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From Farm Boy to Senator

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2018
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CHAPTER XXVI.

THE BUNKER HILL ORATION

The oration at Plymouth first revealed the power of Mr. Webster. There are some men who exhaust themselves in one speech, one poem, or one story, and never attain again the high level which they have once reached.

It was not so with Daniel Webster. He had a fund of reserved power which great occasions never drew upon in vain. It might be that in an ordinary case in court, where his feelings were not aroused, and no fitting demand made upon his great abilities, he would disappoint the expectations of those who supposed that he must always be eloquent. I heard a gentleman say once, “Oh, I heard Mr. Webster speak once, and his speech was commonplace enough.”

“On what occasion?”

“In court.”

“What was the case?”

“Oh, I don’t remember—some mercantile case.”

It would certainly be unreasonable to expect any man to invest dry commercial details with eloquence. Certainly a lawyer always ambitious in his rhetoric would hardly commend himself to a sound, sensible client.

But Mr. Webster always rose to the level of a great occasion. His occasional speeches were always carefully prepared and finished, and there is not one of them but will live. I now have to call special attention to the address delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, at Charlestown, June 17, 1825. It was an occasion from which he could not help drawing inspiration. His father, now dead, whom he had loved and revered as few sons love and revere their parents, had been a participant, not indeed in the battle which the granite shaft was to commemorate, but in the struggle which the colonists waged for liberty. It may well be imagined that Mr. Webster gazed with no common emotion at the veterans who were present to hear their patriotism celebrated. Though the passages addressed to them—in part at least—are familiar to many of my readers, I will nevertheless quote them here. Apart from their subject they will never be forgotten by Americans.

“Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder in the strife of your country. Behold how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see now no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more.

“All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population come out to welcome and greet you with an universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mound, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country’s own means of distinction and defense. All is peace, and God has granted you this sight of your country’s happiness ere you slumber forever in the grave; he has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you!

“But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country’s independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of peace, like

‘another morn,
Risen on mid-noon;’

and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless.”

After a tribute to General Warren ‘the first great martyr in this great cause,’ Mr. Webster proceeds:

“Veterans, you are the remnants of many a well-fought field. You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Camden,. Bennington and Saratoga. Veterans of half a century, when in your youthful days you put everything at hazard in your country’s cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this. At a period to which you could not reasonably have expected to arrive, at a moment of national prosperity such as you could never have foreseen, you are now met here to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowings of an universal gratitude.

“But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform me that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending feelings rushes upon you. The images of the dead, as well as the persons of the living, throng to your embraces. The scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining years and bless them! And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces, when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in the exultation of victory, then look abroad into this lovely land which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled; yea, look abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind!”

Not only were there war-scarred veterans present to listen entranced to the glowing periods of the inspired orator, but there was an eminent friend of America, a son of France, General Lafayette, who sat in a conspicuous seat and attracted the notice of all. To him the orator addressed himself in a manner no less impressive.

“Fortunate, fortunate man! with what measure of devotion will you not thank God for the circumstances of your extraordinary life! You are connected with both hemispheres, and with two generations. Heaven saw fit to ordain that the electric spark of liberty should be conducted, through you, from the New World to the Old; and we, who are now here to perform this duty of patriotism, have all of us long ago received it in charge from our fathers to cherish your name and your virtues. You will account it an instance of your good fortune, sir, that you crossed the seas to visit us at a time which enables you to be present at this solemnity. You now behold the field, the renown of which reached you in the heart of France, and caused a thrill in your ardent bosom; you see the lines of the little redoubt thrown up by the incredible diligence of Prescott, defended to the last extremity by his lion-hearted valor, and within which the corner-stone of our monument has now taken its position. You see where Warren fell, and where Parker, Gardner, McCleary, Moore and other early patriots fell with him. Those who survived that day, and whose lives have been prolonged to the present hour, are now around you. Some of them you have known in the trying scenes of the war. Behold! They now stretch forth their feeble arms to embrace you. Behold! They raise their trembling voices to invoke the blessing of God on you and yours forever.”

