Returning from abroad, Webster found the election of 184o impending, but his own hopes and aspirations were completely sub merged in the spectacular success of Harrison, with the log-cabin and hard cider and Tippecanoe campaign furore. Again it was evi dent that, widely as Webster was esteemed and respected, he had not the faculty of personal leadership. Men praised him, but they did not vote for him. Instead of the Presidency, he was forced to put up with the secretaryship of State, which was given him by Harrison, and at first continued by Harrison's successor, Vice president Tyler. Tyler soon got into trouble with his Whig cabinet, and they all left him but Webster, who incurred some odium by remaining. His plea was that he wished to complete the negotiation with England about the north-eastern boundary. This was settled with Lord Ashburton by the treaty of 1842, an arrangement which was entirely satisfactory to neither party, and was therefore prob ably as fair a compromise as could have been devised. This is no table as being almost the only great constructive achievement of Webster's career. With all his intellectual and oratorical powers, the working of circumstances was such that he was almost always in opposition, and had no opportunity to show how well he could build for permanence, though the sure logical action of his genius would seem to have adapted him peculiarly for such work.
After the treaty was disposed of, Webster retired from the cab inet and for a time again disappeared into private life. The clouds seemed to be gathering about him in many ways. The deaths of his children, culminating in that of his daughter Julia, were a terrible grief to him. His money complications increased, and though his earning power was as great as ever, his gift for spending more than kept pace with it.
When he returned to the Senate in 1845, the political world was as dark as his own surroundings. He was personally attacked by Ingersoll, with charges of dishonesty during his secretaryship. Con gressional investigation cleared him of all but carelessness, yet men always spoke of him with a slur or an apology from the finan cial point of view. The menace of the Mexican War was confusing everything, and making the issue of slavery more threatening and more difficult to deal with. Webster, like Clay and Calhoun, op posed the war, but he sent his son to fight and die, as did Clay also.
The vast accession of territory that resulted from the defeat of Mexico brought all sorts of slavery complications with it. Webster took an active part in these, being in the main anxious to have slavery repressed and limited, so far as this was compatible with the Constitution. But when, in 1850, Clay brought forward his compromise measures, in the desperate attempt to avert actual civil conflict, Webster joined him, and the combined influence of the two, of ter months of heated debate, prevailed to have the com promise accepted. Webster's course was abused with the utmost violence by the anti-slavery section of the North, and Whittier's wail over Ichabod gave the abuse literary dignity and permanence.
The senator was accused of having betrayed every high principle, in the vain hope of getting the South to support him for the Presi dency. Recent historians have come more and more to reject this view. They argue that without the compromise, the Civil War would have been precipitated at that time, and that by postponing it for ten years, until the North was strengthened by the immense accession of the growing West, the whole course of American his tory was changed. In this view Webster became, not the destroyer but the saviour of his country, and it must at least be believed that such salvation was mainly what he aimed at.
Under Fillmore, he had to be content with the secretaryship of State, and he filled this office until the condition of his health became so critical that work of any kind was out of the question. Perhaps the most notable of his later official acts was his sharp correspondence with the Austrian charge Hillsemann in regard to the affairs of Hungary. Webster died on Oct. 24, 1852.
The details of Webster's death have been recorded with curious minuteness by his biographer, Curtis. The dying statesman first delivered a senatorial oration on religibus matters, perhaps, like most of his talk on such subjects, more eloquent than convincing. The exhaustion of this prostrated him for the moment. When he again came to himself, his words were : "Have I—wife, son, doctor, friends, are you all here ?—have I, on this occasion, said anything unworthy of Daniel Webster?" And the audience unanimously answered, "no." It would be hard to find a more fitting final utter ance for a man who had lived for 5o years in the statuesque pose.
Yet it is fair also to remember that Webster's last preoccupation on the less personal side was with his country, and he directed that the American flag should be kept flying at the masthead of his little yacht, with a light cast upon it at night, so that he could see it as long as he could see anything.
Webster's writings are best studied in the complete edition, 18 vols., 1903. This includes the two volumes of correspondence published ear lier by his son. A large amount of further correspondence was pub lished by Van Tyne in 1902. The two-volume Life, by Curtis (1869), is a storehouse of material, but is eminently partial to the subject. H. C. Lodge's "Life," in the American Statesman series, is brilliantly written, but under strong Republican and anti-slavery prejudices. The True Daniel Webster, by Fisher (191I) is sympathetic, and defends Webster where he most needs it. The Life by Ogg (1914), is critical and dispassionate. The Reminiscences of Lanman and Harvey are suggestive, but not always reliable. The writer of this article, whose grandfather was Webster's law partner, possesses a desk and a dispatch box which belonged to Webster. In the desk are a number of un published documents tending to support the statements made above as to Webster's financial habits. See also Allan L. Benson, Daniel Webster (1929). (G. B.)