Jr. Horatio Alger

“ I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country ”

“ Probably no better selection of an orator could have been made. The circumstances of his own early career, born and brought up as he was on the sterile soil of one of the original States of New England, trained like the first settlers in the rugged school of poverty and simplicity, wresting a bare subsistence from unwilling nature, he could enter into the feelings of those hardy men who brought the seeds of civilization and civil liberty from the shores of the Old World to find a lodgment for them in the soil of the New. ”

“ In describing the consequences of secession it must be admitted that Mr. Webster spoke like a true prophet. All the evils that he predicted—the war such as the world had never seen—came to pass, but out of it the Union emerged stronger than ever, with its chief burden and reproach thrown overboard. Much as the war cost, we feel to-day that we are the better off that it was fought. Let us not blame Mr. Webster that he could not penetrate the future, and strove so hard to avert it. Probably his speech postponed it, but nothing could avert it. ”

“ Why, sir, our ancestors, our fathers, and our grandfathers, those of them who are still living among us with prolonged lives, would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government and the harmony of the union which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is each of the thirty States to defend itself? ”

“ If the plan of Washington had been pursued, and our navy had been suffered to grow with the growth of our commerce and navigation, what a blow might at this moment be struck, and what protection yielded, surrounded, as our commerce now is, with all the dangers of sudden war! Even as it is, all our immediate hopes of glory or conquest, all expectation of events that shall gratify the pride or spirit of the nation, rest on the gallantry of that little remnant of a navy that has now gone forth, like lightning, at the beck of Government, to scour the seas. ”

“ To Webster, as to few other men, is it due that to-day, wherever a son of the United States, at home or abroad, ‘beholds the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured,’ he can utter a prouder boast than, Civis Romanus sum. ”

“ Let us feel deeply how much of what we are, and of what we possess, we owe to this liberty, and to these institutions of government. Nature has indeed given us a soil which yields bounteously to the hands of industry, the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and the skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and skies, and seas to civilized man, without society, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture? ”

“ Adams and Jefferson are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.
“If it be true that no one can safely be pronounced happy while he lives, if that event which terminates life can alone crown its honor and its glory, what felicity is here! ”

“ It has been said with truth that no funeral oration has ever been pronounced, in any age, and in any language, which exceeds this in eloquence and simple grandeur. Happy the country that possesses two citizens of whom such praises can be uttered, and happy the nation that can find an orator of such transcendent genius to pronounce their eulogies! ”

“ For the first time, fellow citizens, badges of mourning shroud the columns and overhang the arches of this hall. These walls, which were consecrated so long ago to the cause of American liberty, which witnessed her infant struggles, and rang with the shouts of her earliest victories, proclaim now that distinguished friends and champions of that great cause have fallen. It is right that it should be thus. The tears which flow and the honors which are paid when the founders of the republic die give hope that the republic itself may be immortal. ”

“ There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union ”

“ Firmly relying on the protection of Heaven, unwarped in the resolution you had taken, you then undaunted met, engaged, defeated the gigantic power of Britain, and rode triumphant over the aggressions of your enemies!
“Trenton, Princeton, Bennington and Saratoga were the successive theaters of your victories, and the utmost bounds of creation are the limits of your fame! The sacred fire of freedom, then enkindled in your breasts, shall be perpetuated through the long descent of future ages, and burn with undiminished fervor in the bosoms of millions yet unborn!” ”

“ Well, all I can say is, and I say it in sincerity, if the people of the United States were to repudiate caucuses, conventions, politicians and tricksters, and rise in the glory of their strength and might, without waiting for any convention to designate a candidate, but bent on placing in the Presidential chair the first citizen and statesman, the first patriot and man, Daniel Webster, it would do for republican government more than any event which has taken place in the history of the world. ”

“ There are not a few who may well be content to live on the applauses and praises which their efforts have called forth from immediate hearers and admirers. They will enjoy at least a reflected and traditional fame. But Webster will always stand safest and strongest on his own showing. His fame will be independent of praise or dispraise from other men’s lips. He can be measured to his full altitude, as a thinker, a writer, a speaker, only by the standard of his own immortal productions. ”

“ I claim them for countrymen, one and all, the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinkneys, the Sumters, the Marions, Americans all, whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is one of the treasures of the whole country. ”

“ Among those who listened with rapt attention to Mr. Webster was John C. Calhoun, his great compeer, who had risen with difficulty from the bed where he lay fatally sick, to hear the senator from Massachusetts. “A tall, gaunt figure, wrapped in a long black cloak, with deep, cavernous black eyes, and a thick mass of snow-white hair brushed back from the large brow,” he seemed like a visitant from the next world. It was his last appearance in the Senate. ”

