THE PERSONALITY OF WEBSTER

Two VERY different scenes almost precisely a century apart have often engaged and held my imagination. The setting for both was the picturesque village of Plymouth, so noteworthy in the annals of New England. On December 22, 1820, in commemoration of the two hundreth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, Daniel Webster delivered there what is commonly known as his Plymouth Oration. It was an unseasonably warm day just before Christmas, and some of the residents sat at their open windows in their shirt-sleeves. Webster, garbed in "small clothes," with a robe thrown over his shoulders, stood on a table placed in the deaf pew just beneath the pulpit in the old first Church, since burned. His address, covering about two hours, was filled with colorful prophecies of a prosperous future for the nation which he loved. Innocent that he was, he seems to have felt that the millennium was just around the corner.

One hundred years went by, and the moment arrived for observing the three hundredth anniversary of the same event. The orator on this occasion was appropriately another New England Statesman—Henry Cabot Lodge. As if to emphasize the transition, the day was very cold so cold that even Governor Calvin Coolidge, of Massachusetts, shivered under his heavy overcoat sitting on the stage of the Old Colony Theater. Senator Lodge had written a biography of Webster and was familiar with every paragraph of the Plymouth Oration; but he did not choose to carry on the tradition. Rather he pointed out, in an address of less than an hour's duration, that Webster "had expected too much," and that the United States had not advanced, either intellectually or spiritually, during the preceding century. Not even the recent election of Warren Gamaliel Harding as President had lightened the gloom. Lodge was in a mood of personal and philosophical pessimism.

It would be easy, of course, to over-emphasize the contrasts between these two striking moments. It is not unsignificant that one oration was delivered in a church, the other in a motion picture theater. Webster was thirty-eight, thick-set, ponderous, rather slow-moving, like a sturdy mastiff; Lodge was seventy, small, alert, quick in his gestures, like a nervous fox terrier. Webster, sanguine and unworried, spoke with convincing confidence; Lodge, despondent and apprehensive, expressed a mood of disillusionment. One address was like the soothing warmth of August sunshine; the other was like the chill wind which blows from the peak of Mount Washington in February. Webster was rhetorical, even poetical, with a style like rich brocade; Lodge was dry, matter-of-fact, and dispassionate. Webster's speech throbbed with glorious generalizations; Lodge's was straightforward and specific.

I do not wish to make any invidious comparisons. It is not astonishing that Webster, in the Era of Good Feeling, under the benign administration of James Monroe, should believe that the world was getting, and would continue to get better. We can readily understand how Lodge, after the terrible strain of the World War and the shock of the death of his friend, Theodore Roosevelt, should feel that hope had gone. In a sense, moreover, the two men were symbolic of their respective periods: Webster of the nation's exuberant youth, Lodge of its maturity, its sophisticated middle age. One is tempted to speculate as to what kind of an oration, by what kind of a man, will be delivered at Plymouth in the year 2020.

My chief motive in presenting this contrast is, however, to bring out something of Webster's compelling and romantic nature. Senator Lodge was an able statesman, doubtless the New Englander best equipped by inheritance and achievement to represent thatsectionin 1920. But it is remarkable that the United States, with its one hundred and five millions of population in 1920, could produce no statesman comparable with the Webster of 1820, when it had only nine millions of people. Why this should be so I am willing to leave as a problem to biologists and genealogists andanthropologists. It is, fortunately, none of my business. But it is a fact that Daniel Webster remains, to this day, the most striking personality yet to appear in America. I do not say the greatest, although he was very great; but I do say the most fascinating and overwhelming.

