[3] The landing at Plymouth was on Dec. 11, 1620, Old Style, corresponding to December 21 according to the present calendar, though December 22 is generally observed.

[4] A plain eighteen miles northeast of Athens, between Mount Pentelicus and the sea, where, B. C. 490, 10,000 Greeks and 1,000 PlatÆans, under Miltiades, defeated 100,000 Persians, thereby destroying Darius’s scheme for subjugating Greece.

“The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free.”

Byron, Don Juan, canto iii, stanza 86, 3.

[5] John Robinson, 1575-1625, an influential English Independent (or Congregational) minister, who left the Church of England and joined the “Separatists” in 1604, and was their pastor at Scrooby, England, removing to Amsterdam, Holland, in 1608, and continuing his leadership of Independents there and in Leyden.

[6] Smithfield is a section of London, north of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where alleged heretics were burned at the stake during the reign of Queen Mary, in 1555 and subsequent years.

[7] The monument, erected by an association which aroused national as well as local interest and support, is a granite obelisk, two hundred and twenty-one feet high, actually standing on Breed’s, not Bunker Hill. The two eminences are seven hundred yards apart, and both were scenes of conflict, the American redoubt being on Breed’s; but general use has long sanctioned the expression “the battle of Bunker Hill.” The monument was finished in 1842.

[8] Jamestown, Virginia, on the James River, where the first permanent English settlement in the United States was made May 13, 1607.

[9] It is no part of the purpose of the present edition to undertake to criticise the rhetoric of Webster. But the use of “him” in the objective case, in the present paragraph, followed by “thy,” is so uncommon as to call for mention. Most rhetoricians would employ “he,” followed by “his;” or “thou,” followed by “thy.” A use of cases identical with Webster’s is found in the well-known second stanza of S.F. Smith’s “America”:—

“My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,—
Thy name I love.”

[10] The Marquis de la Fayette (1757-1834), a member of a rich and noble French family, equipped a vessel at his own cost, and came to America in 1777, to aid the Revolutionists. At once brave and judicious, he became the friend of Washington, and was made major-general, distinguishing himself as a fighter or strategist at Brandywine, Monmouth, and Yorktown. Returning to France after the war, he took a middle course in the French Revolution, for which he later was subjected to the unwarranted sneers of Carlyle. Imprisoned for years in Austria, he was released by request of Napoleon in 1797. In 1824 he again visited the United States, being everywhere greeted with enthusiasm, and receiving from Congress $200,000 and a township of land. Four years before his death he was made head of the French National Guard by the party which dethroned the Bourbon, Charles X., and transferred the crown to Louis Philippe.

[11] Late may you return to the sky.

[12] The people of Greece, long restive against Turkish oppression, rose under Alexander Ypsilanti in 1820, promulgated a new constitution in 1822, and began a war of revolution. After bloody atrocities on both sides, in 1824 the Greeks began to receive some outside help, including that of Lord Byron, who died at Missolonghi, in that year, from exposure in the field. The jealousies and intrigues of Mahmoud, Sultan of Turkey, and Mehemet Ali, Turkish Viceroy of Egypt, with fears of Russian preponderance in a divided Turkey, led the Great Powers of Europe to interfere in behalf of Greece, as the Turks and Egyptians were working together against her. The Treaty of London (July 6, 1827) founded the new Kingdom of Greece; England, France, and Russia overwhelmed the fleets of Turkey and Egypt at Navarino, October 26 of the same year; and the independent career of the resuscitated Greek nation began.

[13] “Monument Square is four hundred and seventeen feet from north to south, and four hundred feet from east to west, and contains nearly six acres. It embraces the whole site of the redoubt, and a part of the site of the breastwork. According to the most accurate plan of the town and the battle (Page’s), the monument stands where the southwest angle of the redoubt was, and the whole of the redoubt was between the monument and the street that bounds it on the west. The small mound in the northeast corner of the square is supposed to be the remains of the breastwork. Warren fell about two hundred feet west of the monument. An iron fence encloses the square, and another surrounds the monument. The square has entrances on each of its sides, and at each of its corners, and is surrounded by a walk and rows of trees.

“The obelisk is thirty feet in diameter at the base, about fifteen feet at the top of the truncated part, and was designed to be two hundred and twenty feet high; but the mortar and the seams between the stones make the precise height two hundred and twenty-one feet. Within the shaft is a hollow cone, with a spiral stairway winding round it to its summit, which enters a circular chamber at the top. There are ninety courses of stone in the shaft,—six of them below the ground, and eighty-four above the ground. The capstone, or apex, is a single stone four feet square at the base, and three feet six inches in height, weighing two and a half tons.”—Frothingham’s Siege of Boston.

