this method of action.
 
 1837.] DOINGS AT MARSHFIELD. 551 
 
 " drove their teams afield," where they founded the early insti- 
 tutions of !New England, and where, " each in his narrow cell 
 forever laid," their simple monuments carried back public and 
 private history to the infancy of the nation : 
 
 [TO CHAS. H. THOMAS, ESQ.] 
 
 "WASHINGTON, February 4, 1837. 
 
 " DEAK HEXEY : Although I have no letter from you either yesterday 
 or to-day, I must still commend your improved habits. Tou have certainly 
 whipped up your spirit of letter-writing to new speed, so that I get two 
 letters a week, at least. This is very pleasing. There have been times, 
 since I saw you last, when I have doubted whether Marshfield and I could 
 hold on together to the end of my life. I have felt in those moments as a 
 humility looks when she spreads out her wings for flight. Even now some 
 things are unsettled in my brain. I keep them, however, to myself, and, 
 except you and one other, who has received a slight hint, nobody knows 
 of the existence of any such notions. There are temptations, which, if 
 Marshfield were not what it is, or if it were to cease to be what it has been, 
 might induce me to look upon the last seven or eight years as a bright spot, 
 in the journey of life, which I had passed through. All these things, how- 
 ever, are to be buried in the depth of your faithful bosom. And, in the 
 mean time, I must say that even your slightest letters afford me pleasure. 
 Amidst the toil of law and the stunning din of politics, any thing is wel- 
 come which calls my thoughts back to Marshfield, though it be only to be 
 told which way the wind blows. I am suffering from a cold, and for two 
 days have not been out of my room. Last night I was dreaming of you 
 all night, which I hope you will consider as a very great compliment. My 
 letters from Boston all speak of your mother. She seems to have made 
 quite a sensation in Summer Street. Captain John Thomas will find it 
 necessary to put his best foot forward when he goes to Boston, if he does 
 not mean to have the shine taken off of himself by his spouse. 
 
 " In regard to farming matters, you appear to be doing well. Some of 
 your kelp-drawing days have showed great results. If I have kept the 
 account right, you have probably secured as much kelp as will be a decent 
 dressing for all the corn-land you prepared to plant at Careswell. By-the- 
 way, let us settle names. I am tired of the ' Soule Place,' and the 
 ' Sprague Place,' and the ' Widow "Winslow's Thirds,' and so many other 
 names. Let us use some names uniformly, and we shall save time and 
 breath. According to the proposed plans (which I hope are made), there 
 are three places : 
 
 " 1. The homestead that is, ' Green Harbor ; ' and any man must be 
 indicted for slander who gives it any other name. 1 
 
 1 This was the place bought of Captain Thomas.
 
 552 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIII. 
 
 " 2. Those parcels which we have set apart for a mulberry farm. This 
 may be called ' The Mulberry Farm,' or it may be called ' Winslow Place,' 
 without the ' the,' or ' Pelham Place,' Pelham being a distinguished name 
 hi the pedigree of the Winslow family. 1 
 
 " 3. The Soule place that is to say, the house and land bought of Mr. 
 Soule, and what we have attached to it from the Sprague purchase may 
 be called ' Careswell,' which I do [not] much like, or ' The Summer Farm,' 
 which I like better, or the ' Cottage Farm,' when we take down the big 
 house. 2 
 
 " Consult Captain John Thomas and Lucy, his wife, on these matters. 
 Let me know what they and you and Edward 8 think, and we will give 
 these places fixed names, and anybody who miscalls them is not to be an- 
 swered when he speaks to us. Was Careswell the name of the Winslow 
 property generally, or did it apply only to a part of it ? Ask your mother 
 to explain and expound. And now to return to the kelp. 4 I suppose the 
 season may be pretty nearly over for it, but if it continue to come, you will 
 be ready to seize it, and know what to do with it. When John Taylor 
 comes down next August or September, I want him to lose himself in our 
 cornfields. 6 I am thinking of using lime freely at Green Harbor, but this 
 will depend on the cost. I understand it can often be had at less than a 
 dollar a cask at Thomaston sometimes lower than eighty cents. A cask 
 is five bushels of unslacked lime. Of course, when slacked, there will be 
 ten. Suppose the price a dollar a cask, the slacked lime would be ten 
 cents per bushel, or equal to that, at the quarry. Now, what is the freight 
 worth for a vessel to go direct, and to bring her cargo to the mouth of 
 Green Harbor Kiver ? This, as well as the actual price at Thomaston, you 
 can readily ascertain. Please make inquiries, and let me know. The 
 Thomaston lime is a good deal stronger than the Pennsylvania lime, and 
 yet, in the best counties of Pennsylvania, they will pay twelve or fifteen 
 cents a bushel for lime, and haul it ten, fifteen, or twenty miles, for corn, 
 clover, and wheat. Think of these things, and count the cost. If I had 
 lime, in addition to using it with mud and other matter, I should use it by 
 itself, thus : I should spread it, thirty or forty bushels to the acre, on old 
 sward-land, like Stoughton Island, on the old orchard, or the sheep-pas- 
 
 1 This farm, with a very old Puritan This was one of the local distinctions 
 house, had become the property of Mr. which were always conceded to him. 
 Webster. Porter Wright, who was his " foreman " 
 
 2 This place Mr. Webster finally called at Marshfield for many years, in giving 
 " Careswell." He built a cottage-house his recollections of Mr. Webster, after 
 upon it, which was occupied by his son his death, said, with delightful naivete, 
 Fletcher as a summer residence. It is "Nobody had ever used munhaden or 
 about one mile distant from " Green kelp in this part of the country ; he 
 Harbor." , started both." 
 
 3 His second son, afterward Major B John Taylor, one of the best speci- 
 Webster. mens of the New-England yeomanry, 
 
 4 Mr. Webster enjoyed the glory of was Mr. Webster's farmer and factotum 
 being the first farmer on that coast to at Franklin. It must have been tall corn 
 use "kelp,' 1 or sea- weed, as a manure, for this man to lose himself in.
 
 1837.] DOINGS AT MARSHFIELD.' 553 
 
 ture ; plough it in, and plant the land with corn, potatoes, beans, or some 
 other crop requiring the hoe, according to the natural strength of the land. 
 The hoeing mixes the lime with the land, so that it affects the whole soil. 
 On such land as the sheep-pasture, I should spread twenty-five bushels of 
 unslacked lime to the acre ; and on such light land I think I should plant 
 beans. The next year apply manure from the barn-yard as plentifully as 
 possible, get a crop of oats, and put in grass-seed. Field turnips would 
 do well, instead of oats, or part might be put into each. On strong, clayey 
 land, I should plant corn or potatoes. Ponder these matters. 1 
 
 " We have made some mistakes, but must hope to grow wiser. Never 
 again sow small grains on long manure. Put that down as one maxim. If 
 I live, and am well, I must go home, either in March or the early part of 
 April. Either time will be in season to settle some things. If I should be 
 in JVIarshfield in March, I should expect to drive the team once off the 
 beach with a load of kelp. The oxen which you destine for beef next fall 
 you will, of course, ease off from their work so soon as you can, when the 
 business of kelp is over. How many, and which is it best to turn out ? 
 1. There are the old oxen, they must be fatted, of course. 2. The 0^ oxen, 
 bought of Captain Stevens (I wish we had the black ram to go with them), 
 if not sold, these must be fatted. 3. Then there are the Princeton oxen, 
 which are quite old enough to fat well. Now, I do not see how we are 
 going to sell any thing, unless it be stock, and we must contrive to sell 
 something, or we shall all be called on to make an assignment; These off 
 oxen, I think, will make good beef, for Captain John Thomas and his wife 
 Lucy, and for me and wife Caroline. Suppose, therefore, we devote them 
 to the captain's ' powdering tub,' together with any other similar likely 
 thing which John Taylor may happen to send down next fall ? And then, 
 suppose we fat the old oxen and the Princeton oxen for the market, loosing 
 them from the yoke as early as we can, keeping them as well as we can 
 through the summer, and keeping them on roots in the fall and winter, 
 until they are fat enough to make people at Brighton ' open their eyes,' as 
 Captain Thomas would say ? All these things you must weigh. I don't 
 mean you must weigh the oxen ; they are too poor yet, but weigh these 
 hints. But I must stop from these interesting topics, and pursue them no 
 further. You owe the trouble of reading this long letter to my heing un- 
 able, from my cold, to go either to the court or Senate, and to my having 
 positively forbidden Charles to let any one in this day. I am tired, too, of 
 reading, and so have run on with this incoherent scribbling. There is 
 another matter on which I may write you in a few days ; but, if I am well 
 
 1 This reminds us of Burke, who, like the crop is very large, and the carrots, though 
 
 Mr. Webster, was a practical farmer, and KSfStiSSf Sf^Qtif, 
 
 equally fond of the details of his work: a mos t aromatic smell, flrnTand admirably 
 
 tasted. I have sent two wagon-loads to Lon- 
 
 " BECONSFIELD, October 21, 1770. flon, f or which I had six pounds, fifteen. The 
 
 ..." Last year I sowed two acres with back-carriage of coal-ashes has paid my 
 
 the same seed. . . . In the summer they were charges." {Correspondence of the Right Eon, 
 
 twice hand-hoed, I fear not sufficiently, but Edmund Burke, i., 246. London: 1844.)
 
 554 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIIL 
 
 enough to go out to-morrow, I shall have no more leisure to trouble you 
 with a long letter for some time. Meanwhile, I hope you will not fail to 
 write as often as you can. Give my best regards to your wife, and to Ann 
 and the doctor, and to your father and mother, and my love to Edward. 
 I suppose you all receive Charles's communications in sufficient abundance. 
 Adieu 1 my good friend. 
 
 " DAKL. WEBSTER." 
 
 Before this letter was written, however, he had determined 
 to resign his seat in the Senate, and, at the end of January, he 
 dispatched letters to Massachusetts, making known this pur- 
 pose, in order that the Legislature might appoint his successor. 
 His friends in Boston at once manifested their opposition to 
 this step. In the city of New York the intelligence was re- 
 ceived with no less concern. A meeting of his political friends 
 was held on the 21st of February, at which Chancellor Kent 
 presided, and which was attended by many of the principal per- 
 sons in the city, for the purpose of inviting him to a public 
 reception. If he was to resign, these gentlemen desired to 
 mark their sense of his public services ; and if his purposes 
 might be modified by the wishes of a great body of citizens in 
 the commercial metropolis of the country, they desired to pre- 
 sent those wishes to him in the most imposing form in which 
 they could be expressed. It was certainly a striking proof how 
 entirely he belonged to the country, and how widely his im- 
 portance was felt beyond the limits of the State which he rep- 
 resented, that the rumor of his intended resignation should have 
 called forth such a demonstration as this. It was without pre- 
 cedent in the case of any man who had ever held a seat in the 
 Senate of the United States ; nor has it ever been since repeated 
 in any other case. Even if we were now to regard it merely 
 as the expression of a party to one of its great leaders, its sig- 
 nificance is scarcely diminished. But it was not a mere party 
 movement. It was his relation to the Constitution, his rela- 
 tion to the whole country, his extensive knowledge of public 
 affairs, and his unwavering devotion to the Union, that led a 
 body of men, who were not his constituents, to endeavor to in- 
 fluence, as far as they might with decorum undertake to influ- 
 ence, the course of his life. If such expressions induced further 
 sacrifices of private convenience, if they postponed, as they did.
 
 1837.] PUBLIC RECEPTION IN NEW YORK. 555 
 
 again and again, the day for securing his personal fortunes until 
 " a life devoted to the public service " became his unchangeable 
 " destiny," we are to remember how earnestly and impressively 
 he was appealed to, and how little he was left to regard his own 
 personal interests, when they were to be weighed in the balance 
 against the interests of the country. 
 
 When the invitation to a public reception in New York was 
 about to be sent to him at Washington, he was in correspond- 
 ence with his friends in Massachusetts on the subject of his 
 resignation. The Legislature of the State was then in session, 
 and it was his own opinion, and that of his friends in Wash- 
 ington, that the vacancy ought to be filled before its adjourn- 
 ment. He had important private interests in the West, con- 
 nected with purchases of land which he had made in that 
 region ; and, without any political object, he desired to travel 
 in his own country more extensively than he had hitherto done. 
 Nor had he ever been in Europe. England, at least, he desired 
 to see, and the desire to see him was not confined to the few 
 Englishmen whom he had known here, although their, -letters to 
 him constantly looked forward to the time when they might 
 welcome him among them. All this, it seemed to him, could 
 not be accomplished without some interval of uninterrupted 
 attention to his private affairs. He expressed his willingness 
 to return to the Senate at some future time, if that should be 
 the wish of his constituents. But they were unwilling to re- 
 ceive his resignation, even on this understanding. A committee 
 of the Whigs of the Legislature, with their Speaker, the Hon. 
 Robert 0. Winthrop, at the head of it, sent him a formal re- 
 quest to withdraw his resignation, or, at least, to postpone it 
 for the present. To this an overwhelming number of private 
 wishes were added ; so that when the New- York invitation was 
 ready to be sent to him, and he was informally apprised of its 
 tenor, nothing had been left for him to do but to signify his 
 consent to hold the seat until the next meeting of the Legis- 
 lature. 
 
 The public correspondence in relation to the proposed cere- 
 mony in New York is contained in the first volume of Mr. 
 Webster's Works. The following private letter respecting the 
 arrangements has been hitherto unpublished :
 
 556 LITE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXIII 
 
 [TO PHILIP HONE, ESQ.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, March 5, 1837. 
 
 " MY DEAH SIB : I had the pleasure to receive Mr. Ogden's communi- 
 cation, referred to in your letter of the 3d instant, and have made an an- 
 swer to that communication, expressing, not half as fully as I feel, the 
 honor conferred on me by this tender of respect and hospitality, made by 
 political friends in New York. 
 
 " Such marks of approbation cannot but be gratefully received ; and I 
 have signified to Mr. Ogden the pleasure it will give me to meet these, and 
 other friends, in the manner most acceptable to them. 
 
 " In answer to your inquiry as to the day of my arrival in New Tork, I 
 have to say that I have not fixed on any day, and that such day may be 
 named as may best suit the convenience of the committee, and of others. 
 I shall be in Philadelphia on Thursday or Friday next, and shall be ready, 
 I presume, to proceed to New York on Monday, the 13th. Tuesday, the 
 14th, or any day later than that, would, therefore, suit me. I can be at 
 Jersey City Tuesday or Wednesday, or Thursday evening, as you may find 
 most convenient, but rather preferring, myself, that it should not be later 
 than Wednesday. 
 
 " I desire the committee to consult their own feelings and wishes, and 
 not mine, in all things respecting the manner and forms of proceeding. It 
 would be perfectly agreeable to me to dispense with all ceremony of recep- 
 tion, and to meet my friends after my arrival, in the ordinary way, in the 
 city. But I leave all this in the discretion of others. You will have the 
 kindness to write me, in Philadelphia, as soon as may be convenient, and 
 to name day, and hour, and place, at which I may expect the honor of 
 meeting with the committee. 
 
 " I must not close this short letter, my dear sir, without expressing the 
 pleasure it gives me to receive expressions of your personal friendship and 
 regard. Be assured, I reciprocate these sentiments, and cordially offer you 
 renewed declarations of esteem and the most sincere good wishes. 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 " Philip Hone, Esq." 
 
 On the 15th of March the committee attended Mr. Webster 
 at Amboy, and escorted him to the city ; and in the evening lie 
 met a great assemblage of the people at Niblo's Saloon. The 
 speech which he delivered on this occasion forms one of the 
 chief landmarks in his political career, on account of the past, 
 present, and future relations of the topics of which he treated, 
 and the opinions which he expressed. He was at this time in 
 his fifty-sixth year. It was very nearly a quarter of a century 
 since he first entered Congress, and he had been fourteen years
 
 1837.] SPEECH AT NIBLO'S SALOOX. 557 
 
 uninterruptedly engaged in public life. The Administration of 
 General Jackson had just closed, through the whole of which, 
 excepting in relation to the subject of " nullification," Mr. "Web- 
 ster had strenuously opposed the measures of the Executive. It 
 was to be expected, therefore, that he would review the meas- 
 ures of that Administration; for the crisis which it was ap- 
 parent that these measures had prepared for the country was 
 upon it, and Mr. "Webster owed it to himself to make it plain 
 that his opposition had been founded in correct motives, and 
 upon sound principles. The condition of affairs which I have 
 described as existing during the past year remained substan- 
 tially unchanged. The " Specie Circular " was still in opera- 
 tion, drawing the gold and silver of the country into the land- 
 offices, and thence into the deposit banks, where it took the 
 form of a debt to the Government, thus converting its revenues 
 into bank credits. The seventy-five or eighty millions of specie 
 in the country neither went abroad to pay the balance against 
 us in foreign hands, nor was it so disposed of at home as to 
 sustain the paper currency, the volume of which was in-creasing 
 every day, without any regulator to control it. Besides that 
 portion of the specie which was locked up from free circulation 
 by the operation of the Treasury circular, large amounts had 
 begun to be hoarded in private hands. Mr. "Webster saw that 
 an explosion must ensue, and that it could not be far off. He 
 was, therefore, in this public address, to trace the causes that 
 had brought about this state of things, and to point out to the 
 public intelligence the little that could then be done toward 
 arresting the catastrophe. 
 
 His review of General Jackson's measures relating to the 
 currency, commencing from his first inauguration as President, 
 was searching, but personally respectful. He spoke of the late 
 President as a man who had done the country great service in 
 the field ; but whose usurpations of executive power, while ad- 
 ministering the Government as President, had resulted in a 
 total derangement of the currency and the business of the com- 
 munity. That this was a true description of the case, every one 
 can now see who will look back to the year 1832, and will 
 consider that, from that time down to the moment when Mr. 
 "Webster delivered this speech, in the spring of 1837, Con-
 
 558 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [H. XXIIL 
 
 gress had done nothing, and would do nothing, effectually to 
 resist the control which the Executive had assumed over the 
 currency. In 1832 the President vetoed the bill continuing 
 the bank, and Congress would not pass it over the veto. In 
 1833 the President removed the public deposits from the bank, 
 and, although Congress would not have voted for this measure, 
 it would not direct their restoration. The Executive selected 
 the State banks that were to take the place of the national in- 
 stitution ; prescribed their duties, and committed to them the 
 whole proceeds of the public revenues; acting all the while 
 without any legislation or rightful authority on the subject. It 
 was not until July, 1836, that Congress interfered at all to place 
 the deposit banks under the regulation of law, and securing 
 them against executive favoritism. But, in the mean time, great 
 mischiefs had ensued. The public money, constantly accumu- 
 lating beyond the wants of the Government, had become the 
 means of speculation ; banking capital and bank paper had 
 vastly increased ; there was no check on the paper circulation, 
 and nothing to produce uniformity in its credit, and to sustain 
 confidence in its security. As a means of effecting some dimi- 
 nution of these tendencies, Congress, in 1836, ordered the sur- 
 plus in the Treasury to be distributed to the States. But now 
 came in the Treasury circular, ordering nothing but gold and 
 silver to be received at the land-offices a thing which Congress 
 had just previously refused to direct by law ; and, although, in 
 the winter of 1837, Congress passed a bill which was intended 
 to rescind the circular, the President would neither approve nor 
 disapprove of it, and, as it went to him within the last ten days 
 of the session, it failed to become a law. Nearly every thing, 
 therefore, in relation to the revenue and the currency, had been, 
 from the beginning of the late Administration, entirely under the 
 control of the President, and that control had resulted in brino-- 
 
 ' O 
 
 ing the country to the situation in which it now stood on the 
 verge of a suspension of specie payments by all its banks, in- 
 cluding those which held every dollar of the public funds. 
 
