DEDICATION OF THE STATUE
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OFFICIAL PROCEEDINGS ~f^' ^^^^ ^''^"
AT THE i .
I LIERARY,
DEDICATION OF THE STATUE
OF
DANIEL WEBSTER
AT
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE,
On the 17th clay of June,
1886.
PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNOR AND COUNCIL.
MANCHESTER:
JOHN B. CLARKE, PUBLIC PRINTER.
t886.
3Y TP^^'^^^^^
Oiiice bept.
\JH RA
Executive Council Chamber,
Concord, June 10, 1886.
Ordered, That the seeretai;y of state be authorized to employ a sten-
oo-raphei- to report the official proceedings to take place at the
dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, on the 17th instant,
and to procure the publication of three thousand copies of said
report.
Attest :
A. B. THOMPSON,
Secretary of State.
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS.
THE WEBSTER STATUE AjS^D ITS HISTORY.
BY B. W. BALL.
We have as a nation reached a period of commemora-
tion of our historic men. Although our national exist-
ence involves but a single century, still that century
in connection with the colonial period has been illus-
trated by a long list of memorable Americans. The cap-
itol at Washington and the various state capitols are
beino- transformed into valhallas for commemorative pur-
poses. These edifices and their precincts, together with
the city parks of our great cities, are the appropriate sites
for the erection of memorial statues of the illustrious
dead, and for this purpose they are being rapidly util-
ized. Central Park, ^ew York, conspicuously so. The
nation is now amply able, by reason of its wealth and its
multitude of artists and persons of fine aesthetic culture,
to fitly honor its gr6at men departed. As has been said,
brief as has been our national existence we have plenty
of subjects for the commemorative sculptor and artist in
stone, bronze, or pigments. All the periods of American
history, from that of discovery and exploration down to
the present time, have abounded in such subjects. Prim-
6 STATUE OF DANIEL AVEBSTER.
itive Greece, in city and country both, was literally pop-
ulous with statues in stone and bronze of its famous men.
Primitive Athens, in particular, was full of carven forms
" that mocked the eternal dead
In mai'ble immortality."
No objects are so impressive as the statues of great
men, and none exert so salutary and potent an influence
on the younger generations. In all the metropolitan
cities of Europe the traveler is confronted by memorial
statues of the great men whose words and deeds have
been a part of his education ; and already in our chief
American cities the eye is attracted by the carven sem-
blances of the most famous men of this new world repub-
lic. Central Park, New York, as the pleasure-ground of
that polyglot, many-nationed metropolis, is appropriately
enough hospitable to the memorial statues of the great
men of all countries, whether European or American.
" In that free Pantheon of sun and air,"
as Bayard Taylor calls it, a statue of the world-poet,
Shakespeare, who, by the way, belongs to this American
division of the great English-speaking world as much as
he does to the home branch of our race, was dedicated
in 1872.
" There in his ri<>;ht he stands !
No breadth of earth-dividing seas can bar
The breeze of morning or the morning star
From visiting our lands."
What Shakespeare was in the domain of poetry and
the imagination, that was "Webster in the field of states-
mansliip.
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 7
Thus much by way of general remark on the subject
of permanent memorials of historic men.
The centennial anniversary of the birth of Webster,
which occurred January 18, 1882, was generally cele-
brated throughout the country. The Webster legend, so
to speak, was everywhere revived. After an interval of
thirty most eventful years, full of change, the country
seemed again to have fallen under the spell of Webster's
genius. The younger generation, to whom he was
purely a historic character, had an opportunity to listen
to eloquent speakers who had lived in Webster's day,
and who could testify of their own personal knowledge
to his marvelous influence and power. Webster clubs
and Webster historical societies, which had been organ-
ized to keep his memory fresh, everywhere caused the
occasion to be fitly celebrated by public meetings and
memorial addresses. The Webster Club at Concord,
]Sr. H., observed the centennial anniversary of Webster's
nativity b}^ a public meeting at White's Opera House.
The orator of the occasion was Col. John H. George.
His address was noteworthy among the numerous ad-
dresses which were delivered, because it called the atten-
tion of the people of New Hampshire to the fact that the
native state of Webster was without a single memorial
statue of her greatest son.
The following is the passage in Col. George's address
which, by eloquently pointing out the above deficiency,
was the initial step in the history of the erection of the
Webster statue, now so conspicuous an object in the
State-house grounds of his native state : " There is a
bronze statue of Webster," said Col. George, " by Pow-
8 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTEK.
ers, which was lost at sea. It lies at the bottom of the
Atlantic Ocean, somewhere in the vicinity of the tele-
graphic cable, as we are told. A duplicate of it is stand-
ing in the state-house grounds in Boston. Of this lost
statue Hawthorne remarks in his 'Italian Notes': 'There
is an expression of quiet, solid, massive strength in the
whole figure ; a deep, pervading energy which any exag-
geration of gesture would lessen and lower. He looks
like a pillar of state. The face is very grand, very Web-
ster, stern and awful, because he is in the act of meeting
a crisis, yet with the warmth of a great heart glowing
through it. Happy is "Webster to have been so truly and
adequately sculptured. Happy the sculptor in such a
subject, with which no idealization of a demi-god could
have supplied him. Perhaps the statue at the bottom of
the sea will be cast up in some future age, when the pres-
ent race of man is forgotten, and, if so, that fiir posterity
will look up to us as a grander race than we find our-
selves.' Apropos of this extract, we are reminded that
the state of Webster's nativity lacks to this day a monu-
mental statue of her greatest son. It is a lack that
sliould no longer be permitted to disgrace us. While
Boston and New York have erected on most conspicuous
sites colossal bronze statues to the memory of Webster as
among the worthiest of great Americans, to stand carved
or cast in enduring material for the inspection of pos-
terity, this his native state has erected no monument
illustrative of her appreciation of the services of her
ablest son in the cause of constitutional liberty. There
should be a monumental statue here at the state capital,
and also at his birthplace, where his form would most
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. »
appropriately stand, sweeping with its gaze the broad
intervals which he ].oved so well, and so often frequented
for rest and recreation during his arduous career as a
public man. His sublime form would be the most appro-
priate genius loci of our sublime local scenery."
It was these eloquent words which, falling under the
eye of Mr. Cheney, determined him to carry into effect a
purpose which he had long entertained of presenting to
his native state a statue of her greatest citizen, whom
Mr. Cheney not only admired in common with the rest
of his countrymen as a great statesman, but whom he
also loved as a personal friend who had interested him-
self in his own welfare as a business man. The commis-
sion to execute the statue was at first given to the well-
known Boston sculptor, the late Martin Milmore, but he
died before the completion of his model. Ills brother
Joseph was employed to finish the work, but he too was
prevented by death from putting the finishing touch to
the model. Thus the business of carrying into effect Mr.
Cheney's plan had to be commenced de novo. Meantime,
to secure the final consummation of his plan, and pre-
vent its failure in any contingency, Mr. Cheney placed
its execution in the hands of three trustees, viz., Hon.
George W. Is^esmith, John M. Hill, Esq., and Col. John
H. George, by the following deed of trust : —
Whereas, It is now and long has been the desire and intention of
the inidersigned, Benjamin Pierce Cheney, formerly of Hillsborough,
in the county of Hillsborough and state of New Hampshire, and now
of Boston, in the county of Suffolk and commonwealth of Massachu-
setts, to procure a bronze statue of Daniel Webster, and, with the
permission of the state, to erect the same upon a fitting pedestal
with permanent granite foundations, in the state-house yard in Con-
cord, Xew Hampshire ; and
10 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
Whereas, Unexpected delays have occiu-red in can-ying such inten-
tion into effect, and it is the wish of said Cheney to i^rovide against
the defeat of said intention by any contingency incident to the uncer-
tainty of life or otherwise ; and
Whereas, A contract has been negotiated with Thomas Ball, wha
is now in Europe, for furnishing said statue for the sum of $8,000,
with the cost of transportation added, to be cnmj^leted, if practicable,
as early as November, 1885 ;
Now, for the purpose of carrying the intention aforesaid into full
effect, this contract between said Cheney, party of the first part, and
George W. Nesmith, of Franklin, and John M. Hill and John H.
George, both of Concord, and all in the county of Merrimack in the
state of New Hampshire, parties of the second part, witnesseth :
The first party, in consideration of the agreements of the second
parties, herein contained, will, as soon as shall be practicable, pro-
cure and i^hxce in the hands of the second parties a bronze statue of
Daniel Webster, which shall be placed upon a suitable pedestal, rest-
ing on a permanent granite foundation, in the yard of the state house
in said Concord, and said statue is never to be removed from said
location. After it shall be comjjleted and erected as aforesaid, it
shall be jjresented by said second parties to the state of Webster's
birtli, to the care and custody of which state it shall thus be forever
committed, with such ceremonies as shall seem best adapted to per-
petuate the memory and honor the patriotism of New Hampshire's
greatest son and our country's foremost statesman. If there shall
be any failure to cai'ry into effect and complete all of the above
agreements and intentions before the decease of said first party, it is
directed and agreed that the same may then be carried into full eiiect
and completed by said parties of the second part, at the expense of
the first party or his estate.
In case of the death or incapacity- of any of the trustees herein
named, before the completion of said statue and its erection, and the
conveyance to the state as aforesaid, the surviving trustees or trus-
tee may carry into effect this agreement ; or they may, if they pre-
fer, appoint some suitable person or persons to fill the vacancy or
vacancies thus occurring, who, with such surviving trustees or trus-
tee, may perform the agreements of the second parties herein con-
tained. And said second parties, in consideration of the aforesaid
agreements of the first party, accept the trust above specified, and
on the procurement of said statue by said first party, or by his estate,
and its delivery with said pedestal and said foundation to said second
parties, will cause the same to be erected as above provided, and
will convey the same, when so erected, to the state of New Ilamp-
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 11
shire, in accordance with the desire and intention of the first party,
as above set forth.
In witness whereof said parties have hereto interchangeably set
their hands and seals this 13th day of February, 1885.
At this point, the eminent American sculptor, Thomas
Ball, who was at the time a resident of Florence, Italy,
was commissioned by cable to model the statue, being-
governed as to its proportions and characteristics by the
statue of Franklin in City Hall yard, Boston. The statue
was to be completed and ready for shipment in season for
its dedication on January 18 of the current year, which
was the anniversary of "Webster's birth. But linally
the dedication of it was postponed to the seventeenth of
June, the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, with
which Webster had forever linked his name by his Bun-
ker Hill Monument addresses. The statue was cast in
Munich, so famous for its exquisite bronze castings. It
was regarded as so perfect a work of art, that it was
placed on exhibition in the Bavarian capital by general
request. The Jovine proportions of Webster's head and
form of course made the statue of him the cynosure of
an admiring public gaze, as well as its exquisite work-
manship. There was only one other statue in Germany
at the time equally noteworthy, on account of its impos-
ing and magniiicent proportions and aspect, viz., that of
the poet Goethe, at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, who iiad the
same commanding virile beauty which characterized
Webster. He, too, like Webster, struck all beholders
with a thrill of admiration by his personal grandeur, so
much so, that the iirst IS'apoleon on seeing him exclaimed^
" You are a man !"
12 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
The figure is eight feet in height and weighs two
thousand pounds : it stands upon a hght bronze base,
the dimensions of which are thirty-two by thirty inches.
Webster is arrayed in an old-style dress suit. His ample
coat is closed around him by the two central buttons. It
has broad lapels, and its large and rolling collar discloses a
plain shirt bosom. Tlie bottom of the vest is seen below
the coat, and the trousers are full and flowing. The neck
is dressed with a stock, with a broad, turned-down collar.
The arms are at the sides, the thumb and index finger of
the right hand being opened, with the remaining fingers
partially closed. The left hand holds a manuscript partly
opened. The head represents Webster in his closing
years, and the features are said by those who knew him
to be extremely lifelike and correct. The pose is massive
and commanding, and is pronounced as unexceptionable.
The head is slightlv turned to the right, the face is smooth,
and the expression is of the highest intellectual character.
In the rear of the right leg is an irregular pile of books
surmounted by manuscript.
The pedestal was cut from the finest of Concord granite
by the Granite Railway Company of this city ; Henry E.
Sheldon is agent, and Joseph H. Pearce superintendent.
The plans for the pedestal were drawn by John A. Fox,
the well-known Boston a.rchitect, and the work was exe-
cuted under his direction. The base is a single stone
about nine feet square, weighing eleven tons, and show-
ins: <^'iit \\ork of some six inches above o-round. The
plinth is six and one half feet square, four feet high, and
weighs thirteen tons. It has beveled edges and a series
of finely cut moldings. The die is four and one quarter
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 13
feet square and five and one quarter feet liigh, and taper-
ing toward the top. On the front are the words, cut in
polished letters : —
DANIEL
WEBSTER
On the other sides are panels of fine government bronze of a light
shade. On the north one the coat-of-arms of New Hampshire and
the legend,
BORN
AT SAIJSBURY, NEW HAMPSHIRE,
JANUARY 18, 1782.
On the south tablet is the coat-of-arms of the state of Massachu-
setts and the inscription,
DIED AT
MARSHFIEI.D, MASSACHUSETTS,
OCTOBER 24, 1852.
On the west side is the following : —
PRESENTED BY
BENJAMIN PIERCE CHENEY
TO THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE,
JANUARY 18, 1886.
The whole height of the base and statue is seventeen
and one eighth feet, and the total cost was |12,000.
The legislature, by the following resolves, authorized
the governor and council to select the site for the
statue : —
A Joint Resolution Granting a Tract of Land for the Loca-
tion OF A Monument of Danieu Webster.
Be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives in General
Court convened :
Section 1. That there be granted and set apart forever a tract of
land not exceeding hvo rods square, in some convenient part of the
State-house yard in Concord, to be selected by the governor and
council, suitable for the permanent erection of a bronze monument
of Daniel Webster, to be donated and furnished by Benjamin Pierce
Cheney, Esq., of Boston.
14 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
Sect. 2. That the custody and future ijrotective care of said
monument shall be assumed and forever hereafter remain and be
vested in the governor and council of this state for the time being,
-or In a board of trustees of their appointment.
[Approved August 8, 1883.]
On February 11, 1886, the governor and council
passed the following : —
Voted, That in accordance with chapter 125, laws of 1883, the jjlan
. of the location of the Webster statue submitted to the board to-day
be and is hereby approved ; and that a committee consisting of the
governor and Councilor Kimball be appointed to prepare the site
for the reception of the statue, and that the plan of the same be
deposited in the office of the secretary of state.
The legislature at its last session made provision for
the reception and dedication of the statue. On July 8,
General Oilman Marston, of Exeter, oifered in the house
a joint resolution providing lor the appointment of a
joint committee of the senate and house of representa-
tives, with authority to make arrangements for the recep-
tion and dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster,
presented to the state by Benjamin Pierce Cheney.
August 28, the house judiciary committee reported the
resolution, which was passed under a suspension of the
rules, and subsequently the same day was passed by the
senate.
The followino; is the resolution : —
Joint Resolution Relative to the Reception and Dedication
OF the Statue of Daniel Webster.
Resolved by the Senate and House of lieprescntalives in General
Goxirt convened :
Tliat a joint comniitti'c. consisting of five members of the house,
of wliich the s])eaker sliall be one, and such as the senate may join,
be appointed with authority to make proper arrangements for the
PRELIMINAKY PROCEEDINGS. 15
reception and dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, to be pre-
sented to the state of New Hampshire by Benjamin Pierce Cheney,
and that the necessary expenses authorized by said committee be
audited and approved by the governor and council, and paid from the
state treasurJ^
■ [Approved August 28, 1885.]
The same day the speaker announced the special com-
mittee on the part of the house as follows : Messrs. Mars-
ton of Exeter, Hutchins of Laconia, McDufFee of Roch-
ester, Aldrich of Littleton, and Stone of Andover ; and
the senate appointed on their part Senators Pike, Kent,
Chamberlain, Bingham, and Hinds. The location of the
statue was fixed by the governor and council.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES.
THE PROCESSION.
The procession moved up Main street about half past
twelve o'clock, and returned one hour later. The streets
along which it passed were lined with people, and the fine
appearance made by the ISTational Guard, the Amoskeag
Veterans, and the Manchester Cadets, called forth hearty
applause. General Ayling's efficiency as chief marshal
aided in making the parade a fine success, and his staff
ably seconded his efforts. The brigade returned to camp
after the line of march was ended, and the Manchester
companies repaired to Phenix Hall, where they dined.
The line of march and the organizations and guests were
as follows : —
LINE OF MARCH.
Up Main street to Penacook street ; countermarch on Main street to
Washington street; throngli Washington street to State street;
down State street to Thorndi]<e street ; through Thorndike street
to Main street ; up Main street to the state-house park.
OFFICERS.
General A. D. Ayling, Concord, chief marshal.
Colonel Solon A. Carter, Concord, chief of staff.
Aides. — Gen. John AV. Sturtevant, Keene ; Gen. Marshall C.
Wcntworth, Jackson; Gen. George II. Calley, Plymouth; Col.
Converse J. Smith, Major Iliram F. Gerrish, James 11. French,
Arthur C. Stewart, Concord; Gen. Solon A. Wilkinson, Keene ;
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. ^ 17
Gen. Gilman B. Johnson, Col. Rnfus P. Staiiiels, Concord; Col.
Frank G. Clarke, Peterborough; Howard L. Porter, Dr. F. A.
Stillino-s, John B. Gilman, Everett W. Willard, William F.
Thayer, James Minot, William F. Challis, William M. Mason,
Edward P. Comins, Concord.
FIRST BRIGADE N. H. NATIONAL GUARD.
Brig. Gen. Daniel M. White, Peterborough, commanding; Lieut.
Col. George W. Gould, Manchester, assistant adjutant-general;
Major Frank W. Russell, Plymouth, assistant inspector-general ;
Major William H. Cheever, Nashua, inspector of rifle practice ;
Lieut. Col. George Cook, Concord, medical director; Major
Daniel B. Donovan, Concord, judge-advocate; Capt. Louis C.
Mei-rill, Manchester, quartermaster ; Capt. Willis D.Thompson,
Concord, commissary; Capt. Richard M. Scammon, Exeter, Capt.
Daniel H. Gienty, Concord, aides-de-camp.
NON-COMMISSIONED STAFF.
Harley B. Roby, Concord, brigade sergeant-major; Charles A.
Hall, Concord, brigade quartermaster-sergeant; George M. Davis,
Manchester, brigade hospital steward; John T. Fiske, Concord,
brigade color-sergeant; Henry A. Brown, Penacook, brigade
bugler.
THIRD REGIMENT.
Third Regiment Band, of Concord.
FIELD AND STAFF.
Col. J. N. Patterson, Concord; Lieut. Col. True Sanborn, Jr., Chi-
chester; Maj. Nathan H. Randlett, Lebanon.
Fred S. Hall, Rumney, adjutant; Harry B. Cilley, Concord, quarter-
master ; George R. Leavitt, Laconia, paymaster ; Irving A. Wat-
son, Concord, surgeon ; Frank T. Moffett, Littleton, assistant
surgeon; Daniel C. Roberts, Concord, chaplain.
HONORARY STAFF.
Col. J. E. Pecker, Concord; Col. F. C. Churchill, Lebanon; Col.
George H. Stowell, Clai-emont; Col. D. C. Jewell, Suncook; Col.
C. H. Greenleaf, Franconia; Col. W. S. Pillsbury, Derry ; Col.
O. P. Patten, Kingston; Col. W. H. Stinson, Dunbarton ; Major
C. F. Hildreth, Suncook; Col. C. J. Smith, Concord; Col. F. E.
Kaley, Milford.
18 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
NOK-COMMISSIONED STAFF.
Robert H. Rolfe, Concord, sergeant-major; ^'^'i^iara O. Stevens,
Franklin Falls, quartermaster-sergeant; Arthur M. Dodge, Tilton,
commissarj--sergeant : J. Henry Storj', Laconia, hospital steward ;
James F. Clark, Concord, drvnn major; Henry G. Blaisdell, Con-
cord, bandmaster; Arthur F. Nevers, Concord, deputy band-
master.
LINE OFFICERS.
Company A, New London: William A. Messer, captain; Willard
Reed, first lieutenant ; Baxter Gay, second lieutenant.
Company F, Littleton : John T. Simpson, captain ; Frank C. Wil-
liams, first lieutenant ; Henrj- E. Bartlott, second lieutenant.
Comjjany C, Concord: Edward H. Dixon, captain; Charles P.
Hadley, first lieutenant; John E. Gove, second lieutenant.
Company D, Pittsfield : Williaiu A. Yeaton, captain ; Walter Lang-
maid, first lieutenant ; Forest F. Hill, second lieutenant.
ComiiauA* G, Lebanon: Chai'les H. Clough, captain: Eugene S.
Downes, first lieutenant; George A. Freeto, second lieutenant.
Compau}' K, Wolfeborough : Josejih Lewando, captain ; Charles L.
Home, first lieutenant.
Company E, Plymouth: George H. Colbj-, captain; Erastus B.
Dearborn, first lieutenant; Henry S. Arris, second lieutenant.
Company H, Franklin Falls : George N. Cheever, captain ; Amos S.
Ripley, first lieutenant: Hollis K. Smith, second lieutenant.
FIRST REGIMENT.
First Regiment Band, of Manchester.
FIELD AND STAFF.
Col. John B. Hall, Manchester; Lieut. Col. G. INI. L. Lane, ]\Ianehes-
ter; Maj. Patrick A. Devine, INIanchester.
John Gannon, Jr., Manchester, adjutant; William G. Mason, Man-
chester, quartermaster ; Hervey M. Bennett, Manchester, paymas-
ter; William M. Parsons, INIanchester, surgeon; James Sullivan,
Manchester, assistant surgeon.
NON-COMMISSIONED STAFF. ^
Louis Stevens, Manchester, sergeant-nuijor ; A. E. J. Hiud, ]\Ian-
chester, hospital steward ; Bart. Gannon, Manchester, commissary-
sero-eant; H. D. Gordon, Manchester, bandmaster: F. TI. Pike,
Manchester, drum major.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 19
LINE OFFICERS.
€om2:)any A, Dover: G. H. Demeritt, captain ; M. J. Gallio-an, first
lieutenant : J. H. Ingi-aham, second lieutenant.
Company E, Manchester : F. W. McAllister, captain ; O. I. Ellsworth,
first lieutenant : F. AV. Tebbetts, second lieutenant.
Company B, Manchester: D. F. Shea, captain; E. F. Bagley, first
lieutenant: J. F. Gleason, second lieutenant.
Company 1), Exeter: A. F. Cooper, captain; G. E. Warren, first
lieutenant; A. N. Dow, second lieutenant.
Company F, Derry : R. W. Pillsbury, captain; J. E. Webster, first
lieutenant; J. E. Fitzgerald, second lieutenant.
Company H, Great Falls : J. Mack, captain ; William J. Andrews,
first lieutenant ; C. W. Willey, second lieutenant.
Company C, Goffstown : L. S. Bidwell, captain ; S. H. Balch, first
lieutenant; G. E. Whitney, second lieutenant.
Company K, Manchester: J. H. Wales, Jr., captain: P. H. 0"Mal-
ley, first lieutenant; A. F. Eaton, second lieutenant.
Drum Cordis.
HIGH SCHOOL CADETS OF MANCHESTER.
(ieorge L. Fox, captain; Minot O. Simons, first lieutenant; Lewis
Crockett, second lieutenant.
Manchester War Veterans Drum Corps.
SECOND REGIMENT.
Second Regiment Band, of Nashua.
FIELD AXD STAFF.
Col. Elbridge J. Copp, Nashua; Lieut. Col. Albert W. Metcalf,
Keene; Maj. Jason E. Tolles, Nashua.
William E. Spaulding, Nashua, adjutant; George P. Kimball,
Nashua, quartermaster; Ashton W. Rounsevel, Newport, paymas-
ter; George W. Flagg, Keene, surgeon ; William H. Nute, Farm-
ington, assistant surgeon; George W. Grover, Nashua, chaplain.
NOX-COMMISSIONED STAFF.
Charles E. Faxon, Nashua, sergeant-major; Edward :\1. Hunter,
Newport, (luartermaster-sergeant ; Charles A. Roby, Nashua, com-
missary-sergeant : Cliarles G. Farrar, Keene, hospital steward ;
Frank E. Jackman, Nashua, drum major: Dana P. Barker, Hills-
borough, color-sergeant; Willard A. Cummings, Nashua, band-
master.
20 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
LINE OFFICERS.
Comi)any C, Winchester : Amos Lawrence, captain ; Charles D.
Seaver, first lieutenant ; Henrj- C. Tenney, second lieutenant.
Company I, Nashua : Edwin H. Parmenter, cajjtain ; Eugene H.
Saunders, first lieutenant; Willis H. Goodspeed, second lieutenant.
Company F, Farmington : Eugene W. Emerson, caj^tain ; Charles 11.
Pitman, first lieutenant; Charles W. Leighton, second lieutenant.
Company E, Rochester: Isaac D. Piercy, captain ; Fred L. Chesley,
first lieutenant ; Horatio L. Cate, second lieutenant.
Company D, Newj^ort: Fred W. Cheney, captain; Ira Stowell, first
lieutenant; Bela Nettleton, second lieutenant.
Company K, Hillsborough : Henry P. Whitaker, captain ; Leander
Emery, first lieutenant; Loren E. Nichols, second lieutenant.
Comi^any H, Keene : .Terry P. Wellman, captain; Frank Chapman,
first lieutenant ; Elbridge A. Shaw, second lieutenant.
Company G, Keene : Francis O. Nims, captain ; Edward P. Kimball,
first lieutenant ; Charles W. Starkey, second lieutenant.
ARTILLERY.
First Battery, of Manchester, Capt. S. S. Piper commanding. Se-
nior first lieutenant, Edward H. Currier; junior first lieutenant,
Silas R. Wallace; second lieutenant, John A. Barker.
CAVALRY.
Company A, of Peterborough : Ervin H. Smith, captain ; Charles
B. Davis, first lieutenant; James E. Saunders, second lieutenant.
OTHER ORGANIZATIONS, AND GUESTS.
