Hero Tales from History — Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Three Great Champions in Congress
WEBSTER, CLAY, CALHOUN, THREE GREAT CHAMPIONS IN CONGRESS
“There were giants in those days,” a hundred years ago in the United States of America; not giants in body, but in mind and heart.
Besides the Presidents and the generals in the War of 1812 and the Indian wars, the greatest men in America were Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, who were in Congress together.
Daniel Webster was the man of New England, Henry Clay of the west, and John C. Calhoun of the south.
Daniel Webster was born among the hills of New Hampshire, the ninth of the ten children of his father.
He had a huge head, a high forehead, and great, deep, inquiring eyes.
Webster once said that he did not remember when he could not read the Bible.
He learned chapter after chapter of it by heart and remembered them all his life.
[Illustration: CLAY, CALHOUN AND WEBSTER, “THE STATESMEN OF THE COMPROMISE.
” (From left to right.
) _From the painting by A. Tholey_] Daniel’s father lived on a rocky farm in New Hampshire and had a hard time to educate his growing family.
He was called Captain Webster because he had been an officer in the War for Independence.
His children used to delight in hearing about General Washington.
After Daniel grew to be a great man he was proud to tell how the Father of his Country had trusted his father.
Once he said, “I should rather have it said upon my father’s tombstone that he had guarded the person of George Washington and was worthy of such a trust, than to have carved upon it the greatest title that the world could give.
” Captain Webster said to his son one day after a gentleman who was riding by had stopped to speak to him: “Dan, that man beat me by a few votes when I ran against him for Congress, and all because he had a better education.
For that reason I intend you shall have a good education, and I hope to see you work your way up to Congress.
” Daniel’s next older brother’s name was Ezekiel.
He was larger and stronger than Daniel who, because of his poor health, was not expected to do hard work on the farm.
This gave Daniel time to read and improve his mind.
Yet he was not allowed to be idle; he was expected to do “chores” and other light work about the place.
One day Captain Webster went away, after giving both boys a certain task to do while he was gone.
The lads, boy-like, spent the day having a good time, so that when their father came home he found the work not done.
“Zeke,” he said sternly, “what have you been doing all day?
” “Nothing,” said Zeke sheepishly.
“And what have _you_ been doing, Dan?
” asked Captain Webster.
“Helping Zeke!
” said the younger boy with a grin.
After that when any one was idle, it was said that he was “helping Zeke.
” When the time came for Father Webster to send Daniel away to school, as he had promised, the younger boy said he would not go unless Zeke could have the same chance.
So Captain Webster mortgaged the farm to raise the money to educate both boys.
Even then the sons had to stay out of school at times to earn money to help themselves through the academy and college.
In mental work Daniel proved stronger and better able to earn money than his older brother.
A good story is told of Daniel’s coming, after teaching a term of school, to see Ezekiel at college and giving his brother one hundred dollars--nearly all he had earned, keeping only three dollars for himself until he could earn more.
That was Daniel Webster’s best way of “helping Zeke.
” Daniel was the more brilliant of the two, so that he was through college as soon as his brother, though he had not spent so much time there.
Their father explained one difference between the two sons: “Ezekiel could not tell half he knew; but Daniel could tell more than he knew.
” By the time Daniel was out of college his father had become a county judge, and was able to offer his youngest son a position as clerk of the court at fifteen hundred dollars a year, which was a large salary for that time and place.
But Daniel refused the place, saying: “I intend to be a lawyer myself and not to spend my life jotting down other men’s doings.
” “‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,’” said Judge Webster, reminding his son that there were already too many lawyers for them all to make a good living.
“There’s always room at the top,” said young Daniel Webster.
He went to Boston to study law, and his fame as attorney and orator spread far and wide.
The two sons soon paid their father’s debts, and proud old Judge Webster soon saw his son Daniel not only in Congress, but acknowledged to be the greatest man in the Senate.
Ezekiel Webster did not have so brilliant a career as his younger brother, but Daniel always yielded to “Zeke’s” better judgment, even in the greatest public affairs.
