nothing of matters or things either recent or remote.

He died on Friday, the llth of August, at his residence in
Hancock Street in this city, at the age of ninety years two
months and nineteen days, having been born in Brookline on
the 23d of May, 1786. His funeral took place on the following
Monday afternoon at Brookline ; and nothing but absence from
the State prevented me from attending it. Both personally and
officially I should have felt bound to be present, had it been in
my power.

He had been connected with our Society longer than any
other member at the time of his death. He was chosen a Cor
responding Member in July, 1833, while he was American
Consul in London ; and soon after his return home, in April,
1855, he was elected a Resident Member. He was on our
Standing Committee for four years, and on the Publishing
Committee for three volumes of our Collections. From 1862 to
1870, he was one of our Vice-Presidents.

During his resident membership, he made valuable communi
cations at our meetings and important contributions to our His
torical Collections. His Papers on the Narragansett Patent,
and on William Vassall, and his admirable tribute to his friend
General Winfield Scott, on the death of the old hero, will be
remembered by us all.

But the ninth and tenth volumes of the Fourth Series of our
Collections, both printed in 1871, furnish a still more recent and
more adequate memorial of his labors in our behalf. Entitled
u The Aspinwall Papers," and supplied wholly from the rnate-

28



434 COLONEL THOMAS ASPINWALL.

rials gathered by himself in England, they will keep his name
fresh and fragrant where he would most desire that it should
not be forgotten. We have no other volumes, I think, and
may never again have, edited and annotated by one who had
already reached his eighty-fifth year !

Colonel Aspinwall was a man of the highest integrity and the
most ardent patriotism. On the first breaking out of the war
of 1812, he abandoned his profession as a lawj^er and took a
commission as Major in the Army of the United States. He
was bre vetted a Lieutenant-Colonel for his gallantry at Sackett s
Harbor in 1813, and a Colonel for his courage and conduct at
Fort Erie in 1814, where he lost his left arm in battle. On the
restoration of peace, though offered the position of Inspector-
General, he preferred civil service, and was soon afterwards
appointed Consul at London. In that capacity he served his
country diligently and faithfully until 1853, a term of thirty-
eight years. During this period he formed the intimate friend
ship of such men as Joshua Bates, the benefactor of our Boston
Public Library, and Washington Irving, whose publishing con
tracts were made through him, and to whom he paid a most
interesting tribute at one of our meetings, in 1859.

I will dwell no longer on the details of his career, which may
well form the subject of a formal Memoir, according to our
custom. It is enough to say of him that he had the respect,
esteem, and affection of all who knew him. A braver and more
independent spirit has hardly ever dwelt among us. He meas
ured his patriotism by no party standard. Always for his country,
its constitution, and its union, he was as sincere and earnest in
its cause when it was assailed from within, as when he was per
sonally combating against a foreign foe. But he had his own
opinions as to men and measures, and never flinched from the
responsibility of avowing them and acting upon them.

I can close this brief notice in no way more appropriately than
by reading a portion of a letter lately received from our worthy
Honorary Member, Mr. Grigsby, 1 who illustrates Colonel Aspin-
wall s acuteness in historical inquiries as follows :

1 The Honorable Hugh Blair Grigsby, LL.D., President of the Virginia Histori
cal Society, and Chancellor of William and Mary s College.



