E340 
 ,.W4 P22 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 DDDD5Dai33b 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 /\.-J<;^% %_ 
 
 

 
 
 
 * ^^ '^^ "•'^"^^ . '^ ''^ 
 
 I. < • 
 
 •'. - .1*.-^;:.% <^^y;^°- /••^i.'^-. 
 
 °\-i.;/^'/°o .,<.:aw'.%. ./..i:^-*°. 
 
 
 
 ♦ «? 
 
DISCOURSE 
 
 OCCASIONED BY THE 
 
 DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER, 
 
 PREACHED AT THE MELODEON 
 
 ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1852. 
 
 BY 
 
 J ' ! 5 > 3 » 
 
 THEODORE TimKEE, ' i' : i ' ,v, i 
 
 MINISTER OP THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGTlFGATIONAL^SOCpiyY^ IK BOSTOV. •, » , 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 BENJAMIN B. MUSSEY & CO. 
 
 No. 29, CORNHILL. 
 
 1853. 
 
 f 
 
IV . PREFACE. 
 
 If I have committed any errors, I hope they will be pointed out. 
 Fifty years hence, the character of Mr. Webster and his eminent 
 contemporaries will be better understood than now ; for we have 
 not yet all the evidence on which the final judgment of posterity 
 will rest. Thomas Hutchinson and John Adams are better known 
 now than at the day of their death ; five and twenty years hence 
 they will both be better known than at present. 
 
 Boston, March 7, 1853. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 TO THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 
 
 Gentlemen, — I address this Discourse to you in particular, 
 and by way of introduction will say a few words. 
 
 We are a young nation, three and twenty millions strong, 
 rapidly extending in our geographic spread, enlarging rapidly in 
 numerical power, and greatening our material strength with a swift- 
 ness Avhich has no example. Soon we shall spread over the whole 
 continent, and number a hundred million men. America and 
 England are but parts of the same nation, — a younger and an 
 older branch of the same great Anglo-Saxon stem. Our character 
 will affect that of the mother-country, as her good and evil still 
 influence us. Considering the important place which the Anglo- 
 Saxon tribe holds in the world at this day, — occupying one-eighth 
 part of the earth, and controlling one-sixth part of its inhabitants, 
 — the national character of England and America becomes one of 
 the great human forces which is to control the Avorld for some 
 ages to come. 
 
 In the American character there are some commanding and 
 noble qualities. We have founded some political and ecclesi- 
 astical institutions which seem to me the proudest achievements 
 of mankind in Church and State. But there are other qualities 
 in the nation's character which are mean and selfish ; we have 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 founded other institutions, or confirmed such, as we inherited, 
 which were the weakness of a former and darker age, and are 
 the shame of this. 
 
 The question comes, "Which qualities shall prevail in the charac- 
 ter and in the institutions of America, — the nohle, ox the mean 
 and selfish ? Shall America govern herself by the eternal laws, 
 as they are discerned through the conscience of mankind, or hy 
 the transient appetite of the hour, — the lust for land, for money, 
 for power, or fame 1 That is a question for you to settle ; and, 
 as you decide for God or mammon, so follows the weal or woe of 
 millions of men. Our best institutions are an experiment : shall 
 it fail ? If so, it will be through your fault. You have the power 
 to make it succeed. We have nothing to fear from any foreign 
 foe, much to dread from Wrong at home : will you sufi'er that to 
 work our overthrow 1 
 
 The two chief forms of American action are Business and 
 Politics, — the commercial and the political form. The two hum- 
 bler forms of our activity, the Church and the Press, — the 
 ecclesiastic and the literary form, — are subservient to the others. 
 Hence it becomes exceedingly important to study carefully our 
 commercial and political action, criticizing both by the Absolute 
 Right ; for they control the development of the people, and deter- 
 mine our character. The commercial and political forces of the 
 time culminate in the leading politicians, who represent those 
 forces in their persons, and direct the energies of the people to 
 evil or to good. 
 
 It is for this reason, young men, that I have spoken so many 
 times from the pulpit on the great political questions of the day, 
 and on the gfeat political men ; for this reason did I preach, and 
 now again publish, this Discourse on one of the most eminent 
 Americans of our day, — that men may be warned of the evil in 
 our Business and our State, and be guided to the Eternal Justice 
 which is the foundation of the common weal. There is a Higher 
 Law of God, written imperishably on the nature of things, and in 
 
INTRODUCTION. VU 
 
 the nature of man ; and, if this nation continually violates that 
 law, then we fall a ruin to the ground. 
 
 If there be any truth, any justice, in my counsel, I hope you 
 will be guided thereby ; and, in your commerce and politics, will 
 practise on the truth which ages confirm, that Righteousness 
 exalteth a Nation, while Injustice is a reproach to any People. 
 
 h 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 When Bossuet, who Avas himself the eagle of eloquence, 
 preached the funeral discourse on Henrietta Maria, daughter 
 of Henry the Fourth of France, and wife of Charles the 
 First of England, he had a task far easier than mine to-day. 
 She was indeed the queen of misfortunes ; the daughter of 
 a king assassinated in his own capital, and the widow of a 
 king judicially put to death in front of his own palace. Her 
 married life was bounded by the murder of her royal sire, 
 ♦and the execution of her kingly spouse ; and she died ne- 
 glected, far from kith and kin. But for that great man, who 
 in his youth was called, prophetically, a " Father of the 
 Church," the sorrows of her birth and her estate made it 
 easy to gather up the audience in his arms, to moisten the 
 faces of men with tears, to show them the nothingness of 
 mortal glory, and the beauty of eternal life. He led his 
 hearers to his conclusion that day, as the mother. lays the 
 sobbing child to her bosom to stillits grief. 
 
 To-day it is not so with me. Of all my public trials, this 
 is my most trying day. Give me your sympathies, my 
 friends; remember the difficulty of my position, — its deli- 
 cacy too. 
 
I am to speak of one of the most conspicuous men that 
 New England ever bore, — conspicuous, not by accident, 
 but by the nature of his mind, — one of her ablest intellects. 
 I am to speak of. an eminent man, of great power, in a great 
 office, one of the landmarks of politics, now laid low. He 
 seemed so great that some men thought he was himself one 
 of the institutions of America. I am to speak while his 
 departure is yet but of yesterday ; while the sombre flags 
 still float in our streets. I am no party man ; you know I 
 am not. No party is responsible for me, nor I to any one. 
 I am free to commend the good things of all parties, — their 
 great and good men ; free Hkewise to censure the evil of all 
 parties. You will not ask me to say what only suits the 
 public ear : there are a hundred to do that to-day. I do not 
 follow opinion because popular. I cannot praise a man 
 because he had great gifts, great station, and great opportu- 
 nities ; I cannot harshly censure a man for trivial mistakes. 
 You will not ask me to flatter because others flatter; to 
 condemn because the ruts of condemnation are so deep and 
 so easy to travel in. It is unjust to be ungenerous, either in 
 praise or blame : only the truth is beautiful in speech. It is 
 not reverential to treat a great man like a spoiled child. 
 Most of you are old enough to know that good and evil are. 
 both to be expected of each man. I hope you are all wise 
 enough to discriminate between right and wrong. 
 
 Give me your sympathies. This I am sure of, — I shall 
 be as tender in my judgment as a woman's love ; I will try 
 to be as fair as the justice of a man. I shall tax your lime 
 beyond even my usual wont, for I cannot crush Olympus 
 into a nut. Be not alarmed : if I tax your time the more, 
 I shall tire your patience less. Such a day as this will never 
 come again to you or me. There is no Daniel Webster left 
 to die, and Nature will not soon give us another such as he. 
 I will take care by my speech that you sit easy on your bench. 
 The theme will take care that you remember what I say. 
 
A great man is the blossom of the world ; the individual 
 and prophetic flower, parent of seeds that will be men. This 
 is the greatest work of God ; far transcending earth and 
 moon and sun, and all the material magnificence of the uni- 
 verse. It is "a little lower than the angels," and, like the 
 aloe-tree, it blooms but once an age. So we should value, 
 love, and cherish it the more. America has not many great 
 men living now, — scarce one: there have been few in her 
 history. Fertile in multitudes, she is stingy in great men, — 
 her works mainly achieved by large bodies of but common 
 men. At this day, the world has not many natural masters. 
 There is a dearth of great men. England is no better off 
 than we h6r child. Sir Robert Peel has for years been dead. 
 Wellington's soul has gone home, and left his body awaiting 
 burial. In France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, few great 
 men appear. The Revolution of 1848, which found every 
 thing else, failed because it found not them. A sad Hunga- 
 rian weeps over the hidden crown of Maria Theresa ; and a 
 sadder countenance drops a tear for the nation of Dante, and 
 the soil of Virgil and Caesar, Lucretius and Cicero. To me 
 these two seem the greatest men of Europe now. There 
 are great chemists, great geologists, great philologians ; but 
 of great men, Christendom has not many. From the highest 
 places of politics great men recede, and in all Europe no 
 kingly intellect now throbs beneath a royal crown. Even 
 Nicholas of Russia is only tall, not great. 
 
 But here let us pause a moment, and see what greatness 
 is, looking at the progressive formation of the idea of a great 
 man. In general, greatness is eminence of ability ; so there 
 are as many different forms thereof as there are qualities 
 wherein a man may be eminent. These various forms of 
 greatness should be distinctly marked, that, when we say a 
 man is great, we may know exactly what we mean. 
 
 In the rudest ages, when the body is man's only tool for 
 work or war, eminent strength of body is the thing most 
 
coveted. Then, and so long as human affairs are controlled 
 by brute force, the giant is thought to be the great map, — 
 is had in honor for his eminent brute strength. 
 
 When men have a little outgrown that period of force, 
 cunning is the quality most prized. The nimble brain out- 
 wits the heavy arm, and brings the circumvented giant to 
 the ground. He who can overreach his antagonist, plotting 
 more subtly, winning with more deceitful skill ; who can turn 
 and double on his unseen track, " can smile and smile, and 
 be a villain," — he is the great man. 
 
 Brute force is merely animal ; cunning is the animalism of 
 the intellect, — the mind's least intellectual element. As 
 men go on in their development, finding qualities iflore valu- 
 able than the strength of the lion or the subtlety of the fox, 
 they come to value higher intellectual faculties, — great 
 understanding, great imagination, great reason. Power to 
 think is then the faculty men value most ; ability to devise 
 means for attaining ends desired ; the power to originate 
 ideas, to express them in speech, to organize them into insti- 
 tutions; to organize things into a machine, men into an 
 army, or a state, or a gang of operatives ; to administer these 
 various organizations. He who is eminent in this ability is 
 thought the great man. 
 
 Rut there are qualities nobler than the mere intellect, 
 the moral, the afFectional, the religious faculties, — the power 
 of justice, of love, of holiness, of trust in God, and of obe- 
 dience to his law, — the Eternal Right. These are the 
 highest qualities of man : whoso is most eminent therein is 
 the greatest of great men. He is as much above the merely 
 intellectual great men, as they above the men of mere cun- 
 ning or of force. 
 
 Thus, then, we have four different kinds of greatness. Let 
 me name them bodily greatness, crafty greatness, intellectual 
 greatness, religious greatness. Men in different degrees of 
 development will value the different kinds of greatness. 
 
Belial cannot yet honor Christ. How can the little girl ap- 
 preciate Aristotle and Kant ? The child thinks as a child. 
 You must have manhood in you to honor it in others, even 
 to see it. 
 
 Yet how we love to honor men eminent in such modes of 
 greatness as we can understand ! Indeed, we must do so. 
 Soon as we really see a real great man, his magnetism 
 draws us, will we or no. Do any of you remember when, 
 for the first time in adult years, you stood beside the ocean, 
 or some great mountain of New Hampshire, or Virginia, or 
 Pennsylvania, or the mighty mounts that rise in Switzer- 
 land ? Do you remember what emotions came upon you at 
 the awful presence ? But if you were confronted by a man 
 of vast genius, of colossal history and achievements, im- 
 mense personal power of wisdom, justice, philanthropy, 
 religion, of mighty power of will and mighty act; if you 
 feel him as you feel the mountain and the sea, what grander 
 emotions spring up ! It is like making the acquaintance of 
 one of the elementary forces of the earth, — like associating 
 with gravitation itself ! The stiffest neck bends over : down 
 go the democratic knees ; human nature is loyal then ! A 
 New England shipmaster, wrecked on an island in the 
 Indian Sea, was seized by his conquerors, and made their 
 chief. Their captive became their king. After years of 
 rule, he managed to escape. When he once more^' visited 
 his former realm, he found that the savages had carried him 
 to heaven, and worshipped him as a god greater than their 
 fancied deities : he had revolutionized divinity, and was 
 himself enthroned as a god. Why so ? In intellectual 
 qualities, in religious qualities, he was superior to their idea 
 of God, and so they worshipped him. So loyal is human 
 nature to its great men. 
 
 Talk of Democracy! — we are all looking for a master; 
 a man manlier than we. We are always looking for a great 
 man to solve the difficulty too hard for us, to break the 
 
6 
 
 rock which lies in our way, — to represent the possibility of 
 human nature afe an ideal, and then to realize that ideal in 
 his life. Little boys in the country, working against time, 
 with stents to do, long for the passing-by of some tall bro- 
 ther, who in a few minutes shall achieve what the smaller 
 boy took hours to do. And we are all of us but little boys, 
 looking for some great brother to come and help us end our 
 tasks. 
 
 But it is not quite so easy to recognize the greatest kind 
 of greatness. A Nootka-Sound Indian would not see much 
 in Leibnitz, Newton, Socrates, or Dante ; and if a great 
 man were to come as much before us as we are before the 
 Nootka-Sounders, what should we say of him ? Why, the 
 worst names we could devise, — Infidel, Atheist, Blasphe- 
 mer, Hypocrite. Perhaps we should dig up the old cross, 
 and make a new martyr of the man posterity will worship 
 as a deity. It is the men who are up that see the rising sun, 
 not the sluggards. It takes greatness to see greatness, and 
 know it at the first; I mean to see greatness of the highest 
 kind. Bulk, anybody can see ; bulk of body or mind. The 
 loftiest form of greatness is never popular in its time. Men 
 cannot understand or receive it. Guinea negroes would 
 think a juggler a greater man than Franklin. What would 
 be thought of Martin Luther at Rome, of Washington at St. 
 Petersburg, of Fenelon among the Sacs and Foxes ? Herod 
 and Pilate were popular in their day, — men of property 
 and standing. They got nominations and honor enough. 
 Jesus of Nazareth got no nomination, got a cross between 
 two thieves, was crowned with thorns, and, when he died, 
 eleven Galileans gathered together to lament their Lord. 
 Any man can measure a walking-stick, — so many hands 
 long, and so many nails beside ; but it takes a mountain- 
 intellect to measure the Andes and Altai. 
 
 But, now and then, God creates a mighty man, who 
 greatly influences mankind. Sometimes he reaches far on 
 
into other ages. Such a man, if he be of the greatest, will, 
 by and by, unite in himself the four chief forces of society, 
 — business, politics, literature, and the church. Himself a 
 stronger force than all of these, he will at last control the 
 commercial, political, literary, and ecclesiastical action of 
 mankind. But just as he is greater than other men, in the 
 highest mood of greatness, will he at first be opposed, and 
 hated too. The tall house in the street darkens the grocer's 
 window opposite, and he must strike his light sooner than 
 before. The inferior great man does not understand the man 
 of superior modes of eminence. Sullenly the full moon at 
 morning pales her ineffectual light before the rising day. In 
 the Greek fable, jealous Saturn devours the new gods whom 
 he feared, foreseeing the day when the Olympian dynasty 
 would turn him out of heaven. To the natural man the 
 excellence of the spiritual is only foolishness. What do you 
 suppose the best educated Pharisees in Jerusalem thought of 
 Jesus ? They thought him an infidel : " He blasphemeth." 
 They called him crazy : " he hath a devil." They mocked 
 at the daily beauty of his holiness: he had "broken the 
 sabbath." They reviled at his philanthropy : it was " eating 
 with publicans and sinners." 
 
 Human nature loves to reverence great men, and often 
 honors many a little one under the mistake that he is great. 
 See how nations honor the greatest great men, — Moses, 
 Zoroaster, Socrates, Jesus — that loftiest of men ! But by 
 how many false men have we been deceived, — men whose 
 light leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind ! If a preacher 
 is a thousand years before you and me, we cannot understand 
 him. If only a hundred years of thought shall separate us, 
 there is a great gulf between the two, whereover neither 
 Dives nor Abraham, nor yet Moses himself, can pass. It is 
 a false great man often who gets possession of the pulpit, 
 with his lesson for to-day, which is no lesson ; and a false 
 great man who gets a throne, with his lesson for to-day, 
 
8 
 
 which is also no lesson. Men great in little things are sure 
 of their pay. It is all ready, subject to their order. 
 
 A little man is often mistaken for a great one. The pos- 
 session of office, of accidental renown, of imposing qualities, 
 of brilliant eloquence, often dazzles the beholder; and he 
 reverences a show. 
 
 How much a great man of the highest kind can do for us, 
 and how easy ! It is not harder for a cloud to thunder, than 
 for a chestnut in a farmer's fire to snap.. Dull Mr. Jingle 
 urges along his restive, hardmouthed donkey, besmouched 
 with mire, and wealed with many a stripe, amid the laughter 
 of the boys ; while, by his proper motion, swan-like Milton 
 flies before the faces of mankind,- which are new lit with 
 admiration at the poet's rising flight, his garlands and sing- 
 ing robes about him, till the aspiring glory transcends the 
 sight, yet leaves its track of beauty trailed across the sky. 
 
 Intellect and conscience are conversant with ideas, — with 
 absolute truth and absolute right, as the norm of conduct. 
 But, with most men, the affections are developed in advance 
 of the intellect and the conscience ; and the affections want 
 a person. In his actions, a man of great intellect embodies a 
 principle, good, or bad ; and, by the affections, men accept 
 the great intellectual man, bad or good, and with him the 
 principle he has got. 
 
 As the affections are so large in us, how delightful is it for 
 us to see a great man, honor him, love him, reverence him, 
 trust him ! Crowds of men come to look upon a hero's 
 face, who are all careless of his actions and heedless of his 
 thought ; they know not his what, nor his whence, nor his 
 whither ; his person passes for reason, justice, and religion. 
 
 They say that women have the most of this affection, and 
 so are most attachable, most swayed by persons, — least by 
 ideas. Woman's mind and conscience, and her soul, they 
 say, are easily crushed into her all-embracing heart; and 
 truth, justice, and holiness are trodden under foot by her 
 
affection, rushing towards its object. "What folly!" say 
 men. But, when a man of large intellect comes, he is wont 
 to make women of us all, and take us by the heart. Each 
 great intellectual man, if let alone, will have an influence in 
 proportion to his strength of mind and will, — the good great 
 man, the bad great man ; for as each particle of matter has 
 an attractive force, which affects all other matter, so each 
 particle of mind has an attractive force, which draws all other 
 mind. 
 
 How pleasant it is to love and reverence ! To idle men 
 how much more delightful is it than to criticize a man, take 
 him to pieces, weighing each part, and considering every 
 service done or promised, and then decide ! Men are con- 
 tinually led astray by misplaced reverence. Shall we be 
 governed by the mere instinct of veneration, uncovering to 
 every man who demands our obeisance ? Man is to rule 
 himself, and not be over-mastered by any instinct subordi- 
 nating the whole to a special part. We ought to know if 
 what we follow be real greatness or seeming greatness ; and 
 of the real greatness, of what kind it is, — eminent cun- 
 ning, eminent intellect, or eminence of religion. For men 
 ought not to gravitate passively, drawn by the bulk of big.* 
 ness, but consciously and freely to follow eminent wisdom, 
 justice, love, and faith in God. Hence it becomes exceed- 
 ingly important to study the character of all eminent men ; 
 for they represent great social forces for good or ill. 
 
 It is true, great men ought to be tried by their peers. But 
 " a cat may look upon a king," and, if she is to enter his 
 service, will do well to look before she leaps. It is dastardly 
 in a democrat to take a master with less scrutiny than he 
 would buy an ox. 
 
 Merchants watch the markets: they know what ship 
 brings corn, what hemp, what coal; how much cotton there 
 is at New York or New Orleans ; how much gold in the 
 banks. They learn these things, because they live by the 
 
10 
 
 market, and seek to get money by their trade. Politicians 
 watch the turn of the people and the coming vote, because 
 they hve by the ballot-box, and wish to get honor and office 
 by their skill. So a minister, who would guide men to 
 wisdom, justice, love, and piety, to human welfare, — he 
 must watch the great men, and know what quantity of truth, 
 of justice, of love, and of faith there is in Calhoun, Webster, 
 Clay ; because he is to live by the word of God, and only 
 asks, " Thy kingdom come ! " 
 
 What a great power is a man of large intellect ! Aristotle 
 rode on the neck of science for two thousand years, till 
 Bacon, charging down from the vantage-ground of twenty 
 centuries, with giant spear unhorsed the Stagyrite, and 
 mounted there himself; himself in turn to be unhorsed. 
 What a profound influence had Frederick in Germany for 
 half a century ! — Napoleon in Europe for the last fifty 
 years ! What an influence Sir Robert Peel and Wellington 
 have had in England for the last twenty or thirty years ! 
 Jeffierson yet leads the democracy of the United States ; the 
 dead hand of Hamilton still consolidates the several States. 
 Dead men of great intellect speak from the pulpit. Law 
 is of mortmain. In America it is above all things necessary 
 to study the men of eminent mind, even the men of eminent 
 station ; for their power is greater here than elsewhere in 
 Christendom. Money is our only material, greatness our 
 only personal nobility. In England, the influence of power- 
 ful men is checked by the great families, the great classes, 
 with their ancestral privileges consolidated into institutions, 
 and the hereditary crown. Here we have no such families; 
 historical men are not from or for such, seldom had historic fa- 
 thers, seldom leave historic sons. Tempus ferax hominiim, edax 
 hominum. Fruitful of men is time ; voracious also of men. 
 
 Even while the individual family continues rich, political 
 unity does not remain in its members, if numerous, more 
 than a single generation. Nay, it is only in families of re- 
 markable stupidity that it lasts a single age. 
 
11 
 
 In this country the swift decay of powerful families is a 
 remarkable fact. Nature produces only individuals, not 
 classes. It is a wonder how many famous Americans leave 
 no children at all. Hancock, and Samuel Adams, Wash- 
 ington, Madison, Jackson — each was a childless flower, that 
 broke off the top of the family tree, which after them dwin- 
 dled down, and at length died out. It has been so with 
 European stocks of eminent stature. Bacon, Shakspeare, 
 Leibnitz, Newton, Descartes, and Kant died and left no sign. 
 With strange self-complaisance said the first of these, " Great 
 benefactors have been childless men." Here and there an 
 American family continues to bear famous fruit, generation 
 after generation. A single New England tree, rooted far 
 off in the Marches of Wales, is yet green with life, though it 
 has twice blossomed with Presidents ; but in general, if the 
 great American leave sons, the wonder is what becomes of 
 them, — so little, they are lost, — a single needle from the 
 American pine, to strew the forest floor amid the other litter 
 of the woods. 
 
 No great families here hold great men in check. There 
 is no permanently powerful class. The mechanic is father 
 of the merchant, who will again be the grandsire of mecha- 
 nics. In thirty years, half the wealth of Boston will be in 
 the .hands of men now poor ; and, where power of money is 
 of yesterday, it is no great check to any man of large intel- 
 lect, industry, and will. Here is no hereditary power. So 
 the personal power of a great mind, for good or evil, is 
 free from that three-fold check it meets in other lands, and 
 becomes of immense importance. 
 
 Our nation is a great committee of the whole ; our State 
 is a provisional government, riches our only heritable good, 
 greatness our only personal nobility ; office is elective. To 
 the ambition of a great bad man, or the philanthropy of a 
 great good man, there is no check but the power of money 
 or numbers ; no check from great families, great classes, or 
 
12 
 
 hereditary privileges. If our man of large intellect runs up 
 hill, there is nothing to check him but the inertia of mankind ; 
 if he runs down hill, that also is on his side. 
 
 With us the great mind is amenable to no conventional 
 standard measure, as in England or Europe, — only to public 
 opinion. And that public opinion is controlled by money and 
 numbers ; for these are the two factors of the American 
 product, the multiplier and the multiplicand, — millions of 
 money, millions of men. 
 
 A great mind is like an elephant in the line "of ancient 
 battle, — the best ally, if you can keep him in the ranks, 
 fronting the right way ; but, if he turn about, he is the fatal- 
 est foe, and treads his master underneath his feet. Great 
 minds have a trick of turning round. 
 
 Taking all these things into consideration, you see how 
 important it is to scrutinize all the great men, — to know 
 their quantity and quality, — before we allow them to take 
 our heart. To do this is to measure one of the most power- 
 ful popular forces for guiding the present and shaping the 
 future. Every office is to be filled by the people's vote, — 
 that of public president and private cook. Franklin intro- 
 duced new philanthropy. to the law of nations. Washington 
 changed men's ideas of political greatness. If Napoleon the 
 Present goes unwhipped of justice, he will change those 
 ideas again ; not for the world, but for the saloons of Paris, 
 for its journals and its mob. 
 
 How different are conspicuous men to different eyes ! 
 The city corporation of Toulouse has just addressed this peti- 
 tion to Napoleon : — 
 
 "liloNSEiGNiEUK, — Thc govcmmcnt of the world by Providence is the 
 most perfect. France and Europe style you the elect of God for the 
 accomplishment of his designs. It belongs to no Constitution whatever to 
 assign a term for the divine mission with which you are entrusted. In- 
 spire yourself with this thought, — to restore to the country those tutelar 
 institutions, which form the stability of power and the dignity of na- 
 tions." 
 
