All 44 Uses of
Daniel Webster
in
Profiles in Courage
- John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Sam Houston, Thomas Hart Benton, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, George Norris and Robert Taft imparted a heritage to us.†
Chpt Frwd.
- We may remember Daniel Webster for his subservience to the National Bank throughout much of his career, but we have forgotten his sacrifice for the national good at the close of that career.†
Chpt 0.1
- It was because Daniel Webster conscientiously favored compromise in 1850 that he earned a condemnation unsurpassed in the annals of political history.†
Chpt 0.1 *
- Among the acquaintances and colleagues who march across the pages of his diary are Sam Adams (a kinsman), John Hancock, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lafayette, John Jay, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Hart Benton, John Tyler, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Lincoln, James Buchanan, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew Johnson, Jefferson Davis and many others.†
Chpt 1.2
- Daniel Webster dryly commented, "As he has already done to his friends.†
Chpt 1.2
- In the third—that involving Daniel Webster of Massachusetts—even death, which came within two years of his great decision, did not halt the calumnies heaped upon him by his enemies, who had sadly embittered his last days.†
Chpt 2.0
- Of these, only Daniel Webster was to share with Benton and Houston the ignominy of constituent wrath and the humiliation of political downfall at the hands of the states they had loved and championed.†
Chpt 2.0
- That secession did not occur in 1850 instead of 1861 is due in great part to Daniel Webster, who was in large measure responsible for the country's acceptance of Henry Clay's compromise.†
Chpt 2.0
- His story is told in Chapter V. III — Daniel Webster.†
Chpt 2.3
- But wheezing and coughing fitfully, Henry Clay made his way through the snowdrifts to the home of Daniel Webster.†
Chpt 2.3
- For an hour he outlined its contents to Daniel Webster in the warmth of the latter's comfortable home, and together they talked of saving the Union.†
Chpt 2.3
- For the Compromise of 1850 added to Henry Clay's garlands as the great Pacificator; but Daniel Webster's support, which insured its success, resulted in his political crucifixion, and, for half a century or more, his historical condemnation.†
Chpt 2.3
- Daniel Webster is familiar to many of us today as the battler for Jabez Stone's soul against the devil in Stephen Vincent Benet's story.†
Chpt 2.3
- With all his faults and failings, Daniel Webster was undoubtedly the most talented figure in our Congressional history: not in his ability to win men to a cause—he was no match in that with Henry Clay; not in his ability to hammer out a philosophy of government—Calhoun outshone him there; but in his ability to make alive and supreme the latent sense of oneness, of Union, that all Americans felt but which few could express.†
Chpt 2.3
- But how Daniel Webster could express it!†
Chpt 2.3
- And Daniel Webster was not as great as he looked.†
Chpt 2.3
- But whatever his faults, Daniel Webster remained the greatest orator of his day, the leading member of the American Bar, one of the most renowned leaders of the Whig party, and the only Senator capable of checking Calhoun.†
Chpt 2.3
- How could Henry Clay then hope to win approval to such a plan from Daniel Webster of Massachusetts?†
Chpt 2.3
- But Daniel Webster feared that civil violence "would only rivet the chains of slavery the more strongly."†
Chpt 2.3
- And thus on that fateful January night, Daniel Webster promised Henry Clay his conditional support, and took inventory of the crisis about him.†
Chpt 2.3
- Only the Clay Compromise, Daniel Webster decided, could avert secession and civil war; and he wrote a friend that he planned "to make an honest truth-telling speech and a Union speech, and discharge a clear conscience."†
Chpt 2.3
- He was excitedly interrupted by the Sergeant at Arms, who told him that even then—two hours before the Senate was to meet—the chamber, the galleries, the anterooms and even the corridors of the Capitol were filled with those who had been traveling for days from all parts of the nation to hear Daniel Webster.†
Chpt 2.3
- The crowd fell silent as Daniel Webster rose slowly to his feet, all the impressive powers of his extraordinary physical appearance—the great, dark, brooding eyes, the wonderfully bronzed complexion, the majestic domed forehead—commanding the same awe they had commanded for more than thirty years.†
Chpt 2.3
- Daniel Webster preferred to risk his career and his reputation rather than risk the Union.†
Chpt 2.3
