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EULOGY 
 
 ON 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER, 
 
 DELIVERED BY REQUEST 
 OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT AND CITIZENS OF PORTLAND, 
 
 il^frtektj, tm> 17, 1852: ~^'~ 
 
 BY LEONARD WOODS, JR., D. D., 
 
 PRESIDENT OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE. 
 
 BRUNSWICK: 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. GRIFFIN, 
 
 1852. 
 
H -34-0 
 
CITY OF PORTLAND : 
 
 Mayor's Office, Nov. 19th, 1852. 
 Sir, — It affords me great pleasure to transmit a copy of a Resolu- 
 tion unanimously passed by our City Council on the iStli inst., re- 
 questing a copy for publication of your very interesting and able Ad- 
 dress on the character of Mr. Webster, delivered in this City on the 
 17th inst., in which request I most cordially unite. 
 
 With entire respect, 
 
 Albion K. Farris. 
 Rev. Leonard Woods, D. D. 
 
 President of Bowdoin College. 
 
 In Board of Aldermen, Nov. 18, 1852. 
 
 Resolved, — That the thanks of the City Government be presented 
 10 Dr. Leonard Woods, for his very able and beautiful analysis of 
 the public, private, moral and intellectual character of the lamented 
 Daniel Webster ; and that he be requested to furnish a copy of 
 the same for publication. 
 
 RES0LVED,--That the Mayor be requested to transmit a copy of 
 these resolutions to Dr. Woons. 
 
 In Board of Aldermen, Nov. 18, 1852. 
 Read and passed in concurrence by unanimous vote. 
 
 Attest : Wm. Boyd, City Clerk. 
 
 City of Portland, Nov. 18, 1852. 
 
 At a meeting of the Webster Committee the following resolution 
 was oflered by John A. Poor, Esq. and unanimously adopted. 
 
 Resolved, — That the thanks of the Committee be tendered to the 
 Rev. Dr. Woods for the very learned, eloquent and appropriate Eu- 
 logy by him pronounced upon the Hon. Daniel Webster at the re- 
 quest of the City authorities and Citizens of Portland, on the 17th inst., 
 and that a copy thereof be requested for publication. 
 
 Jltttst: C. D. Bearce, Secretary. 
 
 James Furbish, Chairman. 
 
 To Hon. Albion K. Parris, Mayor, and 
 James Furbish, Esq., Chairman. 
 
 As my Eulogy on Daniel Webster was delivered by appointment 
 of the City Government and a Committee of the Citizens, I do not feel 
 at liberty to decline their request to have it published. It is accord- 
 ingly herewith submitted to their disposal. 
 
 With many thanks for the kind terms in which their request is 
 expressed and communicated, 
 
 I remain, gentlemen, with high respect, yours etc. 
 
 Leo.nard Woods. 
 Brunswick, Nov. 20, 1852. 
 
We have assembled together to take our part 
 in giving expression to a great national sorrow. 
 In the extent to which it has prevailed, and in the 
 depth to which it has penetrated, there has been 
 now, for a long time, no sorrow like to this. The 
 feelings which have turned our steps aside from 
 the paths of business, and brought them hither, in 
 mournful procession, to the House of God, are not 
 confined to our own breasts, but are shared by 
 millions of our countrymen. The solemn scene 
 which here presents itself to our view, is only 
 one of a thousand witnessed in every part of the 
 country. The whole Republic has clothed itself 
 in sackcloth, and abandoned itself to grief The 
 whole tone of the public mind, usually so cheerful 
 and jubilant, is suddenly depressed to the lowest 
 mood and measure of sadness. A subdued and 
 
thoughtful air reigns in the busy streets, a 
 solemn stillness broods over the home and the 
 fireside, the tear starts unbidden in eyes unused 
 to weep. Turn which way we may, mournful 
 symbols, in gloomy profusion, annomice mutely, 
 but with affecting significance, the presence of a 
 sorrow, deep as the fountains of the heart, and 
 co-extensive with the utmost boundaries of the 
 nation. 
 
 It is not that we have been visited with any 
 great material calamity. The flock has not been 
 cut off" from the fold, nor the herd from the stall. 
 The staff" of bread has not failed. The land has 
 not been desolated by pestilence or war. These 
 harsher judgments of Heaven, affecting simply 
 our material mterests, may awaken the sorrow of 
 selfish regret, but could never produce a sorrow 
 of so refined and generous a quality,, as that which 
 now oppresses the heart, and darkens the face, of 
 the whole people. 
 
 When a few weeks since, the tidings, Daniel 
 Webster IS no more, were inscribed, as it were, 
 on a scroll m the Heavens, and displayed at once 
 over the whole continent, the first emotions which 
 broke forth were those of natural sympathy. 
 There was much in the dignified composure of the 
 
dying scene of the great Statesman, in its Christian 
 resignation, in its domestic tenderness, in its entire 
 fitness for a close to the grand epic of his Hfe, 
 which was adapted to move the deepest sensibilities 
 of that vast cloud of witnesses by whom it was, 
 as it were, smTOunded and beheld. And while the 
 nearer circle of kindred and friends, of neidibors 
 and domestics, stood weeping around the Dead, 
 the whole nation lifted up its voice, and wept 
 with those that wept. 
 
 But hardly had this first gush of natural sym- 
 pathy subsided, before the people began to recall, 
 each one for himself, the great quahties and great 
 services of the Deceased ; to reflect on the vast 
 circle of interests upon which liis agency had been 
 so beneficially exerted, and on the dangerous crises 
 through which they had passed safely by his inter- 
 position ; to consider how he had identified hmi- 
 self with all the great institutions and interests of 
 his country ; in short, to revolve the whole story of 
 his remarkable career, from its humble beginnings 
 at the outermost verge of civihzation, till it reached 
 the proudest eminence in the civihzed world : and 
 as they did this, there began to prevail a sense of 
 almost personal bereavement, a feelmg of the in- 
 calculable magnitude of the loss sustained by the 
 
8 
 
 nation in the death of this great man. And as 
 they had wept before in generous sympathy with 
 others, they began now to weep for themselves 
 and for their children, — sorrowing most of all that 
 they should see his face no more. 
 
 Mingled with these feelings, there has also ap- 
 peared some reverent recognition of the high 
 sovereignty of Him, who thus, by a single blow, has 
 laid prostrate the pride and hope of the nation ; 
 and some penitent acknowledgment of his awful 
 justice in this visitation. The God of our Fathers, 
 so often forgotten in the day of prosperity, has 
 been remembered in this hour of adversity. 
 
 And in the train of these impressions, there 
 has also sprung up some juster and deeper sense 
 of the instability of earthly fortmie, of the vanity 
 of human greatness and glory, of the worthless- 
 ness of the objects after which, as a nation, we 
 have been running so madly. When in an instance 
 so signal it has been seen, that man in his best 
 estate is altogether vanity, and that all the glory 
 of man is as the flower of the grass, the exclama- 
 tion has been extorted from a thousand lips, 
 "What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue !" 
 
 The nation would thus seem to have been 
 brought by this great judgment to a solemn pause, 
 
9 
 
 and to have had stirred within its breast, in which 
 the fires of discord and the lusts of power and 
 aggrandizement were so recently raging, some 
 kindlier feelings, some better thoughts, some loftier 
 and purer and holier purposes ; to have been 
 waked up for a season to a higher consciousness 
 of its duty and its destiny. 
 
 Let us trust that this season will not prove to 
 have been only a lucid interval in a career of 
 madness. Let us trust that these salutary impres- 
 sions will not flide away from our minds, when 
 these pageants of mourning shall have vanished 
 from our sight ; but that they will long continue 
 to exert upon us a restraining, a refining, and an 
 ennobling influence ; and that thus this dispensa- 
 tion of Providence, now invested with the dread 
 aspect of a divine judgment, being laid to heart 
 and wisely improved, will become a richer blessing 
 than if our corn and our wine were increased, than 
 if our armies were crowned with new victories, or 
 new territories were added to our domain. 
 