 In the whole of that long contest, therefore, with the Ad- 
 ministration of General Jackson, Mr. Webster was engaged in 
 resisting a tendency of the Executive to absorb all political 
 power, and especially all power over the currency; and it is be-
 
 1837.] DISORDERS OF THE CURRENCY. 559 
 
 cause of :he indisputable existence of this tendency, springing 
 partly from the President's own temper, and partly from the 
 new use of the public patronage then introduced, that Mr. Web- . 
 ster's opposition is to be judged. Certainly, he could have had 
 no personal hostility to General Jackson. Their personal inter- 
 course had always been mutually respectful, and Mr. Webster, 
 notwithstanding his strong dissent from the President's meas- 
 ures, was a guest at the Executive mansion probably as often 
 as any public man of the time who was so much occupied. But 
 in that enormous enlargement of the Executive powers which 
 grew up under President Jackson, in the control which he exer- 
 cised over a great party, and in the manner in which Congress, 
 when filled by a majority of his friends, surrendered its judg- 
 ment to the executive will, Mr. "Webster saw great dangers to the 
 future stability of the Constitution; and it is quite apparent 
 now that, if this had not been an exceptional case if the suc- 
 ceeding Presidents had been men of sufficient force to have 
 grasped and wielded the kind of sceptre that General Jackson 
 left to them in the doctrines of executive power which ^he main- 
 tained we should have had reason to know, practically, the 
 significance of these warnings. 
 
 Moreover, this subject of currency and public finance was 
 one that Mr. "Webster well understood. He was not wrong 
 when, in 1816, he insisted that the public revenues must be 
 collected in the bills of specie-paying banks ; and that a paper 
 currency must be secured by being at all times convertible into 
 specie. He was not wrong, twenty years later, when he said 
 that the operation of the Bank of the United States, combined 
 with the effect of his specie resolutions in 1816, had given us a 
 better paper currency than any other country had ever pos- 
 sessed. He was not wrong when he maintained, as he always 
 did, that there must be some paper circulation, and that no man 
 of that generation would ever see an exclusive gold and silver 
 currency. He was not wrong when he foretold that the State 
 banks could not perform the functions of a national bank ; when 
 he said, after the removal of the public deposits from the Bank 
 of the United States, that the exchanges of the country would 
 become disordered ; when he declared that the distribution of 
 the public money to new agents, selected upon principles of
 
 560 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXIIL 
 
 favoritism, would end in over-trading and extravagant specula- 
 tion ; when he predicted that the disturbances in the internal 
 exchanges would tend to the great increase of local paper money, 
 which must be used to take the place of bills of exchange ; and 
 when, finally, as the last of the Executive projects came into 
 operation, he pointed out the mischiefs that were to arise from 
 placing the whole specie that was within the country where it 
 could have no operation in strengthening and upholding its 
 paper circulation, or be sent out of the country to restore the 
 balance of trade by payment of its debts. Nor was he wrong 
 when, on the 16th of March, 1837, he said, with caution, but 
 plainly enough for wise men to understand, that " the worst is 
 not yet." In less than three months from that time, all the 
 banks in the country suspended the payment of their notes in 
 specie, 1 and an almost universal bankruptcy overspread the 
 country. 
 
 This speech is also memorable, because Mr. Webster availed 
 himself of this, the earliest moment after the independence of 
 Texas had been formally recognized by our Government, to ex- 
 press his opposition to its annexation to the United States an 
 opposition which he never changed nor relaxed. His reasons 
 were these : In the first place, no necessity existed for extending 
 the limits of the Union in that direction, and therefore the case 
 was unlike that of Louisiana or Florida. In the next place, 
 Texas was likely to be a slaveholding country, and he held that 
 the people of the United States would not, and certainly should 
 not, consent to add to the Union a territory large enough to 
 make several new slaveholding States. On this subject he said : 
 
 " On the general question of slavery, a great portion of the community 
 is already excited. The subject has not only attracted attention as a ques- 
 tion of politics, but it has struck a far deeper-toned chord. It has arrested 
 the religious feeling of the country ; it has taken strong hold on the con- 
 sciences of men. He is a rash man, indeed, and little conversant with 
 human nature, and especially has he a very erroneous estimate of the char- 
 acter of the people of this country, who supposes that a feeling of this 
 kind is to be trifled with or despised. It will assuredly cause itself to be 
 respected. It may be reasoned with ; it may be made willing, I believe it 
 is entirely willing, to fulfil all existing engagements and all existing duties, 
 to uphold and defend the Constitution as it is established, with whatever 
 
 1 The suspension began in the city of New York on the 10th of June.
 
 1837.] DANGERS OF THE UNIOX. 561 
 
 regrets about some provisions which it does actually contain. But to 
 coerce it into silence, to endeavor to restrain its free expression, to seek to 
 compress and confine it, -warm as it is, and more heated as such endeavors 
 would inevitably render it should this be attempted, I know nothing, 
 even in the Constitution or in the Union itself, which would not be en- 
 dangered by the explosion which might follow." 
 
 At the same time lie declared, in tlie strongest terms, that 
 all the stipulations found in the Constitution in favor of the 
 slaveholding States already in the Union ought to be fulfilled, 
 and, so far as depended on him, should be fulfilled, " in the ful- 
 ness of their spirit and to the exactness of their letter." Such 
 was the attitude taken by him at the very commencement of 
 an excitement which he forewarned the country was to be at- 
 tended by the most serious consequences an attitude that is 
 most important to be remembered by the reader, because he 
 will have occasion to see it again and again repeated, as often 
 as Mr. Webster was called to act upon this subject. In this 
 respect, it must now be conceded that, of all the statesmen of 
 that period, he looked farther into the future, and comprehended 
 more in the range of his vision, than any of the public men of 
 his time. The Southern statesmen saw danger to that institu- 
 tion of their States which had received a qualified recognition, 
 and some degree of direct guaranty in the Constitution of the 
 United States; and they sought, by the enlargement of the 
 number of slaveholding States, to strengthen their political 
 power in the Government, as a means of defence against the 
 growing spirit of aggression which had sprung up in the Korth. 
 But they did not see that no amount of increase of their sec- 
 tional power would be of any avail against a sentiment which 
 was taking its hold upon private conscience. They miscalcu- 
 lated, the effect of suppression and coercion, as they miscalcu- 
 lated the power of political combination or governmental action 
 over the progress of opinion and feeling. The Northern states- 
 men, too, who thought that the Union could be strengthened 
 by recasting the balance of power between the non-slaveholding 
 and the slaveholding sections, equally failed to appreciate the 
 fact that, after the latter had been increased, the movement 
 itself however it might, for a time, appear to be successful, by 
 receiving the sanction of Xorthern constituencies would, sooner 
 37
 
 562 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIII. 
 
 or later, find those constituencies acting in the opposite direc- 
 tion, by the force which a moral sentiment always exerts over 
 the restraints of political arrangements. All this Mr. Webster 
 did see. The proof that he saw it is in the record of what he 
 said, in the warnings that he gave, and in every one of his 
 public acts relating to this subject, from this year 1837 to the 
 close of his life. Let it be remembered that he entered upon 
 this new era of the Union with a strong and clear conviction 
 that causes were at work which were to expose it to great perils ; 
 and let every one of his particular efforts to avert those perils, 
 when he could no longer control the causes, be judged by the 
 existence of this conviction. 
 
 Mr. Webster's purpose to make an extended tour to the 
 West, in the course of this spring and summer, having become 
 known, Mr. Clay addressed to him the following cordial letter, 
 in anticipation of his visit : 
 
 [FROM MR. CLAY.] 
 
 " ASHLAND, %8th March, 1837. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I should like to know at what time we may expect 
 the pleasure of seeing you in Kentucky, as I do not wish to be absent on 
 that interesting occasion. I have no intention of leaving home during the 
 spring, or before August, except to make an excursion to Missouri, to visit 
 a young son whom I have established there. Without being bound to any 
 specific time for this trip, I wish to make it toward the last of May ; but, 
 of course, shall be regulated by your movements, if I can know them. 
 " I am, truly and faithfully, 
 
 " Your friend and obedient servant, 
 
 " H. CLAY. 
 " The Hon. D. Webster." 
 
 The journey was begun in the early part of May, and on 
 the llth of that month he was at Pittsburg. Descending the 
 Ohio, he was met by a hundred citizens of Wheeling, who had 
 chartered a steamboat to ascend the river and escort him to that 
 place. At the landing he was greeted by an immense throng 
 of people, and, on the 17th, he accepted a public dinner. The 
 news of the suspension of the Eastern banks reached Wheeling 
 on the day of this entertainment. He had left a scene of com- 
 mercial distress in the Atlantic cities, which, as he described it 
 in his speech at this dinner, presented a mass of evil such as he
 
 1837.] VISIT TO THE WEST. 563 
 
 had never expected to see, " except as the result of war, a pesti- 
 lence, or some other calamity." He could not have avoided 
 speaking of that which was in all men's thoughts, melancholy 
 as the topic was. Nor was there any reason for avoiding an 
 allusion to what all men spoke of his own early and constant 
 predictions of what had now occurred. From the year 1832 
 down to the last session of Congress, in every important debate, 
 he had foretold and proclaimed the approach of this result, as a 
 necessary consequence of the measures adopted in regard to the 
 currency. 
 
 On the lYth and 18th of May he was at Maysville, in Ken- 
 tucky, where he had a similar reception, great numbers of people 
 coming in from the surrounding country to see and to greet 
 him. On the 19th he was escorted into Lexington by a com- 
 mittee, chosen for the purpose at a general meeting of the citi- 
 zens ; and here another public dinner was given to him. At 
 Louisville he was received at one of those peculiar entertain- 
 ments which are known in that country as "barbecues," at 
 which he addressed a vast crowd of people in a speech of two 
 hours. Ascending the Ohio toward Cincinnati, he landed at 
 North Bend, and paid a visit to General Harrison. On the 2d 
 of June he arrived at Cincinnati, amid a great popular demon- 
 stration, and, on the 3d, he addressed the people of that city, 
 being introduced by General Harrison. On the 9th, at St. 
 Louis, he was received in a similar manner, and as no other 
 man, according to the newspapers of the time, ever was re- 
 ceived on the west bank of the Mississippi. On the 14th, he 
 left St. Louis for Alton, in Illinois, where his arrival was greeted 
 with a display of flags, ringing of church-bells, discharge of 
 cannon, and a great turnout of the population. The next of 
 these demonstrations was at Madison, Indiana; and here he 
 was obliged, in consequence of the state of the country and the 
 early meeting of Congress, to turn his course again toward the 
 East. It would have occupied him for at least three months 
 longer to have accepted the other invitations which poured in 
 upon him from the great region that is covered by the States 
 of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. But to the far greater part of 
 all this outpouring of popular respect and interest he could 
 only return his grateful regrets. From Madison he passed
 
 564 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXIII. 
 
 through Indiana to Chicago, where he was met by a cavalcade 
 ten miles from the city, and was followed by a long train of 
 carriages. Here he addressed a vast crowd assembled in front 
 of the Lake House, and, on the following day, a festival was 
 given in his honor. On the 1st of July he crossed the lower 
 part of Lake Michigan to Michigan City, and passed thence to 
 Toledo. On the 8th he reached Detroit, from which place he 
 arrived on the 16th at Buffalo, where, on the lYth, there was a 
 grand steamboat regatta on Lake Erie, in honor of his visit. 
 On landing from this excursion, he was escorted to the park, 
 and there addressed the public in one of his characteristic 
 speeches. On the 26th he reached the city of ISTew York, on 
 his way to Massachusetts. 
 
 Such is a very imperfect outline of the last extended and 
 public tour that Mr. Webster made to the West. It might have 
 resembled the progress of a supreme ruler, if he had not been 
 simply a member of the legislative branch of the Government ; 
 for the addresses which were presented to him, and which are 
 now before me in great numbers, many of them coming from 
 quarters which it was impossible for him to visit, almost always 
 proceeded from formal meetings of the citizens, convened for 
 the purpose of inviting him, and they mark the general sense 
 of his public importance, while, with perfect freedom, they ex- 
 press the gratification and delight to be anticipated from his 
 presence. It is quite apparent, from the tone of these addresses, 
 that, on this tour, he exhibited his great social powers in their 
 most attractive form, and that their fame spread far and wide 
 through that vast region. It was a new experience in that 
 country to see so much refinement and intellectual power, com- 
 bined with a fascination and cordiality that put everybody at 
 their ease, and yet lost nothing of personal dignity. "Western 
 society had heard of Mr. Webster's coldness, and coldness is not 
 to its taste. It found him, to its surprise and delight, one of 
 the most genial of men, capable of hearty enjoyment in the 
 simplest pleasures of life, and feeling quickly and keenly all 
 manifestations of sympathy and kindness. On him, too, the 
 country and its people produced a very strong impression. 
 
 Mr. Yan Buren, who received the administration of the Gov- 
 ernment in March, 1837, just as the great crisis in the monetary
 
 183Y.] PRESIDENT VAN BTJREN'S POLICY. 565 
 
 condition of the country, recently referred to, was rapidly de- 
 veloping itself, found himself obliged to summon Congress in 
 a special session, to "be holden on the 4th of September. The 
 proclamation issued for this purpose met Mr. "Webster while he 
 was on his tour in the West. It rendered it necessary for him 
 to shorten his journey ; and, by the time he reached Boston, he 
 had only the month of August remaining for rest and recrea- 
 tion at Marshfield. 
 
 The position of the new President was peculiar. Com- 
 mitted, by the circumstances of his election, to the policy of 
 his predecessor, he had to accept the dogma that a national 
 bank was a measure not to be resorted to under any cir- 
 cumstances. At the same time, nothing had been devised to 
 answer the purposes of a substitute for such an institution. 
 The deposit-bank system had broken down entirely ; and, in 
 the general crash which came by the suspension of specie pay- 
 ments, these banks, with the public funds in their custody, were 
 alike involved. TThat had been called, under the former Ad- 
 ministration, the " experiment," which had been founded in the 
 expectation that the State banks could transact the financial 
 business of the Government, and furnish a generally-accredited 
 paper circulation for the uses of commerce, had completely 
 failed. The new Administration, therefore, had to strike out 
 for itself, and for the country, a policy that was destined to be 
 somewhat of a paradox ; for it was to coincide with that of the 
 preceding Administration, and was yet to be unlike it. In re- 
 fusing to go back to the policy of a national bank, Mr. Yan 
 Buren could adhere to the doctrines and example of General 
 Jackson. But the latter had never renounced the duty of regu- 
 lating the currency. He had, in fact, admitted this duty, by 
 attempting to make the deposit banks a substitute for the Bank 
 of the United States. But the alternatives from which Mr.' Yan 
 Buren had now to choose were, either to return to the policy of 
 a national bank, which had been the policy of the country for 
 forty years out of the forty-eight which had elapsed since the 
 Government was established, or to renounce all care of the na- 
 tional Government over the currency, excepting the coinage, 
 and to disclaim all concern of the Government in the relations 
 of commerce, of exchange, and of the money which the people
 
 566 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBS1ER. [Cn. XXHI. 
 
 must use in their ordinary dealings. This was a difficult path 
 to tread ; for if, on the one hand, it were to be considered that 
 the peculiar agency of a national bank, as a regulator and source 
 of a commercial currency, was out of the question, still it could 
 not be easily seen how the Government was to extricate itself 
 from its present embarrassments, and accomplish that divorce 
 from the general concerns of the people, which alone remained 
 for it to attempt, if no substitute could be found to discharge 
 the functions that had so long been performed by a Bank of the 
 United States. 
 
 Difficult, however, as the enterprise was, it was undertaken. 
 The new Administration decided to disclaim the duty of pro- 
 viding a currency for commercial uses, or of exercising any con- 
 trol over the paper circulating medium ; and it is in reference 
 to this new policy, which was to confine the action of the Gov- 
 ernment to the care of its own interests alone, and to the mere 
 collection and disbursement of its revenues, that Mr. "Webster's 
 opposition to Mr. Yan Buren's measures is to be examined. 
 Before it could be known what those measures were to be, Mr. 
 Webster had said publicly, while on his tour in the West, that 
 the country had now reached a point at which a great principle 
 would have to be decided: whether the Government of the 
 United States has any constitutional duty to perform in regard 
 to the currency of the country, beyond the mere regulation of 
 the gold and silver coins. 
 
 On the assembling of Congress, the message of the President 
 and the report of the Secretary of the Treasury exhibited the 
 deranged condition of the public finances, and disclosed the plan 
 of the Administration. For the immediate relief of the Gov- 
 ernment, it was proposed to postpone the payment to the States 
 of the fourth instalment of the surplus revenue, and to issue 
 some millions of Treasury notes, to be used in paying the public 
 creditors. Mr. Webster opposed the first of these measures as 
 inexpedient, after the States had been led to expect that the 
 money would be distributed to them ; and he pointed out that 
 the kind of Treasury notes proposed to be issued, to circulate 
 on the credit of the Government, without interest, and with no 
 fixed period of redemption, would be mere paper money. For 
 the permanent plan of managing the public finances, the mes-
 
 1837.] OPINIONS RESPECTING THE CURRENCY. 567 
 
 sage proposed that the Government should no longer make any 
 use whatever of banks, but that its revenues, after being col- 
 lected, should be held by officers of the Treasury, and be paid 
 out by them to the public creditors on Treasury orders. This 
 scheme, which afterward became expanded into what was known 
 as the " Sub-Treasury," was justified upon the ground that it 
 was no part of the duty of the Government of the United States 
 either to provide a paper circulating medium for the uses of the 
 country, or to supervise and regulate that which is issued by 
 corporations or individual bankers. A bill was soon introduced 
 into the Senate, in accordance with the President's recommen- 
 dation, for the purpose of carrying out the new plan of keeping 
 and disbursing the public moneys ; and to this bill Mr. Calhoun 
 moved an amendment, providing for the gradual repeal of the 
 resolution of April 30, 1816, so far as it authorized the receipt 
 of the notes of specie-paying banks in payment of public dues. 
 Mr. Calhoun, who, in 1816, advocated the creation of the last 
 Bank of the United States, and, during the Administration of 
 General Jackson, had been opposed to his measures, now be- 
 came a convert to the doctrine that the Government "has no 
 right to have any connection with banks. He regarded himself 
 as having formerly acted under the compulsion of necessity, in 
 supporting a national bank; and, now that the connection be- 
 tween the Government and all banks was broken, he said that 
 he was set at liberty to act upon his original opinions. It was 
 in consequence of this change that Mr. "Webster and Mr. Cal- 
 houn came into collision in the debate of this session upon the 
 currency. 
 
