The Daniel Webster Birth Place 
 Celebration 
 
 [Single copies of this pamphlet may now be obtained gratis of the Rumford 
 Press, Concord, N. H. 
 
 Single copies of the full proceedings at the Webster Birth Place Celebration 
 may also be so obtained with paper covers at 20 cents each, 50 copies at 
 half price; with board covers at 25 cents each or leather bound at 50 cents 
 each. Expected to be ready by October twenty-seventh. 1 
 
 AT FRANKLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 ON AUGUST 28, 1913 
 
 Opening Address of 
 
 WILLIAM E/CHANDLER 
 
 President of the Webster Birth Place Association 
 
 And 
 
 The Poem in Fac-Simile Written by 
 
 EDNA DEAN PROCTOR 
 
WEBSTER BIRTH PLACE ASSOCIATION 
 CELEBRATION. 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Of the Proceedings at Franklin, New Hampshire, 
 
 August 28, 1913. 
 
 (1) Invocation by Rev. Rufus P. Gardner. 
 
 (2) Opening address by Chief Justice Frank N. Parsons of Franklin, Vice- 
 
 President. 
 
 (3) Motion by Hon. Clarence E. Carr giving a vote of sympathy and 
 
 thanks to Hon. William E. Chandler of Concord, President, 
 — absent on account of sickness — adopted. 
 
 (4) Address by Mr. Chandler, read by Hon. George H. Moses of Concord, 
 
 late United States Minister to Greece and Montenegro. 
 
 (5) Address by Governor Samuel Demeritt Felker. 
 
 (6) Reading by Hon. Henry H. Metcalf of Concord of Poem by Miss Edna 
 
 Dean Proctor. 
 
 (7) Address by President Ernest Fox Nichols of Hanover, New Hamp- 
 
 shire, in behalf of Dartmouth College. 
 
 (8) Principal oration by Hon. Samuel W. McCall for the Commonwealth 
 
 of Massachusetts. 
 
 (9) Address by Senator Jacob H. Gallinger of Concord, read in his ab- 
 
 sence by Hon. James O. Lyford of Concord. 
 
 (10) Letters from speakers invited but unable to be present: 
 
 United States Senator Hoke Smith of Georgia. 
 
 United States Senator Henry F. Hollis (2) of Concord. 
 Congressman Eugene E. Reed of Manchester. 
 
 Congressman Raymond B. Stevens of Landaff. 
 
 Hon. William H. Sawyer of New York City, Chairman of Local 
 Committee. 
 
 (11) Address by Hon. Samuel E. Pingree of Hartford, ex-Governor of 
 
 Vermont. 
 
 (12) Address by Hon. David Cross of Manchester, New Hampshire. 
 
 (13) Address by Hon. Nahum J. Bachelder of Andover, ex-Governor of 
 
 New Hampshire. 
 
 (14) Address by Rev. Arthur Little of Newton ville, Massachusetts. 
 
 (15) Closing address by Hon. Clarence E. Carr, Vice-President of the 
 
 Association. 
 
 (16) Benediction by Rev. H. C. McDougall. 
 
 (17) Story of the restoration of the birth place; organization of the Web- 
 
 ster Birth Place Association of October 26, 1910, with list of 
 officers and members and contributors; donation and freedom 
 from taxation granted by the legislature of New Hampshire. 
 
 (18) Newspaper accounts of celebration, and newspaper comments. 
 
 (19) Appendix — Fac-simile of Miss Edna Dean Proctor's poem on Mr. 
 
 Webster; Mr. Chandler's note to his address. 
 
OPENING ADDRESS OF 
 WILLIAM E. CHANDLER 
 
 It is my privilege to open the proceedings of this occasion 
 by telling you what has been done by our Birth Place 
 Association for the restoration and permanent preservation 
 of the little dwelling-house in which Daniel Webster was 
 born on the eighteenth day of January, 1782, upon the 
 spot where it now stands — then a part of the town of 
 Salisbury, now a part of the city of Franklin. 
 
