From Farm Boy to Senator

Mr. Webster was too great a man to wish for praise which he did not deserve. That is for men of inferior ability, who are glad to have it believed that their most elaborate utterances are “thrown off upon the spur of the moment.” Indeed he does not claim enough when he disclaims being inspired by the occasion. His encomium upon New England, his glowing peroration, were fused and put into enduring form under the pressure of strong emotion, which may well be termed inspiration. Yet it was always his habit to ascribe his great efforts to hard labor rather than to genius, and he remarked to a young clergyman on one occasion, who had questioned him in regard to some of his speeches, “Young man, there is no such thing as extemporaneous acquisition.”

If a man like Daniel Webster felt constrained to say this, how much more ought labor to be held necessary by the ordinary mind. My young readers may be assured that diligent and uncomplaining toil are the secret springs in most cases of worldly success. So, if they chance to dash off a smooth essay in a mood of inspiration, they may have good cause to doubt whether it has any solid value. I recall a certain school where a prize was offered for an essay on a subject requiring a certain amount of thought and research. The leading contestants were two boys, one quick and brilliant, the other slow and plodding, but sound. Both were anxious to succeed. The second began in due time and worked steadily, not allowing himself to be unduly hurried. The first waited till within two days of the date at which the essays were to be submitted, and then dashed off an essay which was very creditable under the circumstances. But it did not win. It was slow and sure that won the prize, then, as in so many other cases. I am glad to have the potent example of Daniel Webster to help me in enforcing a lesson so valuable to youth.

Yet Mr. Webster was always ready of speech. He could make a great speech upon any occasion, and upon any subject, however slight. An illustration of this is given by Hon. John Wentworth, of Illinois, in a letter from which I proceed to quote:

“Mr. Webster won my lasting gratitude by his assistance in the passage of the River and Harbor bill, in 1846. The bill had passed the House and been referred to the Committee on Commerce, a majority of whom were of the ‘strict construction’ school, believing that Congress could improve a natural harbor, but could not make one. I went before the committee to defend the appropriation for a harbor at Little Fort, now called Waukegan. I found I had no friends there but Senator Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland. The committee recommended that the appropriation be struck out. Senator John A. Dix, of New York, led the opposition. He had been a graduate of West Point, was a good engineer, had brought the map of survey into the Senate, and was having great influence against it. I was seated in the lobby directly behind Col. Thomas H. Benton, and Webster was upon his usual walk. He gave me a nod of recognition and passed on. Gen. Dix kept up his fire and I felt it. Our senators, Sidney Breese and James Semple, were both from the southern part of our State, and had no personal knowledge of the merits of the case. The Indiana senators were similarly situated. Wisconsin had no senators. And the Michigan senators lived at Detroit, and they had only a general knowledge of Lake Michigan.

“As Webster was traveling to and fro past me, the thought occurred to me that, as he was ‘a liberal constructionist,’ he was just the man to rectify all the damage that Gen. Dix was doing. But it was a small matter for so great a man. Besides, I knew that his colleague, Senator John Davis, was taking the side of Gen. Dix. As Webster would pass me I would resolve that the next time he would come I would speak to him. But my courage would forsake me when I reflected that he was a Whig and I was a Democrat. I wanted some excuse to speak to him. He had known my father. He was a son of New Hampshire, and a graduate of the same college with myself. But my heart failed me; and yet it was all the while sighing, ‘Webster, Webster, do but speak to me.’

“At length came his voice, in deep, sepulchral tone, ‘Wentworth, what is Dix making all this ado about?’

“Promptly the answer came: ‘Mr. Webster, since your trip around the lakes from Chicago, in 1837, we have had but few appropriations for old harbors and none for new ones. This place is half way between Chicago and Milwaukee, and we want a harbor of refuge there.’

“‘I see the point, I see the point,’ says Webster, and at once went to his seat upon the Senate floor.

“When Gen. Dix had concluded, Mr. Webster observed that he could add nothing to the conclusive argument of the senator from New York in favor of the appropriation. He thought he had satisfied all the senators that there was no harbor at the place, and so the House must have thought when it made the appropriation to construct one there. Upon what did the senator from New York found his doctrine that, when God created the world, or even Lake Michigan, He left nothing for man to do? The curse pronounced upon our first parents for their transgression was in entire conflict with any such doctrine. He did not believe that the Constitution of the United States was such a narrowly contracted instrument that it would not permit the construction of a harbor where the necessities of commerce required it. He then foreshadowed the growth of the West, its abundant products, its gigantic commerce, its numerous people. He started a steamer from Chicago laden to the guards with freight and passengers. He then described a storm in a manner that no man but Webster could describe. His flight of eloquence equaled his best at Bunker Hill or Plymouth Rock. You could hear the dashing waves, the whistling winds, the creaking timbers, and the shrieking passengers, and, as he sent the vessel to the bottom with all on board, he exclaimed: ‘What but a merciful Providence saved me from such a catastrophe when I passed over Lake Michigan in 1837?’ At such a dire disaster could the senator from New York derive any consolation from the reflection that his narrow interpretation of the Constitution had been maintained?

“As Webster closed Col. Benton turned to me and said, ‘That is the greatest speech upon so small a matter that I ever heard.’ Reverdy Johnson came up and said, ‘Now, don’t you abuse the Whigs any more.’ And Senator Breese said, ‘Now you can go back to the House. That speech saves us.’

“The bill passed without amendment. But alas! President Polk vetoed it. And out of his veto grew that wonderful event in the history of Chicago, the river and harbor convention of 1847, a vast assemblage, composed of the most talented, enterprising, wealthy and influential men of all parts of the country. At the laying of the corner-stone of the Douglas Monument, Gen. Dix was here as the principal orator. While others were speaking I called his attention to our magnificent harbor works. After complimenting them highly he said, ‘They ought to protect you from any storm—even from such a one as Webster manufactured for you in the Senate in 1846.’”

It must be remembered that this readiness of Mr. Webster arose not wholly from his great powers, but largely from the fact that all his life long he had been a diligent and faithful student. Hence it was that his mind was a vast reservoir of acquisition from which he could at will draw out what was most fitting upon any subject. So Sir Walter Scott, browsing in his boyhood among the treasures of legendary lore and feudal traditions, was unconsciously preparing himself for the novels and poetical romances with which many years afterwards he delighted the world, and made his native land famous.

Recurring to the subject of nullification, at which Mr. Webster had aimed so powerful a blow, it may be said that it was scotched but not killed. Col. Hayne was overwhelmed, but he was not convinced. Neither was John C. Calhoun, the greater representative of the same State, who entirely accorded with Hayne in his extreme views of the rights and powers of the separate States. Not long afterwards Col. Hayne resigned his seat in the Senate, in order to be elected Governor of South Carolina, and lead at home the opponents of the government, while Mr. Calhoun, resigning his place as Vice-President, was elected senator in the place of Hayne, to lead the forces of nullification on the floor of the Senate. Through the firmness of President Jackson their schemes came to naught, but were revived, as we know, thirty years later by the citizens of the same State, and the Civil War was the result.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HONORS RECEIVED IN ENGLAND

It would require a volume far larger than the present to speak in detail of Mr. Webster’s public life, to point out his public services, to enumerate the occasions on which he took a distinguished part in debate. But this does not come within my plan. Fortunately there are other works in which such as desire it can gain all the information they desire upon these points. They will find how closely Mr. Webster was identified with the history of the nation, and what a powerful influence he exerted upon all public measures. And all the while he was making an equally brilliant reputation at the bar. He was employed in numerous “great cases,” and in none was he found unequal to his opportunity.

The result of his multifarious and exhausting labors was a determination to make a tour of recreation, and not unnaturally he decided to visit England, a country which to every American of Anglo-Saxon race must possess a first attraction. His second wife, who died but a few weeks since, his daughter, and Mrs. Page, the wife of his brother-in-law, were of the party. His youngest son, Edward, then a Dartmouth student, joined them later.

Mr. Webster’s fame had preceded him, and he received unusual honors. One paper in announcing his arrival said, “We cordially welcome to our shores this great and good man, and accept him as a fit representative of all the great and good qualities of our transatlantic brethren.” So great was the curiosity to see him that the press of carriages about the door of his hotel was almost unprecedented. He was invited everywhere, and was cordially received by the most prominent men. In fact, he was a “lion,” and that in a marked sense.

Among others he met that eccentric and craggy genius, Thomas Carlyle, and I am sure my readers young and old will like to know what impression the great senator made upon the Scotch philosopher.

This is what Carlyle writes:

“American notabilities are daily becoming notable among us, the ties of the two parishes, mother and daughter, getting closer and closer knit. Indissoluble ties!

“I reckon that this huge smoky wen may for some centuries yet be the best Mycale for our Saxon Panionium, a yearly meeting-place of ‘all the Saxons’ from beyond the Atlantic, from the antipodes, or wherever the restless wanderers dwell and toil. After centuries, if Boston, if New York, have become the most convenient ‘All-Saxondom,’ we will right cheerfully go thither to hold such festival and leave the wen.

“Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notablest of all your notabilities, Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent specimen. You might say to all the world, ‘This is our Yankee Englishman; such limbs we make in Yankee-land!’ As a logic-fencer, advocate or parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against the extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face, the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows [I am sure no one ever called Mr. Webster’s eyes dull before or since], like dull anthracite furnaces only waiting to be blown, the mastiff mouth accurately closed—I have not traced so much of silent Berseker’s rage that I remember of in any other man. ‘I guess I should not like to be your nigger.’ Webster is not loquacious, but he is pertinent, conclusive, a dignified, perfectly-bred man, though not English in breeding, a man worthy of the best reception among us, and meeting such, I understand.”

In a letter to Mr. Ticknor, John Kenyon indulges in some reminiscences of Mr. Webster, whom he met intimately, having traveled with him and his family party during four days.

“Coleridge used to say that he had seldom known or heard of any great man who had not ‘much of the woman in him.’ Even so, that large intellect of Daniel Webster seemed to be coupled with all softer feelings, and his countenance and bearing at the very first impressed me with this.

“All men, without having studied either science, are, we all know, more or less phrenologists and physiognomists. Right or wrong, I had found as I thought much sensibility in Webster’s countenance. A few weeks afterwards I had an opportunity of learning that it was not there only. We were in a hackney coach, driving along the New Road to Baring’s in the City. It was a longish drive, and we had time to get into a train of talk, also we were by that time what I may presume to call ‘intimate.’ I said, ‘Mr. Webster, you once, I believe, had a brother?’ ’Yes,’ he kindly said, ‘when I see you and your brother together I often think of him,’ and—I speak the fact as it was—I saw, after a little more talk on the subject of his brother, the tears begin to trickle down his cheek till he said to me, ‘I’ll give you an account of my early life,’ and he began with his father, and the farm in New Hampshire, and his own early education, and that of his brother, the details of his courtship and first marriage, and his no property at the time, but of his hopes in his profession and of his success, as he spoke showing much emotion. How could one help loving a man at once so powerful and so tender?”

The opinions of those who are themselves eminent are of interest. Let us see, therefore, what Hallam, the historian, says of our subject.

“I have had more than one opportunity,” he writes to Mr. Ticknor, “of hearing of you, especially from your very distinguished countryman, Mr. Webster, with whom I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted last summer. It is but an echo of the common voice here to say that I was extremely struck by his appearance, deportment and conversation. Mr. Webster approaches as nearly to the beau ideal of a republican senator as any man that I have ever seen in the course of my life, worthy of Rome, or Venice, rather than of our noisy and wrangling generation. I wish that some of our public men here would take example from his grave and prudent manner of speaking on political subjects, which seemed to me neither too incautious nor too strikingly reserved.”

