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light till the hour when the House met, he was busy with his brief. When he was far advanced in speaking, a note was brought to him from the Supreme Court, informing him that the great case of Gibbons vs. Ogden would be called on for argument the next morning. He was astounded at the intelligence, for he had supposed that after the tariff question should have been disposed of, he would still have ten days to prepare himself for this formidable conflict, in which the constitutionality of the laws of New York, granting a steamboat monoply of its tide-waters, would be decided. He brought his speech on the tariff to a conclusion as speedily as he could, and hurried home to make such preparation for the great law argument as the shortness of the notice would permit. He had then taken no food since his morning's breakfast-but instead of dining he took a moderate dose of medicine and went to bed, and to sleep. At ten P. M. he awoke, called for a bowl of tea, and without other refreshment went immediately to work. To use his own phrase, the tapes had not been off the papers for more than a year.' He worked all night, and, as he has told me more than once, he thought he never on any occasion had so completely the free use of all his faculties. He hardly felt that he had bodily organs, so entirely had his fasting and the medicine done their work. At nine A. M., after eleven hours of continuous intellectual effort, his brief was completed. He sent for the barber and was shaved; he took a very slight breakfast of tea and crackers; he looked over his papers to see that they were all in order, and tied them up-he read the morning journals, to amuse and change his thoughts, and then he went into court, and made that grand argument which, as Judge Wayne said above twenty years afterward, 'released every creek and river, every lake and harbor in our country from the interference of monopolies.' Whatever he may have thought of his powers on the preceding night, the court and the bar acknowledged their whole force that day. And yet, at the end of five hours, when he ceased speaking, he could hardly be said to have taken what would amount to half the refreshment of a common meal, for above two and thirty hours, and, out of the thirty-six hours immediately preceding, he had for thirty-one been in a state of very high intellectual excitement and activity."

Probably, if we possessed as full a report of this argument as that which remains of the Dartmouth College case, we should be inclined to estimate it quite as highly. Certainly the difficulties to be overcome were as great, and the nature of the question demanded as much power of analysis and discrimination, and force of reasoning, as were required in the former case. The weight of judicial authority that was arrayed against the side which Mr. Webster had to espouse was far more imposing than in the college case. The question derived

its chief difficulty from the apparent conflict of jurisdictions as between the State and the national governments, in respect to waters which are confessedly within the territorial limits of a State. But notwithstanding the locality in which these laws of monopoly were to operate, the question was, whether they were consistent with the grant to Congress of the power to regu late commerce with foreign nations and between the several States. The argument of Mr. Webster established the great positions that the commerce of the Union is a unit; that its regulation being vested in Congress, there is of necessity some legislative regulation, which is exclusively in Congress, and not concurrently in Congress and the States; and that a law granting a monopoly of navigation over waters where commerce is carried on, is a law regulating commerce, and is one of those regulations that can be made, if by any authority, only by the authority in which the regulation of that commerce is vested.

We have seen that Mr. Webster did not take a very strong personal interest in the topic that absorbed so much of the attention of members of Congress at this session-the approaching presidential election. On his arrival at Washington in December, 1823, he found the state of things to be this: The candidates were Mr. John Quincy Adams, General Jackson, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Clay, Mr. Crawford, and Mr. Clinton. Each of these gentlemen seemed likely to command so many of the electoral votes as to prevent a choice of any one of them. Mr. Webster was satisfied, therefore, from the first, that the election would devolve upon the House of Representatives. He would have preferred Mr. Calhoun at this time, for the presidency, of all the candidates, if there had been a reasonable prospect that he could be elected. As the winter wore on, he saw that Mr. Adams and General Jackson would be the real competitors at last; and under these circumstances, so far as he gave any advice to his friends at home, it was to cast the electoral votes of New England so as to secure the election of Mr. Calhoun as Vice-President. In March he wrote to his brother, who had much influence in New Hampshire: "I hope all New England will support Mr. Calhoun for the vice-presidency. If so, he will probably be chosen, and that will be a

great thing. He is a true man, and will do good to the country in that situation."

Mr. Webster's labors of this session, in the House, in its committees, and in two legal tribunals, had their effect even upon him, accustomed as he was to such exertions, and strong as was his physical constitution at the age of forty-two. Probably he never passed a winter at Washington of more constant and severe exertion than this, although he had no such cause for intense anxiety concerning the country as he afterward had, in 1830, in 1842, and in 1850. It was a winter of hard work; and, when the spring arrived, he admitted its effects. "We have had a busy time of it," he wrote to Judge Story, "since you left us. For myself, I am exhausted. When I

look in the glass, I think of our old New-England saying, 'as thin as a shad.' I have not vigor enough left, either mental or physical, to try an action for assault and battery. However, the fine weather has come on, I have resumed the saddle, and hope to pick up my crumbs' again soon." To his brother, a little later, he writes: "I hope to get away by the 12th of May, and to be at home in season to see you at Dorchester the week before the General Court meets at Concord. The ensuing summer I shall do nothing but move about and play. I shall certainly spend a fortnight with you at Boscawen, and the rest you may spend with us. August we will pass together on Cape Cod. My wife wants some one to ride about with her, while I am shooting," etc.

But it was past the middle of June before he could get away. He was detained for some days after the termination of the session, to serve on a committee of investigation into certain charges made by a Mr. Ninian Edwards against the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Crawford. As this tedious business dragged its slow length along, he began to think of the birds that he ought to be following at Cohasset or Chelsea Beach, in company with his friend Mr. George Blake. He was not yet so reduced, he wrote, but that he "could walk with a bit of iron" on his shoulder, and he desired to know whether Mr. Blake was ever found driving with an "umbrella" in his chaise, as that quaint and most agree

able person was accustomed to call his fowling-piece when in its case.'

In the autumn of this year (1824), he was again elected a Representative in Congress from the Boston district, by a vote which is recorded in the newspapers of the time as "nearly unanimous." There was in fact no opposition of any importance.

Mr. Webster had hitherto possessed no permanent country residence, excepting his father's farm in New Hampshire, which, in the days when railways were as yet unknown, was at a rather inconvenient distance from Boston. In fact, he did not become the sole owner of this property until some years after this period, although he frequently went there. It was a place always full of tender recollections for him. But the farm was a small one, the rural few; and, above all, it was remote from the sea, which always had for him very great attractions. "At Franklin," he used to say, "I can see all in two days."

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It was in the autumn of this year (1824) that he first saw the spot on the southeastern shore of Massachusetts which afterward became his favorite home, and with which his name will be long associated; where, as he often said, he "could go out every day in the year and see something new." This house, situated about a mile from the ocean (which is in full view from it), and surrounded by a farm then embracing one hundred and sixty acres, was the property of Captain John Thomas. The month of August was passed by Mr. and Mrs. Webster and their children at Sandwich. On their way to Boston-Mr. Webster driving his

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wife in a New-England "chaise"-they chanced to take the road which passed by the Thomas farm. As they descended the valley, Mrs. Webster was so much delighted by the quiet repose of this old house under its magnificent elm, and by the general beauty of the scene, that she begged her husband to turn in at the gate and pay a visit to the family. The call ended in their being invited to extend their visit to a few days; and, before they left, an arrangement was made, by which they became, in succeeding summers, regular inmates in the family of Captain Thomas. This continued to be their course of life for several years.

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