II

WEBSTER'S CAREER has always seemed to me much like a novel by Victor Hugo or Thomas Hardy—a series of dramatic episodes illuminated always by his brilliant personality. I think of him, for example, as he appeared during the summer of 1840, when a vast throng, estimated at fully forty thousand persons, had assembled on the side of Stratton Mountain in southern Vermont to hear the great orator speak for Harrison and Tyler, the Whig candidates. There, in the middle of a pasture bright with painters' brush, Webster stood on an improvised platform and, in his ringing voice, began, "Lo, from above the clouds I address you!" I think, also, of that day in 1846 when the railroad was formally opened between Concord and Lebanon. At Webster's home near Franklin the train stopped, and Senator Webster was escorted to a plain kitchen chair placed on a flat car. And so, as the train wound among the hills, past Webster Lake and Mount Cardigan and Mascoma Lake, through Andover and Canaan and Enfield, he sat there in the open air, greeted by crowds at every crossroads. When the terminus at Leba non was reached, Webster rose to make a speech. A small boy sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of the platform reached over and reverently touched the great man's cowhide boots. He was to live to tell the story at gatherings of Dartmouth alumni for more than fifty years. And then, too, I think of that day in the Supreme Court of the Uni ted States in 18118, when Daniel Webster, still under forty, after arguing five hours in the Dartmouth College Case, turned to Chief Justice Marshall and said in memorable words, "Sir, it is, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it!" There is a tradition among Amherst men that no Dartmouth graduate ever listens to those words without having his eyes fill with tears, and I, as an Amherst man, can understand why Dartmouth men should weep, for Daniel Webster, on that March afternoon, saved Dartmouth College.

Massachusetts sometimes claims Daniel Webster, but New Hampshire has a prior claim. In New Hampshire, at Salisbury, Webster was born. He was educated at Exeter and Dartmouth. He practised law at Boscawen and Portsmouth, and rode the circuit as a country lawyer with Jeremiah Mason among the New Hampshire hills. In this state, a highway, a railroad station, a hotel, a township, a building, a professorship, are all named after him. He has even received the supreme tribute of being made the sponsor for the Daniel Webster cigar. If you enter Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington, you find that General Stark and Daniel Webster represent New Hampshire. He is New Hampshire's greatest citizen and Dartmouth's greatest alumnus.

There are some men whom nobody ever forgets. Daniel Webster was one of them. Colonel Higginson recalled that, when Webster strolled down State Street, in Boston, the clerks would fill the office windows and all business would be suspended while the great man went by. When he stepped to the stage during Edward Everett's inauguration as President of Harvard College, the audience forgot Everett entirely and stood up to cheer the Senator from the Bay State. One reminiscent journalist has told us that, in the political processions of the "1840's" he never saw Webster marching except alone, in the center of a hollow square which his companions formed around him without any planning by the parade authorities. When he 'was delivering his Reply to Hayne or his Seventh of March Speech, there was in the Senate Chamber hardly space to breathe, Whittier described him as

"New England's stateliest type of man, In port and speech Olympian; Whom no one met at first, but took A second awed and wondering look."

Nature had been unusually lavish with Daniel "Webster. He was physically a magnificent animal. Although his height was a little short of six feet, he carried himself with dignity and seemed taller than he actually was. He had a broad chest and, by middle age, had acquiied that portliness which is the reward—or the penalty—of good living. Even more impressive were his lofty brow and massive domeshaped head, far larger in capacity than that of the normal human being; his swarthy, somber complexion, which earned him the nickname of "Black Dan" and which, someone said, burnt gunpowder could not change; his rugged, firm-set jaw, the symbol of his relentless will; and finally his blazing, cavernous eyes, glowing "like two ship-lights at sea" and resembling "catacombs of ancient wisdom." He stood, he walked, he acted as a king of men should do, as if he were the heir of Agamemnon, of Caesar, or of Charlemagne.

As Webster, through success, gained in assurance, he acquired a bearing which, even to his intimate friends, was awesome. He deliberately selected picturesque costumes, like the rough blue overcoat and the California hat in which he was painted by Ames at Marshfield. For important occasions he garbed himself in a kind of uniform,—a blue dress coat, with swallow-tails, a buff waistcoat, and a heavily starched white stock encased his thick neck. If he had appeared at a Congressional debate in any other clothes, there would have been a protest nation-wide.