COLONEL THOMAS ASPINWALL. 435

"How well-timed my visit to Boston in 1867! I saw Ticknor, and
Jeffries Wymari, and good Mr. Folsom, and Colonel Aspinwall, who has
just gone. Let me give you a reminiscence of Colonel Aspinwall. I
was introduced to him in the hall of the Historical Society, on my visit
in June, 1867. A short time before, I had written a letter, which appeared
in The Proceedings, relating to the origin of the name of Newport
News, and endeavored to show that the true name was Newport Newce,
in honor of Sir William Newce, the Marshal of the Virginia Colony in
1621. I would add that I believe there did not then exist half-a-dozen
men in the United States who knew that such a man as Sir William
Newce ever appeared upon the stage in Virginia or elsewhere. You
may imagine, then, my surprise, when Colonel Aspinwall, almost imme
diately after my introduction to him, said to me, with an evident sense of
interest in the question, Mr. Grigsby, why do you believe that the name
of Newce was taken from Sir William, instead of from his brother
George ? I was so struck with the question, coming from an old gen
tleman, then in his eighty-third year, and known to me only as one of
the heroes of the war of 1812, and as the Consul at London, that I
answered playfully, < To tell you the truth, Colonel Aspinwall, I did not
know that Sir William had a brother. When I had thus expressed my
admiration of his minute historical knowledge, I assigned the obvious
reasons, that Sir William Newce had been largely endowed by the Vir
ginia Company, that he was the most distinguished military and naval
officer in the colony, and that he was the only one who had attained to
the dignity of knighthood.

The venerable patriot must have had a happy life : military fame ;
forty years in the leading foreign consulate ; and an old age of compe
tence, respect, and honor ; and the only one, out of the hundred thousand
of his fellow-beings who began life with him, who passed beyond the
, milestone of ninety ; while Macaulay went off in the fifties ; Scott, Pres-
cott, Choate, in the sixties ; Folsom and Everett in the seventies ; Tick
nor almost, and Savage quite, in the eighties."



THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF
DANIEL WEBSTER.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK,
NOVEMBER 25, 1876.



I AM here, Mr. Mayor, fellow-countrymen and friends, with
no purpose of trespassing very long on your attention. I was
doubtful almost to the last moment whether I should be able to
be here at all to-day, and I am afraid that I have neither voice
nor strength for many words in the open air.

But, indeed, the Address of this occasion has been made.
It has been made lay one to whom it was most appropriately
assigned, and who had every title and every talent for making
it. It was peculiarly fit that this grand gift to your magnifi
cent Park should be acknowledged and welcomed by a citizen
of New York, one of whom you are all justly proud, an
eminent advocate and jurist, a distinguished statesman and
public speaker, with the laurels of the Centennial Oration at
Philadelphia still fresh on his brow. 1 The utterances of this
hour might well have ended with him.

I could not, however, find it in my heart to refuse altogether
the repeated and urgent request of your munificent fellow-
citizen, Mr. Burnham, that I would be here on the platform
with. Mr. Evarts and himself, to-day, to witness the unveiling of
this noble Statue, and to add a few words in commemoration of
him whom it so vividly and so impressively portrays.

Mr. Burnham has done me the honor to call me to his assist
ance on this occasion, as one who had enjoyed some peculiar
opportunities for knowing the illustrious statesman to whose

i The Hon. William M. Evarts.

[430]



STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 437

memory he is paying these large and sumptuous honors. And
it is true, my friends, that my personal associations with Mr.
Webster reach back to a distant day. I recall him as a familiar
visitor in the homes of more than one of those with whom I
was most nearly connected, when I was but a schoolboy, on
his first removal to Boston, in 1817. I recall the deep impres
sions produced on all who heard him, and communicated to all
who did not hear him, by his great efforts in the Constitutional
Convention of Massachusetts, and, soon afterward, by his noble
Discourse at Plymouth Rock, in 1820. I was myself in the
crowd which gazed at him, and listened to him with admiration,
when he laid the corner-stone of the Monument on Bunker
Hill, in presence of Lafayette, in 1824. I was myself in the
throng which hung with rapture on his lips as he pronounced
that splendid eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, in Faneuil Hall,
in 1826. Entering his office as a Law-Student, in 1828, I was
under his personal tuition during three of the busiest and
proudest years of his life. From 1840 to 1850 I was associated
with him in the Congress of the United States ; and I may be
pardoned for not forgetting that it was then my privilege and
my pride to succeed him in the Senate, when he was last called
into the Cabinet, as Secretary of State, by President Fillmore.