- For three hours and eleven minutes, with only a few references to his extensive notes, Daniel Webster pleaded the Union's cause.†
Chpt 2.3
- Daniel Webster did succeed.†
Chpt 2.3
- It was understood by Daniel Webster, who dedicated the printed copies to the people of Massachusetts with these words: "Necessity compels me to speak true rather than pleasing things...I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer to save you, whatever be your attitude toward me."†
Chpt 2.3
- As the Massachusetts Legislature enacted further resolutions wholly contrary to the spirit of the Seventh of March speech, one member called Webster "a recreant son of Massachusetts who misrepresents her in the Senate"; and another stated that "Daniel Webster will be a fortunate man if God, in his sparing mercy, shall preserve his life long enough for him to repent of this act and efface this stain on his name."†
Chpt 2.3
- The New York Tribune considered it "unequal to the occasion and unworthy of its author"; the New York Evening Post spoke in terms of a "traitorous retreat ....a man who deserted the cause which helately defended"; and the Abolitionist press called it "the scarlet infamy of Daniel Webster...An indescribably base and wicked speech."†
Chpt 2.3
- And finally, the name of Daniel Webster was humiliated for all time in the literature of our land by the cutting words of the usually gentle John Greenleaf Whittier in his immortal poem "Ichabod": So fallen!†
Chpt 2.3
- And for Daniel Webster, the arrogant, scornful giant of the ages who believed himself above political rancor, Whittier's attack was especially bitter.†
Chpt 2.3
- But Daniel Webster was doomed to disappointment in his hopes that this latent support might again enable him to seek the Presidency.†
Chpt 2.3
- But this "profound selfishness," which Emerson was so certain the speech represented, could not have entered into Daniel Webster's motivations.†
Chpt 2.3
- And when the Boston Whigs urged that the party platform take credit for the Clay Compromise, of which, they said, "Daniel Webster, with the concurrence of Henry Clay and other profound statesmen, was the author," Senator Corwin of Ohio was reported to have commented sarcastically, "And I, with the concurrence of Moses and some extra help, wrote the Ten Commandments."†
Chpt 2.3
- So Daniel Webster, who neither could have intended his speech as an improvement of his political popularity nor permitted his ambitions to weaken his plea for the Union, died a disappointed and discouraged death in 1852, his eyes fixed on the flag flying from the mast of the sailboat he had anchored in view of his bedroom window.†
Chpt 2.3
- But to the very end he was true to character, asking on his deathbed, "Wife, children, doctor, I trust on this occasion I have said nothing unworthy of Daniel Webster."†
Chpt 2.3
- The bitter animosities on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line which had engulfed Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton and Sam Houston continued unabated for some two decades after the war.†
Chpt 3.0
- If Daniel Webster had lived in that age, one editor commented, he would have been "neither in debt nor in the Senate†
Chpt 3.0
- Charles Sumner—who assailed Daniel Webster as a traitor for seeking to keep the South in the Union—who helped crucify Edmund Ross for his vote against the Congressional mob rule that would have ground the South and the Presidency under its heel—whose own death was hastened by the terrible caning administered to him on the Senate floor years earlier by Congressman Brooks of South Carolina, who thereupon became a Southern hero—Charles Sumner was now dead.†
Chpt 3.7
- Still, when we realize that a newspaper that chooses to denounce a Senator today can reach many thousand times as many voters as could be reached by all of Daniel Webster's famous and articulate detractors put together, these stories of twentieth-century political courage have a drama, an excitement—and an inspiration—all their own.†
Chpt 4.0
- Unlike the acts of Daniel Webster or Edmund Ross, it did not change history.†
Chpt 4.9
- Those who abandoned their state and section for the national interest—men like Daniel Webster and Sam Houston, whose ambitions for higher office could not be hidden—laid themselves open to the charge that they sought only to satisfy their ambition for the Presidency.†
Chpt 4.11
- Daniel Webster, according to his critics, fruitlessly appeased the slavery forces, Thomas Hart Benton was an unyielding and pompous egocentric, Sam Houston was cunning, changeable and unreliable.†
Chpt 4.11
- Tyler, on the other hand, despised Adams; and Adams was disgusted with "the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster."†
Chpt 4.11
Definition:
United States politician and orator (1782-1817)