 In his Address on the completion of the 
 Bmiker Hill Monument, Mr. Webster paused, and 
 pointing to the column wliich rose before him, 
 exclauned, " It is not from my lips that that strain 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 of eloquence is this day to flow, most competent 
 to move and excite the vast multitudes around me : 
 the powerful speaker stands motionless before us 1" 
 With how much more reason may it be felt by 
 those appointed to pronounce his Eulogy, that it is 
 not from their lips, but from his, that the eloquence 
 of the occasion is to proceed ; and that the best 
 thing they can do, is to point to him, and let him 
 speak for himself. Let us then place ourselves 
 under the spell of that great Presence, which has 
 been so familiar to us in days gone by, and which 
 now, once more, stands invisibly before us ! Dur- 
 ing this hour sacred to his memory, let us pass 
 in review before our minds the several attributes 
 of that complex greatness, ' where every god did 
 seem to set his seal.' And let us contemplate 
 these attributes neither with an overweenmg admi- 
 ration on the one hand, nor with a captious criti- 
 cism and grudging approval, on the other. If in 
 selecting our public servants for offices of high 
 trust, we justly impose on ourselves the cold 
 maxim of Principles and not men, let us relax some- 
 thing of the rigor of this rule in judging of them 
 when their stewardship is over ; and then at least, 
 if at no other time, give some place to that loyalty 
 of the heart, which passing beyond their principles. 
 
11 
 
 attaches itself to whatever was lofty in their per- 
 sonal character, noble and generous m their words 
 and deeds. 
 
 In surveying the elements of Mr. Webster's 
 greatness, our attention is first arrested by his 
 extraordinary inteUectual iwiver. This undoubted- 
 ly constituted his chief distinction. Wherever he 
 was known, it was principally as a commanding 
 intelhgence. It was in this sovereign power of 
 mind, throned in that majestic forehead, beaming 
 in those cavernous and unfathomable eyes, and 
 stamping the impress of thought upon his whole 
 countenance, that his strength lay. Every one 
 who came into any connection with him, in the 
 most casual intercourse of life, in the freest intima- 
 cy of friendship, felt the controlUng power of 
 his mind. It was this which secured to him an 
 easy superiority in that path of Hfe which he had 
 marked out for himself, and which would probably 
 have given him as easy a superiority in almost 
 any other which he might have chosen. It was 
 this which gained him an easy victory over every 
 opponent with whom he ever measured his 
 strength. It was this which gave him his lordly 
 mastery over every subject to which he ever 
 turned his attention. It was this which imparted 
 
12 
 
 to his words their oracular power, to his style its 
 crystal clearness, to his whole discourse its lucid 
 order. It was this which gave to his common 
 sense its practical wisdom, to his graver judgments 
 their infallible authority ; and imj^ressed on all his 
 opinions in politics and religion, a certain meas- 
 ured justness and grand simplicity, in harmony 
 with the substantial verities and great realities of 
 existence. It was this, in fine, which transfusing 
 itself through the thousand minor j^articulars of 
 his public and j)rivate life, gave them an elevated 
 and even majestic tone, and produced the collec- 
 tive impression of greatness. 
 
 In vindicating for Mr. Webster this transcendent 
 intellectual power, it is not necessary to deny, that 
 in particular mental attributes, he may have been 
 deficient, either by nature or by practice, in com- 
 parison with some others. It may readily be con- 
 ceded that he displayed less high intuitive per- 
 ception of truth than Plato, less profound philo- 
 sophical insight than Coleridge, less imaginative 
 vividness and richness of conception than Burke, 
 less metajDhysical acumen than Edwards; and at 
 the same time it may be claimed for him, that in 
 native original strength of mind, in what may be 
 caUed naJced intellect, he was equal to any of them. 
 
13 
 
 From some latent bias, perhaps, or from outward 
 circumstances, this original intellectual force took 
 in him a practical rather than a speculative direc- 
 tion, moved in the argumentative rather than in 
 the intuitive process, the logical rather than the 
 metaphysical method. But it by no means follows, 
 that had the causes by which this direction of his 
 mind was determined, been different, he might 
 not have succeeded equally in different and oppo- 
 site departments. It may generally be presumed 
 of minds of that higher order to which his cer- 
 tainly belonged, that they are competent to take 
 the lead in any of the great departments of human 
 thought and action, even in those most opposite to 
 the departments in which they have earned their 
 chief distinction. It has certainly been often 
 seen in the histories of truly great men, that 
 they have passed, back and forth, from the specu- 
 lative to the practical sphere, from the cloister 
 to the camp and the court, from the deepest se- 
 clusion of reUgious or philosophical meditation, to 
 the highest post of military command or of po- 
 litical administration, and found themselves equal- 
 ly at home in each, and foremost in all. In 
 the lives of Cardinal Ximenes and of Chancellor 
 Bacon, we have examples of men, who having 
 
14 
 
 distinguished themselves in the holiest exercises 
 of religion, or in the profoundest investigations 
 of science and philosophy, acquired afterwards, 
 when opportunity offered, a new distinction in 
 the department of administrative statesmanship. 
 With these examples in view, why may it not be 
 beheved, that our great Statesman, had his lot in 
 life been different, or had he been permitted to 
 enjoy at last his long coveted leisure, and to exe- 
 cute his cherished purposes, might have placed 
 himself side by side with the great masters of 
 speculative philosophy, or of divine wisdom! 
 
 But whatever may be thought of this sugges- 
 tion, it may be affirmed, I think, without extrava- 
 gance, and judging from physical as well as other 
 indications, that he was originally endowed with 
 as much pure intellect as any man of the age ; 
 even if we may not venture to say of him, as was 
 said of King Solomon, that there was none like 
 him before him, nor after him shall any arise hke 
 unto him, in that wise and understanding heart 
 which the Lord had given him. 
 
 And we have come together to-day in a willing 
 allegiance to this royalty of spirit. On other 
 days we pay a sordid homage to wealth, to station, 
 to worldly greatness. We would now render a 
 
15 
 
 more reasonable service to Mind. This is that in 
 which man is most nearly resembled to the Infinite 
 Intelligence, and which, in projDortion to the degree 
 in which it is possessed, if not perverted and abused, 
 lays the foundation for all the true and legitimate 
 distinctions among men. It is the mind which 
 makes the man, not the accidents of birth, or for- 
 tune, or station. The man of great mind is the 
 true nobleman ; the man of the greatest mind is 
 King among men. This crown of intellectual su- 
 premacy we would gladly award to hun, from 
 whom we have withholden the high magistracy 
 recently in our gift. It was justly, as weU as 
 beautifully remarked of him by the successful can- 
 didate for that high magistracy, that " his greatness 
 is of that rare character which no earthly position 
 could exalt." In this his appropriate intellectual 
 greatness we prefer to contemplate him. From 
 the dead level of intellectual mediocrity spreading 
 far around, we rejoice that we may look up to one 
 Alpine summit, proudly rearing itself above the 
 plain, and piercing the very skies. We feel it to 
 be a matter of just pride, that in our age and 
 among ourselves, a mind has appeared endowed 
 with gifts so rare and so resplendent. Let others 
 boast of their great men as they may, we shall 
 
16 
 
 always be able to point to Daniel Webster, and 
 say, a greater is here. 
 
