Daniel Webster

Ebenezer Webster farmed thin land at Salisbury, New Hampshire, and raised eight surviving children on it. Daniel was the second-youngest and too frequently sick to be much use in the fields, so he read Alexander Pope and Isaac Watts instead. Phillips Exeter took him in 1796 and Dartmouth in 1797, and he graduated in 1801 into a legal apprenticeship he found dull. He stuck with law anyway, having watched his father's bouts of poverty and wanting to live comfortably. To keep his older brother Ezekiel at Dartmouth he left the law office altogether and taught school at Fryeburg Academy in Maine. He was admitted to the bar in 1805, moved his practice to Portsmouth the next year, and handled more than 1,700 cases before Boston took him.

Boston in 1816 made him the lawyer the country hired when a case reached John Marshall's Court. He argued 223 times there and won roughly half, including Dartmouth College v. Woodward and McCulloch v. Maryland in a single 1819 term and Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824. Four decades in Congress followed, two turns as secretary of state, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, and three failed runs at the presidency. BriefHistory has the Senate career, the Union speeches and the Compromise of 1850. What follows is the ledger.

He borrowed from Nicholas Biddle and other friendly bankers to speculate in land, furnished his Marshfield estate lavishly, gave money away with what Henry Cabot Lodge called reckless generosity and heedless profusion, and gambled and drank. The Panic of 1837 brought the creditors in, and by Robert Remini's account he never got clear of debt again. While leading the Senate fight for the national bank he wrote to Biddle asking for retainers, which is why Arthur Schlesinger later asked how such a man could expect the country to follow him if somebody first had to make up a purse. The deaths came in a row. His wife Grace died of a tumor in January 1828, his brother Ezekiel in April 1829, his son Edward of typhoid in Mexico in January 1848, and his daughter Julia of tuberculosis three months later.

Cirrhosis of the liver and a subdural hematoma killed him at Marshfield on October 24, 1852, and he lies in Winslow Cemetery nearby. His last words were, I still live. Only Fletcher of his five children by Grace outlived him, and he was killed at Second Bull Run in 1862. The verdict on 1850 never settled. Theodore Parker said no living man had done so much to debauch the nation's conscience. A century later a Senate committee under John F. Kennedy named him one of the five greatest senators ever, and Profiles in Courage called the Seventh of March speech an act of principle. Lodge had argued the reverse: the man who held firm in 1833 gave way in 1850.

Daniel Webster's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Dartmouth College v. Woodward case
  Argued for his own college, and for the Contract Clause 1819
• McCulloch v. Maryland case
  Marshall's line about the power to tax being the power to destroy came from Webster's argument 1819
• Gibbons v. Ogden case
  The steamboat monopoly case, and the reach of the commerce power 1824
• Second Reply to Hayne speech
  Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable 1830
• Webster-Ashburton Treaty law
  Settled the northeastern border with British North America 1842
• Seventh of March Speech speech
  Backed Clay's compromise and cost him New England 1850

• 1796 aged ~14 Enters Phillips Exeter Academy His father spent scarce money on the education of a son too sickly for farm work.
• 1801 aged ~19 Graduates from Dartmouth College He taught at Fryeburg Academy soon after to fund his brother Ezekiel's studies there.
• May 24, 1808 aged 26 Marries Grace Fletcher, a schoolteacher
• March 4, 1813 aged 31 Enters the House of Representatives from New Hampshire A Federalist, and an opponent of the War of 1812.
• 1819 aged ~37 Wins Dartmouth College v. Woodward and argues McCulloch v. Maryland
• January 27, 1830 aged 48 Delivers the Second Reply to Hayne in the Senate
• 1837 aged ~55 The Panic wipes out his land speculations Remini judged that he never emerged from debt afterward.
• March 6, 1841 aged 59 Becomes secretary of state under Harrison, and stays under Tyler He kept the post when the rest of the cabinet walked out, and Whigs never forgave it.
• October 24, 1852 aged 70 Dies at Marshfield

• John Marshall 1755–1835
  Chief justice who established judicial review and strengthened the Supreme Court and federal government. argued before
• Joseph Story 1779–1845
  Early Supreme Court justice and legal scholar whose treatises and opinions strengthened federal judicial authority. ally on the bench
• Andrew Jackson 1767–1845
  Seventh President whose populist policies and Indian Removal Act left a deeply contested legacy. fought over the national bank
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. condemned his fugitive slave vote
• Horace Mann 1796–1859
  Reformist who championed public education and is considered the father of the American public school system. turned on him after 1850
• John F. Kennedy 1917–1963
  35th President whose brief tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of the Apollo program. ranked him among the five greatest senators