“ As if the millennium had already commenced, our politicians have beaten their swords into plowshares. They have actually bargained away in the market essential means of national defense, and carried the product to the Treasury. Without loss by accident or by enemies the second commercial nation in the world is reduced to the limitation of being unable to assert the sovereignty of its own seas, or to protect its navigation in sight of its own shores. What war and the waves have sometimes done for others, we have done for ourselves. ”

“ A man’s character and life add weight to the words which he utters, and wise and judicious advice coming from a trifler or a shallow person falls often unheeded, and with reason. But Daniel knew how much his father had accomplished without education—he knew how high his rank was among his neighbors, and no man ever probably received from him a tithe of that reverence which he felt for his plain, unlettered parent. ”

“ Mr. Mason felt that the matter had gone far enough. He slowly rose in his seat; the countryman with astonishment saw what he had supposed to be a man of average height towering into gigantic proportions, and he became alarmed.
“Hold on!” he shouted; “you needn’t unroll yourself any more. I’ll turn out myself.”
This great lawyer, though so often opposed to Webster, was unvaryingly kind to him, and as Daniel himself testifies, was of infinite advantage to him, not only by his friendship, but by the many good lessons he taught him and the example he set him in the commencement of his career. ”

“ Webster approaches as nearly to the beau ideal of a republican senator as any man that I have ever seen in the course of my life, worthy of Rome, or Venice, rather than of our noisy and wrangling generation. I wish that some of our public men here would take example from his grave and prudent manner of speaking on political subjects, which seemed to me neither too incautious nor too strikingly reserved.”
[Pg 272]
It is seldom that a man’s personal appearance is so impressive as that of Daniel Webster, seldom that his greatness is so visibly stamped upon his face and figure. ”

“ I had my notes tucked away in a pigeon-hole, and when Hayne made that attack upon me and upon New England I was already posted, and only had to take down my notes and refresh my memory. In other words, if he had tried to make a speech to fit my notes he could not have hit it better. No man is inspired with the occasion; I never was.”
Mr. Webster was too great a man to wish for praise which he did not deserve. That is for men of inferior ability, who are glad to have it believed that their most elaborate utterances are “thrown off upon the spur of the moment.” ”

“ To the winds I dismiss those light hopes of eminence which ambition inspired and vanity fostered. To be ‘honest, to be capable, to be faithful’ to my client and my conscience. I believe you, my worthy boy, when you tell me what are your intentions. I have long known and long loved the honesty of your heart. But let us not rely too much on ourselves; let us look to some less fallible guide to direct us among the temptations that surround us.”
In a letter written June 4, 1802, Mr. Webster refers to his indecision as to a career. ”

“ It will be seen that young Webster aimed to be something more than a lawyer. Instead of throwing aside his law books when his daily reading was over with a sigh of relief that he could now devote his time to mere enjoyment, he closed them only to open the English and Latin classics, with a view to broaden his culture and qualify himself for something better than a routine lawyer, to whom his profession presents itself only as a means of livelihood. ”

“ Webster, with his clarion voice, facing the thousands who were seated before him on the rising hillside, and the other thousands who stood at the summit, spoke these eloquent words. Let them imagine the veteran soldiers, and the white-haired and venerable Lafayette, and they can better understand the effect which this address made on the eager and entranced listeners. They will not wonder at the tears which gathered in the eyes of the old soldiers as they bowed their heads to conceal their emotions. ”

“ We who come here, as agents and representatives of these narrow-minded and selfish men of New England, consider ourselves as bound to regard with an equal eye the good of the whole in whatever is within our power of legislation. Sir, if a railroad or canal, beginning in South Carolina and ending in South Carolina, appeared to me to be of national importance and national magnitude, believing, as I do, that the power of government extends the encouragement of works of that description, if I were to stand up here and ask, What interest has Massachusetts in a rail [Pg 252] road in South Carolina? ”

“ Daniel had up [Pg 49] to this time led only the secular life of a country farmer’s boy, and, though the New Hampshire farmers have sent out many heroes as firm and true as the granite rocks in the pasture, there cannot be among the hard and homely work which such a life implies the little finenesses of manner which good society demands. Daniel was one of these diamonds of the first water, but was still in the rough, and needed some cutting and polishing to fit him to shine in the great world in which he was to figure so conspicuously. ”

“ Webster had an honorable ambition to serve his country in that great office—the greatest in its gift—no one will dispute. He knew his own fitness, and would have rejoiced to crown a life of high service with this elevated trust. But I have said elsewhere that it is only in an ideal republic that the greatest citizens reach the highest posts, and our republic is not an ideal one. ”

“ We behold a feeble band of colonists engaged in the arduous undertaking of a new settlement in the wilds of North America. Their civil liberty being mutilated, and the enjoyment of their religious sentiments denied them in the land that gave them birth, they braved the dangers of the then almost unnavigated ocean, and sought on the other side of the globe an asylum from the iron grasp of tyranny and the more intolerable scourge of ecclesiastical persecution. ”