 But Mr. Webster is entitled to admiration as 
 well for his great learning, as for his great mind. — 
 He was certainly no mere scholar, and yet he was a 
 man of great and various acquisitions. Beginning 
 at the very bottom, he climbed to the very top of 
 the Hill of Science. No youthful student ever 
 had less to help and cheer him on his way, than 
 the young farmer-boy of Salisbury, when he walked 
 his two or three miles every day in the winter, to 
 get what learning he could from an itinerant 
 school-master. But he had in him, from this early 
 period, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and 
 something of that spirit of hterary heroism, so 
 quaintly expressed by Cowley : 
 
 Alps rise o'er Alps ; but I will conquer all, 
 And march the Muses' Hannibal. 
 
 The day for cheap literature and the diifusion 
 of knowledge, had not yet come. Few books found 
 their way into those outskirts of society where his 
 lot was cast ; but those few were standard works 
 in prose and poetry ; such as we may remember to 
 have seen in the book-case of the New England 
 farm-house many years ago, now alas! supplanted 
 
17 
 
 by works of qiiite another sort. They were books 
 worth readmo; ; and in the intervals of labor on 
 the farm, and especially during the long winter 
 evenings, they were, we may be sure, well read by 
 young Webster, and conned over and over, and 
 in good part committed to memory. As his mind 
 was not pre-occupied with trifles, and had its appe- 
 tite sharpened by restraint, it fed and grew apace 
 upon this spare and wholesome diet, and made 
 more life-blood out of a single volume, than others 
 from a library. In this early training, the fire-side 
 stories of the hardships and dangers of the border- 
 life, in those troublous times of Indian, French, and 
 English wars, had their full share ; and the stern 
 features of the surromiding scenery, and the vary- 
 ing aspect and moods of the adjacent mountain, 
 forest and river, were not mthout their influence. 
 From this elementary education of the school 
 and the household, he passed to the Academy and 
 College. As the privileges which these afforded 
 were to be paid for out of his father's hard earnings, 
 and his own labor in school-keeping, they were not 
 misimproved. Even at this early period he made 
 the impression of superiority, and excited the ex- 
 pectation that he would one day be a great man. 
 He was seen to be intent already on some great 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 object, and to be bending all his powers to the 
 attainment of it. At the close of this second 
 period of his training, he arrived at the threshold 
 of manhood, with his mind already well stored and 
 discipHned, and with a good foundation laid to build 
 upon. 
 
 He now entered at once upon his professional 
 training as a Lawyer, and devoted himself with all 
 his mind and heart to the study of the Common 
 Law, — still paying his o^vn way by school-keeping, 
 and copying deeds in the Register's ofdce at Frye- 
 burg. Li this study, the character of his mind 
 was already indicated, by his never resting in cases 
 and precedents, but always ascending to the sources 
 of the Law, and grasping its principles. From the 
 study of the Common Law he advanced successive- 
 ly, according to the gradation of the Courts in 
 which he practised, to the study of all the higher 
 branches of Jurisprudence. And so, by sure steps 
 and by his own efforts, long before he had reached 
 the meridian of his life, he had come to stand, in 
 respect to thorough and various legal learning, at 
 the very head of the American Bar, and was 
 widely known through the country as the great 
 Lawyer, before he was known in any other charac- 
 ter. 
 
19 
 
 After reaching this eminence he was led, both 
 by his owni tastes and by the call of public duty, 
 from a professional to a political career. Li order 
 to qualify himself in the best manner for this ca- 
 reer, he entered upon a wholly new class of studies, 
 comprising the science of government. Political 
 Philosophy and Economy, the history of nations, 
 ancient and modern, and especially the history of 
 his own country. And so successfully and to such 
 an extent did he pursue these, that in respect to 
 all the learning of the Statesman, he was acknowl- 
 edged to be without a rival. In whatever other 
 respects he may have been well matched by his 
 great competitors in public life, m the various 
 branches of learning necessary to this high calling, 
 he was accomplished beyond them all. He accord- 
 ingly took, in this fourth period, the same pre-emi- 
 nent rank as a Statesman, which he had before held 
 as a Lawyer; or rather, as these vocations were 
 thenceforward exercised by him contemporaneously 
 quite to the end of his life, he stood foremost, at 
 the same moment, m the Court-room and in the 
 Senate-chamber ; and thus, in the strong language 
 of Mr. Choate, "won for himself the double fame, 
 and wore the double wreath of Murray and of 
 Chatham, of Wm. Pinkney and Rufus King, in one 
 blended and transcendent superiority." 
 
20 
 
 Nor did Mr. Webster, amid these severer studies, 
 neglect the claims or disdain the charms of general 
 Literature. The extent and accuracy of his gen- 
 eral knowledge, esjoecially in the departments of 
 science and of classical learning, has been sometimes 
 called in question. And it is undoubtedly true, 
 that the range of his general knowledge may have 
 been limited in comparison with that of some 
 French Encyclopedist, and that his knowledge of 
 Greek and Latin may have been inaccurate in com- 
 parison with that of some German philologist. 
 But it must still be acknowledged, that for one 
 oppressed with the double cares of a Lawyer and a 
 Statesman, his studies were highly liberal and 
 thorough. He appears to have kept tolerably well 
 up with the progress of modern science, interesting 
 himself especially in those branches of it which 
 related to his agricultural pursuits and his manly 
 sports, and in those which tended to enlarge the 
 conceptions of his mind of the wisdom and glory of 
 the Creator. He is reported to have been em- 
 ployed, during some of his last days, in reading the 
 volumes of Humboldt's Cosmos. — He appears also to 
 have maintained, through his whole life, an intimate 
 and discriminating acquaintance with the best Greek 
 and Latin writers. And in his recent Address be- 
 
21 
 
 fore the New York Historical Society, to say noth- 
 ing of his other speeches, he has certainly exhibited 
 a knowledge of the ancient classics, which is nei- 
 ther mean in quaUt}^, nor in quantity inconsid- 
 erable. — To those at all acquainted with his writ- 
 ings it hardly need be said, that he was quite at 
 home in our standard English literature, and had a 
 singular appreciation no less of its finer beauties of 
 style and sentiment, than of its more sterling merits. 
 On the whole, we shall look in vain for any among 
 our public men, (if we except a few, a very few, — 
 here and there an Everett or a Legare,) who give 
 evidence of an equal richness and fineness of lite- 
 rary culture. 
 
 There is no character to which Mr. Webster 
 ever made less pretension, than to that of a man of 
 Letters. Literature was not to him a profession or 
 a trade, but a recreation and a passion. It was an 
 affair of the heart. And it well repaid his affec- 
 tion. It drew a vein of beauty through the rough 
 texture of his colossal greatness. It twined its 
 graceful garlands around the pillar of his strength. 
 It served him many a good turn in his public de- 
 bates, as in the affair of Banquo's ghost in his Re- 
 ply to Mr. Ha3nie. It occupied agreeably many a 
 lonely hour, and gently smoothed many a rough 
 
22 
 
 passage in his journey of life. And it came to 
 liini at last in his dying hour, and relieved his mor- 
 tal agony, by recalhng to him a sweet strain of 
 Gray's Elegy, from the fading memories of his boy- 
 ish days. 
 
 But the greatness of Mr. Webster was owing 
 hardly more to his great mind and his great learn- 
 ing, than to ihe noble traits of Ids personal character, — 
 those quahties of the heart, which, so far as they 
 were known, have caused him to be loved, as much 
 as admired. 
 
