Famous American Statesmen Part 13

In his conversation with the ex-President, he told this story of himself, which well ill.u.s.trates the fact that all the knowledge which we can acquire becomes of use to us at one time or another in life. When a young lawyer in Portsmouth, a blacksmith brought him a case under a will. As the case was a difficult one, he spent one month in the study of it, buying fifty dollars' worth of books to help him in the matter.

He argued the case, won it, and received a fee of fifteen dollars. Years after, Aaron Burr sent for him to consult with him on a legal question of consequence. The case was so similar to that of the blacksmith that Webster could cite all the points bearing upon it from the time of Charles II. Mr. Burr was astonished, and suspected he was the counsel for the opposite side. Webster received enough compensation from Burr to cover the loss of time and money in the former case, and gained, besides, Burr's admiration and respect.

In the winter of 1824, Webster's youngest child, Charles, died, at the age of two years. Mrs. Webster wrote her absent husband, "I have dreaded the hour which should destroy your hopes, but trust you will not let this event afflict you too much, and that we both shall be able to resign him without a murmur, happy in the reflection that he has returned to his Heavenly Father pure as I received him.... Do not, my dear husband, talk of your own 'final abode;' that is a subject I never can dwell on for a moment. With you here, my dear, I can never be desolate. Oh, may Heaven, in its mercy, long preserve you!"

Four years later, "the blessed wife," as he called her, went to her "final abode." Mr. Webster watched by her side till death took her. Then at the funeral, in the wet and cold of that January day, he walked close behind the hea.r.s.e, holding Julia and Fletcher, his two children, by the hand. Her body was placed beneath St. Paul's Church, Boston, beside her children. All were removed afterward to Marshfield.

Webster went back to Was.h.i.+ngton, having been made United States senator, but he seemed broken-hearted, and unable to perform his duties. He wrote to a friend, "Like an angel of G.o.d, indeed. I hope she is in purity, in happiness, and in immortality; but I would fain hope that, in kind remembrance of those she has left, in a lingering human sympathy and human love, she may yet be, as G.o.d originally created her, a 'little lower than the angels.' I cannot pursue these thoughts, nor turn back to see what I have written." Again he wrote, "I feel a vacuum, an indifference, a want of motive, which I cannot describe. I hope my children, and the society of my best friends, may rouse me; but I can never see such days as I have seen. Yet I should not repine; I have enjoyed much, very much; and, if I were to die to-night, I should bless G.o.d most fervently that I have lived."

Judge Story spoke of Mrs. Webster as a sister with "her kindness of heart, her generous feelings, her mild and conciliatory temper, her warm and elevated affections, her constancy, purity, and piety, her n.o.ble disinterestedness, and her excellent sense."

Later, Mr. Webster married Caroline Le Roy, the daughter of a New York merchant, but no affection ever effaced from his heart the memory of Grace Webster, whom he always spoke of as "the mother of his children."

The next year, 1829, his idolized brother Ezekiel died suddenly at forty-nine, while he was addressing a jury in the court-house at Concord, New Hamps.h.i.+re.

Daniel Webster said of this shock, "I have felt but one such in life; and this follows so soon that it requires more fort.i.tude than I possess to bear it with firmness, and, perhaps, as I ought. I am aware that the case admits no remedy, nor any present relief; and endeavor to console myself with reflecting that I have had much happiness with lost connections, and that they must expect to lose beloved objects in this world who have beloved objects to lose."

Recently, at the home of Kate Sanborn in New York, the grand-niece of Daniel Webster, I met the sweet-faced wife of Ezekiel, young in her feelings and young in face despite her four-score years. Here I saw a picture of the great orator in his youth, the desk on which he wrote, and scores of mementos of Marshfield and "Elms Farms," treasured by the cultivated woman who bears token of her renowned kins.h.i.+p.

With all these sorrows crowded into Mr. Webster's life, he could not cease his pressing work in Congress. Andrew Jackson had become President, and John C. Calhoun had preached his Nullification doctrines till South Carolina was ready to separate herself from the Union, because of her dissatisfaction with the tariff laws. Webster had somewhat changed his views, and had become a supporter of the "American System" of Henry Clay, the system of "protection," because he thought the interests of his const.i.tuents demanded it. For himself, he loved agriculture, but he saw the need of fostering manufactures if we would have a great and prosperous country.

On December 29, 1829, Mr. Foote, a senator from Connecticut, introduced a resolution to inquire respecting the sales and surveys of western lands. In a long debate which followed, General Hayne of South Carolina took occasion to chastise New England, in no tender words, for her desire to build up herself in wealth at the expense of the West and South. On January 20, Webster made his first reply to the General, having only a night in which to prepare his speech. The notes filled three pages of ordinary letter paper, while the speech, as reported, filled twenty pages.

