ous field for any National Administration to venture upon. If Tammany should be successful, the public opinion of the country, as it has already pronounced itself, will doubtless award the responsibility to the Republican machine here; and you can certainly not desire to be involved in the disaster. Your true friends would greatly deplore it. Believe me when I say that this sentiment on my part is inspired not only by my regard for the public interest, but also by a very sincere feeling of friendship for you personally.
I hope you have not seen in my declination to go into the Ohio campaign any want of willingness on my part to please you. I was very sorry I found myself compelled to decline. Be assured that if anything could have induced me to set aside my engagements here and to go, the expression of a wish by you would have done so.
DANIEL WEBSTER[1]
Of the generation of American statesmen that followed those of the Revolutionary period few will live as long in the memory of the people, and none as long in the literature of the country, as Daniel Webster. His figure rises above the level of his time like a monument of colossal proportions. He was a child of the war of Independence, born in 1782. His father, a Puritan of stern and sterling character, had, as a backwoods farmer in New Hampshire, been an Indian fighter while New England had an Indian frontier, a soldier in the French war and a captain in the Revolutionary army. His high standing among his neighbors made him a judge of the local court. Ambitious for his children, he strained his scanty means to the utmost
- ↑ From Harper's Magazine, Nov., 1897. Hearty thanks are given to Harper & Bros, for their generous consent to this reprint.