I have thus no excuse, my friends, for not knowing some
thing, for not knowing much, of Daniel Webster. Of those
who knew him longer or better than I did, few, certainly,
remain among the living ; and I could hardly have reconciled it
with what is due to his memory, or with what is due to my own
position, if I had refused, I will not say, to bear testimony to
his wonderful powers and his great public services ; for all such
testimony would be as superfluous as to bear testimony to the
light of the sun in the skies above us, but if I had declined
to give expression to the gratification and delight with which
the Sons of New England, and the Sons of Massachusetts and
of Boston especially, and I as one of them, cannot fail to re
gard this most signal commemoration of one, whose name and
fame were so long and so peculiarly dear to them.

Neither Mr. Evarts nor I have come here to-day, my friends,
to hold up Mr. Webster, much as we may have admired or



438 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER

loved him, as one with whom we have always agreed, as one
whose course we have uniformly approved, or in whose career
we have seen nothing to regret. Our testimony is all the more
trustworthy, my own certainly is, that we have sometimes
differed from him. But we are here to recognize him as one
of the greatest men our country has ever produced ; as one of
the grandest figures in our whole national history ; as one who,
for intellectual power, had no superior, and hardly an equal, in
our own land or in any other land, during his day and genera
tion ; as one whose written and spoken words, so fitly embalmed
" for a life beyond life " in the six noble volumes edited by
Edward Everett, are among the choicest treasures of our lan
guage and literature ; and, still more and above all, as one who
rendered inestimable services to his country, at one period,
vindicating its rights and preserving its peace with foreign
nations by the most skilful and masterly diplomacy ; at another
period, rescuing its Constitution from overthrow, and repelling
triumphantly the assaults of nullification and disunion, by over
powering argument and matchless eloquence.

Mr. Webster made many marvellous manifestations of himself
in his busy life of threescore years and ten. Convincing argu
ments in the Courts of Law, brilliant appeals to popular
assemblies, triumphant speeches in the Halls of Legislation,
magnificent orations and discourses of commemoration or
ceremony, are thickly scattered along his whole career. I
rejoice to remember how many of them I have heard from his
own lips, and how much inspiration and instruction I have
derived from them. To have seen and heard him on one of
his field-days, was a privilege which no one will undervalue
who ever enjoyed it. There was a power, a breadth, a beauty,
a perfection, in some of his efforts, when he was at his best,
which distanced all approach, and rendered rivalry ridiculous.

And if the style and tone and temper of our political discus
sions are to be once more elevated, refined, and purified, and
we all know how much room there is for elevation and refine
ment, we must go back for our examples and models at least
as far as the days of that great Senatorial Triumvirate, Clay,
Calhoun, and Webster. There were giants in those days ; but



IN THE CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK. 439

none of them forgot that, though "it is excellent to have a
giant s strength, it is tyrannous to use it like a giant."

Among those who have been celebrated as orators or public
speakers, in our own days or in other days, there have been many
diversities of gifts and many diversities of operations. There
have been those who were listened to wholly for their intel
lectual qualities, for the wit or the wisdom, the learning or
the philosophy, which characterized their efforts. There have
been those whose main attraction was a curious felicity and
facility of illustration and description, adorned by the richest
gems which could be gathered by historical research or classical
study. There have been those to whom the charms of manner
and the graces of elocution and the melody of voice were
the all-sufficient recommendations to attention and applause.
And there have been those who owed their success more
to opportunity and occasion, to some stirring theme or some
exciting emergency, than to any peculiar attributes of their own.
But Webster combined every thing. No thoughts more pro
found and weighty. No style more terse and telling. No illus
trations more vivid and clear-cut. No occasions more august
and momentous. No voice more deep and thrilling. No man
ner more impressive and admirable. No presence so grand and
majestic, as his.

That great brain of his, as I have seen it working, whether in
public debate or in private converse, seemed to me often like
some mighty machine, always ready for action, and almost
always in action, evolving much material from its own resources
and researches, and eagerly appropriating and assimilating what
ever was brought within its reach, producing and reproducing
the richest fabrics with the ease and certainty, the precision
and the condensing energy, of a perfect Corliss engine, such
an one as many of us have just seen presiding so magically
and so majestically over the Exposition at Philadelphia.

