From Farm Boy to Senator

And I had scorned the warning voice that told me thou must die.’”

When Mr. Webster received the intelligence of his loss, he, for the first time in years, indulged in his early fondness for verse, and wrote a few stanzas which have been preserved, though they were intended to be seen only by those near and dear to him. The prevailing thought is a striking one. Here are the verses:

“The staff on which my years should lean
Is broken ere those years come’ o’er me;
My funeral rites thou shouldst have seen,
But thou art in the tomb before me.

“Thou rear’st to me no filial stone,
No parent’s grave with tears beholdest;
Thou art my ancestor—my son!
And stand’st in Heaven’s account the oldest.

“On earth my lot was soonest cast,
Thy generation after mine;
Thou hast thy predecessor passed,
Earlier eternity is thine.

“I should have set before thine eyes
The road to Heaven, and showed it clear;
But thou, untaught, spring’st to the skies,
And leav’st thy teacher lingering here.

“Sweet seraph, I would learn of thee,
And hasten to partake thy bliss!
And, oh! to thy world welcome me,
As first I welcomed thee to this.”

But a still heavier bereavement was in store, though it was delayed for some years. In the summer of 1827 the health of Mrs. Webster began to fail, and from that time she steadily declined until on the 21st of January, in the following year she died. Of Mr. Webster’s bearing at the funeral, Mr. Ticknor writes: “Mr. Webster came to Mr. George Blake’s in Summer Street, where we saw him both before and after the funeral. He seemed completely broken-hearted. At the funeral, when, with Mr. Paige, I was making some arrangements for the ceremonies, we noticed that Mr. Webster was wearing shoes that were not fit for the wet walking of the day, and I went to him and asked him if he would not ride in one of the carriages. ‘No,’ he said, ‘my children and I must follow their mother to the grave on foot. I could swim to Charlestown.’ A few minutes afterwards he took Nelson and Daniel in either hand, and walked close to the hearse through the streets to the church in whose crypt the interment took place. It was a touching and solemn sight. He was excessively pale.”

It is a striking commentary upon the emptiness of human honors where the heart is concerned that this great affliction came very soon after Mr. Webster’s election to the United State Senate, where he achieved his highest fame and gathered his choicest laurels. We can well imagine that he carried a sad heart to the halls of legislation, and realized how poorly the world’s honors compensate the heart for the wounds of bereavement. But Daniel Webster was not a man to suffer sorrow to get the mastery of him. He labored the harder in the service of his country, and found in the discharge of duty his best consolation. If I had room I would like to quote the tribute of Judge Storey to the character of Mr. Webster. I confine myself to one sentence: “Few persons have been more deservedly or more universally beloved; few have possessed qualities more attractive, more valuable or more elevating.”

A little over a year later there was a fresh sorrow. Ezekiel Webster, the older brother, between whom and Daniel such warm and affectionate relations had always existed, died suddenly under striking circumstances. He was addressing a jury in the court-house at Concord, N. H., speaking with full force, when, without a moment’s warning, “he fell backward, without bending a joint, and, so far as appeared, was dead before his head reached the floor.”

He was a man of large ability, though necessarily overshadowed by the colossal genius of his younger brother. It would be too much to expect two Daniel Websters in one family. His death had a depressing effect upon Daniel, for the two had been one in sympathy, and each had rejoiced in the success of the other. Together they had struggled up from poverty, achieved an education and professional distinction, and though laboring in different spheres, for Ezekiel kept aloof from politics, they continued to exchange views upon all subjects that interested either. It is not surprising, in view of his desolate household, and the loss of his favorite brother, that Daniel should write: “I confess the world, at present, has an aspect for me anything but cheerful. With a multitude of acquaintances I have few friends; my nearest intimacies are broken, and a sad void is made in the objects of affection.” Yet he was constrained to acknowledge that his life, on the whole, had been “fortunate and happy beyond the common lot, and it would be now ungrateful, as well as unavailing, to repine at calamities, of which, as they are human, I must expect to partake.”

I have taken pains to speak of Mr. Webster’s home affections, because many, but only those who did not know him, have looked upon him as coldly intellectual, with a grand genius, but deficient in human emotions, when, as a fact, his heart was unusually warm and overflowing with tender sympathy.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CALLED TO THE SENATE

I have called this biography “From Farm-boy to Senator,” because it is as a senator that Daniel Webster especially distinguished himself. At different times he filled the position of Secretary of State, but it was in the Senate Chamber, where he was associated with other great leaders, in especial Clay, Calhoun and Hayne, that he became a great central object of attention and admiration.

