Wea-Wei: Weaver through Weitzel

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


WEAVER, James Baird (June 12, 1833- February 6, 1912), soldier, congressman, Greenback and Populist candidate for the presidency.  He had been a Democrat, but, according to his own account, was converted to Free-Soil principles by reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and the New York Tribune. From 1857 until the outbreak of the Civil War he was active in local Republican circles, and he attended the convention which nominated Lincoln for the presidency in 1860. 

(E. A. Allen, The Life and Public Services of James Baird Weaver (1892); H. C. Evans, The Pioneers and Politics of Davis County, Iowa (1929); S. D. Dillaye, "Life of General J. B. Weaver" in Our Presidential Candidates and Political Compendium (1880).

Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 568-570:

WEAVER, JAMES BAIRD (June 12, 1833- February 6, 1912), soldier, congressman, Greenback and Populist candidate for the presidency, was born at Dayton, Ohio, fifth of the thirteen children of Abram and Susan (Imlay) Weaver. His father, a skilled mechanic and millwright, moved in 1835 to a forest-enclosed farm near Cassopolis, Michigan, and eight years later to a quarter section of virgin prairie in what soon became Davis County, Iowa. Here on a typical frontier young Weaver grew to manhood. He attended the country schools, and when his father's election to a minor county office took the family to Bloomfield, the county-seat, he had the advantage of the somewhat better schools of that small town. For several years (1847-51) he carried the mail through roadless country and across bridgeless streams, from Bloomfield to Fairfield, Iowa. In 1853 he accompanied a relative overland to California, and within a few months was cured completely of the gold fever, from which he had suffered since 1848. On his return to Iowa he worked in a store at Bonaparte, and had he consented might have become a partner in the business. By this time, however, he had discovered his aptitude for public speaking, particularly on controversial subjects, and had resolved to become a lawyer. In 1855, after borrowing one hundred dollars at thirty-three and one-third per cent. interest, he entered the Cincinnati Law School. A year later he was graduated and returned to Bloomfield to practise law.

Almost immediately he became absorbed in politics. He had been a Democrat, but, according to his own account, was converted to Free-Soil principles by reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and the New York Tribune. From 1857 until the outbreak of the Civil War he was active in local Republican circles, and he attended the convention which nominated Lincoln for the presidency, although not as a delegate. When Lincoln called for troops in 1861, Weaver volunteered and was made first lieutenant of the 2nd Iowa Infantry. He was in the thick of the fighting at Fort Donelson, at Shiloh, and at Corinth. On July 25, 1862, probably because his colonel had great confidence in him he was advanced over all the captains of his regiment to the rank of major, and when, during the battle of Corinth, his colonel and lieutenant-colonel were both mortally wounded, he took command. His conduct during this emergency was so gallant that afterwards, with the full approval of the officers who had so recently outranked him, he was commissioned colonel. During the winter of 1863-64, he was stationed at Pulaski, Tennessee, where, under orders of a superior officer, he obtained by an assessment upon the inhabitants the means needed to care for some Confederate refugees. Later his political opponents made much more of this incident than the facts warranted. When his term of enlistment expired, in May 1864, he returned to his home in Iowa, and on March 13, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general.

Weaver's services to his country and his party launched him upon what would normally have been a successful political career. He failed in 1865 to obtain a nomination for the post of lieutenant- governor, but in 1866 he was elected district attorney of the second Iowa judicial district, and in 1867 he received an appointment as federal assessor of internal revenue for the first district of Iowa, a post which he held until 1873. From this time forward, however, he lost ground with the Republican leaders in his state. He was a devout Methodist, utterly incorruptible, and an ardent prohibitionist; he denounced the extortions of the politically important railways and other predatory corporations; and he objected strenuously to the stand his party was taking on the currency question. Nevertheless, such was his popularity that only the sharpest political trickery prevented him from obtaining the Republican nomination for Congress in 1874, and for governor in 1875. Undoubtedly these defeats, which he believed wholly unmerited, served to undermine his party loyalty, and to drive him towards the "independents," or "Greenbackers," for whose principles he was developing a great affinity. His views on the money question would not at a later date have been regarded as extreme. He was not an advocate of unlimited inflation, nor of debt repudiation, but he held to the quantity theory of money, and opposed what he deemed the systematic efforts of the creditor class to appreciate the purchasing power of the dollar. As a Greenbacker he won a seat in Congress in 1878, ran for president in 1880, was defeated for Congress in 1882, but won again in 1884 and 1886.

When the Farmers' Alliance succeeded the Greenbackers as the chief exponent of soft-money views, Weaver hastened to identify himself with that organization, and he took a leading part in transforming it into the People's, or Populist, party. With but little opposition he was accorded the Populist nomination for the presidency in 1892. Throughout the campaign the magnetism of his personality, enhanced rather than diminished by his whitened hair and his generally patriarchal appearance, was as effective as on the battlefield of Corinth. His commanding presence coupled with the force and fire of his oratory gave him a bearing where a less able speaker would have been laughed off the stage. Only in the South, where falsified accounts of his Pulaski record were deliberately circulated, was he subjected to the discourtesies so commonly accorded to third-party orators. His defeat was inevitable, but he received a popular vote of over a million, and twenty-two votes in the electoral college. His book, A Call to Action (1892), published during the campaign, summarized his own political principles and furnished much of the ammunition used by his supporters during the fray.

Weaver's victories in the eighties had been won by the assistance of the Democrats, and after 1892 he was one of the leading advocates of a fusion of all soft-money forces; When in 1896 Bryan captured the Democratic nomination, Weaver strongly favored his nomination by the Populists also, and helped to bring it about. Fusion, however, rang the death knell of Populism, and within a few years Weaver found himself, together with most of the Populist leaders, a Democrat, and without a future in politics. With his political career at an end, his neighbors in the town of Colfax, Iowa, where he spent the later years of his life, showed their good will by choosing him to be their mayor. On July 13, 1858, he married Clara Vinson, a school-teacher who had come to Iowa from St. Mary's, Ohio; they were the parents of five girls and two boys. The year of his death, 1912, there was published Past and Present of Jasper County, Iowa, in two volumes, bearing his name as editor-in-chief.

[James B. Weaver, Jr., of Des Moines, Iowa, has in his possession "Memoranda with Respect to the Life of James Baird Weaver" (unpublished), prepared by Weaver himself. Substantial extracts from this document, which gives information only down to 1859, are printed in F. E. Haynes, James Baird Weaver (1919), a satisfactory account of Weaver's political career, gleaned largely from the newspapers, and from a scrapbook which Weaver kept. See also E. A. Allen, The Life and Public Services of James Baird Weaver (1892); H. C. Evans, The Pioneers and Politics of Davis County, Iowa (1929); S. D. Dillaye, "Life of General J. B. Weaver" in Our Presidential Candidates and Political Compendium (1880); F. E. Haynes, Third Party Movements Since the Civil War (1916); J. D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt (1931); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); F. B. Heitman, Historical Register and Directory U. S. Army (1903); Who's Who in America, 1910-11; Register and Leader (Des Moines), February 7, 8, 9, 1912.]

J. D. H-s.


WEAVER, Philip (b. 1791), cotton manufacturer. He was unhappy in South Carolina, chiefly because he felt that he and his family, he had married Miriam Keene, by whom he had four daughters-were "looked down upon with contempt" because they were "opposed to the abominable practice of slavery"

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 570:

WEAVER, PHILIP (b. 1791), cotton manufacturer, was a son of John and Ruth (Wilbur) Weaver of North Scituate, Rhode Island, and a descendant of Clement Weaver who was in Weymouth, Massachusetts, by 1643. As early as 1812 Philip went from his home in Coventry, Rhode Island, to work for the Dudley Cotton Manufacturing Company, Dudley, Massachusetts; in 1815 he was associated with Weaver, Hutchings & Company, for whom he did work on patterns and rollers. Early in 1816 he moved to Spartanburg District, South Carolina, accompanied by his  brothers, John, Wilbur, and Lindsay, as well as William Sheldon, John Clark; Thomas Slack, William Bates, and Thomas Hutchings. He was unhappy in South Carolina, chiefly because he felt that he and his family-,he had married Miriam Keene, by whom he had four daughters-were "looked down upon with contempt" because they were "opposed to the abominable practice of slavery" (Wallace, post, II, 411); nevertheless, he remained there for a number of years. Between December 1816 and 1820 he and his associates experienced serious difficulties because of shortage of cash; the Spartanburg Judgment Roll lists several judgments against them for both large and small sums. In 1819 Weaver was arrested for non-payment of one of these claims, but one Thomas Craven went his bail. The Weaver mill was on land owned by Reverend Benjamin Wofford who was at that early date accumulating the fortune with which he later founded Wofford College. In December 1818 he sold to Nathaniel Gist the tract of sixty acres on the Tiger River containing the mill, but Philip and John Weaver continued to operate the mill after the sale. Philip Weaver owned no land in Spartanburg district until August 14, 1819, when John Withers of Columbia sold Weaver & Company 300 acres on the east side of the Tiger.

Whether or not the weaver mill was the first cotton mill in Spartanburg District has been a matter of controversy. Kohn (post) inclines toward the view that the Weavers were first, while Landrum (post) is inclined to accept the claim made for George and Leonard Hill. Wallace (post) thinks it reasonably clear that the Weavers a little antedated the Hills as manufacturers in Spartanburg. Certainly both the Weaver and Hill mills provided an energetic element in the cotton manufacturing industry in Spartanburg and Greenville counties which undoubtedly laid the foundation for the extensive textile development before 1860.

Philip Weaver left Spartanburg District before 1826 and subsequently settled in Attica, Indiana, where shortly before the Civil War he was killed by a runaway horse. His former associates continued in the manufacturing business: John Weaver built a mill nineteen miles from Greenville, on Thompson's Beaver Dam, and operated it until his death several 'years after the Civil War; Hutchings built and operated several mills in succession with apparent profit, while in the thirties William Bates established the Batesville Cotton Mill.

