Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Daniel Webster, by Henry Cabot
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Title: Daniel Webster
Author: Henry Cabot Lodge
Release Date: July 29, 2004 [EBook #13047]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WEBSTER ***

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American Statesmen
EDITED BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.

American Statesmen
DANIEL WEBSTER
BY
HENRY CABOT LODGE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1883 AND 1911, BY HENRY CABOT LODGE

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

CHAPTER II.
LAW AND POLITICS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

CHAPTER III.
THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE.--MR. WEBSTER AS A
LAWYER

CHAPTER IV.
THE MASSACHUSETTS CONVENTION AND THE PLYMOUTH
ORATION

CHAPTER V.
RETURN TO CONGRESS

CHAPTER VI.
THE TARIFF OF 1828 AND THE REPLY TO HAYNE

CHAPTER VII.
THE STRUGGLE WITH JACKSON AND THE RISE OF THE WHIG
PARTY

CHAPTER VIII.
SECRETARY OF STATE.--THE ASHBURTON TREATY

CHAPTER IX.
RETURN TO THE SENATE.--THE SEVENTH OF MARCH
SPEECH

CHAPTER X.
THE LAST YEARS

DANIEL WEBSTER.
[NOTE.--In preparing this volume I have carefully examined all the
literature contemporary and posthumous relating to Mr. Webster. I have
not gone beyond the printed material, of which there is a vast mass,

much of it of no value, but which contains all and more than is needed
to obtain a correct understanding of the man and of his public and
private life. No one can pretend to write a life of Webster without
following in large measure the narrative of events as given in the
elaborate, careful, and scholarly biography which we owe to Mr.
George T. Curtis. In many of my conclusions I have differed widely
from those of Mr. Curtis, but I desire at the outset to acknowledge fully
my obligations to him. I have sought information in all directions, and
have obtained some fresh material, and, as I believe, have thrown a new
light upon certain points, but this does not in the least diminish the debt
which I owe to the ample biography of Mr. Curtis in regard to the
details as well as the general outline of Mr. Webster's public and
private life.]

CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.
No sooner was the stout Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts
firmly planted than it began rapidly to throw out branches in all
directions. With every succeeding year the long, thin, sinuous line of
settlements stretched farther and farther away to the northeast, fringing
the wild shores of the Atlantic with houses and farms gathered together
at the mouths or on the banks of the rivers, and with the homes of hardy
fishermen which clustered in little groups beneath the shelter of the
rocky headlands. The extension of these plantations was chiefly along
the coast, but there was also a movement up the river courses toward
the west and into the interior. The line of northeastern settlements
began first to broaden in this way very slowly but still steadily from the
plantations at Portsmouth and Dover, which were nearly coeval with
the flourishing towns of the Bay. These settlements beyond the
Massachusetts line all had one common and marked characteristic.
They were all exposed to Indian attack from the earliest days down to
the period of the Revolution. Long after the dangers of Indian raids had
become little more than a tradition to the populous and flourishing
communities of Massachusetts Bay, the towns and villages of Maine
and New Hampshire continued to be the outposts of a dark and bloody

border land. French and Indian warfare with all its attendant horrors
was the normal condition during the latter part of the seventeenth and
the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Even after the destruction of
the Jesuit missions, every war in Europe was the signal for the
appearance of Frenchmen and savages in northeastern New England,
where their course was marked by rapine and slaughter, and lighted by
the flames of burning villages. The people thus assailed were not slow
in taking frequent and thorough vengeance, and so the conflict, with
rare intermissions, went on until the power of France was destroyed,
and the awful danger from the north, which had hung over the land for
nearly a century, was finally extinguished.
The people who waged this fierce war and managed to make headway
in despite of it were engaged at the same time in a conflict with nature
which was hardly less desperate. The