struggle for the presidency is told in the succeeding
chapter. It seems strange that while he was indisputably the most
popular man in the United States, he was not able to secure the great
prize. The American Congress never knew a more brilliant debater, nor
did the public ever listen to a more magnetic orator. His various
compromise measures in the interest of the Union were beyond the
attainment of any other man. His fame rests above that which any office
can confer. His friends idolized and his opponents respected him. A
strong political enemy once refused an introduction to him on the ground
that he could not withstand the magnetism of a personal acquaintance
which had won "other good haters" to his side. John C. Breckinridge, his
political adversary, in his funeral oration, said: "If I were to write
his epitaph, I would inscribe as the highest eulogy on the stone which
shall mark his resting-place, 'Here lies a man who was in the public
service for fifty years and never attempted to deceive his countrymen.'"

DANIEL WEBSTER.

[Illustration: DANIEL WEBSTER. (1782-1852).]

Daniel Webster was born January 18, 1782, at Salisbury, New Hampshire,
and died October 24, 1852. He was educated at Exeter Academy and
graduated from Dartmouth College in 1801. After teaching school a short
time in Maine, he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1805, and
began practice at Boscawen, in his native State. Two years afterward, he
removed to Portsmouth, where he speedily became a leader at the bar and
served in Congress from 1813 to 1817. At that time he was a moderate
Federalist. He settled in Boston in 1818, and assumed a front rank among
lawyers by his argument before the United States Supreme Court in the
celebrated "Dartmouth College Case," which involved the obligation of
contracts and the powers of the national government. He was congressman
from Massachusetts from 1823 to 1827, was chairman of the judiciary
committee, and attracted great attention by his speeches on Greece, then
struggling for independence, and his pleas in favor of free trade.

Webster's fame as an eloquent orator was already established. As such,
he was the greatest that America ever produced, and many claim that he
surpassed any who spoke the English tongue. Among his masterpieces were
his speeches at Plymouth, 1820, on the bi-centennial; at the laying of
the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument, 1825; and his eulogy on
Adams and Jefferson, 1826