 In his pubhc life and before the world at large, 
 his bearing was cold and reserved, his presence 
 ^ lofty and sour'. And those who saw him only thus, 
 were apt to conclude that he was, in common 
 phrase, all head and no head, — that he was a very 
 great man, but very unloveable. But in so judg- 
 ing, they greatly misjudged him. In truth, the 
 emotional part of his nature appears to have been 
 as richly endowed and fully developed, as the intel- 
 lectual. He was a large-hearted, genial man ; fuU 
 of simple tastes and instincts, gentle and refined 
 sensibilities, and warm natural affections ; liberal 
 almost to prodigality ; frank in showing both his 
 likes and his dislikes, and scorning every hypocriti- 
 
23 
 
 cal pretension ; incapable of any thing mean ; un- 
 willing to do or say anything, on his own part, to 
 give unnecessary offence to any human being, and 
 always ready to forgive his enemies and slander- 
 ers. He had faults, no doubt ; but they were 
 
 the faults of a generous, not a niggardly nature. 
 They were not the faults of avarice, or cowar- 
 dice, or treachery, or hypocrisy, or vindictiveness ; 
 but rather faults of that class which spring from 
 the excess of good qualities, and are sometimes 
 said to lean to virtue's side. But whatever they 
 were, they never brought over his conscience to 
 their side, or bribed his judgment into approbation. 
 His moral sense, unclouded and vmperverted, point- 
 ed to the right so steadfastly, and bore witness to it 
 so clearly, that he found it impossible, without be- 
 traying some embarrassment, even to argue pro- 
 fessionally for a cause which he knew to be bad. 
 
 Not the least mteresting of the traits of Mr. 
 Webster's personal character were his tastes for 
 country-life, and its pleasant alternations of homely 
 toil, of manly sport, and of sohtary meditation. In 
 these natural tastes he resembled the English, 
 rather than the American statesman. He once 
 spoke of Mr. Calhoun with some wonder, as having 
 no recreations, and seeming to feel no need of 
 
24 
 
 reliefs from business and retirement from the world. 
 To himself, on the contrary, some seasons of re- 
 prieve from public duty, some opportunities to es- 
 cape from artificial to natural hfe, were both a ne- 
 cessity and a delight. And as the hero of the 
 classical mythology, after his combats with savage 
 beasts and men, was wont to retire at intervals 
 from his labors, and to bury himself deep in some 
 Caucasian sohtude, that he might purge himself 
 from the soil of earthly contact, and regam the 
 consciousness of his divine original ; even so did 
 our great Statesman break away, as often as he 
 could, from the din and smoke, the dust and tur- 
 moil of public life, and betake himself to his farm, 
 and even thence plunge into the deeper solitude of 
 the silent forest and the resounding shore, that he 
 might restore his broken fellowship with himself, 
 and recover the consciousness of his higher nature. 
 These moments were indeed few and far between ; 
 and few are the revelations made to us of the mus- 
 ings of these sohtary hours ! But they go far to 
 mark the man. They invest his character with a 
 certain poetical interest ; they take him at once 
 out of the vulgar ranks ; they distinguish him for- 
 ever from our burly heroes of the stump and the 
 platform ; and show him to have possessed a higher 
 
25 
 
 and finer nature, wMch might act upon, but could 
 not mix with the coarser mould. They place him 
 by the side of such men as Burke, who while they 
 move in the common world, and act with common 
 men, and with all the coarse machinery employed 
 by them, have yet a world of their own apart from 
 this, and far more congenial to them ; — men who 
 in some sort live above the world while they live 
 in it, and keep their souls in some relationship 
 with a divmer sphere. — For myself, I must acknow- 
 ledge that I am deeply impressed with this side of 
 Mr. Webster's many-sided character, and regard 
 him as almost equally admirable in this his contem- 
 plative repose, as in his proudest field of action. 
 
 In passing on from these tastes of Mr. "Webster 
 to a higher order of affections, it will perhaps be 
 thought, that he had less of that broad philan- 
 thropy which embraces the whole world of man- 
 kind, than is required by the highest law of Chris- 
 tian charity. He took little part in the great phi- 
 lanthropic movements of the age, and showed little 
 S3rmpathy with them. But it may be said on the 
 other hand, by way of compensation, that what his 
 affections wanted in expausiveness, they made up 
 in intensity in the narrower sphere in which they 
 moved. If he loved the world less, he loved his 
 
26 
 
 kindred and country more. If lie had less of that 
 fashionable and sentimental benevolence, which 
 travels far out of its way to find objects upon 
 which to expend its sympathies, he had more of 
 that genuine, old fashioned humanity, which pro- 
 vides for one's own household, and relieves the suf- 
 ferer at one's door. If he was no cosmopolitan, he 
 was in a very remarkable degree susceptible of all 
 the attachments of locality, the ties of consan- 
 guinity, and the sentiments of nationahty. Where 
 indeed shall we look to find a man in whom all the 
 domestic, the social, the patriotic afiections were 
 more healthful and abundant! 
 
 With what yearning love did he cHng, till his 
 very last days, to the home of his birth and the hum- 
 ble scenes of his childhood 1 and how eagerly did 
 he bend his steps thitherward, each returning year, 
 that he might revisit once more the old elm which 
 his father had planted, the old well which he had 
 dug, the old cellar, half filled with rubbish, where 
 the log cabin had stood which he had built in the 
 wilderness! And with what mingled feelings of 
 fondness and pride did he regard his noble father, 
 weeping at the thought of the sacrifices made by 
 him in giving him an education, and then striving 
 to repay the debt of gratitude, by sustaimng him 
 
27 
 
 through all the infirmities of his declining years! 
 And how sincerely did he mourn for him, and 
 piously and reverently cherish his memory after he 
 was gone ! And when this doom of nature was 
 reversed, and his own children were taken from 
 him, with what affecting tenderness did he pour 
 forth a father's sorrows over their tomb ! — As for the 
 old Salisbury neighbors, for miles around, he never 
 forgot them ! and after more than half a century 
 he writes about them by name to one of his old 
 school-masters, and tells him whether they are still 
 living at the old place ! And as to his new neigh- 
 bors at Marshfield, on what friendly and familiar 
 terms did he live with them ! and when he was 
 about to die, with what good taste and good feeling 
 did he select his pall-bearers from among them, 
 rather than from the ranks of worldly pride and 
 greatness ! 
 
 In the circle of private friendship, if we may 
 judge from the testimony of those who knew him 
 best, all the finer traits of his character were seen 
 to the best advantage. He gave his hand warmly 
 to his friends and drew them to him with a strong 
 attraction. When surrounded by them, in the free- 
 dom of the social hour, he brought forth from the 
 good treasure of his heart, such riches of thought 
 
28 
 
 and feeling, as the great world knew notliing of. 
 Here his brow lost its rigors and its terrors, here 
 was seen the fascination of his smile, here he laid 
 by his senatorial dignity, and assuming a presence 
 which was more winning, and giving free play to 
 his pent-up humor, and drawmg upon his great 
 fund of anecdote, indulged in those lighter graces 
 of conversation, which were all the more captiva- 
 ting in him from their contrast with the severer and 
 more elaborate style of his pubhc discourse. But 
 httle of this fire-side eloquence of Mr. Webster has 
 yet been published ; from this little, however, we 
 should infer, that it is as well worth being fully 
 reported, as the table-talk of Martin Luther or of 
 Dr. Johnson, with both of whom he has sometimes 
 been compared, both in the more rugged, and the 
 more genial aspects of his nature. 
 
 But stronger than his love of kindred or friends, 
 was his love of country. He was not indeed indif- 
 ferent to the welfare of other nations. He spoke 
 potent words for Greece and for Hungary. But 
 these words appear to have been dictated by some 
 apprehension of a possible danger to American in- 
 stitutions from the triumph of absolute principles 
 in Europe, and by some sense of the rightness and 
 fitness on our part, as the leading RepubHc of the 
 
29 
 
 world, of letting our voice be heard in favor of 
 freedom ; and not at all by any modern notions of 
 the political fraternity and solidarity of the human 
 species. His words, even in these instances, savor 
 more of American patriotism, than of foreign pro- 
 pagandism. Spartam nactiis es, hanc exorna, was the 
 ruling principle of his life, and the master-passion 
 of his soul. And since he firmly believed that the 
 safety, honor and welfare of the whole American 
 people could be maintamed only by means of the 
 Federal Constitution and the Union of the States, 
 it was upon these that the energies of his patrio- 
 tism were concentrated. With sleepless vigilance 
 he saw from far whatever threatened them with 
 evil. And in the hour of danger he stood fore- 
 most, and often single-handed, in the unminent 
 deadly breach, striking right hand and left, accord- 
 ing to the quarter from which the danger came ; 
 rebutting Southern sophistries, and rebukmg North- 
 ern prejudices, as the case might be ; and at last, 
 when nothing else would do, devoting himself for his 
 country, after the sublimest examples of ancient 
 patriotism. 
 
 But I cannot brmg to a close what ought in 
 justice to be said of Mr. Webster's personal charac- 
 ter, without adverting to his rehgious feehngs and 
 
30 
 
 convictions. No man ever had more of what may 
 be called the natural sentiment of religion, — the 
 reverent sense of our dependence on a superior 
 Power. From his earhest youth, and through all 
 his College days, as well as in after years, he never 
 thought or spoke of things sacred and divine with- 
 out deep seriousness, and never attended upon any 
 rehgious exercise without becoming devoutness and 
 solemnity : and this too at a period when the spirit 
 of profane mockery was more rife in our Colleges 
 and hterary circles, than at any time before or 
 since. 
 
 With many persons at the present day, this 
 natural and instinctive reverence of mind, is the 
 beginning and end of religion. But it was not so 
 with Mr. Webster. He was no pantheist or trans- 
 cendentalist. He believed in the outward, objec- 
 tive reality of those divine things to which this in- 
 ward sentiment relates. He believed in a personal 
 God, possessed of moral, as well as natural perfec- 
 tion, and exercising a moral and providential gov- 
 ernment over the world. He believed in the Bible 
 as a Kevelation, and in Jesus Christ as a Saviour. 
 He believed in the Church, in the Mmistry, in the 
 Ordinances of the Gospel, as positive institutions 
 established by God for his own worship and the 
 redemption of the race. 
 
31 
 
 These religious convictions, received by tradi- 
 tion from his Puritan ancestors, and early incorpo- 
 rated by catechism and sermon, by psalm and 
 hymn, into the very frame-work of his mind, were 
 fortified by his later reflections and studies, and 
 appear to have been never seriously disturbed 
 by infidel doubts or objections. Nor were these 
 convictions coldly speculative; — they were deep 
 and heartfelt. And there is much reason to 
 think, that as he advanced in years, they exerted a 
 more and more controlling influence over his life. 
 As the earthly shadows of Pleasure and of Power 
 by which he had been tempted, began to recede, 
 the Eternal Realities in which he had trusted, drew 
 near and took strong hold upon him. And ever 
 and anon, as he stood on the shore and looked out 
 on the illimitable ocean, or lifted up his eyes to 
 the starry heavens, the visions of immortality broke 
 in upon his soul with overpowering clearness. 
 
 As his life drew near its close, the germs of 
 religious character which had been early implan- 
 ted, and never destroyed, sprang up to high ma- 
 turity. By that law which so often opposes the 
 spiritual to the natural, as his outer man perished, 
 the inner man was renewed day by day. As 
 the lamp of Hfe was going out, the Hght of Faith 
 
32 
 
 burned brighter and brighter, and filled with its 
 radiance the house of mourning and of death. It 
 was the faith of the Christian, and not the philoso- 
 phy of the Sage, which gave him the deep serenity 
 of his last hours, and that great victory over his 
 last enemy. It is not too much to say, that his 
 rehgious character assumed at last a grandeur pro- 
 portioned to the scale of his other attributes, and 
 that all which had been before wanting to the high- 
 est style of manhood, was supplied in this crown of 
 Christian perfection which was given to him just 
 before his departure. 
 
 The great intellectual powers, the great and 
 various learning, the noble qualities of heart, which 
 have now been ascribed to Mr. Webster, had their 
 highest embodiment and expression in his character 
 as an Orator. In no other character could all this 
 double wealth of mind and heart have been ade- 
 quately exliibited. Nor could this noble character 
 have been sustained by him, in its highest dignity, 
 had he been less richly gifted either on the intel- 
 lectual or emotional side of his nature. But since 
 he had at command these essential qualifications, 
 and could draw at will from exhaustless treasures of 
 thought and learning, and from still more exhaust- 
 
33 
 
 less fountains of feeling and imagination^ and 
 possessed besides the physical advantages of voice 
 and person in high perfection, he only needed a 
 great occasion to make him a great orator. Such 
 an occasion never failed to present itself in due 
 season, and whenever it confronted him, it always 
 found him ready to cope with it. However great 
 and appalling the occasion might be, it was always 
 well met in the man, and he greeted it with joy. 
 He not only rose with the occasion, but rose supe- 
 rior to it. In his greatest efforts he seemed to be 
 conscious of possessing a reserved power, be^^ond 
 the exigencies of the moment. There was some- 
 thing of calm self-possession and high composure in 
 his air, like that of Apollo, when he had sped but 
 a single shaft from his full quiver ; — something of 
 proud exultation, in which however there was 
 nothing of arrogance, which seemed to say, ' that 
 half his strength he put not forth!' 
 
 At such times, when standing face to face with 
 some of those great occasions which have been 
 signalized by his triumphs, Mr. Webster was seen 
 in his glory, and reached perhaps the culminating 
 point beyond which our present rational and physi- 
 cal powers cannot go. His temperament, com- 
 monly inert and impassive, was then wholly vital- 
 5 
 
34 
 
 ized, his very frame was dilated, and his swarthy 
 countenance illuminated, by the inspiring impulse 
 of the emergency. In the high-drawn sketch of 
 one of these occasions given by Mr. March, he is 
 described as having been " gazed at as something 
 more than mortal, and having appeared as Moses 
 might, when emerging from the smoke of Sinai, 
 his face all radiant with the breath of divinity." 
 Another witness of the best authority has affirmed, 
 with somewhat cooler judgment, " that after hav- 
 ing heard some of the ablest speeches of the great- 
 est living orators on both sides the water, he had 
 never heard anything which so completely realized 
 his conception of what Demosthenes was when he 
 delivered the Oration for the Crown." 
 
 In his character as an orator, he occupied the 
 three great fields of eloquence, the popular, the 
 forensic, and the parliamentary. And if the ques- 
 tions were asked, by whom, in our own age and 
 country, the appropriate excellence of each of 
 these kinds has been in the highest degree illus- 
 trated, it could not be better answered, than by 
 pointing for the first, to Mr. Webster's addresses at 
 Plymouth and Bunker Hill ; for the second, to his 
 pleas in the case of the Knapps, and of Dartmouth 
 College J for the third, to his repHes to Hayne and 
 
35 
 
 Calhoun in the debates in the Senate on Nullifi- 
 cation. 
 
 In some particular excellences of oratory, it 
 may readily be allowed that he was surpassed by 
 some others ; — in overpowering vehemence perhaps 
 by Demosthenes, in ornate and copious diction by 
 Cicero, in the exuberant gush of moral sentiment 
 and enthusiasm by Burke, in sparkling wit and 
 felicitous point by Sheridan, in subtle dialectics by 
 Calhoun, in the graces of elocution and power to 
 move the passions by Henry Clay : but in the 
 harmonious combination of opposite excellences, in 
 the blending of reason and of passion, of argument 
 and illustration, of learning and imagination, of 
 logic and rhetoric, of strength and beauty ; in the 
 whole impression thus produced ; in that central 
 power of commanding attention and securing con- 
 viction and persuasion ; he was rarely equalled and 
 perhaps never surpassed. 
 