 Mr. Webster, in addition to his surpassing qualities 
 as an orator and statesman of world-wide fame, was 
 pre-eminently inspired by constant admiration and affec- 
 tion for the works of nature — for the joyous places, scenes 
 and other aspects of the physical world appearing before 
 him; such as are so indispensable to the happiness of 
 every one of us in this troublesome yet wonderful world 
 in whose vicissitudes we must live on, until there is lov- 
 ingly opened before us the better, and, we hope, a little 
 easier life for spiritual and immortal mankind. 
 
 At a mass meeting at Saratoga on August 19, 1840, 
 Mr. Webster, after attributing to political opponents the 
 origin of a reproach that Candidate General William 
 Henry Harrison had been born in a log cabin, went on to 
 say: 
 
 “It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin; 
 but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, 
 raised amid the snowdrifts of New Hampshire at a period 
 so early that, when the smoke first rose from its rude 
 chimney and curled over the frozen hills, there was no 
 similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it 
 and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains 
 still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children 
 to it to teach them the hardships endured by the gener- 
 ations which have gone before them. 
 
 “I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred 
 
2 
 
 ties, the early affections, and the touching narratives and 
 incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive 
 abode. I weep to think that none of those who inhabited 
 it are now among the living; and if ever I am ashamed of 
 it, or if I ever fail in affectionate veneration for him who 
 reared and defended it against savage violence and destruc- 
 tion, cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, 
 and, through the fire and blood of seven years’ revolu- 
 tionary war, shrunk from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice 
 to serve his country and to raise his children to a condition 
 better than his own, may my name and the name of my 
 posterity be blotted forever from the memory of mankind.” 
 
 On October 11, 1828, Mr. Webster wrote a letter on 
 “Local Associations” to his friend, Jacob McGaw, who 
 had written to him about a trip to Kingsbridge, White 
 Plains, Benn’s Heights and other historic places he had 
 recently visited. He wrote: 
 
 “I never knew a man yet, nor a woman either, with 
 a sound head and a good heart, that was not more or less 
 under the power which these local associations exercise. 
 
 “It is true that place, in these things, is originally 
 accidental. Battles might have been fought elsewhere 
 as well as at Saratoga or Bennington. Nevertheless, here 
 they were fought; and nature does not allow us to pass 
 over the scenes of such events with indifference, unless 
 the scenes themselves have become familiar by frequent 
 visits to them. For my part I love them all, and all such 
 as they.” 
 
 And again, to Chancellor James Kent, on June 5, 1832, 
 concerning the former’s speech at Mr. Irving’s dinner, 
 Mr. Webster wrote: 
 
 “One line for the purpose of saying that the speech is 
 a delightful little thing, just, sweet, affectionate. When 
 I read the paragraph in. which you prefer what relates 
 to the blue hills and mountain glens of our own country 
 to sketches of foreign scenes and foreign countries, I 
 wanted to seize your hand and give it a hearty shake of 
 sympathy. Heaven bless this goodly land of our fathers! 
 Its rulers and its people may commit a thousand follies, 
 yet Heaven bless it! Next to the friends beloved of my 
 heart, those same hills and glens and native woods and 
 
3 
 
 native streams will have my last earthly recollections. 
 Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” 
 
 Moved by this same kind of inspiration which always 
 controlled Mr. Webster, as well as by a sense of neglected 
 duty towards the humble home of their greatest public 
 man, citizens of New Hampshire, aided by many friends 
 elsewhere, have at last rescued his birthplace from private 
 control and — either in the hands of our Association or 
 belonging in trust to the city of Franklin — the little building 
 as it was in 1782 and as you now see it, with the 130 acres 
 of the farm of Captain Ebenezer Webster, wherein were 
 born Ezekiel and Daniel Webster, children of Abigail 
 Eastman (not in the log cabin in which were born their 
 brothers and sisters, the children of Mehitable Smith) — 
 will stand in the far future a precious and attractive 
 reminder of perhaps the most noted orator and statesman 
 of this or any of the nations of the highest civilization in 
 the world. 
 
 The log cabin in which the brothers and sisters were 
 born was located upon the same home-house-lot and the 
 site is to be so marked by a boulder and a suitable tablet 
 giving the result of the latest careful research. 
 
