Famous American Statesmen Part 11

As a soldier, he was a brave, wise, skilful leader; as a statesman, honest, earnest, fearless, true--"I do precisely what I think just and right."

Said a friend who knew him well, "There was more of the woman in his nature than in that of any man I ever knew--more of woman's tenderness toward children, and sympathy with them. Often has he been known, though he never had a child of his own, to walk up and down by the hour with an infant in his arms, because by so doing he relieved it from the cause of its crying; more also of woman's patience and uncomplaining, unnoticing submissiveness to trivial causes of irritation. There was in him a womanly modesty and delicacy.... By no man was the homage due to woman, the only true homage she can receive--faith in her--more devoutly rendered.... This peculiar tenderness of nature entered largely, no doubt, into the composition of that _manner_ of his, with which so many have been struck, and which was of the highest available stamp as regards both dignity and grace."

Much of what he was in character he owed to Rachel Jackson. He once said to a prominent man, "My wife was a pious Christian woman. She gave me the best advice, and I have not been unmindful of it. When the people, in their sovereign pleasure, elected me President of the United States, _she_ said to me, 'Don't let your popularity turn your mind away from the duty you owe to G.o.d. Before him we are all alike sinners, and to him we must all alike give account. All these things will pa.s.s away, and you and I and all of us must stand before G.o.d.' I have never forgotten it, and I never shall."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DANIEL WEBSTER.]

DANIEL WEBSTER.

In the little town of Salisbury, New Hamps.h.i.+re, now called Franklin, Daniel Webster was born, January 18, 1782, the ninth in a family of ten children. Ebenezer, the father, descended from a st.u.r.dy Puritan ancestry, had fought in the French and Indian Wars; a brave, hardy pioneer. He had cleared the wilderness for his log house, married a wife who bore him five children, after which she died, and then married a second time, Abigail Eastman, a woman of vigorous understanding, yet tender and self-sacrificing. Of the five children of the latter wife, three daughters and two sons, Daniel was the fourth, a slight, delicate child, whose frail body made him especially dear to the mother, who felt that at any time he might be taken out of her arms forever.

"In this hut," said Webster, years later, speaking of his father and mother, "they endured together all sorts of privations and hards.h.i.+ps; my mother was constantly visited by Indians, who had never gone to a white man's house but to kill its inhabitants, while my father, perhaps, was gone, as he frequently was, miles away, carrying on his back the corn to be ground, which was to support his family."

The father was absent from home, also, on more important errands. When the news of the battle of Bunker Hill thrilled the colonies, Captain Webster, who had won his t.i.tle in the earlier wars, raised a company, and at once started for the scene of action. He fought at Bennington under Stark, being the first to scale the Tory breastworks, at White Plains, and was at West Point when Arnold attempted to surrender it to the British. He stood guard before General Was.h.i.+ngton's headquarters, the night of Arnold's treason. No wonder, when Was.h.i.+ngton looked upon the robust form nearly six feet high, with black hair and eyes, and firm decisive manner, he said, "Captain Webster, I believe I can trust _you_."

And so thought the people of New Hamps.h.i.+re, for they made him a member of both Houses of the State Legislature at various times, and a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in his own county.

The delicate boy Daniel was unable to work on the farm like his brother Ezekiel, two years older, but found his pleasure and pastime in reading, and in studying nature. The home, "Elms Farm," as it was called later, from the elms about it, was in a valley at a bend of the Merrimac. From here the boy gazed upon Mount Kearsarge, and Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, the king of the White Mountain peaks, and if he did not dream of what the future had in store for him, he grew broad in soul from such surroundings.

Great mountains, great reaches of sea or plain, usually bring great thoughts and plans to those who view them with a loving heart.

Daniel had little opportunity for schooling in those early years. He says, in his autobiography, "I do not remember when or by whom I was taught to read, because I cannot, and never could, recollect a time when I could not read the Bible. I suppose I was taught by my mother, or by my elder sisters. My father seemed to have no higher object in the world than to educate his children to the full extent of his very limited ability. No means were within his reach, generally speaking, but the small town-schools. These were kept by teachers, sufficiently indifferent, in the several neighborhoods of the towns.h.i.+p, each a small part of the year. To these I was sent with the other children.... In these schools nothing was taught but reading and writing; and as to these, the first I generally could perform better than the teacher, and the last a good master could hardly instruct me in; writing was so laborious, irksome, and repulsive an occupation to me always."

