then spoke, would have infallibly saved our country from all those scenes of unfraternal strife, and fierce, sanguinary conflict, to avert which was the most cherished wish of his whole long and useful public life. Mr. Webster, upon the occasion referred to, said:

"Sir, this measure is opposed by the North, or some of the North, and by the South, or some of the South; and it has the remarkable misfortune to encounter resistance by persons the most directly opposed to each other in every matter connected with the subject under consideration. There are those (I do not speak, of course, of members of Congress, and I do not desire to be understood as making any allusion whatever, in what I may say, to members of this House or of the other), there are those in the country who say, on the part of the South, that the South by this bill gives up every thing to the North, and that they will fight it to the last; and there are those, on the part of the North, who say that this bill gives up every thing to the South, and that they will fight it to the last. And really, sir, strange as it may seem, this disposition to make battle upon the bill by those who never agreed in any thing before under the light of heaven, has created a sort of fellowship and good feeling between them. One says, Give me your hand, my good fellow; you mean to go against this bill to the death, because it gives up the rights of the South. I mean to go against the bill to the death, because it gives up the rights of the North; let us shake hands, and cry out, 'Down with the bill!' and then unitedly raise the shout,

"A day, an hour of virtuous liberty,

Is worth a whole eternity in bondage!'

such is the consistency of the opposition to this measure."

Having thus incidentally alluded to Mr. Webster, I shall seize the opportunity of expressing frankly my own opinion of this remarkable personage, together with a few of the considerations upon which this opinion is bottomed. It will fall within the scope and compass of this volume to make frequent references to this truly conservative and patriotic statesman; in consideration of which fact, and by reason of the additional fact that one of the most gifted of his numerous admiring friends* has, some years ago, published an analysis of Mr. Webster's life and character, more masterly, perhaps, than any other production of that class which the present age has produced, I shall confine myself at present to a very brief statement of my own recollections of a man who has filled the world with his fame, and the glories connected with whose public career are as imperishable even as those solid granite hills of New England, amid which he came into existence, and in sight of which it was his fortune to be afterward nurtured in all the arts of true greatness. I saw Mr. Webster for the first time in the summer of 1825, while he was sojourning for a few days at the celebrated Saratoga Springs, on his way to the Falls of Niagara, which stupendous wonder of Nature he was then about to visit for the first time, and in company with his esteemed and life-long friend Justice Story. An acquaintance of mine, Colonel White, then a representative in Congress from Florida, did me the honor of presenting me to Mr. Webster a few days after the publication, in

*Mr. Choate.

AUTHOR'S FIRST MEETING WITH MR. WEBSTER. 23

pamphlet form, of the first of his Bunker Hill orations; which masterly and thrilling oration I had just read with weeping eyes and soul on fire. Never shall I cease to remember, and with a pleasure not unmixed with veneration, the impression then made upon my youthful and untutored sensibilities by the solemn and imposing aspect, the grave yet courteous demeanor, and the simple, cordial, and unassuming conversational tone and manner of this extraordinary individual. After reading the marvelous speech to which I have alluded, on being thus ushered into the august presence of him by whom that speech had been delivered, and after listening with fixed and silent admiration to his noble colloquial utterances, I could scarcely feel surprised that his fellow-citizens of Boston had named him "the God-like;" and I am not at all ashamed to confess that I do, even at the present moment, hold Daniel Webster to have been far better entitled to this swelling appellation than was the famed Pericles of old to that of "the Olympian," which his imaginative countrymen are known to have bestowed on him. Years rolled away before I again saw Mr. Webster, and was able to renew my former personal acquaintance with him. Meanwhile, his renown, both as a statesman and orator, had greatly extended. He had successfully contended for mastery with the ablest forensic reasoners that had ever graced the bar of the highest judicial tribunal of the country; he had delivered numerous grand and instructive popular discourses, which Cicero, of all the ancients, might alone perchance have been able to equal, and which neither Burke, nor Bossuet, nor Fisher Ames, nor Massillon could have been expected to sur

pass; and he had met in exciting and stormy debate some of the most consummate parliamentary speakers that the country had produced upon questions involving alike the fundamental principles of all government, and the varied and conflicting interests of our own growing republic. In all these contests, the world had given him credit for displaying the highest oratorical powers, deep and far-reaching views, and a knowledge of all that appertains to the affairs of a free and self-governing people, of which few if any of his contemporaries had ever shown themselves to be possessed. After meeting with Mr. Webster in the Senate, I had the good fortune to be associated with him on the Committee of Foreign Affairs of that body, and to act as chairman of the same committee while he was Secretary of State during Mr. Fillmore's administration, and I thus enjoyed an opportunity of becoming somewhat familiar with the particular views which he entertained touching the great international questions of the age. I saw much of him also at his own hospitable mansion, as well as in social life elsewhere, and I am now prepared to declare that he was, in my judgment, one of the few public men whom it has been my fortune to know who did not suffer some loss of dignity upon a near personal approach. In all my intercourse with him, I beheld constant and ever-increasing evidences of the purity and elevation of his sentiments, his steady devotion to principle, his lofty disinterestedness of motive, his kind and charitable temper, and his entire exemption from every thing like low personal rivalry. I am quite certain that he never cherished feelings of rancorous malevolence toward any human being in his life;

MR. WEBSTER'S CHARACTER.

25

and it is quite remarkable, that I never heard from his lips a single unkind allusion to any of those whom he might naturally regard as, in some degree, his competitors for political advancement. After the moment of heated conflict had once passed by, he seemed always both to forgive and to forget all the irritating collisions which had occurred. In proof of the exceeding kindness and magnanimity of his nature, I will cite a single evidence, but one that shall be conclusive. Mr. Calhoun was, of all the eminent statesmen who were in public life at the same time with Mr. Webster, and who were occasionally thrown into serious and painful conflict with him, undoubtedly the most potential. These gigantic champions of opposite and hostile political creeds were, in truth, for a long period the veritable Achilles and Hector of the Senate; yet, upon the sudden decease of Mr. Calhoun in the summer of 1850, behold what his truly high-minded and chivalrous opponent said of him! No knight of the Middle Ages, not Sir Philip Sydney himself, nor the world-renowned Bayard, nor even the famous Black Prince, when holding King John of France as a prisoner of war, could have been expected to display a more highbred courtesy, a more manly and tender sympathy toward a former adversary, or a more generous oblivion of former contentions in arms, than is evinced by Mr. Webster in the following beautiful effusion. Let the puny and heartless traducers of entombed greatness, whom our own unfortunate times have temporarily brought into notice, read the funeral eulogy pronounced by this august son of New England on the occasion referred to, and blush, if indeed the sense of shame has not become en

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