[L. E. Weaver., History and Genealogy of a Branch of the Weaver Family (1928); Yates Snowden, History of South Carolina (1920), II, u67; D. D. Wallace, The History of South Carolina (1934), II, 411, III, 56; August Kohn, The Cotton Mills of South Carolina (1907); J. B. 0. Landrum, History of Spartanburg County (1900), pp. 157-65; Philip Weaver's account book, Wofford College Library; South Carolina Judgment Rolls, 532, 593, 595; Spartanburg Mesne Conveyance Office, Q 320, R 9, 10, 12, 79; Greenville Mesne Conveyance Office, T 342.]

R. G. S.


WEBB, James Watson (February 8, 1802- June 7, 1884), journalist and diplomat,  He became a chief supporter of the Whig party. He was an anti-abolitionist but a Free-Soiler, and during the 1850's urged the preservation of the Union even at the cost of war.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 574-575:

WEBB, JAMES WATSON (February 8, 1802- June 7, 1884), journalist and diplomat, was born at Claverack, New York Through his mother, Catharine Hoge boom, he came of old New York Dutch stock; and through his father, General Samuel Blachley Webb (1753 -1807), an aide of Washington, of old Connecticut stock, his first American ancestor being Richard Webb who was admitted freeman in Boston in 1632 and went to Hartford in 1635. Early orphaned, he was educated at Cooperstown, New York, under the guardianship of a brother-in-law, but at seventeen ran away to join the army. Appearing in Washington (1819) armed with a letter of identification from Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, he persuaded Secretary of War John C. Calhoun to give him a second lieutenant's commission. He was assigned at first to the artillery at Governor's Island, New York, but was transferred in 1821 to the 3rd Infantry at Chicago. There, in 1822, he had a notable frontier adventure, when he volunteered to carry to Fort Armstrong on the Mississippi news of a meditated Indian attack on Fort Snelling, Minnesota, crossing the forests and prairies of Illinois in the depth of winter while trailed by hostile Indians. As impetuous as he was audacious, Webb fought two duels with fellow-officers, came near fighting many more, and finally (1827) resigned from the army in consequence of one of these embroilments. At this time he was a first lieutenant; his later title of general was conferred at the time of his appointment as minister to Austria (A Letter ... to J. Bramley- Moore, post, p. 5).

On leaving the army young Webb went to New York City and plunged into a journalistic career, eventually to become one of the most influential editors in that age of personal journalist. In 1827 he acquired the Morning Courier, and in 1829 acquired and merged with it the New-York Enquirer, thereafter continuing as editor and proprietor of the Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer until he sold out to the World in 1861 and retired from the field. At first stanchly Jacksonian, he deserted Jackson in 1832 on the United States Bank issue, and became a chief prop of the Whig party. He was an anti-abolitionist but a Free-Soiler, and during the 1850's urged the preservation of the Union even at the cost of war. The Courier and Enquirer was one of the old sixpenny "blanket sheets" destined to be starved out by the smaller, cheaper papers, two of which were founded by one-time assistants of Webb's, James Gordon Bennett, the elder, and Henry Jarvis Raymond [qq.v.]. With its chief rival, the Journal of Commerce, the Courier and Enquirer waged a war of size which eventually produced folios containing over two thousand square inches of type. In the 1830's the rivals sent schooners fifty to a hundred miles to sea in a race for incoming news, and established pony expresses to hasten the news from Washington. With the editors of the penny papers Webb later exchanged plentiful invective, until he was called the "best abused" of them all. He was frequently involved in affairs of honor growing out of his editorial activities, on one occasion (1842) escaping prison under the New York anti-dueling law only by the pardon of the governor.

At the outbreak of the Civil War Webb sold his paper and, somewhat to his own surprise, found himself in the diplomatic service. He had journeyed to Vienna in 1849-50 under appointment (January 7, 1850), as charge d'affaires to Austria, only to be greeted with the news that the Senate had refused to confirm his appointment, perhaps because of a widespread desire to break with Austria in protest against the Hungarian war. He was now (May 31, 1861) made minister to Brazil, and went to his post via France, where he presented the Union cause to Louis Napoleon, his friend and correspondent since their meeting in 1835 while Napoleon was in exile. Later, through correspondence and another fateful interview (November 1865), Webb was instrumental in securing a promise of French withdrawal from Mexico. The record of his eight strenuous years in Brazil is marked by an alert patriotism and a bold energy verging on rashness. He had the satisfaction of seeing the unfriendly British envoy sent home in disgrace. He fought tirelessly against the aid extended to Confederate privateers, protected the interests of Americans during the Paraguayan War, and secured the settlement of several long-standing maritime claims. Retiring from the service in 1869, he traveled in Europe for two years, and then lived quietly at home, mostly in New York, until his death. His publications include a number of pamphlets: To the Officers of the Army (1827) on the occasion of his resignation; Slavery and Its Tendencies (n.d.), written in 1856; A Letter ... to J. Bramley-Moore, Esq., M.P. (n.d.), on the affair with the British envoy; and A National Currency (1875.). He also wrote Reminiscences of General Samuel B. Webb (1882).

Webb was twice married: first (July 1, 1823) to Hel en Lispenard Stewart, daughter of Alexander L. Stewart, who died in 1848; second (November 9, 1849) to Laura Virginia Cram, daughter of Jacob Cram, millionaire brewer. Of the eight children born of the first union, five grew to maturity,  the youngest being Alexander Stewart Webb [q.v.], the well-known Civil War general. There were five sons born of the second marriage. Webb's tall figure, massive head, and piercing eyes gave him a dignified, even imposing presence, which he retained until old age, in spite of a half-century's battle with hereditary gout.

[In addition to, Webb' s pamphlets, see for family data Webb's Reminiscences of General Samuel B. Webb (1882); for the Fort Snelling adventure, dedication to Altowan; or, Incidents of Life and Adventure in the Rocky Mountains (2 volumes, 1846), ed. by Webb; for charges arising out of the Carolina claims, General J. Watson Webb .. . vs. Hamilton Fish (1875), and J. B. Moore, A Digest of international Law (1906), volume VI, pp. 749-50. See also G. H. Andrews, in Sketches of Men of Progress (1870-71), ed. by James Parton; N. A. Cleven, in Revista do Instituto Historico e Geographico Brasileiro ... Congresso Internacional de Historia da America (.1925), pp. 293-394; F. E. Stevens, fames Watson Webb's Tri p across Illinois in 1822 (1924); Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U.S. (1873); obituary in New York Times, June 8, 1884. Webb's dispatches from Brazil were published in Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, 1862-69.]

E. M. S.


WEBSTER, Daniel, 1782-1852, statesman, U.S. Secretary of State, orator, author, strong opponent of slavery.

(Baxter, 1984; Blue, 2005; Mabee, 1970, pp. 175, 197, 261, 291, 307; Mitchell, 2007; Peterson, 1987; Remini, 1997; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 331-332, 508-509; Shewmaker, 1990; Smith, 1989; Webster, 1969; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 406-415; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 585-592; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 865).  Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 585-592:

WEBSTER, DANIEL (January 18, 1782-October 24, 1852), statesman, was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire. He was descended from Thomas Webster, who was brought to Ipswich, Massachusetts, c. 1635 as an infant and later removed to the southern New Hampshire frontier. His father, Ebenezer Webster, an unlettered but intrepid colonial, took part in General Jeffrey Amherst's invasion of Canada in 1759 and was allotted some 225 acres of land in the upper Merrimack Valley, where he became a founder and local official in the exposed frontier town of Salisbury. Ebenezer was an early and active revolutionary leader and served with distinction as captain in the militia. He also served capably in the state legislature and participated in the ratification of the federal Constitution as a member of the New Hampshire convention. Later in life Captain Webster, who kept this title even after he had been made a colonel in the state militia, was made a lay judge of the county court of common pleas. Webster's mother, Abigail Eastman, of Welsh stock, was a second wife who, like her predecessor, bore Ebenezer five children; of these Daniel was next to the youngest.

A lad of delicate health, Daniel was spared the heavier tasks which his brothers and sisters shared on the rugged New Hampshire farm. He found opportunity instead for the cultivation of his precocious mind and strongly emotional nature. In the random schools of the neighborhood the boy found that in reading he "generally could perform better" than the teachers in charge but his crude achievements in the irksome task of writing caused his masters to wonder whether after all his fingers were not "destined for the plough-tail" (Writings and Speeches, National ed., XVII, 7). His father, however, not satisfied with his clumsy efforts at certain rural tasks, was determined to save him from a life of arduous toil and shortly announced his intention to give Daniel "the advantage of knowledge" that had been denied to himself. Accordingly, in 1796, Captain Webster enrolled his fourteen-year-old son in the Phillips Exeter Academy. The boy was shy and sensitive about his unfashionable attire and clumsy manners, but he made rapid headway with his studies. Only in declamation was he unable to match his fellows: at the weekly public exhibitions, despite careful preparation, he "could never command sufficient resolution" to leave his seat and present his offerings (Ibid., XVII, 10).

In December 1796 Daniel returned with his father to Salisbury without having completed his course. A brief period of school-teaching ended with an arrangement for him to study under the Reverend Samuel Wood of Boscawen, who had offered to prepare him for Dartmouth College. By August 1797 he had achieved fair success in Latin and Greek and in the meantime had satisfied his omnivorous appetite for reading in 'the village library. With this uncertain equipment he presented himself for admission to Dartmouth at the opening of the regular fall term. Arriving on horseback with baggage and bedding, Webster began a college course that cost him in four years considerably less than two hundred dollars. The swarthy youngster, who was often taken for an Indian, soon acquired the nickname of "Black Dan." He pursued his studies with energy, yet found time for his two youthful enthusiasms, reading and playing. He graduated not far from the top of his class. He dabbled with enthusiasm in poetry and earned part of his board temporarily by contributing to the village newspaper. In contrast with his failure in Exeter days, he was outstanding in one of the college debating societies and developed a reputation as a speaker that led to his being invited by the citizens of Hanover to deliver, at the age of eighteen, the local Fourth of July oration. In this he revealed a florid style and a tendency toward bombast along with the "vigor and glow" that characterized his early oratorical efforts.