Much of the boy's time was spent in rambles along the Merrimac river, formed by the Winnipiseogee and the Pemigewa.s.set, "the beau ideal of a mountain stream; cold, noisy, winding, and with banks of much picturesque beauty." He loved to fish along the streams, having for company an old British soldier and sailor, Robert Wise. "He was," says Webster, "my Isaac Walton. He had a wife but no child. He loved me, because I would read the newspapers to him, containing the accounts of battles in the European wars. When I have read to him the details of the victories of Howe and Jervis, etc., I remember he was excited almost to convulsions, and would relieve his excitement by a gush of exulting tears. He finally picked up a fatherless child, took him home, sent him to school, and took care of him, only, as he said, that he might have some one to read the newspaper to him. He could never read himself.

Alas, poor Robert! I have never so attained the narrative art as to hold the attention of others as thou, with thy Yorks.h.i.+re tongue, hast held mine. Thou hast carried me many a mile on thy back, paddled me over and over and up and down the stream, and given whole days in aid of my boyish sports, and asked no meed but that, at night, I would sit down at thy cottage door, and read to thee some pa.s.sage of thy country's glory!"

Daniel heard of battles from another source beside Robert Wise. In the long winter evenings, when the family were snow-bound, Captain Webster would tell stories of the Revolutionary War, and the boy grew patriotic, as he heard of the brave soldiers who died to bring freedom to unborn generations. When he was eight years old, with all the money at his command, twenty-five cents, he went into a little shop "and bought," as he says, "a small cotton pocket-handkerchief, with the Const.i.tution of the United States printed on its two sides. From this I learned either that there was a Const.i.tution, or that there were thirteen States. I remember to have read it, and have known more or less of it ever since."

Years afterward he said, "that there was not an article, a section, a clause, a phrase, a word, a syllable, or even a comma, of that Const.i.tution, which he had not studied and pondered in every relation and in every construction of which it was susceptible."

How important a part this twenty-five cent handkerchief played in the lives of the two Webster boys! There is no soil so mellow as that of a child's mind; it needs no enriching save love that warms it like suns.h.i.+ne. What is planted there early, grows rank and tall, and mothers do most of the planting.

The lad's reading in these boyish days was confined mostly to the "Spectator," and Pope's "Essay on Man." The whole of the latter he learned to repeat. "We had so few books," he says, "that to read them once or twice was nothing. We thought they were all to be got by heart."

The yearly almanac was regarded as "an acquisition." Once when Ezekiel and he had a dispute, after retiring, as to a couplet at the head of the April page, Daniel got up, groped his way to the kitchen, lighted a candle, looked at the quotation, found himself in the wrong, and went back to bed. But he had inadvertently, at two o'clock at night in midwinter, set the house on fire, which was saved by his father's presence of mind. Daniel said, "They were in pursuit of light, but got more than they wanted."

Exceedingly fond of poetry, at twelve he could repeat many of the hymns of Dr. Watts. Later, he found delight in Don Quixote, of which he says, "I began to read it, and it is literally true that I never closed my eyes until I had finished it; nor did I lay it down, so great was the power of that extraordinary book on my imagination." Later still, Milton, Shakespeare, and the Bible became his inspiration.

Years after, he used to say, "I have read through the entire Bible many times. I now make it a practice to go through it once a year. It is the book of all others for lawyers as well as for divines; and I pity the man that cannot find in it a rich supply of thought, and of rules for his conduct. It fits man for life--it prepares him for death!"

Captain Webster had secretly nourished the thought that he should send Daniel to college, but he was not a man to awaken false hopes, so he made no mention of his thoughts. An incident related by Daniel shows his father's heart in the matter. "Of a hot day in July, it must have been in one of the last years of Was.h.i.+ngton's administration, I was making hay with my father. About the middle of the forenoon, the Honorable Abiel Foster, who lived in Canterbury, six miles off, called at the house, and came into the field to see my father. He was a worthy man, college-learned, and had been a minister, and was not a person of any considerable natural power. He talked a while in the field and went on his way. When he was gone, my father called me to him, and we sat down beneath the elm, on a hayc.o.c.k. He said, 'My son, that is a worthy man; he is a member of Congress; he goes to Philadelphia, and gets six dollars a day, while I toil here. It is because he had an education, which I never had. If I had had his early education, I should have been in Philadelphia in his place. I came near it as it was. But I missed it, and now I must work here.' 'My dear father,' said I, 'you shall not work. Brother and I shall work for you, and will wear our hands out, and you shall rest.' And I remember to have cried, and I cry now at the recollection. 'My child,' said he, 'it is of no importance to me. I now live but for my children. I could not give your elder brothers the advantages of knowledge, but I can do something for you. Exert yourself, improve your opportunities, learn, learn, and, when I am gone, you will not need to go through the hards.h.i.+ps which I have undergone, and which have made me an old man before my time.'"

