WEBSTER CENTENNIAL.

A'DDRESS

0 F

COL. JOHN H. GEEORGE,

A '1‘

VWHTHSCHTE%.HOUSﬂ

CONCORD, N. H.,

l3‘.I31Ii‘ORI*3 'l_‘.I~“[iI.43'

WEBSTER CLUB,

JANUARY 18, '18$§2.

CONCORD,N.Ha
PRINTED BY REPUBLICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION.
N I883.

 yesterday to be well-—nigl'1forgotten.

WEBSTER GEN TENN IAL.

ADDRESS OF COL.

JOHN H. GEORGE.

Mr. I~’rres?icle92.t, Gentlemen of the Webster
Olaf), mic? Irlellow-0t'ttze72.s : To most of this
audience Daniel W'cbstcr is a tradition.
Men in the prime of life are hardly old
enough to recollect oven the time and cir-
cumstances of his death, which occurred
almost thirty years ago. Since then new
generations have come upon the stage of
action. To such, l<:11ow'lcdge of Wcl)ste1'
can only be derived from his comparatively
few cox1t;ornpor:f1.1'ic;-.s who are still living, or
from the printed page. At the present time,
although the country is ful.l of men of in-
tclligcncc, of eloquence and marked ability
in public affairs, yet, by the universal con-

scnt of all men and parties alike, there is

living to-day no transcendent man like Webw
stcr, cn1phatieal1.y the centre of political and
social gravity. Every day now is crowded
with events, with new men and new things,
which make the men and transactions of
1ilvery~
body and everything seems transient, and
to require but momentary attention. Pre-

 occupation is the rule, leisure the exception.

' Let us cease, then, in the words of another,

to look upon the confusions of our own imw
mediate day, on this one hundredth anniver-
sary of the birth of Webster, and turn our
gaze for a brief hour upon one of the great
immortals, who has gone before, seeking
guidance by his light. . -

Is it, my friends, that we are living in the
days of great events rather than great men,

 that there are no such eulogists even, to

. commemorate this cciitonnial anniversary, as

used to celebrate the annual recurrence of
the day of Webstcr’s birth? Once there
was a Ohoate, an Everett, a Hillard to keep

» his memory fresh in the public mind, men

only second. to .Webster himself in elo-
quence and genius. Winthrop remains, the

only representative of the Websterian

group, almost the last Websterian man.
Now the pleasant task of eulogy of necessi-
ty falls to hands vastly less competent both
in appreciation and treatment, for no man
can be the ﬁt culogist of "Webster who has
not had the experience and beneﬁt of per-
sonal intcrcourse and association. Such
was the controlling power of VVcbster’s per-
sonality, that it seemed to the people of his
day to be almost impossible for the Federal
Government to be administered without his
co-opcration in some one of its three great
branches. We are accustomed nowadays to
the idea that no man, however high his posi-
tion, is a necessity, or is seriouly missed at
his death. As is epigrammatically said by a
living poet,---“and a famous man is forgot
era the minute—hand can tick nine :” but un-
fortunately wc have no Webster now to be
forgotten or missed. This assemblage and
similar assemblages, this day convened in
every part of the country he served so faith-
fully and loved so well, prove that Webster
is still missed and will never be forgotten.
He was one of those exceptional men not
merely of his own time, but of all tin1es—e-
the contemporary, as it were, of every gen-
eration. . ,
I have spoken of the confusing rush of
events, and the constant change of actors
on the political stage, which are such no-
ticeable featurcs of current times. Even no
longer ago than my own boyhood and youth
there wasan entirely diﬁerent state of things.
Men were less hurried. The population of
the country was much «smaller and more
homogeneous. The feeling‘ of country, of
locality and neighborhood, was stronger.
We were then intensely American. Europe
lay afar off. Ourattention was concentrated
on our own domestic concerns, on our own
conspicuous public 1nen,and on our ownicis-
Atlantic aﬁairs; for there was then no

