indicted for murder and tried in the Superior Court in Grafton County. It is said that the senior counsel abandoned the cause after hearing the evidence, leaving to Mr. Webster the whole burden of summing up to the jury. But it is scarcely needful to trace the precise degree of accuracy with which these several accounts have come down to us, or to determine which of them is to be regarded as his first cause. It is enough to know that, before he left the interior of the State, he had produced an impression which is even now not effaced, and that different counties have contended for the honor of having been the scene of his first effort at the bar.' In the Autobiography, all that he says further, respecting the period of his residence in Boscawen, is embraced in the following short paragraph: "The two years and a half which I spent in Boscawen were devoted to business and study. I had enough of the first to live on, and to afford opportunity for practice and discipline. I read law and history; not without some mixture of other things. These were the days of the Boston Anthology; and I had the honor of being a contributor to that publication. There are sundry reviews written by me, not worth looking up or remembering." But, slight as was the interest which, in 1829, he thought might be attached to these things, they are not to be passed over without mention. His contributions to the Monthly An 1 Although I am unable definitely to assign this honor, I can add to the anecdotes of this period the following account of Mr. Webster's first encounter with Mr. Jeremiah Mason, of Portsmouth, which was given to me by Mr. Mason himself. A man, who had previously held a respectable position in one of the counties where Mr. Webster then practised, was indicted for forgery. Mr. Mason, as the leading counsel in New Hampshire, was sent for, on a special retainer, to defend him. "I had heard," said Mr. Mason, "that there was a young lawyer up there, who was reputed to be a wonderfully able fellow; and was said by the country people to be as black as the ace of spades, but I had never seen him. When they told me that he had prepared the evidence for this prosecution, I thought it well to be careful, especially as the trial was to be conducted by the attorney-general. But when the trial came on, the attorneygeneral was ill, and the prosecutors asked that Webster should be allowed to conduct the case. I assented to this readily, thinking I ought to have an easy time of it; and we were introduced to each other. We went at it, and I soon found that I had no light work on my hands. He examined his witnesses, and shaped his case with so much skill, that I had to exert every faculty I possessed. I got the man off, but it was as hard a day's work as I ever did in my life. There were other transactions behind this one which looked quite as awkward. When the verdict was announced, I went up to the dock, and whispered to the prisoner, as the sheriff let him out, to be off for Canada, and never to put himself within the reach of that young Webster again. From that time forth I never lost sight of Mr. Webster, and never had but one opinion of his powers." thology were four; in 1806, a review of a Treatise on Political Economy, by Tunis Mortman; in 1807, a review of the first volume of Johnson's (New York) Reports, and an article. on the French language; in 1808, a review of Lawe's Treatise on Pleading.' After his father's death, Mr. Webster waited only for his brother's admission to the bar, so that he could relinquish to him the office in Boscawen, and that his mother and sisters might have a protector at hand. He had assumed the burden of his father's debts; and in the autumn of 1807, Ezekiel took charge of the farm on which the family had been left, and succeeded to the law business at Boscawen. From that time the care of their mother and sisters was shared between them. In September of that year, Daniel removed to Portsmouth. He had been admitted as a counsellor of the Superior Court in the preceding May.' Of Mr. Webster's political principles or his connection with political affairs, down to the time of his removal to Portsmouth, it is necessary to say but little, partly because his political principles were very simple, and partly because his connection with political affairs, before the year 1812, was less than is commonly maintained by young American lawyers. I have already intimated that his father, from having served under Washington in the Revolution, was of that class of men who deemed that they could best discharge their duty to their country by following in the footsteps of Washington in civil affairs. These old officers of the Revolution, after their great chief had retired from public life, endeavored to shape their political conduct by the maxims which they believed had been inculcated in his "Farewell Address." That many of these men, scattered through the country, after the formation of the political parties, gravitated into the Federal party; that they tempered its counsels by their moderation and their sober patriotism; that they gave to its opposition to the measures of 1 The Monthly Anthology was published in Boston, from 1804 to 1811. In the Boston Public Library there is a copy of the work, in which the names of the writers are noted. The Anthology was the forerunner of the North American Review, His assumption of his father's debts continued to weigh upon him as a heavy burden for many years. In fact, he did not entirely free himself from it until after he removed to Boston, in 1817.