Daniel Webster (1782–1852) was an American Federalist- and later Whig-party politician, lawyer, and orator who served as his country’s secretary of state.
Born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, Webster graduated from Dartmouth in 1801, entered the bar in 1805, and practiced law in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A renowned orator, he represented New Hampshire 1813–17 and then Massachusetts 1823–27 in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate 1827–41 and 1845–50.
Webster supported protective tariffs, was a strong pro-Union advocate, and supported the Compromise of 1850 to preserve the Union. A leader of the Whig Party, Webster unsuccessfully ran for president in 1836.
Webster later served as President W. H. Harrison’s secretary of state 1841–43 and negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which settled boundary disputes with Canada and improved relations with Great Britain. He also developed America’s policy toward Asia by formulating a statement on Hawaii in 1842 and inaugurating the first diplomatic mission to China in 1843.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Daniel Webster
The Senator says the territory of California is three times greater than the average extent of the new States of the Union. Well, Sir, suppose it is. We all know that it has more than three times as many mountains, inaccessible and rocky hills, and sandy wastes, as are possessed by any State of the Union. But how much is there of useful land? how much that may be made to contribute to the support of man and of society? These ought to be the questions. Well, with respect to that, I am sure that everybody has become satisfied that, although California may have a very great sea-board, and a large city or two, yet that the agricultural products of the whole surface now are not, and never will be, equal to one half part of those of the State of Illinois; no, nor yet a fourth, or perhaps a tenth part.
—Daniel Webster
A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Greatness
The world is governed more by appearances than by realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Intelligence, Reality, Appearance
Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Capitalism
Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Country, America, Patriotism
The past is at least secure.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Past, The Past
When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself.
—Daniel Webster
It is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration, the system that lets in all to participate in its counsels, that we owe what we are, and what we hope to be.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Government
Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are answered.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Mind
If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Authority
Whenever a jury, through whimsical or ill-founded scruples, suffer the guilty to escape, they become responsible for the augmented danger of the innocent.
—Daniel Webster
Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Liberty
There is nothing upon this earth that can be compared with the faithful attachment of a wife; no creature who, for the object of her love, is so indomitable, so persevering, so ready to suffer and die. Under the most depressing circumstances, woman’s weaknesses become a mighty power; her timidity becomes fearless courage; all her shrinking and sinking passes away; and her spirit acquires the firmness of marble—adamantine firmness—when circumstances drive her to put forth all her energy and the inspiration of her affections.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Wife
Suppose your candidate for fame pursues unremittingly the object of his love, through every difficulty and over every obstacle, till at last he overtakes her ladyship, and is permitted to kiss the hem of her garment on mount immortality, what will the dear-bought damsel boot him? If he take her to his bosom, she has no flesh and blood to warm it. If he taste of her lip, there is no more nectar in it than there are sunbeams in a cucumber.—Every rascal who has been bold and fearless enough, Nimrod, Cataline, and Tom Paine, all have had a smack at her before him: They have all more or less become famous, and will be remembered much longer than better men.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Fame
Labor is one of the great elements of society—the great substantial interest on which we all stand. Not feudal service, or predial toil, or the irksome drudgery by one race of mankind subjected, on account of their color, to another; but labor, intelligent, manly, independent, thinking and acting for itself, earning its own wages, accumulating those wages into capital, educating childhood, maintaining worship, claiming the right of the elective franchise, and helping to uphold the great fabric of the State—that is American labor; and all my sympathies are with it, and my voice, till I am dumb, will be for it.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Labor
The farmers are the founders of civilization and prosperity.
—Daniel Webster
Keep cool; anger is not an argument.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Anger
God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it. Let our object be our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: America
Credit is the vital air of the system of modern commerce. It has done more, a thousand times, to enrich nations, than all the mines of all the world. It has excited labor, stimulated manufactures, pushed commerce over every sea, and brought every nation, every kingdom, and every small tribe, among the races of men, to be known to all the rest. It has raised armies, equipped navies, and, triumphing over the gross power of mere numbers, it has established national superiority on the foundation of intelligence, wealth, and well-directed industry. Credit is to money what money is to articles of merchandise. As hard money represents property, so credit represents hard money; and it is capable of supplying the place of money so completely, that there are writers of distinction, especially of the Scotch school, who insist that no hard money is necessary for the interests of commerce. I am not of that opinion. I do not think any government can maintain an exclusive paper system, without running to excess, and thereby causing depreciation.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Money
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Mistakes, Failures, Failure
Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Unity, Patriotism
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Liberty
The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.
—Daniel Webster
When the mariner has been tossed for many days in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and, before we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are.
—Daniel Webster
If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work on brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work on mens immortal minds, if we impress on them high principles, the just fear of God, and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Education, Mind
If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Money, Labor
Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Cities
The criminal law is not founded on the principle of vengeance; it uses evil only as the means of preventing greater evil.
—Daniel Webster
One country, one constitution, one destiny.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Unity
Political and professional fame cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary, an indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne. If that tie is sundered or broken, he floats away a worthless atom in the universe, its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describes in so terse but terrific a manner, as “living without hope and without God in the world.” Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away from the purposes of his creation.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Religion, Conscience
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