[14] The old method, established by Julius CÆsar, of counting 365 days in a year, and 366 every fourth year, gave each year about eleven minutes too much, which overplus amounted in 1582 to ten days. In that year Pope Gregory XIII discontinued the “Julian” and established the “Gregorian” calendar, by setting forward the date of a day ten days. This change was adopted (the dropping of an additional day being needed) by the English Parliament in 1751,—September 3, 1752, to be called September 14. At present, the New Style gives 366 days to every year divisible by four, excepting 1800, 1900, etc.

[15] March 5, 1770, a conflict called the “Boston Massacre” took place between English troops and Bostonians, three of the latter being killed. Samuel Adams, the people’s leader in Boston, in consequence compelled the Governor to withdraw the soldiers from the town.

[16] Documents giving the royal custom-house officers the right to search any house for alleged smuggled goods.

[17] Parliament closed the port of Boston, in 1774, in retaliation for the destruction of taxed tea by the Colonists in 1773, in the so-called “Boston Tea-party.” Under the Port Bill all exports and imports were prohibited save food and fuel.

[18] The parliament of Holland.

[19] Prior to 1804 the “presidential electors” voted for two candidates from previous page: for president; the one receiving the highest number to be president, and the one having the next highest vice-president.

[20] John Quincy Adams was President of the United States, 1825-1829.

[21] The fiftieth anniversary of the independence of the United States. The Jews of the Old Testament celebrated every fiftieth anniversary of their entrance into Canaan. Leviticus xxv. 10.

[22] Mr. Jefferson himself considered his services in establishing the University of Virginia as among the most important rendered by him to the country. In large part he arranged its curriculum, and even designed its buildings. By his direction the following inscription was placed on his monument: “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statutes of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”

[23] “Happy, not only in the brightness of his life, but also in the circumstance of his death.”

[24] The question has often been asked whether the anonymous speech against the Declaration of Independence, and the speech in support of it ascribed to John Adams in the preceding address, are a portion of the debates which actually took place in 1776 in the Continental Congress. Those speeches were composed by Mr. Webster, after the manner of the ancient historians, as embodying the arguments relied upon by the friends and opponents of the measure, respectively. They represent speeches actually made on both sides, but no report of the debates of this period has been preserved, and Mr. Webster had no aid in framing these addresses but what was furnished by tradition and the known line of argument pursued by the speakers and writers of that day for and against the measure of Independence. The first sentence of the speech ascribed to Mr. Adams was suggested by the parting scene with Jonathan Sewall, as described by Mr. Adams himself, in the Preface to the “Letters of Novanglus and Massachusettensis.”

The following answer was written by Mr. Webster to one of the letters of inquiry above alluded to.

“Washington, 22 January, 1846.

“Dear Sir:—

“I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 18th instant. Its contents hardly surprise me, as I have received very many similar communications.

“Your inquiry is easily answered. The Congress of the Revolution sat with closed doors. Its proceedings were made known to the public from time to time, by printing its journal; but the debates were not published. So far as I know, there is not existing, in print or manuscript, the speech, or any part or fragment of the speech, delivered by Mr. Adams on the question of the Declaration of Independence. We only know, from the testimony of his auditors, that he spoke with remarkable ability and characteristic earnestness.

“The day after the Declaration was made, Mr. Adams, in writing to a friend, declared the event to be one that ‘ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.’

“And on the day of his death, hearing the noise of bells and cannon, he asked the occasion. On being reminded that it was ‘Independent day,’ he replied, ‘Independence forever!’ These expressions were introduced into the speech supposed to have been made by him. For the rest I must be answerable. The speech was written by me, in my house in Boston, the day before the delivery of the Discourse in Faneuil Hall; a poor substitute, I am sure it would appear to be, if we could now see the speech actually made by Mr. Adams on that transcendently important occasion.

“I am, respectfully,
“Your obedient servant,
“Daniel Webster.”