-(Ticknor MSS.) Government, when the Government passed into the hands of their opponents, a consistent adherence to the spirit and pur. poses of the Constitution, and that they prevented some of the excesses to which an opposition is prone, are facts which require now no formal proof. That this was eminently the tone of the New-Hampshire Federalists, no one will doubt who is acquainted with the political history of that State. It was in that New-Hampshire school of Federal politics that Mr. Webster was educated. To this circumstance, as well as to the breadth and comprehensiveness of his intellect, we are to ascribe the fact, that although he entered public life at a period when party spirit was exceedingly virulent, he was never at any time in his whole career a very warm partisan, and never had any great faith in the utility of parties, while he submitted to them as a necessity, and like a wise and practical statesman regulated his coöperation with them as a choice between evils which he could not prevent. In regard to his connection with political affairs before the year 1812, after having indicated the political school in which it may be said he was born and educated, there is little more to be said. For, although before his removal to Portsmouth, he kept up an intelligent interest in public affairs, and although his range of knowledge on such subjects was far greater than that of most educated men at the same period who were much older in years, yet his active participation in politics was very slight, and his concern in the management of party machinery amounted to almost nothing. He did, in 1804, at the request of his friends, when visiting his father from Boston, write a political pamphlet to promote the election of Governor Gilman, the candidate of the Federalists. It was called "An Appeal to Old Whigs;" being, of course, an exhortation to those who had been Whigs in the Revolution. But even then he felt no very strong party. interest in his production.' He also, as he has mentioned, delivered an oration on the fourth of July, at three several times between the period of his leaving college and his removal to Portsmouth. But he 1 He said of it, whimsically enough, a year later, "Last year I wrote a political pamphlet in two days, which I have had the pleasure of seeing kicked about under many tables. But you are one of the very few who know the author of the 'Appeal to the Old Whigs.' Keep the precious secret."-(Letter to his classmate Bingham, January 19, 1806. Cor. respondence, vol. i.) was pressed into this service more on account of his literary and oratorical accomplishments, than on account of his activity or zeal as a politician. None of these discourses are of any importance, excepting in a literary point of view; and, in this respect, all of them that have survived exhibit the growth of his power of expression and an approach to that pure and vigorous English of which he afterward became so great a master. But his political character should not begin to be studied before he wrote the "Rockingham Memorial" in 1812, or at least until the year 1808, when he published a small pamphlet on the Embargo. This chapter, therefore, may be concluded with what he has himself said on the subject of his connection with political affairs prior to 1808: "I have never held office, popular or other, in the government of New Hampshire. My time was always exclusively given to my profession till 1812, when the war commenced. I had occasionally taken part in politi. cal questions, always felt an interest in elections, and contributed my part, I believe, to the political ephemera of the day. Indeed, I always felt an interest in political concerns. My lucubrations for the press go back, I believe, to my sixteenth year. They are, or ought to be, all forgotten, at least, most of them; and all of this early period. "When I visited my father from Boston, in January or February, 1804, a severe political contest was going on between Governor Gilman and Governor Langdon. The friends of the former, and they were my friends, wanted a pamphlet, and I was pressed to write one. I did the deed, I believe, at a single sitting of a winter's day and night. Among other things of a similar kind, it is certainly not despicable. It is called an 66 Appeal to Old Whigs." Like other young men, I made fourth of July orations—at Fryeburg, 1802; at Salisbury, 1805; at Concord, 1806, which was published; and at Portsmouth, 1812, published also. "August, 1812, I wrote the Rockingham Memorial.' It was an antiwar paper of some note in its time. I confess I am pleased to find, on looking at it now, for I do not think I have read it in all the twenty years that have rolled by since I wrote it, that it is of a tone and strain less vulgar than such things are prone to be. "Before this period, I think in 1808, I had written the little pamphlet, lately rescued from oblivion, called 'Considerations on the Embargo Laws.'" 1 Autobiography. CHAPTER IV. 1807-1813. REMOVAL TO PORTSMOUTH-MARRIAGE THE BUCKMINSTERS—MR. CREES. ΟΝ Na Sunday morning in September, 1807, the sexton of the Rev. Dr. Buckminster's church, in Portsmouth, introduced a stranger into the minister's pew, according to the custom of the time. The eldest daughter of the family, on her return from church, observed that "there had been a remarkable person in the pew with her, that he riveted her attention, ⚫ and that she was sure he had a most marked character for goodor for evil." The stranger was Daniel Webster, at the age of twenty-five. His appearance at that time has been thus described, by another lady of the same family, from whom this anecdote is derived: "Slender, and apparently of delicate. organization, his large eyes and massive brow seemed very predominant above the other features, which were sharply cut, refined, and delicate. The paleness of his complexion was heightened by hair as black as the raven's wing." He took lodgings very near Dr. Buckminster's house, and in a short time, says the same lady, "there was no longer a problem connected with him." 1 1 Mrs. E. Buckminster Lee.-(Correspondence, i., p. 438.) |