steamship connection or submarine tele-
graphic cable to bring us face to face with
the daily occurrences of the other he1ni-
sphere. In those days politics were viru-
lent enough and personal enough, but there
was little or no corruption in them. Men
voted as they saw ﬁt, according to their own
convictions, unbought, and subject to few
improper solicitations. In other words, pop-
ular government was then not merely a the-«
cry, but a practical reality. Then there was
ah intense patriotism pervading the entire
country. Perhaps our people were too
boastful and too proud of their immunities
from the curses and ills of the civilizations
of the Old World. Then the spirit of com-
munism had not been transplanted from Eu-
ropean soil, nor had an.y portion of the peo-
ple become impregnated with ideas begotten
in the hot-beds of tyranny and oppression,
which are without excuse, and should be
without tolerance in a free republic. It
was the day of the expounders of the
Federal Constitution; of the men who suc-
ceeded the Fathers of the Republ.ic; who
put their ideas into practical operation, and
made their great work successful by a
clear exposition and defence of the princi~
ples which underlie rational liberty, regu-
lated and controlled by law. First came
Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin,
and the Adamses, who gave us national in»
dependence and the union of locally sov-
ereign states under a written Constitution.
Then came the next great age of the Re-
public, that of Webster, Clay, Clinton, Cal-
houn, Woodbury, Wright, Benton, and their
associates, who made the Federal Govern»
mentapractical success. Their duty was
to elucidate the principles of the Constitu«-
tion, and impress upon the people ﬁdelity to
all its provisions and devotion to the whole
Union. And this duty was well performed.
Foremost, _faciZe pgorrzlrziaeps, in this group of
marvellous men of the second age of the
Republic was Webster, a son of our own
Granite State, known in his day emphati-
cally as the expounder of the Constitution—-
as the great typical American, with a per-
sonal grandeur not surpassing the ma.gniﬁ-
cence of his own. intellect, and equal to the
continental extent of the country, every
inch of which was embraced in the love of
his great heart.

Webster was born in this irnmccliate neigh—
borhood, on our then Northern frontier, in
the last year of the struggle for national
independence. At the time of his father’s
emigration from south-eastern New Hamp-
shire, the smolsze from the rude chimney of
his humble dwelling, in its gloomy surround-
ings of an almost unbroken forest, was the
last sign of civilization between the Merri-
mack and the St. Lawrence.

Webster’s father, Captain and Judge
Ebenezer Webster, cannot be omitted in an
estimate of the character of his illustrious
son. In the biographical sketch which pre-
faces Webster’s works, Capt. Webster is
spoken of as belonging to that intrepid bor-
der race which lined the whole frontier of
the Anglo—SaXon colonies, by turns farmers,
huntsmen, and soldiers, passing their lives
in one long struggle with the hardships of
an infant settlement, on the skirts of a pri-
meval forest. He was stalwart in frame,
and a man of great energy and pluck. He
had served as a ranger in the French and
Indian wars, and through the Revolutionary
struggle. Thus ‘Webster knew by his father
what manner of men the early settlers and
patriots of New I+l:ngland were, and what
their heroic services had been, and thus it
was that he always cherished a deep ﬁlial
feeling of grati.tude for the pioneers of
New Englaml and the soldiers of our war
of liberation. He was familiar from child-
hood with the story of their l1ar<;lships
in opening the wilderness to ClV‘ll.l.Zt'l.i;Ll().l1,
and in achieving by their valor indepen-
dence for their children. In clierishing an
affectionate veneration for his father, who
defended the soil on which. he was born
against savage violence, and through the
blood of seven years’ revolutionary war
shrank from no danger or sacrifice for his
country, "Webster learned to extend th.e
sanie veneration to all his father’s con'te:rnpo~
rarics and comrades in arms. He had a
vivid appreciation of the cost of our free
institutions and our national independence;
and hence arose his fervid ancestor-worship,
his conservatism, and his intense love of
the Union. Webster’s fathcr”s house was
undoubtedly the rendezvous of the soldiers
and pioneers of the neighborhood. It was
there they fought their battles over again,
and told the stories of dangers encountered,
of hair-breadth escapes and deeds of per-
sonal prowess. Arnid these scenes, and ac-»
customed to these recitals, Wel)ster’s child-
hood and early youth were spent. Here
he drank in the patriotic inspiration which
created an enthusiasm growing with his
growth and strengthening with his strength.
Here he was impregnated with those ideas
which characterized his entire life. He
could not be other than a patriot if he
would, and his whole nature rcvoltcd at any
other idea than that of veneration for the
men of the Revolution and their work. In
his eyes they were the world’s heroes.
How the seed thus sown in his childhood
bore fruit in his touching address to the
Revolutionary soldiers at the laying of the
cornerstone of the rnonument on Bunker
Hill! ‘What a scene for the painter was
furnished in the days of his childhood by

that pale~faced boy, as, with overhangingl

brow and great black eyes, rivalling the eyes
of Burns in their lustrous beauty, and glow-
ing with fire never to be quenched in life,
he listened to the recitals of the deeds of
the old soldiers, in those long winter even-
ings at his father’s house in the wilderness!
How familiar to him did these recitals make
every prominent act and actor of the Revo-
lutionl

Thus the soldier-pioneer’s humble cabin,
near the head waters of the Merrimack, be»
came the nursery of a patriotism which was
by its eloquent utterance to ﬁre the hearts of
the American people, assembled on great
connnemorative occasions, command the ap-
plause of listening Senates, and intensify
an unconquerable sentiment of Unionism,
fraught with the greatest historic results.

In those days, the Fourth of July was the
grand ga1a—dayof the year. Every village
and hamlet celebrated the anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence with a depth of
feeling which could only be experienced
by those who participated in the stirring
events of the Revolution. One of Webstc.-r’s
earliest orations, which has been preserved,
was delivered on one of these occasions, and
not only gave brilliant promise of his future
-grcatn.ess, but proved his thorough innocula-
tion with the spirit of "76.

In his centennial address, delivered at
l?hiladelpl1ia in 1.876, Professor Sanborn
said.,——-—~“For nearly two centuries after the
first setrtlemenrt of New Ilampshire, her en-
tire record is blotted with tears and blood.
No pages of human history are more touch-
ing and pathetic than the record of the In-
dian wars, the 1i‘rench wars, and the Iihigli.sl1
Wars, that almost crushed the life out of the
pioneers of the (3‘rrani¢te State. We who live
in ‘ceiled houses,’ with better furniture than
kings could coinrnand three hundred years
ago, can scarcely conceive the hardships on-
durcd by our ancestors in New Hampshire
dtiiririg the ll.1‘Sl3 century after its settlement.
lfroni the day when lE’hilip first lighted the

torch of war in 1675, there were continued

hostilities, with brief intervals of peace, for
fifty years; and the citizen that had lived
through that period had endured ‘hardness
as a good soldier,’ longer than the Roman
veteran when he was released from active
service. But our fathers found no discharge
in that war. They were compelled to fight

on for their hearths and altars, for their

children and country. There fell upon them,
at once, a storm of woes, such as can scarce-
ly be paralleled in history. Indians lay in
wait for their blood; proprietors sought to
rob them of the farms they had cleared and
tilled; monarchs usurped their government;
pestilence thinned their ranks; famine wast-
ed their strength‘; toil and suffering bowed

5

their bodies; and wily and treacherous
Frenchmen sent savages from Canada to
burn their houses and murder their families.
This combination of destructive agents might
be very aptly symbolized by the ﬂying and
creeping things that devoured the land of
Israel, when the prophet exclaimed,-——‘That
which the palmer—worm hath left, hath the 10-
cust eaten; and that which the locust hath
left, hath the canker-worm eaten; and that
which the canker-worm hath left, hath the
caterpillar eaten.’ Still they gained skill
and courage from these very disasters. Like
the oak from Mount Algidus, to which the
poet compares ancient Rome, they derived
strength from the very axe that pruned their
branches.”