[25] Joseph White, an old man of eighty, was found murdered in his bed, in Salem, Massachusetts, on the morning of April 7, 1830. A few weeks later four men—Richard Crowninshield, George Crowninshield, John Francis Knapp, and Joseph J. Knapp, Jr.—were arrested on the charge of murder. On June 15 Richard Crowninshield committed suicide in his cell; George Crowninshield, having proved an alibi, was discharged; and the two Knapps were tried between July 20 and August 20, the former as principal and the latter as accessory. Joseph made a full confession, outside of court, on the government’s promise of impunity; but afterwards refused to repeat this testimony on the witness-stand. It was shown that the fatal blow was struck by Richard Crowninshield; that John Francis Knapp, who had bargained with Richard Crowninshield to commit the murder, was lurking in the neighborhood during the commission of the crime; and that Joseph J. Knapp was also an accessory before the fact, having, indeed, projected the murder. The Knapps were executed. A detailed description of the extraordinary network of circumstances, before and after the murder, is given in the volume entitled “Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster.”

[26] The “Great Debate” in the Senate, between Webster and Hayne, had an unexpected origin. A resolution had been introduced by Senator Samuel Augustus Foot, of Connecticut, merely ordering an inquiry into the expediency of throwing restrictions around future sales of public lands of the United States. Into the discussion of this resolution, which lasted five months, was brought a large number of partisan pleas, tariff arguments, local jealousies, and questions of the right and wrong of slavery, and of the respective powers of the State and national governments. Recriminations and even personalities were not infrequent; and some of the Southern speakers did not refrain, in defence of the new “nullification” doctrine, from criticism of New England Federalism as having been essentially selfish, derisive, and unpatriotic. Senator Robert Young Hayne (1791-1840), of South Carolina, who had been a member of the Senate since 1823, was conspicuous, in this debate, for his advocacy of the idea that a State might suspend Federal laws at its discretion; and his assertions to that effect, combined with sharp criticisms of Massachusetts, led Mr. Webster to make his famous reply. Mr. Hayne was subsequently Governor of South Carolina, at the time of the almost armed collision between that State and President Jackson, in 1832, over the nullification of tariff laws. At one time Governor Hayne actually issued a proclamation of resistance to the authority of the general government; but subsequently Congress modified the objectionable tariff provisions and the State repealed its nullification ordinance, which President Jackson’s firmness had certainly made “null, void, and no law.”

[27] It had been charged that John Quincy Adams, during his presidency (1825-1829), had sought to purchase the support of Webster by giving offices to members of the old Federalist party, then merging into the “National Republican” or Whig party. Furthermore, the opposition had declared that Adams’s bestowal of the Secretaryship of State upon Henry Clay was in accordance with a bargain by which Adams was to be supported by the Clay vote in the House of Representatives.

[28] Mr. Webster here quotes parts of lines 69 and 74 of Macbeth, Act III. Scene 14.

[29] The Ordinance of July 13, 1787, was an act of the Congress of the Confederation,—prior to the beginning of the constitutional government of the United States in 1789,—which, in its sixth article, said of the “Northwest Territory,” organized by this Ordinance: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Under the provisions of this Ordinance Ohio became a State in 1802. Says Johnston in his “History of American Politics “: “The Ordinance of 1787 is noteworthy as an exercise by the Congress of the Confederacy of the right to exclude slavery from the territories. It will be found that the language of this Ordinance was copied in the efforts made in 1819 (Missouri), 1846 (Wilmot Proviso), and 1865 (XIIIth Amendment), to assert and maintain for the Federal Congress under the Constitution this power of regulating and abolishing slavery in the territories of the United States, and finally in the States as the result of civil war.”

[30] The line between Pennsylvania, a free State, and Maryland, a slave State; originally run by two surveyors bearing these names.

[31] The “Virginia Resolutions of 1798,” of which the most important is here quoted, and the similar Kentucky Resolutions of the same year, were protests of the Republican, or Anti-Federalist, legislatures of the two States, against the “Alien and Sedition Laws” passed by the Federalist majority in Congress. These laws were the outgrowth of an almost warlike feeling between the United States and France, due to a variety of causes, for the most part discreditable to France. They authorized the President to order out of the country any foreigner he deemed dangerous; and imposed fines and imprisonment upon alleged conspirators against Government measures, or libellers of Congress or the President. The laws were deemed by the Anti-Federalists to be autocratic and semi-monarchical. The Virginia protesting resolutions were put into form by James Madison, afterwards President.

[32] James Hillhouse (1754-1832), of Connecticut.

[33] The District of Columbia is governed directly by Congress, but sends no representative thereto.

[34] The Embargo Bill of 1807 prohibited American vessels from foreign trade, and foreign vessels from American, only coasting trade being permitted. It was directed against England, and was supported by the Anti-Federalists and bitterly opposed by the Federalists. For the time it almost destroyed American commerce, and bore especially heavily on New England.

