America's greatest orator
Two-time US Secretary of State and presidential candidate, leading Supreme Court attorney, and Senator; Daniel Webster was named as one of the five greatest senators in history, gave "the most eloquent speech ever delivered in Congress,” and his style—for at least 75 years—became the main exercise for students of oratory. A key supporter of President John Quincy Adams and leading opponent of Andrew Jackson, historians consider him instrumental in maintaining United States union over the Southern efforts of creating a states-rights Confederacy. In John F. Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage, he described one of his positions risking denunciations and his presidential ambitions, one of the “greatest acts of courageous principle in the history of the Senate.” On the other hand however, he supported wars against Native Americans, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, war against England because they wouldn’t return fugitive slaves, and opposed the Dorr Rebellion. In many ways, Webster represents the art of compromise—both the positive and negative aspects of giving away something important for something even more important. For example, he supported the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which made it easier for slave owners to recapture runaway slaves; but, in exchange, California was admitted into the Union as a non-slave state tipping the balance to more non-slave than slave states.
Lineages
American (USA) Politicians
Address, 1825
Funeral oration for Justice Story, 1845
North American Review, 1820
Speech, 1824
Speech, 1837
The Cry for Justice, Sinclair
“When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization.”
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“On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.”
from Speech, 1837
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“America has proved that it is practicable to elevate the mass of mankind... She holds out an example 1000 times more encouraging than ever was presented before, to those 9/10ths of the human race who are born without hereditary fortune or hereditary rank.”
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“If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled it will burn… the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven.”
from Address, 1825
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“The freest government cannot long endure when the tendency of the law is to create a rapid accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and to render the masses poor and dependent.”
from The Cry for Justice, Sinclair
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“The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.”
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“If the people can attain a fair compensation for their labor, they will have good homes, good clothing, and good food. the great interest of this country is labor.”
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“Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.”
from Funeral oration for Justice Story, 1845
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“There is not a more dangerous experiment than to place property in the hands of one class, and political power in those of another”
from North American Review, 1820
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“Labor does not have to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the air of labor... If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves.”
from Speech, 1824
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“Webster was the most complete man... nature has not in our days or not since Napoleon, cut out such a masterpiece.”
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