It may here be remarked that these are
the words of one of the most cultured sons
of New Hampshire, whose deceased wife
was the daughter of Ezekiel and the grand-
daughter of Ebenezer Webster, and whose
daughter is to-day one of the most brilliant
stars in the intellectual constellation of our
State. Of Ezekiel Webster hardly less can
be said on this occasion than that his sudden
death in 1829 deprived New Hampshire of a
son scarcely less gifted than his illustrious
brother.

Webstcr’s life thus began with the initial
year of our independent existence as a na-
tion. Never was genius born in a ruder en-
vironment of man and nature. Here were
the forests and the mountains. A few miles
distant the majestic river was just com-
mencing its course seaward, but its banks
were not then as now the sites of great indus~
trial cities, where the hum of machinery
drowns the roar of the water-fall, and where
the busy activities of life ﬁnd their best
illustrations and show their most marvellous
results. They were almost wholly unre-
clairncd, and lying in a state of nature. All
was forest primeval. The external condi-
tions neccssary to the development of intel»
lectual ability were apparently utterly want-
ing. It was the day of the pioneers, who
had just commenced their aggressions from
the coasts of Massachusetts and New Hamp-
shire upon the interior wilderness. Their

lives were of necessity a grim struggle with I

cold, and want, and privations of all sorts,
and certain to develop physical hardihood
and thrift, rather than high intellectual tastes
and ambitions. Webster, by temperament
and complexion, seemed to belong to a tropi-
cal race rather than to be a native of cold,
sterile, northern New England. But great
genius is irrepressible, and will ﬁnd food
and inciternents to satisfy its ravenous hun-4
ger for knowledge, and to nourish its aspira-
tions, even in a wilderness. ;

It is an enigma which has never been

solved, how Shakespeare acquired his clas-~

sical learning, and in what way he ob-
tained his extraordinary intellectual out-
ﬁt. Nothing could have been more dull
and commonplace than the obscure rural
neighborhood in which he was born,
and where he lived up to the time of his
majority. A country .village in England in his
day, which was the England of the middle
ages,was beyond measure unintellectual. The
people were universally ignorant, mere creat-
ures of habit and tradition. There was no
more incentive to genius in a country village
of medieval England, than in the rude pio-
neer settlement in the woods of New Hamp-
shire at the close of the eighteenth century.
Indeed, there. was not so much, for here
even then were at least the beginnings of
popular education and enterprise. Yet
Shalcespeare, on emerging from his country
birthplace, began, soon after his advent in
London, the writing; of that wonderful series
of dramas, not only illustrative of the his-
tory of his own country, but of human na-
ture in all ztges and everywhere. He por-
trayed the influence of every kind of emo-
tion and circumstance to which human na-
ture can be subjected. How did he become
the moral and intellectual luminary of the
world, which he is, and will continue to be, to
the latest time? This is a question which
no one has as yet succeeded in answeriiw.

In like manner "Webster contrived, on a
most meagre diet of early instruction, obtained
at a country academy and an Indian school,
founded in the wilderness by an Englislii no-
bleman (for such was Dartmouth College in
Webster’s youth), to arm and equip himself
intellectually to become one of the grandest
orators and greatest statesmen of which this
world has record. The Bible, Shakespeare,
Homer, Virgil, Milton, Pope, and Aclclison.
were accessible to him; and perhaps this list
of books and authors constituted library
enough and mental aliment enoitigli for a
person of ‘Webstefs genius. It may even
be thought fortunate that he was substan-
tially conﬁned to these books, for it is quite
evident that in these later times a multitude

of books has brought mental distraction and

superﬁciality rather than wisdom. One can
iniagine with what veracity Webster devour-
ed the lC)00l{S we have mentioned, and how
thoroughly he assimilated their thoughts
and made them his own. It is matter of
tradition, that his first appearance in the
court-room and legislative halls showed a
most perfect mental equipxnent in every re-
spect.