Again General Hayne spoke in an able yet personal manner, a.s.serting the doctrines of nullification, and attempting to justify the position of his State in seceding. Mr. Webster took notes while he was speaking, but, as the Senate adjourned, his speech did not come till the following day. Again he had but a night in which to prepare.

When the morning of January 26 came, the galleries, floor, and staircase were crowded with eager men and women. "It is a critical moment," said Mr. Bell, of New Hamps.h.i.+re, to Mr. Webster, "and it is time, it is high time, that the people of this country should know what this Const.i.tution _is_." "Then," answered Webster, "by the blessing of Heaven they shall learn, this day, before the sun goes down, what I understand it to be."

When Webster began speaking his words were slowly uttered. "Mr.

President,--When the mariner has been tossed, for many days, in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his lat.i.tude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of the resolution."

And then with trenchant sarcasm, unanswerable logic, and the intense feeling which belongs to true oratory, Mr. Webster taught the American people the strength and holding power of the Const.i.tution, which a civil war, thirty years later, was to prove unalterably. The speech, which filled seventy printed pages, came from only five pages of notes. When asked how long he was in preparation for the reply to Hayne, he answered, his "whole life."

How often his loving defence of Ma.s.sachusetts has been quoted! "Mr.

President, I shall enter on no encomiums upon Ma.s.sachusetts. She needs none. There she is--behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history: the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure.

There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill,--and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State, from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it--if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it--if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that union, by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked: it will stretch forth its arm, with whatever of vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.

"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him s.h.i.+ning on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!--Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original l.u.s.tre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured--bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as _What is all this worth_? Nor those other words of delusion and folly, _Liberty first_, and _Union_ afterwards--but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart--Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"

Of course, this reply to Hayne electrified the country, and Webster began to be mentioned for the presidential chair. No one who ever heard him speak, with his wonderful magnetism, his majestic enthusiasm, his rich, full voice, and his unsurpa.s.sed physique, could ever forget the man, his words, or his presence. When he visited Europe, some said, "There goes a king." When Sydney Smith saw him, he exclaimed, "Good Heavens! he is a small cathedral by himself."

Through Jackson's administration Webster was his courteous opponent in most measures, but in the nullification scheme he was heart and hand with the fearless, self-willed general. When Henry Clay brought forward his compromise tariff bill, which pacified the nullifiers, Webster opposed it, believing that, in the face of this opposition to the Const.i.tution, concession was unwise.

In 1833, the famous statesman made an extended journey through the West, and was everywhere honored and feted. Church-bells were rung, cannon fired, and houses decorated at his coming. Great crowds gathered everywhere to hear him speak.

By this time a party was developing in opposition to the unusual powers exercised by General Jackson, whose great victory at New Orleans had made him the idol of the people. The party was the more easily formed from the financial troubles under Van Buren, he having reaped the harvest of which Jackson had sown the seed. Naturally, Mr. Webster became the leader of this Whig party, so called from the Whig party in England, formed to resist the ultra demands of the king. Ma.s.sachusetts favored him for the presidency. Boston presented him with a ma.s.sive silver vase, before an audience of four thousand persons. Philadelphia and Baltimore gave him public dinners. Letters came from various States urging his name upon the National Convention, which met at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, December 4, 1839. But Mr. Webster had been so prominent that his views upon all public questions were too well known, therefore General William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, an honored soldier of the War of 1812, was chosen, as being a more "available" candidate.

Webster must have been sorely disappointed, as were his friends, but he at once began to work earnestly for his party, spoke constantly at meetings, and helped to elect Harrison, who died one month after the exciting election, at the age of sixty-eight. John Tyler, of Virginia, the Vice-President, succeeded him, and Mr. Webster remained Secretary of State under him, as he had been under Harrison. Here the duties were arduous and complicated.

For many years the north-eastern boundary had been a matter of dispute between England and the United States. Bitter feeling had been engendered also by trouble in Canada in 1837. Several of those in rebellion had fled from Canada to the States, had fitted out an American steamboat, the Carolina, to make incursions into that country. She was burned by a party of Canadians, and an American was killed. McLeod, from Canada, acknowledged himself the slayer, was arrested, and committed for murder. The British were angered by this, as were the Americans by the search of their vessels by British cruisers. Lord Ashburton was finally sent as a special envoy to the United States, and largely through the statesmans.h.i.+p of Mr. Webster the Ashburton treaty was concluded, and war between the nations avoided.