 Mr. "Webster's great speech on this subject was delivered on 
 the 28th of September, in opposition to the bill embracing the 
 first Sub-Treasury scheme, and to Mr. Calhoun's amendment. 
 It was the most elaborate of all the arguments that he ever 
 made in support of the constitutional duty of the General Gov- 
 ernment to see that a paper currency, of general credit, suitable 
 to the wants of trade and business, as well as to the payment 
 of debts due to the Government, be maintained and preserved. 
 The capital sources of this constitutional argument were drawn 
 from the coinage power of the Constitution, the prohibition on 
 the States to issue their own paper for circulation, and the
 
 568 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXUI. 
 
 power to regulate commerce. Commencing with the great ob- 
 ject of the coinage power, to provide a money for circulation 
 that should be, at the same time, the standard of value, Mr. 
 Webster contended that this power embraces authority to regu- 
 late and control any and all paper which either States or indi- 
 viduals may put into circulation in the place of coin. Passing 
 thence to the prohibition on the States against issuing their own 
 paper for circulation, he said that it had not been, and now can- 
 not be held to prevent them from authorizing private corpora- 
 tions or individuals to issue notes for circulation on their own 
 credit. Such notes were and would continue to be issued, and 
 they filled all the channels of commerce, while they failed to be 
 of universal credit. The power to regulate commerce here 
 comes in, and is to be applied to the regulation and control of 
 whatever, by circulating as money, is in fact an agent or instru- 
 ment in the performance of commercial transactions ; and from 
 this power Mr. Webster deduced the duty of the General Gov- 
 ernment to provide a currency of general credit, equivalent in 
 value to specie. Mr. Calhoun, who now denied this whole doc- 
 trine, appears to have anticipated a kind of Government paper 
 circulation which we have seen since most extensively employed. 
 While he contended that the entire banking system of modern 
 times, so far as it involved the use of Government credit, was 
 wrong and vicious, he was not able to suggest that the Govern- 
 ment can wholly avoid the use of its credit in some form, or 
 rely exclusively on the coinage. Credit, as the associate and 
 assistant of the metals, he held to be both unobjectionable and 
 necessary. But, in seeking the form in which the Government 
 is to use its credit, he selected as " the most stable, the least 
 liable to abuse, the cheapest, and that which combines all the 
 requisite qualities of a credit circulation in the highest degree," 
 a Government paper receivable in payment of the revenues, and 
 to be issued as the wants of the Government should require. 
 In the event of war, such a paper, he said, would open almost 
 unbounded resources to carry it on, without the necessity of re- 
 sorting to loans, which he was almost disposed to regard as a 
 fraud. The increase of such bills would keep pace with the 
 increase of taxes, and they would furnish the means of paying 
 the taxes. Excepting that he did not suggest the making of
 
 1837.] OPINIONS RESPECTING THE CURRENCY. 569 
 
 this Government paper a lawful tender in the payment of pri- 
 vate debts, the form in which Mr. Calhonn would have used 
 Government credit, instead of using it in connection with bank- 
 ing institutions, was essentially the same scheme which we have 
 since seen resorted to on a gigantic scale ; and we have thus 
 had some means of judging how far it can be made " the asso- 
 ciate and assistant of the metals," and how far it combines " all 
 the requisite qualities of a credit circulation." 
 
 The difference between Mr. "Webster's financial system and 
 that maintained by Mr. Calhoun as the best, can now be appre- 
 ciated. Mr. Webster contended that it always had been and 
 always will be impossible to maintain any paper circulation at 
 par with specie that is not convertible into specie at the will of 
 the holder ; that if Government is to use its credit at all, in aid 
 of the circulation, it must do it in such a form as to make the 
 paper issues convertible at pleasure into coin; that its own 
 paper, issued without any promise of redemption other than 
 that of its being received for taxes, has no advantage over that 
 issued by individuals ; that the modern banking system leads to 
 the circulation of paper as money which is founded on 'assigned 
 capital and recognized credit, under an administration of citi- 
 zens responsible, individually and corporately, to the laws. He 
 held this system and form of credit to have been the great in- 
 strument which has elevated the condition of society in modern 
 times, breaking down the influence which dead capital confers 
 upon the few who possess it, lifting up those who have industry 
 without having capital, and extending the property and business 
 of the great mass of mankind. These principles, which he held 
 to lie at the basis of the relation in which government stands 
 to society, in regard to the circulating medium, were, in his 
 opinion, those on which the Government of the United States 
 must act ; and he maintained, now and always, that the power 
 to carry out these principles is in the Constitution, and that to 
 deny it to be there is to reconstruct and rewrite the Constitu- 
 tion, to take it away and give us a substitute. 
 
 The bill to authorize the issue of Treasury notes was passed 
 at this session. The bill to establish the Sub-Treasury was 
 passed in the Senate, but did not pass the House. 
 
 It was at this period that the first formal overture of annex-
 
 570 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXI1L 
 
 ation to the United States was made by Texas, which now had 
 an independent government that had been acknowledged by us. 
 The offer was declined by President Yan Buren, partly upon 
 the ground that it involved constitutional questions which it 
 would be inexpedient now to agitate, and partly because we 
 had a treaty of amity and commerce with Mexico, the friendly 
 purposes of which would appear to be disregarded by enter- 
 taining this proposal. Mr. "Webster had received a great num- 
 ber of petitions against the annexation before the actual con- 
 dition of this negotiation was publicly known. As soon, how- 
 ever, as it was known, he considered that the time had arrived 
 when it was proper for our citizens to declare their sentiments 
 on the subject, and he accordingly presented the petitions at 
 tliis session. 1 
 
 1 October 12, 1837.
 
 1887.1 WESTERN SPECULATIONS. 571 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 1837-1838. 
 
 PROJECT FOE A GREAT WESTERN FARM SEPARATE NATIONALITY 
 
 OF TEXAS SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA THE 
 
 SUB-TREASURY PREEMPTION RIGHTS FOR SETTLERS ON THE 
 
 PUBLIC LANDS THE COMMONWEALTH BANK, IN BOSTON COR- 
 RESPONDENCE. 
 
 ONE of the effects of -Mr. Webster's visit to the West, in 
 the summer of 1837, was to confirm his desire for a 
 great Western farm, and to lead him into other land specula- 
 tions and projects of investment in that region. His fondness 
 for agriculture, and his knowledge of it, found in that country 
 the scope which they craved ; for his preferences in this re- 
 spect were for broad fields and large operations. He had be- 
 come the owner of an extensive tract, to which he had given 
 the name of Salisbury, from that of his native town in New 
 Hampshire. This place is in Sangamon County, Illinois, not 
 far from Springfield ; on it he had placed, as his agent, Mr. 
 Nathaniel Ray Thomas, a younger son of the family from 
 whom he purchased the Green Harbor estate at Marshfield. 
 After his return to Washington, in the winter and spring of 
 1838, he was occupied with a project for enlarging this tract, 
 so as to carry out a plan which he had long entertained of 
 making a Western farm of one thousand acres. There he 
 sometimes believed that he should retire finally from profes- 
 sional and public life ; sometimes, that he should make it a 
 place of only occasional residence, in order to indulge his love
 
 572 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXIV. 
 
 of farming on a scale that suited the grandeur of his tastes, and 
 on a soil such as he could not have in New England ; and 
 sometimes he imagined that a great fortune was to be made 
 from the increased value of the property that was to arise 
 out of the further settlement of that country. But, at this 
 period, he had done nothing more than to make contracts for 
 the enlargement of Salisbury, and for stocking it, as it would 
 require to be stocked, according to the scheme that he had 
 planned. He was to look for the means of carrying out this 
 grand project hereafter. 
 
 At this session, another capital error was committed on the 
 subject of slavery, and it is extraordinary that it should have 
 been committed, and that the Southern statesmen should not 
 have been content to accept the conservative and consistent 
 views of Mr. Webster as the true ground on which to rest the 
 rights and interests of their States, instead of obliging him to 
 dissent from doctrines which it was out of the question for him 
 to accept. His opinions were well known. He held that Con- 
 gress could do nothing in regard to the institution of slavery in 
 any State ; but that, in the District of Columbia, inasmuch as 
 the jurisdiction of Congress is plenary, it could deal with this 
 subject as it might see fit, and that this legislative power neces- 
 sarily involved the right of citizens of the United States to peti- 
 tion for the abolition of slavery in the District, and the duty of 
 Congress to receive, refer, and consider the petitions. Never- 
 theless, Mr. Calhoun now undertook to have the Senate affirm, 
 by resolution, that any act or measure of Congress, with a view 
 to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, would be 
 a direct and dangerous attack on the institutions of all the 
 slaveholding States ; and Mr. Clay proposed to go further, and 
 declare that such legislation would be a violation of the faith 
 implied in the cessions of the District by Virginia and Mary- 
 land, a just cause of alarm to the people of the slaveholding 
 States, and that it would have a direct and inevitable tendency 
 to disturb and endanger the Union. 1 From this doctrine, of 
 
 1 The following was the fifth of the slavery in this District, or any of the Terri- 
 
 !. + ~A K^ \T Pniu^v r. T tones, on the ground, or under the pretext, 
 
 resolutions moved by Mr. Calhoun, De- tnat it ig immo s ral or 8 ' infu ], or tne p a8 F 8a g e O f 
 
 cember 27, 1837 : any act or measure of Congress with that 
 
 view, would he a direct and dangerous attack 
 
 " Resolved, Thai the intermeddling of any on the institutions of all the slaveholcling 
 State or States or their citizens, to abolish States."
 
 1838.] THE SUB-TREASURY. 573 
 
 an implied faith involved in the cessions of the District as a 
 restraint upon the legislative power of Congress, Mr. Webster 
 expressed his dissent in the most decided, but temperate terms ; 
 at the same time saying, that whatever would stay the exercise 
 of the power must be drawn from discretion, from reasons of 
 justice and true policy, and from those high considerations 
 which ought to influence Congress in questions of such extreme 
 delicacy and importance. 1 How he regarded the effort of Mr. 
 Calhoun and Mr. Clay is apparent from the following letter : 
 
 [TO ME. KETCHTTM.] 
 
 " WASHINGTON, January 15, 1838. 
 
 " DEAB SIB : My speech on Mr. Clay's resolution will appear, I hope, 
 in the Intelligencer to-morrow. I venture to say you will be satisfied with 
 it. We are not slumbering here, but wish to act with circumspection as 
 well as decision. I consider the proceedings of the Senate as having 
 drawn a line which can never be obliterated. 
 
 " Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, in my judgment, have attempted in 1838 
 what they attempted in 1833, to make a new Constitution. 
 
 " I am engaged to-day up to the chin, in committee on the new Sub- 
 Treasury, and in court. To-morrow I will write you on the Hartford 
 Convention, and on the Tariff Law of 1833. 
 
 " Tours, 
 
 " D. WEBSTEB." 
 
 We have seen in the last chapter the grounds of Mr. Web- 
 ster's dissent from the policy of Mr. Van Buren's Administra- 
 tion on financial subjects. It has been sometimes said, of late, 
 that Mr. Webster's opposition to what was called the Sub- 
 Treasury, if not the only error, was one of the chief errors of 
 his political life. This opinion is founded in a superficial view 
 of his doctrines respecting the power and duties of the General 
 Government in regard to the currency, and in an assumed suc- 
 cess of the Sub- Treasury in reference to things concerning 
 which it had no success at all, and which remained, as he said 
 
 On the 10th of January, 1838, Mr. measure of Congress, desismed to abolish 
 
 Clav moved thp following a* a Riihti slavery in this District, would be a violation 
 
 stl ' of the faith implied in the cessions by the 
 
 * u * e : States of Virginia and Maryland, a just cause 
 
 -0,^1 ~* rrn, i. . * _< i. . cf alarm to the people of the slaveholding 
 
 " Besotted, That the interference by the states and have di ^ ect and inevi table ten. 
 
 Citizens Of any Of the States, With the View Hfnrvtft rlistnrh anrl pnrlamrpr th(> TTnirm " 
 
 to the abolition of slavery in this District, is den 7 Q to c W 1 q' ^ 
 
 endan ? erin ? the rights and security of the See the speech, Works, iv., 371, d 
 
 people of the District ; and that any act or seq.
 
 574 LIFE Or DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIV. 
 
 they would remain, unprovided for by the introduction of the 
 plan of a separate custody and disbursement of the public funds, 
 and uninfluenced by it. Undoubtedly, the plan of separate 
 custody and disbursement has operated beneficially ; but it is 
 to be remembered that its introduction and establishment were 
 accompanied by a denial of all power and duty of the General 
 Government to exercise any control over the paper currency. 
 This is the principal reason why Mr. Webster reiterated his 
 opposition to the Sub-Treasury at the present session. The dis- 
 cussions on this subject led to another encounter with Mr. 
 Calhoun. 1 The following note relates to it : 
 
 [TO MR. K.ETCHUM.] 
 
 " Monday Morning. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I received yours last evening. The speeches will go to all 
 the printers this mail, and you will get a copy also. The reply to Mr. 
 Calhoun is nearly ready for the press. It will make a speech of twenty to 
 thirty pages. 
 
 " The speech will not come quite up to expectation. It has been too 
 much praised. If you can believe it, no reporter took down a single 
 word of it. I had to gather it together from my own notes, my own 
 recollection, other friends' recollections, and the letters of the letter- 
 writers. 
 
 " I shall go to Boston the end of this week or early nest ; must see 
 you for an hour as I go on, though I shall make no stay, or a very short 
 one, in New York. 
 
 " Tours, 
 
 " D. WEBSTER." 
 
 Mr. Webster's visit to the West had made him acquainted 
 with a condition of the frontier settlements for which he felt 
 himself, on his return to his place in the Senate, bound to ex- 
 tend some relief. In parts of Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, 
 and especially in the region beyond the Mississippi, compre- 
 hended in what was then the Territory of Wisconsin, population 
 had extended itself beyond the surveys of the public lands, and 
 the actual settlers were consequently without any title to the 
 land which they had cleared, and on which they had made im- 
 provements. Mr. Webster had satisfied himself that the cir- 
 
 1 See the speeches on the Sub-Treasury, and the reply to Mr. Calhoun, Works, 
 iv., 401-522
 
 1838.] CORRESPONDENCE. 575 
 
 cumstances under which these settlements had been made 
 afforded some palliation for the intrusion on the public domain, 
 and that the practical question of what was to be done with 
 these settlers, their improvements, and the lands on which 
 they were living, must be met by Congress in a spirit of liber- 
 ality. He therefore supported, against Mr. Clay and his own 
 colleague Mr. Davis, a bill to grant a preemption right to every 
 actual settler on the public lands, who was in possession on the 
 1st day of December, 1837, with certain restrictions and limi- 
 tations. His speech on this subject is embraced in the fourth 
 volume of his Works. 
 
 Among the mischievous abuses to which the system of de- 
 positing the public moneys in certain selected State banks had 
 led, under the late Administration, a scandalous occurrence 
 took place in Boston, in the payment, by the local disbursing 
 officers of the United States, of pensions and fishing-bounties 
 in the bills of a bank which was on the eve of failure, and the 
 result was a total loss to a most meritorious class of public 
 creditors. They were all entitled by law to be paid-in specie 
 or in the notes of specie-paying banks. This disgraceful affair 
 was brought before the Senate by Mr. Webster, on the 17th of 
 January ; and he made it the occasion for pointing out that, 
 while the general paper currency of the country was left 
 depreciated and deranged for the want of some regulating 
 and restraining power, the establishment of an exclusive sys- 
 tem of gold and silver for Government use could not secure 
 safety to the Government or its creditors ; for, in spite of 
 the provisions of law, the disbursing agents of the Govern- 
 ment will always be tempted to offer, and the creditors be 
 made to accept, paper which passes for money in the par- 
 ticular locality, and which is exposed at all times to the 
 hazard of falling dead in the hands of its holders. He held 
 the scheme of one kind of currency for the Government and 
 another for the people to be both impracticable and dan- 
 gerous. 1 
 
 The following important letters may appropriately close the 
 
 1 See his remarks on the affair of the officers and managers of this bank were, 
 Commonwealth Bank, Boston. Works, at the same time, disbursing agents for 
 iv., 377, et seq. Some of the leading the Government.
 
 576 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. CH. XXIV. 
 
 present volume, before we enter upon the period in which the 
 stability of the Union was to be subjected to further perils, 
 that were to demand of Mr. Webster, to the end of his career, 
 a continued sacrifice of his private interests to the public 
 good: 
 
 [TO MB. KETCHUM.] 
 
 "May 12, 1838. 
 
 " DEAB SIB : This Cherokee subject is difficult and delicate. The 
 public sympathies are aroused too late. The Whig members of Congress, 
 who have taken an interest in seeing justice done to the Indians, are worn 
 out and exhausted. An Administration man, come from where he will, 
 has no concern for Indian rights, so far as I can perceive. We shall en- 
 deavor to do something or to say something. We are all willing. 
 
 " You think that I ought to do some act to clear myself from the shame 
 and sin of this treaty. My dear sir, I fought it a week in the Senate, on 
 the question of ratification. We came near preventing it, and should have 
 done so, if we had not been disappointed in Mr. Goldsborough's vote. We 
 relied on him as a man of honor and religion ; but he voted for the treaty, 
 and turned the scale mortified some of his friends severely went home, 
 and never returned. 
 
 " On all occasions, public and private, I pronounce the treaty a base 
 fraud on the Cherokee Indians. What can I do more ? Yet, I am willing 
 to do more, if any good can be effected by it. ... 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 "D. WEBSTEB. 
 
 " P. S. Please not to mention what I have said about the Cherokee 
 Treaty in the Senate, because I do not know, now, whether the injunction 
 of secrecy was taken off. I will look on Monday, and, if it was, will send 
 you a list of ayes and noes. I think it was taken off, and that the ayes 
 and noes have already been published. 1 " 
 
 [TO MB. PECK.] 
 
 " Senate-Chamber, January 11, 1838. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB: I can have no possible objection to stating to you, in 
 any manner you may desire, my opinions on the various branches of this 
 great and agitating subject of slavery. 
 
 " In the first place, I concur entirely in the resolution of the House of 
 
 1 This letter refers to the Treaty of kees were dissatisfied with the treaty, 
 
 New Echota, negotiated in December, and claimed that it was negotiated in 
 
 1835, which stipulated for the removal behalf of their nation by unauthorized 
 
 of the Cherokee nation to the West ; persons, and was never ratified by a re- 
 
 the removal to be consummated by May spectable number of the tribe. It was a 
 
 23, 1838. A large portion of the Chero- most scandalous transaction.
 
 1838.] CORRESPONDENCE. 577 
 
 Representatives, passed as early as March, 1790, at a calm and dispassion- 
 ate period in our political history. That resolution is in the following words : 
 
 " ' Resolved, That Congress have no authority to interfere in the eman- 
 cipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them within any of the States ; it 
 remaining with the several States alone to provide any regulations therein 
 which humanity and true policy may require.' 
 
 " In the next place, I entertain no doubt whatever that Congress pos- 
 sessing, by the express grant of the Constitution, a right to exercise ex- 
 clusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over the District of Columbia, the 
 same having been ceded by the States of Maryland and Virginia, and be- 
 come the seat of the Government of the United States, have full authority 
 to regulate slavery within said District, or to abolish it altogether, when- 
 ever, in their judgment, humanity and true policy may require it ; and 
 that they have full authority also to regulate or restrain the purchase and 
 sale of slaves within said District in any manner which they may deem 
 just and expedient. 
 
 " I am also clearly and entirely of opinion, that neither by acts of 
 cession by the States, nor by the acceptance by Congress, nor in any other 
 way, has the faith of Congress become pledged to refrain from exercising 
 its constitutional authority over slavery and the slave-trade in said Dis- 
 trict. More than all, it is my opinion ' that the citizens of the United 
 States have an unquestionable constitutional right to petition Congress 
 for the restraint or abolition of slavery and the slave-trade within the said 
 District ; and that all such petitions, being respectfully written, ought to 
 bs received, read, referred, and considered in the same manner as petitions 
 on other important subjects are received, read, referred, and considered ; 
 and without reproach or rebuke to the authors or signers of such petitions.' 
 
 " The right of petition, free, unqualified, and untrammelled, I hold to 
 be of the very substance and essence of civil liberty. I can have no con- 
 ception of a free government, where the people, respectfully approaching 
 those who are elected to make laws for them, and offering for their con- 
 sideration petitions respecting any subject, over which their constitutional 
 power of legislation extends, may be repelled, and their petitions rejected, 
 without consideration and even without hearing. 
 
 " Wherever there is a constitutional right of petition, it seems to me to 
 be quite clear that it is the duty of those, to whom petitions are addressed, 
 to read and consider them ; otherwise the whole right of petition is but a 
 vain illusion and mockery. 
 
 " I am, dear sir, with very true regard, 
 
 " DAKTEL WEBSTER." 
 
 [TO MESSRS. KELLET A2TD OTHERS, EBIE, FEfTNSYLYAITIA.] 
 
 tt WABHETGTOJT, June 4, 1838. 
 