Mr. Webster was not elected to the Senate till he had reached the age of forty-five. For him it was a late preferment, and when it came he accepted it reluctantly. Mr. Clay was not yet thirty when he entered the Senate, and Mr. Calhoun was Vice-President before he attained the age of forty-five. But there was this advantage in Mr. Webster’s case, that when he joined the highest legislative body in the United States he joined it as a giant, fully armed and equipped not only by nature but by long experience in the lower House of Congress, where he was a leader.

The preferment came to him unsought. Mr. Mills, one of the senators from Massachusetts, who had filled his position acceptably, was drawing near the close of his term, and his failing health rendered his re-election impolitic. Naturally Mr. Webster was thought of as his successor, but he felt that he could hardly be spared from the lower House, where he was the leading supporter of the administration of John Quincy Adams. Levi Lincoln was at that time Governor of Massachusetts, and he too had been urged to become a candidate. Mr. Webster wrote him an urgent letter, in the hope of persuading him to favor this step. From that letter I quote:

“I take it for granted that Mr. E. H. Mills will be no longer a candidate. The question then will be, Who is to succeed him? I need not say to you that you yourself will doubtless be a prominent object of consideration in relation to the vacant place, and the purpose of this communication requires me also to acknowledge that I deem it possible that my name also should be mentioned, more or less generally, as one who may be thought of, among others, for the same situation.... There are many strong personal reasons, and, as friends think, and as I think too, some public reasons why I should decline the offer of a seat in the Senate if it should be made to me. Without entering at present into a detail of those reasons, I will say that the latter class of them grow out of the public station which I at present fill, and out of the necessity of increasing rather than of diminishing, in both branches of the National Legislature, the strength that may be reckoned on as friendly to the present administration.... To come, therefore, to the main point, I beg to say that I see no way in which the public good can be so well promoted as by your consenting to go into the Senate.

“This is my own clear and decided opinion; it is the opinion, equally clear and decided, of intelligent and patriotic friends here, and I am able to add that it is also the decided opinion of all those friends elsewhere whose judgment in such matters we should naturally regard. I believe I may say, without violating confidence, that it is the wish, entertained with some earnestness, of our friends at Washington that you should consent to be Mr. Mills’s successor.”

No one certainly can doubt the absolute sincerity of these utterances. It was, and is, unusual for a representative to resist so earnestly what is considered a high promotion. Mr. Webster was an ambitious man, but he thought that the interests of the country required him to stay where he was, and hence his urgency.

But Gov. Lincoln was no less patriotic. In an elaborate reply to Mr. Webster’s letter, from which I have quoted above, he urges that “the deficiency of power in the Senate is the weak point in the citadel” of the administration party. “No individual should be placed there but who was now in armor for the conflict, who understood the proper mode of resistance, who personally knew and had measured strength with the opposition, who was familiar with the political interests and foreign relations of the country, with the course of policy of the administration, and who would be prepared at once to meet and decide upon the charter of measures which should be proposed. This, I undertake to say, no novice in the national council could do. At least I would not promise to attempt it. I feel deeply that I could not do it successfully. There is no affectation of humility in this, and under such impressions I cannot suffer myself to be thought of in a manner which may make me responsible for great mischief in defeating the chance of a better selection.”

I am sure my young readers will agree that this correspondence was highly honorable to both these eminent gentlemen. It is refreshing to turn from the self-sufficient and self-seeking politicians of our own day, most of whom are ready to undertake any responsibilities however large, without a doubt of their own fitness, to the modesty and backwardness of these really great men of fifty years since. In the light of Mr. Webster’s great career we must decide that Gov. Lincoln was right in deciding that he should be the next senator from Massachusetts.

At any rate such was the decision arrived at, and in June, 1827, Mr. Webster was elected senator for a period of six years. In due time he took his seat. He was no novice, but a man known throughout the country, and quite the equal in fame of any of his compeers. I suppose no new senator has ever taken his seat who was already a man of such wide fame and national importance as Daniel Webster in 1827. Had James A. Garfield, instead of assuming the Presidency, taken the seat in the Senate to which he had been elected on the fourth of March, 1881, his would have been a parallel case.