Following graduation Webster began the study of law in the office of Thomas W. Thompson of Salisbury. He had no great enthusiasm for the legal profession and seems to have had doubts as to whether he had the "brilliancy, and at the same time penetration and judgment enough, for a great law character" (Ibid., XVII, 92, 95). But he read "Robertson, Vattel, and three volumes of Blackstone," meantime learning the routine of the law office, and began to "feel more at ease" (Ibid., XVII, 100). After some months, however, he gave up these studies to accept a position as teacher in an academy in the small village of Fryeburg, the salary ($350) making it possible for him to aid his father in keeping his elder brother Ezekiel, in college. Offered reappointment at "five or six hundred dollars a year, a house to live in, a piece of land to cultivate" and the probability of a clerkship of the court of common pleas, he was tempted to settle down to spend his days "in a kind of comfortable privacy" (Ibid., XVII, 1 10). But father and friends advised him to pursue the study of law and with a careful definition of his ideals he returned, in September 1802, to Thompson's office. The embryo lawyer pondered the limitations of his calling. Conceding the power of the law to help "invigorate and unfold the powers of the mind," he tried to offset the hard didactic style of the legal treatise with excursions into history and the classics and made random attempts of his own at expression in verse and rhyme.

He long expected that only a miracle would make it possible to transfer to "the capital of New England." Now, upon the urge nt invitation of Ezekiel, who was teaching school there, he went to Boston and had the rare good fortune to be accepted immediately as a clerk by Christopher Gore [q.v.], who had just returned from a diplomatic mission abroad. Influenced by the stimulating scholarship of such an employer and his circle of distinguished associates, Webster's fertile mind developed apace. Upon Gore's advice but to his father's surprise and disappointment he declined the profitable clerkship of the court of common pleas which paternal influence had proudly arranged for him. Admitted to the Boston bar in March 1805, he was recall ed to Boscawen by a sense of filial obligation. His intention had Leen to set up an office in Portsmouth, but his father's illness made it a duty "to drop in the firmament of Boston gayety and pleasure, to the level of a rustic village, of silence and of obscurity" (Ibid., XVII, 200).

In September 1807, some little time after his father's death, he transferred his labors to Portsmouth where he remained for nine "very happy years." To this new home he brought his bride, Grace Fletcher, daughter of a New Hampshire clergyman, whom he married on May 29, 1808 (Fuess, post, I, 101n.). In his practice of law, the young attorney promptly won distinction. Following the superior court in most of the counties of the state, he found it possible to achieve a practice worth nearly $2,000 a year. He enjoyed the professional rivalry of Jeremiah Mason [q.v.], whom he once rated as the greatest lawyer in the country. From their frequent clashes in court he learned the importance of the most careful preparation of his arguments and of the most effective diction. Webster consciously dropped his earlier florid style and sought to achieve the short incisive sentences with which Mason was so masterful. Meantime, the two rivals at the bar became the best of political friends.

During the Portsmouth period Webster was being drawn more and more into politics. Temperamentally a conservative, he had inherited from his father strong Federalist convictions, which were reinforced by other associations, especially by his contacts with the "bigwigs" of Boston. Satisfied that wealth and intelligence should play a dominant role in public life, he early reached the conclusion that the Federalist party combined "more than two thirds of the talent, the character, and the property of the nation" (Writings and Speeches, XVII, n5). He grew to maturity amid the fear of French revolutionary ideals of democracy and came to picture them as threatening civil war "when American blood shall be made to flow in rivers, by American swords!" (Ibid., XVII, 79). It was this fear that produced his early devotion to "the bonds of our Federal Union." The Jeffersonian victory of 1800 seemed an "earthquake of popular commotion" under a Constitution which he was free to admit left "a wide field for the exertions of democratic intrigue" (Ibid., XVII, 111-12). He therefore labored in his humble way-in Fourth of July orations and in occasional political pamphleteering-to contribute to the revival of Federalism, to arouse those who were disposed to "sit still and sigh at the depravity of the times," while the "contagion of democracy" threatened to "pervade every place and corrupt every generous and manly sentiment" (Ibid., XVII, 158, 175).

He soon become a champion of the shipping interests of New England and of their protection against the retaliatory measures of Great Britain and France in their war for European supremacy. When Jefferson instituted a policy of economic coercion that struck a ruinous blow at the commercial prosperity of New England, Webster contributed a pamphlet, Considerations on the Embargo Laws (1808), which effectively voiced the Federalist opposition. By the time that the controversy over neutral rights had led to the outbreak of hostilities with Great Britain, Webster had achieved a recognized place among the Federalists of Portsmouth. In a Fourth of July oration in 1812 he vigorously condemned the administration for having led the nation into an unjustifiable war (Ibid., XV, 583-98). But, unlike the Federalist die-hards who had been for years at least toying with the idea of separating New England from the Union, Webster renounced the idea of resistance or insurrection and took his stand for full freedom of criticism and "the peaceable remedy of election" (Ibid., XV, 594). A month later in his famous "Rockingham Memorial,'' presented at a Federalist mass meeting in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, he reiterated his anti-war views even more forcefully (Ibid., XV, 599--010).

The enthusiastic reception of this memorial, both by the convention which proceeded to nominate him for Congress and by Federalists generally, launched Webster, with his election in November, upon a national political career. Made a member of the committee on foreign relations, he presented, on June 10, 1813, a series of resolutions calling upon the government to explain the events immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities and had the satisfaction of making a powerful impression and of seeing his resolutions adopted eleven days later (Annals of Congress, 13 Congress, 1 Session, cols. 149-51, 302-1 I). Aiming to embarrass the administration as much as possible, he loosed his eloquence against bounties to encourage enlistments and in favor of the repeal of the Embargo Act; in ringing words he proclaimed  the constitutional right of the opposition to voice its protests and to utilize full freedom of inquiry. He himself refused to vote taxes in support of the war and denounced the government's draft bill, not only as an "infamous expedient" but as clearly "unconstitutional and illegal" (Writings and Speeches, XIV, 55-69). Webster even suggested the expedient of state nullification of a federal law under "the solemn duty of the State Governments to protect their own authority over their own militia, and to interpose between their citizens and arbitrary power" (Ibid., XIV, 68). Since the conscription bill failed, there was no contemporary test of this doctrine. Webster was careful, however, to repudiate any thought of disunion. During the sessions of the Hartford Convention he was busy at Washington and had in the meantime advised the governor of New Hampshire against appointing delegates to a body that might be unduly influenced by the separatist forces (Curtis, post, I, 136).

Reelected in 1814, Webster became influential in the attempts to make peacetime adjustments to the economic lessons taught in the recent war. Legislation to reestablish the United States Bank was modified by Calhoun to meet Webster's objections to the lack of adequate safeguards for financial stability and was passed by Congress only to receive a presidential veto. He later voted against the bank bill which did not contain such safeguards but which was signed by the President in April 1816. In the discussions of fiscal policy, including the matter of specie payment for government revenues, Webster revealed an amazing knowledge of and devotion to sound principles of public finance. In the discussion of the tariff he proclaimed himself not an enemy of manufactures, but as opposed to rearing them in hotbeds. His loyalty to the mercantile interests of his section, however, caused him to oppose the high protective duties of the tariff of 1816, especially those originally proposed for cotton, iron, and hemp, which menaced the imports of New England and threatened to add to the cost of ship-building.

In August 1816, midway in his second term in Congress, Webster transferred his residence to Boston, where he sidetracked politics for a law practice that was soon bringing in $15,000 a year. During his last winter at Washington, he had given much of his time to legal work. He was retained before the Supreme Court in three important prize cases and was soon to add to his laurels in the Dartmouth College case. As a result of the complicated operation of party politics in New Hampshire, Webster's alma mater had become. a pawn upon the political chess board. A Republican legislature in 1816 enacted a law changing- the character of the institution and its governing body, placing it under the thumb of the general court. A suit in which the college trustees sought to defend their rights against the new political forces was carried to the New Hampshire superior court, from which it was appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Webster, after accepting a small fee from the other side, had revealed his sympathies with the college trustees (Fuess, I, 220-21). He had closed the argument for them before the superior court and now for a fee of $1,000, out of which he was to engage an associate, he was placed in charge of the case in the Supreme Court. The notes and briefs of his colleagues furnished most of his materials, but these he carefully overhauled and brilliantly presented (Writings and Speeches, X, 194-233). He closed with an appeal in which with consummate pathos he presented the case of the small college which he loved as the case of every college in the land. When on February 2, 1819, the Court in its decision completely upheld the college and its counsel (4 Wheaton, 518), Webster became in the opinion of many the foremost lawyer of the time. Three weeks after the Dartmouth College victory he appeared for the Bank of the United States in McCulloch vs. Maryland (Writings and Speeches, XV, 261-67) and received a fee of $2,000 for his services. In three other important cases involving grave constitutional issues that shortly came before the Supreme Court, Webster was to play an important part (Gibbons vs. Ogden, Osborn vs. Bank of the United States, Ogden vs. Saunders; Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 1922, I, 476-88; II, 59, 90, 147-48).

In the midst of a busy law practice Webster could not keep out of the public eye. In December 1819 he opposed the admission of Missouri as a slave state and drafted the memorial of a Boston protest meeting. He made the feature address in favor of free trade at a meeting of New England importers in Faneuil Hall in the autumn of 1820. He was chosen as a presidential elector in the campaign of that year. He played an influential but conservative role in the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1820-21 and helped to hold the democratic forces in check (Fuess, I, 273-80). On December 22, 1820, he delivered at Plymouth a powerful oration in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. Achieving another great oratorical triumph at the laying of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill monument on June 17, 1825, he made popular the occasional oratory that was to thrive for decades. He served for a brief period in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in the spring of 1822. In the fall he was drafted to represent Boston in Congress and was promptly made chairman of the judiciary committee when he took his seat in December 1823. A brilliant oration on Greek Independence (January 19, 1824) signalized his return to the national political arena, but he was soon busied with less romantic topics. The tariff question-to him at this time "a tedious, disagreeable subject"-was now to the fore and the financiers, merchants, and ship-builders of Boston expected him to challenge Henry Clay's arguments for protection. Accordingly, on April 1, 2, 1824, Webster attacked the proposed bill and its principles and announced his inability to accord it his vote (Writings and Speeches, V, 94-149).

