an impassioned appeal for love of country, in a time when the people as a whole had scarcely outgrown their strong sense of separate, colonial origins.
So shy as a child that he could not stand up in school to speak pieces, Webster won such a reputation for eloquence at the bar that, at the age of 30, he was a member of Congress for New Hampshire, remaining four years, retiring to return to the Boston bar. His income soon rose to $20,000, a great sum in those days, and his reputation became national with his winning of the famous Dartmouth College charter case. In 1816 the New Hampshire legislature changed the charter given by King George III in 1769. The trustees appealed to the United States supreme court, and Webster won the suit on the contention that a state is forbidden to alter contracts. The decision was of national importance, because it asserted the authority of the Federal government over the states, and was a blow at the theory of states' rights. As a criminal lawyer, Webster won celebrity in his defense of a man named Knapp, on the charge of murder. In his summing up of the defense occurs the famous passage on conscience that has been declaimed by three generations of school-boys. The strength of Webster's arguments always lay in their being based on fundamental moral principles, whether they were delivered before the bar or in public orations. In this early period he made a trio of historical orations — one in 1820 on the second centennial of the landing on Plymouth Rock, one on the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument and one on the deaths of Adams and Jefferson, that served still further to place himself and his broad patriotism before the American public. Such a man could not escape the duty of public service. In 1823 he was again in Congress, this time for Massachusetts. In 1828 he was chosen to represent Massachusetts in the senate, and there he remained until his death in 1852, except while serving as secretary of state under Harrison and Tyler.
On many political questions of the day Webster seemed to vacillate, but, in perspective, he is seen to have been consistent to one principle. A free-trader, he became a protectionist on the ground, that since protection had been established, it must be maintained or business built up under it would be demoralized. Although opposed to the extension of slavery, he joined Clay in securing the passage of the Missouri Compromise. On the other hand he supported Jackson in the Force Bill which authorized the president to use the army and navy to enforce federal laws in any resisting state. The truth is that he hated nullifier and abolitionist alike, and fought every measure and every opinion which tended to divide North and South. He was concerned only with preserving the Union. As early as the great speech of 1830 he predicted civil war as the inevitable result of these sectional interests, but he helped to delay the conflict until the federal government was strong enough to meet the shock. In the meantime he sowed seeds of national patriotism broadcast by his impassioned eloquence and unanswerable logic of history. His uncompromising attitude on this question probably lost him the presidency, for abolitionist sentiment was sweeping over the north resistlessly, and must soon have swept him from the public arena where he had, for a generation, been a colossal figure. He died on Oct. 24, 1852, while serving as secretary of state under President Fillmore. Consult Life by E. P. Whipple and Great Speeches by Henry Cabot Lodge.
Webster, Noah, an American scholar, was born at Hartford, Conn., Oct. 16, 1758. He studied at Yale College and served in the militia under his father in the Revolutionary War. While a teacher at Goshen, N. Y., he published Grammatical Institutes of the English Language. He published books and lectured on political subjects, taught an academy at Philadelphia, practiced law at Hartford, edited a magazine and a newspaper, and wrote pamphlets on epidemic diseases, banking and international law. He was almost the first American to see the importance of Winthrop's Journal to the history of New England, editing and publishing it. He also was influential as a pamphleteer and a political publicist in the people's discussions of the federal constitution of the new nation. In 1807 he published a grammar and began his American Dictionary of the English Language; but decided to fit himself more perfectly for the work, and spent ten years in the study of the origin of the English language and its connection with other languages. Seven years were then spent on the dictionary, including a visit to Europe to consult books and scholars at Paris and at Cambridge. The dictionary was published in 1828 in two volumes in the United States, followed sooa by an edition of 3,000 copies in England. It has long been a standard dictionary of the English language, and has passed through many editions and revisions. More than 300,000 copies have been sold yearly, and the income from the book still is about $25,000 a year. As celebrated as the dictionary is Webster's Spelling-Book, which was used for many years in every school in the land, and of which more than 70,000,000 copies have been sold. Webster also published a History of the United States. He was one of the founders of Amherst College and a member of the Massachusetts legislature while residing in Amherst, and of the Connecticut legislature when living at New Haven. He died on May 28, 1843.
