During the next three years Mr. Webster was completely absorbed in the practice of his profession, and not until the declaration of war with England had stirred and agitated the whole country did he again come before the public. The occasion of his reappearance was the Fourth of July celebration in 1812, when he addressed the Washington Benevolent Society at Portsmouth. The speech was a strong, calm statement of the grounds of opposition to the war. He showed that "maritime defence, commercial regulations, and national revenue" were the very corner-stones of the Constitution, and that these great interests had been crippled and abused by the departure from Washington's policy. He developed, with great force, the principal and the most unanswerable argument of his party, that the navy had been neglected and decried because it was a Federalist scheme, when a navy was what we wanted above all things, and especially when we were drifting into a maritime conflict. He argued strongly in favor of a naval war, and measures of naval defence, instead of wasting our resources by an invasion of Canada. So far he went strictly with his party, merely invigorating and enforcing their well-known principles. But when he came to defining the proper limits of opposition to the war he modified very essentially the course prescribed by advanced Federalist opinions. The majority of that party in New England were prepared to go to the very edge of the narrow legal line which divides constitutional opposition from treasonable resistance. They were violent, bitter, and uncompromising in their language and purposes. From this Mr. Webster was saved by his breadth of view, his clear perceptions, and his intense national feeling. He says on this point:—

"With respect to the war in which we are now involved, the course which our principles require us to pursue cannot be doubtful. It is now the law of the land, and as such we are bound to regard it. Resistance and insurrection form no part of our creed. The disciples of Washington are neither tyrants in power nor rebels out. If we are taxed to carry on this war we shall disregard certain distinguished examples and shall pay. If our personal services are required we shall yield them to the precise extent of our constitutional liability. At the same time the world may be assured that we know our rights and shall exercise them. We shall express our opinions on this, as on every measure of the government,—I trust without passion, I am certain without fear. By the exercise of our constitutional right of suffrage, by the peaceable remedy of election, we shall seek to restore wisdom to our councils, and peace to our country."

This was a sensible and patriotic opposition. It represented the views of the moderate Federalists, and traced the lines which Mr. Webster consistently followed during the first years of his public life. The address concluded by pointing out the French trickery which had provoked the war, and by denouncing an alliance with French despotism and ambition.

This oration was printed, and ran at once through two editions. It led to the selection of Mr. Webster as a delegate to an assembly of the people of the county of Rockingham, a sort of mass convention, held in August, 1812. There he was placed on the committee to prepare the address, and was chosen to write their report, which was adopted and published. This important document, widely known at the time as the "Rockingham Memorial," was a careful argument against the war, and a vigorous and able presentation of the Federalist views. It was addressed to the President, whom it treated with respectful severity. With much skill it turned Mr. Madison's own arguments against himself, and appealed to public opinion by its clear and convincing reasoning. In one point the memorial differed curiously from the oration of a month before. The latter pointed to the suffrage as the mode of redress; the former distinctly hinted at and almost threatened secession even while it deplored a dissolution of the Union as a possible result of the administration's policy. In the one case Mr. Webster was expressing his own views, in the other he was giving utterance to the opinions of the members of his party among whom he stood. This little incident shows the susceptibility to outside influences which formed such an odd trait in the character of a man so imperious by nature. When acting alone, he spoke his own opinions. When in a situation where public opinion was concentrated against him, he submitted to modifications of his views with a curious and indolent indifference.

The immediate result to Mr. Webster of the ability and tact which he displayed at the Rockingham Convention was his election to the thirteenth Congress, where he took his seat in May, 1813. There were then many able men in the House. Mr. Clay was Speaker, and on the floor were John C. Calhoun, Langdon Cheves and William Lowndes of South Carolina, Forsyth and Troup of Georgia, Ingersoll of Pennsylvania, Grundy of Tennessee, and McLean of Ohio, all conspicuous in the young nationalist war party. Macon and Eppes were representatives of the old Jeffersonian Republicans, while the Federalists were strong in the possession of such leaders as Pickering of Massachusetts, Pitkin of Connecticut, Grosvenor and Benson of New York, Hanson of Maryland, and William Gaston of North Carolina. It was a House in which any one might have been glad to win distinction. That Mr. Webster was considered, at the outset, to be a man of great promise is shown by the fact that he was placed on the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which Mr. Calhoun was the head, and which, in the war time, was the most important committee of the House.

