Daniel Webster

CHAPTER X.

THE LAST YEARS

The story of the remainder of Mr. Webster's public life, outside of and apart from the slavery question, can be quickly told. General Taylor died suddenly on July 9, 1850, and this event led to an immediate and complete reorganization of the cabinet. Mr. Fillmore at once offered the post of Secretary of State to Mr. Webster, who accepted it, resigned his seat in the Senate, and, on July 23, assumed his new position. No great negotiation like that with Lord Ashburton marked this second term of office in the Department of State, but there were a number of important and some very complicated affairs, which Mr. Webster managed with the wisdom, tact, and dignity which made him so admirably fit for this high position.

The best-known incident of this period was that which gave rise to the famous "Hülsemann letter." President Taylor had sent an agent to Hungary to report upon the condition of the revolutionary government, with the intention of recognizing it if there were sufficient grounds for doing so. When the agent arrived, the revolution was crushed, and he reported to the President against recognition. These papers were transmitted to the Senate in March, 1850. Mr. Hülsemann, the Austrian chargé, thereupon complained of the action of our administration, and Mr. Clayton, then Secretary of State, replied that the mission of the agent had been simply to gather information. On receiving further instructions from his government, Mr. Hülsemann rejoined to Mr. Clayton, and it fell to Mr. Webster to reply, which he did on December 21, 1850. The note of the Austrian chargé was in a hectoring and highly offensive tone, and Mr. Webster felt the necessity of administering a sharp rebuke. "The Hülsemann letter," as it was called, was accordingly dispatched. It set forth strongly the right of the United States and their intention to recognize any de facto revolutionary government, and to seek information in all proper ways in order to guide their action. The argument on this point was admirably and forcibly stated, and it was accompanied by a bold vindication of the American policy, and by some severe and wholesome reproof. Mr. Webster had two objects. One was to awaken the people of Europe to a sense of the greatness of this country, the other to touch the national pride at home. He did both. The foreign representatives learned a lesson which they never forgot, and which opened their eyes to the fact that we were no longer colonies, and the national pride was also aroused. Mr. Webster admitted that the letter was, in some respects, boastful and rough. This was a fair criticism, and it may be justly said that such a tone was hardly worthy of the author. But, on the other hand, Hülsemann's impertinence fully justified such a reply, and a little rough domineering was, perhaps, the very thing needed. It is certain that the letter fully answered Mr. Webster's purpose, and excited a great deal of popular enthusiasm. The affair did not, however, end here. Mr. Hülsemann became very mild, but he soon lost his temper again. Kossuth and the refugees in Turkey were brought to this country in a United States frigate. The Hungarian hero was received with a burst of enthusiasm that induced him to hope for substantial aid, which was, of course, wholly visionary. The popular excitement made it difficult for Mr. Webster to steer a proper course, but he succeeded, by great tact, in showing his own sympathy, and, so far as possible, that of the government, for the cause of Hungarian independence and for its leader, without going too far or committing any indiscretion which could justify a breach of international relations with Austria. Mr. Webster's course, including a speech at a dinner in Boston, in which he made an eloquent allusion to Hungary and Kossuth, although carefully guarded, aroused the ire of Mr. Hülsemann, who left the country, after writing a letter of indignant farewell to the Secretary of State. Mr. Webster replied, through Mr. Hunter, with extreme coolness, confining himself to an approval of the gentleman selected by Mr. Hülsemann to represent Austria after the latter's departure.

The other affairs which occupied Mr. Webster's official attention at this time made less noise than that with Austria, but they were more complicated and some of them far more perilous to the peace of the country. The most important was that growing out of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty in regard to the neutrality of the contemplated canal in Nicaragua. This led to a prolonged correspondence about the protectorate of Great Britain in Nicaragua, and to a withdrawal of her claim to exact port-charges. It is interesting to observe the influence which Mr. Webster at once obtained with Sir Henry Bulwer and the respect in which he was held by that experienced diplomatist. Besides this discussion with England, there was a sharp dispute with Mexico about the right of way over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the troubles on the Texan boundary before Congress had acted upon the subject. Then came the Lopez invasion of Cuba, supported by bodies of volunteers enlisted in the United States, which, by its failure and its results, involved our government in a number of difficult questions. The most serious was the riot at New Orleans, where the Spanish consulate was sacked by a mob. To render due reparation for this outrage without wounding the national pride by apparent humiliation was no easy task. Mr. Webster settled everything, however, with a judgment, tact, and dignity which prevented war with Spain and yet excited no resentment at home. At a later period, when the Kossuth affair was drawing to an end, the perennial difficulty about the fisheries revived and was added to our Central American troubles with Great Britain, and this, together with the affair of the Lobos Islands, occupied Mr. Webster's attention, and drew forth some able and important dispatches during the summer of 1852, in the last months of his life.

