WEBSTER
WEBSTER
Xoah and Mercy (Steele) Webster ; grandson of
Daniel and 3Iiriam (Kellogg) Webster, and a de-
scendant of John Webster, one of the first settlers
in Hartford and colonial governor of Connecticut,
and on lii.-* mothers side, of William Bradford of
Plymouth. He matriculated at Yale in 1774,
joined his father's company to aid in repelling
Burgoyne's iuvp^ion in che summer of 1777, and
was graduated from Yale, A.B., 177S, A.M., 1781.
He taught school in Hartford. Conn., was ad-
mitted to the bar in 1780. established a school at
Sharon, and removed to Goshen, Orange county,
X.Y., in 178'2. Wliile there he compiled two
small elementary books for teaching the English
language, which were the beginning of his Gram-
matical Institute of the English Lanr/iiage. which
comprised, when completed, a speller, a grammar
and a reader. Prii>r to this time all the school
books were by English authors, and Webster felt
that the pedantry of the English educator would
not please the American farmers' sous, and that
a young indeftendent nation needed new. sympa-
thetic text books. Accordingly in his Gram-
matical Institute, quotations from the American
patriots were as numerous as those from the
classics. After compiling his speller, Webster,
realizing the necessity of adequate copyright
laws, traveled from state to state, importuning
legislators to enact such laws, and in 1790 his
efforts bore fruit in the passage by congress of
its first copyright legislation. From that time
until 1832, Webster worked tirelessly for the ex-
tension of authors' rights. After the law was
passed in 1790, Webster got a Hartford firm to
print 5000 copies of his spelling book as a ven-
ture, and it is worthy of note that throughout
the rest of Webster's life, whenever he was in
need of funds he fell back on the sales of the
spelling-book. He resumed school-teaching,
started the American Magazine, lectured, prac-
tised law and did almost anything to turn a
penny. He took a lively interest in politics,
showing the greatest confidence in the young re-
public that many regarded as a doubtful experi-
ment in government. He delivered an address
" On the Effects of Slavery on Morals and Indus-
try " in 179.3, and the same year, during the
French revolution, l>ecame editor of the newly
established American Minerva, an anti-French
jjaper. He favored Jay's treaty, and together
with Chancellor Kent, wrote a series of twelve
papers defending it, the first of which Jefferson
ascribed to Hamilton. Webster was a strong
Federalist, thoroughly loyal to Washington, and
after abandoning the Minerva in 1798 as unprofit-
aMe, he continued his interest in public affairs,
writing Essays on the rights of Neutral Nations,
attacking the spoils system at the time of its in-
ception under Jefferson, and publishing a reply
to Jefferson's inaugural address. But during all
his interest in other matters, he never lost his
grasp on his speller. Its large sales necessitated
many new editions, and each edition was
thoroughly revised, new spellings being adopted
and definitions altered. Webster was strongly
in favor of phonetic spelling, carrying it to an
extreme in his essays, and introducing it judi-
ciously in his speUer and dictionary. It is prob-
able that his first impulse in this line was given
by Benjamin Franklin, with whom he was
intimate. Franklin first projected the diction-
ary, but thinking himself too old to undertake
the work, presented Webster with what manu-
script and type he had. Webster named his
book the American Dictionary of the English
Language, and although his first aim was to be
correct, his book differed from the others of its
class in that it was intended to go into the Amer-
ican household, and foreign words, foreign spell-
ings of English words, and pedantic words, so
common in Johnson, were dealt with harshly.
Webster maintained that the language spoken in
America was not a dialect of the English, but a
separate, legitimate branch of the parent stock ;
that Americans were better authority on good
use in America than were Englishmen, and that
simply because a word was confined to America,
it was not a provincialism. On the whole,
Webster's dictionary was decidedly patriotic.
Etymology was the branch that attracted him
most, and although it was the weakest point in
his dictionary, his work in that line was remark-
able. He traced words where they could be
traced, and guessed at them when they could
not, but his genius served him well, and modern
comparative philology, of which he laid the
foundation, shows some of his longest shots to
have been siirprisingly near the mark. Webster
began work in 1806 : in 1812 he removed from
New Haven to Amherst, Mass., as a matter of
economy, but in 1822, having exhausted his own
library, he returned to New Haven, and in 1824,
realizing the lack of material in America, he
went to Cambridge, England, to use the univer-
sity library. He finished the dictionarj- in Jan-
uary, 1825, and in 1828 the first edition was pu1>
lished. It was the first American dictionary,
and long after Webster's deatli was the standard
in this country. It is of especial interest to note
that during the revision of the Bible (1870-80)
there were several points of difference between
the English and American scholars, and on many
of these points the American company agreed
with Weljster's views as expressed in a revision
of the Bible which he had made long before he
compiled his dirtionary. Webster revised his
dictionary in 1840, and was engaged in another
revision at the time of his death. He was mar-