Mr. Webster's first act was a characteristic one. Early in June he introduced a set of resolutions calling upon the President for information as to the time and mode in which the repeal of the French decrees had been communicated to our government. His unerring sagacity in singling out the weak point in his enemy's armor and in choosing his own keenest weapon, was never better illustrated than on this occasion. We know now that in the negotiations for the repeal of the decrees, the French government tricked us into war with England by most profligate lying. It was apparent then that there was something wrong, and that either our government had been deceived, or had withheld the publication of the repealing decree until war was declared, so that England might not have a pretext for rescinding the obnoxious orders. Either horn of the dilemma, therefore, was disagreeable to the administration, and a disclosure could hardly fail to benefit the Federalists. Mr. Webster supported his resolutions with a terse and simple speech of explanation, so far as we can judge from the meagre abstract which has come down to us. The resolutions, however, were a firebrand, and lighted up an angry and protracted debate, but the ruling party, as Mr. Webster probably foresaw, did not dare to vote them down, and they passed by large majorities. Mr. Webster spoke but once, and then very briefly, during the progress of the debate, and soon after returned to New Hampshire. With the exception of these resolutions, he took no active part whatever in the business of the House beyond voting steadily with his party, a fact of which we may be sure because he was always on the same side as that staunch old partisan, Timothy Pickering.

After a summer passed in the performance of his professional duties, Mr. Webster returned to Washington. He was late in his coming, Congress having been in session nearly three weeks when he arrived to find that he had been dropped from the Committee on Foreign Relations. The dominant party probably discovered that he was a young man of rather too much promise and too formidable an opponent for such an important post. His resolutions had been answered at the previous session, after his departure, and the report, which consisted of a lame explanation of the main point, and an elaborate defence of the war, had been quietly laid aside. Mr. Webster desired debate on this subject, and succeeded in carrying a reference of the report to a committee of the whole, but his opponents prevented its ever coming to discussion. In the long session which ensued, Mr. Webster again took comparatively little part in general business, but he spoke oftener than before. He seems to have been reserving his strength and making sure of his ground. He defended the Federalists as the true friends of the navy, and he resisted with great power the extravagant attempt to extend martial law to all citizens suspected of treason. On January 14, 1814, he made a long and well reported speech against a bill to encourage enlistments. This is the first example of the eloquence which Mr. Webster afterwards carried to such high perfection. Some of his subsequent speeches far surpass this one, but they differ from it in degree, not in kind. He was now master of the style at which he aimed. The vehicle was perfected and his natural talent gave that vehicle abundance of thought to be conveyed. The whole speech is simple in form, direct and forcible. It has the elasticity and vigor of great strength, and glows with eloquence in some passages. Here, too, we see for the first time that power of deliberate and measured sarcasm which was destined to become in his hands such a formidable weapon. The florid rhetoric of the early days is utterly gone, and the thought comes to us in those short and pregnant sentences and in the choice and effective words which were afterwards so typical of the speaker. The speech itself was a party speech and a presentation of party arguments. It offered nothing new, but the familiar principles had hardly ever been stated in such a striking and impressive fashion. Mr. Webster attacked the war policy and the conduct of the war, and advocated defensive warfare, a navy, and the abandonment of the restrictive laws that were ruining our commerce, which had been the main cause of the adoption of the Constitution. The conclusion of this speech is not far from the level of Mr. Webster's best work. It is too long for quotation, but a few sentences will show its quality:—

"Give up your futile projects of invasion. Extinguish the fires that blaze on your inland frontier. Establish perfect safety and defence there by adequate force. Let every man that sleeps on your soil sleep in security. Stop the blood that flows from the veins of unarmed yeomanry and women and children. Give to the living time to bury and lament their dead in the quietness of private sorrow. Having performed this work of beneficence and mercy on your inland border, turn, and look with the eye of justice and compassion on your vast population along the coast. Unclench the iron grasp of your embargo. Take measures for that end before another sun sets…. Let it no longer be said that not one ship of force, built by your hands, yet floats upon the ocean…. If then the war must be continued, go to the ocean. If you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre where alone those rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your fortune points you. There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water's edge."

Events soon forced the policy urged by Mr. Webster upon the administration, whose friends carried first a modification of the embargo, and before the close of the session introduced a bill for its total repeal. The difficult task of advocating this measure devolved upon Mr. Calhoun, who sustained his cause more ingeniously than ingenuously. He frankly admitted that restriction was a failure as a war measure, but he defended the repeal on the ground that the condition of affairs in Europe had changed since the restrictive policy was adopted. It had indeed changed since the embargo of 1807, but not since the imposition of that of 1813, which was the one under discussion.