 But while the eloquence of Mr. Webster com- 
 bined in a remarkable manner these oj^posite excel- 
 lences, it was after all, as it seems to me, most 
 distinguished for its intellectual element. His elo- 
 quence more than that of any other orator, was 
 the eloquence of thought and of reason. And of 
 this distinguishing trait, the best example, if I do 
 
36 
 
 not mistake, is his reply to Mr. Calhoun, already 
 referred to. Unlike his rejoly to Mr. Hayne, it de- 
 pended wholly for its effect upon clearness of 
 thought and power of argument. It exhibited, as 
 has been well said, the dignity of human reason in 
 its loftiest exj)ression. In the course of a long de- 
 bate, in which almost every senator had taken 
 part, no real progress had been made, no solid 
 ground had been gained. The whole subject had 
 come to ajDpear like that Serbonian bog described 
 by Mr. Webster, in which one after another, on 
 which side soever he might approach, went down, 
 and sank deeper and deeper, the more he endeav- 
 ored to extricate himself When Mr. Webster 
 arose, after a brief exordium, he laid down, in sim- 
 ple and concise terms, four propositions, in oppo- 
 sition to the three which had been advanced by 
 Mr. Calhoun. Henceforward there was something 
 to stand upon. The entrance of his word had 
 given light. As he proceeded, the mists cleared 
 away, the darkness fled, the chaos became organ- 
 ized. And when he had finished, the whole subject 
 was emphatically elucidated, and the whole contro- 
 versy finally settled. 
 
 It has been said of Lord Chatham, that he was 
 not the master, but the slave of his own speech, 
 
37 
 
 and that he was carried along by it, he knew not 
 whither. The contrary of this was always true of 
 Mr. Webster; but never more true than in this 
 reply to Mr. Calhoun. That high mastery over the 
 subject, that fund of reserved power, with which 
 he always impressed his hearers, was strikingly ex- 
 hibited during the delivery of this speech, by a 
 little incident which I happened to witness, from 
 standing in the crowd near the orator. At a mo- 
 ment when the argument seemed to demand his 
 undivided attention, and when the powers of the 
 assembly were most severely taxed in following 
 him, and all were hanging on his lips, a package of 
 letters was laid on his desk by a page of the Sen- 
 ate. Without at all arresting the course of his 
 argumentation, except perhaps by a slight abate- 
 ment of the fluency of his utterance, he opened 
 his letters, and cast his eye over them, so as appa- 
 rently to possess himself of their chief contents, 
 by a perfectly contemporaneous process of thought; 
 and thus gave demonstration that, great as were 
 the occasion and the subject, he had mind enough 
 for them, and to spare. 
 
 The immediate effect of Mr. Webster's oratory 
 will never be forgotten by any by whom it has 
 ever been experienced or witnessed. Even when 
 
38 
 
 most purely argumentative it held the hearer spell- 
 bound. When it rose to a higher and more impas- 
 sioned strain, it swept over the audience lilte a 
 rushing wind. And at the close of his great efforts, 
 it was not at all unusual for him to leave his hear- 
 ers in that state of su^Dernatural stillness and breath- 
 less enchantment, which was once produced by Mr. 
 Sheridan, and once by Lord Brougham, and here 
 and there, in the course of centuries, by some other 
 great orator, and which, whenever it occurs, is al- 
 ways regarded as the highest triumph of eloquence. 
 
 From contemplating Mr. Webster as an orator 
 we are naturally led to survey the vast field of his 
 puhlic services, as it was more in this character than 
 in any other, that he accomplished whatever was 
 done by him for the good of his country. 
 
 And first of all, it was no small advantage to the 
 country to be represented, at home and abroad, by 
 an organ so admirably endowed and accomplished. 
 Born as he was under the American flag, s^Dringing 
 from the very heart of American life, formed in- 
 tellectually and morally by American influences, 
 and embodying American ideas, he showed to the 
 world what these were capable of j^roducing. By 
 his own greatness he reflected honor on the system 
 
39 
 
 which he represented, and rendered ilKistrious the 
 age and country which had given him birth. He 
 redeemed his native soil from the reproach of hav- 
 ing been smitten with intellectual sterility, in being 
 dissevered from the seats of European civilization, 
 and furnished to every countryman of his who 
 went abroad, a passport to favor which he was al- 
 ways proud to present, and which was never chal- 
 lenged. 
 
 But this was not all. While he honored the 
 American character by his manner of conceiving 
 and representing it on the stage of the world, he at 
 the same time did much for its improvement and 
 elevation. It is a remark of general truth, that 
 the education of a people proceeds from its great 
 men. And this remark was never more true than 
 in this instance. The American people owe to the 
 lessons of Daniel Webster the best part of the in- 
 struction they have received in the principles of 
 their Constitution, and their rights and duties un- 
 der it. They owe to his love of the Union and 
 his sense of its value, inculcated upon them so fer- 
 vently and so incessantly, whether they would hear 
 or forbear, very much of the strength of that feel- 
 ing of nationality, which holds together so firmly 
 those who are repelled from each other by so many 
 
40 
 
 discordant interests. In several well-known in- 
 stances the whole previous sentiment of the coun- 
 try on great national questions, has been revolu- 
 tionized by him at a single blow. And the habitual 
 mode of thinking and feeling of the great mass of 
 the people on all matters involving the general 
 welfare, — the great public opinion of the country, 
 — has been in j)ast times formed and fashioned, and 
 is at present controlled and guided, by his influence, 
 in a far greater degree than by any other agency. 
 Mr. Webster was not a writer, in the strict sense 
 of this term. He never addressed the public imme- 
 diately as an aidJior. He never wrote a hook in his 
 life. But probably no author ever held for so long 
 a time so intimate a relation with the public, or ex- 
 ercised so transforming a power over it. His 
 speeches, as they fell from his lips, were caught up 
 by the press, and transferred to the page, and be- 
 came the popular literature of the hour, and were 
 read in every counting-room, in every work-shop, 
 in every dwelling-house, throughout the land, and 
 were then formed into a permanent library of po- 
 litical wisdom and patriotic sentiment. And we 
 have only to consider what these speeches were, 
 which have furnished for so many years a principal 
 part of the reading and study of the people ; — how 
 
41 
 
 pure in style, how profound in thought, how vari- 
 ous in their topics, how frank and honest, manly 
 and independent, noble and elevated in their tone, 
 how free from the corrupting flatteries and mis- 
 leading sophistries of the demagogue, how full of 
 the love of liberty and progress on the one hand, 
 and on the other, how fraught with veneration for 
 law, and imbued with the spirit of a wise conserva- 
 tism ; — we have only to consider this, in order to 
 form some estimate of the good influence which he 
 has exerted, and to see how ill we could afford to 
 lose that part of our national education which we 
 have received from him. 
 
 But it is impossible to give any just account of 
 the good which has been done by Mr. Webster, 
 without descending somewhat more into particulars. 
 Let it be considered, then, that there is not one of 
 the great fundamental interests of society, which 
 has not received from him, at some time or other, 
 some specific, signal, and vital service, by which it 
 has been laid under greater obligations to him than 
 to any other man. 
 