Highland Band, of Lake Village.
AMOSKEAG VETERANS OF MANCHESTER.
Lewis Simons, major; John B. Abbott, adjutant; Alfred G. Fair-
banks, quartermaster; Charles L. Harmon, paymaster; Dr. Emil
Custer, surgeon ; Dr. George D. Towne, assistant surgeon ; Rev.
C. W. Ileizer, chaplain; Henry Robinson, judge-advocate ; Ira A.
Moore, quartermaster-sergeant; George E. Hall, sergeant-major;
Dr. II. C. Canney, Edward L. Kimball, standard-bearers.
Company A: E. F. Trow, captain: A. T. Pierce, first lieutenant;
B. F. Clark, second lieutenant.
Company B: Moses AVadleigh, captain; David Wadsworth, first
lieutenant; George A. Leighton, second lieutenant.
Company C: Captain Hiram Forsaith in command.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 21
MANCHESTER CADETS.
F. L. Downs, captain ; G. N. Bui-i:)ee, first lieutenant; E. T. Knowl-
ton, second lieutenant.
THE STAFF OF GOVERNOR CURRIER.
Maj. Gen, Augustus D. Ayling, Concord, adjutant-general; Brig.
Gen. Elbert Wheeler, Nashua, inspector-general ; Brig. Gen.
Charles Williams, Manchester, quartermaster-general ; Brig. Gen.
George W. Pierce, Winchester, surgeon-general ; Brig. Gen. Philip
Carpenter, Lancaster, judge-advocate-general ; Brig. Gen. Frank
T. Brown, Whitefield, commissary-general ; Col. Frank E. Kaley,
Milford, Col. Hiram H. Dow, Conway, Col. George G. Davis,
Marlborough, Col. Alfred A. Collins, Danville, aides-de-camp.
GOV. CURRIER AND GUESTS OF THE STATE IN CARRIAGES.
Gov. Moody Currier, of Manchester; Hon. George W. Nesmith, of
Franklin; B. P. Cheney, Esq., of Boston; Rev. Samuel C. Bart-
lett, 1). D., of Hanover.
Gen. Gilman Marston, of Exeter, chairman of the legislative com-
mittee ; Gov. George D. Roljinson, of Chicopee, Mass. ; Hon. John
A. Bingham, of Ohio, ex-minister to JajJan.
Adjt. Gen. Dalton, Lieut. Gen. A. T. Holt, and Col. Whipple, of
Gov. Robinson's staff.
Col. Rockwell, Col. Currier, and Col. Stearns, of Gov. Robinson's
staff.
Gov. Daniel B. Hill, of New York; W. G. Rice, the governor's pri-
vate secretary ; Hon. Robert A. Maxwell, superintendent of the
insurance department of New York ; Hon. Frank Jones, of Ports-
mouth.
Hon. Harry Bingham, of Littleton, of the legislative committee;
Hon. John Wentworth, of Chicago, Hon. William E. Chandler, of
Concord.
Hon. Chester Pike, of Cornish, of the legislative committee ; Gov.
Samuel E. Pingree, of Hartford, Vt., Gov. Frederick A. Robie, of
Gorham, Me., Lieut. Gov. Oliver Ames, of North Easton, Mass.
Hon. Edgar Aldrich, of Littleton, of the legislative committee;
Charles C. Coffin, Esq., of Boston, Hon. Charles Levi Woodbury,
of Boston, Judge T. P. Redtield, of the A^ermont supreme court.
Hon. Henry O. Kent, of Lancaster, naval officer of the port of Bos-
ton; Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, of Boston, ex-Gov. Alexander H.
Rice, of Boston.
22 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
George W. Stone, Esq., of Andover, of the legislative committee;
Hon. George B. Loring, of Boston, Hon. George A. Bruce, of
Somerville, Mass., B. F. Ayer, Esq., of Chicago.
Hon. W. II. W. Hinds, of Milford, of the legislative committee ;
Hon. Mellen Chamberlain, of Boston; Hon. A. E. Pillsbury, pres-
ident of the Massachnsetts senate; Hon. J. Q. A. Brackett,
speaker of the Massachusetts house of representatives.
Hon. "William H. Chamberlain, of Keene, of the legislative com-
mittee; Judge Daniel Clark, of Manchester, Hon. Frank Haven,
of Boston.
Hon. John M. Hill, of Concord, one of the trustees of the statue;
John A. Fox, of Boston, architect of the pedestal ; Gilman Cheney
and son, of Montreal, brother of the donor of the statue.
Ex-U. S. Senator Edward H. Rollins, of Concord; Gen. E. G. Gra-
ham, United States Army; Hon. J. G. Blake, M. D., of Boston.
Ex-U. S. Senator James W. Patterson, of Hanover, Hon. Chai'les
Theodore Russell, of Boston, Hon. Roland G. Usher, of Concord,
Mass., Hon. A. R. Brown, of Boston.
Hon. George A. Mardeh, of Lowell, .Mass. ; Hon. Peter Butler,
assistant U. S. treasurer at Boston; Hon. E. A. Kingsbm-y, of the
Massachusetts house of representatives.
Hon. E. J. Sherman, attorney-general of Massachusetts; Hon. Dan-
iel S. Richardson, of Lowell, Hon. Isaac Bradford, of Boston, Rev.
T. B. Lambert, D. d., chaplain United States Navy.
Hon. Edgar H. Woodman, mayor of Concord; Hon. Hugh O'Brien,
mayor of Boston ; Hon. Frank Burns, mayor of Somerville, INIass. ;
Hon. Peter B. Olney, of Boston.
Judge Edward Bennett, of Boston, W. C. Sliepard, of North Seitu-
ate, Mass., Hon. N. S. Wheeler, of Boston; Hon. Stephen M.
Allen, of Boston, of the Webster Historical Society of Boston.
Hon. Henry B. Pierce, secretary of state of Massachusetts; Hon.
A. A. Folsom, of Boston, superintendent of the Boston & Provi-
dence Railroad ; Nathaniel W. Ladd, Esq., of Boston, secretary of
tlie Webster Historical Society; Rev. AVilliam C. Winslow, histo-
riograjiher of that society.
Hon. G. H. Burleigh, of Boston, N. Stafford, of Boston, Hon. Edwin
Tuck, of Lowell; Hon. Luther R. Marsli, president of the New
York park commission and Weljster's New York hiw partner ; Hon.
Edwin T. Thomas, of Boston.
Ex-Gov. Berry, of Bristol, and ex-Govs. Frederick Smyth, James A.
Weston, and Person C. Cheney, of INIanchester.
Kx-Govs. Benjamin F. Prescott, of Epping, and Samuel W\ Hale, of
Keene, ex-U. S. Senator Bainbridge Wadleigli.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 23
Hon. W. H. H. Allen, of Claremont, Hon. Isaac W. Smith, of Man-
chester, Hon. Lewis W. Clark, of Manchester, and Hon. A. P.
Carjienter, of Concord, judges of the supreme court.
Hon. Isaac N. Blodgett, of Franklin, and Hon. George A. Bingham,
of Littleton, judges of the sujjreme coiut ; Hon. Jonathan E. Sar-
gent, of Concord, and Hon. Jeremiah Smith, of Dover, ex-judges
of the supreme court.
Hon. William L. Foster, of Concord, Hon. Charles R. Morrison, of
Manchester, Hon. Charles W. Woodman, of Dover, and Hon.
William S. Ladd, of Lancaster, ex-judges of the sui^reme court.
Ex-Congi-essmen Daniel Marcy, of Portsmouth, Ellery A. Hibbard,
of Laconia, James F. Briggs, of Manchester, Joshua G. Hall, of
Dover.
Congressman Martin A. Haynes, of Lake Village ; ex-Congressmen
Aaron F. Stevens, of Nashua, Samuel N. Bell, of Manchester.
Mason W. Tappan, of Bradford.
Ex-Congressmen Ossian Ray and Jacob Benton, of Lancaster; Hon.
John G. Sinclair, of Orlando, Fla., Hon. Frank A. McKean, of
Nashua.
Col. Martin V. B. Edgerly, of Manchester, Hon. Charles W. Talpey,
of Farraington, Hon. Mortier L. Morrison, of Peterboi-ough, Hon.
Peter Upton, of Jaffrey, Hon. John W. Jewell, of Straftbrd, mem-
bers of Gov. Currier's council.
THE UNVEILING.
The Manchester Cadets marched up the entrance path,
followed by the Highland Band and Amoskeag Veterans,
and formed on either side of the walk. To the strains of
" Hail to the Chief" the procession marched through the
ranks, led by Governor Currier, who was followed by the
orator of the day and distinguished guests. They were
greeted with applause and cheers by the audience, which
by this time filled the grand stand, the state-house park,
and adjoining streets as far as could be seen from the
speakers' stand.
At two o'clock p. M. the assembly was called to order
24 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
by Gen. Gilman Marston, chairman of the legislative
committee, who announced the following
OFFICERS OF THE DAY.
President. — Hon. George W. Nesmith, of Franklin.
Vice-Presidents. — Gen. Gilman Marston, of Exeter, and Hon.
Harry Bingham, of Littleton.
Secretaries. — Hon. Henry O. Kent, of Lancaster, and George W.
Stone, Esq., of Andover.
General Marston then requested all present to observe
silence while prayer was being oftered.
Prayer by Rt. Rev. William W. Kiles, D. D., Bishop
of the Diocese of ]S"ew Hampshire : —
Our Father, Avho art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy
kino-dom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give
us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we
forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temp-
tation, but deliver us from evil; for thine is the kingdom, and
the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
Almio-hty God, who in the former time leddest our fathers forth
into a wealthy place, and didst set their feet in a large room, give
thy grace, we humbly beseech thee, to us, their cliildren, that we
may alwaj'S ap]H-ove ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and
o-lad to do thv will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound
learning, and pure manners. Defend our liberties, preseiTC our
unity. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride
and arrogancy, and from every evil Avay. Incline the hearts of em-
ployers and of those whom they employ to mutual forbearance, fair-
ness, and good will. Fashion into one happy people the multitudes
brought hither, of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the
spirit of wisdom those whom we intrust in thy name with the author-
ity of governance, to the end that there be peace at home, and that
we keep our place among the nations of the earth. In the time of
prosperity temper our self-confidence witli thankfulness, and in the
day of trouble suffer not our trust in thee to fail.
In particular Ave invoke thine especial blessing upon this state in
Avhich we dwell, and upon the people thereof, with the civil authori-
ties and upon all those likewise who have gone forth from these their
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 25
homes. Imbue us with a spirit of loyaltj^ and of love. Give unto
us high aims and a generous mind, that we may seek ever the best
things, and may study the common weal. To the college of this
state, and to all schools of good learning among us, grant thine espe-
cial blessing. Deepen in all our hearts a loving interest in their
work. Do thou, O our God, and our fathers' God, without whom
nothing is strong, nothing is holy, strengthen these schools of sound
learning. And establish them, and build them up, and make theii"
usefulness to be increased to many generations. Help thou the help-
less. Strengthen with thy Spirit those who labor for the sick, for the
orphans, and the poor ; and grant to every work of mercy an even
course. Reward thou those who have done or designed us good ;
and accept our united thanksgiving for the devising of him whose
thought has given us the gathering of this day. Stir up everywhere
the wills of thy faithful people, that they may plenteously bring
forth the fruit of good works, to the beautifying of this state, and
for the welfare of the jjeople, for the brightening of their lives and
the lio-htenino- of their toil.
And all praise shall be rendered unto thee, the Father of us all,
in Jesus Christ thy Son. For the kingdom is thine, and thine is the
power, and thine is the glory. And now in humble and devout com-
memoration of the great gifts and the great w^ork of the man whose
name has brought us hither, and who now rests from his labors, we
commit ourselves unto thy gracious care and protection and guidance
for this day. The Lord bless us and keep us. The Lord make his
face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us. The Lord lift up
his countenance ui^on us and give us peace, both now and evermore.
Amen.
Judge I^esmith was then introduced as friend and
long-time companion of Daniel "Webster. He was re-
ceived with long-continued applause, and spoke as fol-
lows : —
PRESIDENT NESMITIl'S ADDRESS.
Fellow Citizens, — I thank a kind Providence who has permitted
us to participate in the ceremonies of this interesting occasion. Such
ability and strength as I have I tender to your service. Believing
that I shall not be able to encounter the fatigue incident to my office
for the whole day, I shall ask to be relieved at the proper hour.
I bid a hearty and most cordial welcome to this great assemblage
of people, gathered not only from the native and adopted states of
2G STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
Daniel Webster, but from all jiarts of our Union. My i^resent exhor-
tation to all here is, that in order to hear much and see more, jou
must now exercise much ]Datience, long-suffering, and brotherly
kindness towards each otlier, and thus be able to preserve good
order. Our accommodations may not be all you desire, because of
your great numbers.
Permit me at the outset to say, that one of our tirst duties Avill l)e
discharged when this elegant statue of Mr. Webster now standing
before us shall be unveiled, and exposed to the public view. jSTearly
thirty-four years have elapsed since the death of Mr. Welister.
Death has thinned the ranks of those who used to listen to his voice
in the pviblic assemblies or coimsels of our nation, or luul opportu-
nity to enjoy with him the friendly, social intercourse of private life.
T first saw him in Hanover, in 1819, but first took him by the hand
in lS2o, when introduced hj his brother Ezekiel. It was soon after
that my more intimate relations commenced. Still I am happy to
be able to state that there are those present, and among them our
orator, who have had the means and opportunity of knowing the
character of Mr. Webster, the early struggles of his life which he
encountered and overcame, his steady but rapid progress to high
eminence and honest fame. These men, we trust, will have the
ojiportunity and the disposition to instruct us on this occasion.
I indultre the belief with o-reat confidence that we now have before
US such a resemblance in bronze of the great original man when liv-
ing, as may justly be pronounced more perfect in design, execution,
and artistic skill than any other statue heretofore produced by that
eminent artist, Thomas Ball, and seldom exceeded by any other
artist. The pedestal on which the statue stands has been largely
planned and finished under the critical eye of Mr. John A. Fox, of
Boston. Much credit is due to his executive ability, correct taste,
and sound judgment.
The legislature of this state freely granted laiul suflicient for the
location of the monument in this state-house park, imposing upon
the governor and his councilors the duty of designating tli« precise
spot where it should be located. This dut}- has been discharged by
the govei'nor and council.
Now I rejoice that the time has arrived when our worthy friend
and your benefactor, Benjamin Pierce Clieney, of Boston, a native
of New Ilampsliire, will unveil this beautiful statue, and expose it
to the i)ublic view, and tlien in due form ]n-esent it Avith its appen-
dages to the state of Kcw Hampshire. 1 rejoice that his life has
been so prolonged as to enable him to perform this service so honor-
able to him, so acceptable to this state, and lliat he has liad the
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 27
opportunity and means to execute his purpose, long since entertained,
to erect a monument here, destined to perpetuate the name and fame
of Daniel Webster far down into the future ages.
Monuments liecome valuable when they are well earned and well
deserved, either by distinguished and meritorious services, or by the
successful achievement of victory in some of the great struggles
encountered in human life. Has Daniel Webster ever earned this
monument ? It is the written opinion of ex-President John Adams
that Daniel Webster had earned a monument more enduring than
brass by i^roducing his celebrated oration delivered at Plymouth,
Mass., on the 20th of December, 1820. When Mr. Webster had
presented a copy of that oration to Mr. Adams in December, 1821,
Mr. Adams returned to him a very flattering and complimentary
letter, in which he expressed his thanks for that great production,
and in enthusiastic terms alleged that it ought to be read at the end
of every year forever, and then in the triumphant language of Hor-
ace he exclaims, ^^ Exegisti moimmcntum anr pcrennius,'''' "Thou
hast erected a monument more durable than brass." The languao'e
of Chancellor Kent of New York was alike complimentary. (See
Curtis's Biography, Vol. I., p. 194.)
So when ancient Greece was at the zenith of her gloiy in arts and
arms, and Phidias and Praxiteles and others were hewing out their
monuments in honor of their own distinguished men, and when the
eminent dramatist Euripides requested one for himself, the reply
came, "O Euripides! Thou dost not need a monument, but the
monument needs thy name."
So in either case, we now require tlie monument, whether it be
erected to commemorate the famous deeds of a great man, or
whether such deeds are required to make the monument famous.
The statue was then unveiled by Miss Annie, daughter
of Col. John H. George, and was greeted with cheers by
the immense throng. It was then presented to the state
by B. P. Cheney, Esq., who spoke as follows : —
MR. (JIIEXEY'S address.
Your Excellency, — lam happy at the fulfillment of an intention
which I have long ciierished, of presenting to my native state a
statue of Daniel Webster. I trust that it may be received by you, in
behalf of the people whose political rights are intrusted to your care,
as an appropriate tribute to the memory of a son of New Hamijshire,
28 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
wiio as a patriot was miexcelled, and as an orator and statesman
was withont a peer.
I now deliver to your Excellency the conveyance of the statue to
the state, executed by the trustees having the matter in charge.
He then delivered the followhig deed to Gov. Currier: —
THE DEED TO THE STATE.
By virtue of a deed of trust, a copy of which is hereto annexed,*
executed by and between Benjamin Pierce Cheney and the trustees
therein named, dated February 13, 1885, the undersigned, as such
trustees, hereby convey to the state of New Hampshire the bronze
statue of Daniel Webster this day dedicated in the state-house
grounds, in Concord, subject to all the provisions of said deed of
(Signed) GEORGE W. NESMITH,
JOHN M. HILL,
JOHN H. GEORGE.
Witness: Benjamin Pierce Cheney.
Dated Concord, N. H., June 17, 1886.
In behalf of the state, Gov. Cnrrier replied as follows :
GOV. CUKHIER'S ADDRESS OF ACCEPTANCE.
Mr. President and Fellow Citizens, — On this anniversary of the
first o-reat battle of the American Revolution, we meet to dedicate
this beautiful statue to the memory of New Hampshire's greatest
and most distinguished son, the peerless orator, the unrivaled states-
man, the great expounder of our national constitution. Nations
have erected monuments of stone and of brass to represent the ma-
terial forms of their gods and their heroes ; they liave dedicated
statues to the memory of their statesmen and their patriots ; but such
lifeless effigies can add little to the fame and renown of Daniel
Webster. They may preserve to coming generations the outward
lineaments which genius and intellect impressed u])on his living
countenance, but that greatness of soul, that divine energy Mithiu,
Avhich lives and thinks and acts, cannot be imparted to lifeless stone
and bronze ; it can never jjerisli ; it lives on ; it will exist in the life
of the future ; it will be enshrined in eloquence and song to inspire
the great and the good in all lands and in all times.
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Trustees, as the official rcpre-
* See page 9.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 29
sentative of our state I accept this memorial statue, representing the
outward form and features of one whom we have always been proud
to call our own, one whom our people have ever been tielighted to
honor, one whose eloquence and statesmanship have given fame and
o-lorj to our state. This wonderful creation of art now stands
unveiled before us, so noble, so majestic, so lifelike, that these iron
limbs almost seem to move, these brazen lips to utter forth such
words of tire and patriotism as courts and senates have listened to
with wonder and admiration. And now, Mr. President, in the name
of all the people of New Hampshire, I wish to thank the generous
donor for this great and noble gift to our state, to our nation, and
to the world.
Honored and distinguished Sir, j'our own great success in life illus-
trates the grand possibilities that lie open before the young men of
our state and nation ; your generosity is already known to fame ;
your great benefaction to our venerable institution of learning has
rendered your name blessed among all our people; this renewed
liberality will be received by them with a gratitude and thankfulness
which no words can express. We have accepted from your hands
this heroic image of our gi-eat statesman, and here, in his own native
state, and in yours, too, sir, beneath the shadow of our capitol, on a
foundation of granite, have placed it as an enduring memorial of the
man whose living form and features you and we wish to perpetuate.
On this monument, inscribed in letters of bronze, your name, asso-
ciated with the great name of Daniel Webster, will go down to
posterity honored and revered.
Mr. President, the great nations and empires of antiquity have
passed away ; their cities and temples have disappeared from the
earth and been forgotten ; and should the day ever come when these
walls of our capitol shall fall asunder, when this granite foundation
shall crumble into dust, and this brazen statue, worn away by the
wasting elements, shall fall to the earth and disappear, we may hope
and believe that the fame and renown of Daniel Webster will still
be remembered and held sacred by the world.
Before Governor Currier had concluded, the rain,
which had been threatening, began to fall, and hundreds
left the grounds to seek protection. Notwithstanding the
rain. Dr. Bartlett was introduced, and delivered the ora-
tion of the day, sheltered by an umbrella held by one of
the special policemen.
30 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
ORATION OF SAMUEL COLCOKU BARTLETT, 1). D., LL. 1).
Mr. President and Fellow Citizens, — l^aniel ^^'ebstul• eonies home
to-daj- to the heart of his native state. A loyal son of this com-
monwealth, distinguished already by his noble benefaction to its
chief literary institution, presents to his fellow citizens this lasting-
and admirable memorial of the most illustrious graduate of that
college, and the greatest of the sons of New Hampshire. All honor
to the man who, having by his own indefatigable toil and skill
acquired the means, has also had the mind to appreciate and the
heart to commemorate thus the mighty dead. The thanks of every
native and every resident of the state are due to-day to Benjamin
Pierce Cheney.
And while we thank the giver, we are here to receive the gift.
We have come, some indeed from neighboring commonwealths and
distant points, but chiefly from the state of Webster's nativity,—
from its legislative halls and oflices of state, its literary institutions,
its professional employments, its business affairs, the mill, the shop,
the farm, and the home, from the banks of the Piscataqna, the Mer-
rimack, and the Conn(H'ticnt, the l^orders of its lakes, and the shad-
ows of its great mountains, to do honor once more to an imperish-
able memory. For though his death was lamented in -whole volumes
of eulogies from the most eloquent divines and the ablest statesmen
in all ])arts of the Union, thougli such men as Cass, and Seward,
and Preston, and Everett, and Winthrop, and Evarts, and Choate,
and Bayard have Ijrought their exhaustive tributes to his greatness,
we feel that there yet remains something for us to do and to say.
For here we stand in the very center of his earlier sphere of life
and labor, the home of his birth, his growth, and his maturity. On
every side are the places which will be forever associated with his
name and history. A few miles to the north of us still waves the
old elm that swung near his cradle, and still sparkles the water of
the well that (luenched tlie thirst of his childhood's sports and of his
manhood's pilgrimages. Xot far from thence, northwesterly, rises
the hio-h hill, with faint traces of a chm-ch — " Searle's HilP' or
" ]\leetino--house Hill," — up wliiclihe Avas l)orne by his stalwart
father in the first year of his life, f(n- Ixiptism. A few miles l)eyond,
in Andover, is the ])lace where, in tlie last year of his life, lie wept
and prayed with old John Colby. In the opposite direction, down
by the Merrimack, lies the "Elms Farm " of his boyhood's and his
manhood's love ; where at the age of eight he tii'st read the constitu-
tion, i)i-inted on a cotton handkercliief : where were held the counsel-
ings luid the strugglings for his and liis brother's education : whence
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES.
31
he set forth for college with his T)ooks and clothing slung on liorse-
Ixack ; whither he returned to begin the study of law ; where he
composed, sitting on a rock, one of his first public orations, and
wrote, lialf a century later, the famous Hlilsemann letter; whither
he sent his humorous epistles to John Taylor ; where, in his maturity
iind fame, he was wont to welcome his friends of both parties and
of every degree ; and where he diffused around him till his death all
the genial kindnesses of a neighborly, a friendly, and a benevolent
heart. Back again", among the hills of Salisbury, in sight of old
Kearsarge, is the church in which, at the age of twenty-five, he
stood alone before the congregation to profess his Christian faith,
and where in later years I saw him sit a reverent worshiper, join-
ing the sacred song with liis burly voice, -hard l)y the spot where
a vision of loveliness first dawned upon his sight, and just across
the way from the house in which his lot was united with that of the
Grace Fletcher, whose name, to the end of his days, he " could not
write without tears." Not quite half way from that place to this is
the mansion of Dr. Wood, where he learned in part his first Latm
and all his first Greek. Still nearer is tlie plain of Boscawen, on
which he opened his oftice for the practice of the law ; and in the
tower of its academy swings the l^ell that still sounds forth the
generositv of his prime. In the adjoining town of Hopldnton his
father heard his first argument in court, and was satisfied. Two
hours away, as we now travel it, to the northwest of us, is the col-
leo-e that molded his young titanic powers, whose diploma, what-
exev others may foolishly repeat, he did not tear in pieces, but
o-racefuUv accepted, - a college that throughout his life he loved
and cherished. Xot quite so far away, southeasterly, is the httmg
school at which he felt the kind influence of the polished Buckmin-
ster. A little beyond is tlic home for years of his early manhood,
where he matched his strength with that prince of lawyers, Jeremiah
Mason, and from which he was first sent to the councils of the nation.
The place of our assembling to-day once knew him Avell. During
his early practice of tlie law, his face was a familiar sight upon these
streets, 'and the old mansion of the Rents received him long and
often a's a guest. He has listened to the debates in this legislative
hall; and in the former North church, the old Phenix hall, and a
great pavilion on School-street common — all passed away — his
voice has been lieard hx the citizens of Concord.
It was not until the early prime of his manhood, the mature age
<3f thirty-four, that he left the scenes so incorporated with his earlier
history "and so embedded in his latest recollections, to become the
master spirit of a sister state, the stalwart champion of New Eng-
32 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER,
land, a leader in the Kepiiblic, and a power in the world. He was
in the oi^ening fullness of his strength. He had laid down the ]irin-
ciples of public policy that governed his life. He had measured his
sti-ength with the keenest of legal intellects. He had been heard in
the Supreme Court of the United States. He had made his mark in
Congress by the breadth and clearness of his views, the mingled
firmness and temperance of his positions, and the forensic power
with which he maintained them. The great Chief- Justice Marshall
had foretold that "he would become one of the first statesmen in
America, and perhaps the very first."
