There is still universal recognition of the mental capacity of
this foremost lawyer and foremost statesman of his time. He was
unsurpassed in his skill for direct, simple, limpid statement;
but he could rise at will to a high Roman stateliness of diction,
a splendid sonorousness of cadence. His greatest public
appearances were in the Dartmouth College Case before the Supreme
Court, the Plymouth, Bunker Hill, and Adams-Jefferson
commemorative orations, the Reply to Hayne, and the Seventh of
March speeches in the Senate. Though he exhibited in his private
life something of the prodigal recklessness of the pioneer, his
mental operations were conservative, constructive. His lifelong
antagonist Calhoun declared that "The United States are not a
nation." Webster, in opposition to this theory of a confederation
of states, devoted his superb talents to the demonstration of the
thesis that the United States "IS," not "are." Thus he came to be
known as the typical expounder of the Constitution. When he
reached, in 1850, the turning point of his career, his countrymen
knew by heart his personal and political history, the New
Hampshire boyhood and education, the rise to mastery at the New
England bar, the service in the House of Representatives and the
Senate and as Secretary of State.
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