Meantime, President Tyler had vetoed the bill for establis.h.i.+ng another United States Bank, and thereby set his own party against him. Most of the cabinet resigned, and although much pressure was brought by the Whig party upon Mr. Webster, that he resign also, he remained till the treaty matter was settled. Then he returned to Marshfield, and devoted himself once more to the law.

He had spent lavishly upon his farm; he had also bought western land, and lost money by his investments. He felt obliged to entertain friends, and this was expensive. Besides, he never kept regular accounts, often in his generosity gave five hundred dollars when he should have given but five, and now found himself embarra.s.sed by debts which were a source of sorrow to his friends as well as to himself, and a source of advantage to his enemies. Thirty-five thousand dollars were now given him by his admirers, from which he received a yearly income.

In 1844, the annexation of Texas was a leading presidential question.

Until 1836 she was a province of Mexico, but in 1835 she resorted to arms to free herself. On March 6, 1836, a Texan fort, called the Alamo, was surrounded by eight thousand Mexicans, led by Santa Anna. The garrison was ma.s.sacred. The next month the battle of San Jacinto was fought, and Texas became independent. When she asked admission to the Union, the Democrats favored and the Whigs opposed, because she would naturally become slave territory. Already, August 30, 1843, the "Liberty Party" had a.s.sembled at Baltimore and nominated a candidate for the presidency. The North was becoming agitated on the subject of slavery, but the Whigs avoided both the subjects of slavery and Texas in their platform, and nominated as their presidential candidate not Daniel Webster but Henry Clay.

Again Webster worked earnestly for his party and its nominee, but the Whigs were defeated, as is usually the case when a party fears to touch the great questions which public opinion demands. They learned a lesson when it was too late, and other political parties should profit by their example.

James K. Polk of Tennessee was elected, Texas was admitted to the Union, and the Mexican War resulted. War was declared by Congress May 11, 1846, vigorously prosecuted, and Mexico was defeated. By the terms of the treaty, concluded February 2, 1848, New Mexico and Upper California were given to the United States. Webster, who had been returned to the Senate by Ma.s.sachusetts, opposed the war as he had the annexation of Texas. At this time a double sorrow came to him. His second son, Major Edward Webster, a young man of fine abilities, courage, and high sense of honor, died near the city of Mexico, from disease induced by exposure. His body arrived in Boston May 4, and, only three days before, Webster's lovely daughter, Julia, who had married Samuel Appleton of Boston, was carried to her grave by consumption. Her death, at thirty, was beautiful in its resignation and faith, even though she left five little children to the care of others. Her last words were, "Let me go, for the day breaketh," which words were placed upon her tombstone.

Mr. Webster was indeed crushed by this new sorrow. He wrote to his friend Mrs. Ticknor, "I cannot speak of the lost ones; but I submit to the will of G.o.d. I feel that I am nothing, less even than the merest dust of the balance; and that the Creator of a million worlds, and the judge of all flesh, must be allowed to dispose of me and mine as to his infinite wisdom shall seem best."

In 1848, when Mr. Webster was sixty-six, the presidency once more eluded his grasp by the nomination of another "available" man, General Zachary Taylor, one of the heroes of the Mexican War. Webster had spoken earnestly for Harrison and Clay; now he was unwilling longer to work for the party which had ignored him and nominated a man whom, though an able soldier, he thought unfitted for the place as a statesman. If it was a mistake to show that he was wounded in spirit, as it undoubtedly was for so great a man, it was nevertheless human.

The thing which Mr. Webster had feared these many years was now coming to pa.s.s. A violent agitation of the slavery question in the Territories was upon the nation. For thirty years slavery had been odious to the North, and carefully nurtured by the South. In 1820, when Missouri was admitted as a State, the North insisted that a clause prohibiting slavery should be inserted as a condition of her admission to the Union.

Henry Clay devised the compromise by which slavery was prohibited in all the new territory lying north of lat.i.tude 36 30', which was the southern boundary of Missouri. This line was called Mason and Dixon's line, from the names of the two surveyors who ran the boundary line between Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Year by year the hatred of slavery had intensified at the North.

February 1, 1847, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced in Congress his famous proviso, by which slavery was to be excluded from all territory thereafter acquired or annexed by the United States. And now, in 1849, the conflict on the slavery question was more virulent than ever. California, having framed a const.i.tution prohibiting slavery, applied for admission to the Union. New Mexico asked for a territorial government and for the exclusion of slavery.

The South claimed that the Missouri Compromise, extending to the Pacific coast, guaranteed the right to introduce slavery into California and New Mexico, and threatened secession from the Union. Again Henry Clay settled the matter,--for a time only, as it proved,--by his famous Compromise of 1850, by which California was admitted as a free State, the Territories taken from Mexico left to decide the slavery question as they chose, the slave-trade abolished in the District of Columbia, more effectual enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law demanded, with some other minor provisions.

