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DANIEL WEBSTER.

Daniel Webster was born in the town of Salisbury, New Hampshire, January 18, 1782. His father, Major Ebenezer Webster, was one of the pioneers of the settlement in that quarter. He served with credit in the old French war, and also in the war of the revolution, especially under Stark, at Bennington. Major Webster established himself in a newly-*granted township at the confluence of the Winnipisiogee and Pemigewasset, after the peace of 1763. In this region, then lying almost in a state of nature, the great orator and statesman was born, and passed the first years of his life. His opportunities of education were very deficient, and he was indebted for his earliest instruction to his mother, who was a woman of character and intelligence. For a few months only, in 1796, he enjoyed the advantages of Phillips' Exeter academy. Here his education for college commenced; it was completed under the Rev. Dr. Wood, of Boscawen. He entered Dartmouth college in 1797, and during the four years of his study there, gave plain indications of future eminence. Soon after his graduation, he engaged in professional studies, first in his native village, and afterward at Fryeburg, in Maine, where at the same time he had the charge of an academy. He eked out his frugal salary by acting as a copyist in the office of register of deeds. He was moved to these strenuous exertions by the wish to aid his brother to obtain a college education. Having completed his law-studies in the office of governor Gore, of Boston, he was admitted to the bar of Suffolk, Massachusetts, in the year 1805. He immediately commenced the practice of law in his native state and county. His father, a man of sterling sense and character, who for the last twelve years of his life had been a judge of the court of common pleas, died in 1806, but not without the satisfaction of hearing his son's first speeches at the bar. In 1807, Mr. Webster removed to Portsmouth in his native state, and soon became engaged in a most respectable and extensive, but not very lucrative practice. In 1812, he was chosen one of the members of congress from New Hampshire, and in due time was reëlected. Although among the youngest members of the house of representatives, and entirely without legislative experience, he rose at once to the front rank, both in the despatch of business and in debate. Among his associates in the house were Clay, Cheves, Lowndes, Calhoun, Forsyth, and other members of great ability. It was soon felt and admitted that he was worthy to be named with the ablest of them. It was the remark of Mr. Lowndes 'that the south had not his superior, nor the north his equal.' Finding the professional fields at Portsmouth inadequate to the support of a growing family, Mr. Webster removed to Boston in 1816. His professional reputation had grown as rapidly as his fame as a statesman. He placed himself at once by the side of the leaders of the Massachusetts bar. He had already appeared before the supreme court of the United States in Washington. By his brilliant argument in the Dartmouth college case, carried by appeal to Washington in 1817, he took rank among the most distinguished jurists in this country. In 1820, Mr. Webster was chosen a member of a convention called for the purpose of revising the constitution of Massachusetts. No one exercised a more powerful influence over its deliberations. He was offered, about this time,