Trained thus in evei-y motion and toughened in every fiber of his
intellect, he stepped forth upon the great arena " like a strong man
to run a race." He was made and molded for victory. His very
physique was the organ and symbol of an intellectual athlete. What
a statue he was in repose. In speech, what an incarnation of kindled
thought and ponderous power. Though his townsman by birth, I
saw him but three times in my life, but the vision can never pass
away : once on the liighway, as he rode home from the Dartmouth
Commencement with his brother Ezekiel by his side, and they seemed
" duofuhnina belli'' ; again in the little church from which his mem-
bership was never removed, as I looked timidly from the pulpit upon
his face in the pew, and he looked up so kindly and listened so attent-
ively to the youthful preacher ; and once more when on the slope of
Bunker Hill thirty thousand of us listened to his words, and he
seemed like the finished granite shaft that rose above us all. Three
times only, but a life-long memory. That powerful frame, clad,
when he spoke, in continental colors, that massive head, those deep
flashing eyes, that penetrating voice that could ring out like a trum-
pet or strike like a cannon ball, are never to be forgotten. In his
young manhood he was to Judge Richard Fletcher " the most majes-
tic form and the noblest countenance on which he had ever looked " ;
and, after his death, to Theodore Parker, " the grandest figure in
Christendom since Charlemagne." Thorwaldsen, the sculptor,
thought his bust in a studio was not that of a living man, but of an
ancient Jupiter. Thomas Carlyle, that prince of carpers, saw him
once at a breakfast, and wrote of him, " He is a magnificent speci-
men. As a logic fencer, advocate, or parliamentary Hercules, one
would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world.
That tanned complexion, that amorphous, crag-like face, the dull
black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite fur-
naces, waiting only to be blown, the mastiff mouth accurately
elosed, — I have not traced so much silent Berserker rage, that I
remember of, in any other man."
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 66
Corresponding- to tliis noble completeness of physical nianjiood
was the rounded greatness of his intellect and character. It was a
fullness that filled many spheres. Wherever he moved there was
momentum in tlie motion ; wherever he stood, he stood intrenched
and strong. Farming or fishing, in sport or in soberness, writing
social letters or state papers, arguing the law, questioning a witness,
or addressing a jury, — in the senate, on the platform, in the home
eii'cle, in conflict, in friendship or in love, there was the same full-
ness of outflow, and the same fullness of reserve.
A generation has elapsed since his death. Political and personal
animosities have ])assed to the tomb. The smoke and dust of con-
flict have cleared away. As we now look back upon the scene of
half a century ago, brilliant Avith great names at the bar, on the
bench, in the cabinet and the forum, as we gaze on those struggles
and often battles of the giants, there stands out on that arena no
figure more colossal than Daniel Webster ; and as the very great-
ness of his services would render it impossible adequately to portray
them on this occasion, so does their conspicuonsness render it un-
necessary. The place he holds in the annals of the first half of this
century is no longer a question for argument ; it is a verdict of his-
tory. It is therefore my function to-day not to make that argument,
but to report that verdict.
It was as a lawyer that he first rose rapidly to eminence. His
skill in extracting the truth from a witness was singular, and some-
times, as with Bramble and Goodrich, ahnost magical. His power
of grasping a case by its strong points was equaled only by his
ability to array the law in tlieir support, the clearness of Ids presen-
tation to the court, and the impressiveness of his address to the jury.
He seemed like some great commander, throwing out his scouts and
skirmish lines, seizing the strongholds, training his great batteries,
pushing forward the heavy battalions, and then hurling his cavalry
upon the center of the foe. Many of his arguments, as in the case
of Dartmouth College, of Gibbons vs. Ogden, and of the United
States against McCulloch, will live on in the records of the courts ;
others, as in the trial of the Knapps, and the testing of tlie Girard
will, will live on in the hearts of the people. JNIatched in the courts
against Mason, Dexter, Choate, Emmet, Wirt, Binney, Clay, Pink-
ney, Livingston, it was among such antagonists that he won his
laurels. Chief-Justice Marshall listened deferentially to his opin-
ions, and sometimes incorporated them almost verbally in his deci-
sions. It was Charles O'Conor who said: "At anytime within a
quarter of a century preceding his departure from among us, had it
been inquired at any place inhabited by civilized men, who was the
3
34 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
greatest lawyer in America, his name would have l^een the ready
resjionse." It was William H. Seward who declared in the senate
of the United States : " Whatever else concernino' him has been con-
troverted by anybody, thefiitj' thousand lawj-ers of the United States,
interested to deny his pretensions, conceded to him an unapproach-
able supremacy at the bar." Not so much the supremacy of techni-
cal legal lore, — in whieli, no doubt, others ma}- have equaled or
excelled him, — as in that mastery of the underlying legal principles,
which enabled him to find and to Avield at will all the resources of
the law that bore upon his point, and which made him more than a
mere lawyer, — a i:)rofound jurist and a powerful advocate. For it
is Rufus Choate who atSrms : "I shall submit it to the judgment of
the universal American bar, if a carefully prepared ojjinion of Mr.
Webster on any question of law whatever in the whole range of
jurisprudence would not be accepted everywhere as of the most
commandino- authoritv, and as the hio-hest evidence of leg-al truth.
I submit it to the same judgment if, for many years before his death,
they would not rather have chosen to intrust the maintenance and
enforcement of any imiaortant projjosition of law Avhatsoever, before
any legal tribunal of character whatever, to his best exertion of his
faculties, than to any other ability which the Avhole wealth of the
profession could supply." And the same acute observer and mas-
terly critic said of him : "He spoke with consummate ability to the
bench, and yet exactly as, according to every canon of taste and
ethics, the bench ought to be addressed." It was William M. Evarts
who, with his eje uj^on the "history of the countr}^" said of him:
"1 am quite sure that there is not, in the general judgment of the
profession, nor in the conforming oi^iuion of his countrymen, any
lawyer that in the magnitude of his causes, in the greatness of their
public character, in the immensity of their influence upon the for-
tunes of the country, or in the authority which his manner of forensic
eloquence produced in courts and over courts, can be placed in the
same rank with Mr. Webster."
Such testimonies, from such sources, with such sweep of inclusion,
leave nothino- to add and nothing- to subtract. It is lio-ht reflected
from the great lights of the law upon the chief luminary of their
profession. Another able counselor, accustomed to practice by
his side, Charles G. Loring, bore this additional testimony: "He
could not argue a bad cause comparatively Avell." If this be true,
it is the highest testimony to his lucid mind and honest purpose, that
could not and would not jjut light for darkness and darkness for
light. It was indeed the high, oijcn, and manly ground taken by Mr.
Webster Avhicli, from the outset, impressed the ablest of his antago-
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 35
nists and associates. Calhoun pronounced him the fairest man he
ever met to state the position of his opponents : and so liigh an
authority as Chief -Justice Joel Parker lias recorded to his honor as a
lawyer: "He met the case fairly; he resorted to no tricks to make
the worse appear the better reason." It was his crowning merit, too,
that while he argued cases, he also settled principles.
Side by side with his growing legal reputation blossomed out his
power and fame as an orator. From the date of his Plymouth dis-
course in 1820, his rank was settled. It called forth the calm Init
exhaustive admiration of such a man as Chancellor Kent for "its
reflections, its sentiments, its morals, its patriotism, its elofiuence,
its imagination, and its style." It evoked the enthusiastic outburst
of stout old John Adams, that "five hundred years hence it will be
read with as much admiration as it was heard ; " and for a generation
it was declaimed in almost every public school in the land. After
the lapse of a quarter of a century from his death, no less an orator
than Winthrop aifirmed that " certainly from the date of that dis-
course he stood second as an orator to no one Avho spoke the English
language." Indeed, the chief reviler over his new-made grave
could say: "Since the great Athenians, Demosthenes and Pericles,
who ever thundered out such spoken eloquence as his ? " His first
Bunker Hill oration, his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, his crush-
ing reply to Hayne, his jury argument on tlie murder of Joseph
White, stand out with equal prominence as monuments of power,
and a great multitude of other remarkable speeches gather round
them, covering almost every possible variety and combination of
conditions. For more than a generation his voice was heard at pub-
lic ceremonials, conventions, and mass meetings, in the Senate, at
the bar, at dinners and receptions, in political excitements, on his
journeyings, before select audiences, to the inner circles of friends
and neighbors. And if it be true that a great occasion was required
to rouse him to the fullest exertion of his powers, it is also true that
he never fell l^elow, wandered from, nor failed to dignify, the occa-
sion. Whether he addressed the ladies of Richmond, the young men
of Albany, the sons of New Hampshire in Boston, the Dartmouth
alumni in AVashington, the brokers in Wall street, his Democratic
opponents at his home in Franklin, the court, the Senate, or the jury,
spoke at a Pilgrim festival, a cattle fair, the opening of a railway,
or the laying of a corner-stone, gave an historical address, a eulogy
on Mason, Story, or Calhoun, it was alike pertinent, manly, and
true.
The singular breadth and fertility of his mind appearetl in the
unfailing variety of his utterances. He never repeated himself. I
36 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
remember how in the political struggle of 184J:, when Webster,
Choate, Ashmun, and others were addressing the people far and near
on the issues of the jiending election, ^Ir. Webster's many speeches
Avere alone reported in full, and the reason rendei'ed me at the time
was, because they alone could bear it. ]Mr. Everett has in like man-
ner called attention to the series of speeches made by him on a trip
over the Erie Railway. Not counting mere snatches of remarks here
and there, eleven extemiaoraneous speeches were made on that jour-
ney, as he was called from the cars to the platform. "Every one of
them," said Mr. Everett after a careful perusal, "was singularly
adapted to the place and occasion. Ever^' one of those eleven
speeches would have added greatly to the reputation of any other
man in the United States ; made as they were without preparation,
they impressed me more than anything else with his extraordinary
cajjacity." Indeed, when we pass in review all the qualities of his
oratory, — his fullness, depth, and clearness, his readiness and adap-
tation, his iron logic and his si>lendid rhetoric, his lofty imagination,
his converging thought and his plastic style, his grand presence and
magnetic impression, when we consider the wide range of his efforts,
and the effects, immediate and lasting, which he produced, — I am
almost ready to ask whether, when estimated in the grand total, the
annals of oratory certainly furnish a greater name than Webster.
Of later but not less solid growth, was Mr. Webster's fame as a
statesman and diplomatist. His views of national policy were early
matured, and Mith the minor modifications to which a wise and
expanding mind must ever hold itself open, he maintained them
consistently to the end. It was inevitable that he should stand allied
to one of the two great political organizations, which, from the
nature of government and the two bi'oad diverg-ent theories as to its
function, whether fostering or merely permissive, will alwaj^s exist
in a republic. It would be but fair to judge him from that stand-
point in public affairs which he deliberately chose. But happily the
time has come when we can rise to a plane above the line of party
divisions, and test him by his adhesion to the constitution, the laws,
and entire welfare of his country, and to the sountl and lightcous
principles on which that government was founded. He believed, as
we all believe, that whatever may have been its theoretical or prac-
tical human defects, the world has seen no such government as ours,
and were it once broken in pieces, no such government would take
its place, and that with its downfall the great hopes of the world
would be clouded over. To the watchful guardianship of the vast
and precious interests thus garnered up in this federal government,
he gave, in the house, the senate, and the cabinet, thirty-three years
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES.
37
of assiduous, self-saeritieing toil, and a pati-iotism hampered by no
sectional or party ties, but as broad as the nation's boundaries and
as high as her destinies.
Of the vast and complex variety of measures which during that
protracted period felt his hand, enlisted his pen, and evoked his
voice, I cannot even speak by enumeration. :\Ir. Choate, after some
pages of outline, breaks off by declaring that it "demands a vol-
unie." They include the functions of the government itself, from
center to circumference, its boundaries and its territory, its resources,
finances, commerce, improvements, its internal and foreign relations,
in peace and war, on the land and on the sea. In all these multifa-
rious and complicated aflairs he stood forth for a generation a lead-
ing spirit, a guiding and often a controlling power, shaping the
destiny of the whole country. During that long period, no measure
that concerned the honor, integrity, or prosperity of the nation,
escaped his vigilance or his influence. Some of those sei-vices were
conspicuous enough to arrest the eyes of the nation and the worid.
When in his reply to Hayne he strangled the doctrine of nullifica-
tion, it is the testimony of the southera Bayard and the northern
Winthrop, that he deferred the bloody conflict thirty years. And
when the conflict came, the long echoes of that speech were the
reverberating call that summoned and cheered the friends of the
Union to the rescue ; its solid principles, the impregnable rock on
which a million soldiers stood, and fought, and won. In the cele-
brated Washington treaty, by his wisdom, firmness, legal knowledge,
reasoning power, diplomatic tact and personal ascendency, he calmed
the excited passions of the two foremost nations, and averted the
imminent danger of a fratricidal and ruinous Avar. He did it only
by remaining in the cabinet of President Tyler for the good of his
country, but against the warnings of political friends. No other
man in America could have wafted that momentous treaty over all
the rocks and shoals and l)reake]-s at home and abroad; and pos-
terity, I think, has already accorded him its unanimous and admiring
vote. ' So sometimes did the judgment of contemporaries. Thus
when in that bold and masterly dispatch to Iliilsemann he courte-
ously rebuked the insolence of the Austrian charge and left not a
shred of his argument, when he demolished the claim of the Austrian
cabinet to treat the American envoy as a spy, and met their menace
with the information that such a course would have roused, if need
be, the whole military and naval force of a republic "whose power,"
said he, "is spread over a region, one of the richest and most fertile
on the globe, and of an extent in comparison with which the posses-
sions of the House of Hapsburg are but as a patch on the surface of
38 STATUE OF DANIEL AVEBSTER.
the earth,'" the heart of the whole American jieople beat with him in
sympathetic admiration .
Not the least shining aspect of his statesmanship and diplomacy
was the readiness with which, in the discharge of duty, he overleaped
party lines, sustained what he deemed the right measures of political
opponents, aided in the election of his rivals and inferiors, and fol-
lowed wliat he avowed to be his duty, though it cost him hosts of
life-long friends. "It was not in his nature," well says Mr. Blaine,
"to be a partisan chief." And so in a critical time of Jackson's
administration he came to his rescue on the "force bill," and "Old
Hickory "in person expressed his gratitude. Vice-President Jolm-
son had to thank him for " a magnanimity and courtesy above the
times." Though urged to the contrary, he took the stump for his
constant competitor, Clay, — a favor, alas, ill requited by Mr. Clay
at the close of his life. He turned the tide of northern votes in be-
half of General Taylor, though at first the nomination had seemed to
him " not fit to be made." To one candidate of his party he refused
his support, because, while "himself well enough" and "of good
principles," he was sure to be " the tool " of other men ; and he pre-
dicted the signal defeat which awaited the candidate. How gener-
ously he could speak of the high qualities of Clay, Calhoun, and
Pierce, and how promptly he could clasp hands once more with Ben-
ton after years of estrangement. How comjjletely his letter of
apology won the heart of Senator Dickinson, who "perused and
reperused the beautiful note." How frankly he met the friendly
overtures of his life-long, keen antagonist, our Governor Hill, and
welcomed him at his house in Franklin . And though there were some
sharji passages at arms during his long career, how magnanimously
was every stinging word struck out from his jDublished works.
No more conspicuous instance could be furnished of freedom fi-om
all trammels but his own sense of duty, than his noted speech on the
7th of March, 1850, on the Compromise. It was deliberately done.
Weeks beforeliand, in the evening interview sought b}' Mr. Clay, he
had declared his purpose to take his stand, "no matter what might
befall himself at the North." He took it. It cost him more than any
other act of his life, — estrangement of fi-iends, loss of popularity,
bitter taunts and revilings, the refusal once of old Faneuil Hall, and
unfavorable judgments to the present day. Occurring at the close
of a long and honored life, the scene is pathetic and almost tragic.
Now that the excitements are gone and the issues are dead, it is time
to appeal to the sober second thought of posterity. Whether judged
by his own record and his avowed standard of duty, or by the stand-
ard freely conceded by the nation to other illustrious men, his great
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 39
memory should now be cleared from that odium. We can now see
that his whole j^ast career brought him where he stood that day.
"With every utterance of his public life he was committed to the jores-
ervation of the constitution and the Union ; and on that day he pro-
claimed, "I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union." He
had always held slavery to be a " great moral, social, and political
evil ; " he deliberately reiterated the opinion on that seventh of
March. He had argued and voted steadily against the extension of
slavery, and he most emphatically declared on that day, " Wherever
there is a foot of land to be prevented from becoming slave territory,
I am ready to assert the jjrinciple of the exclusion of slavery. I
have been pledged to it again and again, and I will redeem those
jjledges." He declared that in those sections where slavery existed
under the solemn pledges of the constitution, those pledges, once
made, could not be broken. So he had always declared, and so had
the whole nation. He confessed himself unable — and who was not ?
— to propose measures for the extinction of slavery, but willing to
appropriate two hundred millions of the public money to colonize
colored people who were or should be made free. No human eye
could then discern a possible remedy for the central evil, except in
the qiiiet penetration of the Gospel, which, as Mr. Webster then said,
" went to the tirst fomitain of all the social and political relations of
the human race." For though the remedy did suddenly appear in
the form of civil convulsion, that convulsion came, not by the wis-
dom of the \\'ise, but by the fury of the madman and folly of the
fool ; the cost of one man's life for every four men's freedom was a
price that neither God nor man could justify. That the convulsion
did not become a genei-al massacre and extermination at the South,
was due to the wisdom of the negro and the wisdom of God.
Did Mr. Webster on that day maintain the duty of rendition of
fugitive slaves ? So he had always done ; for so it was written in
the constitution, and he was bound to do it, as he wrote to the citi-
zens of Newburyport, " by his oath of office." Nay, he boldly said
before the senate and before the world, " I put it to all the sober and
sound minds of the North, as a question of morals and a question of
conscience." Secession, revolution, was the only escape, and that
was a bottomless pit into which neither he nor we were prepared to
leap. Was he willing to forego extending the Wilmot Proviso to
the new territories of California and New Mexico ? It was, he said,
because nature had rendered it needless, and he woidd not add a
useless irritant to the heated passions of the South. History vindi-
cated his judgment. Slavery gained no firm foothold in that terri-
tory. And still more remarkable was his vindication Avhen, eleven
40 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
years later, the very men who reproached him for this act, the radi-
cal men of Congress, — Sumner, Wade, Seward, Chandler, Lovejoy,
Stevens, the Washburns, — did the very same thing for the same
considerations; they consented to organize the territories of Colo-
rado, Dakota, and Nevada without a word on the Wilmot Proviso,
and without a word of explanation. " It is seldom," says Mr. Blaine,
" that liistory so exactly repeats itself ; in both cases the acts were
altogether honorable, the motives altogether patriotic."' ' ' But," Mr.
Blaine pointedly adds, "these Republicans should at least have
oftered and recorded their apology for their animadversions upon
]\Ir. Webster." He builded better than his censors knew, but he
builded as he knew. Those eleven years that he gained to the Union
were of inestimable value for the final conflict. Did he speak disap-
provingly of the doings of Abolition societies, while conceding to
" thousands of their members " the praise of being " honest and good
men," and " not imputing gross motives to their leaders"? There
lay before his mind the resolutions adopted in Ohio, and reafiirmed
in Faneuil Hall, advocating a " dissolution of the Union," the resolv-
ers avowing themselves " enemies of the Union, the constitution, and
the government of the United States." Did not such utterances
deserve rebuke P But Mr. AVebster also rebuked the violent utter-
ances of southern men, and even arraigned a senator then upon the
floor, for words of " ottense " and " injustice " to the North.
Many were disappointed, and I was among them, that his words
were not more severe, — denunciatory, — toward the South and its
principles. But we can now see that this would have been to defeat
his whole aim in speaking, and to precipitate the catastrophe which
he strove to avert. He then clearly knew, what the North did not
know, the imminent danger of secession; and "peaceable seces-
sion," said he, with prophetic solemnity, "is an utter impossibility."
"Sir," said he on that (hxy, " 1 see as plainly as I see the sun in the
heavens, Avhat disruption must produce. I see it must produce war,
and such war as I A\ill not describe." How dreadfully was his
prophecy fulflUcd, — by a wreck of life and health and morals, of
family and social happiness, of individual and national wealth, on a
more terrific scale than the world had seen since the desolations of
the first Napoleon. To avert tliat awful calamity he stood forth on
that day ; and he may righteously demand to be judged by his own
life and life-long principles, by his keen foresight and lofty purpose.
See, too, how ditterent has been the fate of Webster and of Lin-
coln. Till a dozen years after Mr. Webster's death, and till within
three years of his own death, INIr. Lincoln occupied precisely Web-
ster's position, only even more pronounced. He had even acted as
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 41
attorney for the reclamation of five slaves escaped from Kentucky.
Only three years before Mr. Webster's speech, Lincoln had intro-
duced into Congress a fugitive-slave law for the District of Columbia.
Twelve years after that seventh of March he had jjublished to the
world this well-known statement: "I would saVe the Union. I
would save it in the shortest way under the constitution . . . the
Union as it was. My paramount object is to save the Union, and not
either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could do it by freeing all the
slaves, I would do it. If I could do it by freeing some and leaving
others alone, I would also do that." It was only after the hardest
education, and when compelled by the necessities of war, that he
took his final stand. But while Lincoln is justly canonized, Webster
has Ix-ien'as unjustly anathematized. Let the last cloud pass away
from over tlie fame of a majestic character. Let us see him as he
Avas, boiuid l)y all his history, his principles, and his prophecies, and
able to say as did Luther: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise.'"
And let us not fail to see how, with his inborn hatred of slavery
itself, when once the bonds of the constitution were finally broken
by the emergencies of war, he would have said, in more command-
ing tones than he said of the slave-trade thirty years before, "It is
not fit that the land bear the shame longer," and with a zeal like that
with which his honored father fought for liberty at Bunker Hill and
Bennington, he Avould have cheered on every stroke for universal
fi-eedom against the rampant slave power, from Bull Run to Appo-
mattox.
Such, imperfectly sketched, was Webster, the jurist and advocate,
the orator, the statesman and diplomatist. But more than all and
the basis of all, was the grandeur and fullness of the man, in his
intellect, his sj^mpathies, his affections. He had faults, and they
have been exaggerated. I am here neither to arraign nor defend
them. His make was large. Though not technically a scholar, he
was much more in his mastery of the highest results of scholarship,
and in his broad range of knowledge and thought. In his speeches,
his papers, his letters, to whomsoever and for whatsoever, from the
©•reat themes of state down to the details of farm life, tliere is the
same singular fertility of matter, strength, and brightness. His pri-
vate conversation and social life were equally exuberant of wisdom,
reminiscence, anecdote, and humor. No man met him casually or
permanently but felt his power. lie could not move unknown.
]Mr. Webster's sympathies were as broad as his intellect. Beneath
a dignified and often cold exterior he had a great warm lieart. He
could be on friendly terms with political op])on(Mits. He seemed to
42 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
" love all things, both great and small." lie was fond of nature, of
outdoor recreations, and of the whole animal world. The s:reat
Secretary of State would bring the eggs from his barn in his wife's
work-basket. He loved to feed his fine cattle witli his own hand,
and in the last few days of his life he gathered them to his door to
look once more on their fi'iendly faces. Quail, rabbit, and squirrel
were safe on his lands. He would gaze on the sun rising over the |
sea; he shouted and sung with the exhilaration. "I know the :
morning," said he, "I am acquainted with it, and I love it. I love '
it, fresh and sweet as it is, — a daily new ci-eation, breaking forth |
and calling all that have life and breath and being to new adoration, I
new enjoyments, and new gratitude." He often exjDressed his de-
light in the scenery of his native state, — "its hills and A'ales," its \
"beautiful elms and maples," its "little trickling brooks," heard
"in the still night"; the "most beautiful spectacle of the autumn :
forests ; " " the low and dee]) murmuring of those forests, the fogs and j
mists rising and spreading, and clasping the breasts of the moun- ]
tains whose heads were still high and bri2:ht in the skies ; " its '
"skies all-healthful, and its mountains surpassingly grand and sul)- j
lime." How fondlj^ he appreciated the attractions of ^Nlarshlield, 1
while he yet could write from Elms Farm, the home of liis childhood,
"After all, this is the sweetest place in tlie A\'or]d." For, after
describing all its surroundino-s, wlien he looked out of the east win-
dows over the rich plains of the Merrimack, — "At the east end of
it," said he, "1 see plain, marble gravestones designating the places
where repose my father, my mother, my brother Joseph, and my
sisters. Dear, dear kindred blood, how I love you all." His attach-
ments were strong and lasting. He affectionately remembered his '
college classmates and the schoolmasters of his lioyhood. Not a
few of his humbler early associates were objects of his benefactions. '
He pui'chased and freed the slaves Monica and Henry. His old
neiglibors loved and clung to him, and he clung to them ; and tlicre
are few more touching letters than his reply to his New Hampshire (
neighbors in 1850, in which he tells them, "I could pour oi;t my I
heart in tenderness of feeling for the affectionate letter Avhich comes i
from you. It comes fi'om home ; it comes from those whom I liave • ■'■
known, or who have known me from my birth. It is like the love
of a family circle ; its influences fall on a heart like the dew of |
Hermon." Friends of his maturer years were bound to him by the !
strongest of ties, and Webster and Choate were like David and Jona- j
than. How intense were his family attcctions. The fond memory
of father and mother followed liim to the last. The i)n'mature d<'atli ;
of his brother in the court house here left a wound in his heart, tlurty i
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES.
4a
years later still "fresh and bleeding." And how crushing was the
grief as Avife and children, one by one, were taken from his sight.
° I should do Mr. Webster's greatness the greatest injustice, did I
close this discourse without an acknowledgment of his noble and un-
faltering stand for principle, morality, and Christianity. Where in
all his recorded utterances is there a sentence or a word that on this
account we could wish erased ? What promin ent politician or states-
man, from Washington to the present day, has uttered himself so
openly and so powerfully in the maintenance of true religion ? His
argument on the Girard will was circulated by the clergy. He read
and reverenced the Bible, and knew large portions of it by heart.