It is seldom that a man’s personal appearance is so impressive as that of Daniel Webster, seldom that his greatness is so visibly stamped upon his face and figure. An admirer of Mr. Webster was once shocked by hearing him called “a hum-bug.” “What do you mean?” he demanded angrily. “I mean this,” was the reply, “that no man can possibly be as great as he looks.”

I have said that Mr. Webster was the recipient of attentions from all classes, I may add, from the highest in the land. Mr. and Mrs. Webster dined privately with Queen Victoria by special invitation, and it is recorded that the young Queen, for she was then young, was much impressed by the majestic demeanor of the great American. Even the Eton boys, who are wont to chaff all visitors, forgot their propensity in the presence of Mr. Webster. As Mr. Kenyon, already quoted, writes: “Not one look of unseemly curiosity, much less of the quizzing which I had rather anticipated, had we to undergo. Webster was not merely gratified, he was visibly touched by the sight. You remember that Charles Lamb said at Eton—I do not pretend to quote his exact words—‘What a pity that these fine youths should grow up into paltry members of Parliament!’ For myself, when I saw them so cheerful and yet so civilized and well-conditioned, I remember thinking to myself at the moment, ’Well, if I had a boy I should send him to Eton.’”

While at the Castle Inn, in Windsor, Mr. Webster wrote the following autograph, by request, for Mr. Kenyon:

“When you and I are dead and gone
This busy world will still jog on,
And laugh and sing and be as hearty
As if we still were of the party.”

There is no doubt that Mr. Webster enjoyed heartily his well-earned recreation. He had good cause. Never certainly up to that time had an American been received in England with such distinguished honors. I will close by his own account of the way in which he was received.

“I must say that the good people have treated me with great kindness. Their hospitality is unbounded, and I find nothing cold or stiff in their manners, at least not more than is observed among ourselves. There may be exceptions, but I think I may say this as a general truth. The thing in England most prejudiced against the United States is the press. Its ignorance of us is shocking, and it is increased by such absurdities as the travelers publish, to which stock of absurdities I am sorry to say Captain Marryatt is making an abundant addition. In general the Whigs know more and think better of America than the Tories. This is undeniable. Yet my intercourse I think is as much with the Conservatives as the Whigs. I have several invitations to pass time in the country after Parliament is prorogued. Two or three of them I have agreed to accept. Lord Lansdowne and the Earl of Radnor have invited us, who live in the south, the Duke of Rutland, Sir Henry Halford, Earl Fitzwilliam, Lord Lonsdale, etc., who live in the north.”

Of one thing my young reader may be assured, that no attentions, however elevated the source, had any effect upon the simple dignity of a typical American citizen, or influenced him when a few years later, as Secretary of State, it became his duty to deal with our relations with England.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CALLED TO THE CABINET

In the Presidential campaign of 1840, General Harrison, the nominee of the Whig party, swept the country, and was elected amid demonstrations of popular enthusiasm till then unprecedented. As we look back upon this time, uninfluenced by passion, we can only wonder how a man so moderately fitted for the position should have aroused such a furor. That he should have been nominated, while such born leaders and accomplished statesmen as Mr. Webster were passed over, need excite no surprise. In an ideal republic the best man and the wisest statesman would be selected, but there are no ideal statesmen, and are not likely to be. General Harrison was available, and therefore was put forward as the standard-bearer.

I do not mean to say that our nominees have always been mediocre men. James A. Garfield was a trained and experienced statesman, so was James Buchanan (his faults were of a different order), so were the early Presidents, and so have been occasional nominees of both great parties; but, as a rule, public men of the first rank have been passed by for candidates more available.