And he put his own crown-stamp on almost every thing he
uttered. There was no mistaking one of Webster s great efforts.
There is no mistaking them now. They will be distinguished,
in all time to come, like pieces of old gold or silver plate, by
an unmistakable mint-mark. He knew, like the casters or for-



440 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER

gers of yonder Statue, not only how to pour forth burning words
and blazing thoughts, but so to blend and fuse and weld to
gether his facts and figures, his illustrations and arguments,
his metaphors and subject matter, as to bring them all out at
last into one massive and enduring image of his own great
mind !

He was by no means wanting in labor and study ; and he
often anticipated the earliest dawn in his preparations for an
immediate effort. I remember how humorously, he told me
once, that the cocks in his own yard often mistook his morning
candle for the break of day, and began to crow lustily as he
entered his office, though it were two hours before sunrise.
Yet he frequently did wonderful things off-hand ; and one might
often say of him, in the words of an old poet,

" His noble negligences teach
What others toils despair to reach."

Not in our own land only, Mr. Mayor and fellow-country
men, were the pre-eminent powers of Mr. Webster recognized
and appreciated. Brougham, and Lyndhurst, and the late Lord
Derby, as I had abundant opportunity of knowing, were no
underraters of his intellectual grasp and grandeur. I remember
well, too, the casual testimony of a venerable prelate of the
English Church, the late Dr. Harcourt, then Archbishop of
York, who said to me, thirty years ago, in London, "I met
your wonderful friend, Mr. Webster, for only five minutes ; but
in those five minutes I learned more of American institutions,
and of the peculiar working of the American Constitution, than
in all that I had ever heard or read from any or all other
sources."

Of his Discourse on the Second Centennial Anniversary of
the Landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, John Adams
wrote, in acknowledging a copy of it, " Mr. Burke is no longer
entitled to the praise of being the most consummate orator of
modern times." And, certainly, from the date of that Dis
course, he stood second, as an Orator, to no one who spoke the
English language. But it is peculiarly and pre-eminently as
the Expounder and Defender of the Constitution of the United



IN THE CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK. 441

States, in January, 1830, that he will be remembered and hon
ored as long as that Constitution shall hold a place in the
American heart, or a place on the pages of the world s history.

Mr. Webster once said, and perhaps more than once, that
there was not an article, a section, a clause, a phrase, a
word, a syllable, or even a comma, of that Constitution, which
he had not studied and pondered in every relation and in every
construction of which it was susceptible.

Born at the commencement of the year 1782, at the very
moment when the necessity of such an Instrument for preserv
ing our Union, and making us a Nation, was first beginning to
be comprehended and felt by the patriots who had achieved our
Independence, just as they had fully discovered the utter
insufficiency of the old Confederation, and how mere a rope
of sand it was ; born in that very year in which the Legislature
of your own State of New York, under the lead of your gallant
Philip Schuyler, at the prompting of your grand Alexander
Hamilton, was adopting the very first resolutions passed by any
State in favor of such an Instrument, it might almost be said
that the natal air of the Constitution was his own natal air.
He drank in its spirit with his earliest breath, and seemed born
to comprehend, expound, and defend it. No Roman schoolboy
ever committed to memory the laws of the Twelve Tables more
diligently and thoroughly than did he the Constitution of his
country. He had it by heart in more senses of the words than
one, and every part and particle of it seemed only less precious
and sacred to him than his Bible.

John Adarns himself was not more truly the Colossus of In
dependence in the Continental Congress of 1776, than Daniel
Webster was the Colossus of the Constitution and the Union in
the Federal Congress of 1830.

For other speeches, of other men, it might perhaps be claimed
that they have had the power to inflame and precipitate war,
foreign war, or civil war. Of Webster s great speech, as a
Senator of Massachusetts, in 1830, and of that alone, I think,
it can be said, that it averted and postponed Civil War for a
whole generation. Yes, it repressed the irrepressible conflict
itself for thirty years ! And when that dire calamity came



442 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER

upon us at last, though the voice of the master had so long
been hushed, that speech still supplied the most convincing
arguments and the most inspiring incitements for a resolute
defence of the Union. It is not yet exhausted. There is
argument and inspiration enough in it still, if only they be
heeded, to carry us along, as a United People, at least for
another Century. In that Speech "he still lives;" and lives for
ihe Constitution and the Union of his Country.