 It is intended by the Association to improve and make 
 pleasing the buildings you see — the birthplace building, 
 the larger mansion and the large barn; and also to beautify 
 the 130 acres by walls, gateways and modest monuments 
 as well as by landscape gardening so as to make the whole 
 most attractive to visitors from near and far away during 
 all time to come. 
 
 The next Webster home was three miles away, down 
 on the banks of the Merrimack and known as the Elms 
 Farm; and the last was at Marshfield, in Massachusetts, 
 on the shores of the “ sounding sea,” where Mr. Webster 
 so much indulged his pleasure in nature, and where he 
 died on October 24, 1852. 
 
4 
 
 It is not my province at this time to speak at any length 
 of the public life of Mr. Webster. It has been my privilege 
 to do so on two occasions: in the senate on December 
 20, 1894, upon the presentation by New Hampshire of 
 the Stark and Webster statues to the National Gallery 
 in the Capitol at Washington; and upon the presentation, 
 on January 18, 1900, of the statue of Webster to be placed 
 by Stilson Hutchins, a native of New Hampshire, on 
 Massachusetts Avenue of the Capital City. 
 
 Senator Gallinger took part in the proceedings in the 
 senate and had hoped to be here today. Our principal 
 speaker is a son of Dartmouth, Representative Samuel 
 W. McCall, who has studied and eulogized Mr. Webster 
 and his works with discrimination, power and eloquence. 
 
 [At this point, upon the understanding that, when the 
 proceedings of this day shall be published in final form, 
 each speaker is privileged to extend his remarks by a 
 general and generous “ leave to print,” Mr. Chandler 
 brings to attention, at some length, two episodes in Mr. 
 Webster’s career which he characterizes as epochal in 
 their nature — as national events rather than orations 
 in the career of a great orator.] 
 
 The first of these, naturally, is Mr. Webster’s contest 
 against the right of a state to leave the Union and in vindi- 
 cation of the power of the nation, within constitutional 
 limits, to impose its legislative will upon the several states. 
 This episode of Mr. Webster’s labors for the Union and 
 the Constitution culminates in the reply to Hayne which, 
 Mr. Chandler declares, destroyed the doctrine of nullifica- 
 tion. In support of this declaration he quotes the words 
 of Secretary John D. Long when, as the President’s spokes- 
 man, he received for the nation the statue of Webster to 
 which reference has already been made, joining with his 
 praise of Webster’s overwhelming arguments in the senate 
 the luminous judgments of John Marshall on the bench; 
 and saying of the Constitution framed by George Wash- 
 
5 
 
 ington and his associates, that to Webster and Marshall 
 “we owe its development, by interpretation and con- 
 struction, into the great charter of powers which now 
 constitute the national authority. They illuminated its 
 letter with the national spirit. They breathed into its 
 frame ^he full life of national sovereignty. ... As 
 they prevailed, so they made the United States indis- 
 soluble by internal convulsion and equal to the emer- 
 gencies of the future which confronted them or which 
 confront us.” 
 
 The second event to which Mr. Chandler refers is Web- 
 ster’s connection with and support of the compromise 
 measures of 1850, indicated by the “ Seventh of March 
 Speech” of that year. 
 
 The reply to Hayne, he says, brought to Webster nothing 
 but fame and honor. The Seventh of March speech 
 produced severe condemnation from the North and resulted 
 in Webster’s failure to secure the nomination to the 
 presidency in 1852, which, Mr. Chandler asserts, should 
 have been his. 
 
 Mr. Chandler contends that the contemporary criticism 
 of Webster in 1850 has no justification for its continuance 
 now; for he argues, no one at that time believed that, 
 as a sequence, would follow the repeal of the Missouri 
 Compromise, the abandonment of the Wilmot proviso, 
 the struggle in Kansas and at last the war for secession, 
 while on the other hand every reasonable human being 
 hoped that continued conciliatory legislation would in 
 time come to find a wise solution of the problem of slavery 
 in the United States. 
 