 " GEXTXEMEN : The cane made from the timber of the ship which bore 
 the flag of the gallant Perry on the memorable 10th of September, and 
 38
 
 578 LIFE OP DANIEL WEBSTER. [Cn. XXIV. 
 
 intended as a present to me from the citizens of Erie, has been delivered 
 by your townsman, Mr. Freeman ; and I have also since had the pleasure 
 of receiving your letter intended to accompany the gift. 
 
 " To those who have united in this token of confidence and friendship, 
 I beg leave to return my respectful and cordial thanks. Be kind enough 
 to say this to them, as you may have occasion to see them, and assure 
 them that I highly value their present, because of the associations con- 
 nected with its material, and especially because it is their present, and 
 because of the inscriptions which they have seen fit it shall bear. 
 
 " You have been kind enough to say, gentlemen, that you claim kin- 
 dred with me as an American citizen. 
 
 " I admit and reciprocate this claim with great pleasure and sincerity. 
 I recognize you and your neighbors as fellow-citizens, my own country- 
 men, embarked on the same political fortunes, enjoying the same liberty, 
 and the same bounties and blessings of Providence as myself. 
 
 "Your homes are on the shores of one of our great inland seas, mine is 
 on the ocean; but our substantial interests, the great elements of our pros- 
 perity, and, above all, our stake in that paramount treasure of a free peo- 
 ple, a good and wise government, are the same. All these are under the 
 protection and guardianship of that inestimable Constitution which our 
 fathers framed and have delivered to us, as a bond of perpetual union. 
 
 " It affords me, gentlemen, much gratification to find that my political 
 conduct, on trying occasions, now passed, and I hope passed forever, has 
 met your approbation. The period to which you refer, you justly call the 
 dark hour. I felt it to be my duty in that momentous crisis to disregard 
 party and personal considerations, to act in the true spirit of the Consti- 
 tution, and, without forgetting the propriety of moderation, or the laws 
 of kindness and charity, to proceed, nevertheless, with a firm and inflexible 
 resolution of upholding the authority of the laws and defending the 
 Union. I am happy to know that in all this I appear to you to have dis- 
 charged the duty of a good citizen. 
 
 " I am, gentlemen, your friend and obedient servant, 
 
 " DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 At this time the affairs of Texas assumed a new aspect, in 
 consequence of a change in the purposes of the leading persons 
 in that country, respecting its annexation to the United States. 
 This change was especially welcome to Mr. "Webster, who had 
 always desired to see Texas establish and maintain a separate 
 nationality ; and when, in consequence of negotiations which 
 the new minister of Texas opened with Mr. Nicholas Biddle, 
 for a loan to his government of five millions of dollars, to be 
 subscribed in the United States, that gentleman wrote to Mr. 
 Webster, to ask his opinion on the. whole subject of Texan
 
 1838.] CORRESPONDENCE. 579 
 
 independence, in its relations to the United States Mr. "Web- 
 ster, without hesitation, sent him the following answer : 
 
 [TO MB. NICHOLAS BIDDLE.] 
 
 " BOSTON, September 10, 1838. 
 
 " MY DEAB SIB : I have received your favor of the 8th instant. The 
 decision of the Government of Texas to withdraw its application for a 
 union with the United States is, in my judgment, an event eminently 
 favorable to both countries. She now stands as an independent state, 
 looking to her own power and her own revenues to maintain her place 
 among the nations of the earth ; an attitude vastly more respectable than 
 that which she held when solicitous to surrender her own political charac- 
 ter, and become part of a neighboring country. Seeking thus no longer a 
 union with us, and assuming the ground of entire independence, I think 
 it highly important to the interest of the United States that Texas should 
 be found able to maintain her position. Any connection with a European 
 state, so close as to make her dependent on that state, or to identify her 
 interests with the interests of such state, I should regard as greatly unfor- 
 tunate for us. I could not but regret exceedingly to see any union be- 
 tween those parts of our continent which have broken the chain of Euro- 
 pean dependence, and the Governments of Europe, whether those from 
 which they have been disunited or others. You remember the strong opin- 
 ion expressed by Mr. Monroe, that the United States could not consent to 
 the recolonization of those portions of this continent which had severed 
 the ties binding them to a European connection, and formed free and 
 independent governments for themselves ; or to the establishment of other 
 European colonies in America. The spirit and the reason of this senti- 
 ment would lead us to regard with just fear, and therefore with just 
 jealousy, any connection between our near American neighbors and the 
 powerful states of Europe, except those of friendly and useful commercial 
 intercourse. 
 
 " It is easy to foresee evils, with which any other connection than that 
 last mentioned, between Texas and one of the great sovereignties of 
 Europe, might threaten us. Not to advert to those of a high and political 
 nature, one likely to have a direct bearing on our commerce and pros- 
 perity is very obvious. I mean the effect of such a connection on the 
 great staple of our Southern production. Texas is destined, doubtless, to 
 be a great cotton-producing country ; and, while we should cheerfully 
 concede to her all the advantages which her soil and climate afford to 
 her, in sustaining a competition with ourselves, we could not behold with 
 indifference a surrender by her of her substantial independence for the 
 purchase of exclusive favors and privileges from the hands of a European 
 government. 
 
 " The competency of Texas to maintain her independence depends, I
 
 580 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. [On. XXIV 
 
 think, altogether on the character of her Government and its administra- 
 tion. I have no belief at all in the power of Mexico to resubjugate Texas, if 
 the latter country shall be well governed. The same consideration decides 
 also the question whether a loan to Texas would be safe. I have supposed 
 that her new-found Government was gradually strengthening and improv- 
 ing in all the qualities requisite for the respectable exercise of national 
 power. That, in institutions so recent, there should be for a time some 
 irregularity of action, is to be expected. But, if those, to whose hands her 
 destinies are now committed, shall look steadily to two great objects 
 first, real and absolute, as well as nominal national independence ; and, 
 second, the maintenance of a free and efficient Government, of which good 
 faith shall be, from the beginning, a marked characteristic I see nothing 
 to render it less safe to negotiate money transactions with her than with 
 the governments of other countries. On the other hand, if a spirit of 
 speculation and project should appear to actuate her councils, if she should 
 trifle with her public domain, involve herself in contradictory obligations, 
 or seek to establish her prosperity on any other foundation than that of 
 justice and good faith, there would then be little to be hoped, either in 
 regard to her punctuality in pecuniary engagements, or to the probability 
 of her maintaining an independent national character. My opinion on the 
 whole is, that the prospects of Texas are now far better and brighter than 
 they have ever been before ; that the interest of our own country requires 
 that she should keep herself free from all particular European connection ; 
 and that whatever aid can be furnished to her by individuals or corpo- 
 rations in the United States, in the present state of her affairs, to enable 
 her to maintain a truly independent and national character, would tend 
 to promote the welfare of the United States as well as of Texas herself. 
 " I am, dear sir, yours, with great regard, 
 
 " D. WEBSTEK."
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE notes of Mr. Jefferson's conversation, referred to on 
 page 226 of this volume, are given by the lady who wrote 
 them, with the following explanation : 
 
 " These are notes about a visit of three or four days to Air. 
 Jefferson, in December, 1824. They were written down, on the 
 very evening on which we left Monticello, at a little tavern kept 
 by a Mrs. Clarke, where we stopped for the night, early in the 
 afternoon, because it was the only tolerable inn within our reach. 
 We had therefore a long whiter evening before us, and we got rid 
 of it by making these notes, which are here copied with care, and 
 without a change of any sort, from the identical manuscript in which 
 they were originally recorded, chiefly by Mrs. Ticknor, under the 
 dictation of Mr. Webster and Mr. Ticknor. As far as what relates 
 exclusively to Mr. Jefferson, his appearance and conversation, the 
 work is Mr. Webster's. The rest was a sort of joint-stock contri- 
 bution." 
 
 BOSTON, May 1, 1869. 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 ME. JEFFEESON is now between eighty-one and eighty-two, above 
 six feet high, of an ample bony frame, rather thin and spare. His 
 head, which is not peculiar in its shape, is set rather forward on his 
 shoulders, and, his neck being long, there is, when he is conversing 
 or walking, an habitual protrusion of it. His head is still well 
 covered with hair, which, having been once red, and now turning 
 white, is of an indistinct light sandy color. His eyes are small, very 
 light, and now neither brilliant nor striking. His chin is rather long, 
 not sharp ; his nose small, regular in its outline, with the nostrils a 
 little elevated. His mouth well formed, and still well filled with 
 teeth, generally strongly compressed, bearing an expression of con-
 
 582 APPENDIX. 
 
 tentment and benevolence. His skin, formerly light and freckled, 
 bears now the marks ef age and cutaneous affections. His limbs are 
 uncommonly long, and his hands and feet very large, and his wrists 
 of a most extraordinary size. His walk is not precise and military, 
 but easy and swinging ; he stoops a little, not so much from age as 
 from constitutional formation. When sitting, he appears low, partly 
 from not holding himself erect, and partly from the disproportionate 
 length of his limbs. He wears, in the house, a dark-gray surtout 
 coat, kerseymere yellow waistcoat, with an under one, faced with a 
 dingy red ; his pantaloons are loose, very long, and of the same 
 material as his coat. His stockings are gray, and his shoes of the 
 kind that bear his name. His whole dress is not slovenly, but 
 neglected. He wears a common round hat ; when on horseback he 
 wears a gray strait-bodied coat, and a long spencer of the same 
 material, both fastened with large pearl buttons. When we first 
 met him riding, he wore round his throat, in the place of a cravat, a 
 knit white woollen tippet ; and, to guard his feet, black velvet 
 gaiters under his pantaloons. His general appearance indicates an 
 extraordinary degree of health, vivacity, and spirit. His sight is 
 still good, for he needs glasses only in the evening ; his hearing is 
 but slightly impaired, but a number of voices in animated conversa- 
 tion confounds it. 
 
 HE rises in the morning as soon as he can see the hands of his 
 clock, and examines his thermometer immediately, for he keeps a 
 regular meteorological diary. Until breakfast he employs himself 
 chiefly in writing ; breakfasts at nine. From that time till dinner he 
 is employed in his library, excepting that every fair morning he rides 
 on horseback not less than seven miles, sometimes twelve or four- 
 teen. He dines at four, retires to his drawing-room at six, passes 
 the succeeding hours in conversation, and goes to bed at nine. His 
 habit of retiring early is so strong, that it has become essential to 
 his health. His breakfast is made of tea, coffee, and bread, in all the 
 good Virginia varieties, of which he does not seem afraid, however 
 new and warm. He enjoys his dinner well, taking with his animal 
 food a large proportion of vegetables. In regard to wines, he may 
 be said to excel, both in the knowledge and use. His preference is 
 for the wines of the Continent, of which he has many sorts of excel- 
 lent quality. Among others we found the following, which were 
 new to us : L'Ednan, Muscat, Samian, and Limoux. His dinners 
 are in the half Virginian half French style, in good taste, and
 
 APPENDIX. 583 
 
 abundant. No wine is served till the cloth is removed. Tea and 
 coffee are served in the saloon between seven and eight. 
 
 His conversation is easy and natural, and, apparently, not ambi- 
 tious ; it is not loud, as challenging general attention, but usually 
 addressed to the person next him. The topics, when not selected 
 to suit the character and feelings of his auditor, are those subjects 
 with which his mind seems particularly occupied, and these, at pres- 
 ent, may be justly said to be 1st. Science and letters, especially 
 the University of Virginia which is coming into existence, almost 
 entirely from his exertions, and will rise, it is to be hoped, to useful- 
 ness and credit under his continued care. When we were with him, 
 his favorite literary subjects were Greek and Anglo-Saxon ; and 3d. 
 Historical recollections of the times and events of the Revolution, 
 and of his residence in France from 1783-'84 to 1789. 
 
 MME. D'HOUDETOT'S society was one of the most agreeable in 
 Paris when I was there. She had inherited the materials of,which it 
 was composed from Mme. de Tencin and Mme. de Geoffrin. St. 
 Lambert was always there, and it was generally believed that, every 
 evening, on his return home, he wrote down the substance of the 
 conversations he had held there with D'Alembert, Diderot, and the 
 other distinguished persons who frequented her house. From these 
 conversations he made his books. 
 
 the Baron de Grimm very well ; he was quite ugly, and 
 one of his legs was considerably shorter than the other. But he was 
 the most agreeable person in French society, and his opinion was 
 always considered decisive in matters relating to the theatre and to 
 painting. His persiflage was the keenest and most provoking I ever 
 knew. 
 
 MME. NECKER was a very sincere and excellent woman, but she 
 was not very pleasant in conversation, for she was subject to what we 
 call in Virginia the " Budge ; " that is, she was very nervous and 
 fidgety. She could rarely remain long in the same place, or converse 
 long on the same subject. I have known her get up from table five 
 or six times in the course of one dinner, and walk up and down her 
 saloon to compose herself.
 
 584 APPENDIX. 
 
 PATRICK HENRY 
 
 WAS originally a bar-keeper ; lie was married very young, and, going 
 into some business on his own account, was a bankrupt before the 
 year was out. When I was about the age of fifteen, I left the 
 school here to go to the college at Williamsburgh. I stopped some 
 days at a friend's, in the county of Louisa. There I first saw, and 
 became acquainted with Patrick Henry. Having spent the Christmas 
 holidays there, I proceeded to Williamsburgh. Some question arose 
 about my admission into the college, my preparatory studies not 
 having been pursued in the school connected with that institution. 
 This put off my admission about a fortnight, at which time Henry 
 appeared in Williamsburgh, and applied for a license to practise 
 law, having commenced the study at or subsequent to the time of 
 my meeting him in Louisa. There were four examiners Wythe, 
 Pendleton, Peyton Randolph, and John Randolph. Wythe and 
 Pendleton at once rejected his application ; the two Randolphs 
 were, by his importunity, prevailed upon to sign the license, and, 
 having obtained their signatures, he applied again to Pendleton, 
 and, after much entreaty, and many promises of future study, suc- 
 ceeded also in obtaining his. He then turned out for a practising 
 lawyer. The first case which brought him into notice was a con- 
 tested election, in which he appeared as counsel before a Committee 
 of the House of Burgesses. His second was the " Parsons cause," 
 already well known. These, and similar efforts, soon obtained him 
 so much reputation that he was elected a member of the Legislature. 
 He was as well suited to the times as any man ever was ; and it is 
 not now easy to say what we should have done without Patrick 
 Henry. He was far before all in maintaining the spirit of the Rev- 
 olution. His influence was most extensive with the members from 
 the Upper Counties ; and his boldness and their votes overawed 
 and controlled the more cool, or the more timid aristocratic gentle- 
 men of the lower part of the State. His eloquence was peculiar, if 
 indeed it should be called eloquence, for it was impressive and 
 sublime beyond what can be imagined. Although it was difficult, 
 when he had spoken, to tell what he had said, yet, while speaking, 
 it always seemed directly to the point. When he had spoken in 
 opposition to my opinion, had produced a great effect, and I my- 
 self had been highly delighted and moved, I have asked myself, 
 when he ceased, " What the devil has he said ? " and could never 
 answer the inquiry. His person was of full size, and his manner 
 and voice free and manly. His utterance neither very fast nor
 
 APPENDIX. 585 
 
 very slow. His speeches generally short, from a quarter to a 
 half hour. His pronunciation was vulgar and vicious, but it was 
 forgotten while he was speaking. He was a man of very little 
 knowledge of any sort. He read nothing, and had no books. Re- 
 turning one November from Albemarle Court, he borrowed of me 
 Hume's Essays in two volumes, saying he should have leisure in 
 the winter for some reading. In the spring he returned them, 
 and declared he had not been able to go farther than twenty 
 or thirty pages in the first volume. He wrote almost nothing ; he 
 could not write. The resolutions of 1775, which have been ascribed 
 to him, have been by many supposed to have been written by Mr. 
 Johnson, who acted as his second on that occasion. But, if they 
 were written by Henry himself, they are not such as to prove any 
 power of composition. Neither in politics nor in his profession was 
 he a man of business ; he was a man for debate only. His biog- 
 rapher says : " He read Plutarch every year." I doubt if he ever 
 read a volume of it in his life. His temper was excellent, and he 
 generally observed decorum in debate. On one or two occasions I 
 have seen him angry ; his anger was terrible, and those who had wit- 
 nessed it were not disposed to provoke it again. In his opinions he 
 was yielding and practicable, and not disposed to differ from his 
 friends. In private conversation he was agreeable and facetious, and, 
 while in genteel society, seemed to understand all the decencies and 
 proprieties of it ; but in his heart he preferred low society, and sought 
 it as often as possible. 
 
 He would hunt in the pine-woods of Fluvanna with overseers, 
 and persons of that description, living in a camp for a fortnight at a 
 time, without a change of raiment. I have been often astonished at 
 his command of proper language ; how he obtained the knowledge of 
 it I never could find out, as he read little, and conversed little with 
 educated men. 
 
 After all, it must be allowed that he was our leader in the meas- 
 ures of the Revolution in Virginia, and in that respect more is due to 
 him than to any other person. If we had not had him, we should 
 probably have got on pretty well, as you did, by a number of men 
 of nearly equal talents ; but he left all of us far behind. His biog- 
 rapher communicated the sheets of his work [to me], as they were 
 printed, and, at the end, asked for my opinion. I told him it would 
 be a question hereafter, whether his work belonged to the shelf of 
 history, or of panegyric. It is a poor book, written in bad taste, and 
 gives an imperfect idea of Patrick Henry. It seems written less to 
 show Mr. Henry than Mr. Wirt.
 
 586 APPENDIX. 
 
 BUFFON. 
 
 WHEN" I was in France, the Marquis de Chastellux carried me to 
 Buffon's residence in the country, and introduced me to him. It was 
 Buffon's practice to remain in his study until dinner-time, and receive 
 no visitors under any pretence ; but his house was open, and his 
 grounds, and a servant showed them very civilly, and invited all, stran- 
 gers and friends, to remain and dine. We saw Buffon in the garden, 
 but carefully avoided him ; but we dined with him, and he proved 
 himself then, as he always did, a man of extraordinary powers in con- 
 versation. He did not declaim ; he was singularly agreeable. I was 
 introduced to him as Mr. Jefferson, who, in some notes on Virginia, 
 had combated some of his opinions. Instead of entering into an ar- 
 gument, he took down his last work, presented it to me, and said, 
 " When Mr. Jefferson shall have read this, he will be perfectly satis- 
 fied that I am right." Being about to embark from Philadelphia 
 for France, I had observed an uncommonly large skin of a panther, at 
 the door of a hatter's shop. I bought it for half a Jo 1 on the spot, 
 determining to carry it to Europe, to convince M. Buffon of his mis- 
 take in relation to this animal, which he had confounded with the 
 cougar. I sent him the skin, with a note. He acknowledged his 
 mistake, and said he would correct it in his next volume. I at- 
 tempted also to convince him of his error in relation to the common 
 deer and the moose of America, he having confounded our deer with 
 the red deer of Europe, and our moose with the reindeer. I told him 
 our deer had horns two feet long ; he replied, with warmth, that if I 
 could produce a single specimen with horns one foot long, he would 
 give up the question. Upon this I wrote to Virginia for the horns 
 of one of our deer, and obtained a very good specimen, four feet 
 long. I told him, also, that the reindeer could walk under the belly 
 of our moose, but he entirely scouted the suggestion. Whereupon, 
 I wrote to General Sullivan, of New Hampshire, and desired him to 
 send me the bones, skin, and antlers of a moose, supposing they could 
 easily be obtained by him. Six months afterward, my agent in Eng- 
 land advised me that General Sullivan had drawn on him for forty 
 guineas. I had forgotten my request, and wondered why such a 
 draught had been made, but I paid it at once. A little later, came 
 a letter from General Sullivan, setting forth the manner in which he 
 had complied with my request ;' that he had been obliged to raise 
 a company of nearly twenty men ; had made an excursion toward 
 the White Hills, camping out many nights ; and had at last, after 
 
 1 Jo is a Portuguese coin of eight dollars, common in this country at one period.
 
 APPENDIX. 587 
 
 many difficulties, caught my moose, boiled his bones in the desert, 
 stuffed his skin, and remitted him to me, horns and all. This ac- 
 counted for my debt, and convinced M. Buffon. He promised, in his 
 next volume, to set these things right also; but he died directly 
 afterward. 
 