While the struggle was in progress to convince the country of the value and justice of the compromise measures and to compel their acceptance, another presidential election drew on. It was the signal for the last desperate attempt to obtain the Whig nomination for Mr. Webster, and it seemed at first sight as if the party must finally take up the New England leader. Mr. Clay was wholly out of the race, and his last hour was near. There was absolutely no one who, in fame, ability, public services, and experience could be compared for one moment with Mr. Webster. The opportunity was obvious enough; it awakened all Mr. Webster's hopes, and excited the ardor of his friends. A formal and organized movement, such as had never before been made, was set on foot to promote his candidacy, and a vigorous and earnest address to the people was issued by his friends in Massachusetts. The result demonstrated, if demonstration were needed, that Mr. Webster had not, even under the most favorable circumstances, the remotest chance for the presidency. His friends saw this plainly enough before the convention met, but he himself regarded the great prize as at last surely within his grasp. Mr. Choate, who was to lead the Webster delegates, went to Washington the day before the convention assembled. He called on Mr. Webster and found him so filled with the belief that he should be nominated that it seemed cruel to undeceive him. Mr. Choate, at all events, had not the heart for the task, and went back to Baltimore to lead the forlorn hope with gallant fidelity and with an eloquence as brilliant if not so grand as that of Mr. Webster himself. A majority7 of the convention divided their votes very unequally between Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster, the former receiving 133, the latter 29, on the first ballot, while General Scott had 131. Forty-five ballots were taken, without any substantial change, and then General Scott began to increase his strength, and was nominated on the fifty-third ballot, receiving 159 votes. Most of General Scott's supporters were opposed to resolutions sustaining the compromise measures, while those who voted for Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster favored that policy. General Scott owed his nomination to a compromise, which consisted in inserting in the platform a clause strongly approving Mr. Clay's measures. Mr. Webster expected the Fillmore delegates to come to him, an unlikely event when they were so much more numerous than his friends, and, moreover, they never showed the slightest inclination to do so. They were chiefly from the South, and as they chose to consider Mr. Fillmore and not his secretary the representative of compromise, they reasonably enough expected the latter to give way. The desperate stubbornness of Mr. Webster's adherents resulted in the nomination of Scott. It seemed hard that the Southern Whigs should have done so little for Mr. Webster after he had done and sacrificed so much to advance and defend their interests. But the South was practical. In the 7th of March speech they had got from Mr. Webster all they could expect or desire. It was quite possible, in fact it was highly probable, that, once in the presidency, he could not be controlled or guided by the slave-power or by any other sectional influence. Mr. Fillmore, inferior in every way to Mr. Webster in intellect, in force, in reputation, would give them a mild, safe administration and be easily influenced by the South. Mr. Webster had served his turn, and the men whose cause he had advocated and whose interests he had protected cast him aside.