In the preliminaries of the presidential contest of 1824 Webster's private choice was Calhoun; he shared the distrust of New England Federalists for John Quincy Adams. Busied with his own reelection he avoided any formal commitment, but in the contest in the House he gave his vote to Adams and influenced others in the same direction. Webster had hopes of the mission to Great Britain but Adams showed no inclination to gratify him. Yet, as party lines reshaped themselves under the new administration, Webster became an increasingly loyal supporter. He supported the President's doctrine on internal improvements, pleading for a truly national interest to justify federal aid; he led the futile fight for a revision of the federal judicial system; he made an eloquent appeal for representation in the congress at Panama. Reelected to Congress almost unanimously, he championed the President in the bitter dispute with Georgia over the Cherokee lands. All the while Webster kept up a busy practice before the Supreme Court and other courts of the country.

In June 1827 he was elected to the United States Senate. The death of Mrs. Webster (January 21, 1828) temporarily destroyed his zest for work and his interest in public affairs. But soon he was in the thick of the fight that accompanied the passage of the tariff act of 1828. The Webster of this period was less satisfied than hitherto with economic theories and more concerned with the realities of life. He had established intimate associations with the Lawrences and Lowells and the mill-owners of his state generally, and had taken a small block of stock when the Merrimack Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1822 (Fuess, I, 341). The tariff of 1824 had been followed by a vast increase of investment in wool manufacturing and Webster was now (May 9, 1828) frank in stating that nothing was left to New England "but to consider that the government had fixed and determined its own policy; and that policy was protection" (Writings and Speeches, V, 230). Since the new bill, with all its "abominations," did grant the protection to woolens which the act of 1824 had by implication pledged, he accorded his active support to the measure and helped accomplish its passage. Henceforth, Webster was an aggressive champion of protection.

The months that followed brought bitter disappointments: Adams was defeated for reelection by Jackson, and Webster's favorite brother, Ezekiel, whom he helped launch a career in New Hampshire politics, died. His energy seemed to ebb, and he wondered at times whether he was not growing old. But life took on new meaning following his marriage on December 12, 1829, to Caroline Le Roy, a young and popular representative of New York sophistication, and new and stirring events were ahead. Another month and he was in the thick of the battle against the Calhoun doctrine of nullification. With leonine grace and energy and in the rich tones of his oratory, he met the challenge of Calhoun's mouthpiece, Robert Y. Hayne [q.v.]; rising to the height of his forensic abilities in this famous debate of January 1830 (Ibid., V, 248-69; VI, 3-75), he won what his admirers hailed as a brilliant victory over the cause of state rights and nullification. Praising the Union and what it had accomplished and still promised to achieve for the nation, he declared that in origin it preceded the states and insisted that the Constitution was framed by the people, not as a compact but to create a government sovereign within the range of the powers assigned to it, with the Supreme Court as the only proper arbiter of the extent of these powers. Nullification could result only in violence and civil war, he proclaimed; he was for "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" No wonder that, with the plaudits of his audience still ringing in his ears, with the nation-wide fame achieved in this great outburst of eloquence, rosy dreams of the White House continued henceforth to play in Webster's mind.

The tariff problem which had aroused Calhoun and the South still remained. Southern efforts to force a reduction of duties led to the measure of July 1832 in which Webster was concerned primarily with maintaining protection upon woolen cloths. But even the lower duties of this act did not satisfy South Carolina which forced the issue of nullification in the ordinance passed by a convention of that state in November. Webster made clear his intention to support the President in his defiance of the nullifiers and crossed lances with Calhoun in an important debate the following February (Ibid., VI, 181-238). Meantime, against his advice, Clay joined with the anti-tariff leaders in pressing legislation agreeable to the latter; finally in March 1833 the "Compromise Tariff" was enacted. Bitterly disappointed, Webster voted with the opposition. The only satisfaction he could find in the outcome was in the thought that "the events of the winter have tended to strengthen the union of the States, and to uphold the government" (Ibid., XVII, 537). To this end and for the honor of being known as the "Defender of the Constitution," Webster had sacrificed for the time even his lucrative Supreme Court practice.

Politics had developed even new intricacies. The opposition forces of varying views but with common interests in vested rights had combined in the Whig party. Naturally, Webster joined the new coalition. Any temptation toward continued cooperation with Jackson was removed by the latter's war on the Bank of the United States, which Webster supported both on principle and as a profitable client. There was the further fact that Webster, who was as careless in handling his own money as he was profound in his mastery of the principles of public finance, was heavily indebted to the bank for loans extended to him. He had actively advocated the recharter bill and had vigorously condemned Jackson's veto, especially the constitutional grounds that it set forth. Reelected to the Senate in 1833, Webster regarded Jackson's removal of deposits from the bank as presenting an issue that might lead to the presidential office. He distinguished himself, however, by the constructive quality, in contrast to the personal vituperation of his associates, that marked his reply to Jackson's protest against the resolution of censure which the Senate had adopted. As the election of 1836 drew near the Whigs of the Massachusetts legislature nominated him as their candidate. With other Whig nominees in the field, however, he had few enthusiastic supporters outside of New England and Pennsylvania, despite the friendly visit he had paid to the West in the summer of 1833, and he received only the electoral vote of Massachusetts.

Following this defeat, he gave serious consideration to retirement from active politics, either to recoup his fortune, which had suffered with his law practice, or to improve his presidential chances for 1840. Just at this time, one of the worst for profitable investment, he was acquiring with borrowed money extensive land holdings in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. His interests were largely speculative, except that he planned a huge country estate near La Salle, Illinois, which was for a time operated by his son, Fletcher. His own personal interests continued in his seaside home at Marshfield where, with the continual lure of "the sea, the sea," he lived in almost feudal ease among devoted retainers and entertained with a lavish hand. Unable to realize upon his ill-timed investments, he was increasingly harassed by his creditors and financial embarrassment haunted him to the end. Only the willingness of his wealthy friends to be levied upon in emergency saved him from actual disgrace.

His Massachusetts followers, however, would not consent to his retirement. After another Western tour-which was a veritable series of ovations-during which the panic of 1837 broke, he returned to the special session of Congress and took a brilliant part in the Whig fight against Van Buren's sub-treasury plan, again breaking lances with Calhoun.. The question of slavery and the right of petition brought similar clashes and Webster was impressed with the storm clouds so ominous for the future. In the summer of 1839, following reelection, he and his family visited England where he hoped to find buyers for his western lands and to acquaint himself still further with the details of the menacing boundary dispute between Maine and Canada. He returned to find that the Whigs had nominated General Harrison for the presidency and he participated in the campaign with all the more zest because he expected it to bring to a close his senatorial career, with retirement to the bar in the event of Van Buren's reelection and the prospect of a cabinet appointment if Harrison should succeed.

The victorious Harrison made Webster secretary of state, after having paid a tribute to his knowledge of public finance by offering the alternative of appointment to the Treasury Department. On Harrison's death a month later, John Tyler, his successor, retained the cabinet in office. Webster had anticipated the enactment of a series of Whig measures such as those for which Henry Clay made himself the spokesman in the ensuing months (Writings and Speeches, XVIII, 100). Soon, however, President Tyler, a Southern Whig of the state-rights school, became involved in a dispute with the Clay following when he successively vetoed the two measures by which the Whigs sought to reestablish a United States bank. In the split that followed all the members of Tyler's cabinet except Webster resigned. The latter, who was extremely unhappy about these conditions and suspicious of the leadership of Clay, tried to play a conciliatory role. He regretted "the violence & injustice" which had "characterized the conduct of the Whig leaders"; he was determined, moreover, not to "throw the great foreign concerns of the country into disorder or danger, by any abrupt party proceeding" (Ibid., XVI, 386; XVIII, I 10). He was referring to the, complicated negotiations over the Maine boundary which, with consummate skill, tact, and dignity and with the cordial cooperation of the President, he carried on and brought to a successful adjustment in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. In this agreement was included an arrangement for joint cruising squadrons to operate off the coast of Africa in the suppression of the slave trade, which was expected to terminate a long-standing controversy over the right of search. His eminently satisfactory discharge of his duties in the State Department included successful negotiations with Portugal, important discussions with Mexico, and the preliminaries to the opening of diplomatic relations with China which led to the commercial treaty negotiated by Caleb Cushing in 1844. Meantime, he rejoiced in the enactment of a Whig tariff (1842) which wiped out what seemed to him the iniquities of the measure of 1833 and returned to the principle of protection.

Webster, who had for some time been under strong Whig pressure to resign, at length with some. reluctance (May 8, 1843) left the only office which had ever allowed reasonable satisfaction for his ambition and his talents. He had aspired to a diplomatic mission to England and had tried to juggle events to that end, but fate dictated his retirement to private life (Fuess, II, 125-28). Burdened with debt, he returned to meet the heavy demands for his legal services that promised to replenish his exchequer. A seat in the Senate was awaiting his convenience and the returned statesman, convinced that the sober business men and conservatives of Massachusetts had never deserted him, took satisfaction in a reconciliation with his old party associates in which he felt no necessity for offering apologies for his recent independent course. He cooperated cheerfully in support of Clay's candidacy for the presidency in the campaign of 1844 and in the following winter allowed himself to be returned to the Senate.