13 
 
 That is a prayer addressed to the Prince President of 
 France, Avhose private vices are equalled only by his public 
 sins. How different he looks to different men ! To me he 
 is Napoleon the Little ; to the Mayor and Aldermen of Tou- 
 louse, he is the Elect of God, with irresponsible power to 
 rule as long and as badly as likes him best. "Well said Sir 
 Philip Sidney, " Spite of the ancients, there is not a piece 
 of wood in the world out of which a Mercury may not be 
 made." 
 
 It is this importance of great men which has led me to 
 speak of them so often ; not only of men great by nature, 
 but great by position on money or office, or by reputation ; 
 men substantially great, and men great by accident. Hence 
 I spoke of Dr. Channing, whose word went like morning 
 over the continents. Hence I spoke of John Quincy Adams, 
 and did not fear to point out every error I thought I dis- 
 covered in the great man's track, which ended so proudly in 
 the right ; and I did homage to all the excellence I found, 
 though it was the most unpopular excellence. Hence I 
 spoke of General Taylor ; yes, even of General Harrison, a 
 very ordinary man, but available, and accidentally in a great 
 station. You see why this ought to be done. We are a 
 young nation ; a great man easily gives us the impression of 
 his hand ; we shall harden in the fire of centuries, and keep 
 the mark. Stamp a letter on Chaldean clay, and how very 
 frail it seems ! but burn that clay in the fire, — and, though 
 Nineveh shall perish, and Babylon become a heap of ruins, 
 that brick keeps the arrow-headed letter to this day. As 
 with bricks, so with nations. 
 
 Ere long, these three and twenty millions Avill become a 
 hundred millions ; then perhaps a thousand millions, spread 
 over all the continent, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Sea. 
 It is a good thing to start with men of great religion for our 
 guides. The difference between a Moses and a Maximian 
 will be felt by many millions of men, and for many an age, 
 
14 
 
 after death has effaced both from the earth. The dead 
 hand of Moses yet circumcises every Hebrew boy ; that of 
 mediaeval doctors of divinity still clutches the clergyman by 
 the throat ; the dead barons of Runnymede even now keep 
 watch, and vindicate for us all a trial by the law of the land, 
 administered by our peers. 
 
 A man of eminent abilities may do one of two things in 
 influencing men : either he may extend himself at right 
 angles with the axis of the human march, lateralize himself, 
 spreading widely, and have a great power in his own age, 
 putting his opinion into men's heads, his will into their 
 action, and yet may never reach far onward into the future. 
 In America, he will gain power in his time, by having the 
 common sentiments and ideas, and an extraordinary power 
 to express and show their value ; great power of comprehen- 
 sion, of statement, and of will. Such a man differs from 
 others in quantity, not quality. Where all men have con- 
 siderable, he has a great deal. His power may be repre- 
 sented by two parallel lines, the one beginning where his 
 influence begins, the other where his influence ends. His 
 power will be measured by the length of the lines laterally, 
 and the distance betwixt the parallels. That is one thing. 
 
 Or a great man may extend himself forward, in the line of 
 the human march, himself a prolongation of the axis of man- 
 kind : not reaching far sideways in his own time, he reaches 
 forward immensely, his influence widening as it goes. He 
 will do this by superiority in sentiments, ideas, and actions ; 
 by eminence of justice and of affection ; by eminence of 
 religion: he will differ in quality as well as quantity, and 
 have much where the crowd has nothing at all. His power 
 also may be represented by two lines, both beginning at his 
 birth, pointing forwards, diverging from a point, reaching far 
 into the future, Avidening as they extend, containing time by 
 their stretch, and space by their spread. Jesus of Nazareth 
 was of this class : he spread laterally in his life-time, and 
 
15 
 
 took in twelve Galilean peasants and a few obscure women ; 
 now his diverging lines reach over two thousand years in 
 their stretch, and contain two hundred and sixty millions 
 of men within their spread. 
 
 So much, my friends, and so long, as preface to this 
 estimate of a great man. Daniel Webster was a man of 
 eminent abilities : for many years the favored son of New 
 England. He was seventy years old ;. nearly forty years in 
 the councils of the nation ; held high office in times of peril 
 and doubt ; had a commanding eloquence — there were two 
 million readers for every speech he spoke ; and for the last 
 two years he has had a vast influence on the opinion of 
 the North. He has done service ; spoken noble words that 
 will endure so long as English lasts. He has largely held 
 the nation's eye. His public office made his personal charac- 
 ter conspicuous. Great men have no privacy ; their bed 
 and their board are both spread in front of the sun, and their 
 private character is a public force. Let us see what he did, 
 and what he was ; what is the result for the present, what 
 for the future. 
 
 Daniel Webster was born at Salisbury, N. H. on the 
 borders of civilization, on the 18th of January, 1782. He 
 was the son of Capt. Ebenezer and Abigail Eastman Web- 
 ster. 
 
 The mother of Capt. Webster was a Miss Bachelder, of 
 Hampton, where Thomas Webster, the American founder 
 of the family, settled in 1636. She was descended from the 
 Rev. Stephen Bachiller, formerly of Lynn in Massachusetts, 
 a noted man in his time, unjustly, or otherwise, driven out 
 of the colony by the Puritans. Ebenezer Webster, in his 
 early days, lived as "boy" in the service of Col. Ebenezer 
 Stevens, of Kingston, from whom he received a "lot of 
 land " in Stevenstown, now Salisbury. In 1764 Mr. Web- 
 
16 
 
 ster built himself a log-cabin on the premises, and lighted 
 his fire. His land " lapped on " to the Avilderness ; no New 
 Englander being so near the North Star, it is said. The 
 family was any thing but rich, living first in a log-cabin, then 
 in a frame-house, and some time keeping tavern. 
 
 The father was a soldier of the French \var, and in the 
 Revolution; a great, brave, big, brawny man, "high- 
 breasted and broad-shouldered," " with heavy eyebrows," 
 and " a heart which»he seemed to have borrowed from a 
 lion ; " "a dark man," so black that " you could not tell 
 when his face was covered with gunpowder ; " six feet high, 
 and both in look and manners " uncommon rough." He 
 was a shifty man of many functions, — a farmer, a saw- 
 miller, " something of a blacksmith," a captain in the early 
 part of the Revolutionary War, a colonel of militia, repre- 
 sentative and senator in the New Hampshire legislature, and 
 finally Judge of the Court of Common Pleas ; yet " he never 
 saw the inside of a school-house." In his early married life, 
 food sometimes failed on the rough farm : then the stout 
 man and his neighbors took to the woods, and brought 
 home many a fat buck in their day. 
 
 The riiother, one of the " black Eastmans," was a quite 
 superior woman. It is often so. When virtue leaps high 
 in the public fountain, you seek for the lofty spring of 
 nobleness, and find it far off in the dear breast of some 
 mother, who melted the snows of winter, and condensed the 
 summer's dew into fair, sweet humanity, which now glad- 
 dens the face of man in all the city streets. Bulk is bearded 
 and masculine ; niceness is of woman's gendering. 
 
 Daniel Webster was fortunate in the outward circum- 
 stances of his birth and breeding. He came from that class 
 in society whence almost all the great men of America have 
 come, — the two Adamses, Washington, Hancock, JefTerson, 
 Jackson, Clay, and almost every living notable of our time. 
 New Hampshire herself has furnished a large number of self- 
 
17 
 
 reliant and able-headed men, who have fought their way in 
 the world with their own fist, and won eminent stations at 
 the last. The little, rough State breeds professors and sena- 
 tors, merchants and hardy lawyers, in singular profusion. 
 Our Hercules was also cradled on the ground. When he 
 visited the West, a few years ago, an emigrant from New 
 Hampshire met him in Ohio, recognized him, and asked, 
 " Is this the son of Capt, Webster ? " " It is, indeed," said 
 the great man. " What ! " said he, " is this the little black 
 Dan that used to water the horses?" And the great Daniel 
 Webster said, " It is the little black Dan that used to water 
 the horses." He was proud of his history. If a man finds 
 the way alone, should he not be proud of having found the 
 Avay, and got out of the Avoods ? 
 
 He had small opportunities for academical education. 
 'The schoolmaster was "abroad" in New Hampshire; he 
 was seldom at home in Salisbury. Only two or three 
 months in the year was there a school ; often, only a mova- 
 ble school, that ark of the Lord, shifting from place to 
 place. Sometimes it was two or three miles from Capt. 
 Webster's. Once it was stationary in a log-house. Thither 
 weat Daniel Webster, " carrying his dinner in a tin pail," a 
 brave, bright boy: " The child is father of the man," The 
 common-school of America is the cradle of all her greatness. 
 How many Presidents has she therein rocked to vigorous 
 manhood ! But Mr. Webster's school-time was much inter- 
 rupted : there were "chores to be done" at home; the 
 saw-mill to be tended in winter ; and, in summer, Daniel 
 "must ride horse to plough;" and in planting-time, and hay- 
 time, and harvest, have many a day stolen from his scanty 
 seed-time of learning. In his father's tavern-barn, the 
 fature Secretary gave a rough currying, " after the fashion 
 of the times," to the sorry horse of many a traveller, and in 
 the yard of the inn yoked the oxen of many a New Hamp- 
 shire teamster. " Cast the bantling on the rocks." 
 4 
 
18 
 
 When fourteen years old, he went to Phillips Academy * 
 at Exeter for a few months ; then to study with Rev. Mr. 
 Wood at Boscawen, paying a " dollar a week " for the 
 food of the body and for the food of the mind. In the 
 warm weather, " Daniel went barefoot, and wore tow trou- 
 sers and a tow shirt, his only garments at that season," 
 spun, woven, and made up by his diligent mother. " He 
 helped do the things " about Mr. Wood's barn and wood- 
 pile, and so diminished the pecuniary burthen of his father. 
 But Mr. Wood had small Latin and less Greek, and only 
 taught what he knew. Daniel was an ambitious boy, and 
 apt to learn. Men wonder that some men can do so much 
 with so little outward furniture. The wonder is the other 
 way. He was more college than the college itself, and 
 had a university in his head. It takes time, and the sweat 
 of oxen, and the shouting of drivers, goading and whip- 
 ping, to get a cart-load of cider to the top of Mount 
 Washington ; .but the eagle flies there on his own wide 
 wings, and asks no help. Daniel Webster had little aca- 
 demic furniture to help him. He had the mountains of 
 New Hampshire, and his own great mountain of a head. 
 Was that a bad outfit ? No millionnaire can buy it for a 
 booby-son. 
 
 There was a British sailor, with a wife but no child, an old 
 " man-of-war's-man " living hard by Capt. Webster's, fond of 
 fishing and hunting, of hearing the newspapers read, and of 
 telling his stories to all comers. He had considerable influ- 
 ence on the young boy, and never wore out of his memory. 
 
 There was a small social library at Salisbury, whence a 
 bright boy could easily draw the water of life for his intel- 
 
 ♦ At the commemoration of Mr. Abbott's fiftieth anniversary as Preceptor 
 of Phillips Academy, a time ■when " English was of no more account at Exeter 
 than silver at Jerusalem in the days of King Solomon," Mr. Abbott sat 
 between ^Ir. Webster and Mr. Everett, both of them his former pupils. Mr. 
 John P. Hale, in his neat speech, said, •' If you had done nothing else but 
 instruct these two, you might say, Exegi monumentum ^re pekennius. 
 
19 
 
 lect ; at home was the Farmers' Almanac, with its riddles 
 and "poetry," Watts's Hymns and the Bible, the insepa- 
 rable companion of the New England man. Daniel was 
 fond of poetry, and, before he was ten years old, knew dear 
 old Isaac Watts all by heart. He thought all books were to 
 be got by heart. I said he loved to learn. One day his 
 father said to him, " I shall send you to college, Daniel ; " 
 and Daniel laid his head on his father's shoulder, and wept 
 right out. In reading and spelling he surpgissed his teacher ; 
 but his hard hands did not take kindly to writing, and the' 
 schoolmaster told him his " fingers were destined to the 
 plough-tail." 
 
 He was not a strong boy, was." a crying baby " that wor- 
 ried his mother; but a neighbor " prophesied," "You will take 
 great comfort in him one day." As he grew up, he was " the 
 slimmest of the family," a farmer's youngest boy, and " not 
 good for much." He did not love work. It Avas these 
 peculiarities which decided Capt. Webster to send Daniel to 
 college. 
 
 The time came for him to go to college. His father 
 once carried him to Dartmouth in a wagon. On the way 
 thither, they passed a spot which Capt. Webster remembered 
 right well. " When you were a little baby," said he, " in 
 the winter we were out of provisions, I went into the woods 
 with the gun to find something to eat. In that spot yon- 
 der, then all covered with woods, I found a herd of deer. 
 The snow was very deep, and they had made themselves a 
 pe«, and were crowded together in great numbers. As they 
 could not get out, I took my choice, and picked out a fine, 
 fat stag. I walked round and looked at him, with my knife 
 in my hand. As I looked the noble fellow in the face, the 
 great tears rolled down his cheeks, and I could not touch 
 him. But I thought of you, Daniel, and your mother, and 
 the rest of the little ones, and carried home the deer." 
 
 He can hardly be said to have "entered college:" he only 
 
20 
 
 "broke in," so slenderly was he furnished with elementary 
 knowledge. This deficiency of elementary instruction in 
 the classic tongues and in mathematics was a sad misfor- 
 tune in his later life. 
 
 At college, like so many other New Hampshire boys, he 
 "paid his own way," keeping school in the vacation. One 
 year he paid his board by "doing the hterature" for a 
 weekly newspaper. He graduated at Dartmouth in his 
 twentieth year, largely distinguished, though he scorned his 
 degree; and, when the faculty gave him his diploma, he tore 
 it to pieces in the college-yard, in presence of some of his 
 mates, it is said, and trod it under foot. 
 
 When he graduated, he was apparently of a feeble consti- 
 tution, " long, slender, pale, and all eyes," with " teeth as 
 white as a hound's;" thick, black hair clustered about his 
 ample forehead. At first he designed to study theology, but 
 his father's better judgment overruled the thought. 
 
 After graduating, he continued to fight for his education, 
 studying law with one hand, keeping school with the other, 
 and yet finding a third hand — this Yankee Briareus — to 
 serve as Register of Deeds. This he did at Fryeburg in 
 Maine, borrowing a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries, 
 which he was too poor to buy. In a long winter-evening, by 
 copying two deeds, he could earn fifty cents. He used his 
 money, thus severely earned, to help his older brother, 
 Ezekiel, " Black Zeke," as he was called, to college. Both 
 were " heinously unprovided." 
 
 Then he came to Boston, with no letters of introduction, 
 raw, awkward, and shabby in his dress, his rough trousers 
 ceasing a long distance above his feet. He sought admit- 
 tance as a clerk to more than one office before he found a 
 place; an eminent lawyer, rudely turning him off, "would 
 not have such a fellow in the office ! " Mr. Gore, a man of 
 large reputation, took in the unprotected youth, who "came 
 to work, not to play." Here he struggled m ith poverty and 
 
21 
 
 the law. Ezekiel, not yet graduated, came also and took 
 a school in Short-street. Daniel helped his brother in the 
 school. Edward Everett was one of the pupils, a "mar- 
 vellous boy," with no equal, it was thought, in all New 
 England, making the promise he has since fulfilled. 
 
 Mr. Webster was admitted to the bar in 1805, with a 
 prophecy of eminence from Mr. Gore, — a prophecy which 
 might easily be made: such a head was its own fortune- 
 teller. His legal studies over, refusing a lucrative office, he 
 settled down as a lawyer at Boscawen, in New Hampshire. 
 Thence went to Portsmouth in 1807, a lawyer of large 
 talents, getting rapidly into practice ; " known all over the 
 State of New Hampshire," known also in Massachusetts. 
 He attended to literature, wrote papers in the Monthly An- 
 thology, a periodical published in the "Athens of America" 
 
 — so Boston was then called. He printed a rhymed version 
 of some of the odes of Horace, and wrote largely for the 
 " Portsmouth Oracle." 
 
 In 1808 he married Miss Grace Fletcher, an attractive 
 and beautiful woman, one year older than himself, the daugh- 
 ter of the worthy minister of Hopkinton, N. H. By this 
 marriage he was the father of two daughters and two sons. 
 But, alas for'him ! this amiable and beloved woman ceased 
 to be mortal in 1828. 
 
 In 1812, when thirty years of age, he was elected to the 
 House of Representatives. In 1814 his house was burned, 
 
 — a great loss to the young man, never thrifty, and then 
 struggling for an estate. He determined to quit New Hamp- 
 shire, and seek a place in some more congenial spot. New 
 Hampshire breeds great lawyers, but not great fortunes. 
 He hesitated for a while between Boston and Albany. " He 
 doubted ; " so he wrote to a friend, if he " could make a 
 living in Boston." But he concluded to try; and in 1816 
 he removed to Boston, in the State which had required his 
 ancestor, Rev. Stephen BachiUer, "to forbeare exercising 
 
22 
 
 his gifts as a pastor or teacher publiquely in the Pattent," 
 " for his contempt of authority, and till some scandles be 
 removed." * 
 
 In 1820, then thirty-eight years old, he is a member of 
 the Massachusetts Convention, and is one of the leading 
 members there ; provoking the jealousy, but at the same time 
 distancing the rivalry, of young men Boston born and Cam- 
 bridge bred. His light, taken from under the New Hampshire 
 bushel at Portsmouth, could not be hid in Boston. It gives 
 light to all that enter the house. In 1822 he was elected to 
 Congress from Boston ; in 1827, to the Senate of the United 
 States. In 1841 he was Secretary of State ; again a private 
 citizen in 1843; in the Senate in 1845, and Secretary of 
 State in 1850, where he continued, until, " on the 24th of 
 October, 1852, all that was mortal of Daniel Webster was 
 no more ! " 
 
 He was ten days in the General Court of Massachusetts ; 
 a few weeks in her Convention ; eight years Representative 
 in Congress ; nineteen. Senator ; five. Secretary of State. 
 Such is a condensed map of his outward history. 
 
 Look next at the Headlands of his life. Here I shall 
 speak of his deeds and words as a citizen and public officer. 
 
 He was a great lawyer, engaged in many of the most im- 
 portant cases during the last forty years ; but, in the briefness 
 of a sermon, I must pass by his labors in the law. 
 
 I know that much of his present reputation depends on 
 his achievements as a lawyer ; as an " expounder of the Con- 
 stitution." Unfortunately, it is not possible for me to say 
 how much credit belongs to Mr. Webster for his constitu- 
 tional arguments, and how much to the late Judge Story. 
 The publication of the correspondence between these gentle- 
 
 • Records of Mass. General Court, Oct. 3, 1632. 
 
23 
 
 men ^yill perhaps help settle the matter ; but still much 
 exact legal information was often given by word of mouth, 
 during personal interviews, and that must for ever remain 
 hidden from all but him who gave and him who took. How- 
 ever, from 1816 to 1842, Mr. Webster was in the habit of 
 drawing from that deep and copious well of legal know- 
 ledge, whenever his own bucket was dry. Mr. Justice 
 Story was the Jupiter Pluvius from whom Mr. Webster often 
 sought to elicit peculiar thunder for his speeches, and private 
 rain for his own public tanks of laAv. The statesman got the 
 lawyer to draft bills, to make suggestions, to furnish facts, 
 precedents, law, and ideas. He went on this aquilician 
 business, asking aid, now in a " bankruptcy bill," in 1816 
 and 1825 ; then in questions of the law of nations, in 
 1827 ; next in matters of criminal law in 1830 ; then of con- 
 stitutional law in 1832 ; then in relation to the North- 
 eastern boundary in 1838 ; in matters of international law 
 again, in his negotiations with Lord Ashburton, in 1842. 
 " You can do more for me than all the rest of the world," 
 wrote the Secretary of State, April 9, 1842, " because you 
 can give me the lights I most want; and, if you .furnish 
 them, I shall be confident that they will be true lights. I 
 shall trouble you greatly the next three months." And 
 again, July 16, 1842, he writes, '•'■Nobody hut yourself can do 
 tJiisy But, alas ! in his la'ter years the beneficiary sought to 
 conceal the source of his supplies. Jupiter Pluvius had him- 
 self been summoned before the court of the Higher Law. 
 
 Much of Mr. Webster's fame as a Constitutional lawyer 
 rests on his celebrated argument in the Dartmouth College 
 case. But it is easy to see that the facts, the law, the prece- 
 dents, the ideas, and the conclusions of that argument, had 
 almost all of them been presented by Messrs. Mason and 
 Smith in the previous trial of the case.* 
 
 * See the Report of the Case of the Trustees of Dartmouth College, &c. 
 Portsmouth, N. H. [1819.] 
 
24 
 
 Let me speak of the public acts of Mr. Webster in his 
 capacity as a private citizen. Here I shall speak of him 
 chiefly as a public orator. 
 
 Two juvenile orations of his are still preserved, delivered 
 "while he was yet a lad in college.* One is a fourth of July 
 oration, — a performance good enough for a lad of eighteen, 
 but hardly indicating the talents of its author. The senti- 
 ments probably belong to the neighborhood, and the diction 
 to the authorities of the college : — 
 
 " Fair Science, too, holds her gentle empire amongst us, and almost 
 innumerable altars are raised to her divinity from Brunswick to Florida. 
 Yale, Providence, and Harvard now grace our land ; and Dartmoltd, 
 towering majestic above the groves which encircle her, now inscribes her 
 glory on the registers of fame ! Oxford and Cambridge, those oriental 
 stars of literature, shall now be lost, while the bright sun of American 
 science displays his broad circumference in uneclipsed radiance." — p. 10. 
 
 Here is an opinion which he seems to have entertained at 
 the end of his life. He speaks of the formation of the Con- 
 stitution : — 
 
 "We then saw the people of these States engaged in a transaction , 
 ■which is undoubtedly the greatest approximation towards human perfec- 
 tion the political world ever yet experienced ; and which will perhaps 
 for ever stand, in the history of mankind, without a parallel." — p. 8, 9. 
 
 * "An Oration pronounced at Hanover, N. H. the 4th day of July, 1800, 
 being the Twenty-fourth Anniversary of Independence, by Daniel Webster, 
 member of the Junior Class, Dartmouth University. 
 
 " Do thou, great Liberty, inspire our souls. 
 And make our lives in thy possession happy, 
 Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence," &c. 
 
 "Hanover, 1800." 8vo. pp. 15. 
 
 "Funeral Oration, occasioned by the Death of Ephraim Simonds, of 
 Templeton, Mass., a Member of the Senior Class in Dartmouth College, wlio 
 died at Hanover (N. H.), on the 18th of June, ISOl, a>t. 26. By D..iiiel 
 Webster, a class-mate of the deceased. Et vix sentiunt dicere lingua. Vale. 
 Hanover, 1801." 8vo. pp. 13. 
 
25 
 
 In 1806, he delivered another Fourth-of-July address at 
 Concord, N. H,,* containing many noble and generous opi- 
 nions : — 
 
 " Patriotism," said he, " hath a source of consolation that cheers the 
 heai't in these unhappy times, when good men are rendered odious, and 
 bad men popular ; when great men are made little, and little men are 
 made great. A genuine patriot, above the reach of personal considerations, 
 with his eye and his heart on the honor and the happiness of his country, 
 is a character as easy and as satisfactory to himself as venerable in the 
 eyes of the world. While his country enjoys freedom and peace, he will 
 rejoice and be thankful ; and, if it be in the councils of Heaven to send the 
 storm and the tempest, he meets the tumult of the political elements with 
 composure and dignity. Above fear, 'above danger, above reproach, he 
 feels that the last end which can happen to any man never comes too soon, 
 if he fall in defence of the law and the liberty of his country." — p. 21. 
 
 In 1812, he delivered a third Fourth-of-July address at 
 Portsmouth.! The political storm is felt in the little harbor 
 of Portsmouth, and the speaker swells with the tumult of the 
 sea. He is hostile to France ; averse to the war with Eng- 
 land, then waging, yet ready to fight and pay taxes for it. 
 He wants a navy. He comes " to take counsel of the dead," 
 with whom he finds an " infallible criterion." But, alas ! 
 " dead men tell no tales," and give no counsel. There was 
 no witch at Portsmouth to bring up Washington quickly. 
 
 His subsequent deference to the money-power begins to 
 appear : " The Federal Constitution was adopted for no single 
 reason so much as for the protection of commerce." " Com- 
 merce has paid the price of independence." It has been 
 committed to the care of the general government, but " not 
 as a convict to the safe keeping of a jailor," " not for close 
 confinement." He wants a navy to protect it. Such were 
 the opinions of Federalists around him. 
 
 * " An Anniversary Address, delivered before the Federal Gentlemen of 
 Concord and its Vicinity, July 4, 1806. By Daniel Webster. Concord, 
 N. H., 1806." Svo. pp. 21. 
 
 t " An Address delivered before the Washington Benevolent Society at 
 Portsmouth, July 4, 1812. By Daniel Webster. Portsm. N.H." Svo. pp.27. 
 He delivered also other Fourth-of-July addresses, which. I have not seen. 
 5 
 
26 
 
 But these speeches of his youth and early manhood were 
 but commonplace productions. In his capacity as public 
 orator, in the vigorous period of his faculties, he made three 
 celebrated speeches, not at all political, — at Plymouth Rock, 
 to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of New Eng- 
 land's birth ; at Bunker Hill, in memory of the chief battle of 
 New England ; and at Faneuil Hall, to honor the two great 
 men who died when the nation was fifty years old, and they 
 fourscore. Each of these orations was a great and noble 
 effort of patriotic eloquence. 
 
 Standing on Plymouth R»ck, with the graves of the fore- 
 fathers around him, how proudly could he say, — 
 
 " Our ancestors established their system of government on morality 
 and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be 
 trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any govern- 
 ment be secure which is not supported by moral habits. Living under 
 the heavenly light of revelation, they hoped to find all the social disposi- 
 tions, all the duties which men owe to each other and to society, enforced 
 and performed. Whatever makes men good Christians makes them good 
 citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion free and unmo- 
 lested ; and, at the end of two centuries, there is nothing upon which we 
 can pronounce more confidently, nothing of which we can express a more 
 deep and earnest conviction, than of the inestimable importance of that 
 religion to man, both in regard to this life and that which is to come." 
 