 Mr. Webster’s course was based, says Mr. Chandler, 
 upon an honest motive; and in this is to be found a perfect 
 answer to the criticism of the moment — which should long 
 ago have disappeared, he urges, in the further light of 
 the certain knowledge that Webster, had he lived, would 
 have supported Lincoln and the Union and the war to 
 
6 
 
 preserve it, no less earnestly than did Stephen A. Douglas, 
 the destroyer of the Missouri Compromise. 
 
 [Mr. Chandler here referred to the emancipation of the 
 slaves and to a history of American slavery contained in 
 an address of his before a Grand Army Post at Nashua, 
 N. H., on May 30, 1889, now printed as an appendix, and 
 said :] 
 
 God hardened Pharoah’s heart so he would not let the 
 children of Israel go until there had come the plagues and 
 the slaughter of the first born of Egypt. So an overruling 
 Providence may have ordered the Compromise measures 
 of 1850. Without them Secession would then have been 
 attempted with as many slave states as free states in the 
 Union and the result might have been two American 
 republics, one slave and one free. The delay of ten years 
 and the destruction of the Missouri Compromise by an 
 infatuated south may have been necessary to arouse the 
 north and give it victory, with Abraham Lincoln to destroy 
 slavery. So if General McClellan had won victories in 
 1862 and captured Richmond the war might have ended 
 with slavery not destroyed as a consequence thereof. Mc- 
 Clellan was defeated and retreated to a gunboat on the 
 James to write a letter to Mr. Lincoln telling him how the 
 war ought to be conducted with slavery preserved, which 
 singularity Mr. Lincoln told me he at once regarded as 
 showing McClellan’s expectation to be a candidate for 
 President in 1864. It is impossible to estimate the impor- 
 tance of the ten years’ delay of the crucial struggle from 
 1850 to 1860. “God moves in a mysterious way his won- 
 ders to perform!” 
 
 Mr. Chandler’s closing words were these, spoken in 
 behalf of the Webster Birth Place Association. 
 
 With appreciative thanks for all aid we have received 
 and for the attendance this day, we promise that this 
 sacred spot shall be preserved and made attractive to all 
 the future generations of New Hampshire men and women 
 and shall be made an historic spot of sentiment and affec- 
 tion to all true Americans. 
 
7 
 
 APPENDIX TO MR. CHANDLER’S REMARKS. 
 
 Decoration Day Address of William E. Chandler, 
 on Thursday, May 30, 1889, at Nashua, N. H., 
 Before John G. Foster Post No. 7, G. A. R. 
 
 [Extracts from Part Relating to History of Slavery.] 
 
 It would not be wise, within the limits of this discourse, to 
 attempt to give a history of American slavery. From its feeble 
 inception, and its recognition in the Constitution of 1788, the 
 authors of which instrument did not venture there to call it by 
 its dishonoring name, down to its final destruction, in 1866, by 
 the 13th amendment of that Constitution, an outline of events 
 will suffice for present purposes. 
 
 At first slavery assumed somewhat the character of a paternal 
 institution. Its evils were a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. 
 It seemed unnatural to America, and our forefathers believed 
 that it would gradually disappear at no distant day. But at 
 last it became the great, overwhelming national evil, the sum of 
 all villainies, dominating all other interests, by reason of the 
 acquisition of the slave regions of Louisiana, and the invention 
 by Eli Whitney of the cotton gin, which caused an increased 
 adaptation of slave labor to the production of the great American 
 staple. Cotton becoming the chief American product for expor- 
 tation, the South grew rich and prosperous through its culture. 
 Cotton became king. The cotton lords became the wealthiest 
 class in the country. 
 
