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Page 11
By his voyage to China and by his experiences there, Mr. Webster,
acquired, not only rich stores of curious information and a great
enlargement of his intellectual horizon, but--what is particularly to be
noted--a better appreciation of the splendid destiny of his native land.
Unlike many foolish Americans, who waste their time in foreign capitals,
he never harbored the slightest regret that he had not been born
something other than an American; he never desired to be anything but a
free citizen of the great republic of the West.
He prepared a lecture on China, which he delivered in many of the cities
and large towns. Mr. Cushing had already entered the lecture field with
a discourse on China, and some thought Mr. Webster presumptuous in thus
inviting comparison between his own discourse and Mr. Cushing's. But
competent critics, who heard both these efforts, expressed a preference
for that of Mr. Webster. Vast as was Mr. Cushing's learning, his
oratorical style was never one of the best; while Fletcher Webster's
style, for clearness, simplicity, strength, and majesty, was little
inferior to that of his illustrious father. He afterward expanded this
lecture to the dimensions of a book, but never published it; and, in
1878, this manuscript, and all others left by him, perished by the fire
which destroyed the Webster House at Marshfield. One of the few scraps
which have survived this fire is a Latin epitaph which he wrote for his
father's horse, Steamboat,--a horse of great speed and endurance,--and
which seldom lay down at night unless he had been overdriven. In
English, it ran thus: "Stop, traveler, for a greater traveler than thou
stops here."
On the Fourth of July, 1845, Charles Sumner delivered, before the
municipal authorities of Boston, an oration on Peace, which provoked
much hostile criticism; and on the next succeeding anniversary of
American Independence, Fletcher Webster delivered an oration on War,
which was designed to show that there are cases "where war, with all its
woes, must be endured."
It is probably the only elaborate discourse of his, which has been
preserved entire. It contains many quotable passages; but we must
content ourselves with the following, which are quite in his father's
style:--
"We meet to brighten the memories of a glorious past, to strengthen
ourselves in our onward progress, to remember great enterprises, to look
forward to a great career."
"We celebrate no single triumph, but the result of a long series of
victories; we celebrate the memory of no mere successful battle, but the
great triumph of a people; the victory of liberty over oppression, won
by suffering and struggle and death; the fruit of high sentiment, of
resolute patriotism, of consummate wisdom, of unshaken faith and trust
in God,--a victory and a triumph not for us only, but for all the
oppressed, everywhere, and for every age to come, ... a victory whose
future results to us and to others no imagination can foresee, and which
are yet but commencing to unfold themselves."
"And does any one believe that these results [to wit, the winning of
American independence, and the building of the American nation] could
have been attained in any other method than by arms and successful
physical resistance."
In 1847, he held the only political office to which he was ever elected
by popular suffrage,--that of representative in the Legislature. In
1850, he was appointed surveyor of the port of Boston by President
Taylor, and he was reappointed to the same office by Presidents Pierce
and Buchanan successively. There were many who would have been glad to
see him in a larger sphere, but "the mark which he made upon his times,"
as Mr. Hillard observes, was less than his friends had anticipated.
Occasionally he appeared as an orator in political campaigns, notably in
1856, at Exeter, in his native State, where he spoke with laudable pride
of having "sat at the feet of a great statesman now no more."
The son of Martin Van Buren and the son of Levi Woodbury united their
voices on that occasion with the voice of the son of Webster. A striking
remark then made by him is well remembered. Referring to the speech of
Senator Sumner, which excited the assault of Mr. Brooks, Mr. Webster
said, "If I had been going to make such a speech, I should have worn an
iron pot upon my head."
In 1857, he published two volumes of the Private Correspondence of
Daniel Webster. In editing the papers of such a man, it is not difficult
to make a "spicy" book. Witness McVey Napier's Edinburgh Review
correspondence and Mr. Fronde's Carlyle correspondence. They have spared
no one's feelings. They have paraded hasty expressions of transient
spleen, which the authors would blush to read, except, perhaps, at the
moment of writing. Mr. Webster has shown us a more excellent way, though
it may be less profitable. "With charity for all, with malice for none,"
he carefully excised from his father's correspondence every passage
tending to rekindle the fire of any former personal controversy in which
his father had engaged. In this, perhaps, he followed the behests of his
father, who evinced, as he approached the tomb, an earnest desire for
reconciliation with all with whom he had had differences, illustrating
the Scottish proverb, "The evening brings all home."
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