It is true that Webster-’s marvellous abil-

ities were supplemented by a magniﬁceiit
persoiial presence that commanded consid-

eration and attention for him at once and
from all men. Indeed, Lord Brougham
said, ‘r‘No,man could be so wise as Webster

6

locked.” So impressive was his appearance
that stra.ng.g:ers would follow him in the
streets that they Inig.;'l:1t ge't a full view of
him. In fact, he had only to step out of
doors to create a sensation. His soubriquet
of the “G<.>d-like” was scarcely deemed ex-
trava.g;ant by his friends. He was called in
E1i_;rla1icl “ The Great VVcstern,” in allusion
to the greatest Atlantic vessel of his time.
He inspired even in our 1nattc1‘—of-fact age
and country a sentiment akin to the hero-
worship of Greece and Rome.

There is a bronze statue of WY-zbster,
by Powers, which was lost at sea. It
lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,
somewhere in the vicinity of the tele-
g1'apliic cable, as we are told. A dupli-
cate of it is standing to—day in the State
House ,f_,vr<)u11cls in Boston. Of this lost statue
Hawthorne remarlszs in his Italian Notes,--
“There is an ex.prcssi(m of quiet, solid,
massive strcxigtlri in the whole ﬁ5.g;11i‘e; a
deep, 1:)e1'vz1.cl;in,gv,' e11.crgy, which any exag,rg,'e1ra-
tion of g,>;esture would lessen and lower. He
looks like a pillar of Sta.te. The face is
very grancl, very VVG.l')St(3l‘, stern and awful,
because he is in the act of meeting a crisis,
yet with the warmth of a g;reat heart g‘lmv-
ing; tl11‘o11gl.'i it. Happy is VVebster to have
been so truly and adequately scul.ptured.
Happy the sculptor in such a subject, with
which no ideali-zation of a dcmi-g,'od could
have supplied him. I’crhaps the statue at
the bottom of the sea will. be cast up in
some future age, when the ]_.u'<;rsent race of
man is fo1‘,<;,3'ot.ten, and if so, that far poster-
ity will loolr. up to us as a grander race than
we ﬁnd ourselves.”

Apropos of this extract, we are reminded
that the State of VVebster’s nativity lacks to
this day a rnonumental statue of her grreatest
son. It is a lack that should no longer be per-
mitted to disgrace us. "While Boston and
New York liave erected on most conspicu-
ous sites colossal bronze statues to the
memory of W'cbster as axrriongg; the worthiest
of great Arnericans, to stand carved or cast
in encl1:1i'ing' material for the inspection of
posterity, this his native State has erected

'0.

tion of the services of her ablest son in the
cause of constitutional liberty. Tliere
should be a monumental statue here at the
State Capital, and also at his birthplace,
where his form would most appropriately
stand, sweeping; with its grztac». the broad in-
tervals which hel.oved so well, and so often
frequented for rest and recreation during
his arduous career as a public man. His
sublime form would be the most appropriate
gemias Zoos’ of our sublime local scenery.

. In a brief address of this l+r;indany.at-—
tempt at a full statement of the I character-
istics of Webster’s career must be futile.

no monument il.lustratitve of her apprecia- ,

c 7

The theme is so rich that volumes would he
required for anything like an exhaustive
consideration of it, for he was most cm-
phatically a many-sided man. He was an
orator, a statesman, a diplomatist, a lawyer,
and a legislator, and in each capacity he
was pre-eminent. But he was more than all
these. He was endowed with the rarest
social qualities. He loved the cultivation of
the soil. He took special delight in his do-
mestic animals, and it is a touching illustra-
tion of his character in this regard, that in
his last sickness they were, by his direction,
driven past his window, in order that he
might take a farewell look at them. He
was exceedingly fond of rural sports, and
especially of ﬁshing. The early sunrise often
found him in his ﬁshing-boat off the shores
of Marshﬁeld, and he knew every trout-
brook and pond in the vicinity of his New
I~Ia.mpsliire home.