He honored the sacred day, closing his gates to visitors, and bemg
found in the house of worship. He began his family life at Ports-
mouth with familv prayers conducted by himself, and after interrup-
tions resumed the practice at Marshfield. Through life he was wont
to ask a blessing at his table. "Religion," said he to the supreme
court of Massachusetts in his eulogy on Mason, "religion is a neces-
sary and indispensable element in any great human character.
There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man
with his Maker and holds him to his throne. If that tie be sundered,
all broken, he floats away, a worthless atom in the nniverse, its
proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future
nothino- but darkness, desolation, and death." In answer to the
blunt question of John Colby, "Are you a Christian?" he replied:
"I hope that I am a Christian; I profess to be a Christian. But
while I say that, I wish to add, -and I say it with shame and con-
fusion of face, - that I am not such a Christian as I wish to be."
Almost the last words of the last night of his life were words of
prayer. His tomb bears the inscription, prepared by himself, begm-
ning : "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief."
Tliis was the man whom we commemorate to-day. The livmg
recollection of his majestic presence will soon have passed away,
but so long as English literature shall last, the work that he did will
stand embalmed in the works that he left. Time is vindicating hi&
contemporary fame. And when the distant historian shall pass m
review the illustrious men of the nation between Washington and
Lincoln, what figure among them all will loom up so clear and grand
upon the vision of posterity? He was one whom the presidency of
these United States could hardly have honored, but who could have
honored the presidency. It is as well that he did not. No title is so
tri-eat as the name Daniel AVebster.
" Fellow citizens, Mr. Webster was pre-eminently a New Hamp-
shire man. Born upon its soil, and for the first four and thirty years
44 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
a constant resident of its territory, he was molded by its influ-
ences ; and even its pliysical ieatures seemed stamped upon his soul.
The dark, unbroken sweep of its primeval forests well symbolized
the vast resources of his capacious intellect ; its marvelously varied
surface of grove and meadow, hiil and dale, was a fit emblem of the
many-sidedness of his ways ; its June verdure is not brighter than
the freshness of his whole nature to the last ; its bubbling springs
and trickling rills are not more playful than the genial humor of his
private life, nor its still lakes more profound than the depth of his
affections ; its granite cliffs reappear in the massive solidity of his
character; its mountain heights in the towering ascendency of his
powers ; while its rushing rivers, swollen by the melting snows of
spring, alone can represent the tide of his eloquence.
" The boundless prairies learned his name,
His words the mountain echoes knew ;
The northern breezes swept his fame
From icy lake to warm bayou.
In toil he lived ; in peace he died ;
When life's full cycle was complete,
Put off his robes of power and pride,
And laid them at his Master's feet.
His rest is by the storm-swept waves
Whom life's wdld tempests roughly tried,
Whose heart was like the streaming caves
Of ocean throbbing at his side."
Here stands his statue. Here let it stand through the generations
to come, in this center and heart of the commonwealth, by the INIain
street of her capital and the door of her state house. The quiet
flow of daily life, the bustle of business, and the public parade shall
pass before him in silent review. The stranger shall pause and gaze
on that imperial brow. Children shall here ask and be told his name
and fame. The men of New Hampshire shall point with pride to
the greatest of their fellow citizens. Legislators and oflicers of
state, as they pass to their work, shall be greeted by the sight of one
who wove so strong the bonds of the Union and the constitution,
and guarded so well the priceless blessings they enfold. And as
long as her fountains shall gush, her lakes shall gleam, her rivers
run, and her mountains rise, shall the memory of Webster be fresh
in his native state.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 45
SPEECH OF GOVERNOR ROBINSON, OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Ladies and r/e^«6me«,- Massachusetts delights to be present here
with you to-day and to participate in these most interesting and im-
pressive ceremonies. Happily, no human eye can discern a line that
marks a separation between the two states whose people to-day_ join
in joyful recoo-uition of the consummate ability, marvelous achieve-
ment, and unquestioning loyalty in the man who stood in the fore-
most rank of the greatest of lawyers, orators, and statesmen the
world ever saw. With one common spirit Massachusetts and Wew
Hampshire unite to hail with exultant pride and unquestiomng
enthusiasm the accomplishment of a work that shall perpetuate in
enduring bronze the name, and the form, and the fame of Daniel
Webster To the place of his nativity and to the home of his later
years his career of honor and power is a rich heritage and brings
grand inspiration for the highest and greatest that human mind can
master But two states could not confine the greatness of his power
when in his activity and vigor of life, and no more now can the
same two states hold in exclusive title his distinctive renown
wrouo-ht in his public life and work. Co-extensive with the grand
Union which was the fond ideal of his dearest hopes, enduring as
the nationality which inspired him to his noblest efforts, his name
and fame are in the keeping of all the people of the land and com-
mand the admiration of the civilized world. Here he raised his
eyes again to his native hills ; here he breathed anew the fresh an-
of heaven amid scenes endeared to him by the association of his
youno- days and hallowed by the tender affections of home and
kind °ed ; here he turned in contemplation of the humble beginning
of his illustrious, forceful life ; here he renewed in memory the con-
flicts that were crowned with his earlier triumphs and developed in
him that intellectual strength and clearness that made him the irre-
sistible champion in the arena of debate.
Eminently fitting it is that in this memorable place, in the capital
citv of his native state, here before the halls of assembly, where ti-ee
people meet to enact their will into just and salutary aws that de-
yelop and perpetuate their liberties, this memorial sliall stand for al
coming time to tell of his devotion to the constitution of the fatheis.
The traveler in all the years to come, the youth of the generations
in the centuries of the future, will pause here in contemplation and.
with uncovered heads, will pay the abundant tribute of respect to a
grand hero in life whose heart thrilled with pride when he declared :
^ I was born an American, I live an American, and I shall die an
American."
46 STATUE OP DANIEL WEBSTER.
But a far grander monument, not reared with human hands, stands
to testify of his iiul)Iie Avork and services. It rests on every ineli of
soil in this great republic of the United States of America. It is
the shrine of union and liberty consecrated by the sacrifices of the
fathers, sustained anil defended by his abilities and jjower, and sanc-
tified anew in the heroism and l)lood of the sons who periled all,
that liberty should survive and the Union endure. When the o-reat
life was ebbing out, when death entered the shades at Marshfield,
the glazing eye turned upon states discordant but not then bellig-
erent. It looked upon a land not then drenched with fraternal
blood, but upon a land over which the subdued and baffled spirit
of nullification was threatening to reappear in the accursed demon
form of secession and disunion. The great spirit passed on forever
to the vale beyond ; and the mortal eye closed at last upon earthly
scenes. The hush of death was followed by the clangor of battle.
War came, — long, terrible, costly, and bloody ; but the bow of peace
appeared not again resplendent in the heavens until the sovereignty
of the natipnal government was everywhere acknowledged, and
liberty and union became in very fact one and inseparable in
America forever.
SPEECH OF GOVEKXOK HILL, OF NEW YORK.
Mr. Cltairman, and Your Excellency the Governor, — Most exact-
ing official engagements during the past thirty days have occupied
my entire time. I have had no opportunity, except a few moments
which I took on my way liither, to think of A\hat I should say at this
time.
It is needless for me to tell you that I am pleased to be pres-
-ent on this interesting occasion. I have come from the capital of
the Empire State to testify l>y ni}- presence, rather than by any
word that I may express, the interest which the people of my state
feel in the name and fame of Daniel Webster. Thouo-h born
upon the soil of your state he did not belong to you alone. Your
sister states join with his native state in claiming some share of the
honor and glory which his achievements and services reflected upon
the whole country. His fame is the renown of America. His life
and character add luster to the free institutions of our land. It may
be safely asserted that among all the great men who have been
developed under oui- democratic form of government, he was one of
the greatc^st, if not flu; greatest. No student can peruse his works
-without being im])ressed with the superiority of his enunent ability.
Endowed by nature with extraordinary powers, uncommonly gifted,
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 47
he was a born leader among men. Whether as a statesman, orator,
or jurist, he had no rivals worthy of the name. Always a profound
thinker, he exhausted every subject he discussed, and this is the dis-
tinguishing feature of all his productions and eiforts. No subject
was ever so deep that he did not fathom it ; no litigation so intricate
that he did not comprehend it ; no just cause so weak that did not
have in him a powerful champion and friend. No public man in all
our history has succeeded better in rendering memorable the great
sj)eeches of his life, and impressing their importance and splendor
upon his countrymen. What schoolboy in this broad land who has
not declaimed to applauding audiences one of the immortal orations
of Daniel Webster ? Who is so ignorant or obscure in this great
country of ours who does not know the author of the ever living-
words, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable"?
Mr. Webster was unquestionably the great popular orator of his
time. None could surpass him upon the stump and before the i)eo-
ple. About the year 1850, I believe it was, he made a tour through
the j^rincipal cities of New York, and addressed the multitudes who
flocked from all the surrounding country. From that day down to
the i^resent time there is jjointed out to the stranger in those cities
the spot where he delivered his speeches, the occasion being regarded
as the great event of the time, and the particular places where he.
stood a matter of peculiar interest. Upon that balcony, or in this
park, or in such a hall, or in yonder church, is the place Avhere Dan-
iel Webster spoke in 1850, is the information which is sounded in
your ears by the old residents of those cities who delight to recall
the important circumstance.
It was in defense of our form of government, of the constitution,
and the Union, that Mr. Webster achieved his greatest triumphs as a
statesman and orator. There have been great orators in the world's
history, but I venture the assertion that none have surpassed his
wonderful achievements. Thej' gave him imperishable and ever-
lasting fame.
It was not left for us alone, however, to fully appreciate his i)atri-
otic services in behalf of our imperiled constitution. Our fathers
before us on every proper occasion testified their admiration for his
heroic and brilliant eftbrts. There was a jjublic dinner given to Mr.
Webster at Albany, N. Y., on May 28, 1851, by the citizens of that
hospitable city, which was presided over by a distinguished citizen
of my state, Hon. Jolin C. Silencer, who in proposing a toast and
in speaking of Mr. Webster's defense of the constitution appropri-
ately said : "How poor and insignificant are all our eftbrts to express
our appreciation of such a character and of such services. They
48 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
have sunk deep into our hearts ; they M'ill sink deeper into the hearts
of unborn millions who are to people this vast continent ; and when
he and we sleep with our fathers, his name will reverberate from
the Atlantic to the Pacific as the defender of the constitution of his
country." He then pi'oposed the following beautiful sentiment:
" The constitution of the United States and Daniel Webster, inseijar-
able now, and inseparable in the records of time and eternity."
Mr. Webster replied to this comjiliment in his usual eloquent man-
ner, and in concluding his speech proposed in return the following
courteous and aj^propriate sentiment: "The young men of Alban}-,
the young men of this generation and of the succeeding generations,
may they live forever, but may the constitution and the Union outlive
them all."
I have gladly journeyed to your caj^ital to take part in these cere-
monies, and T can assure you that no state takes a deejDer or more
affectionate interest in any honors which can be paid to your distin-
guished statesman than the state of New York. New Hampshire
and New York have much in common. They both actively engaged
in the great struggle for indei:)endence, and each made glorious rev-
olutionary history. Our citizens have many business relations with
the ijeojile of your state. Both loyally sustained the Union cause in
the war of the rebellion. I recollect the fact that New Hampshire
was the birthplace of one of my distinguished predecessors, he who
uttered the famous sentiment, who issued the familiar order, "If
any man attempt to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the
spot." Your state may well be proud of being the birthplace of both
Daniel Webster and Gen. John A. Dix. I am also reminded that
every block of granite of which the magnificent capitol of the state
of New York is constructed, comes from the quarries of New
England. It is to be feared that New Yorkers are sometimes too
apt to imagine that their state overshadows in importance the
other portions of the country. A trip through your beautiful and
prosperous state will dissipate that illusion.
In other countries the great commercial metropolis of New York
city seems to be confounded with New York state and the whole
country. At a public dinner given to Mr. Webster atBuftalo, N. Y.,
in 1851, he himself alluded to this subject, speaking as follows:
"The commercial character so far pervades the minds of commercial
men all over the world that there are many men who are very
respectable and intelligent who do not seem to know there is any-
thing in tlie United States but New York. When I was in England
it was asked of me if I did not come fi'om New York. I told tliem
that my wife came from New York, and that was something. AVell,
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 49
gentlemen, I had the honor one day to be invited to a state dinner by
the lord mayor of London. He was a portly and dignilied gentle-
man. He had a big wig on his head all powdered, and ribboned
down behind, and I had the honor of sitting between him and the
lord mayoress. There were three hundred guests, and all the luxu-
ries and gorgeousness of the lord mayor's dinner. Soon after the
cloth was removed his lordship thought proper to take notice of his
American guest. He seemed not to know exactly who I was. He
knew I was a senator, but he seemed to have little idea of any place
in the United States but New York. He arose : ' Gentlemen,' said he,
'I o-ive you the health of Mr. Webster, a member of the upper sen-
ate of New York.' " Mr. Webster was, of course, greatly surprised
as well as amused at the blunder of his English host, which thus
summarily reduced him fi'om the high and exalted position of a sen-
ator of the United States to that of a senator in the legislature of a
single state. I can assure you, however, that New York would have
been proud to have had Mr. Webster her senator in either her upper
or lower senate, or in any other branch of her legislature.
I must not detain you longer. I came to listen rather than to
speak. I realize too well that elaborate eulogy cannot add anything
to the greatness or distinction of the man whose statue you unveil
to-day. We have none of us forgotten the magnificent oration of
Edward Everett on AVebster, delivered about thirty years ago upon
a somewhat similar occasion. He has left nothing for any one to
say in regard to Webster in this generation. It is the most brilliant
production of this age in the line of oratory, and will answer for all
the future.
In conclusion, permit me to suggest that while the pure and gen-
erous motives which prompted the erection of this statue are to
be heartily commended, it was not needed to prevent the name of
Daniel Webster from being forgotten by posterity. Neither marble,
nor granite, nor bronze, nor iron, nor brass, is necessary to perpetu-
ate his fame. It may be well said of him,
"Art to his fame no aid hath lent.
His country is his monument."
SPEECH OF GOVERNOR FREDERICK ROBIE, OF MAINE.
My Friends, — I thank you very much for this pleasant introduc-
tion and cordial greeting. I am aware that it is not personal in its
character, but is largely due to the fact that I am here to-day to
represent the state of Maine ; and I am glad to be here, and equally
o-lad to join in these interesting exercises. I bring with me the
4
50 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
kind wishes and good will of all our people, and the congratulations
of the state for what you have done in honor of that great man,
Daniel Webster. I have not the honor of being a son of Kew
Hampshire, bat on reflection find that I can claim to be a grand-
son. My father loved New Hampshire very much, which sentiment
is appreciated by me. My father was born in Candia, N. H., in
1782, the very year that gave l)irth to that great man, Daniel
Webster, and he was his friend, his political friend, and his great
admirer. I recollect very well my earliest impressions of Daniel
Webster, which were made by looking at his portrait, a steel
engraving, which my father for fifty years had hanging in his
librar}'. It remains there to-day, my present home, and brings back
many pleasant memories ; and I am glad to notice here in this beau-
tiful city, under the shadows of your churches and schoolhouses and
in front of your capitol, that there stands for the observation and in-
spiration of the great public an enduring life-like statue of Daniel
Webster. Michael Angelo once made a ^vonderful statue of ]\Ioses
for one of the great cathedrals in Rome, and when he had finished
it, it was so complete and life-like that he walked up to it and
said : " Speak, or I will break you into a thousand pieces." There
was undoubtedly a satisfactory response, for that statue has en-
dured for centuries, and even now speaks in favor of the man who
made it. With a becoming relationship to the statue of the great
lawo-iver of earliest times, this statue of Daniel Webster is dedi-
cated to-day. It will speak to coming generations in language wliich
we cannot understand with the ear because it is silent, but it still
speaks. It speaks of the majesty of the divine decalogue and the
principles of Christian religion which were his guide ; it speaks for
the imion of this great nation, one and inseparable, for which he was
a godlike advocate ; it speaks for the sovereignty of the people,
liberty, and constitutional law ; it is a representative of the public
benevolence and jirogressive civilization of New England, and it
speaks for that. It will stand beneath the smiles of heaven in a
cathedral whose boundaries are the horizon, as the proud representa-
tive of tlie greatest man of this period. The statue of the Egyptian
Memnon is said to have emitted musical sounds when first visited by
the morning sun, which the imagination of the listener was allowed
to interpret. This statue must be superior in influence and ettect to
tliese ancient traditions, for from early morning to the shade of even-
ing it will continually speak to the people of New Hampshire, to the
peo])le of ]\Iaine, to the pcoi)le of this great nation, and the people
of the civilized Avorld, of the prin('i])l('s Aviiich he advocated, and of
which he was the great and acknowledged exponent.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 51
SPEECH OF GOVERNOR PINGREE, OK VERMONT.
Mr. President and Fellow Citizens, — It needed not the invitation
of your executive committee, sir, to induce the state of Vermont to
be represented here on an occasion of this chai-acter and concerning
the memory of this great man, Mr. Webster. Grateful as all her
people would ever be to be represented by their executive head on
an occasion devoted to the memory of such a man, nevertheless,
independently of my official trust or the i^erformance of any official
duty, as a son of New Hampshire, as a native of the town of
Salisbury, as one who attended school in the same district that ]Mr.
Webster attended, as one who attended and afterward taught in that
town at the same academj- where Mr. Webster attended and taught,
as one of the New Hampshire men who pursued his steps through
their beloved college at Dartmouth, that has been so eloquently rep-
resented here to-day in the person of our orator who has addressed
us on tliis occasion, I come from and for my adopted state to add my
words to yours touching this man of genius and of greatness who
belonged to both states alike. For, Mr. President and gentlemen, in
representing my adopted state and speaking for lier, as well as in
my individual love for the name and the history and the memory
of Daniel Webster, I may say that Vermont, the Green Mountain
State — the New Hampshire grants, — claims Daniel Webster by
birthright as much as the state of New Hampshire can claim him.
At the time his eyes first saw light uj) there in the old town of Salis-
bury, the state that I represent was a part of your state which we
all represent to-day. She, Vermont, the first-born state of this
American Union, comes to-day feeling honored that she may unite
with New Hampshire, the last state that made the American Union,
do honor to the memory of that illustrious statesman and to the
deeds of the greatest man in oratory, as has been stated here, that
has ever lived in anj- country or at anytime. And speaking for my-
self and many of my native and my adojited state, I can affirm that
they have drawn their true inspiration of country love — that pa-
triotic devotion that was so sorely needed in days not long past —
from those grand speeches left v;s by Mr. Webster more than from
all the other literature our school days furnished.
From those majestic appeals for the integrity and perpetuity of the
Union, which the man whom this statue represents has left upon the
pages of American history, the men of your generation and nunc,
^Ir. President, have drawn more of that patriotism and character
which insured our salvation as a united peojjle than from all the rest
of the gi'eat orations of our land and time. I know not how, — in-
52 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
deed, I fear it were not possible that this noble land of ours shoidd
stand to-day, having so snccessfully withstood all the assaults that
were brought to bear against her, had it not been that the young men
of our boyhood days and later had imbibed from those great orations
the grand political sentiment that the unity of these states and the
liberties of this people must stand or fall together, and one could not
exist without the other.
That one outpouring of unstudied and resistless eloquence where
he deplored the scene of a broken Union, or brightened at the sight
of a prosperous and united country, which Webster left so appeal-
ingly to the men of his time as well as to the unborn generations, to
stand now and forever by the integrity of the Union, has, to my ap-
prehension, already done more than the sapngs of any other man
towards inspiring " our young men fit for war " to save the govern-
ment in her struggle against the power of secession. And that same
inspiration will reach forward from that speech through the corridors
of time, infusing patriots and marshaling soldiers ever ready at their
country's need in the wars for freedom and for the rights of men.
SPEECH OF HON. JOHN A. BINGHAM, OF OHIO.
By the favor of his Excellency it is my high privilege to partici-
pate in the ceremonies of this day. I am not here for personal dis-
play, but merely to bear witness to the men of this commonwealth of
the deep gratitude which I feel and cherish for the memory of the
man with whose name and fame I was made familiar in my child-
hood, youth, and manhood, and who by his great public services
commanded my admiration and became an idol of my affection.
New Hampshire honors herself by honoring her most illustrious
son. Now that Daniel Webster has put oft' this mortal and has put
on immortality, it is eminently fitting that the state of his nativity
should at the porch of her capitol perpetuate in enduring bronze his
majestic form and features. Those who saw and heard this man of
large discourse, this matchless statesman, jurist, and orator, in the
greatness of his strength, felt, and the words involuntarily pressed
upon their lips for utterance, "How noble in reason, how infinite in
faculties." This life-like statue of AVebster is for posterity. He
needs it not. The dead only are the immortals of our race. They
alone receive the crown of an endless life. Those who saw and heard
Webster saw and heard the man of their times who had taken all
knowledge for his province, and lived laborious days that he might
do faithfully and well his whole duty to his God, his country, and
his race.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 53
To found ami i)erpetuate our American nationality with its consti-
tution of free government deriving its powers from the consent of
the people, and established in order to secure liberty to all and jus-
tice to all by the combined power of all, may well be reckoned as
one of the greatest of human achievements.
The men of the Revolution, under the guidance of Washington,
first of Americans and foremost of men, who by his example o-ave
new "ardor to virtue, and new confidence to truth," founded our
republic and drafted its constitution. These men whom God tauo-ht
to build for glory and for beauty, and who formulated the fabric of
American empire with its centralized power and decentralized ad-
ministration, thereby made us a nation organized by the jDcrpetual
union of thirteen separate and independent states united into one,
and to be further enlarged by the addition of such new states as
might thereafter be formed within the national domain, subject to
and restricted by the constitution of the United States, the funda-
mental law of the republic. This complex system of civil polity
was a new and untried experiment, the like of which had never be-
fore been read or heard of in human story. When Washington had
finished his work, standing upon the isthmus between two eternities,
and in his own words, was soon " to be consigned to the mansions
of rest," he addressed to his countrymen then in life, and to the mil-
lions of his countrymen who might come after him, his farewell
words, wherein he advised them that the "unity of government,
which constitutes us one people, is the main pillar in the edifice of
our real independence " ; that pains would be taken and artifices
employed to weaken in their minds the conviction of this truth, that
our constitution, "perfectly free in its principles till changed by the
explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory
upon all" ; and, finally, that "in proportion as the structure of gov-
ernment gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public
opinion be enlightened." As public opinion under a free represent-
ative government is mightier than armies, it is indispensable that it
be enlightened.
When Washington died, happily for our country Webster lived,
and soon thereafter took his place in the national service. At that
time and after, designing, ambitious men, careless of their country's
welfare and of the interests of mankind, aggressively began the
work of disunion by disseminating among the people the theory that
there was no American nationality ; that what was called the consti-
tution of the United States was in fact not a constitution, but a
league, a compact, a confederation merely between the several states
thereof ; that each state retained its separate sovereignty and inde-
54 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
pendence ; that the government of the United States was but the
agent of the states, and was created Ijy the states, and subject at any
time to be abrogated by the several states, and the separate action
of all or any one of said states. Of the falsity of this theory, and
the peril and disaster which must result from it if accepted by the
people and carried into effect, it was New Hampshire's great son
who warned and instructed the people as no other man of his day
did or could warn or instruct them. With the prescience of a seer
Webster saw clearly and foretold what must come of this theory if
acted upon by one or more of the states of the Union. More than
any man of his day he was the educator of the people on all the
questions involved touching the powers of the national government
and the reserved powers of the states. In the great debates in the
senate in 1830-33, he gave utterance to his thoughts in defense of
the supremacy of the constitution and in exposition of the constitu-
tion, which fell upon the nation's mind like a prophefs words, and
found their way into the hearts of the people, and convinced them
that the people of all the states and all the territories of the Union
were a nation, were one people, with one government, one country,
and one destiny ; that the constitution of the United States was es-
tablished and ordained by the people thereof, and not by the states ;
that it is what it is declared on its face to be, the constitution of
the United States of America, — not a league or compact, but the
constitution, the fundamental and supreme law of the land, sacredly
obligatory upon every state and territory, and upon the people of
every state and territory in the Union ; that no state had color of au-
thority to secede from the Union, or to nullify the constitution or
any law of the United States, or to pass any statute or ordinance in
conflict with the nation's constitution and laws. Webster clearly
comprehended the righteousness there is in right understanding, and
therefore exerted his great powers to educate the whole people and
possess them of the right understanding of their national constitution
and of their duties and obligations thereunder. In the performance
of this service he did more than any other American citizen since
Washington to form and enlighten the public opinion of the United
States in regard to their constitution and government, to the nation's
rights thereunder, and to the duties, rights, and obligations of the
citizens of the United States.
Mr. Webster, in his mastei'ly and conclusive argument in reply to
Mr. Calhoun, the chief est and ablest of the advocates of the theory of
state sovereignty and the alleged right of states severally to secede
from the Union and nullify the constitution and laws of the nation,
demonstrated as clearly as it is possible for human reason to demon-
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 55
strate any proposition within the compass of the human understand-
ing, that the constitution of the United States is a national, funda-
mental law, ordained by the people of the United States, essential to
the nation's life, and is the supreme law of the land, anything in the
constitution and laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
Among other weighty Avords, he said what the people have since af-
firmed and made good, that in the constitution it is the people who
speak, and not the states ; that the maintenance of the constitution does
not depend on the plighted faith of the states as states to support it ;
but that it relies on individual duty and individual obligation ; . . .
that if the friends of nullification should give practical efi"ect to their
opinions, they would prove themselves the most skillful architects of
ruin, the most eflectual extinguishers of high-raised expectations,
the greatest blasters of human hopes that any age has produced.
"The people," said he, "will stand fast by the constitution and
by those who defend it. ... I shall exert every faculty I
possess in aiding to prevent the constitution from being nullified,
destroyed, or impaired, and even should I see it fall, I will still,
with a voice feeble, perhaps, but earnest as ever issued from human
lips, call on the people to come to the rescue."
