Read Ebook: The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style by Webster Daniel Whipple Edwin Percy

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A Speech delivered at Niblo's Saloon, in New York, on the 15th of March, 1837.

SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Remarks made in the Senate of the United States, on the 10th of January, 1838, upon a Resolution moved by Mr. Clay as a Substitute for the Resolution offered by Mr. Calhoun on the Subject of Slavery in the District of Columbia.

THE CREDIT SYSTEM AND THE LABOR OF THE UNITED STATES

From the Second Speech on the Sub-Treasury, delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 12th of March, 1838.

REMARKS ON THE POLITICAL COURSE OF MR. CALHOUN, IN 1838

From the same Speech.

REPLY TO MR. CALHOUN

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 22d of March, 1838, in Answer to Mr. Calhoun.

A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF BANKRUPTCY

From a Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 18th of May, 1840, on the proposed Amendment to the Bill establishing a Uniform System of Bankruptcy.

"THE LOG CABIN CANDIDATE"

From a Speech delivered at the great Mass Meeting at Saratoga, New York, on the 12th of August, 1840.

ADDRESS TO THE LADIES OF RICHMOND

Remarks at a Public Reception by the Ladies of Richmond, Virginia, on the 5th of October, 1840.

RECEPTION AT BOSTON

A Speech made in Faneuil Hall, on the 30th of September, 1842, at a Public Reception given to Mr. Webster, on his Return to Boston, after the Negotiation of the Treaty of Washington.

THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH

A Speech delivered on the 22d of December, 1843, at the Public Dinner of the New England Society of New York, in Commemoration of the Landing of the Pilgrims.

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG

A Speech delivered in the Supreme Court at Washington, on the 20th of February, 1844, in the Girard Will Case.

MR. JUSTICE STORY

THE RHODE ISLAND GOVERNMENT

An Argument made in the Supreme Court of the United States, on the 27th of January, 1848, in the Dorr Rebellion Cases.

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 23d of March, 1848, on the Bill from the House of Representatives for raising a Loan of Sixteen Millions of Dollars.

EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY FROM THE TERRITORIES

Remarks made in the Senate of the United States, on the 12th of August, 1848.

SPEECH AT MARSHFIELD

Delivered at a Meeting of the Citizens of Marshfield, Mass., on the 1st of September, 1848.

JEREMIAH MASON

KOSSUTH

From a Speech delivered in Boston, on the 7th of November, 1849, at a Festival of the Natives of New Hampshire established in Massachusetts.

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION

A Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, on the 7th of March, 1850.

RECEPTION AT BUFFALO

A Speech delivered before a large Assembly of the Citizens of Buffalo and the County of Erie, at a Public Reception, on the 22d of May, 1851.

THE ADDITION TO THE CAPITOL

An Address delivered at the Laying of the Corner-Stone of the Addition to the Capitol, on the 4th of July, 1851.

IMPRESSMENT

THE RIGHT OF SEARCH

LETTERS TO GENERAL CASS ON THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON

THE H?LSEMANN LETTER

DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE.

From my own experience and observation I should say that every boy, who is ready enough in spelling, grammar, geography, and arithmetic, is appalled when he is commanded to write what is termed "a composition." When he enters college the same fear follows him and the Professor of Rhetoric is a more terrible personage to his imagination than the Professors of Greek, Latin, Mathematics, and Moral and Intellectual Philosophy. Both boys at school and young men in college show no lack of power in speaking their native language with a vehemence and fluency which almost stuns the ears of their seniors. Why, then, should they find such difficulty in writing it? When you listen to the animated talk of a bright school-boy or college student, full of a subject which really interests him, you say at once that such command of racy and idiomatic English words must of course be exhibited in his "compositions" or his "themes"; but when the latter are examined, they are commonly found to be feeble and lifeless, with hardly a thought or a word which bears any stamp of freshness or originality, and which are so inferior to his ordinary conversation, that we can hardly believe they came from the same mind.

Now Daniel Webster passed safely through all the stages of the "Sophomoric" disease of the mind, as he passed safely through the measles, the chicken-pox, and other eruptive maladies incident to childhood and youth. The process, however, by which he purified his style from this taint, and made his diction at last as robust and as manly, as simple and as majestic, as the nature it expressed, will reward a little study.