I should like to increase my quotations, but space will not permit. I have quoted enough to give my young readers an idea of this masterly address. When next they visit the hill where the monument stands complete, let them try to picture to themselves how it looked on that occasion when, from the platform where he stood Mr. Webster, with his clarion voice, facing the thousands who were seated before him on the rising hillside, and the other thousands who stood at the summit, spoke these eloquent words. Let them imagine the veteran soldiers, and the white-haired and venerable Lafayette, and they can better understand the effect which this address made on the eager and entranced listeners. They will not wonder at the tears which gathered in the eyes of the old soldiers as they bowed their heads to conceal their emotions. Surely there was no other man in America who could so admirably have improved the occasion.

CHAPTER XXVII.

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON

July 4, 1826, was a memorable day. It was the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, and for that reason, if no other, it was likely to be a day of note. But, by a singular coincidence, two eminent Americans, fathers of the republic, both of whom had filled the Presidency, yielded up their lives.

When John Adams was dying at Quincy, in Massachusetts, he spoke of his great countryman, Thomas Jefferson, who he naturally supposed was to survive him. But the same day, and that the natal day of the republic, brought the illustrious career of each to a close. Not untimely, for John Adams had passed the age of ninety, and Jefferson was but a few years younger.

Those were not the days of telegraphs nor of railroads, and the news had to be conveyed by stage-coaches, so that it was perhaps a month before the country through its large extent knew of the double loss which it had sustained. It was certainly by a most remarkable coincidence that these two great leaders, representing the two political parties which divided the country, but one in their devotion to the common welfare, passed from earthly scenes on the same anniversary. It was no wonder that they were the subjects of public addresses and sermons throughout the United States.

Of all those addresses but one is remembered to-day. It was the oration delivered by Daniel Webster on the 2d of August, 1826. This too was an anniversary, the anniversary of the day when the Declaration of Independence had been engrossed by the Revolutionary Congress.

As the circumstances attending the delivery of this oration will be new to my young readers, I quote from Mr. Ticknor’s description, as I find it in Mr. Curtis’s Life of Mr. Webster. After detailing an interview, in which Mr. Webster read him in advance some portions of the oration, he proceeds:

“The next day, the 2d of August, the weather was fine, and the concourse to hear him immense. It was the first time that Faneuil Hall had been draped in mourning. The scene was very solemn, though the light of day was not excluded. Settees had been placed over the whole area of the hall; the large platform was occupied by many of the most distinguished men in New England, and, as it was intended that everything should be conducted with as much quietness as possible, the doors were closed when the procession had entered, and every part of the hall and galleries was filled. This was a mistake in the arrangements; the crowd on the outside, thinking that some space must still be left within, became very uneasy, and finally grew so tumultuous and noisy that the solemnities were interrupted. The police in vain attempted to restore order. It seemed as if confusion would prevail. Mr. Webster perceived that there was but one thing to be done. He advanced to the front of the stage, and said in a voice easily heard above the noise of tumult without and of alarm within, ‘Let those doors be opened.’

“The power and authority of his manner were irresistible; the doors were opened, though with difficulty, from the pressure of the crowd on the outside; but after the first rush everything was quiet, and the order during the rest of the performance was perfect.

“Mr. Webster spoke in an orator’s gown and wore small-clothes. He was in the perfection of his manly beauty and strength, his form filled out to its finest proportions, and his bearing, as he stood before the vast multitude, that of absolute dignity and power. His manuscript lay on a small table near him, but I think he did not once refer to it. His manner of speaking was deliberate and commanding. When he came to the passage on eloquence, and to the words, ‘It is action, noble, sublime, godlike action,’ he stamped his foot repeatedly on the stage, his form seemed to dilate, and he stood, as that whole audience saw and felt, the personification of what he so perfectly described. I never saw him when his manner was so grand and appropriate.