 At Bunker Hill, there were before him the men of the 
 Revolution, — venerable men who drew swords at Lexing- 
 ton and Concord, and faced the fight in many a fray. There 
 was the French nobleman, — would to God that France had 
 many such to-day ! — who perilled his fortune, life, and 
 reputation, for freedom in America, and never sheathed the 
 sword he drew at Yorktown till France also was a republic, 
 — Fayette was there ; the Fayette of two revolutions ; the 
 Fayette of Yorktown and Olmutz. How well could he 
 say,— 
 
 " Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us 
 extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to 
 
27 
 
 act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing 
 BUT our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself 
 become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but 
 of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with 
 admiration for ever ! " 
 
 On another occasion, when two great men, who, in the 
 time that tried men's souls, were of the earhest to peril 
 "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor," — men 
 who, having been one in the Declaration of Independence, 
 were again made one in death, — then the people returned to 
 the cradle wherein the elder Adams and Hancock had rocked 
 Liberty when young ; and Webster chaunted the psalm 
 of commemoration to the younger Adams and Jefferson, 
 who had helped that new-born child to walk. He brought 
 before the living the mighty dead ; in his words they fought 
 their battles o'er again ; we heard them resolve, that, " sink 
 or swim, live or die, survive or perish," they gave their hand 
 and their heart for liberty; and Adams and Jefferson grew 
 greater before the eyes of the people, as he brought them 
 up, and showed the massive services of those men, and 
 pointed out the huge structure of that human fabric which 
 had gone to the grave : — 
 
 " Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. As human beings, 
 indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fear- 
 less advocates of independence ; no more, as at subsequent periods, the 
 head of the government ; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged 
 and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They 
 are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die ! 
 To their country they yet live, and live for ever. They live in all that 
 perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth ; in the recorded proofs of 
 their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep- 
 engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of man- 
 kind. They live in their example ; and they live, emphatically, and will 
 live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and 
 opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of 
 men, not only in their own country, but throughout the civilized world." 
 
 How loftily did he say : — 
 
28 
 
 "If Ave cherish the virtues and the principles of our flithers, Heaven 
 ■will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. 
 Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own 
 firmament now shines brij^htly upon our path. Washington is in the 
 clear, upper sky. These other stars have now joined the American con- 
 stellation. They circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with 
 new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, and, 
 at its close, devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent 
 of us all, to the Divine Benignity." 
 
 As a political officer, I shall speak of him as a legislator 
 and executor of the law, a maker and administrator of 
 laws. 
 
 In November, 1812, Mr. Webster was chosen as Rep- 
 resentative to the Thirteenth Congress. At that time the 
 country was at war with Great Britain ; and the well-known 
 restraints still fettered the commerce of the country. The 
 people were divided into two great parties, — the Federalists, 
 Avho opposed the embargo and the war ; and the Demo- 
 crats, who favored both. Mr. Madison, then President, had 
 been forced into the war, contrary to his own convictions 
 of expediency and of right. The most bitter-hatred pre- 
 vailed between the two parties: "party politics were inex- 
 pressibly violent." An eminent lawyer of Salem, afterwards 
 one of the most distinguished jurists in the world, a Demo- 
 crat, was, on account of his political opinions, knocked down 
 in the street, beaten, and forced to take shelter in the house 
 of a friend, whither he fled, bleeding, and covered with the 
 mud of the streets. Political rancor invaded private life ; 
 it occupied the pulpit; it blinded men's eyes to a degree 
 almost exceeding belief: were it not now a fact, we should 
 not believe it possible at a former time. 
 
 Mr. Webster was a Federalist, earnest and devoted, with 
 the convictions of a Federalist, and the prejudices and the 
 blindness of a Federalist; and, of course, hated by men 
 who had the convictions of a Democrat, and the prejudices 
 
29 
 
 and blindness thereof. It is difficult to understand the 
 Avilfulness of thorough partisans. In New Hampshire the 
 Judges were Democrats ; the Federalists, having a majority 
 in the Legislature, wished to be rid of them, and, for that 
 purpose, abolished all the Courts in the State, and appointed 
 others in their place (1813). I mention this only to show 
 the temper of the times. 
 
 There was no great principle of political morals on which 
 the two parties differed, only on measures of expediency. 
 The Federalists demanded freedom of the seas and pro- 
 tection for commerce ; but they repeatedly, solemnly, and 
 officially scorned to extend this protection to sailors. They 
 justly complained of the embargo that kept their ships from 
 the sea, but found little fault with the British for impress- 
 ing sailors from American ships. The Democrats professed 
 the greatest regard for " sailors' rights ; " but, in 1814, the 
 government forbade its officers to grant protection to " colored 
 sailors," though Massachusetts had more than a thousand 
 able seamen of that class. Said a leading Federal organ, — 
 " The Union is dear ; Commerce is still more dear." " The 
 Eastern States agreed to the Union for the sake of their 
 Commerce."* 
 
 With the Federalists there was a great veneration for 
 England. Said Mr. Fisher Ames, — "The immortal spirit 
 of the wood-nymph Liberty dwells only in the British oak." 
 " Our country," quoth he, " is too big for union, too sordid 
 for patriotism, and too democratic for liberty." " England," 
 said another, "is the bulwark of our religion," and the "shield 
 of afflicted humanity." A Federalist newspaper at Boston 
 censured Americans as " enemies of England and monar- 
 chy," and accused the Democrats of " antipathy to kingly 
 power." Did Democrats complain that our prisoners were 
 ill-treated by the British, it was declared " foolish and wicked 
 to throw the blame on the British government" ! Americans 
 
 * "Columbian Centinel" for July 25, 1812. 
 
30 
 
 expressed indignation at the British outrages at Hampton, — 
 burning houses and violating the women. Said the Federal 
 newspapers, it is " impossible that their (the British) military 
 or naval men should be other than magnanimous and hu- 
 mane." Mr. Clay accused the Federalists of " plots that 
 aim at the dismemberment of the Union," and denounced the 
 party as " conspirators against the integrity of the nation." 
 
 In general, the Federalists maintained that England had 
 a right to visit American vessels to search for and take her 
 own subjects, if found there; and, if she sometimes took 
 an American citizen, that was only an " incidental evil." 
 Great Britain, said the Massachusetts Legislature, has done 
 us "no essential injury:" she "was fighting the battles 
 of the world." They denied that she had impressed " any 
 considerable number of American seamen." Such was the 
 language of Mr. Webster and the party he served. But even 
 at that time the "Edinburgh Review" declared, "Every 
 American seaman might be said to hold his liberty, and ulti- 
 mately his life, at the discretion of a foreign commander. 
 In many cases, accordingly, native-born Americans were 
 dragged on board British ships of war : they were dispersed 
 in the remotest quarters of the globe, and not only exposed 
 to the perils of service, but shut out by their situation from 
 all hope of ever being reclaimed. The right of reclaiming 
 runaway seamen was exercised, in short, without either 
 moderation or justice." 
 
 Over six thousand cases of impressment were recorded in 
 the American Department of State. In Parliament, Lord 
 Castlereaffh admitted that there were three thousand five 
 hundred men in the British fleet claiming to be American 
 citizens, and sixteen hundred of them actually citizens. 
 At the beginning of the war, two thousand five hundred 
 American citizens, impressed into the British navy, refused to 
 fight against their native land, and were shut up in Dart- 
 moor prison. When the Guerriere was captured, there were 
 
31 
 
 ten American sailors on board who refused to fight. In 
 Parliament, in 1808, Mr. Baring (Lord Ashburton) defended 
 the rights of Americans against the British orders in coun- 
 cil, while in 1812 — 13 the Federalists could not find out 
 the cases of impressment, — such "was the influence of party 
 spirit. 
 
 The party out of power is commonly the friend of free- 
 dom. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts declared that 
 unconstitutional'acts of Congress were void ; the Legislature 
 declared it the duty of the State Courts to prevent usurped 
 and unconstitutional powers from being exercised : " It is 
 the duty of the present generation to stand between the 
 next and despotism." " Whenever the national compact is 
 violated, and the citizens of this State oppressed by cruel and 
 unauthorized enactments, this Legislature is bound to inter- 
 pose its power to wrest from the oppressor his victim." 
 
 After the Federal party had taken strong ground, Mr. 
 Webster opposed the administration, opposed the war, took 
 the part of England in the matter of impressment. He 
 drew up the Brentwood Memorial, once so famous all over 
 New England, now forgotten and faded out of all men's 
 memory.* 
 
 On the 24th of May, 1813, Mr. Webster first took his 
 seat in the House of Representatives, at the extra session of 
 the thirteenth Congress. He was a member of the Com- 
 mittee on Foreign Aff"airs, and industriously opposed the 
 administration. In the three sessions of this Congress, he 
 closely followed the leaders of the Federal party ; voting 
 . with Mr. Pickering a hundred and ninety-one times, and 
 against him only four times, in the two years. Sometimes 
 he "avoided the question;" but voted against thanking 
 Commodore Perry for his naval conduct, against the pur- 
 chase of Mr. Jefferson's library, against naval supplies, direct 
 taxes, and internal duties. 
 
 * I purposely pass over other political writings and speeches of his. 
 
32 
 
 He opposed the government scheme of a National Bank.* 
 No adequate reports of his speeches against the warj are 
 preserved; but, to judge from the testimony of an eminent 
 man, they contained prophetic indications of that oratorical 
 power which was one day so mightily to thunder and lighten 
 in the nation's eyes. Yet his influence in Congress does not 
 appear to have been great. In later years he defended the 
 United States Bank ; but that question, like others, had then 
 become a party question ; and a horse in the party-team 
 must go on with his fellows, or be flayed by the driver's 
 lash. 
 
 But though his labors were not followed by any very 
 marked influence at Washington, at home he drew on him- 
 self the wrath of the Democratic party. Mr. Isaac Hill, the 
 editor of the leading Democratic paper in New Hampshire, 
 pursued him with intense personal hatred. He sneeringly 
 says, and falsely, " The great Mr. Webster, so extremely 
 flippant in arguing petty suits in the courts of law, cuts but 
 a sorry figure at Washington : his overweening confidence 
 and zeal cannot there supply the place of knowledge." J 
 
 He was sneeringly called the "great," the "eloquent," the 
 " pre-eminent" Daniel Webster. His deeds, his words, his 
 silence, all were represented as coming from the basest mo- 
 tives, and serving the meanest ends. His journal at Ports- 
 mouth was called the " lying oracle." Listen to this : " Mr. 
 Webster spoke much and often when he was in Congress ; 
 and, if he had studied the Wisdom of Solomon (as some of 
 his colleagues probably did), he would have discovered that 
 a fool is known by his much speaking:" 
 
 Mr. Webster, in common with his party, refused to take 
 part in the war. " I honor," said he, " the people that 
 
 * Speech in the House of Representatives, Jan. 2, 1815. "Works, vol. iii. 
 p. 35, et seq. 
 
 t See his Speech in House of Representatives, Jan. 14, 1814, on the Army 
 Bill. Alexandria, 1814. 8vo. pp. 14. 
 
 X " New Hampshire Patriot" of July 27, 1813. 
 
33 
 
 shrink from such a contest as this. I applaud their senti- 
 ments: they are such as religion and humanity dictate, and 
 such as none but cannibals would Avish to eradicate from the 
 human heart." Whereupon the editor asks, Will not the 
 federal soldiers call the man Avho made the speech " a cold- 
 blooded wretch, whose heart is callous to every patriotic 
 feeling ? " * and then, " We do not wonder at Mr. Webster's 
 reluctance again to appear at the city of Washington" (he 
 was attending cases at court) : " even his native brass must 
 be abashed at his own conduct, at his own speeches." f 
 Flattery " has spoiled him ; for application might have made 
 him something a dozen years hence. It has given him 
 confidence, a face of brass, which and his native volubility 
 are mistaken for ' pre-eminent talent.' Of all men in the 
 State, he is the fittest to be the tool of the enemy." $ He 
 was one of the men that bring the " nation to the verge of 
 ruin;" a " Thompsonian intriguer;" a " Macfarland ad- 
 mirer." " The self-importance and gross egotism he displays 
 are disgusting." " You would suppose him a great mer- 
 chant, living in a maritime city, and not a man reared in 
 the ivoods of Salisbury, or educated in the wilds of Hano- 
 ver." § 
 
 Before he was elected to Congress, Mr. Hill accused him 
 of " deliberate falsehood," of "telling bold untruths to justify 
 the enormities of the enemy." |1 The cry was raised, " The 
 Union is iti danger." Mr. Webster was to bring about " a 
 dissolution of the Union." ^ " The few conspirators in Bos- 
 ton, Avho aim at the division of the Union, and the English 
 Government, who support them in their rebellion, appear to 
 play into each other's hands with remarkable adroitness." 
 The Patriot speaks of "the mad measures of the Boston 
 junto ; the hateful, hypocritical scheme of its canting, disaf- 
 
 * "New Hampshire Patriot," Aug. 27^1814. 
 t Id.y Oct. 4, 1814. X Id., Aug. 2, 1814. § Id., Aug. 9, 1814. 
 II Id., Oct. 29, 1812. IT Id., Oct. 13, 1812. 
 
 6 
 
34 
 
 fected chief, and the audacious tone of its pubhc prints." * 
 The language of Washington was quoted against political 
 foes; his Farewell Address reprinted. Mr. Webster was 
 charged with " setting the North against the South." The 
 Essex junto was accused of " a plot to destroy the Union," 
 in order "to be under the glorious shelter of British protec- 
 tion." t The Federalists were a " British faction ; " the 
 country members of the Massachusetts Legislature were 
 "wooden members;" distinguished characters were "ex- 
 citing hostility against the Union ; " one of these " ought to 
 be tied to the tail of a Congreve rocket, and offered up a 
 burnt sacrifice." It was " moral treason" not to rejoice at 
 the victories of the nation — it was not then " levying war." 
 The Legislature of New Jersey called the acts of the Massa- 
 chusetts Legislature " the ravings of an infuriated faction," 
 and Gov. Strong a " Maniac Governor." The " Boston 
 Patriot "$ called Mr. Webster "the poor fallen Webster," 
 who " curses heartily his setters on : " " the poor creature 
 is confoundedly mortified." Mr. Clay, in Congress, could 
 speak of "the bowlings of the whole British pack, let loose 
 from the Essex junto : " the Federalists were attempting 
 " to familiarize the public mind with the horrid scheme of 
 disunion." § And Isaac Hill charges the Federalists with 
 continually "threatening a separation of the States; striving 
 to stir up the passions of the North against the South, — in 
 clear defiance of the dying injunctions of Washington." || I 
 mention these things that all may understand the temper 
 of those times. 
 
 In 1814, Mr. Webster sought for the office of Attorney 
 General of New Hampshire, but, failing thereof, was re- 
 elected to the House of Representatives. In the fourteenth 
 
 * March 30, 1813, quoted from the "Baltimore Patriot." 
 
 t " Boston Patriot," No. 1. 
 
 X July 21, 1813. 
 
 § Speech in House of Representatives, Jan. 8, 1813. 
 
 H '« New Hampshire Patriot" for June 7, 1814. 
 
35 
 
 Congress, two important measures came up amongst others, 
 — the Bank and the Tariff. . Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay fa- 
 vored the establishment of a national bank, with a capital of 
 $ 35,000,000. Mr. Webster opposed it by votes and speech, 
 reaffirming the sound doctrines of his former speech : the 
 founders of the Constitution were " hard-money men ; " 
 government must not receive the paper of banks which do 
 not pay specie ; but " the taxes must be paid in the legal 
 money of the country." * Such was the doctrine of the 
 leading Federalists of the time, and the practice of New 
 England. He introduced a resolution, that all revenues of 
 the United States should be paid in the legal currency of the 
 nation. It met scarce any opposition, and was passed 
 the same day. I think this was the greatest service he ever 
 performed in relation to our national 'currency or national 
 finance. He was himself proud of it in his later years.f 
 
 The protective tariff was supported by Messrs. Calhoun, 
 Clay, and Lowndes. Mr. Webster opposed it ; for the 
 capitalists of the North, then deeply engaged in commerce, 
 looked on it as hostile to their shipping, and talked of the 
 " dangers of manufactories." Was it for this reason that the 
 South, always jealous of the Northern thrifty toil, proposed 
 it ? So it was alleged, ij: Mr. Webster declared that Con- 
 gress has no constitutional right to levy duties for protection ; 
 only for revenue. Revenue is the constitutional substance ; 
 protection, only the accidental shadow. § 
 
 In 1816, Mr. Webster removed to Boston. In 1819, 
 while he was a private citizen, a most important question 
 came before the nation, — Shall slavery be extended into the 
 Missouri Territory? Here, too, Mr. Webster was on the 
 
 * Speech in House of Representatives, Feb. 28, 1816 (in " National Intel- 
 ligencer for March 2, 1816). See also Works, vol. iii. p. 35, et seq. 
 t It passed April 26, 1816. Yeas, 79 ; nays, 35. 
 
 % But see Mr. Calhoun's defence of his course, Life and Speeches, p. 329. 
 § Speech in House of Representatives. 
 
36 
 
 side of freedom. He was one of a committee appointed by 
 a meeting of the citizens of Boston to call a general meeting 
 of the citizens to oppose the extension of slavery. The 
 United States Marshal was chairman of the meeting. Mr. 
 Webster was one of the committee to report resolutions at a 
 subsequent meeting. Said the preamble : — 
 
 "The extirpation of slavery has never ceased to be a measure deeply 
 concerning the honor and safety of the United States." "In whatever 
 tends to diminish the evil of slavery, or to check its growth, all parts of the 
 confederacy are alike interested." " If slavery is established in Missouri, 
 then it will be burthened with all the mischiefs which are too well kno\vn 
 to be the sure results of slavery ; an evil, which has long been deplored, 
 would be incalculably augmented ; the whole confederacy would be 
 weakened, and our free institutions disgraced, by the voluntary extension 
 of a practice repugnant to all the principles of a free government, the con- 
 tinuance of wliich in any part of our country necessity alone has justified." 
 
 It was Resolved, that Congress "possesses the constitutional power, 
 upon the admission of any new State created beyond the limits of the 
 original territory of the United States, to make the prohibition of the fur- 
 ther extension of slavery or involuntary servitude in such ncAV State, a 
 condition of its admission." "It is just and expedient that this power 
 should be exercised by Congress, upon the admission of all new States 
 created beyond the limits of the original territory of the United States." 
 
 In a speech, Mr. Webster " showed incontrovertibly that 
 Congress had this power ; that they were called upon by 
 all the principles of sound policy, humanity, and morality, 
 to enact it, and, by prohibiting slavery in the new State of 
 Missouri, oppose a barrier to the further progress of slavery, 
 which else — and this was the last time the opportunity 
 would happen to fix its limits — would roll on desolating 
 the vast expanse of continent to the Pacific Ocean." * 
 
 Mr. Webster was appointed chairman of a committee to 
 prepare a memorial to Congress on this matter.f Said he : 
 
 * Account of a Meeting at the State House in Boston, Dec. 3, 1819, to 
 consider the Extension of Slavery by the United States (in " Boston Daily 
 Advertiser" for Dec. 4, 1S19). 
 
 t " A Memorial to the Congress of the United States, on the Subject 
 of Restraining the Increase of Slavery in the New States to he admitted into 
 the Union," &c. &c. Boston, 1819. pp. 22. 
 
37 
 
 " "We have a strong feeling of the injustice of any toleration of slavery." 
 But, " to permit it in a new country, what is it but to encourage that 
 rapacity, and fraud, and violence, against which we have so long pointed 
 the denunciations of our penal code 1 What is it but to tarnish the proud 
 fame of our country 1 What is it but to throw suspicion on its good faith, 
 and to render questionable all its professions of regard for the rights of 
 humanity and the liberties of mankind? " — p. 21. 
 
 At that time, such was the general opinion of the Northern 
 men.* Said a writer in the leading journal of Boston : 
 "Other calamities are trifles compared to this (slavery). 
 War has alleviations ; if it does much evil, it does some 
 good : at least, it has an end. But negro-slavery is misery 
 without mixture ; it is Pandora's box, but no Hope at the 
 bottom ; it is evil, and only evil, and that continually." f 
 
 A meeting of the most respectable citizens of Worcester 
 resolved against " any further extension of slavery," as 
 "rendering our boasted Land of Liberty pre-eminent only 
 as a mart for Human Flesh." 
 
 " Sad prospects," said the " Boston Daily Advertiser," 
 " indeed for emancipators and colonizers, that, faster than 
 the wit or the means of men can devise a method even for 
 keeping stationary the frightful propagation of slavery, other 
 men, members of the same community, sometimes col- 
 leagues of the same deliberative assembly, will be compass- 
 ing, with all their force, the widest possible extension of 
 slavery." if: 
 
 The South uttered its threat of " dissolving the Union," 
 if slavery were not extended west of the Mississippi. " The 
 
 * See a valuable series of papers in the " Boston Daily Advertiser," No. I. 
 to VI., on this subject, from Nov. 20 to Dec. 28, 1819. Charge of Judge Story 
 to the Grand Juries, &c. ; ibid. Dec. 7 and 8, 1819. Article on the Missouri 
 Compromise, in " North American Review," Jan. 1820. Mr. King's speech 
 in Senate of United States, in " Columbian Centinel " for Jan. 19 and 22, 
 1820. See also the comments of the "Daily Advertiser" on the treachery 
 of Mr. Mason, the Boston representative, March 28 and 29, 1820. 
 
 t "L. M." in " Columbian Centinel" for Dec. 8, 1819. 
 
 X "Boston Daily Advertiser" for Nov. 20, 1819. 
 
38 
 
 threat," said a writer, " when we consider from whence it 
 comes, raises at once wonder and pity, but has never been 
 thought worth a serious answer here. Even the academi- 
 cians of Laputa never imagined such a nation as these 
 seceding States would form." " We h-ave lost much ; our 
 national honor has received a stain in the eyes of the world ; 
 we have enlarged the sphere of human misery and crime."* 
 Only four New Englanders voted for the Missouri Compro- 
 mise, — Hill and Holmes of Maine, Mason and Shaw of 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. Webster held no public office in this State, until he 
 was chosen a member of the Convention for amending the 
 Constitution of the Commonwealth. 
 
 •It appears that he had a large influence in the Massachu- 
 setts Convention. His speeches, however, do not show any 
 remarkable depth of philosophy, or width of historic view ; 
 but they show the strength of a great mind not fully master 
 of his theme. They are not always fair ; they sometimes 
 show the specious arguments of the advocate, and do not 
 always indicate the soundness of the judge. He developed 
 no new ideas ; looked back more than forward. He stated 
 his opinions with clearness and energy. His leaning was 
 then, as it always was, towards the concentration of poAver ; 
 not to its diffusion. It was the Federal leaning of New 
 England at the time. He had no philosophical objection to 
 a technical religious test as the qualification for office, but 
 did not think it expedient to found a measure on that prin- 
 ciple. He wanted property, and not population, as the 
 basis of representation in the Senate. It was " the true 
 basis and measure of power." " Political power," said he, 
 " naturally and necessarily goes into the hands which hold 
 the property." The House might rest on men, the Senate 
 on money. Said he, " It would seem to be the part of 
 political wisdom to found government on property ; " yet 
 
 • " Boston Daily Advertiser " of March 16, 1820. 
 
39 
 
 he wished to have the property diffused as widely as pos- 
 sible. He was not singular in this preference of money to 
 men. Others thought, that, to put the Senate on the basis 
 of population, and not property, was a change of " an 
 alarming character." 
 
 He had small confidence in the people ; apparently little 
 sympathy with the multitude of men. He was jealous of 
 the Legislature ; afraid of its encroachment on the Judi- 
 ciary, — New Hampshire had shown him examples of legis- 
 lative injustice, — but contended ably for the independence 
 of Judges. He had great veneration for the existing Con- 
 stitution, and thought there Avould "never be any occasion 
 for great changes" in it, and that " no revision of its general 
 principles would be necessary." Others of the same party 
 thought also that the Constitution was "the most perfect 
 system that human wisdom had ever devised." To judge 
 from the record, Mr. Webster found abler heads than his 
 own in that Convention. Indeed it would have been surpri- 
 sing if a young man, only eight and thirty years of age, 
 should surpass the "assembled wisdom of the State."* 
 
 On the 2d of December, 1823, Mr. Webster took his seat 
 in the House of Representatives, as member for Boston. 
 He defended the cause of the Greeks " with the power of a 
 great mind applied to a great subject," denounced the " Holy 
 Alliance," and recommended interference to prevent oppres- 
 sion. Pubhc opinion set strongly in that direction.! " The 
 
 * Some valuable passages of Mr. Webster's speeches are omitted from the 
 edition of his Works. (Compare vol. iii. pp. 15 and 17, with the " Journal 
 of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates," &c. Boston, 
 1821. pp. 143, 144, and 145, 146.) A reason for the omission will Be 
 obvious to any one who reads the original, and remembers the position and 
 expectations of the author in 1851. 
 
 t Meetings had been held in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other 
 important towns, and considerable sums of money raised on behalf of the 
 Greeks. Even the educated men were filled with enthusiasm for the de- 
 scendants of Anacreon and Pericles. The leading journals of England were 
 on the same side. See the letters of John Q. Adams to Mr. Rich and 
 
40 
 
 policy of our Government," said he, " is on the side of 
 liberal and enlightened sentiments." " The civilized world 
 has done with ' the erroneous faith of many made for 
 one.' " * 
 
 In 1816 he had opposed a tariff which levied a heavy duty 
 on imports; in 1824 he opposed it again, with vigorous 
 arguments. His speech at that time is a work of large 
 labor, of some nice research, and still of value. f "Like a 
 mighty giant," says Mr. Hayne, " he bore away upon his 
 shoulders the pillars of the temple of error and delusion, 
 escaping himself unhurt, and leaving his adversaries over- 
 whelmed in its ruins." He thought, "the authority of Con- 
 gress to exercise the revenue-power with direct reference to 
 the protection of manufactures is a questionable authority." $ 
 He represented the opinion of New England, which " dis- 
 countenanced the progress of this policy " of high duties. 
 The Federalists of the North inclined to free trade ; in 1807 
 Mr. Dexter thought it " an unalienable right," § and in 1820 
 Judge Story asked why should "the laboring classes be 
 taxed for the necessaries of life ? " |1 The tariff of 1824 got 
 but one vote from Massachusetts. As the public opinion 
 of Northern capitalists changed, it brought over the opi- 
 nion of Mr. Webster, who seems to have had no serious 
 and sober convictions on this subject. At one time the pro- 
 tective system is ruinous to the laboring man, but again 
 "it is aimed point-blank at the protection of labor ; " and 
 the duty on coal must not be diminished, lest coal grow 
 
 Mr. Luriottis, Dec. 18, 1823 ; and of John Adams, Dec. 29, 1823. Mr. Clay 
 ■was on the same side with Mr. Webster. But Mr. Randolph, in his speech 
 in House of Representatives, Jan. 20, 1824, tartly asked, " Why have we 
 never sent an envoy to our sister republic Hayti ? " 
 
 * See the just and beautiful remarks of Mr. Webster in this speech. 
 Works, vol. iii. pp. 77, 78, and 92 and 93. Oh si sic semper! 
 
 t Vol. iii. p. 94, et seg. See Speech in Faneuil Hall, Oct. 2, 1820. 
 