 Where is the man to whom the cause of learning 
 owes so much as to Daniel Webster ! By his cele- 
 brated argument before the Supreme Court in the 
 case of Dartmouth College, the law was settled 
 
 6 
 
42 
 
 which secures to Learning the indejienclence of her 
 institutions, and the free enjoyment of their char- 
 tered jirivileges. It was owing to this argument, 
 and to the remarkable abihty and ^^athetic earnest- 
 ness with which it was enforced, beyond all ques- 
 tion, that the law was so settled. Henceforward 
 our Colleges and Universities, holding their proper- 
 ty by the same firm legal tenure as individuals, 
 may justly look to him almost as a second founder. 
 "The battle fought, and the victory won, in that 
 particular case," says Mr. Everett, " were fought 
 and gained for every College and University, for 
 every Academy and School in the United States, 
 endowed with property, or possessed of chartered 
 rights." 
 
 Of the same paramount nature is the service 
 rendered by Mr. Webster to the cause of religion, 
 in his argument on the validity of Girard's will, 
 and in his constant, emphatic public testimony to 
 the importance of Christianity, in accordance with 
 the opinions there expressed. It is something to 
 say of a public man, in an age like this, as has been 
 said of him, that no word of profaneness or irrever- 
 ence ever fell from his lips. But it is not enough 
 to say for Mr. Webster. Always and everywhere, 
 alike in pubHc and in private, he uttered himself 
 
43 
 
 in a full, direct, open and bold vindication of the 
 truth of the Christian rehgion, and its importance 
 to the success of our free institutions, representing 
 it as the grand condition on which depends the 
 realization of the hopes of the American patriot. 
 All that he has said on this subject, if collected to- 
 gether, would make a large volume. And I can 
 think of no one thing which, at the present mo- 
 ment, is exerting an influence so favorable to reli- 
 gion on the great public mind of this country, as 
 this earnest testimony of Mr. Webster in its behalf, 
 repeated as it has been in every possible form, and 
 now rehearsed from every pulpit, and spread broad- 
 cast in the newspapers over the whole length and 
 breadth of the land. Not many wise, mot many 
 mighty are called. But when one of the very 
 wisest and the very mightiest is called, and pro- 
 foundly feels and openly acknowledges the trans- 
 cendent claims of religion, it is an argument not 
 easily disposed of by a scoffing and conceited infi- 
 dehty. When such a man as Daniel Webster lays 
 his hand on the Bible, and says. This is the BooJc, it 
 is worth more than whole volumes of Evidences. 
 Another of our great vital interests is that of 
 law. And there is no lawyer who will not join 
 with Mr. Chflford of Massachusetts, in saying, that 
 
44 
 
 it is scarcely possible to measure the magnitude of 
 the debt which the law owes to Mr. Webster. To 
 say nothing of the fact that he stood foremost in 
 the ordinary i^ractice of the law, and illustrated by 
 his genius all its ordinary branches, he entered on 
 a field of Jurisprudence such as has existed no 
 where else, in any age of the world ; and was the 
 founder of a school or system of law, determining 
 the new and delicate relations of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment to particular States and to individuals; and 
 has thus provided for the peaceable settlement, by 
 regular judicial process, of those countless questions 
 of conflicting claims and jurisdictions, which must 
 otherwise have awaited, here as elsewhere in the 
 world, the dreadful arbitrament of the sword. 
 
 But eminent as were the services rendered by 
 Mr. Webster to the great interests of learning, 
 religion and law, they are not still the services 
 upon which his claims to the gratitude of his coun- 
 trymen principally repose. The services already 
 enumerated were for the most part performed by 
 him in his earher and professional career, and 
 though brilliant enough to eclipse any ordinary 
 fame, are themselves completely thrown into the 
 shade by the services rendered by him in his later 
 and higher career as a diplomatist and statesman. 
 
45 
 
 On liis accession to the office of Secretary of 
 State in 1841, he found the country on the verge 
 of war with the most powerful nation of the world. 
 The old questions of fifty years standing respecting 
 the North-eastern boundary seemed fast ripening 
 to bloody issues, and at the same time new sources 
 of irritation were occurring on the high seas and 
 along the Canadian frontier. These difficulties, 
 old and new, were brought to a satisfactory settle- 
 ment in the Treaty of Washington. And the 
 credit of this great treaty, by which the honor and 
 interest of the country were asserted, and at the 
 same time the peace of the w^orld maintained, is 
 due mainly to the negotiator on the American side. 
 It was doubtless owing to the confidence inspired 
 by his character, that Great Britain was disposed, 
 after so many failures, to enter upon a new nego- 
 tiation. And the delicate trust of conducting it 
 was committed by the English Government to one 
 known as a personal friend of Mr. Webster, and 
 was undertaken by him solely and professedly on 
 the ground of his "reliance upon the honorable 
 and upright character of the American Secretary." 
 How amply this confidence was justified by Mr. 
 Webster ; how nobly he rose above the low cun- 
 ning and chicanery of a hacknied diplomacy ; with 
 
46 
 
 what high statesmanship he provided against possi- 
 ble contingencies, and throngh difficulties which 
 had baffled all previous attempts at settlement, 
 secured a result advantageous to all the parties 
 concerned ; all this is sufficiently kno^vn to the 
 country and to the world. It is well remarked by 
 the editor of Mr. Webster's diplomatic papers, that 
 the just measure of praise due to the American 
 negotiator may be estimated by reflecting, what 
 would have been our condition, if instead of a war 
 with Mexico, we had been involved in a war with 
 Great Britain. 
 
 But besides these services of Mr. Webster in 
 adjusting our foreign relations, and far superior to 
 them in dignity and importance, are his services in 
 defending the Government at home. During the 
 eventful period of his public life, several successive 
 crises have arisen in which the Constitution and 
 the Union have been seriously threatened from 
 different and opposite quarters. — The prevalence at 
 the South, some twenty years ago, of a violent 
 hostility to the Protective Policy dictated by North- 
 ern interests, gave birth to the extreme doctrines 
 of State rights and Nullification. With Hayne and 
 Calhoun for their champions, it seemed for a mo- 
 ment as if they were about to overrun the country 
 
47 
 
 and override the Government. They advanced 
 under color of a specious theory, by which the 
 Constitution is represented as a compact between 
 sovereign States, liable to be dissolved at their op- 
 tion. By this theory the good work accomplished 
 by the framers of the Constitution was wholly un- 
 done, and the flood-gates were opened for all the 
 evils of the old Confederacy, in a ten-fold aggra- 
 vated form. Had this theory been established, it is 
 difficult even for the imagination to dej)ict the 
 miseries Avhich must inevitably have ensued. That 
 it was not established, and all its train of fatal con- 
 sequences with it, is owing, under God, to the stand 
 then taken by Mr. Webster. No other man was 
 equal to the emergency. But no sooner did it 
 arise, than he was ready for it, armed and equipped 
 at all points, as if his whole life had been spent in 
 preparing for it. In two successive encounters, in 
 fair and open field, with the odds against him, he 
 met the two great champions of Nullification, and 
 gave them and their doctrine a hopeless overthrow. 
 In looking back to the ever memorable contests of 
 that period, we are apt, in our admiration of the 
 prowess of the field, to forget the momentous inter- 
 ests at stake. We are apt to think more of that 
 eloquence which shook the Capitol, and entranced 
 
48 
 
 the nation, than of that profound research which 
 laid bare, for the first time, the deep foundations of 
 our Government in the will of the whole people. 
 But after all, Mr. Webster is likely to be remem- 
 bered and estimated by his grateful countrymen in 
 after times, far less as an orator, than as the Ex- 
 pounder and Defender of the Constitution, and the 
 chosen instrument, in the hand of Providence, in 
 effecting the deliverance of the country from the 
 evils with which it was threatened. 
 