Of course there was some curiosity as to the opening speech of the already eminent senator. He soon found a fitting theme. A bill was introduced for the relief of the surviving officers of the Revolution. Such a bill was sure to win the active support of the orator who had delivered the address at Bunker Hill.

Alluding to some objections which had been made to the principle of pensioning them, Mr. Webster said: “There is, I know, something repulsive and opprobrious in the name of pension. But God forbid that I should taunt them with it. With grief, heartfelt grief, do I behold the necessity which leads these veterans to accept the bounty of their country in a manner not the most agreeable to their feelings. Worn out and decrepit, represented before us by those, their former brothers in arms, who totter along our lobbies or stand leaning on their crutches, I, for one, would most gladly support such a measure as should consult at once their services, their years, their necessities and the delicacy of their sentiments. I would gladly give with promptitude and grace, with gratitude and delicacy, that which merit has earned and necessity demands.

“It is objected that the militia have claims upon us; that they fought at the side of the regular soldiers, and ought to share in the country’s remembrance. But it is known to be impossible to carry the measure to such an extent as to embrace the militia, and it is plain, too, that the cases are different. The bill, as I have already said, confines itself to those who served, not occasionally, not temporarily, but permanently; who allowed themselves to be counted on as men who were to see the contest through, last as long as it might; and who have made the phrase ‘‘listing for the war’ a proverbial expression, signifying unalterable devotion to our cause, through good fortune and ill fortune, till it reached its close.

“This is a plain distinction; and although, perhaps, I might wish to do more, I see good ground to stop here for the present, if we must stop anywhere. The militia who fought at Concord, at Lexington and at Bunker Hill, have been alluded to in the course of this debate in terms of well-deserved praise. Be assured, sir, there could with difficulty be found a man, who drew his sword or carried his musket at Concord, at Lexington or at Bunker Hill, who would wish you to reject this bill. They might ask you to do more, but never to refrain from doing this. Would to God they were assembled here, and had the fate of this bill in their own hands! Would to God the question of its passage were to be put to them! They would affirm it with a unity of acclamation that would rend the roof of the Capitol!”

This is so much in Mr. Webster’s style that, had I quoted it without stating that it was his, I think many of my young readers would have been able to guess the authorship.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT BATTLE

When Andrew Jackson became President Mr. Webster found himself an anti-administration leader. He was respected and feared, and a plan was formed to break him down and overwhelm him in debate. The champion who was supposed equal to this task was Col. Hayne, of South Carolina, a graceful and forcible speaker, backed by the party in power and by the silent influence of John C. Calhoun, who, as Vice-President, presided over the councils of the Senate.

On the 29th day of December, 1829, an apparently innocent resolution was offered by Mr. Foote, of Connecticut, in the following terms:

“Resolved, That the Committee on Public Lands be instructed to inquire into the expediency of limiting for a certain period the sales of the public lands to such lands only as have been heretofore offered for sale and are subject to entry at the minimum price; also, whether the office of Surveyor-General may not be abolished without detriment to the public interest.”

This resolution called forth the celebrated debate in which Mr. Webster demolished the eloquent champion of the South in a speech which will live as long as American history.

Mr. Benton, of Missouri, in an elaborate speech furnished the keynote of the campaign. On Monday, the 18th, he made a speech in which a violent attack was made upon New England, its institutions and its representatives. He was followed by Col. Hayne, who elaborated the comparison drawn between the so-called illiberal policy of New England and the generous policy of the South towards the growing West. He charged the East with a spirit of jealousy and an unwillingness that the West should be rapidly settled, taking the resolution of the senator of Connecticut as his text.