 X Speech in reply to Hayne, vol. iii. p. 305. 
 
 § Argument in District Court of Massachusetts against the Embargo. 
 
 (I Memorial of the Citizens of Salem. 
 
41 
 
 scarce and dear.* Non-importation was " an American 
 instinct." f 
 
 In 182S he voted for " the bill of abominations," as that 
 tariff was called, which levied " thirty-two millions of duties 
 on sixty-four millions of imports," "not because he was in 
 favor of the measure, but as the least of two evils." 
 
 In 1816 the South wanted a protective tariff: the com- 
 mercial North hated it. It was Mr. Calhoun:|: who introduced 
 the measure first. Mr. Clay gave it the support of his large 
 talents and immense personal influence, and built up the 
 " American System." Pennsylvania and New York were on 
 that side. Gen. Jackson voted for the tariff of 1824. Mr. 
 Clay Avas jealous of foreign commerce: it was "the great 
 source of foreign wars." " The predilection of the school 
 of the Essex junto," said he, " for foreign trade and British 
 fabrics is unconquerable." Yet he correctly said, " New 
 England will have the first and richest fruits of the tariff." § 
 
 After the system of protection got footing, the Northern 
 capitalists set about manufacturing in good earnest, and then 
 Mr. Webster became the advocate of a high tariff of protec- 
 tive duties. Here he has been blamed for his change of 
 opinion ; but to him it was an easy change. He was not a 
 scientific legislator : he had no great and comprehensive 
 ideas of that part of legislation which belongs to political 
 economy. He looked only at the fleeting interest of his 
 constituents, and took their transient opinions of the hour 
 for his norm of conduct. As these altered, his own views 
 also changed. Sometimes the change was a revolution. || It 
 
 * Works, vol. iv. p. 309. t Works, vol. ii. p. 352. 
 
 X See Mr. Calhoun's reason for this. Life and Speeches, p. 70, ei seq. 
 
 § Speech in House of Rep., April 26, 1820. Works, vol. i. p. 150. 
 
 II Compare his speeches on the tariff in 1824 and 1828 (Works, vol. iii, 
 p. 94, et seq. ; and 228, et seq.) with his subsequent speeches thereon in 1837, 
 1846. Works, vol. iv. p. 304, et seq. ; vol. v. p. 361, et seq. ; and vol. ii. p. 130, 
 et seq. and 349, et seq. Compare vol. iii. p. 118, et seq. and 124, et seq. with 
 vol. ii. p. 357. See his reasons for the change of opinion in vol. v. p. 186 and 
 240. All of these speeches axe marked by great ability of statement. 
 7 
 
42 
 
 seems to me his first opinion was right, and his last a fatal 
 mistake, that he never answered his first great speech of 
 1824 : but it seems to me that he was honest in the change ; 
 for he only looked at the pecuniary interest of his employers, 
 and took their opinions for his guide. But he had other 
 fluctuations on this matter of the tariff, which do not seem 
 capable of so honorable ap explanation.* 
 
 In the days of nulUfication, Mr. Webster denied the right 
 of South Carolina to secede from the Union, or to give a 
 final interpretation of the Constitution. She maintained that 
 the Federal Government had violated the Constitution ; that 
 she, the aggrieved State of South Carolina, was the judge in 
 that matter, and had a constitutional right to " nullify " the 
 Constitution, and withdraw from the Union. 
 
 The question is a deep one. It is the old question of 
 Federal and Democrat, — the question between the constitu- 
 tional power of the whole, and the power of the parts, — 
 Federal power and State power. Mr. Webster was always 
 in favor of a strong central government ; honestly in favor of 
 it, I doubt not. His speeches on that subject were most mas- 
 terly speeches. I refer, in particular, to that in 1830 against 
 Mr. Hayne, and the speech in 1833 against Mr. Calhoun. 
 
 The first of these is the great political speech of Daniel 
 Webster. I do not mean to say that it is just in its political 
 ethics, or deep in the metaphysics of politics, or far-sighted 
 in its political providence. I only mean to say that it sur- 
 passes all his other speeches in the massive intellectual power 
 of statement. Mr. Webster was then eight and forty years 
 old. He defended New England against Mr. Hayne ; he 
 defended the Constitution of the United States against South 
 Carolina. His speech is full of splendid eloquence ; he 
 
 * Compare his speech in Faneuil Hall, Sept. 30, 1842, with his tariff 
 speeches in 1846. Works, vol. ii. p. 130, et seq. with vol. v. p. 161, et seq, and 
 vol. ii. p. 349, et seq. 
 
43 
 
 reached high, and put the capstone upon his fame, whose 
 triple foundation he had laid at Plymouth, at Bunker Hill, 
 and at Faneuil Hall. The " republican members of the 
 Massachusetts Legislature " unanimously thanked him for 
 his able vindication of their State. A Virginian, who heard 
 the speech, declared he felt " as if looking at a mammoth 
 treading his native canebrake, and, without apparent con- 
 sciousness, crushing obstacles which nature had never 
 designed as impediments to him." 
 
 He loved concentrated power, and seems to have thought 
 the American Government was exclusively national, and not 
 Federal.* The Constitution was " not a compact." He 
 was seldom averse to sacrificing the claims of the individual 
 States to the claim of the central authority. He favored 
 consolidation of power, while the South Carolinians and 
 others favored local self-government. It was no doctrine of 
 his "that unconstitutional laws bind the people ;" but it was 
 his doctrine that such laws bind the people until the Supreme 
 Court declared them unconstitutional ; thus making, not the 
 Constitution, but the discretion of the rulers, the measure of 
 its powers. 
 
 It is customary at the North to think Mr. Webster wholly 
 in the right, and South Carolina wholly in the wrong, on that 
 question ; but it should be remembered, that some of the 
 ablest men whom the South ever sent to Washington thought 
 otherwise. There was a good deal of truth in the speech of 
 Mr. Hayne : he was alarmed at the increase of the central 
 power, which seemed to invade the rights of the States. Mr. 
 Calhoun defended the Carolinian idea ; f and Calhoun was a 
 man of great mind, a sagacious man, a man of unimpeach- 
 
 * Last remarks on. Foote's Resolution, and speech in Senate, 13th Feb. 
 1833. Works, vol. iii. p. 343, et seq. ; 448, ei seq. 
 
 t See Mr. Calhoun's Disquisition on Government, and his Discourse 
 on the Constitution and Government of the United States, in his Works, 
 vol. i. (Charleston, 1851); Life and Speeches (New York, 1843), No. iii. — 
 vi. See, too, Life and Speeches, No. ix. xix. xxii. 
 
44 
 
 able integrity in private. Mr. Clay was certainly a man 
 of very large intellect, wise and subtle and far-sighted. 
 But, in 1833, he introduced his " Compromise Measure," 
 to avoid the necessity of enforcing the opinions of Mr. 
 Webster. 
 
 I must pass over many things in Mr. "Webster's congres- 
 sional career. 
 
 While Secretary of State, he performed the great act of 
 his public life, — the one deed on which his reputation as a 
 political administrator seems to settle down and rest. He 
 negotiated the Treaty of Washington in 1842. The matter 
 was difficult, the claims intricate. There were four parties 
 to pacify, — England, the United States, Massachusetts, and 
 Maine. The difficulty was almost sixty years old. Many 
 political doctors had laid their hands on the immedicable 
 wound, which only smarted sorer under their touch. The 
 British Government sent over a minister to negotiate a treaty 
 with the American Secretary. The two eminent statesmen 
 settled the difficulty. It has been said that no other man in 
 America could have done so well, and drawn the thunder out 
 of the gathered cloud. Perhaps I am no judge of that ; 
 yet I do not see why any sensible and honest man could 
 not have done the work. You all remember the anxiety 
 of America and of England ; the apprehension of war ; and 
 the delight when these two countries shook hands, as the 
 work was done. Then we all felt that there was only 
 one English nation, — the English Briton and the English 
 American; that Webster and Ashburton were fellow-citi- 
 zens, yea, were brothers of the same great Anglo-Saxon 
 tribe. 
 
 His letters on the Right of Search, and the British claim to 
 impress seamen from American ships, would have done honor 
 to any statesman in the world.* He refused to England 
 
 * Works, vol. vi. p. 318, et seq. 
 
45 
 
 the right to visit and search our ships, on the plea of their 
 being engaged in the slave-trade. Some of my anti-slavery 
 brethren have censured him for this. I always thought he 
 was right in the matter. But, on the other side, his cele- 
 brated letter to Lord Ashburton, in the Creole case, seems to 
 me most eminently unjust, false in law, and wicked in mo- 
 rality.* It is the greatest stain on that negotiation ; and it is 
 Avonderful to me, that, in 1846, Mr. "Webster could himself 
 declare that he thought that letter was the most triumphant 
 production from his pen in all the correspondence. 
 
 But let us pause a moment, and see how much praise is 
 really due to Mr. Webster for negotiating the treaty. I 
 limit my remarks to the north-eastern boundary. The main 
 question was, Where is the north-west angle of Nova Scotia, 
 mentioned in the treaty of 1783 ? for a line, drawn due north 
 from the source of the river St. Croix to the summit of the 
 highlands dividing the waters of the Atlantic from those of the 
 St. Lawrence, was to terminate at that point. The Ameri- 
 can claim was most abundantly substantiated ; but it left the 
 British Provinces, New Brunswick and Canada, in an em- 
 barrassed position. No military road could be maintained 
 between them ; and, besides, the American border came very 
 near to Quebec. Accordingly, the British Government, on 
 the flimsiest pretext, refused to draw the lines and erect the 
 monuments contemplated by the treaty of 1794 ; perverted 
 the language of the treaty of 1783, which was too plain to 
 be misunderstood ; and gradually extended its claim further 
 and further to the west. By the treaty of Ghent (1814), it 
 was provided that certain questions should be left out to a 
 friendly power for arbitration. In 1827, this matter was 
 referred to the King of the Netherlands : he was to deter- 
 mine where the line of the treaty ran. He did not determine 
 that question, but, in 1831, proposed a new conventional 
 line. His award ceded to the British about 4,119 square 
 
 * Works, vol. vi. p. 303, et seq. 
 
46 
 
 miles of land in Maine. The English assented to it ; but the 
 Americans refused to accept the award, Mr. Webster op- 
 posing it. He was entirely convinced that the American 
 claim was just and sound, and the American interpretation 
 of the treaty of 1783 the only correct one. On a memora- 
 ble occasion, in the Senate of the United States, Mr. Web- 
 ster declared — "that Great Britain ought forthwith to be 
 told, that, unless she would agree to settle the question by the 
 4th of July next, according to the treaty of 1783, we would 
 then take possession of that line, and let her drive us off if 
 
 she can ! " * 
 
 The day before, and in all soberness, he declared that he 
 " never entertained a doubt that the right to this disputed 
 territory was in the United States." This was " perfectly 
 clear, — so clear that the controversy never seemed to him 
 hardly to reach to the dignity of a debatable question." 
 
 But, in 1842, the British minister came to negotiate a 
 treaty. Maine and Massachusetts were asked to appoint 
 commissioners to help in the matter ; for it seemed deter- 
 mined on that those States were to relinquish some territory 
 to which they had a lawful claim. Those States could not 
 convey the territory to England, but might authorize the 
 Federal Government to make the transfer. The treaty was 
 made, and accepted by Maine and Massachusetts. But it 
 ceded to Great Britain all the land which the award had 
 given, and 893 square miles in addition. Thus the treaty 
 conveyed to Great Britain more than five thousand square 
 miles (upwards of 8,000,000 acres) of American territory, 
 to which, by the terms of the treaty, the American title was 
 perfectly good. Rouse's Point was ceded to the United 
 States, with a narrow strip of land on the north of Vermont 
 and New Hampshire; but the king's award gave us Rouse's 
 Point at less cost. The rights which the Americans gained 
 
 * Evening Debate of Senate, Feb. 27, 1839 (in " Boston Atlas " of 
 March 1). 
 
47 
 
 with the navigation of a part of the St. John's River were 
 only a fair exchange for the similar right conceded to the 
 British. As a compensation to Maine and Massachusetts 
 for the loss of the land and the jurisdiction over it, the United 
 States paid these two States $300,000, and indemnified 
 Maine for the expenses occasioned by the troubles which had 
 grown out of the contested claims, — about ^ 300,000 more. 
 Great Britain gained all that was essebtial to the welfare of 
 her colonies. All her communications, civil and military, 
 were for ever placed beyond hostile reach ; and all the mili- 
 tary positions claimed by America, with the exception of 
 Rouse's Point, were for ever secured to Great Britain. What 
 did England concede ? It was fortunate that the contro- 
 versy was settled ; it was wise in America to be liberal. A 
 tract of wild land, though half as large as Massachusetts, is 
 nothing compared to a war. It is as well for mankind that 
 the jurisdiction over that spot belongs to the Lion of England 
 as to the Eagle of America. But I fear a man who makes 
 such a bargain is not entitled to any great glory among 
 diplomatists. In 1832, Maine refused to accept the award 
 of the king, even when the Federal Government offered her 
 a million acres of good land in Michigan, of her own selec- 
 tion, valued at a million and a quarter of dollars. Had it 
 been a question of the south-western boundary, and not 
 the north-eastern, Mexico would have had an answer to 
 her claim very different from that which England received. 
 Mr. Webster was determined on negotiating the treaty at all 
 hazards, and was not very courteous to those who expostu- 
 lated and stood out for the just rights of Maine and Massa- 
 chusetts;* nay, he was indignant at the presumption of 
 
 * For the facts of this controversy, see, I. The Definitive Treaty of Peace, 
 &c. 1783. Public Statutes of the United States of America (Boston, 1846), 
 vol. viii. p. 80. Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, &c, 1794. 
 ibid. p. 116. Treaty of Peace and Amity, 1814, ibid. p. 218. — II. Act of 
 Twentieth Congress, stat. i. chap. xxx. id. vol. iv. p. 262. Act of Twenty-sixth 
 
48 
 
 these States asking for compensation when their land was 
 ceded away ! Was there any real danger of a war ? If 
 England had claimed clear down to the Connecticut, I 
 think the Southern masters of the North would have given 
 up Bunker Hill and Plymouth Rock, rather than risk to the 
 chances of a British war the twelve hundred million dollars 
 invested in slaves. Men who live in straw houses think 
 twice before they scatter fire-brands abroad. England 
 knew well with whom she had to deal, and authorized her 
 representative to treat only for a " conventional line," not to 
 accept the line of the treaty ! Mr. Webster succeeded in 
 negotiating, because he gave up more American territory 
 than any one would yield before, — more than the king of 
 the Netherlands had proposed. Still, we may all rejoice in 
 the settlement of the question; and if Great Britain had 
 admitted our claim by the plain terms of the treaty, and 
 then asked for the land so valuable and necessary to her, 
 who in New England would have found fault ? 
 
 After the conclusion of the treaty, Mr. Webster came to 
 Boston. You remember his speech in 1842, in Faneuil 
 Hall. He was then sixty years old. He had done the great 
 deed of his life. He still held a high station. He scorned, 
 or affected to scorn, the littleness of party and its narrow 
 platform, and claimed to represent the people of the United 
 
 Congress, stat. i. chap, lii, ibid. vol. v. p. 402; and stat. ii. chap. ii. p. 413. 
 III. Statement, on the part of the United States, of the Case referred in 
 pursuance of the Convention of 29th Sept. 1827, between the said States 
 and Great Britain, to his Majesty the King of the Netherlands, for his 
 decision thereon (Washington, 1829). North American Boundarj', A. : 
 Correspondence relating to the Boundary, &c. &c. (London, 1838). North 
 American Boundary, part I. : Correspondence relating to the Boundary, &c. 
 (London, 1840). The Right of the United States of America to the North- 
 Eastern Boundary claimed by them, &c. &c., by Albert Gallatin, &c. (New 
 York, 1840). Documents of the Senate of Massachusetts, 1839, No. 45 ; 
 1841, No. 9. Documents of the House of Representatives of the Common- 
 wealth of Massachusetts, 1842, No. 44. — IV. Congressional Globe, &c. 
 (AVashington, 1843), vol. xii. and Appendix. Mr. Webster's Defence of the 
 Treaty ; Works, vol. v. p. 18, et seq. 
 
49 
 
 States. Everybody knew the importance of his speech. I 
 counted sixteen reporters of the New England and Northern 
 press at that meeting. It was a proud day for him, and 
 also a stormy day. Other than friends were about him. It 
 was thought that he had just scattered the thunder which 
 impended over the nation : a sullen cloud still hung over 
 his own expectations of the Presidency. He thundered his 
 eloquence into that cloud, — the great ground-hghtnmg of 
 his Olympian power. 
 
 I come now to speak of his relation to slavery. Up to 
 1850, with occasional fluctuations, much of his conduct had 
 been just and honorable. As a private citizen, in 1819, he 
 opposed the Missouri Compromise. Said he, at the meeting 
 of the citizens of Boston to prevent that iniquity, " We are 
 acting for unborn millions, who lie along before us in the 
 track of time." * The extension of slavery would de- 
 moralize the people, and endanger the welfare of the nation. 
 " Nor can the laws derive support from the manners of the 
 people, if the power of moral sentiment be weakened by 
 enjoying, under the permission of the government, great 
 facilities to commit offences." f 
 
 A few months after the deed was done, on Forefathers' 
 Day in 1820, standing on Plymouth Rock, he could say : — 
 
 " I deem it my duty, on this occasion, to suggest, that the land is not 
 yet -wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at which every feeling 
 of humanity must for ever revolt, — I mean the African slave-trade. 
 Neither public sentiment nor the law has hitherto been able entirely to 
 put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when 
 God in his mercy has blessed the Christian world with a universal peace, 
 there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and 
 character, new eiforts are making for the extension of this trade by 
 subjects and citizen^ of Christian states, in whose hearts there dwell no 
 sentiments of humanity or of justice, and over whom neither the fear of 
 
 * Reported in the " Columbian Centinel " for Dec. 8, 1819. 
 t Memorial to Congress, ttf supra. 
 8 
 
50 
 
 God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law, 
 the African slave-trader is a pirate and a felon ; and, in the sight of 
 Heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There 
 is no brighter page of our history than that vrhich records the measures 
 Avhich have been adopted by the government at an early day, and at 
 different times since, for the suppression of this traiEc ; and I would call 
 on all the true sons of New England to cooperate with the laws of man 
 and the justice of Heaven. If there be, within the extent of our know- 
 ledge or influence, any pairticipation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves 
 here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not 
 fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear 
 the sound of the hammer ; I see the smoke of the furnaces where mana- 
 cles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of 
 those who, by stealth and at midnight, labor in this work of hell, foul 
 and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and 
 torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. 
 Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world. Let it 
 be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards ; and 
 let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it." 
 
 In 1830, he honored Nathan Dane for the Ordinance which 
 makes the difference between Ohio and Kentucky, and 
 honorably vindicated that man who lived " too near the 
 north star " for Southern eyes to see. " I regard domestic 
 slavery," said Mr. Webster to Mr. Hayne, " as one of the 
 greatest evils, both moral and political." * 
 
 In 1837, at Niblo's Garden, he avowed his entire unwill- 
 ingness to do any thing that should extend the slavery of 
 the African race on this continent. Said he : — 
 
 " On the general question of slavery, a great portion of the commu- 
 nity is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted 
 attention as a question 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 consciences of men. He is a rash man, indeed, and 
 little conversant with human nature, — and especially has he a very 
 erroneous estimate of the character 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 
 
 • Works, vol. iii. p. 279 ; see also p. 263, et seq. 
 
51 
 
 engagements, and all existing duties ; to uphold and defend the Con- 
 stitution as it is established, with whatever regrets about some provisions 
 which it does actually contain. But to coerce it into silence, 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 endangered by the explosion which might 
 follow." * 
 
 He always declared that slavery was a local matter of the 
 South ; sectional, not national. In 1830 he took the ground 
 that the general government had nothing to do with it. In 
 1840, standing "beneath an OctQ,ber sun" at Richmond, he 
 declared again that there was no power, direct or indirect, in 
 Congress or the general government, to interfere in the 
 smallest degree with the " institutions" of the South, f 
 
 At first he opposed the annexation of Texas ; he warned 
 men against it in 1837. He went so far as to declare : — 
 
 " I do say that the annexation of Texas would tend to prolong the 
 duration and increase the extent of African slavery on this continent. I 
 have long held that opinion, and I would not now suppress it for any con- 
 sideration on earth ! and because it does increase the evils of slavery, 
 because it will increase the number of slaves and prolong the duration of 
 their bondage, — because it does all this, I oppose it without condition 
 and without qualification, at this time and all times, now and for ever.'" { 
 
 He prepared some portions of the Address of the Mas- 
 sachusetts Anti-Texas Convention in 1845. But, as some 
 of the leading Whigs of the North opposed that meeting 
 and favored annexation, he did not appear at the Con- 
 vention, but went off to New York. In 1845 he voted 
 against annexation. He said that he had felt it to be his 
 duty steadily, uniformly, and zealously to oppose it. He 
 did not wish America to be possessed by the spirit of 
 aggrandizement. He objected to annexation principally 
 because Texas was a Slave State. § Here he stood with John 
 
 * Works, vol. i. p. 356-7. % Works, vol. ii. p. 270. 
 
 t Works, vol. ii. 93, et seq. § See Works, vol. ii. p. 552, et seq. 
 
52 
 
 Quincy Adams, but, alas ! did too little to oppose that annex- 
 ation. Against him were Mr. Calhoun, the South, almost 
 all the Democratic party of the North ; Mr. Van Buren 
 losing his nomination on account of his hostility to new 
 slave-soil ; and many of the capitalists of the North wished 
 a thing that Mr. Webster wanted not. 
 
 He objected to the Constitution of Texas. Why ? Be- 
 cause it tied up the hands of the Legislature against the 
 abolition of slavery. He said so on Forefathers' Day, two 
 hundred and twenty-five years after the landing of the 
 Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. Then he could not forget his 
 own proud words, uttered a quarter of a century before. I 
 thought him honest then ; I think so still. But he said that 
 New England might have prevented annexation ; that Mas- 
 sachusetts might have prevented annexation, only " she could 
 not be roused." If he had labored then for freedom with as 
 much vigor and earnestness as he wrought for slavery in 1850 
 and 1851, Massachusetts would have been roused. New 
 England would have risen as a single man, and annexation 
 of new slave-soil have been put off till the Greek Kalends, a 
 day beyond eternity. Yet he did some service in this work. 
 
 After the outbreak of the Mexican war, the northern men 
 sought to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the new territory 
 gained from Mexico. The celebrated " Wilmot proviso " 
 came up. Mr. Webster also wished to prohibit slavery in 
 the new territory. In March, 1847, he presented to Con- 
 gress the resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature against 
 the extension of slavery, — which had been passed unani- 
 mously, — and he endorsed them all. 
 
 " I thank her for it, and am proud of her ; for she has denounced the 
 whole object for which our armies are now traversing the mountains of 
 Mexico." " If any thing is certain, it is that the sentiment of the whole 
 North is utterly opposed to the acquisition of territory to be formed into 
 new Slave-holding States." * 
 
 * " Consressional Globe," March, 1S47, p. 555. 
 
53 
 
 At the Whig Convention at Springfield, in 1847, he main- 
 tained that the Wihnot Proviso was his " thunder." 
 
 " Did I not commit myself in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entire- 
 ly? " " I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim 
 the merit and take out a patent. We are to use the first and the last and 
 every occasion which offers to oppose the extension of slave power." * 
 
 On the 10th of August, 1848, in the Senate of the United 
 States, he said : — 
 
 "My opposition to the increase of slavery in this country, or to the 
 increase of slave-representation, is general and universal. It has no refer- 
 ence to the lines of latitude or points of the compass. I shall oppose 
 all such extension at all times and under all circumstances, even against all 
 inducements, against all supposed limitations of great interests, against 
 all combinations, against all compromises." 
 
 He sought to gain the support of the Free Soilers in Mas- 
 sachusetts, and encouraged their enterprise. Even when he 
 denounced the nomination of General Taylor as " not fit to 
 be made," he declared that he could stand on ithe Buffalo 
 Platform ; its Anti-Slavery planks were good sound Whig 
 timber ; he himself had had some agency in getting them 
 out, and did not see the necessity of a new organization. 
 