[35] Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), author of the famous “Commentaries on the Laws of England” (1765-1769).

[36] Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1675) an eminent French general, who left memoirs of his campaigns from 1643 to 1658.

[37] See note on page xciv.

[38] John Fries (1764?-1825) was the leader of seven hundred men who forcibly resisted the levying of the “house or window” tax in Northampton, Bucks, and Montgomery counties, Pennsylvania, in 1798-1799. These men liberated prisoners and “arrested” the assessors themselves; and Fries, when marching toward Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, resisted a United States marshal. He was tried for treason in 1799, found guilty, given a new trial in 1800, again found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged; but President John Adams, against the advice of all his cabinet, pardoned him and gave a general amnesty to the rioters. Fries became a well-to-do merchant in Philadelphia.

[39] Interesting examples of Webster’s revision of important passages in this speech may be found by comparing the present standard text with the original versions as preserved in the Boston Public Library. The eulogium of Massachusetts, beginning “Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium” and ending with “the very spot of its origin,” was spoken thus:

“Sir, I shall be led on this occasion into no eulogium on Massachusetts. I shall paint no portraiture of her merits, original, ancient or modern. Yet, Sir, I cannot but remember that Boston was the cradle of liberty, that in Massachusetts (the parent of this accursed policy so eternally narrow to the West), etc., etc., etc. I cannot forget that Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill are in Massachusetts, and that in men and means and money she did contribute more than any other State to carry on the Revolutionary war. There was not a State in the Union whose soil was not wetted with Massachusetts blood in the Revolutionary war, and it is to be remembered that of the army to which Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown a majority consisted of New England troops. It is painful to me to recur to these recollections even for the purpose of self-defence, and even to that end, Sir, I will not extol the intelligence, the character and the virtue of the people of New England. I leave the theme to itself, here and everywhere, now and forever.”

The first form of the famous concluding passage was as follows:

“When my eyes shall be turned for the last time on the meridian sun, I hope I may see him shining bright upon my united, free, and happy country. I hope I shall not live to see his beams falling upon the dispersed fragments of the structure of this once glorious Union. I hope I may not see the flag of my country with its stars separated or obliterated; torn by commotions, smoking with the blood of civil war. I hope I may not see the standard raised of separate State rights, star against star, and stripe against stripe; but that the flag of the Union may keep its stars and its stripes corded and bound together in indissoluble ties. I hope I shall not see written as its motto, ‘First liberty, and then Union.’ I hope I shall see no such delusive and deluded motto on the flag of that country. I hope to see, spread all over it, blazoned in letters of light and proudly floating over land and sea, that other sentiment, dear to my heart, ‘Union and Liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable.’”

[40] At the beginning of the nineteenth century Marcus Tullius Cicero was often called Tully.

[41] Bishop George Berkeley’s (1684-1753) “On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.”

[42] A remark by Fisher Ames (1758-1808), of Massachusetts,—perhaps the extremest Federalist of his time.

[43] The famous phrase “honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none” was not Washington’s, but Jefferson’s.

[44] In the debate on Henry Clay’s Compromise resolutions.

[45] Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad, book xviii., lines 701-4. Webster changes the first word, “Thus,” to “Now.”

[46] Shakespeare, King Henry the Fifth, Prologue, lines 1-4.

[47] Mr. Webster’s table contained, of course, the figures for 1793 and 1851 only. For the sake of illustration, those for 1900 are now added.

[48] Including Hawaii, but not the other foreign possessions.

[49] Including Alaska, but no other possession not contiguous to the United States.

[50] Male population available for defence.

[51] Total lighted aids in the year 1893.

[52] The area given for 1851 was incorrect.

[53] Exclusive of double tracks and sidings.

[54] Total liabilities.

[55] Excluding private lines.

[56] Including public, society, and school libraries.

[57] Total from all parts of the world.

[58] The Washington monument here mentioned had been begun in 1848. Work was continued, by State and other donations, until 1855, when it was abandoned until 1877. But as the unfinished condition of the shaft was felt to be a sort of national disgrace, its construction was resumed in the last-named year, under a Congressional appropriation, and steadily pushed forward until the completion of the noble obelisk in 1884, at a total cost of $1,300,000. It is built of white Maryland marble, and is 555 feet high—the loftiest masonry construction in the world, though much surpassed in height by the steel Eiffel Tower in Paris.

[59] From the address at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument.