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 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. He was, too, a splendid specimen of the New England race; a true descendant of ancestors who had been for generations yeomen and pioneers. Tall, large, dark of hair and eyes, in the rough world in which he found himself he had been thrown at once upon his own resources without a day's schooling, and compelled to depend on his own innate force of sense and character for success. He had had a full experience of desperate fighting with Frenchmen and Indians, and, the war over, he had returned to his native town with his hard-won rank of captain. Then he had married, and had established his home upon the frontier, where he remained battling against the grim desolation of the wilderness and of the winter, and against all the obstacles of soil and climate, with the same hardy bravery with which he had faced the Indians. After ten years of this life, in 1774, his wife died and within a twelvemonth he married again.

Soon after this second marriage the alarm of war with England sounded, and among the first to respond was the old ranger and Indian fighter, Ebenezer Webster. In the town which had grown up near his once solitary dwelling he raised a company of two hundred men, and marched at their head, a splendid looking leader, dark, massive, and tall, to join the forces at Boston. We get occasional glimpses of this vigorous figure during the war. At Dorchester, Washington consulted him about the state of feeling in New Hampshire. At Bennington, we catch sight of him among the first who scaled the breastworks, and again coming out of the battle, his swarthy skin so blackened with dust and gunpowder that he could scarcely be recognized. We hear of him once more at West Point, just after Arnold's treason, on guard before the general's tent, and Washington says to him, "Captain Webster, I believe I can trust you." That was what everybody seems to have felt about this strong, silent, uneducated man. His neighbors trusted him. They gave him every office in their gift, and finally he was made judge of the local court. In the intervals of his toilsome and adventurous life he had picked up a little book-learning, but the lack of more barred the way to the higher honors which would otherwise have been easily his. There were splendid sources of strength in this man, the outcome of such a race, from which his children could draw. He was, to begin with, a magnificent animal, and had an imposing bodily presence and appearance. He had courage, energy, and tenacity, all in high degree. He was business-like, a man of few words, determined, and efficient. He had a great capacity for affection and self-sacrifice, noble aspirations, a vigorous mind, and, above all, a strong, pure character which invited trust. Force of will, force of mind, force of character; these were the three predominant qualities in Ebenezer Webster. His life forms the necessary introduction to that of his celebrated son, and it is well worth study, because we can learn from it how much that son got from a father so finely endowed, and how far he profited by such a rich inheritance.

By his first wife, Ebenezer Webster had five children. By his second wife, Abigail Eastman, a woman of good sturdy New Hampshire stock, he had likewise five. Of these, the second son and fourth child was born on the eighteenth of January, 1782, and was christened Daniel. The infant was a delicate and rather sickly little being. Some cheerful neighbors predicted after inspection that it would not live long, and the poor mother, overhearing them, caught the child to her bosom and wept over it. She little dreamed of the iron constitution hidden somewhere in the small frail body, and still less of all the glory and sorrow to which her baby was destined.

For many years, although the boy disappointed the village Cassandras by living, he continued weak and delicate. Manual labor, which began very early with the children of New Hampshire farmers, was out of the question in his case, and so Daniel was allowed to devote much of his time to play, for which he showed a decided aptitude. It was play of the best sort, in the woods and fields, where he learned to love nature and natural objects, to wonder at floods, to watch the habits of fish and birds, and to acquire a keen taste for field sports. His companion was an old British sailor, who carried the child on his back, rowed with him on the river, taught him the angler's art, and, best of all, poured into his delighted ear endless stories of an adventurous life, of Admiral Byng and Lord George Germaine, of Minden and Gibraltar, of Prince Ferdinand and General Gage, of Bunker Hill, and finally of the American armies, to which the soldier-sailor had deserted. The boy repaid this devoted friend by reading the newspapers to him; and he tells us in his autobiography that he could not remember when he did not read, so early was he taught by his mother and sisters, in true New England fashion. At a very early age he began to go to school; sometimes in his native town, sometimes in another, as the district school moved from place to place. The masters who taught in these schools knew nothing but the barest rudiments, and even some of those imperfectly. One of them who lived to a great age, enlightened perhaps by subsequent events, said that Webster had great rapidity of acquisition and was the quickest boy in school. He certainly proved himself the possessor of a very retentive memory, for when this pedagogue offered a jack-knife as a reward to the boy who should be able to recite the greatest number of verses from the Bible, Webster, on the following day, when his turn came, arose and reeled off verses until the master cried "enough," and handed him the coveted prize. Another of his instructors kept a small store, and from him the boy bought a handkerchief on which was printed the Constitution just adopted, and, as he read everything and remembered much, he read that famous instrument to which he was destined to give so much of his time and thought. When Mr. Webster said that he read better than any of his masters, he was probably right. The power of expression and of speech and readiness in reply were his greatest natural gifts, and, however much improved by cultivation, were born in him. His talents were known in the neighborhood, and the passing teamsters, while they watered their horses, delighted to get "Webster's boy," with his delicate look and great dark eyes, to come out beneath the shade of the trees and read the Bible to them with all the force of his childish eloquence. He describes his own existence at that time with perfect accuracy. "I read what I could get to read, went to school when I could, and when not at school, was a farmer's youngest boy, not good for much for want of health and strength, but expected to do something." That something consisted generally in tending the saw-mill, but the reading went on even there. He would set a log, and while it was going through would devour a book. There was a small circulating library in the village, and Webster read everything it contained, committing most of the contents of the precious volumes to memory, for books were so scarce that he believed this to be their chief purpose.