found that the greatest statesman of the country frankly addressed them,
as man to man, without pluming himself on his exceptional talents and
accomplishments. Up to the crisis of 1850, he succeeded in domesticating
himself at most of the pious, moral, and intelligent firesides of New
England. Through his speeches he seemed to be almost bodily present
wherever the family, gathered in the evening around the blazing hearth,
discussed the questions of the day. It was not the great Mr. Webster,
"the godlike Daniel," who had a seat by the fire. It was a person who
talked _to_ them, and argued _with_ them, as though he was "one of the
folks,"--a neighbor dropping in to make an evening call; there was not
the slightest trace of assumption in his manner; but suddenly, after the
discussion had become a little tiresome, certain fiery words would leap
from his lips and make the whole household spring to their feet, ready
to sacrifice life and property for "the Constitution and the Union."
That Webster was thus a kind of invisible presence in thousands of homes
where his face was never seen, shows that his rhetoric had caught an
element of power from his early recollections of the independent,
hard-headed farmers whom he met when a boy in his father's house. The
bodies of these men had become tough and strong in their constant
struggle to force scanty harvests from an unfruitful soil, which only
persistent toil could compel to yield any thing; and their brains,
though forcible and clear, were still not stored with the important
facts and principles which it was his delight to state and expound. In
truth, he ran a race with the demagogues of his time in an attempt to
capture such men as these, thinking them the very backbone of the
country. Whether he succeeded or failed, it would be vain to hunt
through his works to find a single epithet in which he mentioned them
with contempt. He was as incapable of insulting one member of this
landed democracy,--sterile as most of their acres were,--as of insulting
the memory of his father, who belonged to this class.