 But wealth was not the only advantage which slavery came to 
 give to the South. It was also soon discovered by the slave- 
 owners that slavery, thus made so profitable, would give them 
 overwhelming political power in the government, such as the 
 framers of the Constitution had not imagined when they pro- 
 vided that in fixing the basis of representation in the Presidential 
 Electoral College and for representatives in the popular branch 
 of the National congress, there should be added to the total white 
 population three fifths of all other persons, meaning the slave 
 population. As the inevitable result the South took control of 
 the government. A slave aristocracy grew up which dominated 
 the nation with inexorable power. It controlled every congress, 
 
8 
 
 » 
 
 it selected all Presidents, it took possession of the supreme court; 
 and when the Northern conscience concerning slavery — found to 
 be thus protected and favored by the Constitution — began to 
 show itself, the slave-owners resisted ail attempts to restrict or 
 limit the institution, or to place it where the founders of the 
 Constitution believed it should be placed — in a condition of 
 progress towards final extinction. 
 
 The declared policy of the slaveholding interests soon came to 
 be this, — that the slave states should exceed, or at all events 
 equal, the free states, so that there should never be a majority 
 from the free states in the United States senate; and that when- 
 ever in the growth of the nation new states should be added to 
 the Union, if the slave states could not be kept in the majority, 
 there should, at least, be admitted a slave state for every free 
 state, so that there should be no opportunity afforded by legis- 
 lation for weakening slavery in its intrenched position in the 
 National government. 
 
 The thirteen original states had arranged themselves seven 
 free, six slave. Louisiana, with slavery, became a state in 1812; 
 and the free and slave states were thus made equal. Thenceforth 
 the slave power took care that new states should come in only 
 in pairs: — Kentucky and Vermont; Tennessee and Ohio; Indiana 
 and Mississippi; Illinois and Alabama; Maine and Missouri 
 (the free states here gaining the Missouri Compromise, dedicat- 
 ing to freedom in the future all the Louisiana purchase, except 
 Missouri, north of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude) ; Arkansas 
 and Michigan; Florida and Iowa. When Mr. Polk became 
 President, fifteen states had been admitted — eight slave and seven 
 free; and the states were twenty-eight in number — free fourteen, 
 slave fourteen. Next the Mexican War, unjustifiably waged to 
 enlarge the area of slavery, gave to the Union the slave state of 
 Texas; but the free state of Wisconsin was close at the door and 
 kept the balance even. 
 
 But in proportion as slavery, through the facilities which it 
 afforded for acquiring wealth, and through the political power 
 which it gave to ambitious men, strengthened its hold upon the 
 South and the nation; so hatred of slavery, based upon its in- 
 human and unchristian character, grew stronger at the North. 
 Widespread agitation began; the privilege of free speech was fully 
 exercised; and that great anti-slavery conflict ensued, the ac- 
 
9 
 
 counts of which must form the greater part of our history during 
 our first hundred years; and this conflict, from the very consti- 
 tution of human nature, could end only in the destruction of 
 slavery or in its complete and overwhelming ascendency in the 
 nation. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward are both recorded as having said 
 that it was impossible that this country could long exist half 
 slave and half free. At Springfield, Illinois, June 17, 1858, Mr. 
 Lincoln said , — “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I 
 believe this government cannot permanently endure half slave 
 and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do 
 not expect the house to fall; but I do expect that it will cease to 
 be divided. It will become all one thing or all another. Either 
 the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and 
 place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in 
 the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it 
 forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as 
 well as new, North as well as South.” 
 
 At Rochester, New York, October 25, 1858, Mr. Seward said, — • 
 “It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring 
 forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner 
 or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely 
 a free labor nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South 
 Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately 
 be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become 
 marts for legitimate merchandise only, or else the rye fields and 
 wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be sur- 
 rendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production 
 of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets 
 for trade in the bodies and souls of men.” 
 
 In 1850 the contest over slavery assumed such proportions and 
 such bitterness that good men of all parties found their fears lest 
 there should be a dissolution of the Union reaching a culminating 
 point. As a result of this crisis of fear the compromise measures 
 of that year were adopted, and during the presidential canvass of 
 1852 both political parties of the country acquiesced in them, 
 and declared them to be final and perpetual. But the result of 
 the election of 1852, when a pro-slavery president was chosen 
 from New Hampshire, indicated to the slave interests that the 
 Northern people, in their fears that the slavery conflict would 
 
10 
 
 bring a dissolution of the Union, would submit to almost any 
 measure for the protection of slavery which might be demanded 
 by its advocates. The compromises of 1850 had also proved 
 unsatisfactory to the South. Although it had obtained the 
 passage of a fugitive slave law, it had been compelled to consent 
 to the admission of the free state of California, which had sud- 
 denly through the discovery of gold sprung into being as a great 
 and prosperous commonwealth, and this admission, without 
 that of any counterbalancing slave state, had at last broken the 
 Southern scheme and made the Union of states one containing 
 sixteen free states to fifteen slave states. 
 