Webster's prayer was, that in his expiring moments he might not
see a land rent with civil feuds and drenclied in fraternal blood,
or look upon the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glori-
ous Union. His prayer was granted; he passed to his rest before
that fearful conflict burst upon the country, when our sun went down
at mid-noon, and night and storm and thick darkness fell upon the
nation, and the land was rent with civil feuds, and the foundations
of the republic rocked beneath the earthquake shock of battle. In
that supreme moment of peril to the nation, its constitution, and laws,
the people, not unmindful of Webster's words that the people
would stand by their constitution and that he called upon them to
come to its rescue, did come in their might to its rescue.
" They came as the winds come when forests are rended.
They came as the waves come when navies are stranded."
The loyal, faithful people made a sublime sacrifice in defense of
the nation, its constitution and laws; more than three hundred
thousand of them gave up their lives in the fierce conflict that their
country might live, and by their virtue, their valor, and their self-
sacrifice they made their death beautiful. They conquered a peace
for their country ; they vindicated the nation's rights and maintained
the supremacy of the nation's constitution and laws. It was a wr-
56 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
tory for the whole country, for libertj-, for justice, and for humanity.
Webster, by his never-to-be-forgotten instructions and thoughts, as
clearly contributed to this victoiy of the people as did Grant, the
hero of the centvuy, by his sword. The constitution, re-formed and
maintained, is still supreme over all the land. It embodies the
democracy of the New Testament, — liberty, fraternity, and equality.
The Union stands undivided and unbroken, more firmly established
than at any time in our history. The republic stands secure, known
and honored throughout the earth, numbering sixty millions of
freemen, and covering the continent from ocean to ocean. It looks
out on Europe from its eastern and on Asia fi'om its western shore.
May the republic, saved by suffering and sacrifice and martyi'dom,
be perpetual.
ODE TO DANIEL WEBSTEK, BY AVILLIAM C. SHEPPARD, OF NORTH
SCITUATE, MASS., A NATIVE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
O fair New Hampshire's noblest son,
The mighty, glorious, and great.
Most cherished of thy native state.
The immortal and the godlike one !
To thee we rear the modest token
Of love and gratitude and praise.
And offer speech and song and lays.
But speak and sing in accents broken.
We praise thee for thy strong right arm.
On which the nation leaned secure ;
Thy heart, so tender, fond, and pure.
That loved her with a love so warm ;
And for thy tongue so eloquent
And full of sweetest melody,
Whose tones rang out from sea to sea.
Enrapturing a continent.
Thy hand Columbia's lyre swept o'er,
And made all jarring notes agree ;
Awoke the strains of liberty
And unitv forcvermore.
THE DEDICATION EXERCISES. 57
What thoug-li thy body 's by the sea,
Beneath the Pilgrims' hallowed hill ?
Thou ever livest, livest still.
Enshrined in grateful memory !
Within thine arms the nation lies ;
Thy mighty heart-throbs yet she feels ;
And still the same thy music peals
Throughout the land, along the skies !
Descend, ascend, ye cherubim,
JJpon the ladder of his glory.
And bear aloft to God the stor}',
Our thanksgiving for the gift of him —
Him ! him ! Columbia's greatest son,
The mighty, gloi'ious, and grand.
Most cherislied of his native land, —
The godlike and immortal one !
After the reading of tlie ode by its author, the Handel
Society of Dartmouth College sang ^^ Integer Vitce'' very
beautifully^
INTEGER \YTM.
"Integer vitjB scelerisque purus
Non eget Mauris jaculis, neque arcu,
Nee venenatis gravida sagittis,
Fusee, Pharetra ;
Sive per Syrtes iter festuosas,
Sive factui-us per inhosjjitalem
Caucasum, vel qua3 loca fabulosus
Lambit Hj^daspes.
Namque me silva lupus in Sabina,
Dum meam canto Lalagen, et ultra
Terminum curis vagor expeditis
Fugit inermem ;
58
STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
Quale portentum neque militaris
Daunias latis alit a^sculetis,
Nee Jubfe tellus generat, leoni;m
Arida nutrix.
Pone me, pigris iibi nulla canipis
Arbor restiva recreatur aura,
Quod latus mvindi nebula? mahisque
Juppiter urget ;
Pone suIj curru niniium jiropinqui
Solis, in terra domibvis negata:
Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo,
Dulce loquenteni."
— Horace, Book I., Ode 22.
MEMBERS OF THE HANDEL SOCIETY WHO SANG AT THE WEBSTEK
MONUMENT UNVEILING.
R. G. Brown,
A. H. Chase,
K. H. Goodwin,
A. H. Hale,
F. P. Brackett,
G. W. Glass,
E. B. Hale,
'86 Seniors.
E. S. Hill,
E. J. Hatch,
W. P. Kelley,
E. P. Pitman,
'(97 Juniors.
F. A. Howland,
AV. D. Quint,
J. C. Simpson,
W. Sampson,
H. W. Thurston,
F. T. Vaughan.
A. J. Thomas,
F. J. Urquhart.
''88 Sophomores.
F. II. Chase, R. N. Fairbanks.
'SO Frcslimeii.
J. I. Buck,
F. L. Bugbee,
A. Chase, Jr.,
C. B. Curtis,
E. B. Davis,
W. P. Ilah',
L. II. Ingham,
E. L. Williamson.
ADDENDA
At the conclusion of the exercises in state-house park,
the guests of the state were escorted to the Eagle Hotel,
where a banquet was served. His Excellency Governor
Moody Currier presided, and grace was said by President
Samuel C. Bartlett. There were no speeches at this time.
During the day Hon. George W. Nesmith received the
following greeting, by telegraph, from the Bunker Hill
Monument Association, through its president:
Boston, June 17, 1886.
Hon. George W. Nesmith, President, Concord, N. H. : —
The Bunker Hill Monument Association, assembled at its annual meet-
ing upon the one hundred and eleventh anniversary of the battle, con-
gratulates the people of New Hampshire upon the erection and dedica-
tion of a statue of Daniel Webster this day at the capital of their state.
Holding in grateful remembrance his services on its own behalf, the
Association cordially unites in every honor to the memory of this illustri-
ous citizen, statesman, and patriot.
CHAS. DEVENS, President.
The reply of Mr. Nesmith was as follows :
Concord, N. H., June 17, 1886.
The Hon. Charles Devens, PresH Bunker Hill Monument Association,
Boston, Mass. : —
New Hampshire receives with gratification the congratulatory despatch
from your Association. Mr. Webster's fame, though broad as the Union,
is specially identified with the glory of his native state, and with the glory
of the state of his adoption. It will live as long as the morning light
shall gild the monumental shaft which his eloquence twice consecrated,
or as the light of parting day shall linger and play upon its summit.
GEO. W. NESMITH, President.
MEETING OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE ALUMNL
At a fully attended meeting of the Dartmouth College
alumni of Concord, May 10, 1886, at which Hon. J. Everett
Sargent, class of 1840, presided, the subject of holding a
reunion of the alumni, in connection with the dedication
exercises, was considered, and a committee of arrangements
was appointed as follows : Henry J. Crippen, class of 1861 ;
Frank S. Streeter, Esq., class of 1874; Henry M. French,
M. D., class of 1876 ; John P. George, Esq., class of 1878 ;
Edward N. Pearson, class of 1881. The committee subse-
quently organized by choosing Frank S. Streeter chairman,
and Henry J. Crippen treasurer.
Sketch of Benjamin Pierce Cheney.
BENJAMIN PIERCE CHENEY.
" Honor and shame from no condition rise ; —
Act well yovir part, there all the honor lies."
Benjamin Pierce Cheney, to whose iimniiicence his
native state of New Hampshire is indebted for the pos-
session of a statue of Daniel Webster, equal if not supe-
rior as a work of art to any similar memorial of her
great statesman, traces his lineage back to Tristram
Cheney, who was born in Roxbury, Mass., in 1720, and
who after several removals finally died at Barnet, Vt., in
1815, at the age of ninety-five years.
The subject of this sketch was the eldest of eight chil-
dren, and was born August 12, 1815, in the town of
Hillsborough, K H. His father, Jesse Cheney, was by
trade and occupation a blacksmith, and became embar-
rassed in his circumstances as the result of being surety
for a neio-hbor on an official bond. The maiden name of
his mother was Alice Steele. His parents were married
l^ovember 25, 1813. His father was born in the town of
Antrim, N. H., October 3, 1788, and died in the city of
Manchester, ^. H., June 22, 1863. His mother was
born in Antrim, I^. H., August 12, 1791, and died at
Manchester, July 28, 1849. Mr. Cheney was named in
62 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTEE.
honor of his father's neighbor, Gov. Benjamin Pierce,
father of President FrankUn Pierce.
The early part of the current century was a primitive
period in the history of the Granite State. Few Hamp-
shire was then ahnost purely an agricultural community.
The railroad was not, nor the electric telegraph. The
cotton mill was unknown in her borders. The state was
largely a rural district, but her inland towns were as a
whole quite as populous then as now. Gov. Pierce pre-
sented his vouno- namesake with three cosset sheep for
his name. Such a gift was specially appropriate in a
pastoral community.
The embarrassed circumstances of his father made it
necessary for the boy to exert himself for his own and
the family's support. At the early age of ten years he
was employed in his fiither's shop ; then in a tavern in
Francestowai, N. H. ; and later in a store in the same
town. But indoor life proving destructive to his health,
he purchased his time from his father, and commencing
at the age of sixteen he drove the stage from Keene to
Nashua and Exeter, driving fifty miles a day without the
loss of a trip for six consecutive years. Among the pas-
sen o-ers in his stage-coach was Daniel Webster, who saw
in Mr. Cheney "the promise and potency" of the highly
successful, energetic, and public-spirited business man
and citizen which he ultimately became. Mr^ Webster
took so much interest in young Cheney that upon his
going into the express business he wrote out and pre-
sented to him, in his own handwriting, the laws relating
to common carriers. Mr. Cheney always held his illus-
trious friend in grateful remembrance, and finally deter-
BENJAMIN PIERCE CHENEY. 63
mined to give to his native state a statue of him, which
purpose and intention were so happily fulfilled on the
seventeenth day of June of the current year (1886).
While Mr. Cheney was engaged as a stage-driver the
Boston & Lowell Railroad was opened. This was one of
the initial railroads, and helped to inaugurate the rail-
road system of the country. In 1842 railroads were
extended to Concord, N. H. Then it was that Mr. Che-
ney embarked upon this recently opened railroad line in
the express business, of w^iich he was the principal pio-
neer and founder, and which under his direction and
management has been expanded from a merely local into
a continental business.
The various express companies inaugurated and man-
aged by Mr. Cheney, commencing with the local express
between Boston and Concord, K. H., and subsequently
extending over this route to Canada and the "West, have
now been consolidated with the American Express Com-
pany, of which Mr. Cheney is still one of the executive
officers. It is in connection with these enterprises that
his name is most familiar to the business men of New
England, but he has been specially prominent throughout
the country in the inauguration and management of the
Overland Mail, Wells & Fargo's Express, the Atchison,
Topeka & Santa Fe, IsTorthern Pacific, Mexican Central,
and Vermont Central railroads, and he is to-day a direc-
tor in nearly all of these corporations, as well as of the
Northern (N. H.) Railroad. Mr. Cheney's career em-
braces the commencement and development of the rail-
road system in this country. It extends back to the days
of the old stage-coach and the freight wagon.
64 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
During his active life the CaUfornia gold miues were
discovered, and the electric telegraph was invented. He
has been connected with and taken advantage of many of
the wonderful improvements which characterize the world
of to-day. He has lived in an age of wonderful opportu-
nities, and has availed himself of them. Beside his gift
of the Webster statue and of fifty thousand dollars to
Dartmouth College, he has manifested in many ways pri-
vately a beneficence even more honorable to him as a
man than any instances of his public munificence.
Mr. Cheney was married June 6, 1865, to Elizabeth S.,
daughter of Asahel Clapp, a former well-known mer-
chant of Concord, IT. H. Three daughters and two sons
are the fruits of this marriage. Mr. Cheney has a large
and elegant farm in Wellesley, Mass., where he and his
devoted wife make their happy summer home specially
attractive in dispensing a free and constant hospitality.
His private and public acts of liberality have endeared
him to hosts of friends, and no man, either in his native
state or the state of his adoption, can boast of more gen-
eral rejoicing at his prosperity, or a more sincere desire
that a long and haj^py life may be vouchsafed to him.
Proceedings of Dartmouth Alumnl
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI.
The gathering of the graduates of Dartmouth College
exceeded in every respect anything in the history of the
college. The alumni headquarters were established in
the Representatives' Hall, where, during the day, between
three hundred and four hundred names were enrolled.
The oldest class represented was 1832, and from that date
to the present it was stated that only one class failed to
have a representative. At four o'clock the graduates
formed in procession in the western portion of the state-
house park, under the marshalship of Albert S. Batchel-
lor, of Littleton, of 1872. The roll of classes was called,
and the oldest alumnus was given the head of the col-
umn. He was followed by those of succeeding dates, the
line being closed by nearly a hundred undergraduates
who came from Hanover in a special train. As the pro-
cession passed down State and up Pleasant street on its
M^ay to the rink, where the meeting was to be held, sharp
lookout was kept to discover any alumnus who happened
not to be in the line. When any such was seen many
lusty voices would call for him, and the ranks would be
opened to receive him. In the rink, tables extended
throughout the floor, with an official one at riirht andes
at the head. Tn the galleries were a large number of
68 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
spectators, personal friends of the graduates. At the
head of the table sat Hon. Walhridge A. Field, of Bos-
ton, the president ot the meeting. On his right was the
chaplain, Rev. E. 0. Jameson, of 1855, of Millis, Mass.,
and next the orator, Hon. Mellen Chamberlain, of 1844,
of Boston. On the left of the president was the toast-
master, Hon. George A. Marden, of 1861, of Lowell.
When Mr. Field rose to call the meeting to order it was
evident that he was deeply impressed by the number and
character of the large assembly.
Grace was said by Rev. E. 0. Jameson, after which an
hour was devoted to the dinner. After cigars had been
ho-hted, Judffe Field introduced the orator, Mr. Cham-
herlain, who on rising was greeted with earnest applause.
JUDGE chamberlain's ORATION.
I am sure, Mr. President, that the alumni of Dartmouth College
desire, first of all, to express to his Excellency the Governor, and to
the honorable council of the state of New Hampshire, their grateful
sense of the privilege of participating in the dedication of a statue
of Daniel Webster on his native soil ; and to add that they regard
the selection of the president of the college for the part wliich he
has performed in these interesting ceremonies with distinguished
success, as a manifestation of good will by the state to the college
which is appreciated by all its friends.
The relations of the college to the state are peculiar. As a cor-
poration it is older than the state ; for the charter of the college,
which is still the basis and measure of its rights, and irrevocable ex-
cept for cause, came from George the Third when New Hampshire
was a royal province, \vithout charter, and governed under the king's
commission, which was revocable at his pleasure.
To-day we witness an extraordinary proceeding. The state ac-
cepts as a gift from an estimable and loyal citizen, and with the
according voices of thousands of other citizens also loyal, sets up in
a conspicuous place before the most august symbol of its authority,
a statue of Daniel Webster, to whom more than to any other man
is due that construction of the constitution of the United States which
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI. 69
overthrew a legislative act of the sovereign state of New Hamjjshire,
reversed the solemn decision of its highest judicial tribunal, and
erected within its jurisdiction an imperium in imperio which will
endure as long as the constitution endures.
And it is well ; for the state and the college have been mutually
heljiful. The state has been the benefactor of the college; and if
not munificent when compared with more opulent states, yet liberal
in a degree honorable to a government which derived its revenues
from a people without profitable industries until the stimulus of
foreign capital had aroused the slumbering giant of the Merrimack,
and whose agricultural interests rapidly declined when canals and
railroads opened the markets of the East to the disastrous competi-
tion of the more fertile West.
But now a new era has begun. Necessity has developed a new
industiy. Thrift and the near approach of hunger have stimulated
the conversion of pure air and mountain scenery into merchantable
commodities, happily indispensable to the sweltering corn-growers
and pork-packers of the malarial prairies. A retributive corner has
been made, — reasonably permanent, if we may rely upon the jjrovi-
dentially slow growth of mountains, and remunerative, we hope,
" beyond the dreams of avarice." These inspiring facts open a
vista. In the distance the college is seen reveling in opulence.
If the state has been liberal according to her means, the colleo-e
has recognized her reciprocal obligations, and met them with prompt-
itude and efliciency. Erase from the state's roll of honor, of which
she is justly proud, the names of those sons of Dartmouth who have
gained distinction in science, in jurisprudence, and in public affairs,
and the place of New Hampshire would be less conspicuous than it
now is among her sister states. Give back to unlettered drudgery
those undistinguished sons of Dartmouth who with minds quickened
by liberal studies have followed their professions on hillsides, or in
sequestered valleys, — narrow, but necessary fields of labor, — and
there would be a manifest decline of intelligence, good judgment,
and moral sense in those communities.
I do not purpose to dwell on those special relations of Daniel
Webster to the college, to which I have adverted ; but in the general
relations of debt and credit between the college and the people of
the state, Daniel Webster was included. Born remote from the
centers of civilization and culture, and without the means of access
to them, there was danger, and in his case, from temperament,
special danger, lest he would grow up in obscurity, and add one more
to the large number of richly endowed but imperfectly educated men
of which New Hampshire was full, who gave to the wilderness
70 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
powers which might have made them conspicuous on any theater of
action . More than most men of anj'thing like his intellectual force,
Daniel Webster needed the stimulus of education and the prospect
of a career. This needed help was just what the college gave. She
opened the mine, she laid bare the ore, — abundant, massive, pure,
— and set it free, as currency bearing the royal stamp of genius,
to enrich the wisdom of the jjeople and the English sj^eech of the
world. This was his chief debt to the college.
Apart from Webster's natural endowments, no one was more
"heinously unprovided," as he said, with education or pecuniary
means "to break into college." Luckily, it was not far to seek;
otherwise he might never have found it. But he sought it and
entered. When there, unlike Bacon and Milton at English Cam-
bridge, he made no complaint of the education it afforded. It was
the best he was prepared to receive, and both parties were satisfied.
She gave him all she had to give, and with all her requirements he
cheerfully complied. Both were young together, both were poor,
and both struggling to gain a foothold on bare creation. It is idle,
but we may guess if we will, how much and in what respects Web-
ster might have been greater, had he, after the preparatorj- training
of such schools as Eton or Winchester, been educated at Oxford or
Cambridge, with their splendid libraries, their exact scholarship,
their impressive antiquity, and the stimulating influence of the long
lines of their illustrious graduates.
Such were the relations to the college of Daniel Webster as an
undergraduate. He was greatly in her debt. But there came a time
when all this was changed, — an hour when her need was sore and
pressing, and his help was seasonable and adequate ; an hour when
he repaid the unforgotten debt of his youth ; when he secured im-
mortality for her, and laid the foundations of his own.
But, gentlemen, I must not forget even in this presence that there
are other claims than ours to Daniel Webster. He was a son of
New Hampshire, and he was the foremost man of his country. Of
all the great Americans of this century, perhaps of any century, he
was the most genuinely and thoroughly American ; of all, most un-
doubtedly a product of our soil, climate, institutions, and modes of
life. He owed much to the state of his birth, Ijut he owed nothing
to any other state. He owed much to his New Hampshire ancestors ;
but to them, and to them alone, was he indebted for his rich inherit-
ance. In him there was no intermixture of nationalities ; no cross-
ing of plebeian with patrician blood. His pedigree was of New
Hampshire, and as piu-e as the air he breathed. Unlike Morris, Gal-
latin, and Hamilton, he was born on our soil. His forefathers wore
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI. 71
also born on it, luilike the ancestors of some of those who in Kevolu-
tiouary days rendered illustrious services to the country. For a
hundred and fifty years they had lived in New Hampshn-e. Into
them had entered the cold blasts from the polar circle, and the fierce
heats which seemed to have strayed from the tropics. Every drop
of their blood, every fiber of their flesh, every bone and smew, had
become Americanized. For five generations, not from the safe re-
treats of o-arrisoned settlements, but on the skirmish Ime of civiliza-
tion, they\ad waged strenuous war with barbarism, and changed
the wilderness into habital^le abodes of men.
To all these transforming influences Daniel Webster was fortu-
nately heir We of New Hampshire think that he was also fortunate
in the place of his birth. The gloiy of a state, sir, is in its men ;
-not in its broad acres ; not in its fertile soil ; not in its rich mines ;
but in its men. That is a great state which produces great men,
and virile were the loins that begat the Websters, the Starks, the
Langdons, the Bartletts, the Smiths, the Bells, the Pierces, the
Woo'dburys, the Casses, the — but I need a day for the rest.
Without doubt Daniel Webster was fortunate in the place of his
Ijirth —in sight of the majestic mountains ; not far from the beauti-
ful river ; the'^mountains in their grandeur, the tyiDe of his character ;
the river in its reserved strength, no unfit emblem of his life. In
this pure air, full of light reflected from the purple hills, —himself
made thoughtful by the nearness of dark forests and the sound of
distant waterfalls, feeding his imagination with traditions of Rogers,
Putnam, and Stark, the old French war rangers, and of Cilley,
Scammell, and Poor, his father\s compatriots in arms during the war
of the Revolution, — Daniel Webster gathered his scanty education,
a o-enuine son of New Hampshire. Here he was born. Here he
"mewed his mighty youth.'' Here he clothed himself with glorious
manhood. He owed little to other forms of civilization. His mind,
his character, and his personality, his thoughts, and his style of their
expression were of New Hampshire. His latest political and con-
stitutional ]n-inciples bore the impress of his earliest. When he
left his native state he was a complete man. He gained little or
uothino- that was essential by association with communities more
cultured than those he left behind him. These were of the sea;
those were of the mountains. Not always in accord with the domi-
nant political party of his native state, he was more nearly so than
with the extreme Federalists of New England.
Thus was he born, so was he reared, and such he remained, — a
true and loyal son of New Hampshire. She claims him as her own.
With all his great qualities she claims him; she claims him with all
72 STATUE OP DANIEL WEBSTER.
his faults. He had faults, but she forgave them in that hour when
he defended the constitution; she forgot them — forgot them all
and forever — when she beheld the Union made one and inseparable
by the inspiration of his prevailing eloquence.
Her son, this complete man, bone of her bone and flesh of her
flesh, she gave to the country. Few states ever had such a son to
off"er. Fortunate the country which receives such a gift. Costly as
it was, it was given without reserve and for all the ages. New
Hampshire is neither able nor desires to recall it. She cannot
reclaim his wisdom embedded in the constitution. She would not
unloose the golden cord of patriotism with which he bound the states
in perpetual union.
More than threescore years and ten have passed since Daniel
"Webster, in the prime of his manhood and in the fullness of his
great powers, went forth from New Hampshire to the service of his
country. What those services were is known of all men. To-day
he returns. Once more his foot is on his native soil, in sight of the
majestic mountains he loved so well, not far from the river on whose
banks he was born. Shouts from the hillsides, answering shouts
from the valleys, welcome his return. Sir, 1 cannot think him dead.
Not in the flesh, indeed, does he stand before us. No longer do
those dark eyes flash upon us their inward light, and the voice which
once rang like a trumpet is now silent. Yet, in a sense more true
than his own pathetic words, he still lives. To-day we have erected
a statue of Daniel Webster, — of Daniel Webster dead. Webster
dead ! Who closed the eyes of that great intelligence ? Who saw
the train go forth bearing that majestic soul to the tomb ? Who
wrapped in cerements and closed the marble doors on those thoughts
that breathed and those words that burned ?
Alas ! in the blindness of our grief we thought that it was so, and
spake of him as of one that was dead ; but time and great events, and
men's second thoughts and more charitable judgments, and loving
hearts that quic-ken at the sound of his name, — all proclaim him
living. Yet we have erected a statue of Daniel Webster ; and it is
well ; for monuments to great actions, and statues of men tridy
great are not dead things, nor are they to the dead, but to the living.
The deeds they emblazon are immortal deeds, not transitory ; deeds
which light the centuries, not the hours, in their pathway to glorious
actions. They illustrate Avhat they teach ; they are what they com-
memorate. If yonder statue is not Daniel Webster in the flesh, it is
Daniel Webster transfigured with the immortality of genius ; with
passionate patriotism which never grows cold; with love of home
and kindred which feels no touch of earthly years ; with
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI. 73
' ' truths that wake
To jjerish never."
And through the years that are to come, to all who may enter yonder
legislative hall, and to the long procession of men who shall walk
these streets, those lijis will still have language, will still defend
the constitution, will still insj^ire sentiments of nationality. Nor
can I think that it ever will be otherwise : for the inspiration of great
endeavor is its immortality ; the potency of great achievement is its
indestructibility. The past assures the future. The discourses at
Plymouth Rock and at Bunker Hill were not for an hour; nor was
the Great Reply. In the days of their utterance they were resplen-
dent, unprecedented eloquence ; but they spake truest when they be-
came wisdom to Lincoln and valor to Grant ; they rang loudest when
heard along the front of battle, and ins])ired deeds of immortal hero-
ism on a hundred fields. No : the statue is not to the dead orator
but to the living who speaks to us, and will speak to those who come
after us, as he sjDake to those, his associates, the venerable men
happily with us to-day, who
" followed him, honored him.
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him their pattern to live and to die."
The sentiments were as follows : —
Dartmouth College :
Cradled by the river-side
Where the Lidian schoolboy played,
Li New Hampshire's untrod wilds,
Far from busy haunts of trade ;
Dowered scant with worldly goods,
Reared in humble penury.
Struggling through long ^-ears of toil,
Rich and j^owerful ne'er to be.
But to-day still toiling on
Rich become, though not in jjelf.
Powerful, too, in best of sense —
Rich and strong in sons and self ;
Glorious always is her work,
74 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
Glorious now as glorious then,
Product of lier fostering care
Strong and self-reliant men.
As to-day we gather here
Webster's statue to unveil,
Not alone his fame we crown,
Hers, as well, our plaudits liail.
She to him was mother true,
He to her was more than son ;
But for both far less tlie fame
We her other boys had won.
If her monument is so\ight.
Let the poet's answer be
Given the seeker : Search no more,
It is liere, • — " Circumspicey
Responded to by President Bartlett.