The loss of the nomination was a bitter disappointment to Mr. Webster. It was the fashion in certain quarters to declare that it killed him, but this was manifestly absurd. The most that can be said in this respect was, that the excitement and depression caused by his defeat preyed upon his mind and thereby facilitated the inroads of disease, while it added to the clouds which darkened round him in those last days. But his course of action after the convention cannot be passed over without comment. He refused to give his adhesion to General Scott's nomination, and he advised his friends to vote for Mr. Pierce, because the Whigs were divided, while the Democrats were unanimously determined to resist all attempts to renew the slavery agitation. This course was absolutely indefensible. If the Whig party was so divided on the slavery question that Mr. Webster could not support their nominee, then he had no business to seek a nomination at their hands, for they were as much divided before the convention as afterwards. He chose to come before that convention, knowing perfectly well the divisions of the party, and that the nomination might fall to General Scott. He saw fit to play the game, and was in honor bound to abide by the rules. He had no right to say "it is heads I win, and tails you lose." If he had been nominated he would have indignantly and justly denounced a refusal on the part of General Scott and his friends to support him. It is the merest sophistry to say that Mr. Webster was too great a man to be bound by party usages, and that he owed it to himself to rise above them, and refuse his support to a poor nomination and to a wrangling party. If Mr. Webster could no longer act with the Whigs, then his name had no business in that convention at Baltimore, for the conditions were the same before its meeting as afterward. Great man as he was, he was not too great to behave honorably; and his refusal to support Scott, after having been his rival for a nomination at the hands of their common party, was neither honorable nor just. If Mr. Webster had decided to leave the Whigs and act independently, he was in honor bound to do so before the Baltimore convention assembled, or to have warned the delegates that such was his intention in the event of General Scott's nomination. He had no right to stand the hazard of the die, and then refuse to abide by the result. The Whig party, in its best estate, was not calculated to excite a very warm enthusiasm in the breast of a dispassionate posterity, and it is perfectly true that it was on the eve of ruin in 1852. But it appeared better then, in the point of self-respect, than four years before. In 1848 the Whigs nominated a successful soldier conspicuous only for his availability and without knowing to what party he belonged. They maintained absolute silence on the great question of the extension of slavery, and carried on their campaign on the personal popularity of their candidate. Mr. Webster was righteously disgusted at their candidate and their negative attitude. He could justly and properly have left them on a question of principle; but he swallowed the nomination, "not fit to be made," and gave to his party a decided and public support. In 1852 the Whigs nominated another successful soldier, who was known to be a Whig, and who had been a candidate for their nomination before. In their platform they formally adopted the essential principle demanded by Mr. Webster, and declared their adhesion to the compromise measures. If there was disaffection in regard to this declaration of 1852, there was disaffection also about the silence of 1848. In the former case, Mr. Webster adhered to the nomination; in the latter, he rejected it. In 1848 he might still hope to be President through a Whig nomination. In 1852 he knew that, even if he lived, there would never be another chance. He gave vent to his disappointment, put no constraint upon himself, prophesied the downfall of his party, and advised his friends to vote for Franklin Pierce. It was perfectly logical, after advocating the compromise measures, to advise giving the government into the hands of a party controlled by the South. Mr. Webster would have been entirely reasonable in taking such a course before the Baltimore convention. He had no right to do so after he had sought a nomination from the Whigs, and it was a breach of faith to act as he did, to advise his friends to desert a falling party and vote for the Democratic candidate.

After the acceptance of the Department of State, Mr. Webster's health became seriously impaired. His exertions in advocating the compromise measures, his official labors, and the increased severity of his annual hay-fever,—all contributed to debilitate him. His iron constitution weakened in various ways, and especially by frequent periods of intense mental exertion, to which were superadded the excitement and nervous strain inseparable from his career, was beginning to give way. Slowly but surely he lost ground. His spirits began to lose their elasticity, and he rarely spoke without a tinge of deep sadness being apparent in all he said. In May, 1852, while driving near Marshfield, he was thrown from his carriage with much violence, injuring his wrists, and receiving other severe contusions. The shock was very great, and undoubtedly accelerated the progress of the fatal organic disease which was sapping his life. This physical injury was followed by the keen disappointment of his defeat at Baltimore, which preyed upon his heart and mind. During the summer of 1852 his health gave way more rapidly. He longed to resign, but Mr. Fillmore insisted on his retaining his office. In July he came to Boston, where he was welcomed by a great public meeting, and hailed with enthusiastic acclamations, which did much to soothe his wounded feelings. He still continued to transact the business of his department, and in August went to Washington, where he remained until the 8th of September, when he returned to Marshfield. On the 20th he went to Boston, for the last time, to consult his physician. He appeared at a friend's house, one evening, for a few moments, and all who then saw him were shocked at the look of illness and suffering in his face. It was his last visit. He went back to Marshfield the next day, never to return. He now failed rapidly. His nights were sleepless, and there were scarcely any intervals of ease or improvement. The decline was steady and sure, and as October wore away the end drew near. Mr. Webster faced it with courage, cheerfulness, and dignity, in a religious and trusting spirit, with a touch of the personal pride which was part of his nature. He remained perfectly conscious and clear in his mind almost to the very last moment, bearing his sufferings with perfect fortitude, and exhibiting the tenderest affection toward the wife and son and friends who watched over him. On the evening of October 23 it became apparent that he was sinking, but his one wish seemed to be that he might be conscious when he was actually dying. After midnight he roused from an uneasy sleep, struggled for consciousness, and ejaculated, "I still live." These were his last words. Shortly after three o'clock the labored breathing ceased, and all was over.

