Comic History of the United States Part 20

His reply to Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, in 1830, was regarded as one of his ablest parliamentary efforts. Hayne attacked New England, and first advanced the doctrine of nullification, which was even more dangerous than secession,--Jefferson Davis in 1860 denying that he had ever advocated or favored such a doctrine.

Webster spoke extempore, and people sent out for their lunch rather than go away in the midst of his remarks.

Webster married twice, but did not let that make any difference with his duty to his country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SENT OUT FOR THEIR LUNCH RATHER THAN GO AWAY IN THE MIDST OF HIS REMARKS.]

He tried to farm it some, but did not ama.s.s a large sum, owing to his heavy losses in trying year after year to grow Saratoga potatoes for the Boston market.

No American, foreign or domestic, ever made a greater name for himself than Daniel Webster, but he was not so good a penman as Noah; Noah was the better pen-writer.

Noah Webster also had the better command of language of the two. Those who have read his great work ent.i.tled "Webster's Elementary Spelling-Book, or, How One Word Led to Another," will agree with me that he was smart. Noah never lacked for a word by which to express himself.

He was a brainy man and a good speller.

One by one our eminent men are pa.s.sing away. Mr. Webster has pa.s.sed away; Napoleon Bonaparte is no more; and Dr. Mary Walker is fading away.

This has been a severe winter on Red Shirt; and I have to guard against the night air a good deal myself.

It would ill become me, at this late date, to criticise Mr. Webster's work, a work that is now, I may say, in nearly every home and school-room in the land. It is a great book. I only hope that had Mr.

Webster lived he would have been equally fair in his criticism of my books.

I hate to compare my books with Mr. Webster's, because it looks egotistical in me; but, although Noah's book is larger than mine, and has more literary attractions as a book to set a child on at the table, it does not hold the interest of the reader all the way through.

He has introduced too many characters into his book at the expense of the plot. It is a good book to pick up and while away a leisure hour, perhaps, but it is not a work that could rivet your interest till midnight, while the fire went out and the thermometer stepped down to 47 below zero. You do not hurry through the pages to see whether Reginald married the girl or not. Mr. Webster did not seem to care how the affair turned out.

Therein consists the great difference between Noah and myself. He doesn't keep up the interest. A friend of mine at Sing Sing, who secured one of my books, said he never left his room till he had devoured it. He said he seemed chained to the spot; and if you can't believe a convict who is entirely out of politics, whom, in the name of George Washington, can you trust?

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEVER LEFT HIS ROOM TILL HE HAD DEVOURED IT.]

Mr. Webster was certainly a most brilliant writer, though a little inclined, perhaps, to be wordy. I have discovered in some of his later books one hundred and eighteen thousand words no two of which are alike.

This shows great fluency and versatility, it is true, but we need something else. The reader waits in vain to be thrilled by the author's wonderful word-painting. There is not a thrill in the whole tome.

I had heard so much of Mr. Webster that when I read his book I confess I was disappointed. It is cold, methodical, dry, and dispa.s.sionate in the extreme, and one cannot help comparing it with the works of James Fenimore Cooper and Horace.

As I said, however, it is a good book to pick up for the purpose of whiling away an idle hour. No one should travel without Mr. Webster's tale. Those who examine this tale will readily see why there were no flies on the author. He kept them off with this tale.

It is a good book, as I say, to take up for a moment, or to read on the train, or to hold the door open on a hot day. I would never take a long railroad ride without it, eyether. I would as soon forget my bottle of cough-medicine.

Mr. Webster's Speller had an immense sale. Ten years ago he had sold forty million copies. And yet it had this same defect. It was cold, dull, disconnected, and verbose. There was only one good thing in the book, and that was a little literary gem regarding a boy who broke in and stole the apples of a total stranger. The story was so good that I have often wondered whom Mr. Webster got to write it for him.

The old man, it seems, at first told the boy that he had better come down, as there was a draught in the tree; but the young sa.s.s-box--apple-sa.s.s-box, I presume--told him to avaunt.

At last the old man said, "Come down, honey. I am afraid the limb will break if you don't." Then, as the boy still remained, he told him that those were not eating-apples, that they were just common cooking-apples, and that there were worms in them. But the boy said he didn't mind a little thing like that. So then the old gentleman got irritated, and called the dog, and threw turf at the boy, and at last saluted him with pieces of turf and decayed cabbages; and after the lad had gone away the old man pried the bull-dog's jaws open and found a mouthful of pantaloons and a freckle.

I do not tell this, of course, in Mr. Webster's language, but I give the main points as they recur now to my mind.

Though I have been a close student of Mr. Webster for years and have carefully examined his style, I am free to say that his ideas about writing a book are not the same as mine. Of course it is a great temptation for a young author to write a book that will have a large sale; but that should not be all. We should have a higher object than that, and strive to interest those who read the book. It should not be jerky and scattering in its statements.

I do not wish to do an injustice to a great man who is now no more, a man who did so much for the world and who could spell the longest word without hesitation, but I speak of these things just as I would expect others to criticise my work. If one aspire to be a member of the _literati_ of his day, he must expect to be criticised. I have been criticised myself. When I was in public life,--as a justice of the peace in the Rocky Mountains,--a man came in one day and criticised me so that I did not get over it for two weeks.