Devoted to the vested interests of his state indeed, a virtual pensioner dependent upon their bounty-Webster deemed it his "especial business" as a member of Congress "to look to the preservation of the great industrial interests of the country" from Democratic free-trade propensities (Writings and Speeches, XVIII, 231; see also Ibid., IV, 47, -XVI, 431-32). All the activities of the protectionists, however, did not prevent the reductions under the Walker Tariff of 1846. Meanwhile, as he had feared, the annexation of Texas had been followed by war with Mexico. Webster had opposed the acquisition of Texas and the resulting extension of slavery and now joined in the Whig policy of condemning the war. He held, however, that supplies should be voted as long as the war was not connected with territorial aggrandizement and that the struggle should be brought to a speedy and successful termination. To this end he gave his second son, Major Edward Webster, who died of exposure in service near Mexico city.

Though Webster, impervious to the lure of empire, introduced resolutions repudiating all thought of the dismemberment of Mexico (Congressional Globe, 29 Congress, 2 Session, p. 422), the war ended in a treaty which gave the United States a vast domain carved out of this neighbor republic. Should the new territory be dedicated to freedom or be thrown open to the westward march of negro slavery, was the inevitable question that arose. Webster had been from the start a strong critic of
the peculiar institution of the South as "a great moral and political evil," but had conceded that within the Southern states it was a matter of domestic policy, "a subject within the exclusive control of the States themselves" (Writings and Speeches, XVIII, 353; XII, 210). He voted consistently for the Wilmot Proviso, but preferred the " no-territory" basis that would prevent a controversy from arising over slavery. With the triumph of the expansionists he saw nothing in the future but "contention, strife, and agitation" (Fuess, II, 171). Dreams of the presidency still haunted him. In the spring of 1847 he had made a Southern tour in which he was dined and wined until his body and spirits drooped. Even after his recuperation at Marshfield and his return to court for many a strenuous session, he took it for granted, at the age of sixty-six, that people were beginning to say, "He is not the man he was" (Writings and Speeches, XVIII, 267). The death of his daughter Julia, who had married Samuel Appleton. Appleton, and of his son Edward depressed him even more. Of his children only his son Fletcher survived him. When out of sheer expediency his party turned to a military hero, General Zachary Taylor, he acquiesced in his own repudiation with what grace he could.

In the first winter of the new administration Webster beheld with alarm a serious crisis in the sectional controversy. The abolitionist extremists were advocating a dissolution of the Union and the anti-slavery forces in Congress were bent upon pressing their strength to accomplish the exclusion of slavery from the territories, while Southern leaders, increasingly conscious of the seriousness of the minority status of the South, were developing a sense of Southern nationality and preparing, if need be, to launch a movement for a separate Southern confederacy. Like other conservative statesmen, Webster came to feel that the Union was seriously at stake and was determined to do all in his power to avert the danger. It must not be overlooked that Webster, as the champion of protection, was alarmed to find tile continued discussion of the slavery question an obstacle to Whig efforts at tariff revision, causing Southern Whigs whose rights, property, and feeling had been constantly assailed to argue that they would never "give a single vote for the Tariff until this Slavery business is settled," and that North- ern men would have to "take care of their own interests" (Ibid., XVI, 541; XVIII, 391). To Webster the more important public question of the tariff was being sacrificed to the slavery controversy (Ibid., XVIII, 370). He had, therefore, become increasingly annoyed at the militant intransigentism of the anti-slavery forces, especially those who would not believe that "I am an anti-slavery man unless I repeat the declaration once a week" (Ibid., XVI, 498). While he believed in the power of Congress legally to exclude slavery from the territories, he had stated as early as 1848 that there was "no longer any important practical question" as to slavery extension (Ibid., XVIII, 283). He therefore rose on March 7, 1850, "to beat down the Northern and the Southern follies, now raging in equal extremes" (Ibid., XVI, 534).

In a well-considered speech he declared himself for Clay's compromise measures and poured oil on troubled waters. He spoke "not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but a s an American" (Ibid., X, 57). Slavery was an evil but not so great an evil as disunion. There could1 be no peaceful secession, he informed the South. On the other hand, he condemned the unnecessary severity of the anti-slavery forces and admitted that Northerners had not lived up to their obligations to return fugitive slaves. Congressional prohibition in the territories was useless since a law of nature had settled "beyond all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist in California or New Mexico" (Ibid., X, 82). To the conservative element of the country Webster's performance seemed "Godlike"; but the anti-slavery men, including those of his own party, could see him only as a fallen star. Nor did he recover their good graces. Webster became, after Taylor's death, secretary of state in Fillmore's cabinet (July 22, 1850). He supported the legislation that substantially covered the ground of Clay's compromise measures and followed with concern the storm that still raged. Even as late as the summer of 1851 the question of secession was being discussed in certain Southern states and Webster felt called upon to write a timely letter denying the right of secession and denouncing it as revolution (Ibid., XVI, 622- 23). In the State Department Webster conscientiously and creditably performed the duties of his office, writing the famous "Hulsemann letter" in reproof of the attitude of the Austrian charge toward American policy in the Hungarian revolution and dealing with more than ordinary diplomatic difficulties with Spain, Mexico, Peru, and Great Britain. His presidential aspirations were again revived in 1852, without serious embarrassment to his relations with Fillmore who was also a candidate. But both men were shelved by the Whigs and, sick in mind and body, Webster repudiated General Scott's nomination and prophesied the downfall of his party.

As the summer progressed, serious illness and suffering stared from his dark countenance. Always fond of the good things of life, he had found since his second marriage increasing opportunity for self-indulgence. Lavish hospitalities, with good food and good drink given and received, made him grow portly though rarely sluggish. Only his active life and early rising kept down the inroads of disease. His annual hay fever became increasingly more distressing. Financial worries pressed down upon him and made him wish at times that he "had been born a miser" (Ibid., XVI, 636). By autumn the inroads of a fatal malady, cirrhosis of the liver, had marked his days and he died on October 24, 1852, murmuring, "I still live."

Two score years in the political arena revealed in Daniel Webster two seemingly contrasting but naturally allied forces. Eloquent champion of the American Union, he was also the special advocate of the new industrial interests then so rapidly forging to the fore in the national economy. In their behalf the leonine Daniel, idol of the "best" people of his state and of his section, sacrificed the popular following that would gladly have rallied to the standard of a great democratic chieftain. The penetrating logic and burning eloquence of his oratory, the masterful and magnetic quality of his personality, contributed little toward bringing to him the support of the toiling masses. Life therefore became for Webster a series of great frustrations. A great constitutional lawyer, he found his equals, or betters, among his eminent contemporaries. His victories in statecraft and diplomacy were never on a par with his soaring ambitions. The presidential office seemed to have been reserved for men of less distinction. Even his personal fortunes failed to bring him the sense of security that often assuages frustration. Withal, however, perhaps no Northerner left so strong an impression upon the political life of this great "middle period," or made a more substantial contribution to the preservation of the Union in the supreme test of the sixties.

[The first attempt at general publication of "Webster's works resulted in The Works of Daniel Webster (6 volumes, 185 1), ed. by Edward Everett; and in The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster (2 volumes, 1857), ed. by Fletcher Webster, which included his brief autobiography as written in 1829. Collections of his manuscripts were later made, the most complete being that of the New Hampshire Historical Society at Concord. The Sanborn collection in New York City is less extensive; the Greenough collection in Washington (Library of Congress) is made up largely of letters received from Webster's correspondents; and the Massachusetts Historical Society collection is very limited. Important additions, largely of unpublished items selected from the New Hampshire collection, were made available in The Letters of Daniel Webster (1902), ed. by C.H. Van Tyne; an effort at publishing his complete works was made in the National ed. under the title, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (18 volumes, 1903), ed. by J. W. McIntyre. The earliest biography, prepared with Webster's approval, is S. L. Knapp, A Memoir of the Life of Daniel Webster (1831). C. W. March, Reminiscences of Congress (1850), later published as Daniel Webster and His Contemporaries (1852), is a reminiscent account by a wealthy friend. Immediately following Webster's death, a reminiscent biography appeared in the account of his private secret ary, Charles Lanman, The Private Life of Daniel Webster (1852), which the family made an attempt to suppress. Other gossipy narratives are Peter Harvey, Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster (1877); and the brief "Reminiscences of Daniel Webster" by William Plumer, included in the National ed., XVII, 546-67 Personal recollections give value to the work of his literary executor, G. T. Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster (2 volumes, 1870). H. C. Lodge, Daniel Webster (1883), the first brief formal biography, is colored by the abolitionist tradition and influenced by the highly prejudicial chapter on Webster in James Parton, Famous Americans of Recent Times (1867). After a number of rather perfunctory lives came the more penetrating work of S. G. Fisher, The True Daniel Webster (1911). Recent biographies, including F. A. Ogg, Daniel Webster (19 14) and S. H. Adams, The Godlike Daniel (1930), have been overshadowed by the excellent and more nearly definitive C. M. Fuess, Daniel Webster (2 volumes, 1930). Among numerous special works and articles particularly worthy of mention are G. T. Curtis, The Last Years of Daniel Webster (1878); E. P. Wheeler, Daniel Webster, The Expounder of the Constitution (1905); Gamaliel Bradford, "Daniel Webster," in As God Made Them (1929); R. L. Carey, Daniel Webster as an Economist (1929); H. D. Foster, " Webster's Seventh of March Speech and the Secession Movement, 1850," in American Historical Review, January 1922; V. L. Parrington, "Daniel Webster, Realist and Constitutionalist," in The Romantic Revolution in America (1927); articles by C. A. Duniway in S. F. Bemis, The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, volumes V, VI (1928). There is an excellent bibliography in The Cambridge History of American Literature, volume II (1918), pp. 480-88. For an obituary, see Boston Daily Advertiser, October 25, 1852.]