The themes which were most congenial
to his oratory were the early history of
his own section of the country, and the
lives and characteristics of the Revolution-
ary patriots and of the founders of our
government. '_l‘hesc subjects were sacred
to him, and he dwelt upon them with a for-
vid el.o<.1ucncc which no other subject could
call forth. l?I.i,s orations upon the first settle-
ment of- New jljlngland, upon A.(lan'1s and J ef-
ferson, and at the comrnencement and at the
completion of Bunker Hi.lI. l\{[onui::nent, may
perhaps be called the best specimens of the
peculiar eloquence to which I refer. In
these addresses he looked both to the past
and to the future. His broad pat‘ri.oti.srn
and prophetic vision saw more than the
country of his day and ,ge.one1':1.tic>n. He saw
it as it would be in its full developme‘nt in
space and time. Cal.ii"ornia‘and the other
States of the l’aci.fic slope, as we know them
.to—day, were present to his mind when he
-made his unrivalled oration on Plyniouth
Rock in 1820. He saw with prophetic gaze
the gcnerati.cms of A:mcrican.s, then unborn
and now on the stage of life, and welcomed
them to the places which he and his contem-
poraries were filling, and to the inheritance
of popular liberty which he and they were
then enjoying. His love of liberty and vin-
dication of human riglits was not lhnited to
this hemisphere, or to his ati.ve land. As
his patriotism was  bread as the whole

country, so his humanity embraced the
world. In 1828 the patriots of Greece were

the subject of one
sional efforts.

As a lawyer, Webster had great learning,
severe logical powers, wonderful clearness
of statement, and broad and elevated views.
In the higher branches of constit'utional law
he had no equal. His arguments in the
Knapp tria1,,and in the Dartmouth College

of his finest Congres-

case, specially illustrate his power as an ad-
vocate, and his strength as a constitutional
lawyer. , i
As a statesman and diplomatist, Webster
investigated and mastered every subject
upon wh:ich he was called to act. No man
was freer from sordid motives. With his
unequalled abilities and immense legal pow-
ers, had he been corrupt Croesus might have
borrowed of his wealth. Yet he lived with
limited means, and left to his family the leg-
acy of a great name and poverty. It was
not in his day the fashion to corrupt and be
corrupted. Blatant demagogues did not then
grow rich through the coinage into money
of political dishonesty, business incapacity,
and official unﬁtness, in the mint of public
office, nor did Congressmen then pervert
their high offices to the accumulation of
wealth through Congressional speculations.
The spirit of the trickster and the jobber had
not then affected Congress. Lobbyisrn had
not then become one of the exact sciences.
Cheek had notsupplanted merit, nor did
professional politicians assume the ertclwmce
guardianship of public virtue and morality,
nor claim to be the only infallible advocates
and protectors of the people’s rights and in-
terests in VVcbstcr’s day. His life and
speeches and political action were always
above-board, and a rebuke to all pettiness,
corruption, and sectionalism. He was too
great a statesrnan. to be a partisan, or the
friend or the instrument of mere politicians.
His action at the nulliﬁcation period, and
subsequcnt.ly during the administrations of
Tyler and 17i‘illimore, illustrates the superi-

politician and the shifts of the trimmer.

In "Webstenreason or the regulating faculty
was supreme, and kept his emotional nature
in perfect subjection, but his feelings and
his irnagination, when aroused‘, were in keep»
ing with his other great endowments, as is
attested by many glowing passages in his
best known eiforts, particularly in the per-
oration, in his famous reply to I-Iayne, than
which there is scarcely anything ﬁner in the
English tongue. In that speech, ‘Webster's
eloquence culminated. He was then in the
prime of his matchless manhood. His love
of the Union, and his horror of the possibili-

ty of civil war, were voiced in sentences .

never to be forgotten.

