Daniel Webster | Page 2

soil, even in the most favored
places, was none of the best, and the predominant characteristic of New
Hampshire was the great rock formation which has given it the name of
the Granite State. Slowly and painfully the settlers made their way back
into the country, seizing on every fertile spot, and wringing subsistence
and even a certain prosperity from a niggardly soil and a harsh climate.
Their little hamlets crept onward toward the base of those beautiful
hills which have now become one of the favorite play-grounds of
America, but which then frowned grimly even in summer, dark with
trackless forests, and for the larger part of the year were sheeted with
the glittering, untrampled snow from which they derive their name.
Stern and strong with the force of an unbroken wilderness, they formed
at all times a forbidding background to the sparse settlements in the
valleys and on the seashore.
This life of constant battle with nature and with the savages, this work
of wresting a subsistence from the unwilling earth while the hand was
always armed against a subtle and cruel foe, had, of course, a marked
effect upon the people who endured it. That, under such circumstances,
men should have succeeded not only in gaining a livelihood, but should
have attained also a certain measure of prosperity, established a free
government, founded schools and churches, and built up a small but
vigorous and thriving commonwealth, is little short of marvellous. A

race which could do this had an enduring strength of character which
was sure to make itself felt through many generations, not only on their
ancestral soil, but in every region where they wandered in search of a
fortune denied to them at home. The people of New Hampshire were of
the English Puritan stock. They were the borderers of New England,
and were among the hardiest and boldest of their race. Their fierce
battle for existence during nearly a century and a half left a deep
impress upon them. Although it did not add new traits to their character,
it strengthened and developed many of the qualities which chiefly
distinguished the Puritan Englishman. These borderers, from lack of
opportunity, were ruder than their more favored brethren to the south,
but they were also more persistent, more tenacious, and more
adventurous. They Were a vigorous, bold, unforgiving, fighting race,
hard and stern even beyond the ordinary standard of Puritanism.
Among the Puritans who settled in New Hampshire about the year
1636, during the great emigration which preceded the Long Parliament,
was one bearing the name of Thomas Webster. He was said to be of
Scotch extraction, but was, if this be true, undoubtedly of the Lowland
or Saxon Scotch as distinguished from the Gaels of the Highlands. He
was, at all events, a Puritan of English race, and his name indicates that
his progenitors were sturdy mechanics or handicraftsmen. This Thomas
Webster had numerous descendants, who scattered through New
Hampshire to earn a precarious living, found settlements, and fight
Indians. In Kingston, in the year 1739, was born one of this family
named Ebenezer Webster. The struggle for existence was so hard for
this particular scion of the Webster stock, that he was obliged in
boyhood to battle for a living and pick up learning as he best might by
the sole aid of a naturally vigorous mind. He came of age during the
great French war, and about 1760 enlisted in the then famous corps
known as "Rogers's Rangers." In the dangers and the successes of
desperate frontier fighting, the "Rangers" had no equal; and of their
hard and perilous experience in the wilderness, in conflict with Indians
and Frenchmen, Ebenezer Webster, strong in body and daring in
temperament, had his full share.
When the war closed, the young soldier and Indian fighter had time to

look about him for a home. As might have been expected, he clung to
the frontier to which he was accustomed, and in the year 1763 settled in
the northernmost part of the town of Salisbury. Here he built a
log-house, to which, in the following year, he brought his first wife,
and here he began his career as a farmer. At that time there was nothing
civilized between him and the French settlements of Canada. The
wilderness stretched away from his door an ocean of forest unbroken
by any white man's habitation; and in these primeval woods, although
the war was ended and the French power overthrown, there still lurked
roving bands of savages, suggesting the constant possibilities of a
midnight foray or a noonday ambush, with their accompaniments of
murder and pillage. It was a fit home, however, for such a man as
Ebenezer Webster. He was a borderer in the fullest sense in a
commonwealth of borderers.