“The two speeches attributed to Mr. Adams and his opponent attracted great attention from the first. Soon they were put into school-books, as specimens of English, and of eloquence. In time men began to believe they were genuine speeches, made by genuine men who were in the Congress of ’76; and at last Mr. Webster received letters asking whether such was the fact or not. In January, 1846, he sent me from Washington a letter he had just received, dated at Auburn, begging him to solve the doubt. With it he sent me his answer, which is published in his works, saying: ‘The accompanying letter and copy of answer respect a question which has been often asked me. I place them in your hands, to serve if similar inquiries should be made of you.’ Two months after, in March of the same year, he sent me a letter from Bangor, in Maine, asking the same question, beginning the note which accompanied it with these words: ‘Here comes another; I cannot possibly answer all of them, one after another.’ Indeed he continued to receive such letters until the edition of his works was published in 1851, though the matter was repeatedly discussed and explained in the newspapers. The fact is, that the speech he wrote for John Adams has such an air of truth and reality about it, that only a genius like Mr. Webster, perfectly familiar with whatever relates to the Revolution, and indeed with its spirit, could have written it.”

There is hardly a schoolboy who reads this book who has not declaimed his famous speech, beginning, ‘Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.’ It is hard to believe that this noble and impressive speech, so true to the sturdy character of Mr. Adams, and so appropriate to the occasion, was written by Mr. Webster one morning, before breakfast, in his library. It is also surprising that the orator was not certain whether it really had merit or not, and read it to Mr. Ticknor for his opinion.

Though parts of this speech are familiar, I shall nevertheless conclude my chapter with the exordium, since it will be read with fresh interest in this connection.

“This is an unaccustomed spectacle. For the first time, fellow citizens, badges of mourning shroud the columns and overhang the arches of this hall. These walls, which were consecrated so long ago to the cause of American liberty, which witnessed her infant struggles, and rang with the shouts of her earliest victories, proclaim now that distinguished friends and champions of that great cause have fallen. It is right that it should be thus. The tears which flow and the honors which are paid when the founders of the republic die give hope that the republic itself may be immortal. It is fit that by public assembly and solemn observance, by anthem and by eulogy, we commemorate the services of national benefactors, extol their virtues, and render thanks to God for eminent blessings, early given and long continued, to our favored country.

“Adams and Jefferson are no more, and we are assembled, fellow citizens, the aged, the middle-aged, and the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under the authority of the municipal government, with the presence of the chief magistrate of the commonwealth and others, its official representatives, the university, and the learned societies, to bear our part in the manifestations of respect and gratitude which universally pervade the land. Adams and Jefferson are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.

“If it be true that no one can safely be pronounced happy while he lives, if that event which terminates life can alone crown its honor and its glory, what felicity is here! The great epic of their lives how happily concluded! Poetry itself has hardly closed illustrious lives and finished the career of earthly renown by such a consummation. If we had the power, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of Divine Providence. The great objects of life were accomplished, the drama was ready to be closed. It has closed; our patriots have fallen; but so fallen, at such age, with such coincidence, on such a day, that we cannot rationally lament that that end has come, which we know could not long be deferred.

“Neither of these great men, fellow citizens, could have died at any time without leaving an immense void in our American society. They have been so intimately, and for so long a time, blended with the history of the country, and especially so united in our thoughts and recollections with the events of the Revolution, that the death of either would have touched the strings of public sympathy. We should have felt that one great link connecting us with former times was broken; that we had lost something more, as it were, of the presence of the Revolution itself and of the Act of Independence, and were driven on by another great remove from the days of our country’s early distinction, to meet posterity and to mix with the future. Like the mariner, whom the ocean and the winds carry along, till he sees the stars which have directed his course and lighted his pathless way descend one by one beneath the rising horizon, we should have felt that the stream of time had borne us onward till another great luminary, whose light had cheered us and whose guidance we had followed, had sunk from our sight.

