CHAPTER XIII.

WON A JACKKNIFE FOR RECITING BIBLE VERSES-WINS FAMOUS CASES IN COURT-HOW HE SCARED A WITNESS WHO RAN AWAY-BROKE UP FULTON'S

STEAMBOAT MONOPOLY.

"H

E BROKE upon me like a thunder-shower in July, sudden, portentous, sweeping all before him," said Jeremiah Mason, one of the greatest common lawyers this country ever produced, describing Daniel Webster as he appeared in the first case he ever tried against him. Probably no other lawyer exerted as much influence upon Webster's professional career as Mr. Mason. He was greatly admired by Webster, who would not admit that Mason was second even to the Great Chief Justice Marshall.

The early hardships of Webster's life and the interruption of his law studies by the necessity of earning money to assist his brother to an education, of his admission to the bar in 1805 and of his struggles as a country lawyer in the little town of Boscawen, we need not dwell upon in this narrative.

Suffice it to say that he was the youngest son of Captain Ebenezer Webster, whom Washington selected to guard his tent at West Point, after Arnold's treason, saying: "I think I can trust you, Captain Webster."

At the log schoolhouse near the farm Daniel acquired the rudiments of an education, and the master of the school-a Mr. Tappan-related this anecdote of Daniel's remarkable memory:

"Daniel was always the brightest boy in the school, and Ezekiel the next; but Daniel was much quicker at his studies than his brother. He would learn more in five minutes than another boy in five hours. One Saturday, I remember, I held up a handsome new jackknife to the scholars, and said the boy who would commit to memory the greatest number of verses in the Bible by Monday morning should have it. Many of the boys did well, but when it came to Daniel's turn to recite I found that he had committed so much that, after hearing him repeat some sixty or seventy verses, I was

obliged to give up, he telling me that there were several chapters yet that he had learned. Daniel got that jackknife."

After a few months at Phillips Exeter Academy he entered Dartmouth College, from which he graduated with the class of 1801.

MOVES COURT ROOM TO TEARS.

The law case which gave Daniel Webster greatest renown was one of the first he ever tried, and in some respects the most important. It was known as the Dartmouth College case. Mr. Webster was a graduate of Dartmouth College, and in the trial of the case represented the Federalists, who were striving for its control.

Mr. Goodrich has left a very interesting account of the trial of this case. He tells how Webster, after having finished his legal argument, stood silent for some moments, until every eye in the court room was fixed upon him, and then, addressing the Chief Justice, said:

*

"This, sir, is my case. It is not the case merely of that humble institution; it is the case of every college in our land. * Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so you must carry through your work! You must extinguish one after another all those greater lights of science which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land. It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it."

Here his emotions overcame him; his lips quivered and his eyes filled with

tears.

"The court room," says Mr. Goodrich, "during these two or three minutes presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure, bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheeks expanded with emotion and his eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington, at his side, with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being, leaned forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, to a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves around in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face.

*

*

"Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and, fixing his keen

eye on the Chief Justice, said in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience:

'Sir, I know not how others may feel, but for myself, when I see my alma mater surrounded-like Cæsar in the Senate House by those who are reiterating stab after stab-I would not, for this right hand, have her turn to me and say: "And thou, too, my son.'

SCARES AWAY A PROSECUTING WITNESS.

His powers over a jury were never better shown than in his defense of a man charged with having shot and robbed a man named Goodrich. According to one writer who has described this case, Mr. Webster led the jury to believe that the prosecuting witness-Goodrich-had for some unknown reason wounded his own arm with a bullet, robbed himself and then endeavored to cast the odium on Mr. Webster's client. Frightened by Webster's threats of an action for malicious prosecution, Goodrich fled. It is related of Mr. Webster that twenty years after, while traveling, he asked for a drink at a tavern. The hand of the man who gave him the glass shook with fear. Mr. Webster took the drink and left without saying a word. The man was Goodrich.

Two other cases which enhanced the fame of Mr. Webster as a lawyer were the famous steamboat case and the Girard Will Case. In the former the State of New York had granted a monopoly of steam navigation, in state waters, to Fulton and Livingston. Mr. Webster contended that the grant was unconstitutional and that the United States had sole jurisdiction over all navigable waters. The Supreme Court took his view of the case, and such is the law to-day. In the Girard Will Case suit was brought to break the will of Stephen Girard, who had left a fund to found the college of that name in Philadelphia. Mr. Webster appeared for the plaintiff. He lost the case, as the law was all against him, but he made an appeal wholly outside of the law which attracted the attention of the whole country and which was widely circulated in pamphlet form by the clergy. Girard, as is well known, was a free thinker, and his will provided that no priest or minister should ever enter the college. Webster contended that by this all religious teaching was to be excluded from the college, and that the bequest could not be considered a charity because it excluded Christianity.

Of this speech Judge Story wrote to Chancellor Kent:

"Webster did his best for the other side, but it seems to me altogether an address to the prejudices of the clergy."