General Harrison showed this evidence of fitness for his high station, that almost immediately after his election, he indicated a strong desire that Mr. Webster should enter his Cabinet. Modestly distrustful of his own abilities, he wished to strengthen his administration by calling to his councils Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay. He writes thus to Mr. Webster, Dec. 1, 1840:

“Since I was first a candidate for the Presidency, I had determined, if successful, to solicit your able assistance in conducting the administration, and I now ask you to accept the State or Treasury Department. I have myself no preference of either for you, but it may perhaps be more difficult to fill the latter than the former, if you should decline it. It was the first designed for you, in the supposition that you had given more attention to the subject of the finances than Mr. Clay, to whom I intended to have offered the State Department. This, as well as any other post in the Cabinet, I understood, before my arrival here, from an intimate friend of that gentleman, he would decline. This he has since done personally to me.”

Mr. Webster replied that “for the daily details of the Treasury, the matters of account, and the supervision of subordinate officers employed in the collection and disbursement of public moneys,” he did not think himself to be particularly well qualified. He indicated that he would accept the office of Secretary of State.

Mr. Webster no doubt accurately gauged his own abilities. No one could be better fitted for the premiership and the conduct of our foreign relations, as the event proved. At this time especially a strong, judicious statesman of the first rank was required, for the relations between the United States and Great Britain were very delicate and even critical, and a rash hand might easily have plunged the two countries into war. One vexed question related to the boundary between this country and the provinces of Nova Scotia and Canada. This question was complicated by others of a still more irritating character, which space will not allow me to particularize. There was another question also, the long-standing claim of England to impress her own seamen, and to take them out of American vessels sailing on the high seas in time of war, rendering necessary the odious “right of search.”

Mr. Webster was influenced to accept the post of Secretary of State, because he knew these questions ought to be settled, and he felt confident of his ability to settle them. With this view the people cordially agreed, and Gen. Harrison’s choice of the great statesman of New England to take charge of our foreign relations was a very popular one.

Mr. Webster’s retirement from the Senate, and the necessary choice of a successor, gave occasion for a display of magnanimity. His relations with Ex-President John Quincy Adams were not friendly—he felt that he had been very badly treated by Mr. Adams on one occasion—but Mr. Adams, from his prominent position, was likely to be thought of as his successor in the Senate. Upon this subject Mr. Webster writes to a friend: “Some years ago, as you well know, an incident occurred which interrupted intercourse between Mr. Adams and myself for several years, and wounded the feelings of many of my friends as well as my own. With me that occurrence is overlooked and forgotten. I bury all remembrance of it under my regard for Mr. Adams’s talents, character, and public services.... Mr. Adams’s great knowledge and ability, his experience, and especially his thorough acquaintance with the foreign relations of the country, will undoubtedly make him prominent as a candidate; and I wish it to be understood that his election would be altogether agreeable to me.”

Mr. Adams, however, remained in the House of Representatives, and Rufus Choate was selected to succeed Mr. Webster. Massachusetts was fortunate in having three citizens so eminently fitted to do her honor in the national councils.

When the letter announcing Mr. Webster’s resignation of his seat was read in the Senate, Mr. Clay took occasion to pay a glowing tribute to his great eloquence and ability, referring to him as “one of the noblest specimens of American eloquence; one of the brightest ornaments of these halls, of this country, and of our common nature.”

The lamented death of General Harrison, on the 5th of April, after but a single month in office, interrupted official business, and made Mr. Webster’s position still more difficult. John Tyler, Vice-President, succeeding, soon made himself obnoxious to the party that had elected him. All the members of the Cabinet, except Mr. Webster, resigned. Mr. Webster perceived that he could not do so without serious detriment to the national interests, and he remained steadfast, thereby incurring the censure of many, who did not appreciate the patriotism and self-sacrifice that actuated him. The Secretary of State was too astute a politician not to understand that he was periling his own political fortunes, that he was raising up for himself enemies in his own State, and that his adherence to the administration might cost him the promotion which he ardently desired, for he had already fixed his eyes upon the Presidency as an object to which he might legitimately aspire. Nevertheless he adhered and kept his post till his work was done, and he had accomplished for this country what no other hand could probably have done, the peaceful adjustment of her foreign differences.