The State of Neio Hamjjshire : Famous for her scenery, her granite,
and her men, but chiefly known as being the seat of Dartmouth
College.
Response by Hon. B. F. Prescott, of Epping.
The Press.
W. E. Barrett, editor of tlie Boston Advertiser, was
called on, but as he bad left to take the train, E. C. Car-
rigan responded.
Eloquence as described bt/ him who spake as seldom man has spoken :
" The high purpose, the prime resolve, speaking fi-om the tongue,
beaming from the eye, and urging the whole man onward, right
onward to his jwrposo, — this, this is eloquence, or rather it is
something nobler and higher than all eloquence, it is action."
Hon. J. W. Patterson, who was introduced as the Peri-
cles of Dartmouth's later years, responded.
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMXL 75
BESPONSE liY IIOX. J. AV. PATTERSON.
Brother Alumni, — One should liave tlie genius and felicity of
Pericles to respond suitably to the introduction with which the too
partial kindness of our chairman has embarrassed me, but now such
poor gifts as I have are paralj'zed by the force and cordiality of your
fraternal greeting. This magnificent gathering of the sons of Dart-
mouth represents the learning, experience, and wisdom of all i^ro-
fessions and interests of the republic, and not to be profoundly
moved by such an i;nstinted and spontaneous expression of its confi-
dence and regard, one must be something more or less than human.
Such unsolicited honors are the compensations of life, and from my
heart, gentlemen, I reciprocate the warmth and sincerity of your
reception .
Reverting to the theme to which you called me up, we must con-
fess that in times past our college has been accused of sacrificing
the accessories of oratory to the more solid and disciplinary studies
of a collegiate curriculum. The limited resources of the institution
in its earlier histor3' doubtless restricted somewhat its provisions for
special and ornamental branches. Chairs devoted exclusively to
studies relating immediately to the art of public S2:)eaking could not
be sustained by a dei^leted treasury without trenching upon the
mathematics, the classics, physics, psj-chology, and other masculine
departments in which Dartmouth has always been strong. Fortu-
nately the necessity for such limitations has passed away, and to-day
the college stands equipped for all the modern courses of study.
But has the cause of a true and manly eloquence ever really suf-
fered by defects in the work of our Alma ]\Iater ? I appeal to the
record. Inspect the roll of American orators. Are the names of her
sons less conspicuous or relatively less numerous than those of other
and more ^wealthy institutions ? In purity, strength, impressiveness,
and simple grandeur, the eloquence of that supreme statesman and
lawyer whose statue we have this day inaugurated stands unrivaled
at home and unsurpassed in the forensic or patriotic literature of
other lands, in ancient or modern times. There, too, is the peerless
Choate, Webster's Homer, who made even the sulking of our Achil-
les a personal glory. Where in court or senate has the fullness of
his learning, the splendor of his diction, or the qi;ickness and subtlety
of his perceptions been surpassed since the days of Erskine and
Burke ? In his speeches, tliought, like waves of the sea, rolls in
ujion us in endless succession, bearing an oriental wealth of illus-
tration and glowing with the heat of an intense and lofty passion.
Time would fail us to recall the graduates of our college wlio in leg-
76 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
islative halls, in courts, in pulpits, in poj^ular assemblies, and in
every arena of public service have influenced society with the power
and fascinations of impressive speech.
True eloquence is infinitely more and greater than felicity of style
and the witchery of voice. It demands that strong and definite
grasp of principles, that quickness and clearness of aj^j^rehension,
that strength and tenacity of conviction, which come only with the
discipline of thought, and tliis is the fruitage of those severer studies
which from the first have characterized the work of our college.
We weary of empty declamation, however deftly worded or artfully
modulated, and turn with disgust from simulated emotion.
"Life is real, life is earnest,"
and our public utterances, if they would secure a sympathetic re-
sponse from the popular heart, must reach the vital problems of the
time, must deal with events and iDolicies that affect the conditions
and the welfare of societ}^ The graces of rhetoric add to the effec-
tiveness of speech, but the prime essential of high oratory is strong
masculine thought that solves the practical questions of social and
public life. The collegiate training that imparts mental power and
discipline does most for the eloquence that moves the masses in this
utilitarian ao-e. A chastened imaorination and a cultured taste will
give to language the graces and beauties of high scholarshijJ, and
are important factors in the art of oratory, but its essential element
is strong, sensil)le, and sustained thinking.
Great orators, like great j^oets, are born, not made. No school can
claim the paternity of eloquence. Like the radiance of the diamond,
it sj^rings from intrinsic qualities that are the Avoi'k of nature. But
the school, like the lapidai'y, gives an added beauty and effectiveness
to gifts that are divine. Special endowments of intellect and tem-
perament must be disciplined and habituated to the concentration
and ])i'oper blending of tlieir forces, or they will fail of their higliest
possibilities of achievement. The supreme masters of the forensic
art are often dull and disappointing in formal discourses and occa-
sional addresses. Thought refuses to flow and the sensibilities to
awaken to indifierent themes. The mental powers expand and the
passions kindle with the grandeur of the issue. When liberty is
struck down, or the rights of states are in peril, when nations rock
with revolution, or popular industries perish, when the social organ-
ism is assailed or innnortal destinies are at stake, then utterance
becomes historic and sublime. The soul rises to the magnitude
of the interests involved, and thought, learning, passion, all come
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI. 77
to the aid of the creative faculty, and lift into the literature of the
world forms of eloquence that can never die.
Absolute intellectual and moral honesty is the indispensable in-
spiration to all enduring speech. We cannot impart to trains of
thought and spoken sentiment not grounded in personal conviction
that strengtli of emotion which is the genius of true eloquence. We
cannot convince others of the truth of what we do not ourselves be
lieve. Nature rebels against an untruth and reveals the affectation
of dishonest declamation. An intuitive apprehension reads the lan-
guage of the heart and discounts tlie words of him who plays a pai't.
Expression, if possible, should be original and accurate, simple
and learned, and radiant with the golden light of a chastened fancy ;
but whatever else it may have, if it is not honest, sensible, and pro
foi;nd, it will be ephemeral.
Words maybe beautiful, may be artistically woven into language
and fall like nectar from the lip, but if not embalmed in the aspira-
tions of the popular heart, if not expressive of ideas and principles
that take hold of the real , permanent, and solemn interests of man-
kind, they will rarely take their place among the great orations
whose eloquence lives in various tongues and thrills through the
ages.
We do not claim for our venerable and venerated mother extraor-
dinary pre-eminence to other institutions; but in this family re-
union we should be unjust to her memory if we did not assert for
her sons a foremost place among the orators of the republic who
have won for themselves an undying fame. Wherever the rights of
men were to be asserted, wherever the principles of government
were to be expounded and its authority maintained, wherever the
majesty of law was to be exalted, the intellectual and social interests
of society advanced, or the claims of revelation pressed upon the
conscience, the voices of our brothers, living or dead, have been
heard and heeded amid the strife. No logic has been more poten-
tial, no pathos more moving, and no wisdom more heeded than
theirs in the great crises of our national and social life. It has
been my good fortune to listen to many of the great orators of this
generation, but among them all there have been none that surpassed
and few that equaled some of the sons of " Old Dartmouth." We
have a right to be proud of our Alma Mater and her children.
Nor is the line exhausted. The past is prophetic of the future.
The bounty of Providence has not exhausted its best gifts. In
the roll-call of our second centennial there will be names, now
unknown to fame, as honored and illustrious as any that the past
has placed among the immortals. To-day we hail our orators yet
78 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER,
to be. Listen to the Macedonian cry, young men, and press to
the front. There is a great work and a splendid future before you.
Remember it is
"Better to stem with heart and hand
The roaring tide of life, than lie
Unmindful, on the flowery strand,
Of God's occasions drifting by."
Dartmouth Lawyers: Hooker spoke of "Law, whose seat is the
bosom of God, whose voice is the harmony of the world." That
is the kind of law the Dartmouth graduates practice.
RESPONSE BY COL. JOHN H. GEORCxE.
My first duty is to welcome to New Hampshire's capital these sons
of New Hampshire's college, and this I do most cordially. One and
all I bid you welcome to participation in the most appropriate cere-
monies in honor of Dartmoutli's greatest son. As I listened to the
admirable address of my friend and classmate, Hon. Mellen Cham-
berlain, on this occasion, my thoughts were carried back to the sum-
mer of 1840, when he and I had just finished our preparatory studies
at the old academy on yonder hill. On commencement week of that
year we journeyed, with my father's horse and wagon, across the
country to visit Hanover for the first time, and be subjected to the
examination for admission to the college. Professor Sanborn, —
who came nearer than any other man I ever knew to being an ency-
clopedia of general knowledge, — I remember, examined me in
Latin ; Professor Crosby, whose love of the classics surpassed the
" love of woman," estimated my Greek; and Professor Young, Sr.,
whose death left a marked vacancy in the ranks of scientific men,
subjected me to some investigation, the particulars of which I have
now forgotten. I remember only the general fact that we were,
without conditions, admitted as freshmen to the college which had
graduated Webster and Choate, and that we were several sizes larger
when we returned to our homes at the end of the week than Ave were
when we left Concord at its I)eginning. Dr. Lord, who to an unsur-
passed degree combined the full courage of his convictions with
vigor, tact, and marvelous ability, and whose memory is specially
dear to the sons of Dartmouth, was the college president. Profes-
sors Haddock, Sanborn, Chase, Brown, Crosby, Young, with tutors
Joseph Bartlett and Brown, Ijecaiue our active teachers. All are
gone. 1 believe no one then connected with the college in any ofti-
cial capacity now remains to tell the tale of college reminiscences.
PROCEEDINCiS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI. 79
But changed as all is in the college and its immediate sm-round-
ings, there are no changes more marked than those involved in the
means and methods of reaching Hanover from all directions, and
especially in the roadside accommodations. In 1840 the stages
usually left Concord for Hanover at four o'clock a. m., but at the
beginning of the college term, when crowded with students, they
started as early as two o'clock in the morning. With the highways
double-rutted by the heavily loaded eight and ten horse teams, it
took full twelve hours of hard driving, ''astraddle the ruts,''' and
harder riding, to make the journey from Concord to Dartmouth
College. This tiresome ride was relieved every few miles by the
stoi^page of the stage at a country tavern, a i^ost-offiee, or a hill so
steej) as to require the unloading of the coach. Few of the Dart-
mouth graduates, before the construction of the Northern Kailroad,
can fail to remember the old Johnson tavern at Fisherville ; the
West and Ambrose inns of Boscawen Plain ; Choate's hill, up which
the horses drew with difficulty the empty coaches, and on toj) of
which stood the horse-shifting station ; the Smith and Webster stands
at " South road" and " Center road" in the town of Webster's birth ;
the more dignified " hotels" at Mousam and West Andover, and the
magician's home at the Potter place ; the station where the stage
horses were clianged in Wilmot ; the old Stickney tavern in Spring-
field ; the pretentious " Willis House" at Enfield Center, which was
subsequently moved to White Kiver Junction when the railroad was
opened there; the Lafayette Hotel at Lebanon; and finally the
" Lower Tavern" and Dartmouth Hotel at Hanover.
A year ago I attended commencement with my friend, the gener-
ous contributor to the funds of the college as well as the liberal
donor of the statue this day so fitly dedicated, traveling with my
carriage over the old stage road for the first time for more than
forty years. I found the broad, double-rutted turnpike narrowed in
places almost to a bridle path ; and of the old hostelries, but two
or three remained. The rest have either disappeared or been jjut
to other uses ; and the Dartmouth boys who frequented them in
their frolics or their journeys to and from college, so far as they
survive, have grown gray in the activities of life.
I have often thought that these rough and tough old highways
and tougher taverns had much to do with strengthening both the
physical and mental powers of the old-time collegians. Dartmouth
lawyers all traveled these highways ; they all ate and drank and
frolicked at these country inns.
Show me any institution which can match the lawyer list of Dart-
mouth College in native ability, in legal acquirements, in keenness
80 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
of perception, in energetic action, in forensic eloquence, or in logical
j)Ower. At home or abroad, where can it be equaled? Among her
dead she points to Daniel Webster, Ezekiel Webster, Rufus Choate,
Samuel Sumner Wilde, Levi Woodbury, Ichabod Bartlett, Salmon
Portland Chase, Richard Fletcher, Joseph Bell, Ether Shepley, Isaac
Fletcher Redfield, Samuel Bell, Joel Parker, Harry Hibljard, George
Foster Shepley, William Henry Bartlett, and Ira Perley. Among
her living sons are Doe, Field, Brigham, Ross, and their associates
upon the New England bench; INIarston, Ranney, Minot, Ayer,
Bingham, Parker, Ladd, Bruce, Rollins, and a multitude of others,
who adorn the bench or grace the bar of the diflferent states. It can,
without exao-sreration and with good reason, I think, be said, that
Dartmouth o-raduates have had their full share of success in all the
learned professions, but in no calling has their prominence been
more marked than in the practice of the law. May the integrity,
industry, energy, pluck, and learning which have hitherto charac-
terized the lawyers of Dartmouth, continue to characterize her
graduates, and the old college in the future, as in the past, will
continue justly jH'oud of her sons.
The following Dartmouth graduates (with dates of graduation)
have held important judicial positions : —
Sylvester Gilbert, 1775, justice county court. Conn.
John Samuel Sherburne, 1776, justice United States district coui't,
N. H.
Elijah Brigham, 1778, justice court common j^leas, Mass.
Jedediah Parker Buckingham, 1779, justice county court, Vt.
Calvin Goddard, 17cG, justice supreme court. Conn.
Ebenezer Brown, 1787, justice county court, Vt.
Samuel Sumner Wilde, 1783, justice supreme court, Mass.
Martin Chittenden, 1780, justice county court, Vt.
Moulton INIorey, 178U, justice county court, Vt.
Richard Clair Everett, 1790, justice court of common pleas, N. H.
Asa Lyon, 1790, justice county court, Vt.
Samuel Porter, 1790, jiistice county court, Vt.
Dudley Chase, 1791, chief-justice supreme court, Vt.
William II. Woodward, 1792, chief-justice court of common pleas,
N. II.
Samuel Bell, 1793, justice supreme court, N. H.
Isaac Hall Tiffan}^ 1793, justice court of common pleas, N. Y.
Joshua Darling, 1794, justice court of common i)lcas, N. II.
Daniel Meserve Durell, 1794, chief-justice court of common pleas,
K. H.
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI. 81
William Howe, 1794, justice county court, Vt.
Thomas Heald, 1794, justice supreme court, Ala.
Nicholas Baylies, 1794, justice supreme court, Vt.
Judah Dana, 1795, justice court of common pleas, Me.
Heman Allen, 1795, justice county court, Vt.
Nicholas Emery, 1795, justice supreme court. Me.
William Bradley, 1796, justice county court, N. Y.
Parker Noyes,* 1796, justice supreme court, N. H.
William Wilson, 1797, justice court of common pleas, Ohio.
Phineas White, 1797, justice county court, Vt.
Joseph Locke, 1797, chief justice court of common pleas, Mass.
John Cox Morris, 1798, justice county court, N. Y.
Samiiel Swift, 1798, justice court of common pleas, Vt.
Elisha Hotchkiss, 1801, justice county court, Vt.
Aaron Loveland, 1801, justice county court, Vt.
Sanford Kingsbury, 1801, justice court of common pleas. Me.
Nathan Weston, 1803, chief-justice supreme court, Me.
Calvin Selden, 1803, justice county court. Me.
Israel P. Pvichardson, 1804, justice county court, Vt.
Denison Smith, 1805, justice county court, Vt. ; state's attorney.
David Cummins, 1806, justice court of common pleas, Mass.
Matthew Harvey, 1806, justice United States district court, N. H.
Richard Fletcher, 1806, justice supreme court, Mass.
Albion Keith Parris, 1806, justice supreme court. Me.
Timothy Farrar, 1807, justice court of common pleas, N. H.
Levi Woodbury, 1809, justice United States supreme court.
Daniel Wells, 1810, chief-justice court of common pleas, Mass.
Seth Cogswell Baldwin, 1810, justice court of common pleas, N. Y.
Joel Parker, 1811, chief -justice supreme court, N. H.
Ether Shepley, 1811, chief-justice supreme court. Me.
David Pierce, 1811, justice county court, Vt.
Daniel Breck, 1812, justice supreme court, Ky.
Isaac McConihe, 1812, justice county court, N. Y.
Jonathan Kittredge, 1813, chief-justice court of common pleas, N. H.
David Campbell Smith, 1813, justice court of common pleas, Ohio.
Daniel M. Christie,* 1815, justice supreme court, N. H.
Charles Frederick Gove, 1817, justice court of common pleas, N. H.
Leonard Wilcox, 1817, justice supreme court, N. H.
John Dwight Willard, 1819, justice court of common pleas, N. Y.
George Washington Nesmith, 1820, justice supreme court, N. H.
Nathaniel Gookin Upliam, 1820, justice supreme court, N. H.
* Appointed, but did not accept.
82 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.
Ira Perley, 1822, chief-justice supreme court, N. H.
John Chamberlain, 1823, justice county court. 111.
Jonas Cutting, 1823, justice supreme court. Me.
Benjamin West Bonney, 1824, justice supreme court, N. Y.
Abel Underwood, 1824, justice circuit court, Yt.
Robert Reed Heath, 1825, justice supreme court, N. C.
Isaac Fletcher Redfield, 1825, chief-justice supreme court, Vt.
Andrew Salter Woods, 1825, chief-justice supreme court, N. H.
Charles Milton Emerson, 1826, justice district court, La.
Salmon Portland Chase, 1826, chief-justice supreme comt. United
States.
William Gustavus Woodward, 1828, justice supreme court, Iowa.
Ira Allen Eastman, 1829, justice supreme coiu't, N. H.
Charles William Woodman, 1829, justice court of common pleas,
N. H.
David Aiken, 1830, justice court of common pleas, Mass.
Gouvemeur Morris, 1830, justice circuit court, Mich.
Peabody Atkinson Morse, 1830, justice supreme court, Cal.
John Barron Niles, 1830, justice circuit court, Ind.
Asa Fowler, 1833, justice supreme court, IST. H.
Samuel Locke Sawyer, 1833, justice circuit court. Mo.
Jacob Gale, 1833, justice circuit court, 111.
Samuel L. Sawyer, 1833, justice circuit court, INIo.
Daniel Clark, 1834, justice United States district court, N. H.
Harry Hibbard,* 1835, justice supreme court, N. H.
Timothy Parker Redfield, 1836, justice supreme court, Vt.
Josiah Minot, 1837, justice court of common pleas, N. H.
Horace Mower, 1837, justice supreme court, New Mexico.
George Foster Shepley, 1837, justice first circuit court United States
(Me., N. IL, Mass., and R. I.).
Frank Emerson, 1838, justice court of common pleas, Ind.
Charles Augustus Harper, 1838, justice supreme court. Ark.
James Barrett, 1838, justice supreme court, Vt.
Jason Downer, 1838, justice supreme court. Wis.
Jonathan Everett Sargent, 1840, chief-justice supreme court, N. H.
William Ballard Smith, 1840, justice circuit court, Ind.
Lincoln Flagg Brigham, 1842, cliief-justice superior court, IMass.
Stephen Gortlon Nash, 1842, justice superior court, Mass.
John Sewall Sanborn, 1842, justice court of Queen's Bench, Canada.
Milton Wason, 1842, justice county court, Cal.
Thomas William Freelon, 1843, justice superior court, Cal.
* Appointed, but did not accept.
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI. 83
Joshua James Giippey, 1843, justice county court, Wis.
Levi Benjamin Taft, 1843, justice circuit court, Mich.
Mellen Chamberlain, 1844, chief-justice municipal court, Boston,
Mass.
John Noble Goodwin, 1844, chief-justice supreme court, Ar. Ter.
Harvey Jewell, 1844, justice court Alabama claims, United States.
Benjamin Franklin Dennison, 1845, chief-justice supreme court,
Wash. Ter.
Sylvanus Converse Huntington, 1845, justice court of common pleas.
N. Y.
Isaac William Smith, 1846, justice supreme coiu-t, N. H.
Joseph Mills Cavis, 1846, justice district court, Cal.
Edward Jenner Warren, 1846, justice circuit court, N. C.
William Henry Bartlett, 1847, justice supreme court, N. H.
Alpha C;hild Mtij, 1847, justice circuit comt. Wis.
Austin Adams, 1848, chief-justice supreme court, Iowa.
Oliver Miller, 1848, justice court of appeals, Md.
Charles Humphrey Mooar, 1848, justice county court, Ky.
Charles Doe, 1849, chief-justice supreme court, N. H.
Marquis DeLafayette Lane, 1849, justice superior court, Me.
Clinton Warrington Stanley, 1849, justice supreme court, N. H.
Lewis Whitehouse Clark, 1850, justice supreme court, N. H.
Edward Towle Brooks, 1850, justice supreme court, Canada.
Jonathan Ross, 1851, justice supreme court, Vt.
Edward Jessup Wood, 1853, justice court of common pleas, Ind.
Henry Wilder Allen, 1854, justice court of common pleas, N. Y.
William Callahan Robinson, 1854, justice supreme court, Conn.
Henry Wilder Allen, 1854, justice supreme court, N. Y.
William Henry Harrison Allen, 1855, justice supreme court, N. H.
Walbridge Abner Field, 1855, justice supreme court, Mass.
William Spencer Ladd, 1855, justice supreme court, N. H.
Henry Whipple Perkins, 1855, justice county court, Iowa.
Oreenleaf Clark, 1855, justice supreme court, Minn.
Azro Dyer, 1856, justice superior court, Ind.
Caleb Blodgett, 1856, justice superior court, Mass.
Elijah Francis Dewing, 1856, justice district court, La.
William John Galbraith, 1857, justice United States district court,
Mont. Ter.
Benjamin Hinman Steele, 1857, justice supreme court, Vt.
John Cushman Hale, 1857, justice court of common pleas, Ohio.
Wheelock Graves Veazey, 1859, justice supreme court, Vt.
Roger Sherman Greene, 1859, chief-justice supreme court. Wash.
Ter.
84 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTEK.
Daniel Ashley Dickinson, 1860, justice supreme court, Minn.
Daniel Gustavus Rollins, 1860, surrogate, Xew York cit}-.
Nathaniel Holmes Clement, 1863, justice city court, Brooklyn, X. Y.
John Sanborn Connor, 1865, justice court of common pleas, Ohio.
Horace Russell, 1865, justice superior court, X. Y.
At the close of Col. George's response, Judge Cliani-
berlain arose and said he had omitted in his oration an
important portion, and read from manuscript as follows :
"The gift of the statue is to the state ; and while it is neither fit-
tino- nor necessary that the sons of Dartmouth should add to the
acknowledgment of the donor's munificence of his Excellency the
Governor, we cannot forget that Benjamin Pierce Cheney w\^s one of
the largest and most timely benefactors of the college. And may I
not add a word in anticipation of more formal recognition of the
fact, that the idea of erecting a statue of Daniel "Webster on New
Hampshire soil originated with the eminent citizen identified for the
past thirty years Avith the political history of the state, and always
a true friend of the college, wdiose masterly discourse on Daniel
Webster first suggested, and whose labors have efficiently promoted,
the grateful act this day consummated. I hardly need say that I
refer to Col. John H. George."
Tlie Dartmouth Alumni: Artemas Ward's military company was
made up wholly of brigadier-generals. In like manner the
alumni of Dartmouth are all Fellows — Pro audoritate mihi
commissa, ''Hi Juvenes'" sunt good fellows.
Hon. John Wentworth was expected to respond, but as
he had left the building Hon. David Cross, of Manches-
ter, responded.
Dartviouth and Loyalty.
Response by Capt. Henry B. Atherton, of ITashua.
The Modern Militia.
Gen. Philip Carpenter, of I^ew York city.
PROCEEDINGS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI. 85
At this point Judge Field, for a committee of the Bos-
ton Alumni'Association, outhned the report which would
he made to the annual meeting of the Alumni Associa-
tion at Hanover the following week. It contemplated
the election of an advisory board of fifteen alumni to act
with the trustees ; the secretary and treasurer to be resi-
dent in Hanover and elected annually. The duties of the
board, it was proposed, should be to attend the college
examinations, examine the financial affairs of the college,
revise the courses of study, etc. Hon. David Cross in
his response said the plan struck him favorably. Capt.
Atherton alluded to the brave deeds of Dartmouth men
in the rebellion. The closing toast by Gen. Philip Car-
penter was in a humorous vein, and brought to an end
the very pleasant exercises. The singing by the Handel
Society of Dartmouth College was much enjoyed, and the
several college airs were liberally applauded. The fol-
lowing resolutions were olFered by E. C. Carrigan, and
adopted : —
Resolved, That this association apj^rove of the report of the pro-
gress of the general committee of alumni through its chairman,
Judge Field, and said committee be resiiectfully requested to report
in print at a meeting of the alumni next week.
Resolved, That the hearty thanks of this association be tendered
the executive committee of Concord alumni for their invaluable ser-
vices to old Dartmouth in oro-anizing- this gathering of graduates
and classmates, a convention historic for its associations, with dedi-
catory exercises of the day, and the greatest in the history of the
college.
I
!
s
I
i
Appendix.
i
i
LETTERS.
We append the following appreciative letters, from the
President of the United States and other distinguished
invited guests, in reply to oflicial invitations : —
from the president of the united states.
Executive Mansion,
Washington, June 12, 1886.
Hon. Moody Currier, Governor of Neiv Hampshire :
Dear Sir, — I regret that i^ressing official duties will not pei'mit
me to be j^resent at the exercises attending- the unveiling of the
statue of Daniel Webster at Concord, on Thursday next.
Every occasion which does honor to this illustrious statesman is of
extraordinary interest to all American citizens, since our pride in
his career and achievements is not in the least limited by partisan
influences or by any sentiment less than national.
It would be well if in the capital of every state there stood a statue
such as Concoi'd boasts, which should not only perpetuate the mem-
ory of a man, but which should also keep alive through coming gen-
erations the love and veneration of the American jjeople for true
American greatness. Yours very ti-uly,
GROVER CLEVELAND.
from ex-president Rutherford b. hayes.