I might add, though I dislike to speak of it now, that Mr. Webster was at one time a member of the Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts. I believe that was the only time he ever stepped aside from the strait and narrow way.

A good many people do not know this, but it is true.

Mr. Webster was also a married man, yet he never murmured or repined.

CHAPTER XXIV.

BEFO' THE WAH--CAUSES WHICH LED TO IT--MASTERLY GRASP OF THE SUBJECT SHOWN BY THE AUTHOR.

A Man named Lopez in 1851 attempted to annex Cuba, thus furnishing for our Republican wrapper a genuine Havana filler; but he failed, and was executed, while his plans were not.

Franklin Pierce was elected President on the Democratic ticket, running against General Scott, the Whig candidate. Slavery began to be discussed again, when Stephen A. Douglas, in Congress, advocated squatter sovereignty, or the right for each Territory to decide whether it would be a free or a slave State. The measure became a law in 1854.

That was what made trouble in Kansas. The two elements, free and slave, were arrayed against each other, and for several years friends from other States had to come over and help Kansas bury its dead. The condition of things for some time was exceedingly mortifying to the citizen who went out to milk after dark without his gun.

Trouble with Mexico arose, owing to the fact that the government had used a poor and unreliable map in establishing the line: so General Gadsden made a settlement for the disputed ground, and we paid Mexico ten millions of dollars. It is needless to say that we have since seen the day when we wished that we had it back.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXCEEDINGLY MORTIFYING TO THE CITIZEN WHO WENT TO MILK WITHOUT HIS GUN.]

Two ports of entry were now opened to us in j.a.pan by Commodore Perry's Expedition, and cups and saucers began to be more plentiful in this country, many of the wealthier deciding at that time not to cool tea in the saucer or drink it vociferously from that vessel. This custom and the Whig party pa.s.sed away at the same time.

The Republican or Anti-Slavery party nominated for President John C.

Fremont, who received the vote of eleven States, but James Buchanan was elected, and proved to the satisfaction of the world that there is nothing to prevent any unemployed man's applying for the Presidency of the United States; also that if his life has been free from ideas and opinions he may be elected sometimes where one who has been caught in the very act of thinking, and had it proved on him, might be defeated.

Chief Justice Taney now stated that slaves could be taken into any State of the Union by their owners without forfeiting the rights of ownership.

This was called the Dred Scott decision, and did much to irritate Abolitionists like John Brown, whose soul as this book goes to press is said to be marching on. Brown was a Kansas man with a mission and ma.s.sive whiskers. He would be called now a crank; but his action in seizing a United States a.r.s.enal at Harper's Ferry and declaring the slaves free was regarded by the South as thoroughly representative of the Northern feeling.

The country now began to be in a state of restlessness. Brown had been captured and hanged as a traitor. Northern men were obliged to leave their work every little while to catch a negro, crate him, and return him to his master or give him a lift towards Canada; and, as the negro was replenishing the earth at an astonishing rate, general alarm broke out.

Douglas was the champion of squatter sovereignty, John C. Breckinridge of the doctrine that slaves could be checked through as personal baggage into any State of the Union, and Lincoln of the anti-slavery principle which afterwards const.i.tuted the spinal column of the Federal Government as opposed to the Confederacy of the seceded States.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OBLIGED TO LEAVE THEIR WORK EVERY LITTLE WHILE TO CATCH A NEGRO.]

Lincoln was elected, which reminded him of an anecdote. Douglas and several other candidates were defeated, which did not remind them of anything.

South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, and soon after Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit.

The following February the Confederacy was organized at Montgomery, Alabama, and Jefferson Davis was elected President. Long and patient effort on the part of the historian to ascertain how he liked it has been entirely barren of results. Alexander H. Stephens was made Vice-President.

Everything belonging to the United States and not thoroughly fastened down was carried away by the Confederacy, while President Buchanan looked the other way or wrote airy persiflage to tottering dynasties which slyly among themselves characterized him as a neat and cleanly old lady.

Had Buchanan been a married man it is generally believed now that his wife would have prevented the war. Then she would have called James out from under the bed and allowed him to come to the table for his meals with the family. But he was not married, and the war came on.

Major Anderson was afraid to remain at Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, so crossed over to Fort Sumter. The South regarded this as hostility, and the fort was watched to see if any one should attempt to divide his lunch with the garrison, which it was declared would be regarded as an act of defiance. The reader will see by this that a deaf and dumb asylum in Northern Michigan was about the only safe place for a peaceable man at that time.

President Lincoln found himself placed at the head of a looted government on the sharp edge of a crisis that had not been properly upholstered. The Buchanan cabinet had left little except a burglar's tool or two here and there to mark its operations, and, with the aged and infirm General Scott at the head of a little army, and no encouragement except from the Abolitionists, many of whom had never seen a colored man outside of a minstrel performance, the President stole incog. into Washington, like a man who had agreed to lecture there.