 But, alas ! all this was to pass away. Was he sincere in 
 his opposition to the extension of slavery ? I always thought 
 so. I think so still. But how inconsistent his conduct ! 
 
 Yet, after all, on the 7th of March, 1850, he could make 
 that speech — you know it too well. He refused to exclude 
 slavery by law from California and New Mexico. It would 
 " irritate " the South, would " re-enact the law of God." He 
 declared Congress was bound to make four new Slave 
 States out of Texas; to allow all the territory below 36° 
 30^ to become Slave States; he declared that he would 
 give Texas fifty thousand square miles of land for slave- 
 territory, and ten millions of dollars; would refund to Vir- 
 ginia two hundred millions of dollars derived from the sales 
 
 * Remarks in Convention at Springfield, Sept. 10, .1847; reported in 
 «' Boston Daily Advertiser." 
 
54 
 
 of the public lands, to expatriate the free colored people from 
 her soil ; that he would support the Fugitive Slave Bill, 
 with all its amendments, " with all its provisions," " to the 
 fullest extent." 
 
 You know the Fugitive Slave Bill too well. It is bad 
 enough now: but when he first volunteered his support 
 thereto, it was far worse, for then every one of the seven- 
 teen thousand postmasters of America might be a legal 
 kidnapper by that Bill. He pledged our own Massachusetts 
 to support it, and that " with alacrity." 
 
 My friends, you all know the speech of the 7th of March : 
 you know how men felt when the telegraph brought the first 
 news, they thought there must be some mistake! They 
 could not believe the lightning. You know how the Whig 
 party, and the Democratic party, and the newspapers, treated 
 the report. When the speech came in full, you know the 
 effect. One of the most conspicuous men of the State, then 
 in hish office, declared that Mr. Webster "seemed inspired 
 by the devil to the extent of his intellect." You know the 
 indignation men felt, the sorrow and anguish. I think not a 
 hundred prominent men in all New England acceded to the 
 speech. But such was the power of that gigantic intellect, 
 that, eighteen days after his speech, nine hundred and eighty- 
 seven men of Boston sent him a letter, telling him that he 
 had pointed out "the path of duty, convinced the under- 
 standing and touched the conscience of a nation ; " and 
 they expressed to him their " entire concurrence in the senti- 
 ments of that speech," and their " heartfelt thanks for the 
 inestimable aid it afforded to the preservation " of the Union. 
 
 You remember the return of Mr. Webster to Boston ; the 
 speech at the Eevere House ; his word that " discussion" on 
 the subject of slavery must " in some way be suppressed ; " 
 you remember the "disagreeable duty;" the question if 
 Massachusetts " will be just against temptation ; " whether 
 "she will conquer her prejudices" in favor of the trial by 
 
55 
 
 jury, of the unalienable rights of man, in favor of the 
 Christian religion, and "those thoughts which wander through 
 eternity." 
 
 You remember the agony of our colored men. The Son 
 of man came to Jerusalem to seek and to save that which 
 was lost ; but Daniel Webster came to Boston to crush the 
 poorest and most lost of men into the ground with the hoof 
 of American power. 
 
 At the moment of making that speech, Mr. Webster was 
 a member of a French Abolition Society, which has for its 
 object to protect, enlighten, and emancipate the African 
 race I * 
 
 You all know what followed. The Fugitive Slave Law 
 Bill passed. It was enforced. You remember the conster- 
 nation of the colored people in Boston, New York, Buffalo, 
 Philadelphia, — all over the land. You remember the 
 speeches of Mr. Webster at Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany, 
 — his industry, never equalled before ; his violence, his in- 
 dignation, his denunciations. You remember the threat at 
 Syracuse, that out of the bosom of the next Anti-slavery 
 Convention should a fugitive slave be seized. You remem- 
 ber the scorn that he poured out on men who pledged " their 
 lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor," for the Welfare 
 of men. 
 
 You remember the letters to Mr. Webster from Ncav- 
 buryport, Kennebec, Medford, and his " Neighbors in New 
 Hampshire." You have not forgotten the " Union Meet- 
 ings : " " Blue-light Federalists," and " Genuine Democrats 
 dyed in the wool," united into one phalanx of Hunkerism 
 and became his "retainers," lay and clerical, — the laymen 
 maintaining that his political opinions were an amendment 
 to the Constitution ; and the clergymen, that his public and 
 
 « Institut d'Afrique pour I'Abolition de la Traito ct dc rEsclavage. Art. ii. 
 "II a pour but ^galement de proteger, d'eclairer et d'emanciper la race 
 Africaine." 
 
56 
 
 private practice was one of the evidences of Christianity. 
 You remember the sermons of Doctors of Divinity, proving 
 that slavery was Christian, good Old Testament Christian, at 
 the very least. You remember the offer of a man to deliver 
 up his own brother. Andover went for kidnapping. The 
 loftiest pulpits, — I mean those highest bottomed on the dol- 
 lar, — they went also for kidnapping. There went up a 
 shout against the fugitive from the metropolitan pulpits, 
 " Away with such a fellow from the earth ! — Kidnap him, 
 kidnap him ! " And when we said, mildly remonstrating, 
 "Why, what evil has the poor black man done?" the 
 answer was, — " We have a law, and by that law he ought 
 to be a slave ! " 
 
 You remember the first kidnappers which came here to 
 Boston. Hughes was one of them, an ugly-looking fellow, 
 that went back to die in a street-brawl in his own Georgia. 
 He thirsted for the blood of Ellen Craft. 
 
 You remember the seizure of Shadrach ; you remember 
 his deliverance out of his fiery furnace. Of course it was an 
 Angel who let him out ; for that court, — the kidnappers' 
 court, — thirsting for human blood, spite of the "enlarge- 
 ment of the testimony," after six trials, I think, has not found 
 a man, who, at noonday and in the centre of the town, did 
 the deed. So I suppose it was an Angel that did the deed, 
 and miracles are not over yet. I hope you have not for- 
 gotten Caphart, the creature which " whips women," the 
 great ally of the Boston kidnappers. 
 
 You remember the kidnapping of Thomas Sims ; Fa- 
 neuil Hall shut against the convention of the people ; the 
 court-house in chains ; the police drilled in the square ; sol- 
 diers in arms ; Faneuil Hall a barrack. You remember 
 Fast Day, 1851, — at least I do. You remember the 
 " Acorn " and Boston on the 12th of April. You have not 
 forgotten the dreadful scenes at New York, Philadelphia, 
 and Buffalo ; the tragedy at Christiana. 
 
57 
 
 You have not forgotten Mr. Webster's definition of the 
 object of government. In 1845, standing over the grave of 
 Judge Story, he said, — " Justice is the great interest of 
 mankind." I think he thought so too; but at New York, 
 on the 18th of November, 1850, he said, — "The great 
 object of government is the protection of property at home, 
 and respect and renown abroad." 
 
 He went to AnnapoUs, and made a speech comphmenting 
 a series of ultra-resolutions in favor of slavery and slave- 
 catchins. One of the resolutions made the execution of the 
 Fugitive Slave Law the sole bond of the Union. The orator 
 of Bunker Hill replied : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, I concur in the sentiments expressed by you all — and I 
 thank God they were expressed by you all — in the resolutions passed 
 here on the 10th of December. And allow me to say, that any State, 
 North of South, which departs one iota from the sentiment of that reso- 
 lution, is disloyal to this Union. 
 
 " Further, — so far as any act of that sort has been committed, — sucn 
 A State has no portiox or mv regard. I do not sympalhize ivilh it. I 
 rebuke it wherever I speak, and on all occasions where it is proper for me 
 to express my sentiments. If there are States — and I am afraid there 
 are — which have sought, by ingenious contrivances of State legislation, 
 to thwart the fair exercise and fulfilment of the laws of Congress passed 
 to carry into effect the compacts of the Constitution, — that State, so 
 
 FAR, IS ENTITLED TO NO REGARD FROM ME. At TOE NoRTH THERE HAVE 
 BEEN CERTAINLY SOME INTIMATIONS IN CERTAIN StATES OF SUCH A POLICY." 
 
 " / hold the importance of maintaining these measures to be of the highest 
 character and nature, every one of them out and out, and through and 
 through. 1 have no confidence in anybody who seeks the repeal, in anybody 
 who wishes to alter or modify these constitutional provisions. There they 
 are. jMany of these great measures are irrepealable. The settlement 
 with Texas is as irrepealable as the admission of California. Other im- 
 portant objects of legislation, if not in themselves in the nature of grants, 
 and therefore not so irrepealable, are just as important ; and we are to 
 hear no parleying upon it. We are to listen to no modification or qualifica- 
 tion. They were passed in conformity with the provisions of the Consti- 
 tution ; and they must be performed and abided by, in whatever event, 
 
 AND AT WHATEVER COST." 
 
 Surrounded by the Federalists of New England, when a 
 
 9 
 
58 
 
 young man, fresh in Congress, he stood out nobly for the 
 right to discuss all matters. Every boy knows his brave 
 words by heart : — 
 
 "Important as I deem it, sir, to discuss, on all proper occasions, the 
 policy of the measures at present pursued, it is still more important to 
 maintain the right of such discussion in its full and just extent. Sentiments 
 lately sprung up, and now growing popular, render it necessary to be 
 explicit on this point. It is the ancient and constitutional right of this 
 people to canvass public measures, and the merits of public men. It is a 
 homebred right, a fireside privilege. It has ever been enjoyed in every 
 house, cottage, and cabin in the nation. It is not to be drawn into con- 
 troversy. It is as undoubted as the right of breathing the air, and walking 
 on the earth. Belonging tb 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. 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. 
 
 "Living, I will assert it; dying, I will assert it; and should I leave 
 no other inheritance to my children, by the blessing of God I will leave 
 them the inheritance of Free Principles, and the example of a manly, 
 independent, and constitutional defence of them." * 
 
 Then, in 1850, when vast questions, so intimately affecting 
 the welfare of millions of men, were before the country, he 
 told us to suppress agitation ! 
 
 " Neither you nor I shall see the legislation of the country proceed in 
 the old harmonious way, until the discussions in Congress and out of 
 Congress upon the subject [of slavery] shall be in some way suppressed. 
 Take that truth home with you, and take it as truth." 
 
 "I shall support no agitations having their foundation in unreal and 
 ghostly abstractions."* 
 
 The opponents of Mr. Webster, contending for the free- 
 dom of all Americans, of all men, appealed from the Fugi- 
 tive Slave Bill to " the element of all laws, out of which 
 they are derived, to the end of all laws, for which they are 
 designed and in which they are perfected." How did he 
 resist the appeal ? You have not forgotten the speech at 
 Capron Springs, on the 26th of June, 1851. " When noth- 
 
 * Speech at the Revere House in Boston, April 29, 1850, in "Daily 
 Advertiser " of April 30. 
 
59 
 
 ing else will answer," says he, " they," the abolitionists, 
 " invoke religion, and speak of the ' higher law I ' " He of 
 the granite hills of New Hampshire, looking on the moun- 
 tains of Virginia, blue with loftiness and distance, said, 
 " Gentlemen, this North Mountain is high, the Blue Ridge 
 higher still, the Alleghanies higher than either, and yet this 
 ' higher law' ranges further than an eagle's flight above the 
 highest peaks of the Alleghanies ! No common vision can 
 discern it ; no common and unsophisticated conscience can 
 feel it ; the hearing of common men never learns its high 
 behests ; and, therefore, one would think it is not a safe law 
 to be acted upon in matters of the highest practical moment. 
 It is the code, however, of the abolitionists of the North." 
 
 This speech was made at dinner. The next " sentiment " 
 given after his was this : — 
 
 " The Fugitive Slave Law — Upon its faithful execution depends the 
 perpetuity of the Union." 
 
 Mr. Webster made a speech in reply, and distinctly 
 declared, — 
 
 " You of the South have as much right to secure your fugitive slaves, 
 as the North has to any of its rights and privileges of navigation and 
 commerce." 
 
 Do you think he believed that ? Daniel Webster knew 
 better. In 1844, only seven years before, he had said, — 
 
 "What! when all the civilized world is opposed to slavery; when 
 morality denounces it; when Christianity denounces it; when every 
 thing respected, every thing good, bears one united witness against it, is 
 it for America — America, the land of Washington, the model republic of 
 the world — is it for America to come to its assistance, and to insist that 
 the maintenance of slavery is necessary to the support of her institu- 
 tions?" 
 
 How do you think the audience answered then ? With 
 six and twenty cheers. It was in Faneuil Hall. Said Mr. 
 Webster, "These are Whig principles; " and, with these, 
 " Faneuil Hall may laugh a siege to scorn." That speech 
 
60 
 
 is not printed in his collection ! How could it stand side 
 by side with the speech of the 7th of March ? 
 
 In 184G, a Whig Convention voted to 4° its possible to 
 " defeat all measures calculated to uphold slavery, and pro- 
 mote all constitutional measures for its overthrow ; " to 
 " oppose any further addition of Slaveholding States to this 
 Union;" and to have "free institutions for all, chains and 
 fetters for none." 
 
 Then Mr. Webster declared he had a heart which beat 
 for every thing favorable to the progress of human liberty, 
 either here or abroad ; then, Avhen in " the dark and troubled 
 night" he saw only the Whig party as his Bethlehem Star, 
 he rejoiced in "the hope of obtaining the power to resist 
 Avhatever threatens to extend slavery." * Yet after New 
 York had kidnapped Christians, and with civic pomp sent 
 her own sons into slavery, he could go to that city and say, 
 " It is an air which for the last few months I love to inhale. 
 It is a patriotic atmosphere : constitutional breezes fan it 
 every day." f 
 
 To accomplish a bad purpose, he resorted to mean artifice, 
 to the low tricks of vulgar adventurers in politics. He used 
 the same weapons once wielded against him, — misrepresen- 
 tation, denunciation, invective. Like his old enemy of New 
 Hampshire, he carried his political quarrel into private life. 
 He cast off the acquaintance of men intimate with him for 
 twenty or thirty years. The malignity of his conduct, as 
 it was once said of a great apostate, " was hugely aggravated 
 by those rare abilities whereof God had given him the use." 
 Time had not in America bred a man before bold enough 
 to consummate such aims as his. In this New Hampshire 
 Straflbrd, "despotism had at length obtained an instrument 
 with mind to comprehend, and resolution to act upon, its 
 principles in their length and breadth ; and enough of his 
 
 * Speech at Faneuil Hall, Sept. 23, 1846, reported in the "Daily Adver- 
 tiser," Sept. 24. 
 
 t Speech at New York, May 12, 1851, in " Boston Atlas " of May 14. 
 
61 
 
 purposes were effected by him to enable mankind to see as 
 from a tower the end of all." 
 
 What was the design of all this ? It was to " save the 
 Union." Such was the cry. Was the Union in danger ? 
 Here were a few non-resistants at the North, who said, We 
 Avill have " no union with slaveholders." There was a party 
 of seceders at the South, who periodically blustered about 
 disunion. Could these men bring the Union into peril ? 
 Did Daniel Webster think so ? I shall never insult that 
 giant intellect by the thought. He knew South Carolina, 
 he knew Georgia, very well.* Mr. Benton knew of no " dis- 
 tress," even at the time when it was alleged that the nation 
 was bleeding at " five gaping wounds," so that it would take 
 the whole Omnibus full of compromises to stanch the blood : 
 " All the political distress is among the politicians." f I 
 think Mr. Webster knew there was no danger of a dissolu- 
 tion of the Union. But here is a proof that he knew it. In 
 1850, on the 22d of December, he declared, " There is no 
 longer imminent danger of the dissolution of the United 
 States. We shall live, and not die." But, soon after, he 
 went about saving the Union again, and again, and again, — 
 saved it at Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, at Annapolis, and 
 then at Capron Springs. 
 
 I say there was no real danger ; but my opinio'n is a mere 
 opinion, and nothing more. Look at a fact. We have the 
 most delicate test of public opinion, — the state of the public 
 funds ; the barometer which indicates any change in the po- 
 litical weather. If the winds blow down the Tiber, Roman 
 funds fall. Talk of war between France and England, the 
 stocks CO down at Paris and London. The foolish talk about 
 the fisheries last summer lowered American stocks in the 
 market, to the great gain of prudent and far-sighted brokers, 
 who knew there was no danger. But all this time, when Mr. 
 
 * See his description in 1830 of the process and conclusion of nullification. 
 Works, vol. iii. p. 337, et seq. 
 
 t Speech in Senate, Sept. 10, 1850. 
 
62 
 
 Webster was telling us the ship of state was going to pieces, 
 and required undergirding by the Fugitive Slave Bill, and 
 needed the kidnapper's hand at the helm ; while he was ad- 
 vising Massachusetts to " conquer her prejudices " in favor of 
 the unalienable rights of man ; while he was denouncing the 
 friends of freedom, and calling on us to throw over to Texas 
 — the monster of the deep that threatened to devour the 
 ship of state — fifty thousand square miles of territory, and 
 ten millions of dollars ; and to the other monster of seces- 
 sion to cast over the trial by jury, the dearest principles of 
 the Constitution, of manhood, of justice, and of religion, 
 " those thoughts that wander through eternity ; " while he 
 himself revoked the noblest words of his whole life, throw- 
 ing over his interpretation of the Constitution, his respect 
 for State rights, for the common law, his own morality, his 
 own religion, and his own God, — the funds of the United 
 States did not go down one mill. You asked the capitalist, 
 " Is the Union in danger ? " He answered, " O yes ! it is in 
 the greatest peril." " Then will you sell me your stocks 
 lower than before ? " " Not a mill; not one mill — not the 
 ten hundredth part of a dollar in a hundred ! " To ask men 
 to make such a sacrifice, at such a time, from such a motive, 
 is as if you should ask the captain of the steamer " Niagara," 
 in Boston liarbor, in fair weather, to throw over all his cargo, 
 because a dandy in the cabin was blowing the fire with his 
 breath. No, my friends, I shall not insult the majesty of 
 that intellect with the thought that he believed there was 
 danger to the Union. There was not any danger of a storm ; 
 not a single cat's-paw in the sky ; not a capful of bad weather 
 between Cape Sable and the Lake of the Woods ! 
 
 But suppose the worst came to the worst, are there no 
 other things as bad as disunion ? The Constitution — does 
 it "establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity," and "se- 
 cure the blessings of liberty" to all the citizens? Nobody 
 pretends it, — with every sixth man made merchandise, and 
 not an inch of free soil covered by the Declaration of Inde- 
 
63 
 
 pendence, save the five thousand miles which Mr. Webster 
 ceded away. Is disunion worse than slavery ? Perhaps not 
 even to commerce, which the Federahsts thought " still 
 more dear " than Union. But what if the South seceded 
 next year, and the younger son took the portion of goods 
 that falleth to him, when America divides her living ? Ima- 
 gine the condition of the new nation, — the United States 
 South ; a nation without schools, or the desire for them ; 
 without commerce, without manufactures; with six million 
 white men and three million slaves ; working with that 
 barbarous tool, slave-labor, an instrument as ill-suited to 
 these times as a sickle of stone to cut grain with ! How 
 would that new democracy appear in the eyes of the world, 
 when the public opinion of the nations looks hard at tyranny ? 
 It would not be long before this younger son, having spent 
 all with riotous living, and devoured his substance with 
 slavery, brought down to the husks that the swine do eat, — 
 would arise, and go to his father, and say, " Father, forgive 
 me ; I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am 
 no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of 
 thy hired servants." The Southern men know well, that, if 
 the Union Were dissolved, their riches would take to itself 
 legs, and run away, — or firebrands, and make a St. Domingo 
 out of Carolina ! They cast off the North ! they set up for 
 themselves ! " Tush ! tush ! Fear boys with bugs ! " 
 
 Here is the reason. He wanted to be President. That 
 was all of it. Before this he had intrigued, — always in a 
 clumsy sort, for he was organized for honesty, and cunning 
 never throve in his keeping, — had stormed and blustered 
 and bullied. "Gen. Taylor the second choice of Massachu- 
 setts for the President," quoth he : "I tell you I am to be the 
 first, and Massachusetts has no second choice." Mr. Clay 
 must not be nominated in '44 ; in '48 Gen. Taylor's was a 
 " nomination not fit to be made." He wanted the office 
 himself. This time he must storm the North, and conciliate 
 the South. This was his bid ior the Presidency, — fifty 
 
64 
 
 thousand square miles of territory and ten millions of dollars 
 to Texas ; four new Slave States ; slavery in Utah and New 
 Mexico; the Fugitive Slave Bill; and two hundred millions 
 of dollars offered to Virginia to carry free men of color to 
 Africa. 
 
 He never labored so before, and he had been a hard- 
 working man. What Speeches he made at Boston, New 
 York, Philadelphia, Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Annapolis ! 
 What letters he wrote! His intellect was never so active, 
 nor gave such proofs of Herculean power. The hottest 
 headed Carolinian did not put his feet faster or further on 
 in the support of slavery. He 
 
 " Stood up the strongest and the fiercest spirit 
 That fought 'gainst Heaven, now fiercer by despair." 
 
 Once he could say, — 
 
 " By general instruction, we seek as far as possible to purify the whole 
 moral atmosphere ; to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the 
 strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law, 
 and the denunciations of religion, against immorality and crime. We 
 hope for a security beyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence 
 of enlightened and well-principled moral sentiment." * 
 
 In 1820 he could say, " All conscience ought to be 
 respected ; " in 1850 it is only a fanatic who heeds his con- 
 science, and there is no higher law. In scorn of the higher 
 law, he far outwent his transatlantic prototype. Even 
 Strafford, in his devotion to " T/ioroitg-h,''^ had some respect 
 for the fundamental law of nature, and said, — "If I must 
 be a traitor to man or perjured to God, I will be faithful to 
 my Creator." 
 
 The fountains of his great deep were broken up — it rained 
 forty days and forty nights, and brought a flood of slavery 
 over this whole land ; it covered the market, and the factory, 
 
 * Debate in the Mass. Convention, Dec. 5, 1820. " Journal," uhi sup. 
 p. 145 ; erroneously printed 245. 
 
65 
 
 and the court-house, and the warehouse, and the college, 
 and rose up high over the tops of the tallest steeples ! But 
 the Ark of Freedom went on the face of the waters, — above 
 the market, above the factory, above the court-house, over 
 the college, higher than the tops of the tallest steeples, it 
 floated secure ; for it bore the Religion that is to save the 
 world, and the Lord God of Hosts had shut it in. 
 
 What flattery was there from Mr. Webster ! What flat- 
 tery to the South ! what respect for Southern nullifiers ! 
 " The Secessionists of the South take a different course of 
 remark ; " they appeal to no higher law ! " They are learned 
 and eloquent ; they are animated and full of spirit ; they are 
 high-minded and chivalrous ; they state their supposed inju- 
 ries and causes of complaint in elegant phrases and exalted 
 tones of speech." * 
 
 He derided the instructions of his adopted State. 
 
 " It has been said that I have, by the course that I have thought proper 
 to pursue, displeased a portion of the people of Massachusetts. Well, 
 suppose I did. Suppose I displeased all the people of that State, — what 
 of that? 
 
 " What had I to do with instructions from Massachusetts upon a ques- 
 tion afifecting the whole nation ! " "I assure you, gentlemen, I cared no 
 more for the instructions of Massachusetts than I did for those of any 
 other State !" t 
 
 What scorn against the " fanatics " of the North, against 
 the Higher Law, and the God thereof! 
 
 " New England, it is well known, is the chosen seat of the Abolition 
 presses and the Abolition Societies. There it is principally that the for- 
 mer cheer the morning by full columns of lamentation over the fate of 
 human beings free by nature and by a law above the Constitution, — but 
 sent back, nevertheless, chained and manacled to slavery and to stripes ; 
 and the latter refresh themselves from daily toil by orgies of the night 
 devoted to the same outpourings of philanthropy, mingling all the while 
 their anathemas at what they call ' men-catching ' with the most horrid 
 and profane abjuration of the Christian Sabbath, and indeed of the whole 
 
 * Speech at Capron Springs. t Ibid, 
 10 
 
66 
 
 Divine Revelation : they sanctify their philanthropy by irreligion and 
 profanity ; they manifest their charity by contempt of God and his com- 
 mandments." 
 
 " Depend upon it, the law [the Fugitive Slave Bill] -will be executed in 
 its spirit and to its letter. It will be executed in all the great cities, — 
 here in Syracuse, — in the midst of the next Anti-slavery Convention, if 
 the occasion shall arise ; then we shall see what becomes of their ' lives 
 and their sacred honor ' ! " * 
 
 How he mocked at the " higher law," " that exists some- 
 where between us and the third heaven, I never knew exactly 
 where." 
 
 The anti-slavery men were " insane persons," " some small 
 bodies of fanatics," " not fit for a lunatic asylum." f 
 
 To secure his purposes, he left no stone unturned ; he 
 abandoned his old friends, treating them with rage and inso- 
 lence. He revolutionized his own morals, and his own 
 religion. The strong advocate of liberty, of justice to all 
 men, the opponent of slavery, turned round and went square 
 over. But his old speeches did not follow him : a speech 
 is a fact ; a printed word becomes immovable as the Alps. 
 His former speeches, all the way from Hanover to Washing- 
 ton, were a line of fortresses grim with cannon each levelled 
 at his new position. 
 
 How low he stooped to supplicate the South, to cringe 
 before the Catholics, to fawn upon the Methodists at Fa- 
 neuil Hall ! Oh, what a prostitution of what a kingly power 
 of thought, of speech, of will ! 
 
 The effect of Mr. Webster's speech was amazing : at first 
 Northern men abhorred it; next they accepted it. Why 
 was this ? He himself has perhaps helped us understand the 
 mystery : — 
 
 "The enormity of some crimes so astonishes men as to subdue their 
 minds, and they lose the desire for justice in a morbid admiration of the 
 great criminal and the strangeness of the crime." 
 
 * Speech at Syracuse (New York, 1851). 
 
 t See speech at Buffalo, 22d May, 1851. Vol. ii. p. 644, et seg. 
 