 At a later period, and nearer to our own times, 
 the prevalence at the North of hostility to Southern 
 institutions, gave birth to projects by which the 
 Union and the Constitution were again endangered ; 
 — the Union, by fostering a spirit of desperate sec- 
 tional animosity ; — the Constitution, by trampling 
 on the guarantees established by it for the protec- 
 tion of the rights of the slave-holding States. 
 Through the excitement consequent upon these 
 projects, the public business was brought to a stand, 
 and the public mind dismayed with the apprehen- 
 sion of coming evils. In this crisis the veteran 
 Senator from Massachusetts was seen again at his 
 post, looking somewhat older, but showing no 
 abatement either in the power of his mind, or the 
 fire of his patriotism. He stood where he always 
 
49 
 
 had stood, and where he had promised he should al- 
 ways be found, for the Constitution and the Union. 
 The assailants came from the opposite point of the 
 compass, and so he had fxced about; but he had not 
 changed sides. It was no longer the gay and 
 prancing chivalry of the South which he had to 
 encounter ; but a sturdy and multitudinous North- 
 ern constituency, and foremost among them his old 
 friends from Massachusetts, with whom and for 
 whom he had stood so long, now advancing under 
 new leaders, and impelled to constantly new en- 
 croachments by the aggressive force of moral and 
 religious convictions. The impending contest im- 
 posed upon him the severest trial of his life. It 
 required his parting with old friends, for whom he 
 cherished profound esteem, and whose animating 
 convictions on the great question at issue were 
 deeply shared by him, in everything but in their 
 threatening aspect to the Union and the Constitu- 
 tion. But so long as he beheved these to be in 
 danger, it concerned him little who were friends or 
 foes. In the similar crisis just referred to, he had 
 united in the defence of the Constitution with an 
 administration, to the general policy of which he 
 was strongly opposed, and against which he had al- 
 ways acted ; and he was prepared now, in a case 
 
 7 
 
50 
 
 equally involving the stability of the Government, 
 to separate from those, whose general policy he ap- 
 proved and had always supported. He foresaw 
 the storm he was raising ; but it did not move him 
 from his purpose. He was willing now, as before, 
 to take his chance among those upon whom blows 
 might fall first and fall thickest. And accordingly 
 on the 7th of March his voice was again heard, in 
 tones as earnest as ever came from his lips, speaking 
 not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, 
 but as an American, and as a member of the Senate 
 of the United States. «He felt," he said, " that he 
 had a duty to perform, a part to act, not for his own 
 security, for he was looking out for no fragment 
 upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck 
 there must be ; but for the good of the whole, for 
 the preservation of the Union." It has turned out 
 here, as before, that the post of danger, assumed 
 voluntarily in the spirit of self-sacrifice, became the 
 post of honor. By a singular felicity of fortune, 
 Mr. Webster became, the second time, the principal 
 instrument of a deliverance as signal as any which 
 has occurred in the history of the nation. By 
 common consent he is entitled to the principal 
 credit of this great settlement, in which the North 
 and the South have once more embraced each other 
 
51 
 
 with fraternal affection, and under which the coun- 
 try has resiuned its wonted career of peace and 
 prosperity. 
 
 With the departure of this great Statesman, the 
 second great epoch of American history is brought 
 to a close. In the first period, the Constitution 
 was established by the wisdom of the fathers of the 
 Kepublic. It devolved on the second period to 
 guard the new institute amid the shocks and con- 
 vulsions of the political world attendant on its 
 establishment, to develop its latent principles, to 
 define and limit its powers, to adjust the relations 
 of its several parts, to supply unforeseen deficiencies 
 and provide for future contingencies, to cause it to 
 be obeyed and loved at home, and known and re- 
 spected abroad, and above all to deliver it down 
 unimpaired to after times. And this was precisely 
 the work for which Mr. Webster appears to have 
 been raised up by Providence, and for which he 
 was exactly fitted. It has been laid to his charge, 
 that he himself founded no great organizations to 
 bind him to the future. He found already estab- 
 lished all the great organizations of society ; and 
 he saw no occasion either to add others to them, or 
 
52 
 
 to set them aside, to make place for those of his 
 own contrivance. From the whole class of political 
 schemers and radical reformers, he was separated by 
 the force of a temperament fundamentally conser- 
 vative. He received the institutions delivered 
 down by our fathers as a sacred trust, to be im- 
 proved perhaps where they might be imperfect, 
 or to be modified with a wise and reverent cau- 
 tion, as new circumstances might arise, but at all 
 hazards to be maintained, in their substance and 
 spirit, for the good of our own and coming genera- 
 tions. This office, civitatem jam conditam conservare, 
 was the only one to which he felt himself to be 
 called. If it was an office second in dignity to that 
 of the founders, it was still an office arduous enough 
 to task all his powers, and glorious enough to fill 
 his highest ambition. To this office, according to 
 the elevated conception which he had formed of its 
 duties, he devoted himself, in the fear of God, 
 through a long Hfe, up to the last hour of it. And 
 nobly was it discharged! That which was com- 
 mitted to him, in trust for posterity, he had kept. 
 When his eyes were turned for the last time to be- 
 hold the sun in the heavens, he saw, as he had 
 prayed he might, " the gorgeous ensign of the Re- 
 
53 
 
 public still full high advanced, not a stripe erased, 
 not a star obscured." His mission of preserving, 
 through this long and doubtful period of experi- 
 ment, a Constitution of Government affecting the 
 present happiness of millions, and the future desti- 
 nies of the whole human family, was now ended. — 
 Well done, good and faithful servant, is the verdict of 
 his country, and we cannot doubt of that higher 
 tribunal before which he has gone to appear. 
 
 In that third period which is now dawning 
 upon us with doubtful portents, our safety lies in 
 maintaining the Constitution, as established by its 
 framers in the first period, and as deUvered down 
 to us, through the second, with the expositions of 
 its great defender. Happy will it be for us, if on 
 the withdrawal of his wise and conservative care, 
 the great wheel of political movement, (to use one 
 of his own figures,) hitherto so guarded and regular 
 in its rotation, shall not be at once unduly accele- 
 rated, and take fire, like the chariotrwheels in the 
 races of antiquity, with the rapidity of its own 
 motion ! Happy will it be for us, if the great prin- 
 ciples inculcated by Mr. Webster during his whole 
 life, shall be remembered by us now that he has 
 gone ; and the counsels and admonitions which he 
 
54 
 
 has so recently addressed to us, shall be faithfully 
 heeded ! 
 
 It will l3e in vain that we shall seek to immor- 
 talize his features and his form in marble and in 
 bronze, if we forget his doctrines and his precepts. 
 It will be in vain that we shall erect his monument, 
 and garnish his sepulchre, if we disclaim his maxims 
 and decline from his principles. Fruitless to him 
 are all these tardy honors decreed to him by a Re- 
 public, now indeed grateful and repentant, but too 
 late. The highest splendors of earthty station, 
 eclipsed in his view by a glory which excels them 
 all, can no longer jDrovoke a sigh or a regret. But 
 if earth's unsubstantial splendors have ceased to at- 
 tract his regard, not so the great cause of human 
 progress and happiness, not so the great institu- 
 tions of Law and Religion, by which alone that pro- 
 gress and happiness can be secured. Seated on 
 that mythic cloud, by which he has already been 
 snatched from the earth, and borne aloft to the 
 sphere of the immortals, methinks he may still be 
 seen watching, with guardian care, over these great 
 institutions to which his life was devoted, still 
 frowning as aforetime, with the blackness of mid- 
 night, upon every project threatening them with 
 
55 
 
 evil, still smiling as aforetime, with the beauty of 
 morning, upon every design promising them advan- 
 tage, and aiding every honest effort in their behalf 
 with his prayer and benediction. 
 
\ 
 
 W 73 H 
 
© 
 
 EULOGY 
 
 ON 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTEE. 
 
 BY LEONARD WOODS, JR., D. D 
 
 ® . . © 
 

 
 
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