WEBSTER, DANIEL (1 782-185 2 ), American statesman and lawyer, was born in Salisbury (N.H.), Jan. 18, 1782. His parents were rugged New England farming people. Daniel was the delicate one of the family, and not particularly inclined to farm work. From childhood, however, he loved out-of-door life, was exceedingly fond of hunting and fishing, and unusually skilful at them, and this taste, which became strong in his youth, clung to him through all his long career.
His early schooling was primitive. But he had a passion for books of all sorts. Bits of the poets and illustrations from the great historians were always ready to his hand when he needed them and came out with singular appropriateness in later years. It has been urged that he was indolent. So was Sir Walter Scott. But Scott could do more work in a day than other men in a week; and so could Webster. His mind seized the essence of things.
These intellectual gifts were so manifest that Webster's father made great sacrifices to send the boy to Phillips academy, Exeter, and then to Dartmouth college. His college record was good, but not remarkable; like many men of genius, he preferred other things to the appointed task. It is said that in early days he was reluctant to speak in public, but toward the end of his college career he was known as something of an orator and debater, and when he was 18, a year before his graduation in i8o1, he was in vited to deliver the Fourth of July address for the town of Han over. Some of these early speeches have been preserved, and while crude, they suggest what was to come.
With a mind like Webster's the law seemed the inevitable voca tion, and the little teaching he did was merely a means to an end. As was the custom in those days, he went into the office of a prac tising lawyer in Boston, and the invaluable training of Christopher Gore no doubt went far in making his pupil the great lawyer that he afterwards became. He was admitted to the bar in 1805, and in 1807 settled himself to practise in Portsmouth. His reputation in law is quite as great as, perhaps more unclouded than, in states manship. His clear, massive, gorgeous, overwhelming eloquence carried juries with him as well as parliaments, and no estimate of his eloquence is complete that does not allow for the superb per sonality that gave it weight and vigour. He was a notable presence, even to those who passed him unknown in the street. The dignity of his solid figure, the rich and varied music of his voice, above all the penetrating splendour of his eyes, gave his spoken words a glory which we cannot recover, effective as his speeches often are in print. Of his jury triumphs the best known is that in the White murder case. His most celebrated plea before the Supreme Court in Washington is that for Dartmouth college, in 1818, when the personal touches, notably, "It is, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it," so affected all present that it was said of Chief Justice Marshall that "the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion and his eyes suffused with tears."
Party passions, together with the power of his tongue, naturally took Webster into politics. It is said that even in childhood he began to study the Constitution as printed on a cotton handker chief. From 1813 to 1817 he was a member of the House of Rep resentatives. New England at that time was bitterly opposed to the Madison Administration, to the Democratic Party, and espe cially to the war with England, and Webster's eloquence was used unsparingly to express these New England prejudices, though he cannot be connected with the more or less disloyal Hartford Con vention. At this early period, in curious contrast to his later views and arguments, he was hostile to a protective tariff, feeling that it would complete the ruin of the New England shipping interests, already sufficiently imperilled by the cost of the war.
While he was out of politics, from 1817 to 1823, Webster de voted himself energetically and profitably to the practise of law. During these years he was making his great reputation as a histor ical orator. In 182o he delivered the bi-centennial speech at Ply mouth, celebrating the landing of the Pilgrims, and it is probable that in the line of general eloquence he never reached a greater height than this. The significance of America, the political, social and religious principles that America stood for, and the splendid development and prospects of the Anglo-Saxon race, were por trayed with a dignity and amplitude which good judges consider worthy to be compared with Demosthenes or Burke. Webster's impressive delivery, his intense, magnetic hold upon his audience, were never more fully manifested than upon this occasion. Tick nor, who was present, gives a vivid account of his own experience : "I was never so excited by public speaking before in my life. Three or four times I thought my temples would burst with the gush of blood. . . . When I came out I was almost afraid to come near to him. It seemed to me as if he was like the mount that might not be touched and that burned with fire. I was beside myself, and am so still." The address delivered on the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, in 1825, was another of these historical tributes, equally successful and well known. On Aug. 2, 1826, Webster gave, in Faneuil hall, Boston, the eulogy on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who had both died on the Fourth of July previous. This speech contains the famous words, attributed to John Adams, "Sink or swim, live or die," etc., which have probably been re peated in school declamations as often as any piece of rhetoric in the English language. In 1823 Webster again appeared in the House of Representatives, and in 1827 in the Senate, in which he was to play so great a part for many years. The Missouri Com promise (q.v.) of 182o had for the time apparently settled the question of slavery, but in reality the rift between the two sections of the country had been opened, and it was not ever really to be closed again until after the Civil War.