III

CONSTANTLY in the public eye as he was, Webster never complained of being bored by adulation; indeed he came to expect recognition of his prestige as if it were his due. Webster was not precisely selfeffacing. Few great men really are. John Hay, after living for some years with Lincoln, declared it as his conviction that "no great man is modest." When sufficiently taunted, Webster did not hesitate to remind others of his superiority. Professor Sanborn once said to him, "It is commonly reported that you did not study much at Dartmouth"; whereupon Webster, who, upon provocation could roar like the Great Lexicographer himself, burst out, "Sir, I studied and read more than all the rest of my class, if they had been made into one man! And I was as much above them then as I am now." At a moment when he was disgruntled over the election of General Zachary Taylor as President, he was obliged, at a Whig dinner, to listen to a long eulogy of Taylor by Abbott Lawrence. After moving restlessly in his chair for some minutes, he finally rose in a dudgeon, interrupted the speaker, secured the attention of the guests, and said, "Gentlemen, I may say here and now that I am quite aware that I am a man of considerable public importance, not only here in Massachusetts, but without her boundaries, and throughout the length and breadth of this continent."

It took a brave man to face Webster's displeasure. When that noble brow furrowed and those lips tightened, there was trouble ahead. Perhaps the most critical hour of his career came on the afternoon of September 30, 1842, when, in Faneuil Hall, he confronted a body of hostile Whigs, once his friends and followers, who were now planning to ostracize him from that party. There they satLowells and Appletons and Brookes and Otises and Quincys—frigid and unbending, because he had refused to retire .from President Tyler's cabinet. Amid applause only too obviously perfunctory, the faint patter of palm against palm, he stood before them in all his majesty and fixed them with his blazing eyes. As the well-remembered voice rang out through that auditorium, they yielded again to his irresistible magnetism, reluctantly at first, and then gladly. He proffered no defence of his conduct, only an explanation. But it was enough! In five minutes he had won his victory. With magnificent arrogance, he declaimed, "Gentlemen, I am a Whig, I have always been a Whig, and I shall always be one; and if there are any who would turn me out of the pale of that communion, let them see who will get out first." His audacity was greeted, not with hisses, but with cheers, tumultuous and unrestrained, which shook the rafters of the old building.

IV

IN ALL THAT he accomplished as lawyer and statesman, Daniel Webster was primarily a voice. During his lifetime he delivered well over four thousand speeches. If he had been suddenly stricken dumb, much of his magic would have vanished. His addresses had literary quality, of course, but they gained immeasurably because of the potency of their utterance. We belong to an age when even highly intellectual people grow impatient under long speeches. We even hear of college dinners at which one of the inducements offerd to the reluctant is that there will be no past-prandial talks; and wise clergymen understand that half an hour is the limit for a sermon. But Webster believed that he was not playing fair with his listeners if he did not fill at least an hour. By what miracle did he hold them thus hypnotized and spellbound?

Here are two incidents, both well authenticated. In 1837, he was the chief guest at a private dinner with more than two hundred of his friends at the Astor House in New York. The soup was served at seven o'clock. The eating closed at eleven. Then came a long succession of congratulatory addresses. Webster, finally introduced at two o'clock in the morning, continued in what was described as "a strain of unwearied and unwearying eloquence" until four o'clock. During this period, according to Philip Hone, the diarist, the guests "remained immovable in their seats, with no indications of fatigue or inattention." Still more extraordinary as a feat of sheer physical endurance was an address delivered in the open air, at Buffalo, in his seventieth year, without notes, in a rain storm from which neither he nor his listeners had any shelter. He talked for more than two hours on a topic entirely political, the Compromise of 1850, and without a gleam of humor to lighten his argument. Yet nobody stole away, and he ended amid an outburst of cheers.

Incredulous people have questioned whether Webster could, to use our modern parlance, "get away with it" today. Habits and standards have changed. The American pace has speeded up. An infinite number of distractions provide unceasing entertainment for the multitude. Even in Congress, there is a reaction against what is called "hokum" or "hooey." If Webster were talking over the radio tonight, many a resident of Concord or Hanover would turn the dial in relief to the "Jazzy Jesters" or the "Silver Masked Tenor." But I still have a feeling that he could dominate audiences in 1932 as he did in 1840. He might alter his manner and his methods, but his genius could not be suppressed.

The respect, almost amounting to reverence, shown to Webster by his admirers has no parallel in these days when courtesy is one of the lost arts. He himself, furthermore, knew how to make the most of a situation, for, like every orator, he had much of the actor in him. Once at a dinner in New York he was in one of his morose moods, behaving like a temperamental operatic tenor. For once he refused to talk. Gloom settled like a pall over what was intended to be a gay party. Finally one of those sitting near him summoned up courage to ask, "Mr. Webster, won't you tell us what was the most important thought that ever occupied your mind?" The incident recalls Boswell's famous query of Dr. Johnson, "What would you do, sir, if you were locked in a tower with a new-born baby?" If anybody had laughed, the spell might have been dissolved. But Webster was not disposed to smile. Instead he passed his right hand across his forehead in his favorite gesture, and, turning to his neighbor, said in a low tone, "Is there any one here who does not know me?" "No, sir," came the deferential answer, "they all know you; they are all your friends." Then abandoning his reticence, Webster rose, gazed about like Hamlet on the verge of a soliloquy, and said, "Gentlemen, the most important thought that ever occupied my mind was that of my own individual responsibility to God!" He expatiated upon this theme very solemnly for twenty minutes, and then retired from the room, as if overcome by his emotions. We are told that the entire company sat in silence for a brief period, and then broke up.

For more than forty years, Webster was a popular favorite on the platform. The world in which he moved must have seemed to him like one vast, kaleidoscopic audience. Even on his death-bed, he called his household about him, more than twenty in all, and talked to them as if he were on a rostrum and they in benches in front of him. On the threshold of eternity, he could not break the habit of a lifetime. Tiring a little, he began to ramble incoherently, but, reviving with an effort, looked about him and inquired, "Have I,—wife, son, doctors, friends, are you all here?,—have I, on this occasion, said anything unworthy of Daniel Webster?" "No, no, dear sir," was the response. And so the Great Actor played his last scene and went grandly to his doom.

V

WHENEVER Webster's name is brought up, some one invariably asks, "Didn't Webster drink too much?" The answer is that, like almost every gentleman of his generation, he drank; but what is "too much?" I have taken pains to investigate the whole matter somewhat carefully, and it seems to me that a good deal of nonsense has been talked about it. What if he did enjoy his toddy? What if a famous punch was named after him? These facts did not, and do not, diminish his glory as a statesman. He grew up in a period when whiskey was regarded as a beverage, not as a poison. There was an open bar, called the Hole in the Wall, in the National Capitol; drunkenness on the floor of the Senate was so common as to pass almost unnoticed; and no dinner, public or private, was complete without a long list of wines. Silas Wright might have been President of the United States if he could have kept sober; friends forced Franklin Pierce to sign the pledge before they would let him accept a nomination for the Presidency; and Henry Clay often appeared in public incoherently intoxicated.

Now Webster was a convivial and social drinker; that is, he enjoyed his wine among his friends. His ability to hold his liquor was a subject of comment among his friends. The many stories related of his absurd remarks when drunk are nearly all apochryphal. Before making his Second Bunker Hill Address in 1843, he swallowed a full tumbler of brandy; yet his eloquence, according to the diaries and newspapers of the time, was unimpaired. Oftepeople attending a function would see Webster refilling his wine glass and would whisper, "The old man is drunk again." And then he would be introduced and would speak for two hours or more, logically and forcefully, without hesitating for a word. A man who can do that is not intoxicated. He died, it is true, of cirrhosis of the liver, which may be caused by over-indulgence of liquor. But he died at the age of seventy-one. It took a long time to kill him.

In money matters, Webster was notoriously careless, not to say elusive, especially if he was the debtor. He treated his constituents, particularly the wealthier ones, as if he were a feudal lord to whom tribute was regularly due; and they seemed to recognize his suzerainty and raised funds for his needs, which were large. Even when he lay dying, Samuel Appleton placed in the hands of his friend, George Ticknor Curtis, a roll of banknotes, saying, "At such a moment there ought to be no lack of money in Mr. Webster's house." Although he stayed always at the Astor House when he was in New York, often for several days at a time, he never paid a bill there for his room and board; and the proprietor, Charles A. Stetson, seems never to have pressed him for his account. Boston bankers smiled cynically when they saw his name signed to a promissory note, and some of his paper was sold at a discount of ninety per cent. He lived and died heavily in debt. Yet his friends loved and admired him, and gave him what he wanted. He spent money prodigally; he was easily and frequently the victim of fraudulent projects and of designing speculators; but he was innocent of any corruption.

VI

No ONE CAN study Daniel Webster very long without being struck by the innate conservatism of the man. In these days, it is almost fatal for a statesman to get himself labelled as a "conservative." It is so much easier to pose as a "liberal" or a "progressive,"—and far more romantic! To shout against the established order, to attack the Constitution, to damn the existing government—these are quick devices for gaining publicity; and the man who even suggests that we ought not to tear down our whole political edifice is likely to win the approbrious title of "old fogey." Now conservatism was in Webster's blood. His father, an uncompromising Federalist, once fell ill in a village which was notoriously Democratic. "Take me home," he wailed, "I don't want to die in a Democratic town." Daniel was brought up to distrust Jefferson's passion for experimenting with science and society; he looked upon innovations with suspicion; all his life he hated to change his tailor or his hotel or his cook. Hedeveloped intoan institutionalist,swayed largely by tradition and precedent, and loyal to his family, his church, his party, and his country. No one ever accused Webster of rashness or impetuosity. But his conservatism was instinctive and philosophical,— not the consequence of hardening arteries.

Webster's profession inevitably drew him into close relationship with the more properous elements in the community—the bankers and manufacturers and importers who had financial interests at stake and wanted, therefore, to maintain the status quo. His own economic independence, like theirs, was based upon the continuity of established institutions. As he grew older, he doubtless tended to lay too much emphasis on the need of decorum and stability. To his admirers, however, he became the symbol of permanence. Whenever waves of popular unrest threatened to inundate the republic, he stood unyielding, as immutable as that Mount Kearsarge under the shadow of which he was born.

If you wish to find the very antipodes of Webster, in temperament and philosophy as well as in conduct, you must turn to William Lloyd Garrison, his critic and defamer. Garrison was fundamentally an individualist, opposed in theory and in practice to anything vested or settled. He had an inordinate desire for change, and the very fact that a policy was untried made it irresistible. Mild and benign in appearance, he advocated reforms with such promiscuity that he was condemned by one of his disciples for picking up "every infidel nostrum afloat." He was eager to apply to what he thought to be a diseased society all kinds of remedies, some of them undoubtedly efficacious, others the product of charlatanry; and he seemed unable to discriminate between which were good and which were bad. With the best of intentions, he became a perpetual agitator; and perpetual agitation was what Webster hated most.

By a paradox not always understood, Webster, the conservative, had a broad and tolerant mind, and disliked provincialism, complacency, and illiberality; while Garrison, the progressive reformer, was a bigot, who could see only one side of a question. Webster, warm-blooded and susceptible to tumultuous emotions, could forgive sinners more easily than he could condemn them and could realize that "to step aside is human." It was not difficult for him to see the good in each of two conflicting opinions, and, perceiving this, to maintain a largeness of outlook. But Garrison had no shades in his thinking. He could discern only black and white, righteousness and sin.

To sum the contrast up, we have in Webster and Garrison two antipathetic attitudes towards life: one practical, logical, and systematic; the other theoretical, impulsive, and idealistic. It was inevitable that they should clash; and it is equally inevitable that posterity should differ regarding their aims and their achievements. On this matter, I have only one comment to make. Radical reformers, though much good is rightly attributed to them, probably accomplish less in the long run than is commonly supposed. They may inspire, but they do not always lead. In its enduring results, a violent revolution is not so important to the world as the slow development produced less dramatically by education. The Negro was finally emanicapted, not through methods approved by Garrison, but through those of Webster as they shaped themselves in the sagacious opportunism of Abraham Lincoln. Woodrow Wilson, while a professor at Princeton, expressed what seems to me to be a sound judgment on Webster's statesmanship when he described him as follows:

"The constructive reasoner and the idealist. He conceived, and, what was much more potent and important, incomparably expressed the national spirit of the Constitution. A conservative because so deeply penetrated by the historical sense, so pious in traditions. A national leader and an incomparable force for permanent progress (as Clay was not) because of his constant magnificent expression of the national idea, his reading of it into the Constitution, and his communication of it to the convictions and imagination of the people."