The Fugitive Slave Law, which provided for the return of the fugitives without trial by jury, and expected Christian people to aid the slave-dealers in capturing their slaves, was especially obnoxious to the North. Some of the States had pa.s.sed "Personal Liberty Bills," punis.h.i.+ng as kidnappers persons who sought to take away alleged slaves.

Mr. Webster saw with dismay all this bitterness, and knew that the Union which he loved was in danger. He hoped to avert civil war, perhaps to still the tumult forever, and so gave his great heart and brain to the Clay compromise. On March 7, 1850, he delivered in Congress his famous speech on the Compromise bill. The Senate chamber was crowded with an intensely excited audience. Mr. Webster discussed the whole history of slavery, opposed the Wilmot Proviso, because he thought every part of the country settled as to slavery, either by law or nature,--he could not look into the future and see Kansas,--and then condemned the course of the North in its resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, which he held to be const.i.tutional. The words in reference to restoring fugitive slaves created a storm of indignation at the North, which had looked upon Webster as a great anti-slavery leader, and who had said in the oration at Plymouth, "I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who, by stealth and at midnight, labor in this work of h.e.l.l, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it." In his speech to Hayne he had said, "I regard domestic slavery as one of the greatest evils, both moral and political."

Probably Mr. Webster had not changed his mind at all in regard to the enormity of slavery, but he hoped to save the Union from war. He indeed helped to postpone the conflict, but if the presidency had before this been a possibility to him, it became now an impossibility forever, and his own words had done it.

President Taylor died July 9, 1850, when the discussion of the Compromise matter was at its height, and Millard Fillmore became President. He at once made Webster Secretary of State. Mr. Webster bore bravely the reproaches of the North. He said, "I cared for nothing, I was afraid of nothing, but I meant to do my duty. Duty performed makes a man happy; duty neglected makes a man unhappy.... If the fate of John Rogers had stared me in the face, if I had seen the stake, if I had heard the f.a.gots already crackling, by the blessing of Almighty G.o.d I would have gone on and discharged the duty which I thought my country called upon me to perform."

At the next national Whig convention, General Winfield Scott was nominated to the presidency. Mult.i.tudes throughout the country were disappointed that Webster was not chosen. Boston gave him a magnificent reception. Marshfield welcomed him with a gathering of thousands of people nine miles from his home, who escorted him thither, scattering garlands along the way. "I remember how," says Charles Lanman, "after the crowd had disappeared, he entered his house fatigued beyond measure, and covered with dust, and threw himself into a chair. For a moment his head fell upon his breast, as if completely overcome, and he then looked up like one seeking something he could not find. It was the portrait of his darling but departed daughter, Julia, and it happened to be in full view. He gazed upon it for some time in a kind of trance, and then wept like one whose heart was broken, and these words escaped his lips, 'Oh, I am so thankful to be here. If I could only have my will, never, never would I again leave this home!'"

Here he was happy. Here he had gathered a large library, many of his books being on science, of which he was very fond. Of geology and physical geography he had made a careful study. Humboldt's "Cosmos" was an especial favorite.

In the spring of 1852, Mr. Webster fell from his carriage, and from this fall he never entirely recovered. In the fall he made his will, and wrote these words for his monument, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. Philosophical argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has a.s.sured and rea.s.sured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a Divine Reality.

"The Sermon on the Mount cannot be a merely human production. This belief enters into the very depth of my conscience. The whole history of man proves it."

Mr. Webster had repeatedly given his testimony in favor of the Christian religion. "Religion," he said, "is a necessary and indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne.

If that tie be all sundered, all broken, he floats away, a worthless atom in the universe; its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation, and death."

Once, at a dinner party of gentlemen, he was asked by one present, "What is the most important thought that ever occupied your mind?"

The reply came slowly and solemnly, "My individual responsibility to G.o.d!"

When the last of October came, Mr. Webster was nearing the end of life.

About a week before he died he asked that a herd of his best oxen might be driven in front of his windows, that he might see their honest faces and gentle eyes. A man who thus loves animals must have a tender heart.

A few hours before Mr. Webster died, he said slowly, "My general wish on earth has been to do my Maker's will. I thank him now for all the mercies that surround me.... No man, who is not a brute, can say that he is not afraid of death. No man can come back from _that_ bourne; no man can comprehend the will or the works of G.o.d. That there _is_ a G.o.d all must acknowledge. I see him in all these wondrous works--himself how wondrous!