Fremont, O., May 15, 1886.
Hon. Moody Currier, Oovernor of Neiv HamjisMre,
Hon. Oilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee :
Gentlemen, — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
90 APPENDIX.
valued invitation to be present at the dedication of the statue of
Daniel Webster, on the 17th of next month.
New Hampshire is to be congratulated on her patriotic purpose
worthily to honor the memory of her most illustrious son. She has
many titles to the regard of her sister states, none better than the
fact that she gave to the whole country Daniel Webster.
I regret that my engagements do not permit me to accept your
invitation. Sincerely,
R. B. HAYES.
from samuel j. telden.
Greystone, Yonkers, N. Y.,
June 16, 1886.
Hon. Moody Cukkier, Qovcrnor of New Hampshire,
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee:
Gentlemen, — I have the honor to receive your invitation to partici-
pate in the exercises of the day as the guest of the state of New
Hampsliire, on Thui'sday, the 17th of June, at the dedication of the
statue of Daniel Webster, at the capital. Cordially agreeing with
the people of New Hampshire in their admiration of the illustrious
orator and statesman to whose memory this homage is to b(! ren-
dered, and several of whose great speeches it was my good fortune
to hear, I regret that the condition of my health will not allow me
to be present on so interesting an occasion.
S. J. TH.DEN.
FROM ROBERT C. WINTHROP.
Boston, June 1, 1886.
His Excellency' Moody Currier, Governor of Neiv Hampshire,
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee:
Gentlemen, — Absence from home for a month past must ])e my
apology for not having sooner acknowledged yoiu' kind and compli-
mentary invitation of May 11.
It would afford me peculiar pleasure and pride to be present, as a
guest of New Hampshire, at the reception of the statue of Daniel
Webster. It was my good fortune to assist at the unveiling of a
similar statue, by the same artist, in the Central Park of New York,
in 1876 ; and more recently I have united with the Marshfield Clul)-
in celebrating the centennial anniversary of Webster's birthday. I
could add notliinc' to what T said on those occasions, and should be
APPENDIX. 91
in clanger of weakening by repetition the testimony I am always glad
to hear to the surpassing powers of one with whom I was so long
associated ; but engagements, from which I cannot escape, unite
with the infirmities of age in constraining me to deny myself the
privilege of being at Concord on the 17th inst., and I can only offer
you my best thanks for yoiu' obliging invitation.
Believe me, with the highest respect,
Very faithfully yours,
robi:rt c. winthrop.
from benjamin f. butlek.
Continental Hotel, Philadelphia,
June 15, 1886.
Major-Genera l Oilman Marston:
My dear Marston, — I pray j-ou grieve with me. You, I know,
will fully appreciate how I am distressed when I write you I can-
not be in Concord at the unveiling of the statue of the foremost
lawyer of Massachusetts, as well as the foremost lawyer of the
country. My age enables me to look back and remember that long
ago I was with Webster, nay, that I feeblj- aided in a cause in the
trial of which he was engaged, and in that cause he uttered a sen-
tence wliich was an aphorism in reply to his opposing counsel,
Choate, who claimed that his woman client had only been engaged
in innocent fi'eedom. " Freedom," replied Webster, " is a very good
political but a very bad female word." This trial took place before
the Hon. Richard Fletcher, associate justice of the sujireme court of
Massachusetts. Judge Fletcher was a Xew Hampshire lawyer of
the same town with Webster ; and I have the i^rivilege of remem-
bering another ^lassachusetts law3'er, born and educated in New
Hampshire, Jeremiah ]\Iason, whom Mr. Webster believed to be
the best lawyer in the United States, for it is said he answered to a
friend who asked him wlio was the best of the Country : " Of course I
should say," said Webster, " Chief- Justice John JMarsliall ; but if you
should take me by the throat and back me up into the corner, and
say, ' Now, Webster, on your honor, who is the best lawyer in the
United States?' I should have to answer, 'Jeremiah Mason.'"
I intended at the dinner, — for on such occasions there alwaj^s is a
dinner, — to propose as a toast, the three greatest lawyers of Massa-
chusetts,— Mason, Webster, and Fletcher, all of New Hampshire;
and my toast would be correct in any event, because if any doubted
concerning any one of them, the other two would be so great as to
92 APPENDIX.
overshadow any other three, and I shoukl 1)6 sustained as was a
bright nejjhew of mine, now deceased, who, w^hen asked who were
the three greatest liars in the United States, rei)lied, "Eli Perkins
is one," and gave a name, which I shall not, as the other two.
My dear General, with such an apj^reciation of such a leader at
the bar, and in the forum of the United States, to whose name and
fame New Hampshire, if not entitled to a greater, is to an equal
share with Massachusetts, when he is to be honored by his native
state, and I, born in the same state, because of that distinction have
been invited by its authorities to be present at what may not be
inappropriately termed the solemn festivities of dedicating a statue
to his memory, find myself unable to attend, you can realize my
grief. I am here to close a cause in argument to a jury to-morrow,
to whom it will be submitted the day following. The case has been
on hearing some three weeks, and you, my lawyer soldier friend,
know that it is as impossible for a lawyer to desert his client's case
as it is for a soldier to desert his jjost in the hour of battle. I can
express my sorrow by no stronger word than, I cannot come.
I am very truly your fiiend,
BEXJ. F. BUTLER.
from g. r. nutter.
Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.,
May 18, 1886.
Hon. G. Marston, Chairman of Committee :
Dear Sir, — President Eliot regrets that his engagements will not
permit him to accept the polite invitation to attend the dedication of
the statue of Daniel Webster.
Your obedient servant,
G. R. NUTTER,
Presidenfs Secretary.
FROM MARSHALL P. WILDER.
Dorchester, Mass., June 8, 1886.
Hon. George W. Nesmith, John M. Hill, John H. George,
Legislative Committee :
Gentlemen, — I accept with pleasure your invitation to the imveil-
ing of i\w Webster statue. If life and strength hold out, I shall be
present to participate with the sons of New Hampshire in the cere-
APPENDIX. 93
monies of that ausjiicious occasion ; but witli the weiglit of fourscore
and eiglit winters on my head, I feel I am a minute man, and liable
to be summoned over to the better land, where perhaps I may meet
again him whose worth and greatness will be remembered not only
on the day of your celebration but by the generations that are to
follow us through coming time. But should life or health fail me
ere that day shall arrive, I desire here to record that it was my priv-
ilege to be well acquainted with Mr. Webster for a long course of
years. I knew him both in public and private life, from the day
when he first spoke on Bunker's Heights to the day of his death.
I knew him at the cajiital of the nation, in Faneuil Hall, and in other
places on great occasions. I knew him as the farmer of Marslifield,
and in various relations of life. As a great apostle of the American
Union, the expounder and defender of its constitution, Mr. Webster
stands forth as the foremost figure in the history of our government,
hiffh above all around him. To him we are more indebted than to
any other man for the advocacy of those great principles of liberty
and union which nerved the arms of the North in the great rebellion,
and gave to us the reunion and prosperity which our nation now
enjoj's. New England has had no such other son, America no more
illustrious citizen.
But admired and almost adored as Mr. Webster was, no man was
ever more misunderstood and misrepresented, in regard to his 7th
of ]March speech in 1850 ; but history is a great corrector of human
aft'airs, and will set this right at last ; and there are very few now
livino- who do not see in that memorable document the same un-
swerving patriotism, loyalty, and integrity which were the control-
ling principles of his life. The works of Mr. Webster are among
the most valuable which our nation has produced. "No other set
of volumes contains more wisdom, patriotism, or eloquence ; and the
luore we read them the more will they be admired. The light of his
gigantic intellect was not like the blaze of the meteor, which leaves
darkness more intense, but like the glorious sun, shining in all its
effulgence around us, and lighting up the way to honor, glory,
and immortality." Tliese are the words that I uttered on a former
occasion, and were thej" my last I could find no better, and from
which I have nothing to take back.
As ever, yours,
MARSHALL P. WH.DER.
1798-1886.
94 APPENDIX.
FKOM JAMES W. BRADBURY.
Augusta, Me., June 9, 1886.
Your Excellency Governor Currier,
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee :
Gentlemen,— \ have had the honor to receive your kind invitation
to be present at Concord, on the 17th of June, at the dedication of
the statue of Daniel Webster, presented by Mr. Cheney to the state
of Kew Hampshire, and to participate in the exercises as guest of
the state. I appreciate and thank you for the honor.
While I regret any inability to be present, 1 cannot permit the
occasion to pass without expressing my pleasure to know that such
a testimonial of appreciation of the great orator of the age is to find
visible expression in his native state. It is a signal honor to New
Hampshire to have been the birthplace of the man who for intel-
lectual power and commanding eloquence stands foremost amongst
the illustrious public men our country has produced.
When at Washington a few years ago I visited the capitol to look
upon the statues of the distinguished men that adorn the old repre-
sentatives' hall of that building, but I found none of Webster. Xo
statue of the great " defender of the constitution" in the capitol of the
Union, the theater of his grandest efforts ! As Massachusetts, the
home of most of his active life and honored by his services, has hitli-
erto waived the privilege of placing his statue there, will not his
native state seize the opportunity of securing such distinction for
herself ?
It was my good fortune to be associated with Mr. Webster during
the trying crisis through which our country passed in 1850. While
my political affiliations have never been with him, I take jjleasure
in bearing testimony to his unselfish patriotism and ardent devotion
to the Union. It was no unworthy motive, no selfish ambition, that
led him to brave the censure of friends he esteemed when he made
his celebrated 7th of March speech in the senate, and gave his hearty
support to the compromise measures for the settlement of the ques-
tions that were agitating the country. His course was dictated by
patriotism. He believed there was danger to the Union, and that
the compromise provided a way of adjustment compatible Avith the
honor of both sections of the country. He saw that the excitement
was intense throughout the South. They claimed that the "\Mlmot
Proviso in the ponding bills for tlie organization of the territories
wronged them out of their equal interest in the common property of
APPENDIX. 95
all the states b}- excluding;- them from moving there with their house-
hold as constituted. This mode of reasoning, however specious,
took hold of the southern mind, already deeply excited by the de-
nunciations to which they had been exposed on the subject of slav-
ery. They declared they would not submit to inequality, and avowed
their determination to Avithdraw from the Union if the proviso should
be forced upon them. It was obvious that the time was more favor-
able for success in the attempt than could ever occur again. The
North was increasing more rapidly than the South, and the inequality
was augmented every year. The northwestern states were linked
to the South by commercial interests by the Mississippi River as the
great channel of commerce. The gi-eat West was not then united
with the East by the railroad system that now makes their business
connection. The South could never again find so plausil^le a pre-
text for alleged wrongs. They might never again be united, and a
settlement might avert a Avar or end all future attempts.
It was under these circumstances that Mr. Webster united with the
conservatives in the support of the compromise. This and all meas-
ures of compromise were opposed by members who occupied extreme
positions from the North and the South. The idea of danger was
utterly disbelieved by a large body of Mr. Webster's fi-iends in the
North. They deemed the thought of any attempt of secession pre-
posterous, and scouted the threat of it as mere gasconade.
Subsequent events have thrown such light upon the subject as will
enable us to determine whether Mr. Webster, or the friends that
supposed he was influenced by groundless fears, were right in the
estimate of dano-er.
Ten years afterwards, when the relative strength of the North
was much greater, — when the South was divided, and four of their
states took sides with the North, — when the Northwest had become
connected by railroads with the Atlantic, and no longer depended on
the Mississippi as her sole channel of commerce, and when the
South could only allege against the government as a pretext for
grievances the fact that the president and vice-president (whom they
by their action had contributed to elect) were both citizens of north-
ern states, they made the attempt to withdraw from the Union ; and
they were so thoroughly in the belief of their right under the con-
stitution to do so, and in their determination to succeed, that it took
the united strength of the North Avitli their Southern allies, and years
of Avar such as the Avorld has seldom if ever seen, Avhether Ave regard
the number of men engaged or the valor Avith Avhich they fouglit, to
preserve our glorious Union entire.
Esto perpetua. Hoav fortunate for tlie North, and tlie South also,
96 APPENDIX.
and for the hoj^e of republican institutions throughout the world,
that the struggle was not precijiitated in 1850.
Thus it is that the statesmanship and patriotism of Webster are
vindicated by subsequent events.
I have the honor to be, most respectfully,
Yours, etc.,
JAMES W. BRADBURY.
FROM LEON AlUJETT.
Trenton, N. J., May 1'6, 1886.
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman :
Bear Sir, — Your kind invitation to be j)resent at the New Hamp-
shire state cajjital on June 17 next, to attend the dedication of the
statue of Daniel Webster, is at hand.
I should be pleased to attend, but state engagements will prevent.
Yours respectfully,
LEON ABBETT.
FROM ROBERT C. SCHENCK.
Washington, June 12, 1886.
His Excellency jSIoody Currier, Governor of Neiv Hampshire,
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman oJ Legislative Committee:
Gentlemen, — I must beg you to pardon me for not making earlier
answer to your letter asking me to i^articipate, as a guest of your
state, in the exercises of the day on the occasion of the dedication of
the statue of Daniel Webster, at Concord, on the 17th of this
month. The invitation is one which, on every account, I regard as a
great and special honor, and if it were j^ossible I should take great
pleasure, I assure you, in availing myself of the opportunity to be
present and take part in so interesting a ceremony ; but I am com-
pelled, reluctantly and regretfully, to decline. I have been hoping
that it might be convenient for me to so anticipate and arrange a
summer visit I am intending to make this season to the coast of
IVfaine, as to allow of my l)eing at Concord at the date indicated, l)ut
my engagements here will not jjermit me to get away soon enough
for that, and my age and the condition of my health will hardly ad-
mit of my making two such journeys.
Excuse mc for these personal explanations. I give them only be
cause T would not be tliought to miss, willingly or lightly, a chance
APPENDIX. 97
to show my veneration of the memory of Webster, and my cherished
appi-eciation of his greatness. New Hampshire may well be proud
of the distinction of having given birth to such a man !
In one period of my public service — from 1843 to 1851— it was
my good fortune to see much of Mr. Webster. There were circum-
stances which brought me, during a portion of that time, into as close
association and intimacy with him as, perhaps, was compatible with
our difference of age and position. As a statesman, a senator,, a
great constitutional lawyer, to be admired and revered, towering
among his compeers, he certainly lost by nearness of view nothing
of his majestic stature.
Thanking you again, gentlemen, for the honor of your invitation
and the proffer of New Hampshire hospitality, I am,
Very respectfully and sincerely,
Your obedient servant,
ROBERT C. SCHENCK.
FKOM E. M. STEARXS.
Boston, June 2, 1886.
Hon. G. Marston, Concord, N. H. :
I thank you for your kind invitation to participate in the dedication
of the statue of Mr. Webster. It would afford me the greatest
pleasure to be present, especially under the hospitable terms of your
letter. I should deem it a gi-eat honor to be the guest of the state
which Mr. Webster loved so much, and which was so proud of him.
My earliest political fealty and devotion was given to Mr. Webster,
and although a babe in all political lore and experiences, I was en-
rolled among the " Silver Grey Whigs" and followed his fortunes
while he lived ; and upon his death, it seemed to me that the country
was left without guide and support, and must stagger as best it could
with its head buried and o'one.
I fear it will be impossible for me to be present, as professional
engagements here and at my home so crowd upon me in the busy
month of June that escape seems out of the question.
Accept my thanks for your remembrance of me upon this interest-
ing occasion, and my regrets that I cannot avail myself of your
kindness.
Yours very truly,
E. M. STEARNS.
7
98 APPENDIX.
FROM WILLIAM PATERSON.
Perth Ambot, N. J., June 9, 1886.
George "W. Nesmith, John M. Hill, Johx H. George, Trustees
Webster Statue, Concord, N. E. :
Gentlemen, — Judicial engagements will i^revent my acceptance
of the invitation with which I am honored hj you, to attend the dedi-
cation of a bronze statue of Daniel Webster at the state cajjital of
New Hampshire, on Thursda}' of next week. I regret my inability
to ^participate in the exercises of the occasion and assist in paying
tribute to the memory of that illustrious citizen of your little com-
monwealth, whose fame as a statesman will be written forever on
the page of American history.
I shall not attempt to dwell upon the life and character, the ser-
vices and the worth of one so exalted in reputation and distinguished
among men. Those sui^erior and commanding qualities by which a
long public career was illustrated and finished in immortal glor}^
will be portrayed most fitly by the president of the academical insti-
tution so highly honored by his enrollment among the number of her
sons. As an alumnus of a sister college, the walls of which bear
marks of the struggle that gave a continent to freedom, and but few,
if any, of whose j'oung tribes were faithless in the patriotic cause,
I should esteem it a rare privilege to unite with the alumni of Dart-
mouth in honoring him who always stood in civic strife a foremost
champion of the rights of all the states and all their jjeoj^le. But
few are living who can recollect with me the crown of glory laid
upon his head, when more than half a century- ago he stood forth,
peerless of all his peers, as the grand defender of constitutional
liberty and union ; and keeping steadily in view the price at which
that liberty was bought, and the jjerpetuity of the Federal Union,
wliich he professed as his great aim, it was most meet that tlie clos-
ing effort of his life was to maintain inviolate the sacred compact
which he ever kept and ever strove to make secure and safe.
Vex-y respectfully yours,
WILLIAM PATERSOX.
APPENDIX. 99
FROM CHARLES F. ADAMS, JR.
Boston, May 28, 1886.
Hon. Oilman Marston :
My Dear Sir, — I have to thank yoii for the invitation sent me
some clays since to attend the dedication of the statue of Daniel
Webster, presented to the state of New Hampshire by INIr. Cheney,
upon the ITtli of Jmie. While it would aftbrd me the greatest
jjossible pleasure to participate in this occasion, my engagements
are such as will j^reclude my so doing.
Regretting extremely that this should be the case,
I remain, etc.,
CHARLES F. ADAMS, Jr.
from REBECCA MILLER.
Temple, June 11, 1886.
To Governor Moody Currier and General G. Marston :
Dear Sirs, — I cannot imagine anj^ thing which would give me
more pleasure than to avail myself of the honor of your invitation to
be present at the dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, so
generously presented to the state by Mr. Cheney, but the preserft
infirm state of my health forbids my going.
Mr. Webster had no more sincere admirer than his contemi^orary
and friend, General Miller, or grandson of whom Col. E. H. Rojies,
of New Jersey, will be in Concord on the 17th.
Very respectfully,
REBECCA IVULLER.
from HORACE FAIRBANKS.
St. Johnsbury, Vt., June 1-1, 1886.
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee :
My dear Sir, — In reply to your kind invitation to be present at
the dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, on the 17th instant,
would say that till now I had expected to have that pleasure, but
regret to say that 1 shall be unavoidably j^revented from being
present.
Thanking you for your courtesy, I am
Yours very truly,
HORACE FAIRBANKS.
100 APPENDIX.
from samuel j. kaxdall.
House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C, May 31, 1886.
Messrs. 'George W. Nesmith, John M. Hill, and John H.
George, Committee of Invitation :
Bear Sirs, — I acknowledge yonr kind invitation for tlie ITtli jirox-
imo. It would afford me real gratification to witness the ceremonies
of unveiling the statue of Daniel Webster at yonr state capital, but
I fear my i^ublic duties will not allow me to absent myself from this
city at that time.
Daniel Webster was a great man, and the memory of his splendid
career is enough to em'ich not only one state but the whole Union,
whose noblest advocate he was. He was essentially a teacher, and
his works are full of lessons of wisdom, which those who would pre-
serve our free government will do well to cherish. And one of the
ways of doing so is to keep his memory green in the land he loved
and honored. I shall join heartily with you in the spirit of the
occasion.
Thanking you for your courtesy, I am
Vev}^ truly yours,
* SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
from john lowell.
3 Pemberton Square,
Boston, June 10, 1886.
Hon. Gilman Marston:
3Iy dear Sir, — I was much gratified to receive, through your
hands, the invitation of the state to attend the exercises at Concord,
on the 17th. I should be much pleased to testifjs by my presence,
an appreciation of Mr. Cheney's munificent gift, as well as the ad-
miration and respect that we all feel, and which our posterity will
feel, for the great defender of the Union, whose words did more than
any other influence to consolidate the opinion of the North, and to
render the victory of union over secession possible. It unfortunately
happens that an engagement of long standing which calls me away
will prevent my joining with you on that day.
Yours very truly,
JOHN LOWELL.
APPENDIX. 101
from henry b. harrison.
Executive Department,
Hartford, Conn., June 10, 1886.
To His Excellency, the Governor of Neio Hampshire :
Sir, — I beg yon to accept my apology for having failed to answer
hitherto yonr comninnication inviting me to be present at the dedi-
cation of the statue of Daniel Webster, in Concord, on the 17th of
this month. I have waited in the hope that I might be able to accept
your courteous invitation, which I find now that I must, with great
regret, ask leave to decline.
Verj' respectfully,
HENRY B. HARRISON.
FROM WILLIAM CLAFLIN.
Boston, June l-l, 1886.
Hon. John H. George :
My dear Sir, —It is with sincere regret that I am obliged, on ac-
count of the state of my health, to decline the invitation of your
committee to be present at the unveiling of the statue of Daniel
Webster.
Please accept my thanks for your kind remembrance.
With great respect, I am
Yours truly,
WILLIAM CLAFLIN.
from st. julian fillette.
United States Senate,
Washington, D. C, June 10, 1886.
George W. Nesmith, Esq., JohnM. Hill, Esq., John H. George,
Esq., Committee :
Oentlcmen, — Senator Hampton has been called to South Carolina
by illness in his family, but before leaving he requested me to say to
you that it would give him great pleasure to be present at the unveil-
ing of the Webster statue if his public duties would iicrmit. This,
he is sorry to say, is not the case, therefore he must decline your
polite invitation. I am
Very truly yours,
St. JULIAN FILLETTE.
102 APPENDIX.
FROM CORTLANDT PARKER.
Newark, N. J., June 4, 1886.
George W. Nesmith, Esq., John M. Hill, Esq., and John H.
George, Esq., Trustees, etc. :
Gentlemen, — I acknowledge with thanks the compliment of your
request that I should be present at the unveiling and dedication of
the bronze statue of Daniel Webster, at Concord, on the 17th of
June instant. It would give me great satisfaction to be able to
accept this invitation.
New Hampshire is right in doing honor to the memory of this great
man, intellectnally not surpassed, if equaled, by any other of the
great men of our republic. Nor, especially as his exposition of the
constitution has been settled by arbitrament of arms, as well as by
leo-al adjudication, has the time yet arrived when it has ceased to be
necessary to remember his views, and to seek to impress them upon
succeeding generations.
Monuments preach, and the monument of Webster preaches not
only nationality, but also those true views of state rights — only
second to nationality — and through the maintenance of which alone
will our peculiar nationality be enabled securely to spread and
flourish.
New Hampshire and Dartmouth gave much to the world when they
ushered forth Daniel Webster, and the gratitude of the whole coun-
try is due to them for the deed.
Regretting my inability to join Avith the distinguished men who
will be present on this interesting occasion, I remain
Yours very respectfully,
CORTLANDT PARKER.
from CHARLES DEVENS.
Boston, May 6, 1886.
G. W. Nesmith, Esq., and others. Committee:
Gentlemen, — I am very much honored by an invitation to attend
the dedication of the statue of Mr. Webster, and regret that the day
assigned compels me to decline it. As president of the Bunker Hill
Monument Association I am necessarily obliged to attend its meeting
on that day.
With thanks for your kindness, I am
Your obedient servant,
CHARLES DEVENS.
APPENDIX.
103
FROM E. F. STONE.
Washington, May 17, 1886.
Hon. Gilman Marston :
Dear General,— I have the honor of acknowledging the receipt of
an invitation to be present at the services of the 17th of June next,
in dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, the illustrious son of
New Hampshire, and sincerely regret that my duties here will make
it impossible for me to attend.
Yours truly,
E. F. STONE.
from LEOPOLD MORSE.
Boston, May 29, 1886.
Mr. G. Marston, Chairman, Concord, N. H. :
Mr. Leopold Morse returns thanks for the honor conferred by your
kind invitation of 11th instant, to attend the dedication of the statue
of the immortal Webster, and regrets exceedingly that absence in
Europe will prevent his acceptance.
FROM ANDREW H. YOUNG.
Columbus Barracks, Ohio, June 11, 1886.
Hon. George W. Nesmith, Hon. John M. Hill, and John H.
George, Esq. :
Gentlemen, — Your favor of May 1 inviting me to attend at the
unveiling and dedication of a statue of Daniel Webster, at Concord,
on the 17th instant, was duly received. I have delayed answering it
until to-day, hoping and expecting that I should be able to be
present and participate in the ceremonies, but I regret to find that
my public duties will prevent.
In common with all New Hampshire men, I regard AVebster as the
greatest American, and his memory deserving of all homage from
his native state.
Thanking you for the invitation, I am, gentlemen.
Very respectfully,
ANDREW H. YOUNG.
104 APPENDIX.
FROM S. \V. MAESTON.
Boston, June 12, 1886.
Hon. Gilman Maeston:
My dear Oilman, — Tl\a.n\.s for your invitation for the 17th in-
stant. I tliink no one has lived in my day for whom I had a greater
veneration than for ]Mr. Webster, and I had the pleasure of seeing
him a good deal during the many years of my residence at the Re-
vere House ; and Mr. Cheney, the donor of the statue, is also an old
friend. But a prior engagement to attend the marriage of a daugh-
ter of a dear friend at Pittsfield, on that day, Avill prevent my
acceptance.
With sincere regrets,
Aitectionately yours,
S. W. MARSTON.
FROM WILLIAM S. GARDNER.
New^ton, Mass., June 11, 1886.
To His Excellency Moody Currier, Governor of New Hamp-
shire :
Sir, Your favor inviting me to he present at Concord on Thurs-
day next, as a guest of the state, to participate in the ceremonies
attending the dedication of the statue of Daniel AYebster, has been
gratefully received. I regret that I cannot attend and enjoy the
pleasure of joining in the exercises of the day. You will please
to accept my thanks for the honor of your kind invitation.