A. C. C.


WEBSTER, Noah, 1758-1843, lexicographer, lawyer, wrote against slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 417-418; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 594-597; Dumond, 1961, p. 47; Locke, 1901, pp. 92-93; Zilversmit, 1967, p. 172; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 874). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 594-597:

WEBSTER, NOAH (October 16, 1758-May 28, 1843), lexicographer, was sixth in descent from John Webster (d. April 5, 1661), an emigrant from England to Newtowne (now Cambridge), Massachusetts, c. 1630-33, who became one of the founders of the colony of Connecticut and, in 1656, its governor. John took up land in the township of Hartford, and it was in the village of West Hartford that the lexicographer was born, the fourth of the five children of Noah Webster (March 25, 1722-November 9, 1813) and his wife Mercy (baptized October 8, l 727-died October 5, l794), daughter -of Eliphalet Steele and great-great-grand-daughter of William Bradford [q.v.], second governor of the Plymouth colony. The elder Noah owned a farm of ninety acres in West Hartford. He served as justice of the peace, as deacon of the parish church (Congregational), and as captain on the "a1arm list" of the local militia. He and his wife were married January 12, 1749. Young Noah early showed a bent for books, and his father after some hesitation decided to send him to college. He got his preparatory training from the local minister, the Reverend Nathan Perkins, and from a Mr. Wales, schoolmaster of Hartford. In September 1774 he was admitted to Yale College, and four years later was duly graduated with the degree of B.A., though the elder Noah had to mortgage his farm to meet his son's modest college bills and the War of the American Revolution interfered markedly with academic studies at Yale as elsewhere.

Webster had settled upon a legal career, but his father was unable to help him further and for several years after his graduation from college he earned his living by teaching and clerical work, reading law with various jurists in his spare time. In 1781 he passed his examinations and was admitted to the bar at Hartford, but he did not begin active practice until 1789, and four years later gave up the law for, good. The beginnings of his true career go back to 1782 when, while teaching at Goshen, New York, he prepared an elementary spelling book, published at Hartford the next year as the first part of A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The lnstit1ite was completed with a grammar (1784) and a reader (178 5); all three books were written for the use of- school children. In preparing the-series Webster was moved by patriotic as well as professional and scholarly considerations. He found the schoolbooks then in use deficient on various counts, not least in their neglect of the American scene. The introduction of his speller includes, among other things, a literary Declaration of Independence by which Webster lived and wrought the rest of his days. Later editions of speller and reader gave expression to Webster's patriotic purposes in their very titles: The A1nerican Spelling Book and An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking. The speller did not differ radically from previous spellers, and at first did not include the orthographical reforms introduced into later editions and now regularly associated with Webster's name, but it was well arranged, gave convenient rules of thumb, and had the clarity and freshness of presentation characteristic of its author. Above all, it was an American product, nicely calculated to meet the particular needs of the American schools of the day, an outgrowth, indeed, of Webster's own experience as a schoolmaster: In length of vogue and volume of sales, however, it surpassed all expectation. The first edition of 5000 copies was exhausted in little more than a year, and in revised editions, under various titles, the book continued to be issued well into the twentieth century. In 1837 Webster estimated that some 15,000,000 copies of his spelling-books had been printed, and by 1890 the number had risen to more than 60,000,000. The wide and long use of Webster's spellers had much to do with the standardization of spelling and, to a less degree, of pronunciation in the United States along lines differing somewhat from those that prevailed in the mother country. Webster's reader did not have the vogue of the speller, although it went through a number of editions. To the edition of 1787 were added, as Webster explained to Franklin, "some American pieces under the discovery, history, wars, geography, economy, commerce, government, &c. of this country ... in order to call the minds of our youth from ancient fables & modern foreign events, & fix them upon objects immediately interesting, in this country" (Ford, post, II, 454). The reader thus became a book patriotic enough to justify the insertion of the word American into its title. Webster's grammar, the second part of his Institute, was less successful, commercially, than the other parts.  The historian, however, reads it with interest and respect as a forerunner (in theory, at least) of the scientific English grammars of today, based not on rules taken from Latin grammar or pseudo-logical "principles," but on objective study of the actual phenomena of English speech.

Webster had hardly finished compiling his speller when the problem of the copyright presented itself. At that time the federal government had no authority in such a matter, and none of the newly established states had enacted a copyright law. With characteristic courage and, energy Webster began, in 1782, an agitation which cost him more time and money than he had anticipated but led to legislative provision of an American copyright. Webster's initiative and leadership in this agitation not only gave him a place in the annals of the day but also brought him into contact with many of the leaders of the young republic and set going the national reputation which he was to achieve. In particular, the copyright agitation took him into politics, and made him an ardent Federalist. Forced as he was to promote copyright legislation in thirteen capitals, he became one of the earliest advocates of a strong federal government, and in 1785 printed his views in a pamphlet called Sketches of American Policy, a pamphlet which won the interest of Washington and Madison, and, with an earlier series of articles in the Connecticut Courant (from August 26, 1783), gave Webster his start as journalist and pamphleteer. Of his other political writings of the decade ought to be mentioned here, if only for its characteristic timeliness, the pamphlet of October 1787, urging the adoption, by the several states, of the newly submitted federal Constitution.

Webster's activities in favor of copyright legislation took him as far south as Charleston, South Carolina, and involved much travel and long stays in the chief cities of the country. He earned his living during this period in various ways: by ordinary teaching, by holding singing-schools, and by giving public lectures. While in Baltimore, in the summer and fall of 1785, he wrote five papers on the mother tongue, and read them in public with such success that he was "induced to revise and continue reading them in other towns" (Ford, I, 141). This course of popular lectures, with additions and revisions, was published in 1789 under the title, Dissertations on the English Language. The added "Essay on a Reformed Mode of Spelling," included in the volume, is of special interest. Webster's lectures in Philadelphia had led to an acquaintance with Benjamin Franklin, and a subsequent correspondence between the two on spelling reform (a subject in which Franklin had long been interested) brought Webster back to Philadelphia in December 1786 for a visit which turned into a stay of ten months. The essay, and Webster's various experiments with a simplified spelling, grew out of this intercourse with Franklin. The boldness and sweep of Webster's original scheme appear plainly enough in a letter, dated March 31, 1786, which he wrote to George Washington. "I am encouraged," he says, "by the prospect of rendering my country some service, to proceed in my design of refining the language & improving our general system of education. Dr. Franklin has extended my views to a very simple plan of reducing the language to perfect regularity" (Ford, I, no). Franklin's phonetic alphabet, however, simple though it was, proved too radical for adoption by Webster, who for practical reasons gave up counsels of perfection in favor of a "sufficiently regular" orthography, and with the years yielded ground more and more to the traditional spellers, so that in the end little was left of his reforms. But if Webster proved unable to effect any substantial spelling reforms, his spellers and dictionaries, ironically enough, played a great part in strengthening the grasp of orthographical orthodoxy. The American people, ruthlessly school mastered year in year out, became rooted and grounded in the faith, and the reforms brought forward by later generations of scholars, with all the backing of the now full-fledged science of linguistics, failed to shake the hold of that traditional spelling which Webster so reluctantly had made his own.

It was during his second stay in Philadelphia, as supervisor of an Episcopal school, that Webster met Rebecca Greenleaf (May 27, 1766-June 25, 1847), daughter of William Greenleaf, a Boston merchant, and his wife Mary (Brown). Webster and Miss Greenleaf were married in Boston on October 26, 1789. They had two sons, one of whom died in infancy, and six daughters. Toward the end of 1787 Webster had settled in New York, as editor of a new venture called the American Magazine. The periodical had proved a commercial failure, and in December 1788 Webster had returned to Hartford, where he began his married life and practised law for several years. In 1793, however, he was induced to settle again in New York and take up once more the work of an editor. With the backing of certain prominent Federalists, he launched a daily newspaper, the Minerva, and a semi-weekly, the Herald, names which in 1797 were changed to Commercial Advertiser and Spectator respectively. His journalistic career lasted ten years, though in 1798 he removed to New Haven and thereafter had less and less to do with the details of management of his newspapers, which, as he tells us, "were established for the purpose of vindicating and supporting the policy of President Washington" (Ford, I, 386) and which became burdensome to him as time elapsed and political conditions changed. In particular, Hamilton's betrayal (as he felt) of President John Adams disheartened Webster and had much to do with his return to his first love, linguistic scholarship. In 1803 he succeeded in disposing of his newspapers and gave up journalism for good. Thenceforth he devoted himself wholeheartedly to what was to prove his chief title to fame, his work as a lexicographer.

A survey of Webster's more important writings up to this turning-point in his life brings out in striking fashion the versatility and productivity of the man. His schoolbooks, such as the three volumes of the Institute with their revisions, The Little Reader's Assistant, and the series called Elements of Useful Knowledge, gave Webster the income which enabled him to retire from journalism and devote himself to study. A popular volume of informal essays was The Prompter (1791). The Dissertations, mentioned above, were likewise designed for popular reading, but proved a commercial failure. In the economic field, various treatises by Webster moved Lecky to pronounce him "one of the best of the early economists of America" (A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 1882, III, 3II). In the medical field Webster wrote, among other things, A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases (2 volumes, 1799), the standard work on the subject in its day. Of the many political writings, the "Curtius" articles (1795) on the Jay Treaty, the "Aristides" letter to Hamilton (1800), and the Ten Letters to Dr. Joseph Priestley (1800) may be mentioned. Webster's edition of John Winthrop's Journal (1790) is of special interest as a pioneer work in learned historical publication, while his Experiments Respecting Dew (begun in 1790, though not printed until 1809) hold an honorable place among the pioneer American essays in physical science. It has also justly been noted that Webster's activities as statistician and climatologist foreshadowed the work of the census and weather bureaus of later times. These many-sided labors proved an admirable preparation for lexicography, in which the investigator must take all knowledge for his province.