Daniel never forgot those precious words, "Improve your opportunities, learn, learn." The next year, 1796, he went to Phillips Exeter Academy, where he found ninety boys. He had come with his plain clothes from his plain home, while many of the others had come from rich and aristocratic families. Sometimes the boys ridiculed his country ways and country dress. Little they knew of the future that was to give them some slight renown simply because they happened to be in the same cla.s.s with this country lad! When will the world learn not to judge a person by his clothes! When the first term at Exeter was near its close, the usher, Nicholas Emery, afterward an eminent lawyer in Portland, Maine, said to Webster, "You may stop a few minutes after school: I wish to speak to you." He then told the lad that he was a better scholar than any in his cla.s.s, that he learned more readily and easily, and that if he returned to school he should be put into a higher cla.s.s, and not be hindered by boys who cared more for play and dress than for solid improvement.

"These were the first truly encouraging words," said Mr. Webster, "that I ever received with regard to my studies. I then resolved to return, and pursue them with diligence and so much ability as I possessed."

Blessings on thee, Nicholas Emery! Strange that either from indifference, or what we think the world will say, we forget to speak a helpful or an encouraging word. True appreciation is not flattery.

Daniel was at this time extremely diffident--a manner that speaks well for a boy or girl generally--and was helped out of it by a n.o.ble young teacher, Joseph Stevens Buckminster, who died at twenty-eight. Mr.

Webster says, "I believe I made tolerable progress in most branches which I attended to while in this school; but there was one thing I could not do--I could not make a declamation. I could not speak before the school. The kind and excellent Buckminster sought, especially, to persuade me to perform the exercise of declamation like other boys, but I could not do it. Many a piece did I commit to memory, and recite and rehea.r.s.e in my own room, over and over again, yet, when the day came, when the school collected to hear declamations, when my name was called, and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could not raise myself from it.

Sometimes the instructors frowned, sometimes they smiled. Mr.

Buckminster always pressed and entreated, most winningly, that I would venture, but I could never command sufficient resolution. When the occasion was over, I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification."

After nine months at Exeter, Daniel began to study with Rev. Samuel Wood, a minister in the adjoining town of Boscawen, six miles from Salisbury. As Captain Webster was driving over with his son, he communicated to him his plan of sending him to college. "I remember,"

says Daniel Webster, "the very hill which we were ascending, through deep snows, in a New England sleigh, when my father made known this purpose to me. I could not speak. How could he, I thought, with so large a family, and in such narrow circ.u.mstances, think of incurring so great an expense for me? A warm glow ran all over me, and I laid my head on my father's shoulder and wept."

All through life, Mr. Webster, greatest of American orators, was never afraid nor ashamed to weep. Children are not, and the nearer we keep to the naturalness of children, with reasonable self-control, the more power we have over others, and the sweeter and purer grow our natures.

While Daniel was at Dr. Wood's, a characteristic incident occurred. He says: "My father sent for me in haying time to help him, and put me into a field to turn hay, and left me. It was pretty lonely there, and, after working some time, I found it very dull; and as I knew my father was gone away, I walked home, and asked my sister Sally if she did not want to go and pick some whortle-berries. She said, yes. So I went and got some horses, and put a side-saddle on one, and we set off. We did not get home until it was pretty late, and I soon went to bed. When my father came home he asked my mother where I was, and what I had been about. She told him. The next morning, when I awoke, I saw all the clothes I had brought from Dr. Wood's tied up in a small bundle again.

When I saw my father, he asked me how I liked haying. I told him I found it 'pretty dull and lonesome yesterday.' 'Well,' said he, 'I believe you may as well go back to Dr. Wood's.' So I took my bundle under my arm, and on my way I met Thomas W. Thompson, a lawyer in Salisbury; he laughed very heartily when he saw me. 'So,' said he, 'your farming is over, is it?'"