 From these two conditions — the belief that the North would 
 submit to every demand of slavery, and the dissatisfaction of 
 the South because it had lost the balance of power — came the 
 repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which repeal, it was absurdly 
 contended, was a legitimate outcome of the compromises of 1850, 
 whereas it was in fact an absolute violation 'and destruction of 
 those measures, and opened up to slavery a vast and fertile 
 territory which under the Missouri Compromise had been forever 
 consecrated to liberty and to free institutions. 
 
 In aid of the new Southern demand came the Dred Scott 
 Decision, in which the Supreme Court asserted a principle never 
 before seriously contended for by the South, that slavery instead 
 of being an exceptional and local institution was entitled to be 
 universal and national, and that the slave-owner had a right to 
 take and hold his slaves in all the territories of the Union. With 
 this reopening of the anti-slavery struggle, came the memorable 
 conflict on the plains of Kansas to decide whether that territory 
 should become another free state, to give to freedom two majority 
 of the states, or whether it should be wrested from freedom and 
 admitted as a slave state under the Lecompton constitution, to 
 make the slave states again equal in number to the free states. 
 
 In this momentous contest the North and freedom triumphed. 
 The dark tide of slavery which had swept from Missouri over the 
 Kansas border, was driven back; free state settlers from New 
 England controlled Kansas, and thwarted all attempts of the 
 slave power to organize its government. The issue, which had 
 become the absorbing national question, was taken into the 
 presidential election of 1860. The Republican party, which had 
 been formed to resist slavery extension, nominated Mr. Lincoln. 
 
11 
 
 The Democratic party broke into two fragments, and Mr. Lin- 
 coln was elected President. This election of Mr. Lincoln cer- 
 tainly gave no just cause for war, but the South saw in the result 
 the defeat of their plans for slavery extension, and the destruction 
 of their method of protection for slavery. They determined to 
 resist the new administration facing toward freedom: they or- 
 ganized a Southern Confederacy based on slavery : and thus came 
 our great conflict, a battle on the one side for the dissolution of 
 the Union in order to secure the extension into free territory of 
 the crime of human slavery, and on the other side a contest for 
 the restriction of slavery within its existing limits, the consecra- 
 tion to freedom of all the great unorganized territories of the 
 United States, and the ascendency of freedom in America through 
 the maintenance unbroken of the Constitution and the Union. 
 Thus it clearly appears that the war was on account of slavery, 
 and did not arise from any other cause. 
 
12 
 
 Daniel Webster. 
 
 At his birth place , Salisbury (Franklin), New Hampshire, 
 August, 28, 1913. 
 
 Hail to the home that reared him! hail to the hills, the 
 stream, 
 
 That heard his earliest accents, that shared his earliest 
 dream ! 
 
 A place it is for pilgrimage — for gratitude to shrine 
 
 A name and fame whose grandeur will never know decline; 
 
 And with honor and remembrance and reverent accord, 
 
 For his greatness and his service we bless and praise the 
 Lord. 
 
 From his own Kearsarge and Katahdin to Shasta’ s dome 
 of snow, 
 
 From Superior’s pines to the tropic Gulf where the palm 
 and the orange grow, 
 
 He loved his land and in dreams beheld the splendor of its 
 prime — 
 
 A mighty nation nobly dowered for a destiny sublime; 
 
 And he strove to weld the States in one with a strength 
 no power could sever, 
 
 For the cry of his heart was, Liberty and Union, now and 
 forever! 
 