The first fruit of Webster's lexicographical activities was his small work, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806). In its compilation Webster learned the technique of lexicography and tried out ideas of his own, recording, for example, some 5000 words not included in previous dictionaries. Webster however thought of his first dictionary as only preparatory to a larger work, a work upon which he labored steadily for nearly twenty years. Finished in 1825, it came out in two quarto volumes in 1828 under the title, An American Dictionary of the English Language, probably the most ambitious publication ever undertaken, up to that time, upon American soil. Financially it proved a disappointment (though not a failure), but its merits at once gave it first place among English dictionaries. It marks, indeed, a definite advance in the science of lexicography. Webster established once for all the practice, already begun in his fir st dictionary, of freely recording non-literary words, even though he did not push his principles to their logical conclusion and record all words whatsoever, as present practice inclines more and more to do. He justly based his definitions upon the usage of American as well as British writers and speakers, and did not hesitate to record "Americanisms" which he deemed worthy. In defining a word, he proceeded from what he considered its original or primary meaning, and so far as possible derived the other meanings from the primary. In so doing he made many mistakes, because of the deficiencies of current linguistic knowledge, and in some respects he was not abreast with the times, being out of touch, for example, with the comparative and historical linguistic school of his contemporaries Rask, Grimm, and Bopp, but his principles of definition were sound, and the definitions themselves in many cases cannot be bettered today, for Webster was a born definer as well as a man of encyclopedic knowledge. The great weakness of the dictionary lies in its etymologies, which were largely out-of-date before the work came from the press. As a whole, Webster's American Dictionary was a scholarly achievement of the first order, richly deserving of its great reputation at home and abroad. His chief contemporary rival in the United States was Joseph Emerson Worcester [q.v.], whom he charged with plagiarism, but most of the "War of the Dictionaries" occurred after his own death.

In 1812, Webster removed from New Haven to Amherst, Massachusetts, where he felt he could live more cheaply and with fewer distractions from his scholarly labors. While at Amherst he became interested in local educational needs and helped to found Amherst College. In 1822, however, he returned to New Haven, where he continued to live the rest of his life, except for a year (1824-25) spent in lexicographical work in France and England, and a winter (1830-31) spent in Washington in successful agitation for a revision of the copyright law. His publications during what may be termed his lexicographical period include, besides five dictionaries with abridgments and revisions, a Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language (1807), a revision of the Authorized Version of the English Bible (1833), and various essays and addresses. Webster in early life was something of a freethinker, but in 1808 he became a convert to Calvinistic orthodoxy, and thereafter remained a devout Congregationalist.

[H. E. Scudder, Noah Webster (1881); Emily E. F. Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, ed. by Emily E. F. Skeel (2 volumes, 1912), including list of writings, volume II, 523-40, and list of " authorities cited"; H. R. Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America (1936); C.-E. A. Winslow, "The Epidemiology of Noah Webster," Transaction Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, January 1934; F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume IV (1907); W. H. and M. R. Webster, History and Genealogy of the Governor John Webster Family (1915); D. S. Durrie, Steele Family (1859); J. E. Greenleaf, Genealogy of the Greenleaf Family (1896); obituary in New York Morning Express, May 3, 1843; public records; family letters.]

K. M.


WEED, Thurlow, 1797-1882, journalist, political leader opponent of slavery. 

(Sorin, 1971, p. 63; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 419-420; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 598-600; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 882). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 598-600:

WEED, THURLOW (November 15, 1797-November 22, 1882), politician and journalist, the eldest son of Joel and Mary (Ellis) Weed, was born in Greene County, New York, where his grandfather, formerly of Stamford, Connecticut, had settled with his family after the Revolution. Joel Weed, a hard-working but never prosperous farmer, sometimes in jail for debt, moved in 1799 to Catskill, where his son enjoyed a brief schooling. When he was eight years old Thurlow began to earn what he could by odd jobs at the blacksmith's, the printer's, and on Hudson River boats. In 1808 the family moved to Cortland County, and not long afterward to Onondaga, where young Weed was apprenticed to a printer. Several years in various printers' shops in central New York, broken by a few months' militia service in 1813, brought him little pecuniary gain but gave him an unrivalled education in local affairs. In 1817 he became foreman on the Albany Register, and tried his hand at writing news paragraphs and editorials in support of DeWitt Clinton's canal policy. On April 26, 1818, he married Catherine Ostrander of Cooperstown.

During the next four years Weed tried to publish Clintonian papers at Norwich and Manlius, and after both had failed he moved on, almost penniless, to Rochester. There he secured a position on the Rochester Telegraph, for which he wrote editorials advocating John Quincy Adams for president. Sent to Albany in 1824 to lobby for a bank charter, he promptly set about uniting the friends of Adams and Clay in a common opposition to William H. Crawford, the candidate of Martin Van Buren. He returned to Rochester with the charter, and also with the knowledge that his time and efforts had become essential to his party (Life, post, I, 107). Soon he was campaigning through the western counties in behalf of Adams for president and Clinton for governor of New York. Weed himself was elected to the Assembly. Fortune favored him in business as well as in politics, and in 1825 he was able to buy the Telegraph.

Throughout the anti-Masonic excitement that followed the disappearance of William Morgan [q.v.] in 1826, Weed was an active member of the local Morgan committee, and gave up the Telegraph to publish the Anti-Masonic Enquirer. As local political organizations were formed, Weed exerted himself to secure candidates who were "sound" on issues other than the Masonic. He held the "infected district" in line for Adams in 1828 and supported National Republicans locally. Leading Anti-Masons raised a fund to establish a paper at Albany, and employed Weed as editor; he was elected to the Assembly in 1829 to make his presence at the capital possible. On March 22, 1830 the first issue of the Albany Evening Journal appeared, Weed being reporter, proof-reader, and often compositor, as well as editor, legislator, and political manager. He remained officially an Anti-Mason through 1832, supporting William Wirt [q.v.], the party's presidential candidate, but, as before, saw that the nominees for state offices were National Republicans. Most Anti-Masons, he was convinced, were in sympathy with Clay's "American system," and were inevitably opposed to the dominant "Albany Regency," so closely linked, through Van Buren, to President Jackson. He himself ignored the Bank issue, believing it inexpedient to oppose so popular a movement against "moneyed aristocracy." Drilling his party through the unsuccessful campaigns of 1834 and 1836, he was ready for the opportunity offered by the panic and hard times, and helped create the victories that made William H. Seward [q.v.] governor in 1838 and Harrison president in 1840.

Weed was now generally regarded as the dictator of his party, and was charged with dominating Seward, to whom he was bound in closest personal friendship. His great influence, however, was exerted in the field of political management. Others formulated the principles and Weed secured the votes. Patronage he regarded as indispensable; he derived "great satisfaction ... in bringing-capable and good men into public service" (Life, post, I, 209), the good men being Whigs. Bribery and legislative favors were in his opinion legitimate party instruments, but he was above taking corrupt profits for himself. His paper was a party organ, providing usable facts and arguments, in terse paragraphs, to gain and hold Whigs to the true faith. He shared Seward's humanitarian views but never to the point of endangering the serious business of elections, and while he recognized Horace Greeley's power, he cast a dubious eye on his "isms," especially in the field of social reform. His own anti-slavery sentiments were sincere, but he was more desirous of getting anti-slavery men to accept Whig candidates than of committing the party openly to their cause; for the abolitionists who clamored for a party of their own he had nothing but scorn.

As the fruits of victory vanished with Tyler's accession to the presidency, followed by Seward's defeat in 1842, Weed lost heart, traveled abroad, and even talked of giving up the Evening Journal. The campaign of 1844 was not only unsuccessful but ominous of dissensions to come. Too astute to oppose the government in wartime, he directed his efforts to the future of the territories to be acquired, and supported the Wilmot Proviso. With equal astuteness, early in 1846 he recognized General Zachary Taylor's possibilities as a candidate for the presidency, and advised him not to commit himself on controversial questions. Taylor's election, with Fillmore as vice-president and Seward as senator, promised to establish Weed's power firmly, but with Taylor's death the outlook was changed. Fillmore accepted the compromise measures of 1850; Seward, backed by Weed, was their great opponent; and the Whig division was hopeless. Need, sure of his party's defeat in 1852, went abroad. Thoroughly anti-Nebraska in sentiment, he was slow to join the new Republican party in 1854 until Seward's reelection to the Senate was assured. He was opposed to Seward's being put forward by the Republicans as a candidate for the presidency in 1856, believing that his chances of election would be better in 1860. His presidential ambitions for Seward were doomed to disappointment, however; and no little of the feeling against Seward in 1860 was due to his long and close connection with Weed, who was highly unacceptable to former Democrats.

Weed was consulted by Lincoln, during the latter's campaign and after, and had considerable influence on appointments, though he was credited with more than he had. In 1861 he went, with Archbishop Hughes and Bishop Mcllvaine [qq.v.], on an unofficial mission to conciliate English and French opinion after the Trent affair. He was willing to accept the Crittenden compromise in 1861, and, distrustful of "ultra abolitionist" influences on Lincoln, would have preferred an untainted and active War Democrat as the Union candidate in 1864, but McClellan's acceptance of the Democratic platform kept Weed in the Republican lines. His influence in New York, badly shaken by Seward's failure in 1860, declined steadily as the Radicals gained strength after Lincoln's death. He had given up the Evening Journal and moved to New York City in 1863, where in 1867 he returned to journalism, becoming editor of the Commercial Advertiser. Failing health and sight soon compelled him to abandon editorial work, however. Retaining his deep interest in public affairs, he was a frequent contributor to the press on political subjects and was often consulted by political leaders. For some time he had been writing a desultory autobiography. In 1866 his Letters from Europe and the West Indies was published. After his death some of his articles on bimetallism were reprinted in The Silver Dollar of the United States and Its Relations to Bimetallism (1889).

He was tall and robust, rather awkward in appearance. His charm of manner, unruffled good-nature, and ready generosity drew into the circle of his friends even those political opponents who had suffered most from his vigorous attacks and rough wit. Seward wrote in early years that he had "had no idea that dictators were such amiable creatures" (Life, II, 63), and young Henry Adams, meeting Weed in London, won by "his faculty of irresistibly conquering confidence . .. followed him about ... much like a little clog." He was, thought Adams, "the model of political management and patient address," "a complete American education in himself" (The Education of Henry Adams, 1918, p. 146). He died of old age in his eighty-sixth year and was survived by three daughters, his wife and a son having died many years before.

[Weed's "Autobiography" was published by his daughter, Harriet A. Weed, as volume I of the Life of Thurlow Weed (1884); volume II is a "Memoir" by his grandson, T. W. Barnes. Other sources are: D. S. Alexander, A Polit. History of the State of New York, volumes I-III (1906-09); S. D. Brummer, Political History of New York State During . .. the Civil War (1911); Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (2 volumes, 1900); F. W. Seward, Autobiography of William H. Seward .. (1877) and Seward at Washington (2 volumes, 1891); F. H. Severance, "Millard Fillmore Papers," volume II, being Buffalo Historical Society Publications, volume XI (1907); Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (1868); Gideon Welles, Diary (3 volumes, 19II), and Lincoln and Seward (1874); Atlantic Monthly, September 1883, pp. 411-19; Magazine of American History, January 1888; New York Times, New York Tribune, and Albany Evening Journal, November 22, 23, 1882.]

H. C.B.


WEISS, John (June 28, 1818-March 9, 1879), Unitarian minister, author, openly opposed to negro slavery.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 615-616:

WEISS, JOHN (June 28, 1818-March 9, 1879), Unitarian minister, author, was born in Boston, the son of John and Mary (Galloupe) Weiss. His grandfather, also a John Weiss, was a German Jew who had come to the United States as a political refugee and kept a tavern in Germantown, Pennsylvania. His father was a barber. Weiss lived his boyhood in Worcester, Massachusetts, attended the public schools and Framingham Academy, and graduated in 1837 from Harvard College. At college he did not stand high in the esteem of the faculty, and was once rusticated, but his temperament- an explosive compound of wit, poetry, and religious idealism-was relished by his classmates. After teaching for a few years, he enrolled in 1840 at the Harvard Divinity School and attended, 1842-43, the University of Heidelberg. He was pastor of the Unitarian Church, Watertown, Massachusetts, where he succeeded Convers Francis, from October 25, 1843, to October 3, 1845, from March 23, 1846, to December 6, 1847, and from June 1862 to June 1869; in the second interval, he was pastor of the First Congregational Society, New Bedford, December 29, 1847, to January 24, 1859. On April 9, 1844, he married Sarah Fiske Jennison of Worcester, who with three sons and two daughters survived him. Impetuous in his enthusiasm, zealous for liberty-which meant open opposition to negro slavery among other things -unpredictably witty, eloquent, and satirical in his sermons, he dazzled, bewildered, and ultimately exasperated his pewholders at Watertown and New Bedford. Unable to find a congenial parish, he was compelled at various times to live on the insecure returns from writing, lecturing, and occasional preaching. He contributed articles, reviews, and poems to several magazines, especially to the Christian Examiner, the Atlantic Monthly, Old and New, and the Galaxy, and was one of the chief supports of Sidney H. Morse's Radical. His most substantial achievement was his Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker (1863), which began as a short memoir, undertaken at the suggestion of Joseph Lyman, Parker's literary executor, and grew into a solid, two-volume documentary life of enduring worth. In writing it, however, Weiss incurred the displeasure of Mrs. Parker and of Franklin B. Sanborn, who claimed that Parker had appointed him his biographer. Weiss helped to introduce German literature to New England readers with The Asthetic Letters, Essays, and the Philosophical Letters of Schiller, Translated with an Introduction (1845) and Goethe's West Easterly Divan, Translated with Introduction and Notes (1877). His two original books are American Religion (1871) and Wit, Humor, and Shakespeare: Twelve Essays (1876), the fullest exhibitions of his high-minded, intensely subjective, somewhat disjointed thought. His conversation, like his sermons and lectures, was a cascade of wit, epigram, and poetic images. He was greatly admired by several of the leaders of his denomination, whose memoirs depict him as a religious genius. He was one of the founders in 1867 of the Free Religious Association. During the last five or six years of his life he lived in Boston, where he died.

[Henry Williams, Memorials of the Class of I837 of Harvard University (1887); Boston Daily Advertiser, March 10, 1879; Christian Register, March 29, 1 879; J. H. Allen, "A Memory of John Weiss," Unitarian Review, May 1888; C. A. Bartol, "John Weiss," Ibid., April 1879, and "The Genius of Weiss," Principles and Portraits (1880); O. B. Frothingham, "John Weiss," Unitarian Re11., May 1888, reprinted in Recollections and Impressions (1891); Mrs. J. T. Sargent, Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club (1880); Catalog of the Private Library of the Late John Weiss, to be Sold by Auction (Boston, 1879); C. L. F. Gohdes, The Periodicals of Transcendentalism (1931); M. J. Savage, sketch in S. A. Eliot, ed., Heralds of a Liberal Faith, volume III (1910); F. B. Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years (1909).]

G. H. G.


WEITZEL, Godfrey (November 1, 1835-March 19, 1884), soldier, engineer, commander of U. S. Colored Troops.  He had much experience in command of colored troops. When first assigned to this duty, in 1862, he vigorously opposed the idea of arming slaves, and accepted the command under strong protests; but he was successful with these troops, and in 1864 and 1865 all the infantry regiments of his XXV Corps were colored. 

(G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register Officers and Graduates U. S. Military Academy (3rd ed., 1891), volume II; 15th Annual Reunion, Association Graduates U.S. Military Academy (1884); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 616-617:

WEITZEL, GODFREY (November 1, 1835-March 19, 1884), soldier, engineer, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Louis and Susan Weitzel, recent arrivals from the Bavarian Palatinate. After preparatory education in the loc al schools, he entered the United States Military Academy in 1851, graduated July 1, 1855, as second in a class of thirty-four, and was commissioned brevet second lieutenant of engineers. He became second lieutenant July 27, 1856, and first lieutenant, July 1, 1860.

His first duty was on the fortifications of New Orleans, 1855-59. Subsequently, until January 1861, he was assistant professor of engineering at the Military Academy. During this period his wife died as the result of burns sustained when her dress caught fire. Early in 1861 Weitzel was assigned to the engineer company on duty in Washington, and with this company he took part in the expedition to Pensacola, Florida (April 19-September 17, 1861), which saved Fort Pickens to the Union. In the fall of the same year he was chief engineer of the fortifications of Cincinnati, then returned to Washington in command of an engineer company. On account of his familiarity with the defenses of New Orleans, in the spring of 1862 he was made chief engineer of General Butler's force, which cooperated with Admiral Farragut in the operations against that place. After the surrender, April 30, he served as assistant military commandant of the city. Made brigadier-general of volunteers on August 29, 1862, he was thereafter continuously engaged in field operations in Louisiana until December 1863. He commanded a brigade and provisional division in the siege of Port Hudson, and in the assaults of May 27 and June 14, 1863. During this period he became captain in the regular engineer corps, and received the brevets of major and lieutenant-colonel for gallantry at Thibodeaux and Port Hudson.

In May 1864 he assumed command of the Second Division, XVIII Army Corps, in Butler's Army of the James, but was soon detached to become chief engineer of that army. In this capacity he supervised the construction of the defenses of Bermuda Hundred. In August he became brevet major-general of volunteers, and in September returned to troop duty, commanding first the XVIII and later the XXV Army Corps. He received the brevet rank of colonel in the regular service September 29, 1864, for gallantry at the capture of Fort Harrison, Virginia, and on November 17, 1864, was promoted major-general of volunteers. In December he was second in command to Butler in the first expedition again st Fort Fisher, and exercised the active command of the troops se nt ashore. During the final operations against Richmond his command occupied the line between the James and the Appomattox rivers, and took possession of the city upon its evacuation, April 3, 1865. For service in this campaign he received the brevets of brigadier-general and major-general in the regular army. General Butler relied greatly upon him, and General Grant spoke of him as a thoroughly competent corps commander (John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant, 1879, II, 304). He had much experience in command of colored troops. When first assigned to this duty, in 1862, he vigorously opposed the idea of arming slaves, and accepted the command under strong protests; but he was successful with these troops, and in 1864 and 1865 all the infantry regiments of his XXV Corps were colored.

After Lee's surrender, in the concentration of troops in Texas incident to the Maximilian episode, Weitzel commanded the Rio Grande district; but the emergency there having been terminated, he was mustered out of the volunteer service March 1, 1866, and returned to duty with the Corps of Engineers, in which he became a major, August 8, 1866. Thereafter until his death he was engaged in the constructive work of his corps, notably in river and harbor improvement. Of the numerous projects with which he was connected, the most important were the ship canals at the falls of the Ohio and at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, and the lighthouse at Stannard's Rock in Lake Superior. Taking over the first of these enterprises in 1867 after much work had been done, he carried it to completion in 1873. At Sault Sainte Marie he supervised the building of what was at the time the largest lock in the world-515 feet long and eighty wide, with a lift of eighteen feet. The lighthouse, with a tower rising 101 feet above the water, involved the construction below water level of a solid concrete foundation, sixty-two feet in diameter, on top of a rock situated thirty miles from shore. In connection with his various enterprises, Weitzel made and published translations of several German works dealing with hydraulic engineering and canal construction.

He was made a lieutenant-colonel June 23, 1882, and shortly afterward, because of failing health, was transferred from the Great Lakes to less arduous duty at Philadelphia, where he died in his forty-ninth year. He was married, shortly before the close of the Civil War, to Louisa Bogen of Cincinnati, and was survived by his wife and a daughter.

[G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register Officers and Graduates U. S. Military Academy (3rd ed., 1891), volume II; 15th Annual Reunion, Association Graduates U.S. Military Academy (1884); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); J. F. Brennan, A Biographical Cyclopedia and Portrait Gallery ... of Ohio (1879); Cincinnati Past and Present (1872); The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio of the Nineteenth Century (1876); The Biographical Cyclopedia and Portrait Gallery ... of Ohio, volume III (1884); Charles Moore, The Saint Marys Falls Canal (1907); Army and Navy Journal, March 22, 1884; Philadelphia Press, March 20, 1884.]

O. L. S., Jr.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.