In August, 1797, when Daniel was fifteen, he entered Dartmouth College; there he proved a genial, affectionate friend, and a devoted student.

But for this natural warmth of heart, he probably never would have been an orator, for those only move others whose own hearts are moved. "He had few intimates," says Henry Cabot Lodge, in his admirably written and discriminating "Life of Webster," "but many friends. He was generally liked as well as universally admired, was a leader in the college societies, active and successful in sports, simple, hearty, unaffected, without a touch of priggishness, and with a wealth of wholesome animal spirits."

After two years, the unselfish student could bear no longer the thought that his beloved brother Ezekiel was not to enjoy a college education.

When he went home in vacation, he confided to his brother his unhappiness for his sake, and for a whole night they discussed the subject. It was decided that Daniel should consult the father. "This, we knew," said Mr. Webster, "would be a trying thing to my father and mother and two unmarried sisters. My father was growing old, his health not good, and his circ.u.mstances far from easy.... The farm was to be carried on, and the family taken care of; and there was n.o.body to do all this but him, who was regarded as the mainstay--that is to say, Ezekiel.

However, I ventured on the negotiation, and it was carried, as other things often are, by the earnest and sanguine manner of youth. I told him that I was unhappy at my brother's prospects. For myself, I saw my way to knowledge, respectability, and self-protection; but, as to him, all looked the other way; that I would keep school, and get along as well as I could, be more than four years in getting through college, if necessary,--provided he also could be sent to study.... He said that to carry us both through college would take all he was worth; that, for himself, he was willing to run the risk; but that this was a serious matter to our mother and two unmarried sisters; that we must settle the matter with them, and, if their consent was obtained, he would trust to Providence, and get along as well as he could."

Captain Webster consulted with his wife; told her that already the farm was mortgaged for Daniel's education, and that if Ezekiel went to college it would take all they possessed. "Well," said she, with her brave mother-heart, "I will trust the boys;" and they lived to make her glad that she had trusted them.

The boy of seventeen went back to Dartmouth to struggle with poverty alone, but he was happy; the boy of nineteen began a new life, studying under Dr. Wood, and, later, entered Dartmouth College.

Daniel, as he had promised, began to earn money to pay his own and his brother's way. By superintending a small weekly paper, called the _Dartmouth Gazette_, he earned enough to pay his board. In the winter he taught school, and gave the money to Ezekiel. While in college, his wonderful powers in debate began to manifest themselves. He wrote his own declamations. Said one of his cla.s.smates: "In his movements he was rather slow and deliberate, except when his feelings were aroused; then his whole soul would kindle into a flame. We used to listen to him with the deepest respect and interest, and no one ever thought of equalling the vigor and flow of his eloquence."

Beside his regular studies, he devoted himself to history and politics.

From the old world he learned lessons in finance, in commerce, in the stability of governments, that he was able to use in after life. He remembered what he read. He says, "So much as I read I made my own. When a half-hour or an hour, at most, had elapsed, I closed my book, and thought over what I had read. If there was anything peculiarly interesting or striking in the pa.s.sage, I endeavored to recall it, and lay it up in my memory, and commonly I could recall it. Then, if, in debate or conversation afterward, any subject came up on which I had read something, I could talk very easily so far as I had read, and then I was very careful to stop." In this manner Mr. Webster became skilled in the art of conversation, and could be the life of any social gathering.

On July 4, 1800, he delivered his first public speech, at the request of the people of Hanover, tracing the history of our country to the grand success of the Revolution.

On leaving college he entered the law office of Mr. T. W. Thompson, of Salisbury. He seems not to have inclined strongly to the law, his tastes leading him toward general literature, but he was guided by the wishes of his father and other friends. His first reading was in the Law of Nations--Vattel, Burlamaqui, and Montesquieu, followed by Blackstone's Commentaries. After four months, he was obliged to quit his studies and earn money for Ezekiel.

He obtained a school at Fryeburg, Maine, promising to teach for six months for one hundred and seventy-five dollars. Four nights each week he copied deeds, and made in this way two dollars a week. Thirty years afterward he said, "The ache is not yet out of my fingers; for nothing has ever been so laborious to me as writing, when under the necessity of writing a good hand."