 We think of him as a 'mountain peak that towers above the 
 lea, 
 
 Where sunshine falls and lightnings flash and all the winds 
 blow free; 
 
 And his voice comes back like the swelling chant, within 
 some minster old, 
 
 That floods the nave and thrills the aisles and dies in a 
 strain of gold! 
 
 So lofty his eloquence, grand his mien, had he walked the 
 Olympian plain 
 
13 
 
 The listening, wondering throngs had thought great Zeus 
 come down to reign; 
 
 For beneath the blue or in stately halls, he swayed the 
 hearts of men, 
 
 As the boughs are swayed by the rushing wind that sweeps 
 o’er wood and glen — 
 
 As the earth is swayed by the primal fires that burn beyond 
 our ken. 
 
 And when nor plea nor prayer availed war’s awful strife 
 to shun, 
 
 His fervor glowed in the flag aloft and nerved each North- 
 ern gun, 
 
 And above the roar of battle and the rage of mad endeavor, 
 
 His cry still echoed, Liberty and Union, now and forever! 
 
 Do we look alone at the wounding thorn when the crimson 
 rose waves high? 
 
 Do we hear but the one discordant note as the symphony 
 rolls by? 
 
 The clouds on his fame are like morning mists in the path 
 of the full-orbed sun, 
 
 For his glorious, deathless words will shine 
 
 Down the years with a light divine till dawns and days are 
 done ! 
 
 And whatever world has gained him it will be a heaven to 
 him 
 
 That the Union lives, resplendent, not one star lost or dim. 
 
 Hail to the home that reared him! hail to the hills, the 
 stream, 
 
 That heard his earliest accents, that shared his earliest 
 dream ! 
 
 And while the skies enfold Kearsarge and the meadows 
 Merrimack river, 
 
 From sea to sea, shall our watchword be 
 
 His patriot heart-cry, Liberty and Union, now and forever ! 
 
 Edna Dean Proctor. 
 
4 
 
THE WEBSTER BIRTH PLACE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 OF FRANKLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE. 
 
 As will be seen by visitors the large dwelling-house, barn and other 
 buildings are out of repair. Urgent repairs have been made upon them, but 
 much yet remains to be done. The grounds and approaches also call for 
 expenditure beyond the present resources of the Association. 
 
 The legislature of New Hampshire at its late session voted aid to the 
 extent of $1500, and exempted the property from taxation. 
 
 The only source of future income will be fees of members and donations. 
 The fees have been fixed as follows : 
 
 Life membership, $100, — with no liability for future dues. 
 
 Active membership, $10, — with only such future gifts as may hereafter 
 be voluntarily paid. 
 
 It has been the hope that generous and public-spirited admirers of Mr. 
 Webster, especially from his native State of New Hampshire, would respond 
 by donations. It is desired to raise not less than $20,000 for the purposes 
 above indicated, — as well as for appropriate and permanent care of the 
 property. The officers of the Association will make public annual reports 
 of all receipts and expenditures, — and also make acknowledgment of all 
 moneys received from every source. 
 
 The undersigned have been appointed a committee to solicit new members 
 and contributions. We seek as many life members and donations as we 
 can obtain, but are exceedingly desirous of having as annual members those 
 friends who feel that they cannot afford, or do not care to become life mem- 
 bers, and we are much in immediate need of such $10 memberships as they 
 may be willing to use as their method of now making such contributions 
 even without continuing their memberships. Under the by-laws no one can 
 be made liable for any future payment without his express prior consent. 
 Applications for memberships, with checks, may be sent to the Treasurer, 
 Dr. John W. Staples, Franklin, N. H., or remittances may be made to any 
 one of the undersigned: 
 
 Alvah W. Sulloway, Franklin, 
 
 Edward G. Leach, Franklin, 
 
 Clarence E. Carr, Andover, 
 
 Jacob H. Gallinger, Concord, 
 
 William E. Chandler, Concord, 
 
 Committee 
 
 on 
 
 Membership. 
 
 October 11, 1913. 
 
The Restored Birth Place House. 
 
 Photograph by Hon. George B. Leighton, Monadnock, N. H. 
 
 The Larger Mansion House. 
 
 Photograph by Hon. George B. Leighton, Monadnock, N. H.