on the 18th of january, 1882, the hundredth birthday of daniel webster, the marshfield club assembled at the parker house, in boston, to take suitable notice of the anniversary. though thirty years had elapsed since his death there was one at least present, hon. robert c. winthrop, who had been intimately associated with him in public life, having been his successor in the senate, and a warm personal friend. most notable among the addresses was that of gov. long, of massachusetts, which i shall venture to insert here, as containing in brief compass a fitting estimate of the great statesman whom the company had assembled to honor.
governor long’s address.
“it is but a poor tribute that even the most eloquent voice, least of all mine, can pay for massachusetts to the memory of her greatest statesman, her mightiest intellect and her most powerful orator. among her sons he towers like the lonely and massive shaft on bunker hill, upon the base and the crest of which his name is emblazoned clearer than if chiseled deep in its granite cubes. for years he was her synonym. among the states he sustained her at that proud height which winthrop and sam adams gave her in the colonial and provincial days. with what matchless grandeur he defended her! with what overwhelming power he impressed her convictions upon the national life! god seems to appoint men to special work, and, that done, the very effort of its achievement exhausts them, and they rise not again to the summit of their meridian. so it was with webster. he knows little even of written constitutions and frames of government who does not know that they exist almost less in the letter than in the interpretation and construction of the letter. in this light it is not too much to say that the constitution of the united states, as it existed when it carried our country through the greatest peril that ever tested it, was the crystallization of the mind of webster as well as of its original framers. it came from them and was only accepted by some of our own as a compact of states, sovereign in all but certain enumerated powers delegated to a central government. he made it the crucible of a welded union—the charter of one great country, the united states of america. he made the states a nation and enfolded them in its single banner. it was the overwhelming logic of his discussion, the household familiarity of his simple but irresistible statement, that gave us munition to fight the war for the preservation of the union and the abolition of slavery. it was his eloquence, clear as crystal and precipitating itself in the school-books and literature of a people, which had trained up the generation of twenty years ago to regard this nation as one, to love its flag with a patriotism that knew no faction or section, to be loyal to the whole country, and to find in its constitution power to suppress any hand or combination raised against it. the great rebellion of 1861 went down hardly more before the cannon of grant and farragut than the thunder of webster’s reply to hayne. he knew not the extent of his own achievement. his greatest failure was that he rose not to the height and actual stroke of his own resistless argument, and that he lacked the sublime inspiration, the disentanglement and the courage to let the giant he had created go upon his errand, first of force, and then, through that, of surer peace. he had put the work and genius of more than an ordinary lifetime of service into the arching and knitting of the union, and this he could not bear to put to the final test; his great heart was sincere in the prayer that his eyes might not behold the earthquake that would shake it to those foundations which, though he knew it not, he had made so strong that a succeeding generation saw them stand the shock as the oak withstands the storm. men are not gods, and it needed in him that he should rise to a moral sublimity and daring as lofty as the intellectual heights above which he soared with unequaled strength. so had he been godlike.
“a great man touches the heart of the people as well as their intelligence. they not only admire, they also love him. it sometimes seems as if they sought in him some weakness of our common human nature, that they may chide him for it, forgive it, and so endear him to themselves the more. massachusetts had her friction with the younger adams, only to lay him away with profounder honor, and to remember him devotedly as the defender of the right of petition and ‘the old man eloquent.’ she forgave the overweening conceit of sumner, she revoked her unjust censure of him, and now points her youth to him in his high niche as the unsullied patriot, without fear and without reproach, who stood and spoke for equal rights, and whose last great service was to demand and enforce his country’s just claims against the dishonorable trespass of the cruisers of that england he had so much admired. massachusetts smote, too, and broke the heart of webster, her idol, and then broke her own above his grave, and to-day writes his name highest upon her roll of statesmen. it seems disjointed to say that, with such might as his, the impression that comes from his face upon the wall, as from his silhouette upon the background of our history, is that of sadness—the sadness of the great deep eyes, the sadness of the lonely shore he loved, and by which he sleeps. the story of webster from the beginning is the very pathos of romance. a minor chord runs through it like the tenderest note in a song. what eloquence of tears is in that narrative, which reveals in this giant of intellectual strength the heart, the single loving heart, of a child, and in which he describes the winter sleighride up the new hampshire hills when his father told him that, at whatever cost, he should have a college education, and he, too full to speak, while a warm glow ran all over him, laid his head upon his father’s shoulder and wept!