 THE VIEGINIA FAST. 
 
 ABOUT the time of the Boston Port Bill, the patriotic feeling in 
 Virginia had become languid and worn out, from some cause or other. 
 It was thought by some of us to be absolutely necessary to excite 
 the people ; but we hardly knew the best means. At length it oc- 
 curred to us to make grave faces, and have a fast. Some of us, who 
 were younger members of the Assembly, resolved upon the measure. 
 We thought Oliver Cromwell would be a good guide in such a case. 
 We accordingly looked into Rushworth, and drew up our resolutions, 
 after the most pious and praiseworthy examples. It would hardly 
 have been in character for us to present them ourselves. We applied, 
 therefore, to Mr. Nicholas, a grave and religious man. He proposed 
 them in a set and solemn speech. Some of us gravely seconded him, 
 and the resolutions were passed unanimously. If any debate had 
 occurred, or if they had been postponed for consideration, there is no 
 chance that they would have passed. The next morning Lord Botte- 
 tourt, the Governor, summoned the Assembly to his presence, and 
 said to them, " I have heard of your proceedings of yesterday, and 
 augur ill of their effects. His Majesty's interests require that you be 
 dissolved, and you are dissolved." Another election soon afterward 
 taking place, such was the spirit of the times, that every member of 
 the Assembly, without an individual exception, was reflected. 
 
 Lord Bottetourt was an honorable man. His government had 
 authorized him to make certain assurances to the people here, which 
 he made accordingly. He wrote to the Minister that he had made 
 those assuiances, and that, unless he should be enabled to fulfil them, 
 he must retire from his situation. This letter he sent unsealed to 
 Peyton Randolph, for his inspection. Lord B. s great respectability, 
 his character for integrity, and. his general popujarity, would have 
 enabled him exceedingly to embarrass the measures of the patriots. 
 His death was therefore a fortunate event for the cause of the Revo- 
 lution. He was the first Governor-in-Chief that had ever come over 
 to Virginia. Before his time, we had received only Deputies, the 
 Governor residing in England, with a salary of 5,000, and paying 
 his Deputy 1,000.
 
 588 APPENDIX. 
 
 Our fast produced very considerable effects. We all agreed to 
 go home, and see that preachers were provided in our counties, and 
 notice given to the people. I came to this county, and notified the 
 people, who wondered what it meant, and came together in multi- 
 tudes. I took care to provide a preacher for the occasion. 
 
 (In reply to a question of Mr. "Webster.) 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was written in a house on the 
 north side of Chestnut Street, between Third and Fourth not a cor- 
 ner house. Heiskell's Tavern, in Fourth street, has been shown for 
 it (to Mr. Webster) but this is not the house. 
 
 When Congress met, P. Henry and B. H. Lee opened the gen- 
 eral subject with great ability and eloquence so much so that Paca 
 and Chase, delegates from Maryland, said to each other, as they re- 
 turned from the House, " We shall not be wanted here ; those gen- 
 tlemen from Virginia will be able to do every thing without us." But 
 neither Henry nor Lee was a man of business, and, having made 
 strong and eloquent general speeches, they had done all they could. 
 It was thought advisable that two papers should be drawn up, one, 
 an address to the people of England, and the other an address, I 
 think, to the King. Committees were raised for these purposes, and 
 Henry was at the head of the first, and Lee of the second. When 
 the Address to the people of England was reported, Congress heard 
 it with utter amazement. It was miserably written, and good for 
 nothing. At length, Governor Livingston, of New Jersey, ventured 
 to break silence. After complimenting the author, he said he thought 
 some other ideas might be usefully added to his draft of an address. 
 Some such paper had been for a considerable time contemplated, and 
 he believed a friend of his had tried his hand in the composition of 
 one. He thought, if the subject were again committed, some im- 
 provement in the present draft might be made. It was accordingly 
 recommitted, and the address, which had been alluded to by Governor 
 Livingston, and which was written by John Jay, was reported by the 
 committee, and adopted as it now appears. It is, in my opinion, one 
 of the very best State papers which the Revolution produced. 
 
 FOB depth of purpose, zeal, and sagacity, no man in Congress ex- 
 ceeded, if any equalled, Sam Adams ; and none did more than he to 
 originate and sustain revolutionary measures in Congress. But he 
 could not speak. He had a hesitating, grunting manner.
 
 APPENDIX. 589 
 
 John Adams was our Colossus on the floor. He was not grace- 
 ful nor elegant, nor remarkably fluent, but he came out occasionally 
 with a power of thought and expression, that moved us from our seats. 
 
 THEOUGHOUT the whole Revolution, Virginia and the four New- 
 England States acted together. Indeed, they made the Revolution. 
 They made five votes always to be counted on, and they had to pick 
 up the remaining two for a majority, when and where they could. 
 
 RICHARD H. LEE moved the Declaration of Independence, in pur- 
 suance of the resolutions of the Assembly of Virginia, and only be- 
 cause he was the oldest member of the Virginia delegation. 
 
 I FEEL much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson 
 President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a 
 place. He has had very little respect for laws or constitutions, and 
 is, in fact, merely an able military chief. His passions are terrible. 
 When I was President of the Senate, he was a Senator, and he could 
 never speak, from the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him at- 
 tempt it repeatedly, and choke with rage. His passions are, no 
 doubt, cooler now ; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he 
 is a dangerous man. 1 
 
 MAKMONTEI, was a very amusing man. He dined with me, for a 
 long time, every Thursday, and I think told some of the most agree- 
 able stories I ever heard in my life. After his death, I found almost 
 all of them in his memoirs, and I dare say he told them so well be- 
 cause he had written them out before it, for this very book. 
 
 I WISH Mr. Pickering would make a radical Lexicon. It would 
 do more than any thing else, in the present state of the matter, to 
 promote the study of Greek among us. Jones's Greek Lexicon is very 
 poor ; I have been much disappointed in it. The best I have ever 
 used is the Greek and French one by Planche. 
 
 1 At the time of these conversations, and Mr. Jefferson favored the claims of 
 the Presidential election was pending, Mr. Crawford.
 
 MB. WEBSTER'S RECEPTION OF GENERAL JACKSON'S 
 PROCLAMATION AGAINST THE NTJLLIFIERS. 
 
 WHEN the text of this volume was written, I was undei 
 the impression that Mr. "Webster first received information of 
 General Jackson's Proclamation against the nullifiers from the 
 unknown traveller whom he met in New Jersey, and who un- 
 consciously paid him the compliment related, ante, page 439 ; 
 an anecdote taken from a memorandum in Mr. Webster's own 
 handwriting. But, after this volume had passed through the 
 press, my friend the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, who, in 1832, 
 was a student-at-law in Mr. "Webster's office in Boston, re- 
 minded me of a fact which had escaped my own recollection, 
 although, being at the time already a graduate of Harvard 
 College, I must have noticed it when it occurred. Mr. 'Win- 
 throp kindly informed me that Mr. Webster had not left Boston 
 when the proclamation was received there ; that he promoted 
 a public meeting at Faneuil Hall to sustain the President, 
 attended it, and made a short but very impressive speech, 
 which Mr. Winthrop thinks he read from a written manuscript. 
 
 I have sought for and found the speech, as reported in the 
 newspapers of that period ; and it is so important that I have 
 brought it forward in this edition, premising that it should 
 have been given as part of the history embraced in Chapter 
 XIY. It verifies, in a remarkable manner, what Mr. Webster 
 afterward said: that his support of General Jackson, at this 
 crisis, was " an impulse of duty." (Ante, p. 465.) 
 
 Speech of Mr. Webster at a Union meeting in Faneuil Hall, 
 Boston, December 17, 1832 : 
 
 " MR. CHAIRMAN : Having been detained at home a few days after the 
 meeting of Congress, by the necessity of attending to some private affairs, 
 I have been induced to delay my departure for another day that I might
 
 APPENDIX. 591 
 
 be present at this meeting of my fellow-citizens. "When I look around me 
 on the numbers who fill these galleries and crowd this hall, I thank Al- 
 mighty God that I may still address them as citizens of the United States. 
 The same Almighty Power only knows whether, when we meet again, it 
 will not be as citizens of Massachusetts only. The present is a moment 
 full of interest. Events are on the wing, and are already near us, which 
 must produce the most important effects, one way or the other, on the per- 
 manency of the Constitution of the United States. I regard the issuing of 
 this proclamation by the President as a highly-important occurrence. The 
 actual condition of the country, in my opinion an opinion heretofore ex- 
 pressed called loudly on the President to make public his determination 
 to rebuke the spirit of disaffection, to maintain the peace of the country, 
 and the integrity of the Union ; and to call on all patriotic citizens to dis- 
 countenance all such proceedings as threaten to destroy the one or dis- 
 turb the other. 1 
 
 " Mr. Chairman : The general principles of the proclamation are such as 
 I entirely approve. I esteem them to be the true principles of the Con- 
 stitution. It must now be apparent to every man that this doctrine of 
 nullification means resistance to the laws by force. It is but another name 
 for civil war. The authors of the South Carolina Ordinance cannot re- 
 gard it as a peaceable measure ; they act as if they understood it as being 
 what it really is, a measure leading to hostilities. They know it must 
 bring on a contest, and, accordingly, they have endeavored to prepare for 
 that contest, by putting in a state of readiness the whole military power 
 of the State. Every man must see that they rely, not on any constitutional 
 or legal effect of the ordinance itself, but on the military power which they 
 may be able to bring to maintain them in their resistance to the laws. 
 
 " Mr. Chairman : I hope I may stand acquitted before my country of any 
 negligence in failing to give the true character of this doctrine of nullifica- 
 tion, when it was first advanced, in an imposing form, in the halls of Con- 
 gress. What it then appeared to be, in its very nature, it now proves 
 itself, in this the first attempt to put it in practice. It is resistance to law 
 by force, it is disunion by force, it is secession by force ; it is civil war. 
 
 " The President has declared that, in meeting the exigencies of the 
 crisis, it is his determination to execute the laws, to preserve the Union by 
 all constitutional means ; to arrest, if possible, by moderate but fair meas- 
 ures, the necessity of a recourse to force ; and so to conduct, that the curse 
 impending on the shedding of fraternal blood shall not be called down by 
 any offensive act on the part of the United States. In all this I most cor- 
 dially concur. To execute the laws by lawful means, to uphold the Con- 
 stitution by the just exercise of tbe powers conferred by itself, to be 
 moderate, forbearing, slow to resort to ultimate measures, to admonish 
 such as are misled to return to their duty, to keep the Government always 
 
 1 See the account of Mr. "Webster's speech at "Worcester, October 12, 1832, anif, 
 page 432.
 
 592 APPENDIX. 
 
 in the right, and to place those who oppose it clearly in the wrong ; and 
 to hold out, with unshaken firmness, in maintaining the Union, and caus- 
 ing the laws to be duly executed ; these, sir, in nay opinion, comprise the 
 substance of the duty which the occasion devolves upon the Chief Magis- 
 trate of the nation. 
 
 " Mr. Chairman : I think I can say nothing more satisfactory to this 
 meeting or to the people of this Commonwealth, than that, in this way of 
 meeting the crisis, I shall give the President my entire and cordial sup- 
 port. Sir, we are truly in a crisis of the utmost magnitude, and the most 
 imminent peril. The Union of the States is in danger. It is threatened 
 by the immediate application of military force. Let us not, sir, deceive 
 ourselves by the imagination that the Union may subsist though one State 
 secede from it. No, sir. If the Government, on the first trial, shall be found 
 not able to keep all the States in their proper places, then, that moment, 
 the whole Union is virtually dissolved. Whatever link be struck from 
 this golden chain, breaks the whole. Our only alternative is, to preserve 
 the Union one and entire, as it now is, or else break up, and return to the 
 condition of separate States, with the unpromising chances of forming, 
 hereafter, new, partial, sectional, rival, perhaps hostile, governments ; thus 
 bidding adieu, not only to the glorious idea, but to the glorious reality of 
 the United States of America. 
 
 " Mr. Chairman : In this alternative my choice is made. I am for the 
 Union as it is. I am content with no Government less than that which 
 embraces the whole four-and-twenty States. I am for the Constitution as 
 it is ; a Constitution under which these four-and-twenty States have risen 
 to a height of prosperity unexampled, altogether unexampled, in the his- 
 tory of mankind. I shall support the President in maintaining this Union 
 and this Constitution ; and the cause shall not fail for want of any aid, any 
 effort, or any zealous cooperation of mine. In the spirit of the resolutions, 
 now before this meeting, I say, when the standard of the Union is raised, 
 and waves over my head the standard which "Washington planted on the 
 ramparts of the Constitution God forbid that I should inquire whom the 
 people have commissioned to unfurl it and bear it up ; I only ask in what 
 manner, as an humble individual, I can best discharge my duty in defend- 
 ing it."
 
 ADDENDA. 
 
 NOTE. During the whole period of writing this work, and 
 down to the time of publishing the second volume, two inter- 
 esting communications, addressed to Mr. "Webster's literary 
 executors by two of his early New-Hampshire friends, were 
 mislaid, and they were not again found until the present month 
 of March (1870). They were received by the literary executors 
 in 1853, and were from the late Hon. Arthur Li verm ore, for- 
 merly Chief Justice of New-Hampshire, and the late Hon. 
 William Plumer, who was a representative in Congress from 
 that State for many years. Mr. Plumer was one of those per- 
 sons who have a habit, highly useful at least to posterity that 
 of keeping a journal. I am gratified to find, on reading his 
 long-lost and most interesting paper, that while it adds to many 
 of the details embraced in my work, its statements do not re- 
 quire me materially to change any thing that I had printed 
 before I recovered it. So far as any change is needful, it will 
 be found indicated in the notes which I have appended to the 
 extracts from his journal and letters, and which will be ar- 
 ranged with references to the pages of my work, in connection 
 with which they ought to be read. Some annotations of an his- 
 torical character, to explain further the events to which Mr. 
 Plumer alludes, are also added. 
 
 Judge Livermore's communication was dictated in 1853, 
 when he was at the age of eighty-seven. It relates to Mr. 
 "Webster's father, and to his early career at the bar ; and it 
 contains curious traces of manners in New Hampshire in the 
 latter part of the last and the beginning of the present century. 
 
 Judge Livermore observed : 
 
 " You desire me to speak of Daniel Webster's family, and of any cir- 
 cumstances connected with them. I recollect much of his father, whom I 
 39
 
 594 ADDENDA. 
 
 knew and respected for many years. In the year 1771-'72, my father, then 
 living in Portsmouth, was a large proprietor of land in the town of New 
 Holderness, where he built a small house and placed a tenant. He was in 
 the habit of going frequently to that place, till the year '75, when he 
 moved his family there. After that period I often accompanied my father 
 in his journeys to and from Concord and other places, and our regular 
 stopping-place was Colonel "Webster's. There were a few, but not many, 
 settlements between his house in Salisbury and my father's in Holderness. 
 The country was nearly a wilderness. Colonel Webster was in person quite 
 stout, with a dark complexion and black eyes. He lisped a good deal. I 
 always thought him a man of very remarkable natural abilities; superior 
 to either of his sons. He possessed great influence in the county, and 
 could be bold, prompt, and decided, whenever circumstances called for the 
 exercise of a little brief authority in those early times. After the war [of 
 the Revolution] he held the office of Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. 
 
 " Colonel "Webster's second wife, the mother of Daniel, was a woman of 
 excellent understanding, and a more kindly disposition it would be rare to 
 find. Her countenance was not very prepossessing, though her full, black 
 eyes beamed with intelligence. As I had known her from my childhood, 
 an attachment like that of mother and son existed between us. I often 
 styled her my second mother ; and if I chanced to pass a night at her 
 house in winter she always came, as a mother would, to see that " her 
 Arthur," as she called me, was tucked up snug and warm in bed. 
 
 " There existed in the county of Grafton at that time a law-suit between 
 two persons named Talford and Burpy, which had kept the town and 
 county in a turmoil for years until the parties agreed to submit all their 
 claims to referees. Colonel Webster was at once agreed upon by the par- 
 ties, and they called upon him to know whether he would accept. He at 
 first declined, saying that he Avas tired of labor, and wanted to be at rest ; 
 but, being urged by both parties, he at length said, ' There is a young man 
 in Concord who I know is fond of work ; if you can procure him and 
 another suitable person, I will consent.' Being asked who it was, he said : 
 ' It is Arthur Livermore, who has just been admitted to the bar in the 
 Court of Common Pleas. I meet him four times a year at Amherst, in the 
 county of Hillsborough, and I know that he had rather be in business 
 than at rest.' The parties soon afterward called upon me at Concord. I 
 told them I would undertake the business with old Colonel Webster, and 
 would call upon him at his house at seven o'clock in the morning, on a 
 certain day in December. After riding seventeen miles on horseback from 
 Concord to Salisbury, I reached Colonel Webster's house a little before 
 daylight. His horse was fastened near the door, already saddled. He 
 desired me to walk in, while some one took my horse. Candles were burn- 
 ing in the house, and Mrs. Webster was passing across the entry with our 
 breakfast of beefsteak. As her cheerful 'Good-morning, Arthur,' rose to 
 her lips, she checked herself, and smiling observed, ' I suppose I must not
 
 ADDENDA. 595 
 
 call you my Arthur any more, for you are now a great man ; you have been 
 admitted to the bar, and you are now going to hold a reference with my 
 husband, who is old enough to be your grandfather.' After breakfast I 
 pursued my journey in company with Judge Webster to the place ap- 
 pointed for the reference, where we found the contending parties waiting 
 for us, each armed with a formidable bundle of papers. The Judge soon 
 came to a decision, of which I only remember that it was marked by the 
 good sense and judgment which always characterized him. After it was 
 over, and the parties had left the room, I inquired, as I stood arranging 
 and tying up the papers, 'Mr. Chairman, what shall I do with these 
 papers ? ' ' Put them directly under the forestick,' was his reply. The 
 forestick to which he alluded was about five feet long, and as large round 
 as a churn, resting upon stones instead of andirons, the rest of the fire 
 being in proportion. ' I suppose, Judge,' said I, ' you would not serve the 
 witnesses so, if they were here ? ' ' No,' he replied, ' not exactly, but some 
 of them deserve it. These men will never cease to contend, or suffer the 
 county to be at rest, while they can come at these papers. Put them 
 directly under the forestick, Mr. Livermore.' And under the forestick 
 they accordingly went. 
 
 "Our report was then drawn up and signed. The Superior Court, 
 from which the ' rule ' issued, was then in session at Plymouth. I pro- 
 ceeded to Plymouth, while Judge Webster returned home. The aext day 
 I handed the report into court, Talford and Burpy both being present. 
 When the report had been read by the clerk, Talford rose and made a 
 bitter complaint against the referees, saying, ' They have done me great 
 injustice in not allowing me the amount of my honest due from Burpy ; 
 not only so, they have burnt all my papers, accounts, notes, and receipts, 
 which showed the justice of my demand.' Chief-Justice Pickering desired 
 me to explain. I told him that what Squire Talford had said respecting 
 the burning of the papers was strictly true, but that I believed we had done 
 justice between the parties. I desired the Court to suspend further remark 
 for the present, and I would send for Judge Webster. The members of the 
 bar in Grafton County were at that time few in number, and General Mosea 
 Dow, of Haverhill, was at the trial. He rose and observed that he did not 
 think it necessary to send for Judge Webster, but moved that judgment be 
 rendered on the report, and Mr. Hutchison and Mr. Porter joined in the 
 same request. The Court, having heard all three of the lawyers, who 
 composed the whole bar, according to my recollection, ordered the clerk 
 to enter judgment on the report. 
 