Ezekiel did not live to see Daniel’s highest success, and it was said that a new look of sadness came into the great Webster’s face, and never left it, after hearing of “Zeke’s” sudden death.
Although Daniel Webster was not six feet tall, his high, full, square brow and dignified bearing made him seem a giant.
Carlyle, the great Scottish philosopher, met him in London and said: “Webster is a walking cathedral!
” When Daniel Webster was still a small boy on his father’s “rock-ribb’d” farm in New Hampshire, a thin, homely youth of fifteen came into the Court of Chancery in Richmond, Virginia.
He was so awkward and bashful and dressed so queerly that the clerks winked at one another and snickered behind his back.
That youth, whose name was Henry Clay, had come to Richmond from a low, swampy region called “the Slashes,” where he lived with his widowed mother.
Because he used to ride a poor old horse to a mill near his home to get a little corn ground, Henry Clay was afterward called “the Mill Boy of the Slashes.
” Henry’s mother married again and moved out to Kentucky when it was still a western wilderness.
Young Clay stayed in Virginia to study law and was soon admired because of his brightness.
He improved his time, as well as his appearance, so that when he was eighteen, he was a popular orator and “the bright, particular star” of the Richmond Debating Society.
Then, instead of finding “room higher up” in his home state, Henry went west to be near his mother, and to “grow up with the country.
” The twenty-one-year-old attorney hung out his sign in the new and growing town of Lexington, Kentucky.
He was good-natured and thoughtful.
He understood law very well for so young a man.
As he was an eloquent speaker, he became a successful attorney.
He married and settled down on a 600-acre estate which he named “Ashland.
” This estate is still known all over the world as “the home of Henry Clay.
” The year before the War of 1812 began, Henry Clay was sent to Congress from Kentucky and was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives.
He raised his eloquent voice against England and bore a strong part in supporting President Madison in carrying on the war.
He was so earnest in this that he was known as a leader of “the War Hawks.
” When the war was over, Henry Clay was one of five men sent to Europe by the United States to arrange the terms of peace with Great Britain--a peace which has not been broken for more than a hundred years.
Henry Clay was three times a candidate for the presidency.
He had done so much for the country that he had made enemies of many whom he had to oppose at different times.
So each time he was defeated by a man not nearly so great or powerful, but for whom more people were willing to vote.
While Webster and Clay were leaders in Congress there was great excitement because that body passed a tariff law which the southern people did not like.
Many of the southern leaders, especially those of South Carolina, said that Congress had no right to pass such a law and that each state might declare the objectionable law null and void or of no effect within its borders.
Such action by a state was called “nullification.
” There was talk that some of the states would withdraw from the Union if the President tried to enforce the hated law.
Such withdrawal on the part of a state was called “secession.
” About the time these mutterings of disunion were in the air, Robert Y. Hayne, a great orator from South Carolina, made a strong speech in the Senate of the United States, maintaining the right of his state to “nullify” and withdraw from the Union.
Daniel Webster, the champion of the Union, delivered one of the greatest appeals ever made by any orator, in his famous reply to Hayne.
It closed with these now familiar words: “Let my last feeble and lingering glance behold the glorious ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable question as, ‘What is all this worth?
’ or those other words of delusion and folly, ‘Liberty first and Union afterwards;’ but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing in all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart--_Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable_.
” The greatest leader in the south and champion of the right of his state, South Carolina, was John C. Calhoun.
He also was an eloquent speaker.
He declared in the Senate of the United States, in speaking of the tariff law meant to tax goods which people needed, “We look upon it as a dead law, null and void, and will not obey it.
” South Carolina nullified the tariff law and threatened to secede from the Union.
General Andrew Jackson, the bluff old Indian fighter and hero of the War of 1812, was then President.
He declared, “The Union must and shall be preserved!
” John C. Calhoun and all others acquainted with “Old Hickory,” as the President was nicknamed, knew that he meant just what he said.
It seemed that civil war was about to begin when Henry Clay, who loved the Union, averted the danger by proposing a plan of compromise which both sides could accept.