VII

THE SESQUICENTENNIAL of Webster's birth, now being observed in 1932, naturally impels us to ask where he stands in our political Valhalla. The answer must be, it seems to me, that he was the political heir of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. He preserved the republic which they established on firm foundations. A conservative in an age when conservatism was probably more needed than it is today, he upheld the doctrine of a nation "one and invisible." There is always something romantic in the spectacle of a knight in shining armor dashing, like Garrison, gallantly at the toe. The more practical task of compromise and reconciliation is neither spectacular nor inspiring. But, over the sweep of years, a lofty and wise opportunism may represent a more permanent contribution to civilization. Certainly the verdict of history has shown Webster to be saner than his traducers.

As I have read the superlatives applied to "Black Dan'l" by too effusive eulogists, I have often paused and said to myself, "This is nonsense. No man could have been so stupendous as that!" And then I have remembered the impression he made on certain Englishmen, like Thomas Carlyle, not temperamentally sympathetic with him, but who, viewing him without partiality, confessed that he was the noblest figure ever to come within their ken. Now and then some contemporary "debunker," seeking notoriety through the simple device of calumniating the great, publishes a sensational "exposure" of Webster's drunkenness, his amativeness, his financial inaptitude, or his pomposity, and would have us believe that he was a voice, and nothing more. But when his friends sought for a suitable parallel, they compared him to great objects in Nature,—to Mount Washington or the Mississippi River or Niagara Falls. Studying his features in the available daguerreotypes and portraits, Emerson wrote, "Nature has not in our days, or not since Napoleon, cut out such a masterpiece." George William Curtis, after the dedication of Bunker Hill Monument, asserted that Webster showed "the restless grandeur of a Titan storming Heaven." Place him beside the statesmen of his own generation, not to mention our own, and he stands out like a Brobdignagian among Lilliputians. In life he towered among his fellows like a colossus, and no baseless slanders can permanently damage his reputation or detract from his accomplishment. The position which he occupies in the hearts of Americans is best indicated by the voting in 1901 for candidates for the Hall of Fame on University Heights in New York City. The ninety-seven electors cast their votes unanimously for George Washington, but Lincoln and Webster were tied for second place with ninetysix votes each.

Only a few weeks ago I was in Washington, the national capital. One evening I walked south towards the Potomac, to where the tall marble shaft commemorating the Father of His Country rises, clean and shining, to the sky, illuminated by floodlights from base to summit,—a monument which, in its simplicity and stateliness, has no equal in the world. On the following morning, I strolled to the spot where the marble temple enshrines the massive statute of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, in a grandeur at which he himself would be astonished. Looking from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial towards the Washington Monument, I recalled that there is no Webster Memorial in Washington.

And then I remembered where Daniel Webster lies buried, on a secluded knoll within sound of the ocean which he loved, in one of the quietest spots of the Old Colony. The man who was so dramatic in his career, who dwelt so constantly in the public eye, rests now far from crowds and senate chambers. Yet the very peace of his tomb emphasizes the grandeur of his life.

"We have no high cathedral for his rest, Dim with proud banners and the dust of years; All we can give him is New England's breast To lay his head on, and ten thousand tears."

Daniel Webster From a lithograph in 1844. by E. B. & E. C. Kellogg.

Birthplace at Salisbury, N. H.

The "Black Dan" Portrait Given to Dartmouth in 1836 by Dr. G. C. Shattuck.

In 1846, at the Age of 64 From the original daguerreotype by Richards of Philadelphia.

Webster Replying to Hayne In the United States Senate January 26, 27, 1830.

Andrew Jackson Daniel Webster Henry Clay

At His Marshfield Home

CLAUDE FUESS, Dartmouth Doctor ofLetters in 1931, has earned an author'sand scholar's reputation by his biographies of Daniel Webster and RufusChoate. Dr. Fuess (pronounced Fees) isAnderson professor of English atPhillips Andover Academy where histeaching career has been most notableand successful since his graduationfrom Amherst in 1905. "THE PERSONALITY OF DANIEL WEBSTER" was the subject of an addressgiven by Dr. Fuess at an open meetingof Phi Beta Kappa in Hanover lastspring. This event officially celebratedDartmouth's observance of the 150thanniversary of Webster's birth in 1782.The address was given without notesfrom the speaker's large fund of Webster lore. It has been written for the MAGAZINE that it may be enjoyed byDartmouth men to whom the immortal Dan'l is a tradition, but not thecolorful, living person that Dr. Fuesshere sets before us.