 " After Daniel Webster was graduated, he read law in Mr. Thompson's 
 office, where I frequently saw him, and he once showed me a translation 
 of Saunders into very good English, from the Latin and Norman French, 1 
 
 1 There is some discrepancy between latter that he made the translation fron 
 this account and that given in Mr. Web- Saunders while in Mr. Gore's office in 
 Bter's autobiography. It seems from the Boston. See ante, vol. i., p. 166.
 
 596 ADDENDA. 
 
 My first recollection of his appearance as an advocate was at a Superior 
 Court held by Judge Smith and myself at Hopkinton. He then acted in 
 aid of the prosecuting counsel against a person of the name of Courser, 
 accused of burning a school-house. He spoke without embarrassment or 
 hesitation, and in a manner that drew universal attention. Judge Smith 
 inquired of me, in a whisper, Avho he was. ' His name is Webster,' I re- 
 plied ; ' you must have seen him at Exeter.' ' Wonderful man, wonderful 
 young man,' said he, in his peculiar, quick manner ; ' did you ever see such 
 an eye and such a brow?' For the better elucidation of his subject, he 
 had drawn a diagram, including the school-house in flames, with the 
 grounds and road, and the figure of a man running and looking back over 
 his shoulder, in whose countenance I fancied that I recognized the features 
 of the accused, though I never heard that Mr. Webster on any other occa- 
 sion exercised the talents of a limner. 
 
 " At a subsequent court at Plymouth, when a person ot the name of 
 Burnham was tried and convicted of murder, the court, on my recom- 
 mendation, assigned Mr. Webster, with others, as counsel for the prisoner ; 
 and on that occasion he acquitted himself in a manner that astonished all 
 who heard him. From that time until he went to reside in Boston I saw 
 much of Mr. Webster in the New-Hampshire courts calculated to surprise 
 me, as it did others, at the development of his mental powers, and his 
 increasing legal attainments. I was present when he first appeared in the 
 Superior Court at Portsmouth, and I think I was then Chief Justice. 
 Before Mr. Webster arrived, I was asked by several members of the bar 
 whether he would be able to sustain himself against Jeremiah Mason, then 
 at the head of the profession. My answer was, that the first case on the 
 docket for trial was one which Mr. Mason and his employers had much at 
 heart, and I understood, coming through Boscawen, that Mr. Webster was 
 engaged for the defendant, so that they would probably have an oppor- 
 tunity to judge for themselves. After the case was tried, I heard it said 
 by several, as we were passing through the court-house, ' We have seen 
 Mason, for the first time, quail before his opponent, and, giant as he is, 
 Webster has put the fear on him.' " 
 
 From Mr. Plumer's communication, addressed to Mr. Tick- 
 nor, I take the following excerpts : 
 
 "EPFING, April 2, 1853. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : In answer to your request that I would furnish you with 
 my reminiscences of Mr. Webster, I would say that I Avas more or less in- 
 timately acquainted with him from 1809 to the time of his death ; but that, 
 not residing in his immediate neighborhood (except while we were in Con 
 gress together), I had less personal intercourse with him than I could have 
 desired. I possessed, however, for many years, a good share of his con- 
 fidence, and received many proofs of his kindness and good-will ; but he 
 was himself so much occupied, and I had so little right to encroach upon
 
 ADDENDA. 597 
 
 his time and attention, that I have less to tell than, under other circum- 
 stances, I might perhaps have had. In looking over my letters and jour- 
 nals, I find occasional notices of Mr. Webster, -which, being written at the 
 time of the events to which they refer, may be more accurate than my 
 present recollections would be. I submit a few of them to your examina- 
 tion, not as important in themselves, but as furnishing you perhaps, now 
 and then, with a fact, a date, or an opinion, which you may think worth 
 preserving. It should be remarked that, during the time of the old party 
 divisions, he was a Federalist and I a Republican both of us sufficiently 
 zealous in our party feelings so that I viewed him, at this period, through 
 no very favorable medium. When, after the War of 1812, these old party 
 distinctions died away, we both found ourselves Whigs he with a leaning 
 toward Federalism, I with a bias to the Democracy." 
 
 1810-1S12. 1 
 
 " The first notice which I find of Mr. Webster in my journal is under 
 date of August, 1810 : ' Webster is a young man, under thirty. As a 
 speaker merely he is, perhaps, the best at the bar. His language is correct, 
 his gestures good, and his delivery slow, articulate, and distinct. He 
 excels in the statement of facts; but he is not thought to be a deep-read 
 lawyer. His manners are not pleasing, being haughty, cold, and over- 
 bearing.' Under date of August 12, 1812, occurs the following notice : 
 ' The judges of the Common Pleas are very unpopular. Daniel Webster 
 said to me, this afternoon : " They are too . contemptible to be noticed ; 
 ignorant, indolent, vain. I treat them as they deserve, that is, as if they 
 had no authority and deserved no respect." ' These were a part of the 
 same judges whom, a year later, he and his political associates removed 
 from office by an act which was, by many, considered unconstitutional, 
 and which, till its repeal in 1816, was one of the chief subjects of dispute 
 between the two parties in New Hampshire." 
 
 1813.' 
 
 "In 1813 he was elected to Congress. Judge Smith told me at the 
 time that when he was first proposed for this office he declined it on 
 the ground that he was poor, and must attend to his business as a 
 lawyer. This was at Exeter. The next day Judge Smith received a 
 letter from him, dated at Stratham, on his way down to Portsmouth, 
 saying that, on the whole, he should not decline a seat, if elected. 
 ' As to the law,' he added, ' I must attend to that too. But honor, after 
 all, is worth more than money.' ' The imprudent dog that he is ! ' said 
 Smith, afterward, in relating the story, 'he does not know the value of 
 money, and never will. No matter ; he was born for something better 
 than hoarding money-bags.' I afterward heard, at Washington, a good 
 
 1 Ante, chap, iv., pp. 81, et seq. * Ante, chap, iv., pp. 108, et scq.
 
 598 ADDENDA. 
 
 story, illustrative of his character in this respect. He and Mr. Mason car- 
 ried their families with them, and, boarding together, kept a carriage 
 between them. It was necessary to erect a small building to keep the 
 carriage in ; and at the close of the session the landlord told Mr. Webster 
 that the shed must be removed, as the room was wanted for other purposes 
 in the summer. ' Well,' said Webster, 'remove it when you please. It is 
 of no further use to us. If it is worth any thing to you, you are welcome 
 to it.' The landlord overwhelmed him with thanks for his liberality, and 
 was about leaving the room, when it occurred to Mr. Webster that the 
 building belonged in part to Mr. Mason. He therefore told the man to take 
 Mr. Mason's orders on the subject. 'You may take down the shed,' said 
 the latter, ' and sell the materials either at auction or private sale, and 
 account to me for the proceeds. But this is no time to sell it to advantage, 
 when everybody is selling out at the close of the session. Wait a while 
 till it will bring a fair price, and I will settle with you for it next winter.' 
 Here was a fair sample of Webster's carelessness and Mason's prudence 
 of Webster's liberality and Mason's thrift. Webster thought nothing of a 
 few old joists and boards, which, having served his purpose, were to be 
 thrown aside as worthless. Mason not only thought of what they were 
 worth, but when they could be sold to the best advantage. The anecdote 
 is characteristic of the men the one careless or indifferent in money mat- 
 ters ; the other, not mean or sordid, but aware of his rights, and attentive 
 to his interests." 
 
 1823. 1 
 
 " In December, 1828, he came into Congress as the representative from 
 the Boston district, and from this period I became more intimately ac- 
 quainted with him than I had before been. At the previous session I had 
 been chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, and, as it was custom- 
 ary to continue the members in their old places, I waited on the Speaker 
 (Mr. Clay) and told him that I hoped no feeling of delicacy toward me 
 would prevent his putting Mr. Webster at the head of the Judiciary Com- 
 mittee, as I should have been ashamed of myself if I had not been the first 
 to acknowledge the propriety of the appointment. He was accordingly 
 appointed chairman, and I had the pleasure to serve under him as long as 
 I remained in the House." The late Speaker of the House, Philip P. Bar- 
 bour, was also on the committee, but he came not more than once or twice 
 during the session to our meetings. Mr. Webster, indeed, left little for the 
 rest of us to do. He came prepared at every meeting for the business on 
 
 1 Ante, chap, ix., p. 198 ; chap, x., pp. Mr. Webster at the head of the Judi- 
 
 199, et seq. ciary Committee " without any commu- 
 
 * The statement here made by Mr. nication between them and their respec- 
 
 Plumer requires me to make a slight tive friends." The text is now made to 
 
 change in the text of page 200 of this conform to Mr. Plurner's account of hia 
 
 volume, as it was printed in the first interview with Mr. Clay, 
 edition. I had said that Mr. Clay placed
 
 ADDENDA. 599 
 
 hand, and the only fault he found with us was that we had too much con- 
 fidence in his opinions, and were too much disposed to let him have his 
 own way in all cases. He generally came early to the committee-room, and, 
 as I did the same, we passed much time alone together, and always in a 
 manner exceedingly pleasant and instructive to me." 
 
 1821. ' 
 
 " Under date of June, 1824, I find, in my journal, the following notices 
 of Mr. Webster : ' The ablest man in the House (if we except Mr. Clay, and 
 quare if we should except even him) is Daniel Webster. On the Greek 
 question, and on the tariff, he made the two ablest speeches which were 
 delivered during the session. Is or was his attention confined to these sub- 
 jects ; on all important questions he exerted a controlling influence, which 
 was felt and acknowledged in every part of the House. His reputation 
 was high before he took his seat, but he added to it greatly during the 
 session. The late Speaker, Barbour, told me more than once that he con- 
 sidered Webster the most powerful man we had ever sent from the North ; 
 that he listened to his speeches with delight ; they were pure intellect ; 
 the direct action of mind upon mind without any appeal to the passions. 
 His manner is forcible and authoritative. He displays in general no very 
 remarkable ingenuity or fertility of invention, nor abounds in far-fetched 
 and curious illustrations ; but rests his main argument upon a few strong 
 points, clearly explained and fixed, as if by demonstration, in the minds 
 of his hearers. Nothing is left at loose ends in his statement of facts, or in 
 his reasonings, and the hearer passes from One position to another with the 
 fullest conviction that the result must be correct when the steps leading to 
 it are so clear and obvious. On the feelings of his opponents I know of no 
 man whose arguments produce so painful an effect as those of Webster. 
 During the greater part of his tariff speech the friends of the bill seemed 
 to feel as if the whole fabric, upon which they had so long labored, was 
 tumbling in ruins about their heads. Others had spoken well and in- 
 geniously on the subject ; some with much knowledge of facts, others with 
 great display of philosophical principles. Stilt the system seemed unim- 
 paired, or but slightly affected, till Webster, in the pride of conscious 
 power, came into the field, beating down, as with a giant's club, the whole 
 array of his opponents' force. They never fully recovered from this deadly 
 assault. They, indeed, carried the bill through the House, though not 
 without material alterations even there ; but they wanted strength, when 
 it came back from the Senate, to reject any of the many amendments by 
 which that body had materially changed its most important provisions. 
 The knowledge displayed in this speech surprised those who did not know 
 his practice of levying contributions on all occasions, and making other 
 minds subservient to his purposes. He told me that, immediately after 
 the bill was reported to the House, he obtained from the printer fifty copies 
 
 1 Ante, chap. x.
 
 600 ADDENDA. 
 
 of it. These be sent to the best-informed merchants, manufacturers, agri- 
 culturists, and speculative men, requesting their opinions and remarks in 
 detail on the bill. In due time he received from his correspondents a mass 
 of facts, calculations, and reasonings, which furnished abundant materials 
 for debate. The ablest men in the country were ready, at his call, with 
 the results of their best inquiries, and no man knew better than Webster 
 how to turn to account the aid thus received. He offered me this bundle 
 of papers, out of which half a dozen good speeches might, he said, be made, 
 and advised me to speak on the subject, which, ho w ever, I declined to do. 
 " ' With respect to the presidential election, Webster seemed disposed to 
 avoid taking any active part. Being curious to know his opinion, I more 
 than once introduced the subject. His answers always implied that he 
 was the known friend of Mr. Adams ; but there was no positive declaration 
 to that effect. He was our New-England candidate ; we must do so and 
 so to promote his election, etc. His original preference was, I think, for 
 Calhoun. Crawford's friends paid much court to him, and were anxious 
 to secure his support. But his position as a Massachusetts man makes it 
 certain that he must ultimately go for Adams. Such at least is my view 
 of the case, for I have no belief that any man can root Adams out of the 
 hold which he has on New England, nor have I seen any proof that Webster 
 desires to do so. Being much with him, on committee and in other situa- 
 tions, I had an opportunity to become acquainted with his character and 
 views. He treated me with great kindness and even distinction on all 
 occasions, and appeared to consult me on various topics with entire con- 
 fidence. The degree of intimacy which grew up between us was to me 
 unexpectedly agreeable ; for, as a New-Hampshire politician, I had known 
 him under circumstances not calculated to inspire much esteem. We have 
 probably both of us changed somewhat in our thoughts and feelings within 
 the last ten or twelve years. Compared with Clay, Webster has greater 
 power of reasoning and less native eloquence than the great Western 
 orator. Webster acts directly on the understanding ; Clay on the undei- 
 standing through the passions. In acquired knowledge, in taste, in pro- 
 fessional attainments, and political science, Webster has the advantage ; but 
 in popular address, in the skilful adaptation of means to ends, in the con- 
 tagious enthusiasm which leaves no tune for hesitation or doubt, in 
 promptness, in confidence of power and of success, Clay possesses advan- 
 tages over every person I ever saw in the management of a popular assem- 
 bly. Webster is generally grave, earnest, and argumentative ; yet, in his 
 reply to Bartlett, on the Greek question, he gave the happiest specimen of 
 sarcastic wit I ever witnessed in the House. It has lost some of its point 
 as reported in the Intelligencer ; but it was received by the House with a 
 burst of applause amounting to positive uproar and disorder. It was, 
 moreover, perfectly good-humored, and gave no offence even to its object. 1 ' 
 
 1 As reported, Mr. Webster's reply to really, sir, if Cervantes had never lived, 
 Mr. Bartlett reads as follows : " And there would have been a plentiful lack
 
 ADDENDA. 601 
 
 "It was during this session, and immediately after his tariff speech, that 
 Mr. Webster made his great argument, in the Supreme Court, on the New- 
 York steamboat case. He was listened to with the most profound attention, 
 and I felt, when he sat down, that the question was settled forever by 
 that single speech. Wirt, who was associated with him, could do noth- 
 ing to strengthen the argument, and Wheaton, Ogden, and Emmett, who 
 were employed on the other side, as little to weaken it. We were sitting, 
 a few days after, in the committee-room together, when the messenger 
 brought in his morning letters. Among others was one from his client in 
 this case. This led to his telling the circumstances under which he had 
 prepared his argument, having had, as you know, only part of one night 
 and the next morning to do it in. ' And here,' added he, ' Gibbons has 
 sent me a check for fifteen hundred dollars. That is what I call short 
 work and good pay.' I asked him respecting his business before the com- 
 missioners on the Spanish claims. He said it had been his principal em- 
 ployment for the last three years ; that he was to be paid by a commis- 
 sion of five per cent, on the amount received by his clients, and that he 
 thought he might safely calculate upon sixty thousand dollars as his 
 fees. 
 
 " Mr. "Webster was one of the committee appointed to investigate the 
 charges preferred by Governor Edwards, of Illinois, against Mr. Crawford. 
 Crawford was at this time a candidate for the presidency, and, on this, as 
 on many other accounts, the investigation was one of great delicacy. I 
 find the following notice in my journal on this subject : ' Webster's part 
 was apparently that of neutrality in the presidential election; at any rate 
 he was not the avowed advocate of either of the candidates. He expressed 
 to me his regret that he had been placed on the committee ; and said he 
 would move to be discharged from it if he could think of any satisfactory 
 reason to assign for it, but he knew of none which would not give oflfence, 
 or appear suspicious. Crawford's friends had nothing to fear from him, 
 yet so important was his good opinion deemed, that, from the moment of 
 his appointment, he could not enter the House without being surrounded 
 by Crawford's friends, who were seen, one after the other, taking him 
 aside, and engaged with him in long conversations, doubtless on the sub- 
 ject of his intended report.'" 
 
 of topics in this debate. Gentlemen have Sir, there is not much in this remark 
 
 spoken of running tilts, and of some cru- and yet there may be something in it too. 
 
 sade to be entered into. I have not It is my duty, I know, to encounter 
 
 sufficient perspicacity and penetration, whatever opposition I may meet on the 
 
 my brain is too dull, to catch all the ten subject ; and if I should happen, in my 
 
 thousand inferences gentlemen choose to course, to meet with a wind mi/I, I must 
 
 draw from my resolution. If there is take a tilt with it, whether it be large or 
 
 any thing extravagant in the proposition, small, unless, indeed, I should conclude 
 
 let it be shown that there is, by fair ar- to have a little patience, and to wait till 
 
 gument The honorable gentleman from the motion and the noise shall die of 
 
 Xew Hampshire imputes to me an inten- themselves, for a slight puff is generally 
 
 tion of ' running tilts with windmills.' soon over."
 