Your very obedient servant,
WILLIAM S. GARDNER.
from t. w. uonaparte.
AVashington, D. C, June 13, 1886.
G. Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee:
Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the invita-
tion to assist at the dedication of the statue of Daniel AVebster, on
Thursday, June 17. I regret exceedingly that previous engage-
ments Avill prevent AVilliam Bonaparte and me from being present
on that occasion.
AVith many thanks for having thought of us, I remain
Respectfully yours,
T. AV. BONAPARTE.
APPENDIX. 105
from edwakd mc phersox.
1701 Massachusetts Ave.,
Washington, D. C, June 3, 1886.
Oen. Gilman Marston:
My dear Marston,—! have your kind invitation for the 17th in-
stant, and would gladly accept if I could be absent. That is out of
the question, and I can only thank you for thinking of me.
With high regard.
Very truly yours,
EDWARD Mcpherson.
from frederick a. johnson.
House of Representatives U. S.,
Washington, D. C, May 26, 1886.
Hon. Oilman Marston, Chairman:
Dear Sir, — Please accept my thanks for your kind invitation to
be present at the dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, on the
17th of June next, and my regrets that my duties here will prevent
my acceptance of the same.
Yours respectfully,
FREDERICK A. JOHNSON.
from EDWARD TUCK.
New York, May 27, 1886.
Oen. Oilman Marston:
My dear Sir, — Since my return to New York I have received
from Exeter an official invitation to the Webster celebration at Con-
cord, evidently addressed to me by you. I beg to thank you most
sincerely for your kindness in thinking of me, and the compliment
of the invitation, which I highly appreciate. As Mrs. Tuck and I
shall be moving to Newport at about the time of the celebration, I
I doubt if I shall be able to be present ; but should I be there, I
shall hope to have an opportunity to thank you in i)erson for your
courtesy. At all events, I shall call upon you on my next visit to
Exeter.
I am, dear sir,
Yours very truly,
EDWARD TUCK.
106 APPENDIX.
from c. a. boutelle.
House of Representatives U. S.,
Washington, D. C, May 30, 1886.
Hon. Oilman Marston:
My dear Gen. Marston, — Your polite favor of the 28th is at hand,
and I blame myself for causing you so much trouble of writing.
I have no doubt the occasion will be most interesting, and if I
should be in New England at the time, I certainly should make an
effort to visit your beautifiil city of Concord on that day. I fear I
shall be kept here, however.
Very truly yours,
C. A. BOUTELLE.
from w. r. morrison.
House of Representatives U. S.,
Washington, D. C, May 16, 1886.
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee:
Dear Sir, — I write to acknowledge your kind invitation to jjartici-
pate in the exercises of the coming dedication at your state cajjitol,
and to express my regrets at not being able to accei^t.
Respectfully yours,
W. R. MORRISON.
from g. c. burrows.
House of Representatives U. S.,
Washington, D. C, May 21, 1886.
His Excellency, Governor oj State :
Bear Sir, — In reply to yours of the 11th instant, I regret to say
that my duties here will j)revent me from accepting your kind invi-
tation.
Yours,
G. C. BURROWS.
from SAMUEL DIBBLE.
House of Representatives,
Washington, June 8, 1886.
His Excellency Moody Currier, Governor of New Eami^sMre :
Sir, — Permit me to acknowledge, with thanks, your courteous in-
vitation to me to be present at the dedication of the statue of Daniel
APPENDIX. 107
Webster, at Concord, on the 17th instant. I had hoped to accept
your proffered hospitality, and, as a South Carolinian, to join my
fellow-countrymen of Xew IIam2:)shire in doing honor to the memoiy
of the great New England statesman, whose career belongs not
simply to state or section, but to the entire country ; but the emer-
gencies attendant on the closing weeks of the session will prevent
my attendance, and I can only send my regrets, begging that you
will accept also the assurance of my respectful consideration.
Vevj truly yours,
SAMUEL DIBBLE.
fkom william walter phelps.
House of Representatives U S.,
Washington, D. C, ISLay 27, 1886.
To G. Marston, Esq., Chairman of Legislative Committee:
Dear Sir, — I thank you for yoiu* kind invitation to jjarticipate in
the exercises of jiresenting a statue of Daniel Webster to your state,
and regret that my public duties here will prevent my being present.
Truly yours,
WILLIAM WALTER PHELPS.
from samuel n. green.
^Massachusetts Historical Society,
30 Tremont St., Boston, June 14, 1886.
Hon. G. Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee :
Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your polite
invitation to be present at the dedication of the Webster statue, on
the 17th, but a previous engagement for that day will prevent my
acceptance -
Very respectfulh',
SAMUEL N. GREEN.
from peter b. olney.
120 Broadway,
New York, June U, 1886.
His Excellency Moody Currier, Governor,
Hon. G. Marston, Chairman oj Legislative Committee :
Sirs, — I beg to acknowledge the receijot of the invitation to be
present at the unveiling of the statue of Daniel Webster, at Concord,
108 APPENDIX.
on the 17th instant. I hope to have the honor and pleasure of at-
tendino- as one of her o:uests on this occasion, when the state of Xew
Hampshire pays fitting tribute to the memory of her great son.
I am, dear sirs,
Very truly yours,
PETER B. OLNEY.
from charles f. manderson.
United States Senate,
Washington, D. C, May 11, 1886.
Messrs. George W. Nesmith, John M. Hill, and John H.
George, Trustees for the procurement and erection of a statue of
Daniel Webster, at Concord, N. H. :
Gentlemen, — Your note of invitation, dated May 1, 1886, to be
present at the unveiling and dedication of the proposed statue to
Daniel Webster, at Concord, N. H., on the 17th proximo, was
received. I regret exceedingly that public business will prevent
my attendance, but trust the day may be ausjiicious, and the i^artici-
pants sufficiently numerous and representative in character to fully
attest the esteem in which the' eminent statesman and patriot was
held while living, and his memory and good deeds cherished when
dead. Thanking you for the courtesy of your kind invitation, I
remain.
Very respectfully,
CHARLES F. JMANDERSON.
FROM JOHN little.
House of Representatives TJ- S.,
Washington, D. C, June 11, 1886.
Hon. Moody Currier, Governor, Concord, N. H. :
Dear Sir, — Your kind invitation to be present, June 17, at the
dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, the most gifted of Amer-
ican statesmen and orators, was duly received. Answer has been de-
layed with the liope of being able to accept the invitation. I now
see that public duties here will prevent. Thanking you for the
honor, I am
Ver}- I'espcctfully, etc.,
JOHN LITTLE.
APPENDIX. lOO'
FROM DARWIN E. WARE.
Boston, June 14, 188G.
Messrs. George W. Nesmith, John M. Hill, and John H.
George, Trustees:
Gentlemen, — I desire to acknowledge the honoi- of your request to
be present at the ceremonies for the dedication of a bronze statue of
Daniel Webster, at Concord, N. II., on the 17th of this month, and
regret that other engagements on that day oblige me to forego the
gi-eat pleasure which I should have in accepting your kind invitation
and taking part in an occasion so deeply interesting.
Very truly yours,
DARAVIN E. WARE.
from a. l. soule.
5 Fairfield St.
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman :
Dear Sir, — I regret that the state of my health makes it impossi-
ble for me to accept your kind invitation to be present at the unveil-
inff of a statue of Daniel Webster, at Concord, N. H., on the ITth
instant.
Yours truly,
A. L. SOULE.
FROM C. A. BOUTELLE.
House of Representatives U. S.,
Washington, D. C, May 19, 1886.
Hon. Gilman Marston:
My dear General Marston, — Yowv pleasant letter of the 17th
received, and I am obliged for the cordial invitation. Of course you
understood that my purpose in sending back the former card was
solely humorous. Quite a number of the invitations received here
were" evidently intended for different governors, and probaljly
became mixed in mailing.
I need not assure you that I appreciate the courtesy, and should
o-reatly enjoy visiting Concord at the time of the dedication, but
reo-ret that I shall be unable to leave here at that time.
Sincerely yours,
C. A. BOUTELLE.
110 APPENDIX. t
from c austen browne.
82 Water St.,
Boston, June 12, 1886.
Hon. G. Marston, Concord, N. H. :
Dear Sir, — I have to acknowledge, with sincere thanks, your
invitation to participate, as the guest of the state, in the exercises
attending tlie dedication of tlie Webster statue, on the 17th, but am
obliged to deny myself tlie pleasure of being present.
Very truly yours,
CAUSTEN BROWNE.
FROM E. T. BURLEY.
Law^rence, June 15, 1886.
CoE. John H. George :
Dear Sir, — I regret to say that I find mjself unable to avail my-
self of your kind invitation to visit Concord on the 17th instant.
Thanking you for the invitation, I remain
Yours truly,
"^E. T. BURLEY.
FROM T. L. CLINGMAN.
Washington City, June 15, 1886.
Hon. Moody Currier -.
Honored Sir, — Your favor inviting me to be present, as a guest
of your state, on the occasion of the dedication of the statue of
Daniel Webster, was received some weeks ago. I did not make an
earlier reply because I was in hopes that I might ha able to be
present. I now regret to be obliged to decline on account of business
eno-ao-ements. This is to me a cause of much regret, as Mr. Webster
and I were on terms of great intimacy for many years during the
latter part of his life.
His remarkable strength and breadth of intellect, his public spirit
and patriotism, his freedom from selfishness and intrigues for his
personal advancement, and the grandeur and elevation of his
thoughts and emotions, gave him a position surpassed by no man of
his day. I am much gratified to know that his native state has taken
proper steps to show her ajipreciation of his great qualities and
public services.
With sentiments of the highest respect, I am
Very sincerely youi's,
T. L. CLINGMAN.
APPENDIX.
Ill
FROM CHARLES P. THOMPSON.
Gloucester, Mass., June 14, 1886.
Hon. Moody Currier, Governor of Neiv Hampshire,
Hon. Gilmax Marston, Chairman oj Legislative Committee:
Bear Sirs,— Yowy invitation to ijarticipate at Concord, on the 17th
of June, 1886, in the dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster
presented to the state of New Hampshire by Benjamin Pierce
Cheney, has been received, and I deeply regret that I am compelled
to say that I cannot be with you on that most interesting occasion.
A statue at the capital of his native state is certainly a most appro-
priate expression of her appreciation of his character, principles,
and services. The commonwealth of his adoption has long since
given practical expression of her judgment of the appropriateness
of such a memorial. It will be a constant instructor of the people
in the duty of patriotic devotion to the Union, the constitution, and
liberty regulated by law. Love of country was his inspiration. And
he devoted all his great powers to the promotion of the prosperity
and glory of his country. While his memory is venerated we may
confidently cherish the hope that the objects of his patriotic and self-
sacrificing labors will be cherished and defended.
Again expressing my regret that I shall not be able to participate
In the exercises of the dedication, I am
Very respectfully your obedient servant,
CHARLES P. THOMPSON.
from AARON F. STEVENS.
Nashua, N. H., June 15, 1886.
Hon. Moody Currier, Governor,
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee :
Gentlemen, — I have delayed my answer to your kind invitation to
be present, as a guest of the state, at the dedication of the AVebster
statue on the 17th instant, intending to avail myself of the pleasure of
its acceptance if not prevented by ill health. It is with the sincerest
regret that I am compelled to absent myself from this most interest-
ing ceremonial. No true citizen of New Hampshire can fail to ap-
preciate the noble gift which our state has accepted, or to covet the
honor of being present at its dedication. It is, indeed, a memorial
to the greatest citizen of New Hampshire, to the foremost lawyer
and statesman of his generation. Let us trust that this majestic
112 APPENDIX.
form will stand an enduring tribute to the unrivaled genius of her
greatest son — the orator and statesman whose eloquence turned
back the tide of nullification, exploded the heresy of secession, and
implanted in the hearts of his intelligent countrymen for all future
time the true nature of our government, and the character and value
of our national Union.
I am wnth sincere respect, your obedient servant,
AARON F. STEVENS.
FROM LYMAN TRUMBULL.
Chicago, 111., June 15, 1886.
Governor Moody Currier :
Bear Sir, — It would give me pleasure to participate in the exer-
cises attendant on the dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, if
circumstances would admit of my attendance.
As a great lawyer, statesman, and orator, he was not only foremost
among the men of his day and generation, but he has left for the
imitation and admiration of mankind works which they will study as
models for o-enerations to come. It is well tliat the featiu-es of such
a man should be preserved in marble and metals, but no monument
will be as enduring as the thoughts which sprang from his giant in-
tellect, which are preserved in the annals of his country's history,
and have spread through the civilized world.
Yours very truly,
LYMAN TRUMBULL.
FROM CHARLES DEVENS.
Boston, May 28, 188G.
Hon. Moody Currier, Governor of New Hampshire,
Hon. Oilman Marston, Chairman Legislative Committee :
Oentleme?i, — I am much honored by the invitation to join, as a
ffuest of the state of New Hampslilre, in the dedication of a statue
to her illustrious son, Daniel Webster, and regret that my engage-
ments as president of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, to
which Mr. Webster himself rendered such splendid service, compel
me to decline it.
I am fjuite sure that the association at its meeting on the 17th will
not fail to render its tribute to his meuKny.
Your obedient servant,
CHARLES DEVENS.
APPENDIX. 113
FROM GEORGE S. BOUTWELL.
Washington, D. C, May 19, 1886.
To His Excellency Governor Moody Curkier:
Sir, — I have had the honor to receive your invitation to attend
the dedication of a statue of Daniel Webster, at the capitol of the
state of New Hampshire, the 17th day of June next. The arrange-
ments that I have made and the obligations of business resting upon
me will prevent me from attending the ceremonies. This I regret,
as there is no one of the statesmen of a former generation to whom
the country is more largely indebted than to Mr. Webster.
Very trul}^
Your most obedient servant,
GEORGE S. BOUTWELL.
from the governor of florida.
Executive Office,
Tallahassee, Fla., May 15, 1886.
To His Excellency Moody Currier, Governor of New Ramp-
shire :
Governor, — T have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
courteous invitation to be present, as a guest of your state, to partici-
pate in an honor to the distinguished memory of one who, as time
rolls on, is more and more generally recognized as the grandest in-
tellectual production of our country. With assurances of my sincere
regret that my official duties will not permit me to avail myself of
your courtesy, I have the honor to be, with high esteem.
Your obedient servant,
E. A. PERRY,
Governor oj Florida.
FROM JAMES H. JOHNSON.
Bath, N. H., Jime 1, 1886.
Governor of Neiv Hampshire :
Bear Sir, — Your invitation to attend the dedication of the statue
of Daniel Webster, at Concord, June 17, as guest of the state, gives
me much pleasure, and I deeply regret that the infirmities of age
will prevent me from accepting it.
I was present at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill
8
114 APPENDIX.
Monument, and heard Daniel Webster's famous si^eecli in which he
said : " Let it rise ! let it rise ! let it lise, till it meets the sun in its
coming, and let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and depart-
ing day linger and play vi-pon its summit." I knew him Avell the
four years I was a member of the house, and heard him si)eak in the
senate many times, and always with a thrill of pleasure and delight
in the thought that we were from the same state, and had a jaride in
its granite hills. He was the greatest man I ever met, and I rejoice
that Mr. Benjamin Pierce Cheney has presented his statue to the
state, thus connecting his own worthy name with one whom New
Hampshire cherishes as her most intellectual and talented son.
I offer my sincere thanks to the state for the compliment of the
invitation.
Most respectfully yours,
JAMES H. JOHNSON.
from b. m. cutcheox, m. c.
House of Representatives U. S.,
Washington, D. C, May 26, 1886.
Hon. Moody Currier, Oovernor of Neiv Hampshire :
Dear Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the receii^t of your
invitation to participate in the exercises connected with the dedica-
tion of the statue of Daniel Webster, at the state capitol, June 17,
1886. It would give me the greatest gratification to be al)le to be
present on that luost interesting occasion, in my own native county,
but my official duties here will forbid me that i^rivilege. With
thanks for the invitation, I am
Very truly yours,
B. M. CUTCHEON, M. C.
from c. c. comstock.
House of Representatives U. S.,
Washington, D. C, May 26, 1886.
To the Hon. Moody Currier, Oovernor of New Hampshire :
Dear Sir, — Please accejit my thanks for your kind invitation to
attend the dedication of the statue of the world-renowned statesman,
Daniel Webster, at Concord, on the 17th of June next. I should be
more than pleased to again visit my native state on that occasion
were it possible for me to do so. Although for the last thirty-three
APPENDIX. 115
years my adopted home has been in the great and now wealthy state
of Michigan, I have witli gratitude ever been mindful of the lessons
of industry and economy taught me in the dear old granite state,
and I remain, dear sir.
Most truly your obedient servant,
C. C. COMSTOCK.
from john ii. reagan.
Committee on Commerce,
House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C, May 26, 1886.
Hon. Moody Currier,
Hon. Ct. Marston:
Your circular letter of May 11, inviting me to be present at the
dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, at the state capitol, at
Concord, Thursday, June 17, 1886, is just received. My duties here
will deny me the pleasure of being present and participating in the
ceremonies connected with the dedication of the statue in honor of
Mr. Webster. His great learning, his great ability, and great pa-
triotism, and the veneration in which his virtues are held by the
whole American people, make it eminently fit that his native state
should commemorate his life, his services, and his Avorth by the
erection of a statue, and I would gladly participate in the ceremonies
of its inauguration if my duties here were of a nature that I could
abandon them for the time beino:.
Yours very resi^ectfuUy,
JOHX H. REAGAN.
FROM J. R. DOOLITTLE.
Royal Insurance Building,
Chicago, June 1, 1886.
To the Governor, and Chairman of the Legislative Committee of the
State of New Hampshire :
Gentlemen, — Your invitation to be present at the dedication of
the statue of Daniel Webster, at the capitol, in Concord, on the 17th
of June instant, and to participate in the exercises of that day, as a
guest of the state, is duly received. I would dearly love to accept
it, but I am constrained to decline. It would, indeed, be an honor
and a joy to be there, and to stand among those who, in looking upon
116 APPENDIX.
the statue of the great son of New Ham])shire, will call to mind
those words, never more dear to ever}* true American heart than now,
which in a great crisis came from the deptlis of his soul, fifty years
ago: "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"
That utterance, that inspiration, sustained by President Jackson, the
great son of South Carolina, crushed out the first attemjDt at disunion
in ISo^ ; that same idea, in which alone the great republic lives and
moves and has its being, triumphed in the great civil war. It tri-
xunphed not only because it is true, — and what is true is from God,
— but because that idea rules the hearts and lives of the American
people, and always will. In that idea alone we conquered. To that
idea the South surrendered. On that idea i^eace has come, and the
Union under the constitution has been I'e-established at last ; a Union
in which every state and every citizen has equal rights, under the
constitution and laws. All honor to the great senator.
Respectfullj' yours,
J. R. DOOLITTLE.
from sa^mtel j. kaxdall.
House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C, May 31, 1886.
His Excellency Moody Currier, Governor of New Hampshire,
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee :
Dear Sirs, — I acknowledge the honor of j'our invitation to jmr-
ticipate, as guest of the state, in the dedication of the statue of
Daniel Webster presented by Benjamin Pierce Cheney, at the state
capitol, June 17 next. While it will be impossible for me at that
time to absent myself from m}' public duties, and wliile I regret my
inal)i]ity to accept your courteous invitation, I shall gladly join in
the spirit of the occasion. We have had man}' great men, but as an
orator Webster remains peerless ; as a statesman he overcame by his
wonderful exjiosition all assailants of the principles of our free
government, and in nothing was he greater than in the noble fidelity
with which he maintained his faith to the last moment of his life.
His memory is deeply cherished, as it ought to be, in every corner
of the land.
With personal esteem, I am
Very truly yours,
SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
APPENDIX,
117
from g. g. vest.
United States Senate,
Washington, D. C, May 14, 1886.
Governor Moody Currier :
Dear Sir, — Yowv very kind invitation of the 11th instant, inviting
me to participate in the exercises attending the dedication of the
statue of Daniel Webster, on June the 17th next, has been received.
I desire to return my thanks, and to express my regret that other en-
gagements of an imperative nature will prevent my accepting your
invitation.
I especially regfet to be compelled to so write, for the reason that
nothing would give me greater pleasure than to evidence in the most
public^manner my great admiration for the public character of Mr.
Webster, and my appreciation of his great services to our common
country. ' His reputation as a statesman and lawyer will last so long
as our country exists. Very truly, etc.,
G. G. VEST.
from W. C. WHITNEY.
Navy Perartment,
Washington, D. C, May 14, 1886.
To His Excellency Moody Currier, Governor of New Hampshire :
Sir, — Your kind invitation to participate in the exercises of the
day, as a guest of the state of New Hampshire, on the occasion of
the dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, at Concord, on Thurs-
day, June 17, 1886, has been received. It would give me pleasure
to be present, but my engagements are such as will not permit.
I trust that the ceremonies may in every way be worthy of the
illustrious statesman whom you so appropriately remember.
With many thanks, I have the honor to be
Very truly yours,
W. C. WHITNEY.
from ABRAM S. HEWITT.
House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C, May 18, 1886.
His Excellency Moody Currier, Governor of New Hampshire,
Hon. Gilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee,
Concord, N. H. :
Gentlemeii, — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
invitation to be present at the state capitol, in Concord, on Thursday,
118 APPENDIX.
the 17th of June next, and to participate in the exercises attendant
upon the dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster. If it were in
my power to leave Washington at the date indicated, I should cer-
tainly come to New Hampshire in order to manifest the profound
admiration which I entertain for the imrivaled abilities of the most
distinguished son of New Hampshire, whose services cannot be held
in too much honor by the citizens of our common country. The
longer I live the more profound is my appreciation of the wonderful
intellect and the broad statesmanship of the great expounder of the
constitution. If I could be sure that his teachings would always be
heeded by his countrymen, I should have absolute confidence in the
perpetuity of our free institutions. I can only commend the study
of his work and his career to the rising generation, in the hope that
they will profit by his great example.
I have the honor to be, very respectfully.
Your obedient servant,
ABRAM S. HEWITT.
FKOM GEORGE F. KICHARDSON.
Lowell, Thursday, June 10, 1886.
General Oilman Marston, Chairman of Legislative Committee :
Dear Sir, — J have received, and accept with great pleasure, your
polite invitation to be present at the dedication of a statue of New
Hampshire's greatest son.
Remembering well the profound impression which Daniel Web-
stei-'s mere presence once made upon my youthful mind, I feel
assured that his "counterfeit presentment" will lead others to a
study of the life and character of him, who, as a statesman and a
lawyer, occupied for so many years the very first rank in American
history, and whose published speeches, whether delivered in the
forum or at the bar, are to-day not only models of the purest Eng-
lish, but abound in periods of the sublimest eloquence.
Your state will gratefully cherish the memory of another son, who
has generously caused this statue to be erected as an ornament to its
capital and a lesson to its people.
I have the honor to subscribe myself.
Very respectfully yours,
GEORGE F. RICHARDSON.
ORIGINAL DEED OF THE WEBSTER HOME.
The following is a copy of the original deed of the
home farm upon which Daniel "Webster was born, framed
and presented to Benjamin P. Cheney, Esq., by Fred F.
Hassam, June 17, 1886 :
Know all men by these Presents that we Benjamin Huntoon &
John Collins of Salisbury in the County of Hillsborough & State of
New Hampshire being a committee of the Proiirietors of Salisbury
Late Stevenstown For and in Consideration of the sum of Forty
Eight Founds Lawful money to us in hand for the use of Said Pro-
prietors before the Delivery hereof well and truly Paid by Ebenezer
Webster of Salisbury in the County and State aforesaid Gentlemen
the Receipt whereof we Do hereby acknowledge have Given Granted
bargained and Sold and Do in our Capasity as a Committee Give
Grant bargain Sell aliene enfeeoff convey and Confirm unto him the
said Ebenezer Webster his heirs and assigns forever a Certain Peace
or Parsel of Land Lying in the township of Salisbury aforesaid Con-
taining about twenty acres more or Less (viz) beginning at the
Southwesterly Corner bound of the Intervale Lott Number Eighty
that was Laid out to the Right of Sam'l Solly and Clement ]March
then Running westerly perelal with the Southerly side line of Said
Lot till it Strikes the Easterly Side line of the 100 acre Lot No 1
originally Phillip Call.s then Northerly on Said Line to the North-
easterly Corner bound, of Said 100 acre Lot then Easterly till it
Strikes the Southwesterly Corner of the 60 acre Lot No 1 originally
Said Phillip Call.s then Southeasterly on the Southerly Side Line of
said GO acre Lot till it Comes to the North westerly Corner bounds
of the Intervale Lot No. 75 originally Laid out to the Right of
Joshua Webster jr then Southerly to the bounds first mentioned : To
have and to hold the above Granted and bargained Premises toofether
120 APPENDIX.
with all the Privileges and aiipnrtenances to the Same apjDertaining
to him the Said Ebenezer Webster his heirs and assigns as an abso-
lute Estate of inheritance in fee Simple forever and we the Said
Benjamin Iluntoon and John Collins in our Capasity as a Committee
Do Covenant and Engage by these Presents to warrant and defend
the above Demised Premises to him the Said Webster his heirs and
assigns against ihe Lawful Claims and Demands of all Persons
whomsoever in witness whereof we have hereunto Set our Hands
and Seals this Ninth Day of October Anno Domini 1781.
Benjamin Iluntoon , ( Commitee
John Collins. S ^«V^''!f
(^ of Land.
Signed Sealed and Deliveredln Presence of us
John Collins Gale
Joseph Bartlet
The back of the deed has the followino- :
o
Hillsborough ss Salisbury October 9th 1781 Then the Within
Named Benjamin Iluntoon & John Collins Personally appeared &
acknowledged the within Instrument to be their free act & Deed
Before me
Joseph Bartlett
Just. Peace
Deed from
Huntoon «fc- Collins
to Webster
Hillsborough ss Peed
12; Dec; 1787.
Recorded Lib. 18 :
• Fol; 4i)S: &
Examined
p. Moses Nichols K D R
Colo Webster Salisbury.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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