This attack excited surprise, not only by its violence and injustice, but by its suddenness. Mr. Webster shared in the general surprise. It was not long before he was led to suspect that he was aimed at as a well-known defender of New England. At any rate, he rose to reply, but a motion for adjournment cut him off, and he was obliged to wait for the next day before he could have the opportunity. The speech he then made, though not his great speech, was able and deserves notice. He disproved in the clearest manner the charges which had been made against New England, and showed that her policy had been the direct reverse. He dwelt especially upon the part which the Eastern States had in settling the great State of Ohio, which even then contained a population of a million. Upon this point he spoke as follows:

“And here, sir, at the epoch of 1794, let us pause and survey the scene. It is now thirty-five years since that scene actually existed. Let us, sir, look back and behold it. Over all that is now Ohio there then stretched one vast wilderness, unbroken, except by two small spots of civilized culture, the one at Marietta, the other at Cincinnati. At these little openings, hardly a pin’s point upon the map, the arm of the frontiersman had leveled the forest and let in the sun. These little patches of earth, themselves almost shadowed by the overhanging boughs of the wilderness, which had stood and perpetuated itself from century to century ever since the Creation, were all that had been rendered verdant by the hand of man. In an extent of hundreds and thousands of square miles no other surface of smiling green attested the presence of civilization. The hunter’s path crossed mighty rivers flowing in solitary grandeur, whose sources lay in remote and unknown regions of the wilderness. It struck, upon the north, on a vast inland sea, over which the wintry tempest raged as upon the ocean; all around was bare creation.

“It was a fresh, untouched, unbounded, magnificent wilderness. And, sir, what is it now? Is it imagination only, or can it possibly be fact, that presents such a change as surprises and astonishes us when we turn our eyes to what Ohio now is? Is it reality or a dream that in so short a period as even thirty-five years there has sprung up on the same surface an independent State, with a million of people? A million of inhabitants! An amount of population greater than all the cantons of Switzerland; equal to one third of all the people of the United States when they undertook to accomplish their independence! If, sir, we may judge of measures by their results, what lessons do these facts read us on the policy of the government? What inferences do they not authorize upon the general question of kindness or unkindness? What convictions do they enforce as to the wisdom and ability, on the one hand, or the folly and incapacity on the other, of our general management of Western affairs? For my own part, while I am struck with wonder at the success, I also look with admiration at the wisdom and foresight which originally arranged and prescribed the system for the settlement of the public domain.”

Mr. Webster said in conclusion: “The Senate will bear me witness that I am not accustomed to allude to local opinions, nor to compare, nor to contrast, different portions of the country. I have often suffered things to pass, which I might properly enough have considered as deserving a remark, without any observation. But I have felt it my duty on this occasion to vindicate the State which I represent from charges and imputations on her public character and conduct which I know to be undeserved and unfounded. If advanced elsewhere, they might be passed, perhaps, without notice. But whatever is said here is supposed to be entitled to public regard and to deserve public attention; it derives importance and dignity from the place where it is uttered. As a true representative of the State which has sent me here it is my duty, and a duty which I shall fulfill, to place her history and her conduct, her honor and her character, in their just and proper light.

“While I stand here as representative of Massachusetts, I will be her true representative, and, by the blessing of God, I will vindicate her character, motives and history from every imputation coming from a respectable source.”

This was the first reply of Webster to Hayne, and it was able and convincing. But Col. Hayne and his friends had no intention of leaving the matter there. The next day the consideration of the bill was renewed. Mr. Webster’s friends wished to have the discussion postponed as he had an important case pending in the Supreme Court. Mr. Hayne objected, saying in a theatrical tone, “that he saw the senator from Massachusetts in his seat, and presumed he could make an arrangement that would enable him to be present during the discussion. He was unwilling that the subject should be postponed until he had an opportunity of replying to some of the observations which had fallen from the gentleman yesterday. He would not deny that some things had fallen from the gentleman which rankled here [touching his breast], from which he would desire at once to relieve himself. The gentleman had discharged his fire in the face of the Senate. He hoped he would now afford him the opportunity of returning the shot.”

“Then it was,” as a Southern member of Congress afterwards expressed it, “that Mr. Webster’s person seemed to become taller and larger. His chest expanded and his eyeballs dilated. Folding his arms in a composed, firm and most expressive manner, he exclaimed: ‘Let the discussion proceed. I am ready. I am ready now to receive the gentleman’s fire.’”

Col. Hayne’s speech was the great effort of his life. He was a ready, accomplished and forcible speaker, and he vainly thought himself a match for the great senator from Massachusetts whose power he was yet to understand. He spoke as one who was confident of victory, with a self-confidence, a swagger, a violence of invective, which increased as he went on. He was encouraged by the evident delight of his friends, including the Vice-President. He did not finish his speech the first day, but closed with a hint of what he intended to do.