He exclaiined,---“When my eyes shall be
turned to behold for the last time the sun in
heaven, may I not see him shining on the
broken and dishonored fragments of a once
glorious Union; on States dissevered, dis-
cordant, belligerent; cn a land rent with civ-
il feuds or drenched it may be in fraternal
blood! Let their last feeble and lingering
glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign
of the republic, now known and honored

ority of his statesmanship to the arts of the

8

throughout the earth, still full high ad-W
vanced, its arms and trophies streaming in

their original lustre, not a stripe erased nor

a star obscured, bearing for its motto no

such miserable interrcgatory as ‘What is

all this worth?’ nor those other words of

delusion and folly, ‘Liberty fl1‘Si3 and Union

afterwards;’ but everywhere, spread all

over in characters of living light, blazing on

all its ample folds as they ﬂoat over the sea
and over the land and in every wind under
the whole heavens, that other sentiment
dear to every true American heart, ‘Lib-
erty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable.’ ” Here was speech touched by
emotion indeed, and lighted by the ﬁres of
the most exalted patriotism.

A marked trait in Webster’s character
was his warm and unfaltering personal
friendship, his aifection for h.is native State,
and his love for the old college, his Alma
Mater. His love for Dartmouth College
never grew cold. He looked upon it as an
institution to which he owed a debt of grat-
itude which could not be overpaid. And I

feel sure no ﬁtter tribute could be offered

to his memory than the prompt establish-
ment of the Daniel Webster professorship,
for which eﬁorts are now being made.
President Pierce told me, that upon his
first arrival in Wasliington as one of the
youngest members of the lower House of
Congress, he found a letter from Mr. Wels-
ster, urging him to be a frequent guest at
his house, and assuring him of the interest
with which he should watch the career of
the son of a Revolutionary patriot of his
native State. The note closed with the del-
icate suggestion, that when they met all sub-
jects would be in order but politics. In ap-
preciation of this kindly act of Welister
towards a young man, it should be borne in
mind that party feeling at the time was very
bitter and party lines sharply drawn. In re-
lating this anecdote, Gen. Pierce said to me,
that it was a matter especially gratifying to
him to remember, that whatever might be the
political bitterness of the times, no disparag-
ing remark respecting Mr. Webster, or one
impugning his patriotism, had ever escaped
I remember well the dinner given in
Franklin, at the old family homestead, by
Webster, in the fall of 1851. It was the
next year after his famous 7th of March
speech. Many of his old Massachusetts

. friends had grown cold. Faneuil Hall had

been closed to him. His anxieties for the
future of the country, and his incessant la-
bors to avert the impending danger, had
worn upon his health and depressed his
spirits, and he had come to his old home for
rest and recuperation. Among those pres-
ent were Gen. Pierce, Hon. Richard H.

Ayer, Mr. Peter Harvey, Senator Atherton,
Judge Nesmith, Gen. Peaslee, Judge Up-
ham, Hon. Austin F. Pike, and some ﬁfteen
other prominent men of the State. Of that
dinner party, I believe, Judge Nesmith, Mr.
Pike, and myself are the only survivors.
I was very young, and watched every move-
ment of ‘Webster with an irresistible fasci-
nation.

At the close of the dinner, Gen. Pierce,
who sat at the end of the table opposite
‘Webster, rose and addressed him in a speech
which for tasteful, touching eloquence I have
never heard surpassed. The tears ﬂowed
down Webster’s cheeks like rain. I remem-
ber in his reply Mr. Webster spoke of his
life-long affection for Gen. Pierce, his ear-
nest love of his native State, and for the old
College, his Alma Mater, and his appreci-
ation of the dangers he believed th.reatened
the country. It was the ﬁrst and only time
I had heard ‘Webster speak, and I was so
fascinated with the man, and carried away
by his magniﬁcent oratory, and my impres-
sions of his exalted patriotism were such,
that, I.)emocrat as I was, I would have voted
for him for President, if the opportunity
had presented itself, a thousand tirncs.. It
is greatly to be regretted that the speeches
to which I have referred were never report-
ed. Later in the afternoon of the same
day a large number of our citizens went to
'l+"‘ranklin by special train to pay their re-
spects to the great statesman. The beauty
and cordiality of his speech of welcome to
them could have made no other than a life-
long iI‘I1pI'(3SSi.OI1 upon all who heard it.