67 
 
 Slavery, the most hideous snake which Southern regions 
 breed, with fifteen unequal feet, came crawling North ; fold 
 on fold, and ring on ring, and coil on coil, the venomed 
 monster came : then Avarice, the foulest worm which North- 
 ern cities gender in their heat, went crawling South ; with 
 many a wriggling curl, it wound along its way. At length 
 they met, and, twisting up in their obscene embrace, the twain 
 became one monster, Hunkerism ; theme unattempted yet in 
 prose or song : there was no North, no South ; they were 
 one poison ! The dragon wormed its way along, — crawled 
 into the church of commerce, wherein the minister baptized 
 the beast, " Salvation." From the ten commandments the 
 dragon's breath effaced those which forbid to kill and covet, 
 with the three between ; then, with malignant tooth, gnawed 
 out the chief commandments whereon the law and prophets 
 hang. > This amphisbsena of the Western World then swal- 
 lowed down the hohest words of Hebrew or of Christian 
 speech, and in their place it left a hissing at the higher law 
 of God. Northward and Southward wormed the thing along 
 its track, leaving the stain of its breath in the people's face ; 
 and its hissing against the Lord rings yet in many a speech : 
 
 " Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, 
 And, unawares, morality expires." 
 
 Then what a shrinking was there of great consciences, and 
 hearts, and minds! So Milton, fabling, sings of angels 
 fallen from their first estate, seeking to enter Pandemo- 
 nium : — 
 
 " They but now who seemed 
 In bigness to surpass Earth's giant-sons, 
 Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 
 
 Throng numberless, 
 
 to smallest forms 
 
 Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, 
 Though without number still, amidst the hall 
 Of that infernal court." 
 
68 
 
 Mr. Webster stamped his foot, and broke through into 
 the great hollow of practical atheism, which undergulfs the 
 state and church. Then what a caving in was there ! The 
 firm-set base of northern cities quaked and yawned with 
 gaping rents. " Penn's sandy foundation " shook again, and 
 black men fled from the city of brotherly love, as doves flee 
 from a farmer's barn when summer lightning stabs the roof. 
 There was a twist in Faneuil Hall, and the doors could not 
 open wide enough for Liberty to regain her ancient Cradle ; 
 only soldiers, greedy to steal a man, themselves stole out 
 and in. Ecclesiastic quicksand ran down the hole amain. 
 Metropolitan churches toppled, and pitched, and canted, 
 and cracked, their bowing walls all out of plumb. Colleges, 
 broken from the chain which held them in the stream of time, 
 rushed towards the abysmal rent. Harvard led the way, 
 Christo el EcdesicB in its hand. Down plunged Andover, 
 " Conscience and the Constitution " clutched in its ancient, 
 failing arm. New Haven began to cave in. Doctors of 
 Divinity, orthodox, heterodox with only a doxy of doubt, 
 " no settled opinion," had great alacrity in sinking, and 
 went down quick, as live as ever, into the pit of Korah, Da- 
 than, and Abiram, the bottomless pit of lower law, — one 
 with his mother, cloaked by a surplice, hid neath his sinister 
 arm, and an acknowledged brother grasped by his remaining 
 limb. Fossils of theology, dead as Ezekiel's bones, took 
 to their feet again, and stood up for most arrant wrong. 
 " There is no higher law of God," quoth they, as they 
 went down ; " no golden rule, only the statutes of men." A 
 man with mythologic ear might fancy that he heard a snick- 
 ering laugh run round the world below, snorting, whinnying, 
 and neighing, as it echoed from the infernal spot pressed 
 by the fallen monsters of ill-fame, who, thousands of years 
 ago, on the same errand, plunged down the self-same way. 
 What tidings the echo bore, Dante nor Milton could not tell. 
 Let us leave that to darkness, and to silence, and to death. 
 
69 
 
 But spite of all this, in every city, in every town, in every 
 college, and in each capsizing church, there Avere found faith- 
 ful men, who feared not the monster, heeded not the stamp- 
 ino-, — nay, Doctors of Divinity w^ere found living, — in all 
 their houses there was light, and the destroying angel shook 
 them not. The word of the Lord came in open vision to their 
 eye ; they had their lamps trimmed and burning, their loins 
 girt ; they stood road-ready. Liberty and Religion turned in 
 thither, and the slave found bread and wings. " When my 
 father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will hold 
 me up ! " 
 
 After the 7th of March, Mr. Webster became the ally of 
 the worst of men, the forefront of kidnapping. The orator 
 of Plymouth Rock was the advocate of slavery ; the hero of 
 Bunker Hill put chains around Boston Court-house; the 
 applauder of Adams and Jefferson was a tool of the slave- 
 holder, and a keeper of slavery's dogs, the associate of the 
 kidnapper, and the mocker of men who loved the right. 
 Two years he lived with that rabble rout for company, his 
 name the boast of every vilest thing. " Oh, how unhke the 
 place from whence he fell ! " In early Ufe, Mr. Hill, of New 
 Hampshire, pursued him with unrelenting bitterness. Of 
 late years Mr. Webster had complained of this, declaring 
 that " Mr. Hill had done more than any other man to de- 
 bauch the character of New Hampshire, bringing the bitter- 
 ness of politics into private life." After that day of St. 
 Judas, Mr. Webster pursued the same course which Mr. 
 Hill had followed forty years before, and the two enemies 
 were reconciled.* The Herod of the Democrats and the 
 Pilate of Federalism were made friends by the Fugitive 
 Slave Bill, and rode in the same " Omnibus,"— " a blue-light 
 Federalist " and " a genuine Democrat dyed in the wool." 
 Think of him! — the Daniel Webster of Plymouth Rock 
 
 * See Letter of Hon. Isaac Hill (April 17, 1850), and Mr. Webster's 
 Reply. 
 
70 
 
 advocating the Compromise Measures ! the Daniel Webster 
 of Faneuil Hall, who spoke with the inspiration of Samuel 
 Adams and the tongue of James Otis, honoring the holy dead 
 with his praise ! — think of him at Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, 
 scoffing at modern men, who " perilled their lives, their for- 
 tunes, and their sacred honor," to visit the fatherless and the 
 widows in their affliction, and to keep themselves unspotted 
 from the world ! — think of him threatening with the gallows 
 such as clothed the naked, fed the hungry, visited the pri- 
 soner, and gave a cup of cold water to him that was ready 
 to perish ! Think of Daniel Webster become the assassin of 
 Liberty in the Capitol ! Think of him, full of the Old Testa- 
 ment and dear Isaac Watts, scoffing at the higher law of 
 God, while the mountains of Virginia looked him in the 
 face ! 
 
 But what was the recompense ? Ask Massachusetts, — 
 ask the North. Let the Baltimore Convention tell. He 
 was the greatest candidate before it. General Scott is a 
 little man when the feathers are gone. Fillmore, you know 
 him. Both of these, for greatness of intellect, compared to 
 Webster, were as a single magpie measured by an eagle. 
 Look at his speeches ; look at his forehead ; look at his 
 face ! The two hundred and ninety-three delegates came 
 together and voted. They gave him thirty-three votes, and 
 that only once ! Where were the men of the " lower law," ' 
 who made denial of God the first principle of their politics ? 
 Where were they who in Faneuil Hall scoffed and jeered 
 at the " higher law; " or at Capron Springs, who " laughed" 
 when he mocked at the law higher than the Virginia hills ? 
 Where were the kidnappers ? 
 
 The " lower law" men and the kidnappers strained them- 
 selves to the utmost, and he had thirty-three votes. 
 
 Where was the South ? Fifty-three times did the Con- 
 vention ballot, and the South never gave him a vote, — 
 not a vote ; no, not one ! Northern friends — I honor their 
 
71 
 
 affection for the great man — went to the South, and begged 
 for the poor and paltry pittance of a seeming vote, in order 
 to break the bitterness of the fall ! They went " with tears in 
 their eyes," and in mercy's name, and asked that crumb from 
 the Southern board. But the cruel South, treacherous to 
 him whom she beguiled to treason against God, she an- 
 swered, " Not a vote ! " It was the old fate of men who 
 betray. Southern politicians "did not dare dispense with 
 the services thrust on him, but revenged themselves by 
 withdrawing his well-merited reward." It was the fate of 
 Strafford, the fate of Wolsey. When Lasthenes and Eu- 
 thycrates betrayed Olynthus to Macedonian Philip, fighting 
 against the liberties of Greece, they were distinguished — 
 if Demosthenes be right — only by the cruelty of their fate. 
 Mr. Webster himself had a forefeeling that it might be so ; 
 for, on the morning of his fatal speech, he told a brother 
 Senator, " I have my doubts that the speech I am going to 
 make will ruin me." But he played the card with a heavy, 
 a rash, and not a skilful hand. It was only the playing 
 of a card, — his last card. Mr. Calhoun had said, " The far- 
 thest Southerner is nearer to us than the nearest Northern 
 man." They could trust him with their work, — not with its 
 covenanted pay ! 
 
 Oh! Cardinal Wolsey! there was never such a fall. 
 "He fell, like Lucifer, never to hope again!" The tele- 
 graph which brought him tidings of his fate was a thunder- 
 stroke out of the clear sky. No wonder that he wept, and 
 said, " I am a disgraced man, a ruined man ! " His early, 
 his last, his fondest dream of ambition broke, and only ruin 
 filled his hand ! What a spectacle to move pity in the stones 
 of the street ! 
 
 But it seemed as if nothing could be spared him. His cup 
 of bitterness, already full, was made to run over ; for joyous 
 men, full of wine and the nomination, called him up at mid- 
 night out of his bed — the poor, disappointed old man ! — to 
 
72 
 
 " congratulate him on the nomination of Scott ! " And they 
 forced the great *man, falling back on his self-respect, to say 
 that the next morning he should " rise with the lark, as 
 jocund and as gay." 
 
 Was not that enough ? Oh, there is no pity in the hearts 
 of men ! Even that Avas not enough ! Northern friends 
 went to him, and asked him to advise men to vote for Gen. 
 Scott ! 
 
 Gen. Scott is said to be an anti-slavery man ; but soon as 
 the political carpenters put the " planks " together at Balti- 
 more, he scrambled upon the platform, and stands there on 
 all-fours to this day, looking for " fellow-citizens, native and 
 adopted," listening for "that brogue," and declaring that, 
 after all, he is " only a common man." Did you ever read 
 Gen. Scott's speeches ? Then think of asking Daniel Web- 
 ster to recommend him for President, — Scott in the chair, 
 and Webster out ! That was gall after the wormwood ! 
 They say that Daniel Webster did write a letter advocating 
 the election of Scott, and afterwards said, " I still live." If 
 he did so, attribute it to the wanderings of a great mind, 
 shattered by sickness ; and be assured he would have taken 
 it back, if he had ever set his firm foot on the ground 
 again ! 
 
 Daniel Webster went down to Marshfield' — to die ! He 
 died of his 7th of March speech ! That word endorsed on 
 Mason's Bill drove thousands of fugitives from America to 
 Canada. It put chains round our court-house ; it led men 
 to violate the majesty of law all over the North. I violated 
 it, and so did you. It sent Thomas Sims in fetters to his 
 jail and his scourging at Savannah ; it caused practical 
 atheism to be preached in many churches of New York, ■ 
 Philadelphia, Washington, and, worst of all, Boston itself! 
 and then, with its own recoil, it sent Daniel Webster to 
 his grave, giving him such a reputation as a man would 
 not wish for his utterest foe. 
 
73 
 
 No event in the American Revolution was half so terrible 
 as his speeches in defence of slavery and kidnapping, his 
 abrocration of the ri£;ht to discuss all measures of the ffovern- 
 
 o 
 
 ment. We lost battles again and again, lost campaigns — 
 our honor we never lost. The army was without powder at 
 Cambridge, in '76 ; without shoes and blankets in '78 ; and 
 the bare feet of New England valor marked the ice with blood 
 when they crossed the Delaware. But we were never with- 
 out conscience, never without morality. Powder might fail, 
 and shoes drop, old and rotten, from soldiers' feet. But the 
 love of God was in the American heart, and no American 
 general said, " There is no law higher than the Blue 
 Ridge ! " Nay, they appealed to God's higher law, not 
 thinking that in politics religion makes men mad. 
 
 While the Philip of slavery was thundering at our gate, 
 the American Demosthenes advised us to " conquer our pre- 
 judices" against letting him in; to throw down the wall 
 " with alacrity," and bid him come : it was a constitutional 
 Philip. How silver dims the edge of steel! When the 
 ton<rue of freedom was cut out of the mouth of Europe by 
 the sabres of tyrants, and only in the British Isles and in 
 Saxon speech could liberty be said or sung, the greatest 
 orator who ever spoke the language of Milton and Burke 
 told us to suppress discussion ! In the dark and troubled 
 night of American politics, our tallest Pharo on the shore 
 huns: out a false beacon. 
 
 Said Mr. Webster once, " There will always be some per- 
 verse minds who will vote the wrong way, let the justice of 
 the case be ever so apparent."* Did he know what he was 
 doing ? Too well. In the winter of 1850, he partially pre- 
 pared a speech in defence of freedom. Was his own 
 amendment to Mason's Bill designed to be its text?t 
 Some say so. I know not. He wrote to an intimate and 
 
 * "Columbian Centinel," March 11, 1820. 
 t Works, vol. V. p. 373-4. 
 11 
 
74 
 
 sagacious friend in Boston, asking, How far can I go in 
 defence of freedom, and have Massacliusetts sustain me ? 
 Tlie friend repaid the confidence and said, Far as you 
 hke ! Mr. Webster went as far as New Orleans, as far as 
 Texas and the Del Norte, in support of slavery ! "When 
 that speech came, — the rawest wind of March, — the friend 
 declared : It seldom happens to any man to be able to 
 disgrace the generation he is born in. But the opportunity 
 has presented itself to Mr. Webster, and he has done the 
 deed ! 
 
 Cardinal Wolsey fell, and lost nothing but his place. 
 Bacon fell ; the " wisest, brightest," lived long enough to 
 prove himself the " meanest of mankind." Strafford came 
 down. But it Avas nothing to the fall of Webster. The 
 Anglo-Saxon race never knew such a terrible and calamit- 
 ous ruin. His downfall shook the continent. Truth fell 
 prostrate in the street. Since then, the court-house has a 
 twist in its walls, and equity cannot enter its door ; the stee- 
 ples point awry, and the " higher law " is hurled down from 
 the pulpit. One priest would enslave all the " posterity of 
 Ham," and another would drive a fugitive from his own 
 door ; a third is certain that Paul was a kidnapper ; and a 
 fourth has the assurance of his consciousness that Christ 
 Jesus would have sold and bought slaves. Practical atheism 
 became common in the pulpits of America ; they forgot tha't 
 there was a God. In the hard winter of 1780, if Fayette 
 had copied Arnold, and Washington gone over to the enemy, 
 the fall could not have been worse. Benedict Arnold fell, 
 but fell through, — so low that no man quotes him for prece- 
 dent. Aaron Burr is only a warning. Webster fell, and he 
 lay there "not less than archangel ruined," and enticed the 
 nation in his fall. Shame on us ! — all those three are of 
 New England blood ! 
 
 My friends, it is hard for me to say these things. My 
 
75 
 
 mother's love is warm in my own bosom still, and I hate to 
 say these words. But God is just ; and, in the presence of 
 God, I stand here to tell the truth. 
 
 Did men honor Daniel Webster ? So did I. I was a boy 
 ten years old when he stood at Plymouth Rock, and never 
 shall I forget how his clarion-words rang in my boyish heart. 
 I was but a little boy when he spoke those brave words in 
 behalf of Greece. I learned to hate slavery from the lips of 
 that great intellect ; and now that he takes back his word, 
 and comes himself to be Slavery's slave, I hate it ten-fold 
 harder than before, because it made a bondman out of that 
 proud, powerful nature. 
 
 Did men love him ? So did I. Not blindly, but as I loved 
 a great mind, as the defender of the Constitution and the 
 unahenable rights of man. 
 
 Sober and religious men of Boston yet mourn that their 
 brothers were kidnapped in the city of Hancock and Adams 
 — it Avas Daniel Webster who kidnapped them. Massachu- 
 setts has wept at the deep iniquity which was wrought in her 
 capital — it was done by the man whom she welcomed to 
 her bosom, and long had loved to honor. Let history, as 
 
 " Sad as angels at the good man's sin, 
 Blush to record, and weep to give it in ! " 
 
 Do men mourn for him ? See how they mourn ! The 
 streets are hung with black. The newspapers are sad col- 
 ored. The shops are put in mourning. The Mayor and 
 Aldermen wear crape. Wherever his death is made known, 
 the public business stops, and flags drop half-mast down. 
 The courts adjourn. , The courts of Massachusetts — at 
 Boston, at Dedham, at Lowell, all adjourn ; the courts of 
 New Hampshire, of Maine, of New York ; even at Balti- 
 more and Washington, the courts adjourn ; for the great 
 lawyer is dead, and Justice must wait another day. Only 
 the United States Court, in Boston, trying a man for helping 
 
76 
 
 Shadrach out of the furnace of the kidnappers, — the court 
 that executes the Fugitive Slave Law, — that does not 
 adjourn ; that keeps on ; its worm dies not, and the fire of 
 its persecution is not quenched, when death puts out the 
 lamp of life. Injustice is hungry for its prey, and must not 
 be balked. It was very proper ! Symbolical court of the 
 Fugitive Slave Bill — it does not respect life, why should it 
 death ? and, scorning liberty, why should it heed decorum ? 
 Did the judges deem that Webster's spirit, on its way to 
 God, would look at Plymouth Rock, then pause on the 
 spots made more classic by his eloquence, and gaze at Bun- 
 ker Hill, and tarry his hour in the august company of noble 
 men at Faneuil Hall, and be glad to know that injustice was 
 chanting his requiem in that court? They greatly misjudge 
 the man. I know Daniel Webster better, and I appeal for 
 him against his idly judging friends.* 
 
 Do men now mourn for him, the great man eloquent ? I 
 put on sackcloth long ago ; I mourned for him when he wrote 
 the Creole letter, which surprised Ashburton, Briton that he 
 was. I mourned when he spoke the speech of the 7th of 
 March. I mourned when the Fugitive Slave Bill passed 
 Congress, and the same cannons which have fired minute- 
 guns for him fired also one hundred rounds of joy for the 
 forging of a new fetter for the fugitive's foot. I mourned 
 for him when the kidnappers first came to Boston, — hated 
 then, now " respectable men," " the companions of princes," 
 enlarging their testimony in the court. I mourned when my 
 own parishioners fled from the " stripes" of New England to 
 the "stars" of Old England. I mourned when Ellen Craft 
 fled to my house for shelter and for succor, and for the first 
 
 * I am told that there was some technical reason why that court conti- 
 nued its session. I know nothing of the motive ; but I believe it was the fact 
 that the only court in the United States which did not adjourn at the intel- 
 ligence of the death of Mr. Webster, was the court which was seeking to 
 punish a man for rescuing Shadrach from the fiery furnace made ready for 
 him. 
 
77 
 
 time in all my life I armed this hand. I mourned -when I 
 married William and Ellen Craft, and gave them a Bible 
 for their soul, and a sword to keep that soul living in a 
 livinsf frame. I mourned when the court-house was hung in 
 chains; when Thomas Sims, from his dungeon, sent out his 
 petition for prayers, and the churches did not dare to pray. 
 I mourned when that poor outcast in yonder dungeon sent 
 for me to visit him, and when I took him by the hand which 
 Daniel Webster was chaining in that hour, I mourned for 
 Webster when we prayed our prayer and sang our psalm 
 on Long W^harf in the morning's gray. I mourned then : 
 I shall not cease to mourn. The flags will be removed 
 from the streets, the cannon will sound their other notes of 
 joy ; but, for me, I shall go mourning all my days ; I shall 
 refuse to be comforted; and at last I shall lay down my 
 gray hairs with weeping and with sorrow in the grave. O 
 W^ebster ! Webster ! would God that I had died for thee ! 
 
 He was a powerful man physically, a man of a large 
 mould, — a great body and a great brain : he seemed made 
 to last a hundred years. Since Socrates, there has seldom 
 been a head so massive huge, save the stormy features of 
 Michael Angelo, — 
 
 " The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 
 And "roined the aisles of Christian Rome ; " 
 
 s' 
 
 he who sculptured Day and Night into such beautiful forms, 
 — looked them in his face before he chiselled them in stone. 
 The cubic capacity of his head surpassed all former measure- 
 ments of mind. Since Charlemagne, I think there has not 
 been such a grand figure in all Christendom. A large man, 
 decorous in dress, dignified in deportment, he walked as if 
 he felt himself a king. Men from the country, who knew 
 him not, stared at him as he passed through our streets. 
 The coal-heavers and porters of London looked on him as 
 
78 
 
 one of the great forces of the globe : they recognized a 
 native king. In the Senate of the United States, he looked 
 an emperor in that council. Even the majestic Calhoun 
 seemed common compared with him. Clay looked vulgar, 
 and Van Buren but a fox.. His countenance, like Strafford's, 
 was " manly black." His mind — 
 
 " Was lodged in a fair and lofty room. 
 On his brow 
 Sat terror, mixed with wisdom ; and, at once, 
 Saturn and Hermes in his countenance." 
 
 What a mouth he had ! It was a lion's mouth ; yet there 
 was a sweet grandeur in his smile, and a woman's softness 
 when he would. What a brow it was ! what eyes ! like 
 charcoal fires in the bottom of a deep, dark well. His face 
 was rugged with volcanic fires, — great passions and great 
 thoughts. 
 
 " The front of Jove himself ; 
 An eye like Mars to threaten and command." 
 
 Let me examine the elements of Mr. Webster's character 
 in some detail. Divide the faculties, not bodily, into intel- 
 lectual, moral, affectional, and rehgious, and see what he had 
 of each, beginning with the highest. 
 
 I. His latter life shows that he had no large development 
 of the religious powers, which join men consciously to the 
 infinite God. He had little religion in the higher meaning 
 of that word, much in the lower. He had the conventional 
 form of religion, — the formality of outward and visible 
 prayer ; reverence for the Bible and the name of Christ ; 
 attendance at meeting on Sundays and at. the "ordinances 
 of religion." He was a " devout man," in the ecclesiastic 
 sense of the word. But it is easy to be devout, hard to be 
 moral. Of the two men, in the parable, who " went up to 
 the temple to pray," only the Pharisee w^as "devout" in 
 the common sense. Devoutness took the Priest and the 
 
 i 
 
79 
 
 Levite to the temple : morality took the good Samaritan to 
 the man fallen among thieves. 
 
 His reputation for religion seems to rest on these facts, — 
 that he read the Bible, and knew more passages from it 
 than most political editors, more than some clergymen ; he 
 thought Job " a great epic poem," and quoted Habbakuk 
 by rote ; — that he knew many hymns by heart ; attended 
 what is called " divine service ; " agreed with a New Hamp- 
 shire divine "in all the doctrines of a Christian life;" and, 
 in the " Girard case," praised the popular theology, with the 
 ministers thereof, — the latter as "appointed by the Author 
 of the Christian religion himself." 
 
 He seems by nature to have had a religious turn of mind ; 
 was full of devout and- reverential feelings; took a deep 
 delight in religious emotions ; was fond of religious books 
 of a sentimental cast ; loved Watts's tender and delicious 
 hymns, with the devotional parts of the Bible ; his memory 
 was stored with the poetry of hymn-books ; he was fond of 
 attendance at church. He had no particle of religious 
 bigotry ; joining an Orthodox Church at Boscawen, an 
 Episcopal at Washington, a Unitarian at Boston, and attend- 
 ing religious services without much regard for the theology 
 of the minister. He loved religious forms, and could not 
 see a child baptized without dropping a tear. Psalms and 
 hymns also brought the woman into those great eyes. He 
 was never known to swear, or use any profanity of speech. 
 Considering the habits of his political company, that is a fact 
 worth notice. But I do not find that his religious emotions 
 had any influence on his latter life, either public or private. 
 He read religion out of politics with haughty scorn, — " It 
 makes men mad " ! It appeared neither to check him from ill, 
 nor urge to good : though he loved " to have religion made 
 a personal matter," he forsook the church which made it per- 
 sonal in the form of temperance. His " religious character " 
 Avas what the churches tend to form, and love to praise. 
 
80 
 
 II. Of the affections be was well provided by nature, 
 though they were little cultivated, — attachable to a few 
 who knew him, and loved him. tenderly ; and, if he hated 
 like a giant, he loved also like a king. 
 
 He had small respect for the mass of men, — a contempt 
 for the judgment and the feelings of the millions who make 
 up the people. Many women loved him ; some from pure 
 affection, others fascinated and overborne by the immense 
 masculineness of the man. Some are still left who knew 
 him in early life, before political ambition set its mark on his 
 forehead, and drove him forth into the world: they love him 
 with the tenderest of woman's affection. This is no small 
 praise. In his earlier life he was fond of children, loved their 
 prattle and their play. They, too, were fond of him, came 
 to him as dust of iron to a loadstone, climbed on his back, 
 or, when he lay down, lay on his limbs and also slept. 
 
 Of unimpassioned and unrelated love, there are two modes, 
 — friendship for a few ; philanthropy for all. Friendship 
 he surely had, especially in earlier life. All along the shore, 
 men loved him ; men in Boston loved him to the last ; 
 Washington held loving hearts which worshipped him. But, 
 of late years, he turned round to smite and crush his early 
 friends who kept the higher law ; ambition tore the friendship 
 out of him, and he became unkind and cruel. The com- 
 panions of his later years were chiefly low men, with large 
 animal appetites, servants of his body's baser parts, or tide- 
 waiters of his ambition, — vulgar men in Boston and New 
 York, who bask in the habitations of cruelty, Avhereof the 
 dark places of the earth are full, seeking to enslave their 
 brother-men. These barnacles clove to the great man's 
 unprotected parts, and hastened his decay. When kidnap- 
 pers made their loathsome lair of his bosom, what was his 
 friendship worth ? 
 