“the greatness of webster and his title to enduring gratitude have two illustrations. he taught the people of the united states, in the simplicity of common understanding, the principles of the constitution and government of the country, and he wrought for them, in a style of matchless strength and beauty, the literature of statesmanship. from his lips flowed the discussion of constitutional law, of economic philosophy, of finance, of international right, of national grandeur and of the whole range of high public themes, so clear and judicial that it was no longer discussion, but judgment. to-day—and so it will be while the republic endures—the student and the legislator turn to the full fountain of his statement for the enunciation of these principles. what other authority is quoted, or holds even the second or third place? even his words have imbedded themselves in the common phraseology, and come to the tongue like passages from the psalms or the poets. i do not know that a sentence or a word of sumner’s repeats itself in our every-day parlance. the exquisite periods of everett are recalled like the consummate work of some master of music, but no note or refrain sings itself over and over again to our ears. the brilliant eloquence of choate is like the flash of a bursting rocket, lingering upon the retina indeed after it has faded from the wings of the night, but as elusive of our grasp as spray-drops that glisten in the sun. the fiery enthusiasm of andrews did, indeed, burn some of his heart-beats forever into the sentiment of massachusetts; but webster made his language the very household words of a nation. they are the library of a people. they inspired and still inspire patriotism. they taught and still teach loyalty. they are the school-book of the citizen. they are the inwrought and accepted fiber of american politics. if the temple of our republic shall ever fall, they will ‘still live’ above the ground like those great foundation stones in ancient ruins, which remain in lonely grandeur, unburied in the dust that springs to turf over all else, and making men wonder from what rare quarry and by what mighty force they came. 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. for he can say, i am an american citizen.”
as a fitting pendant to this eloquent tribute i quote a portion of the address of mr. winthrop, whose name, personally and by inheritance, makes him one of the most eminent sons of massachusetts:
“and, after all, mr. president, what are all the fine things which have ever been said of him, or which ever can be said of him, to-night or a hundred years hence, compared with the splendid record which he has left of himself as an advocate in the courts, as a debater in the senate, as an orator before the people? we do not search out for what was said about pericles or demosthenes or cicero or burke. it is enough for us to read their orations. there are those, indeed, who may justly desire to be measured by the momentary opinions which others have formed and expressed about them. 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. that masterly style, that pure saxon english, that clear and cogent statement, that close and clinching logic, that power of going down to the depths and up to the heights of any great argument, letting the immaterial or incidental look out for itself, those vivid descriptions, those magnificent metaphors, those thrilling appeals—not introduced as mere ornaments wrought out in advance, and stored up for an opportunity of display, but sparkling and blazing out in the very heat of an effort, like gems uncovering themselves in the working of a mine—these are some of the characteristics which will secure for webster a fame altogether his own, and will make his works a model and a study, long after most of those who have praised him, or who have censured him, shall be forgotten.
“what if those six noble volumes of his were obliterated from the roll of american literature and american eloquence! what if those great speeches, recently issued in a single compendious volume, had no existence! what if those consummate defenses of the constitution and the union had never been uttered, and their instruction and inspiration had been lost to us during the fearful ordeal to which that constitution and that union have since been subjected? are we quite sure that we should have had that constitution as it was, and the union as it is, to be fought for, if the birth we are commemorating had never occurred—if that bright northern star had never gleamed above the hills of new hampshire? let it be, if you please, that its light was not always serene and steady. let it be that mist and clouds sometimes gathered over its disk, and hid its guiding rays from many a wistful eye. say even, if you will, that to some eyes it seemed once to be shooting madly from its sphere. make every deduction which his bitterest enemies have ever made for any alleged deviation from the course which he had marked out for it by others, or which it seemed to have marked out for itself, in its path across the sky. still, still there is radiance and glory enough left, as we contemplate its whole golden track, to make us feel and acknowledge that it had no fellow in our firmament.”