A personal friend, at the annual reunion
of the Massachusetts Press Association in
Boston in 1.874, in response to a sentiment
coniplimentary to New l*Iarnpshire, made the
following apt allusions to the sons of the
Granite State: “ The remark has been at-
tributed to, and I think has been well an-
thenticated as coming from “Webster, that
‘New l*Iarnpshire was a good state to emigrate
from.’ And this was said when its author
had made your state his home by adoption,
and when he was at the zenith of his fame
as a lawyer. But Webster gave no utter-
ance, as has been alleged, to this sentiment
in disparageinent of his native state, its men,
and its customs. Born and nurtured under
the very shadow of Kearsarge, his great
heart ever beat true to the inspirations of his
chilclhood; and to the last be reverted with
enthusiastic recollection and touching ten-

derness to the scenes and associations of his

youth. He found, what thousands of other
maturing young men have found, that this
ﬁeld of labor was too limited; and for this
reason the sons of New l~lan1pshire, more
numerously than those of any other state,

are scattered throughout the Union, gracing

the learned professions, and honoring the
commerce and industry of the nation. In
the last national campaign we gave to the
country a candidate on either ticket (Greeley
and Vlfilson), both rising from a low estate by
the force of their own energy and character.
The late chief—justice of the United States
(Chase) went out from us in the humble ca-
pacity of a Yankee schoolmaster, and set
himself down in the city of Washington,
the scene of his subsequent fame. He be-
cam.e senator, governor, secretary, chief-
justice, ﬁlling all positions with marked
ability, ﬁdelity, and integrity. It was my
fortune to have been his pupil, and it was
here I learned that

‘ Honor and shame from no condition rise ;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’ ”

The days of Webster were the days of in»
tellectual giants, and yet he towered above
them all. To compare him with modern

pigmy poli.ti.cians would be like contrasting

the noble mountain at whose foot he was
cradled, with the mole-hills which surround
it.

As the greatest light in our intellectual
ﬁrmament, VVebster will go down to future
generations, a guide and example to all who
revere fervid patriotism, appreciate consti-
tutional liberty, and admire consummate
st:;1.tesmanslrip.

Born in lllngland instead of this country,
one can easily i:1nag.ine him ascending from
“a simple village green,” through the force

of his extraordinary endowments, by de-
grees, to the premiership of the British
Empire, an empire he so graphically de-
scribed in an often quoted passage of one
of his speeches. It is possible that England
in his day would have been a better arena
for his great powers than this new and un-
developed republic. It is a high’ compli-
ment to Gladstone, the present premier, to
say that in aspect and eloquence he is Web-
sterian. , But Webster, had he been born
in England and reached its highest honors,
would have added only one more to a long
line of statesmen of kindred power and
genius, such as Burke, Pitt, and Fox. In
this country he stood solitary and alone in
the prominence of his career. In the ex-
citement attendant upon our civil war, the
great statesman of the past has been to a
greater or less extent lost sight of. At
times clouds and darkness have concealed
him from popular view, but, God be praised,
the clouds are lifting and the darkness is
being dispelled.

As the great mountain of his native State
stands immovable, through both the sunshine
and the storm, so, new the storm is past, the
gathering of which he clearly foresaw and
heroically struggled to avert, the memory of
Webster shall rest secure in the heart of
the American people.

“As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale and midway meets the storm;
'l‘hough ’round its breast the rolling clouds be spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”

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Daniel Webster Pamphlet Project

University Libraries

University of Missouri——Columbia

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