 Of philanthropy, I claim not much for him. The noble 
 plea for Greece is the most I can put in for argument. He 
 
81 
 
 cared little for the poor ; charity seldom invaded his open 
 purse ; he trod down the poorest and most friendless of 
 perishing men. His name Avas never coimected with the 
 humanities of the age. Soon as the American Government 
 seemed fixed on the side of cruelty,' he marched all his 
 dreadful artillery over, and levelled his breaching cannons 
 against men ready to perish without his shot. In later 
 years, his face was the visage of a tyrant. 
 
 III. Of conscience it seemed to me he had little ; in 
 his later life, exceeding little : his moral sense seemed long 
 besotted ; almost, though not wholly, gone. Hence, though 
 he was often generous, he was not just. Free to give as to 
 grasp, he Avas lavish by instinct, not charitable on principle. 
 
 He had little courage, and rarely spoke a Northern word 
 to a Southern audience, save his official Avords in Congress. 
 In Charleston he was the "schoolmaster that gives us no 
 lessons." He quailed before the Southern men who would 
 " dissolve the Union," Avhen he stood before their eye. 
 They were " high-minded and chivalrous:" it was only the 
 non-resistants of the North he meant to ban ! 
 
 He was indeed eminently selfish, joining the instinctive 
 egotism of passion with the self-conscious, voluntary, de- 
 liberate, calculating egotism of ambition. He borrowed 
 money of rich young men — ay, and of poor ones — in the 
 generosity of their youth, and never paid. He sought to 
 make his colleagues in office the tools of his ambition, and, 
 that failing, pursued them with the intensest hate. Thus he 
 sought to ruin the venerable John Quincy Adams, when the 
 President became a Representative. By secret hands he 
 scattered circulars in Mr. Adams's district to work his over- 
 throw ; got other men to oppose him. With different men he 
 succeeded better. He used his party as he used his friends, 
 — as tools. He coquetted with the Democrats in '42, with 
 the Free Soilers in '48 ; but, the suit miscarrying, turned to 
 the Slave Power in '50, and negotiated an espousal which 
 
 12 
 
82 
 
 was cruelly broke off in '52. Men, parties, the law,* and the 
 nation, he did not hesitate to sacrifice to the colossal selfish- 
 ness of his egotistic ambition. 
 
 His strength lay not in the religious, nor in the affectional, 
 nor in the moral part of man. 
 
 IV. But his intellect was immense. His power of com- 
 prehension was vast. He methodized swiftly. If you look 
 at the forms of intellectual action, you may distribute them 
 into three great modes ; the Understanding, the Imagi- 
 nation, and the Reason ; — the Understanding dealing with 
 details and methods, the practical power ; Imagination, with 
 beauty, the power to create ; Reason, with first principles 
 and universal laws, the philosophic power. 
 
 We must deny to Mr. Webster the great Reason. He 
 does not belong at all to the chief men of that department, 
 — with Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Leibnitz, Newton, Des 
 Cartes, and the other mighties. Nay, he has no place with 
 humbler men of reason, with common philosophers ; he had 
 no philosophical system of politics, few philosophical ideas of 
 politics, whereof to make a system. He seldom grasps a 
 universal law. His measures of expediency for to-day are 
 seldom bottomed on universal principles of right, which last 
 for ever. 
 
 I cannot assign to hira large Imagination. He was not 
 creative of new forms of thought or of beauty ; so he lacks 
 the poetic charm which gladdens the loftiest eloquence. 
 
 But his Understanding was exceedingly great. He ac- 
 quired readily and retained well ; arranged with ease and 
 skill, and fluently reproduced. As a scholar, he passed for 
 learned in the American Senate, where scholars are few ; for 
 a universal man, with editors of political and commercial 
 prints. But his learning was narrow in its range, and not 
 very nice in its accuracy. His reach in history and litera- 
 ture was very small for a man seventy years of age, always 
 
 * Leges invalidse prius ; imo nocere coactae. 
 
83 
 
 associating with able men. To science he seems to have 
 paid scarce any attention at all. It is a short radius that 
 measures the arc of his historic realm. A few Latin au- 
 thors, whom he loved to quote, made up his meagre classic 
 store. He was not a scholar, and it is idle to claim great 
 scholarship for him. Compare him with the prominent 
 .statesmen of Europe, or with the popular orators of Eng- 
 land, you see continually the narrow range of his culture. 
 
 As a statesman, his lack of what I call the higher Reason 
 and Imagination continually appears. He invented nothing. 
 To the national stock he added no new idea, created out 
 of new thought ; no new maxim, formed by induction out of 
 human history and old thought. The great ideas of the time 
 were not borne in his bosom. 
 
 He organized nothing. There were great ideas of im- 
 mense practical value seeking lodgment in a body : he aided 
 them not. None of the great measures of our time were 
 his — not one of them. His best bill was the Specie Bill of 
 1815, which caused payments to be made in national cur- 
 rency. 
 
 His lack of conscience is painfully evident. As Secretary 
 of State, he did not administer eminently well. When Sec- 
 retary of State under Mr. Tyler, he knew how to be unjust 
 to poor, maltreated Mexico. His letters in reply to the just 
 complaints of Mr. Bocanegra, the Mexican Secretary of 
 State, are painful to read : it is the old story of the Wolf and 
 the Lamb.* 
 
 The appointments made under his administration had bet- 
 ter not be looked at too closely. The affairs of Cuba last 
 year and this, the affairs of the Fisheries and theLobos 
 Islands, are little to his credit. 
 
 * See these letters — to Mr. Thompson, Works, vol. vi. p. 4io, et seq. ; 
 and those of Mr. Bocanegra to Mr. Webster, p. 442, et seq. 457, et seq. How 
 different is the tone of America to powerful England ! Whom men wrong 
 they hate. 
 
84 
 
 He was sometimes ignorant of the affairs he had to treat ; 
 he neglected the public business, — left grave matters all 
 unattended to. Nay, he did worse. Early in August last, 
 Mr. Lawrence had an interview with the British Foreign 
 Secretary, in which explanations were made calculated to 
 remove all anxiety as to the Fishery Question. He wrote 
 a paper detailing the result of the interview. It Avas de- 
 signed to be communicated to the American Senate. Mr. 
 Lawrence sent it to Mr. Webster. It reached the Depart- 
 ment at Washington on the 24th of August. But Mr. 
 Webster did not communicate it to the Senate ; even the 
 President knew nothing of its existence till after the Secre- 
 tary's death. Now, it is not " compatible with .the public 
 interest to publish it," as its production would reveal the 
 negligence of the Department. You remember the letter he 
 published on his own account relating to the Fisheries ! No 
 man, it was said, could get office under his administration, 
 "unless bathed in negro's blood : " supporl of the Fugitive 
 Slave Bill, "like the path of righteous devotion, led to a 
 blessed preferment." 
 
 Lacking both moral principle and intellectual ideas, politi- 
 cal ethics and political economy, it must needs be that his 
 course in politics was crooked. He opposed the Mexican 
 war, but invested a son in it, and praised the soldiers who 
 fought in it, as surpassing our fathers who stood behind 
 bulwarks on Bunker Hill ! He called on the nation to 
 uphold the Stars of America on the fields of Mexico, though 
 he knew it was the stripes that they held up. Now he is for 
 free trade, then for protection ; now for specie, then for 
 bills ; first for a bank, then it is " an obsolete idea ; " now 
 for freedom and against slavery, then for slavery and 
 against freedom ; now Justice is the object of government, 
 now Money. Now what makes men Christians makes them 
 good citizens; next, religion is good "everywhere but in 
 politics, — there it makes men mad." Now religion is the 
 
85 
 
 only ground of government, and all conscience is to be 
 respected ; next, there is no law higher than the act of Con- 
 gress, and he hoots at conscience, and would not re-enact the 
 law of God. 
 
 He began his career as the friend of free trade and hard 
 money ; he would restrict the government to the strait line of 
 the Constitution rigidly defined ; he would resist the Bank, 
 the protective tariff, the extension of slavery, they exceeded 
 the limits of the Constitution ; he became the pensioned advo- 
 cate of restricted trade and of paper money ; he interpreted 
 the Constitution to oppress the several States and the citi- 
 zens ; brought the force of the government against private 
 right, and lent all bis might to the extension of slavery. 
 Once he stood out boldly for the right of all men "to can- 
 vass public measures and the merits of public men ; " then 
 he tells us that discussion "must be suppressed " ! Several 
 years ago, he called a private meeting of the principal 
 manufacturers of Boston, and advised them to abandon the 
 protective tariff; but they would not, and so he defended it 
 as warmly as ever ! His course was crooked as the Missouri. 
 The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were, like him, 
 without a philosophical scheme of political conduct, or any 
 great ideas whereby to shape the future into fairer forms; 
 but the principle of duty was the thread which joined all 
 parts of their public ministration. Thereon each strung his 
 victories. But selfish egotism is the only continuous thread 
 I find thus running through the crooked life of the famous 
 American. 
 
 With such a lack of ideas and of honesty, with a dread of 
 taking the responsibility in advance of public opinion, lack- 
 ing confidence in the people, and confidence in himself, he 
 did not readily understand the public opinion on which he 
 depended. He thought himself " a favorite with the peo- 
 ple," — "sure of election if nominated;" it was " only the 
 politicians " who stood between him and the nation. He 
 
86 
 
 thought the Fugitive Slave Bill would be popular in the 
 North ; that it could be executed in Syracuse, and Massa- 
 chusetts would conquer her prejudices with alacrity. So he 
 had little value as a permanent guide : he changed often, but 
 at the unlucky moment. 
 
 He tacked and wore ship many a time in his life, always 
 in bad weather, and never came round but he fell off from 
 the popular wind. Perseverance makes the saints : he always 
 forsook his idea just as that was about to make its fortune. 
 In his voyaging for the Presidency, he was always too late 
 for the tide ; embarked on the ebb, and was left as the 
 stream run dry. The Fugitive Slave Law has done the 
 South no good, save to reveal the secrets of her prison-house, 
 the cabin of Uncle Tom, and make the North hate slavery 
 Avith a tenfold hate. So far as he "Websterized " the Whig 
 party, he has done so to its ruin. 
 
 He was a great advocate, a great orator; it is said, the 
 greatest in the land, — and I do not doubt that this was true. 
 Surely he was immensely great. When he spoke, he was a 
 grand spectacle. His noble form, so dignified and niasculine ; 
 his massive head ; the mighty brow, Olympian in its majesty ; 
 the great, deep, dark eye, which, like a lion's, seemed fixed 
 on objects far off", looking beyond what lay in easy range; 
 the mouth so full of strength and determination, — these all 
 became the instruments of such eloquence as few men ever 
 hear. He magnetized men by his presence; he subdued 
 them by his will more than by his argument. Many have 
 surpassed him in written words ; for he could not embody 
 the sunshine in such flowers of thought as Burke, Milton, 
 and Cicero wrought into mosaic oratory. But, since tl\e 
 great Athenians, Demosthenes and Pericles, who ever thun- 
 dered out such spoken eloquence as he ? 
 
 Yet he has left no perfect specimen of a great oration. He 
 had not the instinctive genius which creates a beautiful whole 
 by nature, as a mother bears a living son ; nor the wide 
 
87 
 
 knowledge, the deep philosophy, the plastic industry, which 
 forms a beautiful whole by art, as a sculptor chisels a marble 
 boy. So his greatest and most deliberate efforts of oratory 
 will not bear comparison with the great eloquence of nature 
 that is born, nor the great eloquence of art that is made. 
 Compared therewith, his mighty works are as Hercules com- 
 pared with Apollo. It is an old world, and excellence in 
 oratory is difficult; yet he has sentences and paragraphs that 
 I think unsurpassed and unequalled, and I do not see how 
 they can ever fade. He was not a Nile of eloquence, 
 cascading into poetic beauty now, then watering whole pro- 
 vinces with the drainage of tropic mountains: he was a 
 Niagara, pouring a world of clear waters adown a single 
 ledge. 
 
 His style was simple, the business-style of a strong man. 
 Now and then it swelled into beauty, though it was often 
 dull. In later years, he seldom touched the conscience, 
 the affections, or the soul, except, alas ! to smite our sense 
 of justice, our philanthropy, and trust in God. He always 
 addressed the understanding, not the reason, — Calhoun did 
 that the more, — not the imagination: in his speech there 
 was little wit, little beauty, little poetry. He laid siege to 
 the understanding. Here lay his strength — he could make 
 a statement better than any man in America ; had immense 
 power of argumentation, building a causeway from his will 
 to the hearer's mind. He was skilful in devising " middle 
 terms," in making steps Avhereby to lead the audience to his 
 determination. No man managed the elements of his arsu- 
 ment with more practical effect. 
 
 Perhaps he did this better when contending for a Avrong, 
 than when battling for the right. His most ingenious argu- 
 ments are pleas for injustice.* Part of the effect came from 
 the physical bulk of the man ; part from the bulk of will, 
 
 * See examples of this in the Creole -letter, and that to Mr. Thompson 
 (Works, vol. vi.), and in many a speech. 
 
88 
 
 which marked all his speech, and writing too ; but much 
 from his power of statement. He gathered a grea4; mass of 
 material, bound it together, swung it about his head, fixed 
 his eye on the mark, then let the ruin fly. If you want a 
 word suddenly shot from Dover to Calais, you send it by 
 lightning ; if a ball of a ton weight, you get a steam-cannon 
 to pitch it across. Webster was the steam-gun of eloquence. 
 He hit the mark less by gunnery than' strength. His shot 
 seemed big as his target. * 
 
 There is a great difference in the weapons which speakers 
 use. This orator brings down his quarry with a single subtle 
 shot, of sixty to the pound. He carries death without 
 weight in his gun, as sure as fate. 
 
 Here is another, the tin-pedlar of American speech. He 
 is a snake in the grass, slippery, shining, with a baleful crest 
 on his head, cunning in his crazy eye, and the poison of the 
 old serpent in his heart, and on his slimy jaw, and about the 
 fans: at the bottom of his smooth and forked and nimble 
 tongue. He conquers by bewitching; he fascinates his 
 game to death. 
 
 Commonly, Mr. Webster was open and honest in his ora- 
 tory. He had no masked batteries, no Quaker guns. He 
 had " that rapid and vehement declamation which fixes the 
 hearer's attention on the subject, making the speaker forgot- 
 ten, and leaving his art concealed." He wheeled his forces 
 into line, column after column, with the quickness of Han- 
 nibal and the masterly arrangement of Csesar, and, like 
 Napoleon, broke the centre of his opponent's line by the 
 superior weight of his own column and the sudden heaviness 
 of his fire. Thus he laid siege to the understanding, and 
 carried it by dint of cannonade. This was his strategy, 
 
 * " Tu quoque, Piso, 
 Judicis affectum, possessaque jjectora duels 
 Victor ; sponte sua sequitur, quocunque vocasti ; 
 Et te dante capit judex, quam non habet iram." 
 
89 
 
 in the court-house, in the senate, and in the public hall. 
 There were no ambuscades, no pitfalls, or treacherous In- 
 dian subtlety. It was the tactics of a great and naturally 
 honest-minded man. 
 
 In his oratory there was but one trick, — the trick of self- 
 depreciation. That came on him in his later years, and it 
 always failed. He was too big to make aoy one believe he 
 thought himself little ; so obviously proud, we knew he 
 valued his services high when he rated them so low. That 
 comprehensive eye could not overlook so great an object 
 as himself. He was not organized to cheat, to deceive ; and 
 did not prosper when he tried. 'Tis ill the lion apes the 
 fox. 
 
 He was ambitious. Cardinal Wolsey's " unbounded 
 stomach " was also the stomach of Webster. Yet his ambi- 
 tion mostly failed. In forty years of public life, he rose no 
 higher than Secretary of State ; and held that post but five 
 years. He was continually out-generalled by subtler men. 
 He had little political foresight: for he had not the all- 
 conquering Religion which meekly executes the Law of 
 God, all fearless of its consequence; nor yet the wide 
 Philanthropy, the deep sympathy with all that is human, 
 which gives a man the public heart, and so the corvtrol of 
 the issues of life, which thence proceed ; nor the great Justice 
 which sees the everlasting right, and journeys thitherward 
 through good or ill; nor the mighty Reason, which, reflect- 
 ing, beholds the principles of human nature, the constant 
 mode of operation of the forces of God in the forms of men ; 
 nor the poetic Imagination, which in its political sphere 
 creates great schemes of law ; and hence he was not popu- 
 lar. 
 
 He longed for the Presidency ; but Harrison kept him 
 from the nomination in '40, Clay in '44, Taylor in '48, and 
 Scott in '52. He never had a wide and original influence 
 in the politics of the nation ; for he had no elemental thun- 
 
 13 
 
90 
 
 der of his own — the Tariff was Mr. Calhoun's at first; 
 the Force Bill was from another hand ; the Fugitive Slave 
 Bill was Mr. Mason's; "the Omnibus" had many fathers, 
 whereof Webster was not one. He Avas not a blood-relation 
 to any of the great measures, — to free-trade or protec- 
 tion, to paper money or hard coin, to freedom or slavery ; he 
 was of their kindred only by adoption. He has been on all 
 sides of most questions, save on the winning side. 
 
 In the case of the Fugitive Slave Law, he stood betwixt 
 the living and the dead, and blessed the plague. But, even 
 here, he faltered when he came North again, — " The South 
 will get no concessions from me." Mr. Webster com- 
 mended the first draught of the Fugitive Slave Bill, Avith 
 Mr. Mason's amendments thereto, volunteering his support 
 thereof "to the fullest extent." But he afterwards and 
 repeatedly declared, " The Fugitive Slave Bill was not such 
 a measure as I had prepared before I left the Senate, and 
 which I should have supported if I had remained in the 
 Senate." * "I was of opinion," said he, " that a summary 
 trial by jury might be had, which would satisfy the preju- 
 dices of the people, and produce no harm to those who 
 claimed the services of fugitives." f Nay, he went so far 
 as to introduce a bill to the Senate providing a trial by 
 jury for all fugitives claiming a trial for their freedom. X He 
 thought the whole business of delivering up such as owed 
 service or labor, belonged to the State whither the fugitive 
 fled, and not to the general government. § Of course he 
 must have considered it constitutional and expedient to 
 secure for the fugitive a trial before an impartial jury of 
 " twelve good and lawful men," who should pass upon the 
 
 * Mr. "Webster's letter to the Union Committee. Works, vol. vi. p. 578, 
 et al. 
 
 t Speech at Syracuse (New York, 1851), p. 17. 
 X See it in Works, vol. v. p. 373-4 
 § IbicU p. 354. 
 
91 
 
 whole matter at issue. But, with that conviction, and with 
 that bill ready drafted, as he says, in his desk, he could 
 volunteer his support to a bill which took away from ■ the 
 States all jurisdiction in the matter, and from the fugitive all 
 " due process of law," all trial by jury, and left him in the 
 hands of a creature of the court, who was to be paid twice 
 as much for enslaving his victim as for acquitting a man ! 
 He had almost no self-reliant independence of character. 
 It was his surroundings, not his Avill, that shaped his course, 
 — " driven by the wind and tossed." 
 
 Mr. Webster's political career began with generous pro- 
 mise. He contended for the rights of the people against the 
 government, of the minority against the majority; he defended 
 the right of each man to discuss all public measures, and the 
 conduct of public men ; he wished commerce to be unre- 
 stricted, payments to be made in hard coin. He spoke noble 
 words against oppression, — the despotism of the " Holy 
 Alliance " in Europe, the cruelty of the Slave Trade in 
 America. Generously and nobly he contended against the 
 extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi. Not philan- 
 thropic by instinct or moral principle, averse to democratic 
 institutions both by nature and conviction, he yet, by instinct- 
 ive generosity, hated tyranny, hated injustice, hated despot- 
 ism. He appealed to moral power against physical force. 
 He sympathized with the republics of South America. His 
 great powers taking such a direction certainly promised a 
 brilliant future, large services for mankind. But, alas ! he 
 fell on evil times : who ever fell on any other ? He was 
 intensely ambitious ; not ambitious to serve mankind, but to 
 hold office, have power and fame. Is this the " last infirmity 
 of noble mind " ? It was not a very noble object he proposed 
 as the end of his life ; the means to it became successively 
 more and more unworthy. " Ye cannot serve God and 
 mammon." 
 
 For some years, no large body of men has had much 
 
92 
 
 trust in him, — admiration, but not confidence. In Massa- 
 chusetts, off the pavements, for the last three years, he has 
 had but httle power. After the speech of March 7, he 
 said, "I AviLL be maintained in Massachusetts." Massachu- 
 setts said No ! Only in the cities that bought him was he 
 omnipotent. Even the South would not trust him. Gen. 
 Jackson was the most popular man of our time. Calhoun 
 was popular throughout the South ; Clay, in all quarters of 
 the land ; and, at this day, Seward wields the forces of the 
 Whisfs. With all his talent, Webster never had the influ- 
 ence on America of the least of these. 
 
 Yet Daniel Webster had many popular qualities. He 
 loved out-door and manly sports, — boating, fishing, fowl- 
 ing. He was fond of nature, loving New Hampshire's 
 mountain scenery. He had started small and poor, had 
 risen great and high, and honorably had fought his way 
 alone. He rose early in the morning. He loved gardening, 
 "the purest of human pleasures." He was a farmer, and 
 took a countryman's delight in country things, — in loads of 
 hay, in trees, in turnips and the noble Indian corn, in mon- 
 strous swine. He had a patriarch's love of sheep, — choice 
 breeds thereof he had. He took delight in cows, — short 
 horned Durhams, Herefordshires, Ayrshires, Alderneys. 
 He tilled paternal acres with his own oxen. He loved to 
 n'we the kine fodder. It was pleasant to hear his talk of 
 oxen. And but three days before he left the earth, too ill to 
 visit them, his cattle, lowing, came to see their sick lord ; and, 
 as he stood in his door, his great oxen were driven up, that 
 he might smell their healthy breath, and look his last on 
 those broad, generous faces, that were never false to him. 
 
 He loved birds, and would not have them shot on his 
 premises ; and so his farm twittered all over with their " sweet 
 jargonings." Though in public his dress was more uni- 
 formly new than is common with acknowledged gentlemen, 
 at home and on his estate he wore his old and homely 
 
93 
 
 clothes, and had kind words for all, and hospitality besides. 
 He loved his father and brother with great tenderness, which 
 easily broke into tears Avhen he spoke of them. He was 
 kind to his obscurer and poor relations. He had no money 
 to bestow ; they could not share his intellect, or the renown it 
 gave. But he gave them his affection, and they loved him 
 with veneration. He was a friendly man : all along the 
 shore there were plain men that loved him, — whom he also 
 loved ; " a good neighbor, a good townsman : " 
 
 " Lofty and sour to those that loved him not ; 
 But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer." 
 
 His influence on the development of America has not been 
 great. He had large gifts, large opportunities also for their 
 use, — the two greatest things which great men ask. Yet he 
 has brought little to pass. No great ideas, no great organi- 
 zations, will bind him to the coming age. His life has been 
 a long vacillation. Ere long, men will ask for the historic 
 proof to verify the reputation of his power. It will not 
 appear. For the present, his career is a failure : he was 
 balked of his aim. How will it be for the future ? Posterity 
 will vainly ask for proof of his intellectual power, to invent, 
 to organize, to administer. The historian must write that he 
 aimed to increase the executive power, the central govern- 
 ment, and to weaken the local power of the States; that he 
 preferred the Federal authority to State rights, the judiciary 
 to the legislature, the government to the people, the claims 
 of money to the rights of man. Calhoun Avill stand as the 
 representative of State rights and free trade ; Clay, of the 
 American system of protection ; Benton, of payment in sound 
 coin ; some other, of the revenue tariff. And in the greatest 
 question of the age, the question of Human Rights, as 
 champions of mankind, there will appear Adams, Giddings, 
 Chase, Palfrey, Mann, Hale, Rantoul, and Sumner ; yes, one 
 
94 
 
 other name, which on the historian's page will shade all 
 these, — the name of Garrison. Men will recount the 
 words of Webster at Plymouth Rock, at Bunker Hill, at 
 Faneuil Hall, at Niblo's Garden ; they will also recollect 
 that he declared " protection of property " to be the great 
 domestic object of government; that he said, " Liberty first 
 and Union afterwards" was delusion and folly;" that he 
 called on Massachusetts to conquer her "prejudices" in 
 favor of unalienable right, and with alacrity give up a man 
 to be a slave ; turned all the North into a hunting-field for 
 the blood-hound ; that he made the negation of God the first 
 principle of government; that our New England elephant 
 turned round, tore Freedom's standard down, and trod her 
 armies under foot. They will see that he did not settle the 
 greatest questions by Justice and the Law of God. His 
 parallel lines of power are indeed long lines, — a nation 
 reads his word : they are not far apart, you cannot get many 
 centuries between ; for there are no great ideas of Right, no 
 mighty acts of Love, to keep them wide. 
 
 There are brave words which Mr. Webster has spoken 
 that will last while English is a speech ; yea, will journey 
 with the Anglo-Saxon race, and one day be classic in either 
 hemisphere, in every zone. But what will posterity say of 
 his efforts to chain the fugitive, to extend the area of human 
 bondage ; of his haughty scorn of any law higher than what 
 trading politicians enact in the Capitol ? " There is a law 
 above all the enactments of human codes, the same through- 
 out the world, the same in all time ; " " it is the law written 
 by the finger of God upon the heart of man ; and by that 
 law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, 
 and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they will reject with 
 indignation the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold 
 property in man." * 
 
 * Lord Brougham's speech on Negro Slavery, in the House of Commons, 
 July 13, 1830. 
 