A hush fell upon the country as the news of his death sped over the land. A great gap seemed to have been made in the existence of every one. Men remembered the grandeur of his form and the splendor of his intellect, and felt as if one of the pillars of the state had fallen. The profound grief and deep sense of loss produced by his death were the highest tributes and the most convincing proofs of his greatness.

In accordance with his wishes, all public forms and ceremonies were dispensed with. The funeral took place at his home on Friday, October 29. Thousands flocked to Marshfield to do honor to his memory, and to look for the last time at that noble form. It was one of those beautiful days of the New England autumn, when the sun is slightly veiled, and a delicate haze hangs over the sea, shining with a tender silvery light. There is a sense of infinite rest and peace on such a day which seems to shut out the noise of the busy world and breathe the spirit of unbroken calm. As the crowds poured in through the gates of the farm, they saw before them on the lawn, resting upon a low mound of flowers, the majestic form, as impressive in the repose of death as it had been in the fullness of life and strength. There was a wonderful fitness in it all. The vault of heaven and the spacious earth seemed in their large simplicity the true place for such a man to lie in state. There was a brief and simple service at the house, and then the body was borne on the shoulders of Marshfield farmers, and laid in the little graveyard which already held the wife and children who had gone before, and where could be heard the eternal murmur of the sea.

In May, 1852, Mr. Webster said to Professor Silliman: "I have given my life to law and politics. Law is uncertain and politics are utterly vain." It is a sad commentary for such a man to have made on such a career, but it fitly represents Mr. Webster's feelings as the end of life approached. His last years were not his most fortunate, and still less his best years. Domestic sorrows had been the prelude to a change of policy, which had aroused a bitter opposition, and to the pangs of disappointed ambition. A sense of mistake and failure hung heavily upon his spirits, and the cry of "vanity, vanity, all is vanity," came readily to his lips. There is an infinite pathos in those melancholy words which have just been quoted. The sun of life, which had shone so splendidly at its meridian, was setting amid clouds. The darkness which overspread him came from the action of the 7th of March, and the conflict which it had caused. If there were failure and mistake they were there. The presidency could add nothing, its loss could take away nothing from the fame of Daniel Webster. He longed for it eagerly; he had sacrificed much to his desire for it; his disappointment was keen and bitter at not receiving what seemed to him the fit crown of his great public career. But this grief was purely personal, and will not be shared by posterity, who feel only the errors of those last years coming after so much glory, and who care very little for the defeat of the ambition which went with them.

Those last two years awakened such fierce disputes, and had such an absorbing interest, that they have tended to overshadow the half century of distinction and achievement which preceded them. Failure and disappointment on the part of such a man as Webster seem so great, that they too easily dwarf everything else, and hide from us a just and well proportioned view of the whole career. Mr. Webster's success had, in truth, been brilliant, hardly equalled in measure or duration by that of any other eminent man in our history. For thirty years he had stood at the head of the bar and of the Senate, the first lawyer and the first statesman of the United States. This is a long tenure of power for one man in two distinct departments. It would be remarkable anywhere. It is especially so in a democracy. This great success Mr. Webster owed solely to his intellectual power supplemented by great physical gifts. No man ever was born into the world better formed by nature for the career of an orator and statesman. He had everything to compel the admiration and submission of his fellow-men:—