 602 ADDENDA. 
 
 1825. 1 
 
 " You have no doubt a fuller account than I can give you of Mr. Ran- 
 dolph's challenge of Mr. Webster, and of his reply. I find the following 
 notice of it in a letter to my father, dated February 21, 1825 : 'Mr. Ran- 
 dolph, after brooding in silence for nearly a year over the castigation given 
 him by "Webster, Me Arthur, and other members of the committee, in 
 consequence of his letter respecting Crawford, sent Webster a challenge 
 to-day to fight a duel with him. I saw it delivered by Colonel Benton, of 
 the Senate, in the House of Representatives, while the House was in ses- 
 sion. What notice of it Mr. Webster will take I do not know. Webster 
 was sitting on a sofa, back of the members' seats, when Benton came in 
 and delivered him, with some formality, a letter, which Webster took and 
 read. He then very deliberately folded it up, paused a moment, opened 
 and read it again, as if doubtful of its import. Passing his hand slowly 
 over his ample forehead, he resumed at once his usual looks, and, turning 
 to Beuton, gave him an answer, which I was too far off to hear. Benton 
 bowed gravely, and passed on. I do not know that anybody else ob- 
 served what was passing. Webster sat a few moments as if absorbed in 
 thought, and then went to his seat. I turned to Rankin, of Mississippi, 
 who sat next to me, and told him what had occurred, and my suspicion 
 that a challenge had been given. He looked a moment at Webster, and 
 then said, " No ; he does not look as if any thing unusual had occurred. He 
 is either untouched or very cool." An hour or two later, while we were at 
 dinner, Colonel McKim, of Alabama, a friend of Mr. Webster, came in, and 
 took out McArthur, who showed by his looks, when ho came back, that 
 something unusual had happened. The next morning, while we were sit- 
 ting alone in the committee-room, I asked Mr. Webster what answer he 
 had given to Randolph's challenge. He started and said, " What do you 
 know about it ? " I told him what I had seen, and what I suspected. 
 He said, " You are right," and, taking two papers out of his hat, said, " I 
 will show you the challenge, and the answer I have drawn up, but not yet 
 sent." The letter of Randolph demanded satisfaction for words uttered by 
 Webster, impeaching his veracity. The answer of Webster was, that what- 
 ever he had said had been said by him in the House, in the discharge or 
 his duties as a member, for which he could not be made, anywhere else, 
 responsible ; but that, if convinced that he had said what was false, he would 
 readily make any reasonable satisfaction. After reading this reply, Web- 
 ster asked me what I thought of it. I told him that, in my opinion, the 
 demurrer was good in law. He laughed, and said he had not yet quite 
 determined what answer to return. The challenge was, I believe, after- 
 ward withdrawn by Randolph, before any answer was given to it. After 
 an interval of about thirty years, I may not be perfectly correct as to the 
 precise import of Mr. Webster's proposed answer to Randolph, but I think 
 
 1 Ante, chap, xi., pp. 230, et seq.
 
 ADDENDA. 603 
 
 the two points made were, first, that Randolph had no right to call on him 
 out of the House for explanation of words spoken in debate ; and second, 
 that if Randolph would prove that what he had said was not true, he 
 would give him satisfaction, in other words, retract, and acknowledge his 
 error. Randolph got no credit by his conduct in this affair. It was gen- 
 erally said that he should have challenged McArthur, who had said severer 
 things of him than anybody else, and who, as a military man, it was sup- 
 posed would fight, and that he should not have turned round upon Webster, 
 a man of peace, who came from a part of the country where duelling was 
 not justified by public opinion.' Instead of beginning in the middle of 
 this affair, I ought perhaps to have related what I saw of it at an earlier 
 period. On going into the House on the morning of the last day of the 
 preceding session, I saw a group of members listening eagerly to Mr. "Web- 
 ster, who was reading from a New- York paper, just received, a letter from 
 Mr. Randolph, in which he reflected severely on the Edwards committee, 
 and took to himself the credit of having secured a hearing for Mr. Craw- 
 ford, whom the other members were disposed to condemn unheard. As 
 soon as Clay called the House to order, Webster, Taylor, and McArthur, 
 gave the most positive contradiction to Randolph's statements, and the other 
 members of the committee all agreed that they were erroneous. Every one 
 was curious to know what explanation Randolph would give of this letter. 
 He did not make his appearance in the House the next year till late in the 
 session ; but, the first time he came in, he rose, after the reading of the jour- 
 nal, and made a statement on the subject, which was substantially the same 
 as that in his letter. This was met by Webster, Taylor, and McArthur, 
 with the same pointed contradiction as before, and here the matter ended 
 in the House. Randolph was pronounced by many members a disgraced and 
 degraded man if he left the matter here, and did not right himself by calling 
 some of his impugners to the field. This he seems himself to have felt ; 
 and in due time he selected Webster as his antagonist. I never knew 
 under what precise circumstances his challenge was withdrawn. It was 
 not thought that Webster lost any credit in this affair. 1 
 
 "I find in my journal, under date of March, 1825, the following notices 
 respecting Mr. Webster : ' He maintained the high standing which he had 
 acquired at the last session. He made no long or set speeches, but what- 
 ever he spoke it was with the most visible and decisive effect on the House. 
 On the Cumberland Road, and on the question of closing the galleries while 
 voting for President, he interfered with great and controlling influence, yet 
 apparently without effort, and certainly without saying a tenth part as much 
 
 1 The following is the legislative his- Edwards against the Secretary of the 
 
 tory of this affair : At the close of the Treasury, Mr. Crawford. Mr. Webster 
 
 session in March, 1824, as is stated in and Mr. Randolph were members of this 
 
 the text of this volume (page 219), a committee. At one of its meetings, on 
 
 committee of investigation was appoint- the 28th of April, 1824, one of its mem* 
 
 ed by the House to inquire into the truth bers, Mr. Taylor, introduced a resolu- 
 
 of certain charges made by Governor tion instructing the chairman " to trans-
 
 604 
 
 ADDENDA. 
 
 as some others did without a tithe of the effect. The bill for punishing 
 offences against the United States, reported by him as chairman of the 
 Judiciary Committee, he explained and enforced with a display of legal 
 and constitutional law which gave entire satisfaction to the House, and 
 left nothing for the other members of the committee to say. At the com- 
 mencement of the session, when it was generally thought that Jackson 
 would be President, Webster showed some indications of a desire to be on 
 the strongest side, at least I inferred that from some things which I wit- 
 nessed, perhaps without sufficient reason. He passed the Christmas holi- 
 days with the ex-Presidents Jefferson and Madison, in Virginia, and soon 
 after his return declared himself decidedly in favor of Adams, and against 
 Jackson. From that moment he acted with vigor proportioned to his 
 sincerity. His remarks on the bill for the extension of the Cumberland 
 Road were peculiarly gratifying to the Western members, and were not 
 without their effect iu bringing them to vote for Adams. It was finally 
 carried in the House by a small majority, and it can hardly be doubted 
 that Webster's influence, exerted against it, would have proved fatal to its 
 success. It was this question which I dreaded more than any other during 
 the session. Its result was a new proof of Clay's boldness and address. 
 It was bold to hazard so much on so doubtful an issue ; yet fortunate, as it 
 
 mit to Mr. Crawford a copy of Mr. Ed- 
 wards's memorial, and the accompany- 
 ing papers, together with a copy of the 
 resolution creating the committee." Mr. 
 Randolph proposed an amendment in 
 the following words : " And inform him 
 that the committee are proceeding in the 
 examination, and that they are ready to 
 receive any communication which he 
 may think proper to make, in reference 
 to the same." This amendment was ac- 
 cepted by Mr. Taylor, and the resolution, 
 as amended, was unanimously adopted. 
 
 On the 25th of May there appeared 
 in a Richmond newspaper a letter signed 
 "John Randolph, of Roanoke," addressed 
 to his constituents, and containing this 
 statement : " It was at my instance, and 
 not without considerable resistance on 
 the part of a majority of the committee, 
 that the Secretary had the opportunity 
 given him to file his answer to the accu- 
 sation of Mr. Edwards." If this state- 
 ment was true, the committee, or a ma- 
 jority of them, had meditated a great 
 injustice toward Mr. Crawford ; and the 
 delicacy of their situation was increased 
 by the fact, referred to by Mr. Plumer, 
 that Mr. Crawford was at this time a 
 candidate for the presidency. But Mr. 
 Randolph's assertion was not true. He 
 had strangely misapprehended, or mis- 
 
 represented, what occurred in the com- 
 mittee. On the last day of the session 
 (May 27, 1824), Mr. Webster read Mr. 
 Randolph's letter in the House, produced 
 the ofiicial minutes of the committee 
 which exhibited their action, and gave 
 an unqualified denial to Mr. Randolph's 
 statement, by saying that no member of 
 the committee made the least opposition 
 to the motion for giving notice to Mr. 
 Crawford and affording him an opportu- 
 nity to be heard. Other members of 
 the committee, especially Mr. Livingston 
 and Mr. McArthur, confirmed Mr. Web- 
 ster's statement. Mr. Randolph was not 
 present. 
 
 At the next session (December 23, 
 1824), Mr. Randolph again brought this 
 subject before the House, by an argu- 
 mcntative statement, calculated to pro- 
 duce the impression, but not distinctly 
 charging, that it was with reluctance, 
 and not until he had interfered, that a 
 majority of the committee had consented 
 to allow Mr. Crawford to be heard. Mr. 
 Webster and Mr. McArthur followed, 
 reiterating their denial of this charge, if 
 Mr. Randolph was to be understood to 
 have made it in his letter to his con- 
 stituents, or to have made it on the pres- 
 ent occasion. To this Mr. Randolph 
 made no categorical reply, and the mat-
 
 ADDENDA. 
 
 601 
 
 exhibited so many of Adams's friends in favor of this Western measure, and 
 most of the Atlantic friends of Jackson against it. It was a great object 
 with Jackson's friends to defeat this bill, thinking its failure would irritate 
 the Northwest, and make them insist on a Western President in the per- 
 son of Jackson, as the only means of securing their peculiar interests. 
 McDuffie, who, at the preceding session, had made an able speech in favor 
 of internal improvements, now opposed violently the Cumberland-road Bill, 
 and, as it passed in spite of the opposition of the South, by the aid of 
 many Northern votes, the effect produced by this discussion was precisely 
 the reverse of what its opponents had expected from it. Webster answered 
 McDuffie briefly, but conclusively, or, as Adams, using a somewhat terse 
 metaphor, said to me, " Webster wound little McDuffie round his finger, 
 slipped him off, and threw him out the window." l On these occasions, 
 Webster gave an earnest of what he is capable of doing, and probably will 
 do in support of the new Administration. He wished to be minister to 
 London ; but this, for many wise reasons, Adams withheld from him. He 
 wishes to be Speaker of the House, but in this also he will probably be 
 disappointed. His proper place is on the floor of the House, and his ap- 
 propriate office that of confidant and supporter of the Administration. In 
 conversation with Webster, I explained to him my views on this subject, 
 and told him that the part he ought to act was, with due allowance for 
 the difference between this country and England, that of prime minister 
 
 ter was dropped. From what remains 
 of the reported discussion, it does not 
 distinctly appear whether it was to the 
 language used by Mr. Webster on this 
 occasion (December 23d), or to what Mr. 
 Webster said on the last day of the pre- 
 vious session (May 27th), that Mr. Ran- 
 dolph chose to take offence. It appears 
 from Mr. Plumer's account that the 
 challenge was not sent until the 21st of 
 February, 1825, nine months after the 
 first discussion, and two months after 
 the second; and Mr. Plumer intimates 
 that Mr. Randolph's complaint related 
 to what had been said on the former 
 occasion. So far as the reported de- 
 bates show, the language used by Mr. 
 Webster was not offensive on either oc- 
 casion ; although his statement neces- 
 sarily implied that what Mr. Randolph 
 had said was not true in point of 
 fact. 
 
 In the interval between the last dis- 
 cussion and the sending of the chal- 
 lenge, Mr. Webster made his visit (De- 
 cember, 1824) to the ex-Presidents 
 Madison and Jefferson, of which an ac- 
 count is given (ante, pp. 222-226). Down 
 to the autumn of 1824, his attitude in 
 regard to the presidential candidates was 
 that of strict neutrality. But, when 
 
 Congress assembled in December, 1824, 
 it became necessary for Mr. Webster to 
 decide as between the several candi- 
 dates, and he determined to support Mr. 
 Adams, for the reasons explained in my 
 text (ante, pp. 235-239.) It is not im- 
 possible that the political relations, act- 
 ing on Mr. Randolph's morbid and sen- 
 sitive nature, may have led him, after so 
 long an interval, to send the challenge 
 which Mr. Plumer describes ; for they 
 may have aggravated his uncomfortable 
 personal situation, after the denial which 
 his statement of a fact had met with in 
 the House. But, whatever may have 
 been the moving cause or causes that 
 made him feel it to be necessary to chal- 
 lenge Mr. Webster, the latter appears to 
 have met this event as became him. 
 
 But the most singular part of this 
 affair is, that Mr. Randolph had once 
 before challenged Mr. Webster (181(5), 
 and had received from him a reply, which 
 plainly intimated that Mr. Webster was 
 no duellist ; and that he thus knew that 
 he was challenging a man who probably 
 would not, under any circumstances, re- 
 sort to this method of giving satisfaction 
 for what he had said in debate. (Ante, 
 pp. 154, et seq.) 
 
 1 Ante, chap, xi., pp. 240, 241.
 
 606 ADDENDA. 
 
 in the House of Commons. By taking this course he would, even for the 
 present, possess more real power and consideration than he could expect 
 in any other station, and, at the same time, prepare the way for still greater 
 advancement. He seemed to acquiesce in this view of the subject, and, on 
 my presenting it in the same light to Mr. Adams, he seemed also much 
 pleased with it, and said that nothing better could be desired, either for 
 himself or for Mr. Webster, who was able, if he had the will, to be very 
 useful in the House as the Administration leader there. It is not probable, 
 however, that he will be the mere auxiliary of any Administration. He 
 would be glad to assume the place left vacant by Clay, as Speaker of the 
 House, and, at the same time, take, like Clay, an active part in the 
 debate.' " 
 
 1833. 1 
 
 " From this period, I find only occasional notices of Mr. Webster in my 
 journal, many of them interesting to me personally, but not likely to be 
 of any use to you. Under date of October, 1833, is the following, which, 
 as it relates to a distinguished man and an important public measure, you 
 may like to see : ' I had much conversation with Mr. Webster on political 
 affairs. In answer to my inquiry as to Clay's motives in his late tariff 
 compromise, he said, with a strong emphasis, " I do not talk about Mr. 
 Clay; I have done talking about him, Mr. Plumer." Though this was 
 sufficiently expressive of his feelings, I was willing to know more, and 
 therefore said that Mr. Clay had ridden the tariff hobby so long, and with 
 such little effect, that it might perhaps be inferred from his recent conduct 
 that he was disposed to mount on the other side, and thus secure a Southern 
 interest at the expense of his Northern friends. " That is it," said Mr. 
 Webster, " and if you wish to see what his original plan was I can show it 
 to you." He then took from his trunk a paper, which he handed me to 
 read. It was a copy, taken by him from the original, of the preamble and 
 concluding section of Mr. Clay's tariff bill of the last session, as at first 
 drafted by him, and handed round to his friends for their examination. 
 It contained an explicit renunciation of the right of Congress, and pledged 
 that body not to pass any act for that purpose, and not to appropriate money 
 for any other than the ordinary and necessary expenditures of the Govern- 
 ment; thus abandoning manufactures in express terms, and internal im- 
 provements, by necessary implication. Finding that his friends were not 
 prepared to go with him thus far, he struck out the preamble, and altered 
 the last section to the form in which he presented it to the Senate. Mr. 
 Clay would, he said, be a candidate once more for the presidency ; but he 
 would not be elected. The objections to him in the minds of a majority 
 of the American people were insurmountable. You might as well move 
 Monadnock. It could not be. He then spoke of other candidates, par- 
 ticularly Cass and McLean. For himself, he said, he had rather be in the 
 opposition than in a situation which made him responsible for the conduct 
 
 1 Ante, chap, xix., pp. 429, et seq.
 
 ADDENDA. 607 
 
 of men whose course could never be foreseen, and whose chief recommenda- 
 tion was that they were a little better than somebody else. This seemed 
 to imply that he was not satisfied with his past compliances, and intended 
 to act more in the future on his own responsibility. He added that he 
 should not continue in Congress after the next presidential election if 
 things did not take a more favorable turn. 
 
 " ' Speaking of his "Western tour, I adverted to his being himself a can- 
 didate for the presidency. He spoke on the subject with candor and sin- 
 cerity. His friends in Ohio and Pennsylvania were, he said, of opinion 
 that a nomination could be obtained from those States entitled to a great 
 weight, but that he thought it too early to make nominations now ; that 
 it would be better to concentrate the opposition, if possible, into one party 
 against Van Buren, and to leave the selection of a candidate to some future 
 day. If Ohio and Pennsylvania could be brought to act together, their 
 influence would decide the question. Neither of those States would sup- 
 port Van Buren. He thought the Antimasons, as a political party, not 
 likely to increase. They were losing ground in New York. He said they 
 were not unfriendly to him; but, on the contrary, had applied to him to 
 be their candidate at the last election, before they nominated Mr. "Wirt. 
 On the whole, it was evident that Mr. "Webster had some hopes (probably 
 not very strong ones) of reaching the presidency at the nest election. 
 There is, however, little reason to think that he will succeed. He is 
 everywhere respected as a man of the most commanding talents, and of 
 high and honorable feelings a lawyer, a scholar, and a statesman, who 
 would do credit to any office. But with this general respect for Mr. Web- 
 ster, and ready tribute to his high qualities, I do not see that there is much 
 disposition in the country to intrust its government to his hands. He is 
 considered as standing at the head of the old Federal party, and the sins 
 of that party are visited on him. There is no great justice in this ; but 
 there are too many men in all parties who know how to use this ctrcum 
 stance to his prejudice.' " 
 
 1843.' 
 
 "'June, 1843. I attended the Bunker-Hill celebration on the 17th. 
 It was on the occasion of completing the monument. I never before 
 saw so many people together, and probably never shall again a hun- 
 dred thousand human beings some say twice that number all intent on 
 one object, all pleased and giving pleasure, happy themselves, and mak- 
 ing others happy. I was in the crowd, on my feet, but near enough not 
 only to hear the oration of "Webster, but to see the flash of his large black 
 eye, and observe the movements of his face as well as of his body. The dis- 
 course was worthy of the man and of the occasion, each highest in its kind. 
 "Webster bears on his body the marks of labor and of age. "When I spoke 
 to him the next day of his address, he said he was too old for such an oc- 
 
 1 Post, vol. ii., chap, xxx., pp. 222, 223.
 
 608 ADDENDA. 
 
 casion. I told him that nobody else thought him so. Compared, how- 
 ever, with the discourse on laying the corner-stone of the monument, eight- 
 een years ago, it may be remarked that, with less brilliancy, it has more 
 thought ; with equal force, less imagination ; with a wider experience, a 
 less moving eloquence. There are, however, even in this latter respect, 
 some very effective passages in the present address. That in which the 
 monument itself is spoken of as the great orator of the day, and that in 
 which its connection Avith the union of the States is represented, produced 
 upon the audience the most thrilling effect. The heart of that mighty 
 multitude beat, as if by one mighty impulse, in lofty and patriotic emotion, 
 proud and magnanimous, yet obedient to the will and the motion, the 
 words and the action, of the mighty master : 
 
 " Waves, like the waves of ocean, 
 
 Moved in that countless throng; 
 Now hushed, and now in motion, 
 
 Impulsive, sudden, strong ; 
 And still beneath his sway, 
 
 They followed evermore, 
 Tide-like, along their way, 
 
 With murmured break and roar." 
 
 " ' I have broken myself into verse, without intending it, in attempting 
 to describe the influence of the orator on his audience. The great mass of 
 the people were on their feet, standing still, with all eyes intent upon the 
 speaker ; but every now and then the whole mass was in motion, moving 
 backward and forward, each man over a space of some two or three feet, 
 and these tides, irregular in their access, seemed yet connected with the 
 orator, and responsive to his action on the minds of his hearers. There 
 was a curious feeling in my own mind, at once of union and resistance with 
 this moving mass, which I cannot well describe. The President of the 
 United States was present, with his Cabinet, to grace the occasion ; but 
 Webster, after all, was the great man of the day. Into whatever assembly 
 he may come there is no one tall enough to throw'him into the shade.' " 
 
 184/r. 1 
 
 " ' February, 1847. In reading Webster's argument in the case of the 
 Lexington, which he sent me, I could not help regretting that so much 
 knowledge and intellectual power as he possesses should not occasionally 
 take the form of a book, instead of a speech. This argument is full of 
 historical facts and reminiscences of the Revolutionary period, and of the 
 organic and formative processes of our government. 2 The great Greek his- 
 
 1 Post, vol. ii., chap, xxxiii. ported in the sixth volume of Howard, 
 
 s The argument related to the origin, p. 344 : " The New Jersey Steam Navi- 
 
 nature, and extent of the.admiralty juris- gation Company, respondents and ap- 
 
 diction, as conferred by the Constitution pellants, vs. The Merchants' Bank of Bos- 
 
 of the United States. The case is re- ton, libellants."
 