“But the concurrence of their death on the anniversary of independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions. Both had been presidents, both were early patriots, and both were distinguished and ever honored by their immediate agency in the act of independence. It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act; that they should complete that year; and that then, on the day which had just linked forever their own fame with their country’s glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?”

Towards the close of the oration we find a striking passage familiar to many, and justly admired, touching the duties which devolve upon the favored citizens of the United States.

“This lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase of our fathers, are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, ours to transmit. Generations past and generations to come hold us responsible for this sacred trust. Our fathers from behind admonish us with their anxious paternal voices; posterity calls out to us from the bosom of the future; the world turns hither its solicitous eyes; all, all conjure us to act wisely and faithfully in the relation which we sustain.

“We can never, indeed, pay the debt which is upon us; but, by virtue, by morality, by religion, by the cultivation of every good principle and every good habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing through our day, and to leave it unimpaired to our children. Let us feel deeply how much of what we are, and of what we possess, we owe to this liberty, and to these institutions of government. Nature has indeed given us a soil which yields bounteously to the hands of industry, the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and the skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and skies, and seas to civilized man, without society, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture? and how can these be enjoyed, in all their extent and all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government? Fellow citizens, there is not one of us, there is not one of us here present, who does not at this moment, and every moment, experience in his own condition, and in the condition of those most near and dear to him, the influence and the benefits of this liberty and these institutions. Let us then acknowledge the blessing, let us feel it deeply and powerfully, let us cherish a strong affection for it, and resolve to maintain and perpetuate it. The blood of our fathers, let it not have been shed in vain; the great hope of posterity, let it not be blasted!”

It has been said with truth that no funeral oration has ever been pronounced, in any age, and in any language, which exceeds this in eloquence and simple grandeur. Happy the country that possesses two citizens of whom such praises can be uttered, and happy the nation that can find an orator of such transcendent genius to pronounce their eulogies!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOME LIFE AND DOMESTIC SORROWS

In speaking of Mr. Webster as an orator I have for some time neglected to speak of him in his domestic relations. He was blessed with a happy home. The wife he had chosen was fitted by intellect and culture to sympathize with him in his important work. Moreover, she had those sweet domestic qualities which are required to make home happy. Children had been born to them, and these were an important factor in the happiness of Mr. Webster’s home. He had a warm love for children, and was always an affectionate and indulgent parent, seldom chiding, but rebuking in love when occasion required.

In January, 1817, came the first bereavement. His daughter, Grace, always precocious and delicate, developed lung trouble and wasted away. She seems to have been a remarkably bright and attractive child. Her heart was easily touched by sorrow or destitution, and she would never consent that applicants for relief should be sent from the door unsatisfied. “She would bring them herself into the house, see that their wants were supplied, comfort them with the ministration of her own little hands and the tender compassion of her large eyes. If her mother ever refused, those eyes would fill with tears, and she would urge their requests so perseveringly that there was no resisting her.”

The death of this sweet child touched Mr. Webster nearly, and it was with a saddened heart that he returned to Washington to devote himself to his duties in the Supreme Court.

On the 18th of December, 1824, death once more appeared in the little household, this time removing the youngest boy, Charles, then nearing his second birthday. This child, young as he was, is said to have borne a closer resemblance to his father than any of his other children. Both parents were devoted to him. Mrs. Webster writes to her husband just after the little boy’s death: “It was an inexpressible consolation to me, when I contemplated him in his sickness, that he had not one regret for the past, nor one dread for the future; he was as patient as a lamb during all his sufferings, and they were at last so great I was happy when they were ended. I shall always reflect on his brief life with mournful pleasure, and, I hope, remember with gratitude all the joy he gave me, and it has been great. And, oh, how fondly did I flatter myself it would be lasting!

“’It was but yesterday, my child, thy little heart beat high;
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