95 
 
 Calhoun, Clay, Webster — they were all able men, — 
 long in politics, all ambitious, grasping at the Presidency, 
 all failing of what they sought. All three called themselves 
 " Democrats," taking their stand on the unalienable rights of 
 man. But all three conjoined to keep every sixth man in 
 the nation a chattel slave ; all three at last united in deadly 
 war against the unalienable rights of men whom swarthy 
 mothers bore. O democratic America ! 
 
 Was Mr. Webster's private life good ? There are many 
 depraved things done without depravity of heart. I am here 
 to chronicle, and not invent. I cannot praise a man for 
 virtues that he did not have. This day, such praise sounds 
 empty and impertinent as the chattering of a caged canary 
 amid the sadness of a funeral prayer. Spite of womanly 
 tenderness, it is not for me to renounce my manhood and my 
 God. I shall 
 
 " Naught extenuate and nothing add, 
 Nor set down aught in malice." 
 
 Before he left New Hampshire, I find no stain upon his 
 conduct there, save recklessness of expense. But in Boston, 
 when he removed here, there were men in vogue worse than 
 any since as conspicuous, — open debauchees. He fell in 
 Avith them, and became over-fond of animal delights, of the 
 joys of the body's baser parts; fond of sensual luxury, the 
 victim of low appetites. He loved power, loved pleasure, 
 loved wine. Let me turn off my face, and say no more of 
 this sad theme : others were as bad as he.* 
 
 He Avas intensely proud. Careless of money, he was 
 often in trouble on its account. He contracted debts, and 
 did not settle ; borrowed of rich and poor, and young and 
 old, and rendered not again. Private money often clove 
 
 • Hoc sat viator : reliqna non sinit pudor ; 
 Tu suspicare et ambula. 
 
96 
 
 to his hands ; yet in his nature there was no taint of avarice. 
 He lavished money on luxuries, while his washerwoman was 
 left unpaid ; few Americans have spent so much as he. Rapa- 
 cious to get, he was prodigal of his own. I wish the charges 
 brought against his public administration may be disproved, 
 whereof the stain rests on him to this day. When he en- 
 tered on a lawyer's life, Mr. Gore advised him, " Whatever 
 bread you eat, let it be the bread of independence ! " Oh 
 that the great mind could have kept that counsel ! But, even 
 at Portsmouth, luxury brought debt, and many an evil on its 
 back. He collected money, and did not pay ! " Bread of 
 independence," when did he eat it last ? Rich men paid his 
 debts of money when he came to Massachusetts ; they took 
 a dead-pledge on the man ; only death redeemed that mort- 
 gage. In 1827 he solicited the Senatorship of Massachu- 
 setts ; it " would put down the calumnies of Isaac Hill" ! 
 He obtained the office, not without management. Then he 
 refused to take his seat until ten thousand dollars was raised 
 for him.* The money came clandestinely, and he went into 
 the Senate — a pensioner! His reputation demanded a 
 speech against the tariff of '28 ; his pension required his 
 vote for that " bill of abominations." He spoke one way, 
 and voted the opposite. Was that the first dotation ? He 
 was forestalled before he left New Hampshire. The next 
 gift was twenty thousand, it is said. Then the sums in- 
 creased. What great "gifts" have been privately raised 
 for him by contributions, subscriptions, donations, and the 
 like ! Is it honest to buy up a man 1 honest for a man to sell 
 himself? Is it just for a judge who administers the law to 
 take a secret bribe of a party at his court ? Is it just for a 
 party to offer such gifts ? Answer Lord Bacon who tried 
 it ; answer Thomas More who tried it not. It is worse for 
 a Maker of laws to be bought and sold. New England 
 men, I hope not meaning wrong, bought the great senator in 
 '27, and long held him in their pay. They gave him all his 
 
97 
 
 services were worth, — gave more. His commercial and 
 financial policy has been the bane of New England and the 
 North. In ISoO the South bought him, but never paid ! * 
 
 A Senator of the United States, he was pensioned by 
 the capitalists of Boston. Their "gifts" in his hand, how 
 could he dare be just! His later speeches smell of bribes. 
 Could not Francis Bacon warn him, nor either Adams 
 guide ? Three or four hundred years ago, Thomas More, 
 when " under Sheriff of London," would not accept a pen- 
 sion from the king, lest it might swerve him from his duty to 
 the town ; when chancellor, he would not accept five thou- 
 sand pounds which the English clergy publicly offered him, 
 for public service done as chancellor. But Webster in 
 private took — how much I cannot tell! Considering all 
 things, his buyers' wealth and his unthriftiness, it was as 
 dishonorable in them to bribe, as in him to take their gift ! 
 
 To gain his point, alas ! he sometimes treated facts, law, 
 constitution, morality and religion, as an advocate treats 
 matters at the bar. Was he certain South Carolina had no 
 constitutional right to nullify ? I make no doubt he felt so ; 
 but in his language he is just as strong when he declares the 
 Fugitive Slave Bill is perfectly constitutional ; that slavery 
 cannot be in California and New Mexico ; just as confident 
 in his dreadful mock at conscience, and the dear God's un- 
 changing law. He heeded not " the delegated voice of God " 
 which speaks in the conscience of the faithful man. 
 
 No living man has done so much to debauch the con- 
 science of the nation ; to debauch the press, the pulpit, the 
 forum, and the bar ! There is no higher law, quoth he ; and 
 how much of the pulpit, the press, the forum, and the bar, 
 
 * " Sed lateri nullus comitem circumdaro qucerit, 
 
 Quem dat purus amor, sed quom tulit impia merces, 
 Nee quisquam vero pretium largitur amico, 
 Quem regat ex sequo, vicibusque regatur ab illo : 
 Sed miserum parva stipe muncrat, ut pudibundos 
 Exercere sales inter consilia possit." 
 14 
 
98 
 
 denies its God ! Read the journals of the last week for proof 
 of what I say ; and read our history since March of '50. 
 He poisoned the moral Avells of society with his lower law, 
 and men's consciences died of the murrain of beasts, which 
 came because they drank thereat. 
 
 In an age which prizes money as the greatest good, and 
 counts the understanding as the highest human faculty, the 
 man who is to lead and bless the world must indeed be 
 great in intellect, but also great in conscience, greater in 
 affection, and greatest of all things in his soul. In his later 
 years, Webster was intellect, and little more. If he did not 
 regard the eternal Right, how could he guide a nation to 
 what is useful for to-day ? If he scorned the law of God, 
 how could he bless the world of men ? It was by this 
 fault he fell. " Those who murdered Banquo, what did they 
 win by it ? " 
 
 " A barren sceptre in their gripe, 
 
 Thence to be wrenched with an nnlineal hand, 
 No son of theirs succeeding." 
 
 He knew the cause of his defeat, and in the last weeks of 
 his life confessed that he was deceived ; that, before his fatal 
 speech, he had assurance from the North and South, that, if 
 he supported slavery, it would lead him into place and 
 power; but now he saw the mistake, and that a few of the 
 " fanatics " had more influence in America than he and all 
 the South ! He sinned against his own conscience, and so 
 befell! 
 
 He made him wings of slavery to gain a lofty eminence. 
 Those wings unfeathered in his flight. For one and thirty 
 months he fell, until at last he reached the tomb. There, 
 on the sullen shore, a mighty wreck, great Webster lies. 
 
 " Is this the man in Freedom's cause approved, 
 The man so great, so honored, so beloved? 
 "Where is the heartfelt worth and weight of soul, 
 Which labor could not stoop, nor fear control? 
 
99 
 
 Where the known dignity, the stamp of awe, 
 "Which, half abashed, the proud and venal saw ? 
 Where the calm triumphs of an honest cause ? — 
 Where the delightful taste of just applause? 
 
 Oh, lost alike to action and repose. 
 
 Unwept, unpitied in the worst of woes ; 
 
 With all that conscious, undissembled pride, 
 
 Sold to the insults of a foe defied ; 
 
 With all that habit of familiar fame. 
 
 Doomed to exhaust the dregs of life in shame ! " 
 
 Oh, what a warning was his fall 
 
 *' To dash corruption in her proud career, 
 And teach her slaves that vice was born to fear." 
 
 " Oh dumb be passion's stormy rage. 
 When he who might 
 Have lighted up and led his age 
 Falls back in night." 
 
 Had he been faithful to his own best w^ords, so oft repeat- 
 ed, how he would have stood ! How different would have 
 been the aspect of the North and the South ; of the press, 
 the pulpit, the forum, and the court ! 
 
 Had he died after the treaty of 1842, how different would 
 have been his farne ! 
 
 Since the Revolution, no American has had so noble an 
 opportunity as Mr. Webster to speak a word for the advance- 
 ment of mankind. There was a great occasion : slavery 
 was clamorous for new power, new territory ; was invading 
 the State Rights of the North. Earnest men in the North, 
 getting aroused and hostile to slavery, were looking round 
 for some able man to take the political guidance of the anti- 
 slavery feeling, to check the great national crime, and help 
 end it ; they were asking — 
 
 " Who is the honest man, — 
 He that doth still and strongly good pursue, 
 To God, his neighbor, and himself, most true ; 
 
 Whom neither fear nor fawning can 
 Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due i" 
 
100 
 
 Some circumstances seemed to point to Mr. Webster as the 
 man ; his immense oratorical abihties, his long acquaintance 
 Avith public afTairs, his conspicuous position, his noble "words 
 in behalf of freedom, begimiing \\\\h his college days and 
 extending over many a year, — all these were powerful 
 arguments in his behalf. The people had always been indul- 
 gent to his faults, allowing him a wide margin of public and 
 private oscillation ; the North was ready to sustain him in all 
 generous efforts for the unalienable rights of man. But he 
 threw away the great moment of his life, used all his abilities 
 to destroy those rights of man, and builded the materials of 
 honorable fame into a monument of infamy for the warning 
 of mankind. Declaring that " the protection of property " 
 was "the great object of government," he sought to unite 
 the Money power of the North and the Slave power of the 
 South into one great instrument to stifle discussion, and with- 
 stand religion, and the Higher Law of Grod. 
 
 Had he lived and labored for freedom as for slavery, — 
 nay, with half the diligence and half the power, — to-mor- 
 row, all the North would rise to make him their President, 
 and put on that Olympian brow the wreath of honor from 
 a people's hand. Then he would have left a name like 
 Adams, Jefferson, and Washington ; and the tears of every 
 good man would have dropped upon his tomb! Had he 
 served his God with half the zeal that he served the South, 
 He would not, in his age, have left him naked to his enemies ! 
 If Mr. Webster had cultivated the moral, the afFcctional, 
 the religious part of his nature with half the diligence he 
 nursed his power of speech, what a man there would have 
 been ! With his great ability as an advocate, with his elo- 
 quence, his magnetic power, in his position, — a Senator for 
 twenty years, — if he could have attained the justice, the 
 philanthropy, the religion of Channing or of Follen, or of 
 many a modest woman in all the Christian sects, what a 
 noble spectacle should we have seen ! Then the nation 
 
101 
 
 would long since have made him President, and he also 
 would have revolutionized men's ideas of political great- 
 ness ; " the bigot would have ceased to persecute, the des- 
 pot to vex, the desolate poor to suffer, the slave to groan and 
 tremble, the ignorant to commit crimes, and the ill-contrived 
 law to engender criminality." 
 
 But he did not fall all at once. No man ever does. Apos- 
 tasy is not a sudden sin. Little by little he came to the 
 ground. Long leaning, he leaned over and fell down. This 
 was his great error — he sold himself to the money power 
 to do service against mankind. The form of service became 
 continually worse. Was .he conscious of this corruption ? — 
 at first ? But shall he bear the blame alone ? Oh, no ! Part 
 of it belongs to this city, which corrupted him, tempted him 
 with a price, bought him with its gold ! Daniel Webster 
 had not thrift. " Poor Richard" was no saint of his. He 
 loved luxury, and was careless of wealth. Boston caught 
 him by the purse ; by that she led him to his mortal doom. 
 With her much fair speech she caused him to yield ; with 
 the flattery of her lips she deceived him. Boston Avas the 
 Delilah that allured him ; but oft he broke the withes of 
 gold, until at last, with a pension, she shore off the seven 
 locks of his head, his strength went from him, and the Phi- 
 listines took him and put out his eyes, brought him down to 
 Washington, and bound him with fetters of brass. And he 
 did grind in their prison-house ; and they said, " Our God, 
 which is slavery, hath delivered into our hands our enemy, 
 the destroyer of our institutions, who slew many of us." 
 Then, having used him for their need, they thrust the man 
 away, deceived and broken-hearted I 
 
 No man can resist infinite temptation. There came a 
 peril greater than he could bear. Condemn the sin — pity 
 the offending man. The tone of political morality is pitia- 
 bly low. It lowered him, and then he debased the morals 
 of politics. 
 
102 
 
 Part of the blame belongs to the New England church, 
 which honors " devoutness," and sneers at every noble, manly 
 life, calling men saints who only pray, all careless of the 
 dead men's bones which glut the whited sepulchre. The 
 churches of New England were waiting to proclaim slavery, 
 and renounce the law of God. His is not all the blame. 
 We must blame Mr. Webster as we blame few men. 
 Society takes swift vengeance on the petty thief, the small 
 swindler, and rogues in rags : the gallows kills the murderer. 
 But for men in high office, with great abilities, who enact 
 iniquity into law ; who enslave thousands, and sow a conti- 
 nent with thraldom, to bear want and shame and misery and 
 sin ; who teach as political ethics the theory of crime, — for 
 them there is often no earthly outward punishment, but the 
 indignation with which mankind scourges the memory of the 
 oppressor. From the judgment of men, the appeal lies to 
 the judgment of God: He only knows who sins, and how 
 much. How much Mr. Webster is to be pitied, we know 
 right well. Had he been a clergyman, as once he wished, 
 he might have passed through life with none of the outward 
 blemishes which now deform his memory ; famed for his gifts 
 and graces too, for eloquence, and " soundness in the faith," 
 " his praise in all the churches." Had he been a politician 
 in a better age, — when it is not thought just for capitalists 
 1o hnv up statesmen in secret, for politicians clandestinely to 
 sell their services for private gold, or for clergymen, in the 
 name of God, to sanctify all popular crimes, — he might have 
 lifted up that noble voice continually for Truth and Right. 
 Who could not in such a time ? The straw blows Avith the 
 wind. But, alas ! he was not firm enough for his place ; too 
 weak in conscience to be the champion of justice while she 
 needs a champion. Let us be just against the wrong he 
 wrought, charitable to the man Avho wrought the wrong. 
 Conscience compels our formidable blame ; the affections 
 weep their pity too. 
 
103 
 
 Like Bacon, whom Mr. Webster resembles in many things, 
 save industry and the philosophic mind, he had " no moral 
 courage, no power of self-sacrifice or self-denial ; " with 
 strong passions, with love of luxury in all its forms, with 
 much pride, great fondness of applause, and the intensest 
 love of power ; coming to Boston poor, a lawyer, without 
 thrift, embarking in politics with such companions for his 
 private and his pubhc life, with such public opinion in the 
 State, — that honesty is to serve the present purposes of your 
 party, or the wealthy men who control it ; in the Church, — 
 that religion consists in belief without evidence, in ritual sacra- 
 ments, in verbal prayer, — is it wonderful that this great in- 
 tellect went astray ? See how corrupt the churches are, — 
 the leading clergy of America are the anointed defenders of 
 man-stealing; see how corrupt is the State, betraying the red 
 men, enslaving the black, pillaging Mexico ; see how corrupt 
 is trade, which rules the State and Church, dealing in men. 
 Connecticut makes whips for the negro-driver. New Hamp- 
 shire rears the negro-drivers themselves. Ships of Maine 
 and Rhode Island are in the domestic slave-trade. The 
 millionaires of Massachusetts own men in Virginia, Alabama, 
 Missouri ! The leading men in Trade, in Church and State, 
 think justice is not much more needed in a statesman than 
 it is needed in an ox, or in the steel which shoes his hoof! 
 Remember these things, and pity Daniel Webster, ambitious, 
 passionate, unthrifty; and see the circumstances which 
 weighed him down. We judge the deeds : God only can 
 judge the man. If you and I have not met the temptation 
 which can overmaster us, let us have mercy on such as come 
 bleedinsr from that battle. 
 
 His calling as a lawyer was somewhat dangerous, leading 
 him " to make the worse appear the better reason ; " to seek 
 "not verity, but verisimilitude ; " to look at the expedient end, 
 not to inquire if his means be also just; to look too much at 
 measures, not enough at principles. Yet his own brother 
 
104 
 
 Ezekiel went safely through that peril, — no smell of that fire 
 on his garment. 
 
 His intercourse with politicians was full of moral peril. 
 How few touch politics, and are thenceforward clean ! 
 
 Boston now mourns for him ! She is too late in her weep- 
 ing. She should have wept her warning when her capital- 
 ists filled his right hand with bribes. She ought to have put 
 on sackcloth when the speech of March 7th first came here. 
 She should have hung her flags at half-mast when the Fugi- 
 tive Slave Bill became a law; then she only fired cannons, 
 and thanked her representative. Webster fell prostrate, but 
 was Boston more innocent than he ? Remember the nine 
 hundred and eighty-seven men that thanked him for the 
 speech which touched their " conscience," and pointed out 
 the path of " duty " ! It was she that ruined him. 
 
 She bribed him in 1827, and often since. He regarded 
 the sums thus paid as a retaining fee, and at the last main- 
 tained that the Boston manufacturers were still in his debt; 
 for the services he had rendered them by defending the tariff 
 in his place as Senator were worth more than all the money 
 he received. Could a man be honest in such a position ? 
 Alas that the great orator had not the conscience to remem- 
 ber at first that man shall not live by bread alone ! 
 
 What a sad life was his ! His wife died, — a loving wo- 
 man, beautiful, and tenderly beloved ! Of several children, 
 all save one have gone before him to the tomb. Sad man, 
 he lived to build his children's monument ! Do you remem- 
 ber the melancholy spectacle in the street, when Major Web- 
 ster, a victim of the Mexican war, was by his father laid 
 down in yonder tomb? — a daughter, too, but recently laid 
 low ! How poor seemed then the ghastly pageant in the 
 street, empty and hollow as the muffled dram ! 
 
 What a sad face he wore, — furrowed by passion, by am- 
 
105 
 
 bition, that noble brow scarred all over with the records of 
 a hard, sad life. Look at the prints and pictures of him in 
 the street. I do not wonder his early friends abhor the 
 sight. It is a face of sorrows, — private, pubhc, secret woes. 
 But there are pictures of that face in earlier years, full of 
 power, but full of tenderness ; the mouth feminine, and inno- 
 cent as a girl's. What a life of passion, of dark sorrow, 
 rolled betwixt the two ! In that ambition-stricken face 
 his mother would not have known her child ! 
 
 For years to me, he has seemed like one of the tragic 
 heroes of the Grecian tale, pursued by fate ; and latterly, the 
 saddest sight in all the "Western World, — widowed of so 
 much he loved, and grasping at what was not only vanity, 
 but the saddest vexation of the heart. I have long mourned 
 for him, as for no living or departed man. He blasted us 
 with scornful lightning : him, if I could, I would not blast, 
 but only bless continually and evermore. 
 
 You remember the last time he spoke in Boston ; the pro- 
 cession, last summer, you remember it well. What a sad 
 and care-worn countenance was that of the old man, wel- 
 comed with the mockery of applause ! You remember, 
 when the orator, wise-headed and friendly-hearted, came 
 to thank him for his services, he said not a word of saving 
 the Union ; of the compromise measures, not a word. That 
 farce was played out — it was only the tragic facts that were 
 left ; but for his great services he thanked him. 
 
 And when Webster replied, he said, " Here in Boston I 
 am not disowned ; at least, here I am not disowned." No, 
 Daniel Webster, you are not disowned in Boston. So long 
 as I have a tongue to teach, a heart to feel, you shall never 
 be disowned. I must be just. I must be tender too ! 
 
 It was partly by Boston's sin that the great man fell ! 
 I pity his victims ; you pity them, too. But I pity him more, 
 oh, far more ! Pity the oppressed, will you ? Will you not 
 also pity the oppressor in his sin ? Look there ! See that 
 
 15 
 
106 
 
 face, so manly strong, so maiden meek ! Hear that voice I 
 " Neither do I condemn thee ! Go, and sin no more I " 
 Listen to the last words of the Crucified : " Father, forgive 
 them ; for they know not what they do." 
 
 The last time he was in Faneuil Hall, — it was " Faneuil 
 Hall open;" once it had been shut — it was last May — 
 the sick old man — you remember the feeble look and the 
 sad face, the tremulous voice. He came to solicit the vote 
 of the Methodists, a vain errand. I felt then that it was his 
 last time, and forbore to look upon that saddened counte- 
 nance. 
 
 The last time he was in the Senate, it was to hear his suc- 
 cessor speak. He stayed an hour, and heard Charles Sum- 
 ner demonstrate that the Fugitive Slave Bill was not good 
 religion, nor good Constitution, nor good la\y. The old and 
 the new stood face to face, — the Fugitive Slave Bill and 
 Justice. What an hour ! What a sight ! What thoughts 
 ran through the great man's mind, mingled with what re- 
 grets ! For slavery never set well on him. It was a Nessus' 
 shirt on our Hercules, and the poison of his own arrows 
 rankled now in his own bones. Had Mr. Webster been true 
 to his history, true to his heart, true to his intention and his 
 promises, he would himself have occupied that ground two 
 years before. Then there would have been no Fugitive 
 Slave Bill, no chain round the court-house, no man-stealing 
 in Boston ; but the " Defender of the Constitution," become 
 the " Defender of the unalienable rights of man," would 
 have been the President of the United States ! But he had 
 not the courage to dehver the speech he made ; no man can 
 serve two masters, — Justice and Ambition. The mill of 
 God grinds slow but dreadful fine ! 
 
 He came home to Boston, and went down to Marshfield 
 to die. An old man, broken with the storms of State, went 
 home — to die ! His neighbors came to ease the fall, to look 
 upon the disappointment, and give him what cheer they 
 
107 
 
 could. To him, to die was gain; life was the only loss. 
 Yet he did not wish to die : he surrendered, — he did not 
 yield. 
 
 At the last end, his friends were about him ; his dear ones 
 — his wife, his son (the last of six children he had loved).- 
 Name by name he bade them all farewell, and all his friends, 
 man by man. Two colored servants of his were there, — 
 whom he had helped purchase out of slavery, and bless 
 with freedom's life. They watched over the bedside of the 
 dying man. The kindly doctor sought to sweeten the bit- 
 terness of death with medicated skill; and, when that failed, 
 he gave the great man a little manna which fell down from 
 heaven three thousand years ago, and shepherd David gath- 
 ered up and kept it in a psalm : " The Lord is my Shepherd : 
 though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
 will fear no evil ; Ihy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 
 
 And the great man faltered out his last words, " That is 
 what I want — thy rod, thy rod ; thy staff, thy staff." That 
 heart had never wholly renounced its God. Oh, no ! it had 
 scoffed at His " higher law ; " but, in the heart of hearts, 
 there was religious feeling still ! 
 
 Just four years after his great speech, on the 24th of 
 October, all that was mortal of Daniel Webster went down 
 to the dust, and the soul to the motherly bosom of God ! 
 Men mourn for him : he heeds it not. The great man has 
 gone where the servant is free from his master, • where the 
 weary are at rest, where the wicked cease from troubling. 
 
 " No further seek his merits to disclose, 
 
 Or draw his frailties from their dread abode ; 
 There they alike in trembling hope repose, 
 The bosom of his Father and his God ! " 
 
 Massachusetts has lost her great adopted son. Has lost ? 
 Oh, no ! " I still live " is truer than the sick man knew : — 
 
 " He lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 
 And perfect witness of all-judging God." 
 
108 
 
 His memory will long live with us, still dear to many a 
 loving heart. What honor shall we pay ? Let the State go 
 out mindful of his noblest services, yet tearful for his fall ; 
 sad that he would fain have filled him with the husks the 
 swine do eat, and no man gave to him. Sad and tearful, let 
 her remember the force of circumstances, and dark tempta- 
 tion's secret power. Let her remember that while we know 
 what he yielded to, and what is sin, God knows what also 
 is resisted, and he alone knows who the sinner is. Massa- 
 chusetts, the dear old mother of us all ! Oh ! let her warn 
 her children to fling away ambition, and let her charge them, 
 every one, that there is a God who must indeed be worship- 
 ped, and a higher law of God which must be kept, though 
 Gold and Union fail. Then let her say to them, " Ye have 
 dwelt long enough in this mountain ; turn ye, and take your 
 journey into the land of Freedom, which the Lord your God 
 giveth you ! " 
 
 Then let her lift her eyes to Heaven, and pray : — 
 
 " Sweet Mercy ! to the gates of heaven 
 This statesman lead, his sins forgiven ; 
 The rueful conflict, the heart riven 
 
 With vain endeavor, 
 And memory of earth's bitter leaven, 
 Effaced for ever ! 
 
 But 
 
 why to him confine the prayer, 
 
 "While kindred thoughts and yearnings bear, 
 On the frail heart, the purest share 
 
 With all that live ? 
 The best of what we do and are. 
 
 Great God, forgive ! " 
 
 B9 
 
 
■"°o 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 ^-^ rft-'^' .^^t/'^'^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^- '^bv^ " 
 
 -^o^ °' 
 
 ,s 
 
 
 
 r y^ 
 
 ■% 
 
 * ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 * V • 
 
^^% 
 
 ♦ -^ >$>-^ o 
 
 
 * .♦^ ^ 
 
 
 
 V * 
 
 
 ^^' °- //^^^-^ ^°^:^^%°^ /^•^i''^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 0" 
 
 
 
 .-^^^^ 
 
 
 ■^o V^ .° 
 
 J-°-% V 
 
 <*J 
 
 
 
 
 o « a 
 
 
 
 
 » I 1 
 
 
 •:/;i^;4.:^ 
 
 •p^ * 
 
 a5°^ 
 
 
 *J* >^ . .? -- - ill' ' m U 111 ii | *'^ 
 
 
 < • 
 
 
 ^^-^^J 
 
 • a o