 ADDENDA. 609 
 
 torians were statesmen; and " Bome's least mortal mind" was the lawyer 
 and the consul Tully. A statesman and a lawyer can alone write ade- 
 quately the true history of our government and laws. With Webster's 
 knowledge of facts, and his familiarity with legal and constitutional prin- 
 ciples, a year or two devoted to the history of the Constitution, and its 
 early administration, would, in all probability, give to him a more endur- 
 ing reputation than all that he has yet said or done. I hope that such a 
 work will yet be the fruit of his industry and his genius. But it is more 
 probable that he will fritter away the few remaining years of vigorous 
 action, which he may yet enjoy, on subjects of little permanent importance. 
 A few more political speeches, some powerful legal discussions, and a vain 
 struggle for the presidency, which he can never reach, will probably close 
 the scene. He will, indeed, leave behind him a brilliant reputation, and 
 enduring fame. But I wish he might add, to his character of lawyer, 
 orator, and statesman, that of the author of a standard work on law and 
 government, if not of civil history. He is capable of doing this ; and it 
 would crown the climax of his glory with a wreath of enduring fame.' " 
 
 1849. 1 
 
 " ' November, 1849. I attended, as an invited guest, the festival of the 
 emigrant sons of New Hampshire, held at Boston on the 7th. Fifteen 
 hundred sons of the Granite State dined together on that occasion, pre- 
 sided over by Webster, and addressed by him, and by other distinguished 
 New-Hampshire men. Webster's first speech was a good one, though at 
 the time, as delivered, certain parts of it seemed rather dull ; but his clos- 
 ing address was admirable. Broad, comprehensive, philosophical in its 
 views, it was, in parts, eloquent in the highest degree. That part in par- 
 ticular which related to Hungary swept every thing before it, as, in a storm 
 of indignant eloquence, he arraigned the Emperor of Russia before the 
 tribunal of public opinion, the national law of the civilized world, and 
 pronounced sentence on him as a criminal and a malefactor for his attempted 
 violation of the law of nations in the case of the Hungarian refugees. No 
 report could do justice to the words or the manner of this part of his 
 speech. The audience bowed before it, as they always do to true eloquence, 
 in a transport of admiration and delight. Others spoke well ; but Webster 
 was eloquent. Here, as everywhere else, he vindicated his native and in- 
 dubitable superiority. At a social meeting of this kind every man gets his 
 full share of applause, quite as much, I mean, as he deserves. We were all 
 received in turn with almost equal fervor, but with what different results ! 
 Five minutes after most of us had resumed our seats nobody remembered a 
 word that we had said, while every word of Webster had burned itself into 
 the hearer's memory, and the whole stands out in lines of light which can 
 neither be obscured nor effaced.' " * 
 
 1 Post, vol. ii., chap, xxxvii., pp. 558, 559. 8 Post, vol. il, chap, xxxviii., pp. 638-642. 
 40
 
 610 ADDENDA. 
 
 1850. 
 
 " ' February 11, 1850. At the levee of Mr. Ewing, the Secretary of the 
 Interior, I met Mr. "Webster in the thickest of the press, first making his 
 way up the room, and afterward seeking, as he told me, his wife, with 
 tears in his eyes ! Putting both his hands on my shoulders, and looking 
 me full in the face, he said, "Do you remember when and where it was that 
 we first saw each other ? " Pausing a moment to recollect, I said, " I am 
 ashamed to acknowledge that it has escaped my memory." " But it has 
 not mine," said he; "it was in May, 1809, at Langmaid's tavern in Hamp- 
 ton Falls. You were going, with your father, to Cambridge." Gales of 
 the Intelligencer, who was standing by, said, " Mr. Webster never forgets 
 any thing." " I never forget a friend," was the ready and graceful reply. 
 " But I have another question for you. Forty years ago there was in your 
 town a place called Cuba. Do you know any thing about Cuba in Epping ? '' 
 " There is no such place there." " Inquire when you go home, and write me 
 about it." I told him that I would, but I had lived all my life in the town, 
 and had never heard the name." I accordingly made the inquiry on my 
 return, and found one old man who recollected that a neighbor of his, 
 since dead, had a wood-lot, which he used to call his Cuba lands. When 
 I told Webster, at our next meeting, the result of my inquiries, he seemed 
 much pleased to find that his memory of this remote and unimportant 
 matter was accurate. He had heard the name while he lived at Ports- 
 mouth, and, as Gales said, " I never forget any thing." This minute mat- 
 ter is not worth relating, except as an example of the wonderful tenacity 
 of Mr. Webster's memory, which grasped every thing within its reach, and 
 lost nothing which had ever been committed to its charge.' " 
 
 1852. 
 
 " ' July 17, 1852. I went yesterday to Franklin, and spent the night and 
 this morning with Mr. Webster. He received me with his usual kindness, 
 and we had much interesting conversation together. My principal object 
 was to obtain information from him in relation to my father and his times. 
 What I got is noted in another place. I could not but allude to the late 
 Whig Convention for nominating a President. He spoke very strongly 
 against the system of national conventions, which were, he said, scenes of 
 venality and intrigue, where the popular will had no true or adequate ex- 
 pression. In the recent instance, it had resulted in the nomination of two 
 men, neither of whom was the first choice of the party which nominated 
 him ; neither of whom would the people, if left to themselves, have chosen ; 
 but one of whom they must now elect, and this because a convention, un- 
 known to the Constitution or the laws, had made the nomination. While 
 we were at dinner, General Pierce and his wife rode up. Mr. Webster 
 went to the door to receive them, and conducted them into the parlor. 
 They stayed but a few moments. On returning to the table, Mr. Webster
 
 ADDENDA. 611 
 
 said, " There goes the President of the United States that is to be." I said, 
 "Is that certain?" "As certain," he replied, "as any event that is in 
 future can be." He said that he did not talk politics with anybody, and 
 therefore should not with me. He said he had no scheme for the future. 
 But, though he did not talk politics, it was easy to perceive, from his con- 
 versation, what his feelings were. He evidently felt hurt by the course 
 which had been taken in the late convention, and thought himself ill used 
 by many who should have been his friends, and who professed to be so, as 
 well as by others whose position was less equivocal. He, however, said very 
 little on the subject, and nothing in a resentful or vindictive spirit. His 
 health is evidently impaired, and the tone of his mind not less. When I 
 first met him, and asked him how he was, he replied: "Not well, not well, 
 Air. Plumer. The multiplicity of my occupations, this little office which I 
 hold, presses heavily upon me, and I begin to feel sensibly the infirmities 
 of age. I wish I were back again a few years, to your age at least ; but no ; 
 it as well as it is." This was said in a desponding tone, and he seemed 
 much affected. I was told by his secretary that he was, the day before, 
 moved even to tears on meeting with an old friend whom he had not seen 
 for twenty years. It was so on the present occasion. So true is it that 
 his occupations leave him no rest, even in the retirement of his New-Hamp- 
 shire farm, that, while talking to me, he was dictating letters on public 
 business to his son and to his secretary, both of whom he kept busily 
 writing, while he walked the room, alternately talking to me and dictating 
 to them. Among the letters dispatched by telegraph was one to the Presi- 
 dent and another to the British minister. "! sit here in my house in Frank- 
 lin," said he, " send a letter to Washington, and get an answer back in an 
 hour. What would your father or mine have thought if this had been told 
 to them, or even to us, a few years ago ? " Among other papers finished and 
 sent off while I was with him was a long notice respecting the fisheries, to 
 be published hi the newspapers. His son says he has an aversion to writ- 
 ing when he can avoid it, and does much of his correspondence by dicta- 
 tion. On the whole, I left him with a melancholy feeling, as if I had been 
 looking, perhaps for the last time, on the decline of greatness " an old 
 man broken with the cares of state." Still, however, if unsuccessful in the 
 immediate object of his ambition, he has established for himself a reputa- 
 tion which is surpassed by that of no man of our age or nation, and, if he 
 comes peacefully to the grave, in a good old age, with no indiscretion or 
 folly to mark the close of life, few men can, on the whole, be considered 
 more fortunate or more successful in the great aim of all public men the 
 exercise of power and influence in their own day, and the renown which 
 follows greatness hi succeeding time.' 
 
 " Of the four greatest men whom I have personally known Adams, 
 Clay, Calhoun, and Webster the last will, I think, have, on the whole, 
 with posterity the highest reputation. There is no speech of Clay that I 
 now recollect which will be read fifty years hence with much interest. 
 Two or three of Calhoun's may, even then, be studied with some advan-
 
 612 ADDENDA. 
 
 tage. Adams will continue to excite a livelier interest, not so much in a 
 mere political point of view as by the mass of facts and opinions which his 
 letters and his diary will, when published, furnish to the historian a 
 picture of the times and of the man which cannot fail to be interesting. 
 But Webster, besides what we may reasonably anticipate from his as yet 
 unpublished correspondence, has left speeches and discourses of the very 
 highest and rarest merit. The subjects discussed in them are of the most 
 important nature, and he has treated them in a manner worthy of their im- 
 portance. The sensation produced through the whole country by his 
 death is the strongest I have ever witnessed in the case of any public man. 
 The post-mortem examination of his body showed that he could not, under 
 any change of fortune, have lived much longer. Add to this the mental 
 excitements produced by the political events of the last six months, and 
 his death, at this time, can produce no surprise. I reckon it among the 
 fortunate events of my life that I should have known personally so much 
 of this extraordinary man." 
 
 EKD OF YOU L
 
 D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS FROM AUGUSTUS TO 
 CHARLEMAGNE. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY. 2 vols. 12mo. 
 Cloth, 3.00 ; half calf, extra, $7.00. 
 
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 that it is impossible in any moderate space to do more than indicate the line he follows. 
 . . . The work is a valuable contribution to our higher English literature, as well as an 
 admirable guide for those who may care to go in person to the distant fountains from 
 which Mr. Lecky has drawn for them BO freely." London Times. 
 
 A HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENT- 
 URY. By WILLIAM E. H. LEOKY, author of " History of the Rise 
 and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe," etc. Vols. 
 I, II, III, IV, V, and VI. Large 12mo. Cloth, $2.25 each ; half 
 calf, $4.50 each. 
 
 " On every ground which should render a history of eighteenth-century England precious 
 to thinking men, Mr. Lecky's work may be commended. The materials accumulated in 
 these volumes attest an industry more strenuous and comprehensive than that exhibited 
 by Froude or by Macanlay. But it is his supreme merit that he leaves on the reader's mind 
 a conviction that he not only possesses the acuteness which can discern the truth, but the 
 unflinching purpose of truth-telling." New York Sun. 
 
 " Lecky has not chosen to deal with the events in chronological order, nor does he 
 present the details of personal, party, or military affairs. The work is rather an attempt 
 ' to disengage from the great mass of facts those which relate to the permanent forces of 
 the nation, or which indicate some of the more enduring features of national life.' The 
 author's manner has led him to treat of the power of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy ; 
 of the history of political ideas ; of manners and of beliefs, as well as of the increasing 
 power of Parliament and of the press. "Dr. C. K. Adams's Manual of Historical Literature. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE SPIRIT 
 OF RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY. 
 
 2 vols. Small 8vo. Cloth, $4.00 ; half calf, extra, $8.00. 
 
 " The author defines his purpose as an attempt to trace that spirit which ' leads men 
 on all occasions to subordinate dogmatic theology to^the dictates^reasonjind^or con- 
 science, 
 dispose 
 
 ethics, to regard as duties only those which confidence reveals to be such." Dr. C. K. 
 Adams's Manual of Historical Literature. 
 
 THE LEADERS OF PUBLIC OPINION IN IRELAND : SWIFT, 
 FLOOD, GRATTAN, O'CONNELL. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY. 
 
 12mo. Cloth, $1.75. 
 
 "A writer of Lecky's mind, with his rich imagination, his fine ability to ?PP rec Jate 
 imagination in others, and his disposition to be himself an orator upon the written 
 could hardlvhave found a period in British history more harmonious with his 1 
 style than that which witnessed the rise, the ripening, and the fall of the four m 
 impress upon the development of the national spirit of Ireland was not limited by tne K 
 questions whose discussion constituted their fame." New York Evening Post. 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
 
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 HISTORY PRIMERS. Edited by J. E. GREEN, M.A., Examiner 
 in the School of Modern History at Oxford. 18mo vols. Flexible 
 cloth, 45 cents each. 
 
 GREECE. By C. A. FYFFE, M. A. 
 
 ROME. By M. CREIGHTON, M. A. 
 
 EUROPE. By E. A. FREEMAN, D. C. L. 
 
 OLD GREEK LIFE. By J. P. MAHAFFY, M. A. 
 
 ROMAN ANTIQUITIES. By Professor A. S. WILKINS. 
 
 GEOGRAPHY. By GEORGE GROVE, F. R. G. S. 
 
 FRANCE. By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 
 
 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. By Professor G. B. ADAMS. 
 
 L'HISTOIRE DE JULES CESAR, par 8. M. I. Napoleon III. 
 
 2 vols. 12mo. Paper, $2.50. 
 THE SAME. With Maps and Portrait. 2 vols. Cloth, $4.00. 
 
 "It can not be denied that this is a history of Borne importance, in spite of the ques 
 tionable object for which it was written. The work was prepared with the utmost care 
 a care which extended in some instauces to special surveys, to insure perfect accuracy 
 in the descriptions." Dr. 0. K. Adams's Manual of Historical Literature. 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from the Accession of James II. By Lord 
 T. B. MACATJLAY. With Steel Portrait. 5 vols., 12iM>. Cloth, per 
 set, $5.00; sheep, $7.50; half calf, $15.00. 
 
 " Undoubtedly the most brilliant and the most popular history ever written in the 
 English language. It shows vast research, extraordinary power in the portraiture of in- 
 dividual character, and a literary skill that is unrivaled." Dr. C. K. Adams's Manual of 
 Historical Literature. 
 
 DIGEST OF ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY. By THOMAS 
 DEW. 8vo. Cloth, $2.20. 
 
 " So nearly what its title indicates that any considerable description is unnecessary. 
 In method, however, it is somewhat unusual. Each paragraph begins with a question, 
 which it is the purpose of the paragraph to answer." Dr. C. K. Adams's Manual of 
 Historical Literature. 
 
 MANUAL OF ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY. By W. C. 
 
 TAYLOE, LL. D., M. E. A. S. Eevised by C. S. HENRY, D. D. 8vo. 
 Cloth, $3.50 ; or, in separate volumes, $2.00 each. 
 
 ANCIENT HISTORY. Containing the Political History, Geographical Position, and 
 Social State of the Principal Nations of Antiquity, carefully digested from 
 the Ancient Writers, and illustrated by the Discoveries of Modern Scholars 
 and Travelers. 
 
 MODERN HISTORY. Containing the Rise and Progress of the Principal European 
 Nations, their Political History, and the changes in their Social Condition ; 
 with a History of the Colonies founded by Europeans. 
 
 "Dryness is generally characteristic of condensed historical outlines ; in the present 
 case it is avoided by the vigorous style of the author, and the introduction of interesting 
 anecdotes and episodes that serve to relieve the mind and bring out in clear light the 
 peculiarities of individual or national character. 
 
 The American edition has been revised throughout by Dr. Henry, and enlarged by the 
 introduction of an admirable chapter on American history. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 8, & 5 Bond Street
 
 D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 New revised edition of Bancroft's History of tJie United States. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, from the Discovery of the 
 Continent to the Establishment of the Constitution in 1789. By 
 GEOEGE BANCROFT. An entirely new edition, complete in six vol- 
 umes, 8vo, printed from new type, and bound in cloth, uncut, with gilt 
 top, $2.50 ; sheep, $3.50 ; half calf, $4.50 per volume. Vol. VI con- 
 tains the History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United 
 States, and a Portrait of George Bancroft. 
 
 In this edition of his great work the author has made extensive 
 changes in the text, condensing in places, enlarging in others, and care- 
 fully revising. It is practically a new work, embodying the results of the 
 latest researches, and enjoying the advantage of the author's long and 
 mature experience. The original octavo edition was published in twelve 
 volumes. 
 
 " On comparing this work with the corresponding volume of the ' Centenary ' 
 edition of 1876, one is surprised to see how extensive changes the author has 
 found desirable, even after so short an interval. The first thing that strikes one 
 is the increased number of chapters, resulting from subdivision. The first vol- 
 ume contains two volumes of the original, and is divided into thirty-eight chapters 
 instead of eighteen. This is in itself an improvement. But the new* arrange- 
 ment is not the result merely of subdivision : the matter is rearranged in such a 
 manner as vastly to increase the lucidity and continuousness of treatment. In 
 the present edition Mr. Bancroft returns to the principle of division into periods, 
 abandoned in the ' Centenary ' edition. His division is, however, a new one. As 
 thi permanent shape taken by a great historical work, this new arrangement is 
 certainly an improvement." The Nation (New York). 
 
 " It has not been granted to many historians to devote half a century to the 
 history of a single people, and to live long enough, and, let us add, to be willing 
 and wise enough, to revise and rewrite in an honored old age the work of a whole 
 lifetime." New York Mail and Express. 
 
 " The extent and thoroughness of this revision would hardly be guessed with" 
 out comparing the editions side by side. The condensation of the text amounts 
 to something over one third of the previous edition. There has also been very 
 considerable recasting of the text. On the whole, our examination of the first 
 volume leads us to believe that the thought of the historian loses nothing by the 
 abbreviation of the text. A closer and later approximation to the best results 
 of scholarship and criticism is reached. The public gains by its more compact 
 brevity and in amount of matter, and in economy of time and money." 1 he 
 Independent (New York). 
 
 " There is nothing to be said at this day of the value of ' Bancroft.' Its au- 
 thority is no longer in dispute, and as a piece of vivid and realistic historical 
 writing it stands among the best works of its class. It may be taken for 
 granted that this new edition will greatly extend its usefulness." Philadelphia 
 Aorth American. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETOX & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
 
 D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 from the Eevolution to the Civil "War. By JOHN BACH MCMASTER. 
 To be completed in five volumes. Vols. I and II, 8vo, now ready, 
 cloth, gilt top, $2.50 each. 
 
 SCOPE OF THE WORK. In the course of this narrative much is written of wars, 
 conspiracies, and rebellions ; of Presidents, of Congresses, of embassies, of treaties, 
 of the ambition of political leaders, and of the rise of great parties in the nation. 
 Yet the history of the people is the chief theme. At every stage of the splendid prog- 
 ress which separates the America of Washington and Adams from the America in 
 which we live, it has been the author's purpose to describe the dress, the occupations, 
 the amusements, the literary canons of the times ; to note the changes of manners and 
 morals ; to trace the growth of that humane spirit which abolished punishment for 
 debt, and reformed the discipline of prisons and of jails ; to recount the manifold 
 improvements which, in a thousand ways, have multiplied tfie conveniences of life and 
 ministered to the happiness of our race ; to describe the rise and progress of that long 
 series of mechanical inventions and discoveries which is now the admiration of the 
 world, and our just pride and boast ; to tell how, under the benign influence of liberty 
 and peace, there sprang up, in the course of a single century, a prosperity unparal- 
 leled in the annals of human affairs. 
 
 " The pledge given by Mr. McMaster, that ' the history of the people shall be 
 the chief theme,' is punctiliously and satisfactorily fulfilled. He carries out his 
 promise in a complete, vivid, and delightful way. We should add that the literary 
 execution of the work is worthy of the indefatigable industry and unceasing vigi- 
 lance with which the stores of historical material have been accumulated, weighed, 
 and sifted. The cardinal qualities of style, lucidity, animation, and energy, are 
 everywhere present. Seldom, indeed, has a book, in which matter of substantial 
 value has been so happily united to attractiveness of form, been offered by an 
 American author to his fellow-citizens. " New York Sun. 
 
 " To recount the marvelous progress of the American people, to describe their 
 life, their literature, their occupations, their amusements, is Mr. McMaster's object. 
 His theme is an important one, and we congratulate him on his success. It has 
 rarely been our province to notice a book with so many excellences and so few 
 defects." New York Herald. 
 
 " Mr. McMaster at once shows his grasp of the various themes and his special 
 capacity as a historian of the people. His aim is high, but he hits the mark." 
 New York Journal of Commerce. 
 
 " I have had to read a good deal of history in my day, but I find so much 
 freshness in the way Professor McMaster has treated his subject that it is quite 
 like a new story." Philadelphia Press. 
 
 " Mr. McMaster's success as a writer seems to us distinct and decisive. In the 
 first place he has written a remarkably readable history. His style is clear and 
 vigorous, if not always condensed. He has the faculty of felicitous comparison 
 and contrast in a marked degree. Mr. McMaster has produced one of the most 
 spirited of histories, a book which will be widely read, and the entertaining 
 quality of which is conspicuous beyond that of any work of its kind." Boston 
 Gazette, 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON" & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
 
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