The mature style of Webster is perfect of its kind, being in words the express image of his mind and character,--plain, terse, clear, forcible; and rising from the level of lucid statement and argument into passages of superlative eloquence only when his whole nature is stirred by some grand sentiment of freedom, patriotism, justice, humanity, or religion, which absolutely lifts him, by its own inherent force and inspiration, to a region above that in which his mind habitually lives and moves. At the same time it will be observed that these thrilling passages, which the boys of two generations have ever been delighted to declaim in their shrillest tones, are strictly illustrative of the main purpose of the speech in which they appear. They are not mere purple patches of rhetoric, loosely stitched on the homespun gray of the reasoning, but they seem to be inwoven with it and to be a vital part of it. Indeed we can hardly decide, in reading these magnificent bursts of eloquence in connection with what precedes and follows them, whether the effect is due to the logic of the orator becoming suddenly morally impassioned, or to his moral passion becoming suddenly logical. What gave Webster his immense influence over the opinions of the people of New England was, first, his power of so "putting things" that everybody could understand his statements; secondly, his power of so framing his arguments that all the steps, from one point to another, in a logical series, could be clearly apprehended by every intelligent farmer or mechanic who had a thoughtful interest in the affairs of the country; and thirdly, his power of inflaming the sentiment of patriotism in all honest and well-intentioned men by overwhelming appeals to that sentiment, so that, after convincing their understandings, he clinched the matter by sweeping away their wills.

Whatever may have been Goodridge's motive in his attempt to ruin the innocent men he falsely accused, it is certain that Webster saved these men from the unjust punishment of an imputed crime. Only the skeleton of his argument before the jury has been preserved; but what we have of it evidently passed under his revision. He knew that the plot of Goodridge had been so cunningly contrived, that every man of the twelve before him, whose verdict was to determine the fate of his clients, was inwardly persuaded of their guilt. Some small marked portions of the money which Goodridge swore he had on his person on the night of the pretended robbery were found in their house. Circumstantial evidence brought their guilt with a seemingly irresistible force literally "home" to them. It was the conviction of the leaders of the Essex bar that no respectable lawyer could appear in their defence without becoming, in some degree, their accomplice. But Webster, after damaging the character of the prosecutor by his stern cross-examination, addressed the jury, not as an advocate bearing down upon them with his arguments and appeals, but rather as a thirteenth juryman, who had cosily introduced himself into their company, and was arguing the case with them after they had retired for consultation among themselves. The simplicity of the language employed is not more notable than the power evinced in seizing the main points on which the question of guilt or innocence turned. At every quiet but deadly stab aimed at the theory of the prosecution, he is careful to remark, that "it is for the jury to say under their oaths" whether such inconsistencies or improbabilities should have any effect on their minds. Every strong argument closes with the ever-recurring phrase, "It is for the jury to say"; and, at the end, the jury, thoroughly convinced, said, "Not guilty." The Kennistons were vindicated; and the public, which had been almost unanimous in declaring them fit tenants for the State prison, soon blamed the infatuation which had made them the accomplices of a villain in hunting down two unoffending citizens, and of denouncing every lawyer who should undertake their defence as a legal rogue.

This story is a slight digression, but it illustrates that hold on reality, that truth to fact, which was one of the sources of the force and simplicity of Mr. Webster's mature style. He, however, only obtained these good qualities of rhetoric by long struggles with constant temptations, in his early life, to use resounding expressions and flaring images which he had not earned the right to use. His Fourth of July oration at Hanover, when he was only eighteen, and his college addresses, must have been very bad in their diction if we can judge of them by the style of his private correspondence at the time. The verses he incorporates in his letters are deformed by all the faults of false thinking and borrowed expression which characterized contemporary American imitators of English imitators of Pope and Gray. Think of the future orator, lawyer, and senator writing, even at the age of twenty, such balderdash as this!

"And Heaven grant me, whatever luck betide, Be fame or fortune given or denied, Some cordial friend to meet my warm desire, Honest as John and good as Nehemiah."

In reading such couplets we are reminded of the noted local poet of New Hampshire who wrote "The Shepherd's Songs," and some of whose rustic lines still linger in the memory to be laughed at, such, for instance, as these:--

"This child who perished in the fire,-- His father's name was Nehemiah."

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