Why, my friends, not even the Dynamite and Rend-rock
and Vulcan powder of your scientific and gallant Newton were
more effective in blasting and shattering your Hell-Gate reef,
find opening the way for the safe navigation of yonder Bay,
than that speech of Webster was in exploding the doctrines of
nullification, and clearing the channel for our Ship of State to
sail on, safely, prosperously, triumphantly, whether in sunshine
or in storm !

Beyond all comparison, it was the Speech of our Constitutional
Age. " Nil simile aut secundum." It was James Madison, of
Virginia, himself, who said of it in a letter at the time: "It
crushes nullification, and must hasten an abandonment of seces
sion." Whatever remained to be done, in the progress of events,
for the repression of menacing designs or of overt acts, was
grandly done by the resolute patriotism and iron will of Presi
dent Jackson, whose proclamation and policy, to that end, Mr.
Webster sustained with all his might. They were the legiti
mate conclusions of his own great Argument.

Of other and later efforts of Mr. Webster, I have neither time
nor inclination to speak. There are too many coals still burning
beneath the smouldering embers of some of his more recent con
troversies, for any one to rake them rashly open on such an occa
sion as this. I was by no means in full accord with his memorable
7th of March speech, and my views of it to-day are precisely
what he knew they were in 1850. But no differences of opinion
on that day, or on any other day, ever impaired my admiration of
his powers, my confidence in his patriotism, my earnest wishes
for his promotion, nor the full assurance which I felt that he
would administer the Government with perfect integrity, as
well as with consummate ability. What a President he would



IN THE CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK. 443

have made for a Centennial year ! What a tower of strength
he would have been, to our Constitution and our Country, in
all the perplexities and perils through which we have recently
passed, and are still passing ! " Oh ! for an hour of Dundee " !

No one will pretend that he was free from all infirmities of
character and conduct, though they have often been grossly
exaggerated. Great temptations proverbially beset the path
way of great powers ; and one who can overcome almost every
thing else, may sometimes fail of conquering himself. He never
assumed to be faultless ; and he would have indignantly rebuked
any one who assumed it for him. We all know that, while he
could master the great questions of National Finance, and was
never weary in maintaining the importance of upholding the
National Credit, he never cared quite enough about his own
finances, or took particular pains to preserve his own personal
credit. We all know that he was sometimes impatient of differ
ences, and sometimes arrogant and overbearing towards oppo
nents. His own consciousness of surpassing powers, and the
flatteries, I had almost said, the idolatries, of innumerable
friends, would account for much more of all this than he ever
displayed. I have known him in all his moods. I have experi
enced the pain of his frown, as well as the charms of his favor.
And I will acknowledge that I would rather confront him as he
is here, to-day, in bronze, than encounter his opposition in the
flesh. His antagonism was tremendous. " Safest he who stood
aloof." But his better nature always asserted itself in the
end. No man or woman or child could be more tender and
affectionate.

And there is one element of his character which must never
be forgotten. I mean his deep religious faith and trust. I re
call the delight with which he often conversed on the Bible. I
recall the delight with which he dwelt on that exquisite prayer
of one of the old Prophets, repeating it fervently as a model
of eloquence and of devotion : " Although the fig-tree shall
not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines ; the labor
of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; the
flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd
in the stalls : jet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the



444 STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER

God of my salvation." I recall his impressive and powerful
plea for the Religious Instruction of the Young, in the memo
rable case of Girard College. I have been with him on the most
solemn occasions, in Boston and at Washington, in the midst
of the most exciting and painful controversies, kneeling by his
side at the table of our common Master, and witnessing the
humility and reverence of his worship. And who has forgotten
those last words which he ordered to be inscribed, and which
are inscribed, on his tombstone at Marshfield :

" Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine unbelief. Philosophical Argu
ment, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in compari
son with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken
my reason for the faith which is in me; but my heart has always assured
and re-assured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a Divine
Reality. The Sermon on the Mount cannot be a merely human produc