When May came with its week of vacation, he says, "I took my quarter's salary, mounted a horse, went straight over all the hills to Hanover, and had the pleasure of putting these, the first earnings of my life, into my brother's hands for his college expenses. Having enjoyed this sincere and high pleasure, I hied me back again to my school and my copying of deeds." Thus at twenty was the great American living out Emerson's sublime motto, "Help somebody," founded on that broadest and sweetest of all commands, "Love one another."

"In these days," says George Ticknor Curtis' delightful life of Webster, "he was always dignified in his deportment. He was usually serious, but often facetious and pleasant. He was an agreeable companion, and eminently social with all who shared his friends.h.i.+p. He was greatly beloved by all who knew him. His habits were strictly abstemious, and he neither took wine nor strong drink. He was punctual in his attendance upon public wors.h.i.+p, and ever opened his school with prayer. I never heard him use a profane word, and never saw him lose his temper."

While teaching and copying deeds, he read Adam's "Defence of the American Const.i.tutions," Williams' "Vermont," Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History," and continued his Blackstone. He walked much in the fields, alone, and thus learned to know himself; gaining that power of thought and mastery of self which are essential to those who would have mastery over others. He said, "I loved this occasional solitude then, and have loved it ever since, and love it still. I like to contemplate nature, and to hold communion, unbroken by the presence of human beings, with 'this universal frame--this wondrous fair.' I like solitude also, as favorable to thoughts less lofty. I like to let the thoughts go free, and indulge excursions. And when thinking is to be done one must, of course, be alone. No man knows _himself_ who does not thus sometimes keep his own company. At a subsequent period of life, I have found that my lonely journeys, when following the court on its circuits, have afforded many an edifying day."

And yet in this busy life he called himself "naturally indolent," which was true, probably. Seeing that most of us do not love work, it is wise that in early life, if we would accomplish anything, we are drilled into habits of industry.

When he went back to the study of law, he says, "I really often despaired. I thought I never could make myself a lawyer, and was almost going back to the business of school-keeping. There are propositions in c.o.ke so abstract, and distinctions so nice, and doctrines embracing so many conditions and qualifications, that it requires an effort not only of a mature mind, but of a mind both strong and mature, to understand him." And yet he adds, "If one can keep up an acquaintance with general literature in the meantime, the law may help to invigorate and unfold the powers of the mind."

He longed, as every ambitious young man longs, for a wider sphere. If he could only go to Boston, and mingle with the cultivated society there!--but this seemed an impossibility. At this time Ezekiel, through a college friend, was offered a private school in Boston. He accepted the position, and wrote to Daniel urging him to come and teach Latin and Greek for an hour and a half each day, thus earning enough to pay his board.

Daniel went to Boston, poor and unknown. His first efforts in finding an office in which to study were unsuccessful, for who cares about a young stranger in a great city? If we looked upon a human being as his Maker looks, doubtless we should be interested in him. He desired to study with some one already prominent. He found his way to the office of Christopher Gore, who was the first district attorney of the United States for Ma.s.sachusetts, a commissioner to England under Jay's treaty for eight years, Ex-Governor of the State, and ex-senator. Mr. Webster thus narrates his early experience: "A young man, as little known to Mr.

Gore as myself, undertook to introduce me to him. We ventured into Mr.

Gore's rooms, and my name was p.r.o.nounced. I was shockingly embarra.s.sed, but Mr. Gore's habitual courtesy of manner gave me courage to speak. I had the grace to begin with an unaffected apology, told him my position was very awkward, my appearance there very like an intrusion; and that if I expected anything but a civil dismission, it was only founded in his known kindness and generosity of character. I was from the country, I said; had studied law for two years; had come to Boston to study a year more; had some respectable acquaintances in New Hamps.h.i.+re, not unknown to him, but had no introduction; that I had heard he had no clerk; thought it possible he would receive one; that I came to Boston to work, not to play; was most desirous, on all accounts, to be his pupil; and all I ventured to ask at present was that he would keep a place for me in his office till I could write to New Hamps.h.i.+re for proper letters, showing me worthy of it. I delivered this speech _trippingly_ on the tongue, though I suspect it was better composed than spoken. Mr. Gore heard me with much encouraging good-nature. He evidently saw my embarra.s.sment; spoke kind words, and asked me to sit down. My friend had already disappeared. Mr. Gore said what I had suggested was very reasonable, and required little apology.... He inquired, and I told him, what gentlemen of his acquaintance knew me and my father in New Hamps.h.i.+re. Among others, I remember I mentioned Mr.