Mr. Calhoun laid himself open to most unmerciful retorts, which was his misfortune, not his fault, for the embargo had been utterly and hopelessly wrong from the beginning. Mr. Webster, however, took full advantage of the opportunity thus presented. His opening congratulations are in his best vein of stately sarcasm, and are admirably put. He followed this up by a new argument of great force, showing the colonial spirit of the restrictive policy. He also dwelt with fresh vigor on the identification with France necessitated by the restrictive laws, a reproach which stung Mr. Calhoun and his followers more than anything else. He then took up the embargo policy and tore it to pieces,—no very difficult undertaking, but well performed. The shifty and shifting policy of the government was especially distasteful to Mr. Webster, with his lofty conception of consistent and steady statesmanship, a point which is well brought out in the following passage:—

"In a commercial country, nothing can be more objectionable than frequent and violent changes. The concerns of private business do not endure such rude shocks but with extreme inconvenience and great loss. It would seem, however, that there is a class of politicians to whose taste all change is suited, to whom whatever is unnatural seems wise, and all that is violent appears great…. The Embargo Act, the Non-Importation Act, and all the crowd of additions and supplements, together with all their garniture of messages, reports, and resolutions, are tumbling undistinguished into one common grave. But yesterday this policy had a thousand friends and supporters; to-day it is fallen and prostrate, and few 'so poor as to do it reverence.' Sir, a government which cannot administer the affairs of a nation without so frequent and such violent alterations in the ordinary occupations and pursuits of private life, has, in my opinion, little claim to the regard of the community."

All this is very characteristic of Mr. Webster's temperament in dealing with public affairs, and is a very good example of his power of dignified reproach and condemnation.

Mr. Calhoun had said at the close of his speech, that the repeal of the restrictive measures should not be allowed to affect the double duties which protected manufactures. Mr. Webster discussed this point at length, defining his own position, which was that of the New England Federalists, who believed in free trade as an abstract principle, and considered protection only as an expedient of which they wanted as little as possible. Mr. Webster set forth these views in his usual effective and lucid manner, but they can be considered more fitly at the period when he dealt with the tariff as a leading issue of the day and of his own public life.

Mr. Webster took no further action of importance at this session, not even participating in the great debate on the loan bill; but, by the manner in which these two speeches were referred to and quoted in Congress for many days after they were delivered, we can perceive the depth of their first impression. I have dwelt upon them at length because they are not in the collected edition of his speeches, where they well deserve a place, and, still more, because they are the first examples of his parliamentary eloquence which show his characteristic qualities and the action of his mind. Mr. Webster was a man of slow growth, not reaching his highest point until he was nearly fifty years of age, but these two speeches mark an advanced stage in his progress. The only fresh point that he made was when he declared that the embargo was colonial in spirit; and this thought proceeded from the vital principle of Mr. Webster's public life, his intense love for nationality and union, which grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. In other respects, these speeches presented simply the arguments and opinions of his party. They fell upon the ear of Congress and the country with a new and ringing sound because they were stated so finely and with such simplicity. Certainly one of them, and probably both, were delivered without any immediate preparation, but they really had the preparation of years, and were the utterance of thoughts which had been garnered up by long meditation. He wisely confined himself at this time to a subject which had been long before his mind, and upon which he had gathered all the essential points by observation and by a study of the multitude of speeches and essays with which the country had been deluged. These early speeches, like some of the best of his prime, although nominally unprepared, were poured forth from the overflowing resources which had been the fruit of months of reflection, and which had been stored up by an unyielding memory. They had really been in preparation ever since the embargo pamphlet of 1808, and that was one reason for their ripeness and terseness, for their easy flow and condensed force. I have examined with care the debates in that Congress. There were many able and experienced speakers on the floor. Mr. Clay, it is true, took no part, and early in the session went to Europe. But Mr. Calhoun led in debate, and there were many others second only to him. Among all the speeches, however, Mr. Webster's stand out in sharp relief. His utterances were as clear and direct as those of Mr. Calhoun, but they had none of the South Carolinian's dryness. We can best judge of their merit and their effect by comparing them with those of his associates. They were not only forcible, but they were vivid also and full of life, and his words when he was roused fell like the blows of a hammer on an anvil. They lacked the polish and richness of his later efforts, but the force and power of statement and the purity of diction were all there, and men began to realize that one destined to great achievements had entered the field of American politics.