And ye shall succor men; 'Tis nobleness to serve; Help them who cannot help again : I break your bonds and masterships, 50 Free be his heart and hand henceforth 55 And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is owner, O North! give him beauty for rags, With Freedom's image and name. DANIEL WEBSTER. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "IN the last year of the Revolutionary War, on the 18th of January, 1782, Daniel Webster was born, in the home which his father had established on the outskirts of civilization. If the character and situation of the place, and the circumstances under which he passed the first years of his life, might seem adverse to the early cultivation of his extraordinary talent, it still cannot be doubted that they possessed influences favorable to elevation and strength of character. The hardships of an infant settlement and border life, the traditions of a long series of Indian wars, and of two mighty national contests, in which an honored parent had borne his part, the anecdotes of Fort William Henry, of Quebec, of Bennington, of West Point, of Wolfe and Stark and Washington, the great Iliad and Odyssey of American Independence, this was the fireside entertainment of the long winter evenings of the secluded village home. . . . 66 'Something that was called a school was kept for two or three months in the winter, frequently by an itinerant, too often a pretender, claiming only to teach a little reading, writing, and ciphering, and wholly incompetent to give any valuable assistance to a clever youth in learning either. "Such as the village school was, Mr. Webster enjoyed its advantages, if they could be called by that name. It was, 1 Salisbury (now Franklin), N. H. however, of a migratory character. When it was near his father's residence it was easy to attend; but it was sometimes in a distant part of the town, and sometimes in another town. . . . Poor as these opportunities of education were, they were bestowed on Mr. Webster more liberally than on his brothers. He showed a greater eagerness for learning; and he was thought of too frail a constitution for any robust pursuit. . . . It is probable that the best part of his education was derived from the judicious and experienced father, and the strong-minded, affectionate, and ambitious mother." 1 His attitude toward books is well shown by the following extract from his Autobiography: "I remember that my father brought home from some of the lower towns Pope's Essay on Man, published in a sort of pamphlet. I took it, and very soon could repeat it from beginning to end. We had so few books, that to read them once or twice was nothing. We thought they were all to be got by heart.” In 1796 Webster went to Exeter Academy, but poverty at home caused his withdrawal in February, 1797. He then studied in the neighboring town of Boscawen, under the Rev. Samuel Wood, whose entire charge for board and instruction was $1.00 a week. In 1797 he entered Dartmouth College, where he was graduated in 1801, after four years of hard and telling work; his winter vacations were spent in teaching school. Webster next studied law, but the need of money by himself and his brother Ezekiel compelled him to accept an offer to take charge of an academy at Fryeburg, Maine, at a salary of about a dollar a day; he supported himself by copying deeds, and was thus able to save all his salary as a fund for the further education of himself and his brother. 1 See Biographical Memoir, by Edward Everett. From this Memoir, and from Lodge's Life of Webster, in the American Statesmen Series, most of the material of this sketch has been taken. He began the study of law again in September, 1802, and in the spring of 1805 was admitted to the bar at Boston. He opened an office at Boscawen, N. H., but in September, 1807, moved to Portsmouth, where he at once rose to the head of his profession, and for nine successive years had a large though not very lucrative practice. In 1808 he was married to Miss Grace Fletcher of Hopkinton, Mass. In November, 1812, he was elected a member of the National House of Representatives, where his great talents. were at once recognized; he was reelected in 1814. From 1823 until his death in 1852, with the exception of about two years, he was constantly in public life, as congressman, senator, and secretary of state. In 1816 he moved to Boston and soon took a position in the law above which no one has ever risen in this country. He had a choice of the best business of the whole country. He distinguished himself especially in the realm of Constitutional Law, by which the rights of States and individuals granted by the Constitution were defined. In 1818 he argued the famous Dartmouth College case, and secured a decision declaring unconstitutional, on the ground of impairing the obligation of a contract, an act of the New Hampshire Legislature altering the charter of the college. He was thereafter retained in almost every important case argued before the Supreme Court at Washington. On December 22, 1820, the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, he delivered his famous Plymouth Oration, the first of a series of noble, patriotic addresses which showed him to be the greatest orator America ever produced. On June 17, 1825, he delivered an oration at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, and on August 2, 1826, his eulogy on the ExPresidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who died within a few hours of each other, on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In |