chance he might have had in that year of receiving the presidential nomination. In June 1843, on the occasion of the completion of the Bunker Hill monument, Webster delivered another classic oration. In February 1844 he argued the Girard Will Case before the United States Supreme Court. Stephen Girard (q.v.) had devised and bequeathed the residue of his estate for the establishment and maintenance of Girard College, in which no minister of the Gospel of any sect or denomination whatever should be admitted. The suit was brought to break the will, and Webster, for the plaintiffs, after stating that the devise could stand only on condition that it was a charity, argued that it was not a charity because no teaching was such except Christian teaching. He made an eloquent plea for Christianity, but his case was weak in law, and the court sustained the will.
Webster was returned to the Senate in 1845. He opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, and was, as before, the recognized spokesman of his party. At the beginning of the quarrel of the North and the South over the organization of the territory acquired from Mexico, Calhoun contended that the Constitution of the United States extended over this territory and carried slavery with it, but Webster denied this on the ground that the territory was the property of, not part of, the United States, and Webster's view prevailed. The whole matter had, therefore, to be adjusted by Congress, and as the growing intensity of the quarrel revealed the depth of the chasm between the sections, Clay came forward with the famous compromise of 1850, and Webster's last great speech—“The Constitution and the Union,” or as it is more commonly known “The Seventh of March Speech”—was in support of this Compromise. It was a noble effort to secure a lasting settlement of the slavery question, but he was bitterly denounced throughout the north as a renegade. In July 1850 Webster again became secretary of state, in the cabinet of President Fillmore. Perhaps the most important act of his second term was obtaining the release of Kossuth and other Hungarian refugees who had fled to Turkey, and whose surrender had been demanded by the Austrian government. He died at his home in Marshfield, Massachusetts, on the 24th of October 1852. Webster was twice married—first in 1808 to Grace, daughter of Rev. Elijah Fletcher, a New Hampshire clergyman. She died in 1828, leaving two sons, Daniel Fletcher, killed in the second battle of Bull Run, and Edward, a major in the United States army, who died while serving in the Mexican War, and a daughter Julia, who married Samuel Appleton. Webster's second wife was Caroline Le Roy, daughter of Jacob Le Roy, a New York merchant. He was married to her in 1829 and she survived him.
The universal expression of respect and admiration at the time of Webster's death showed that he had retained the confidence of his people. Never, since the death of Washington, had there been in the United States such a universal expression of public sorrow and bereavement. It is not too much to say that the conviction of the justice of their cause that carried the northern states successfully through the Civil War was largely due to the arguments of Webster. He had convinced the majority of the people that the government created by the Constitution was not a league or confederacy, but a Union, and had all the powers necessary to its maintenance and preservation. He had convinced the Supreme Court, and established the principle in American jurisprudence, that whenever a power is granted by a Constitution, everything that is fairly and reasonably involved in the exercise of that power is granted also. He established the freedom of the instrumentalities of the national government from adverse legislation by the states; freedom of commerce between the different states; the right of Congress to regulate the entire passenger traffic through and from the United States, and the sacredness of public franchises from legislative assault. The establishment of these principles was essential to the integrity and permanence of the American Union.
Bibliography.—The Works of Daniel Webster (6 vols., Boston, 1851) contain a biographical memoir by Edward Everett; G. T. Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster (2 vols., New York, 1870) is the most complete biography, but it is written wholly from an admirer's point of view. See also J. W. Mclntyre (ed.), Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (18 vols., Boston, 1903); Fletcher Webster (ed.), Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence (2 vols., Boston, 1857); H. C. Lodge, Daniel Webster (Boston, 1899); J. B. McMaster, Daniel Webster (New York, 1902); E. P. Wheeler, Daniel Webster, the Expounder of the Constitution (New York, 1905); S. W. McCall, Daniel Webster (Boston, 1902); and Norman Hapgood, Daniel Webster (Boston 1899). (E. P. W.; X.)
WEBSTER, JOHN (fl. 1602–1624), English dramatist, was a writer for the stage in the year 1602, when he had a share in three plays noted by Philip Henslow, and he published in 1624 the city pageant for that year, “invented and written by John Webster, merchant-tailor.” In the same year a tragedy by Ford and Webster, A late Murther of the Sonn upon the Mother, was licensed for the stage; it is one of the n timber less treasures now lost to us through the carelessness of genius or the malignity of chance. Beyond the period included between these two dates there are no traces to be found of his existence; nor is anything known of it with any certainty during that period, except that seven plays appeared with his name on the title page, three of them only the work of his unassisted hand. He was the author of certain additions to Marston’s tragi-comedy of The Malcontent (1604); these probably do not extend beyond the induction, a curious and vivacious prelude to a powerful and irregular work of somewhat morbid and sardonic genius. Three years later, in 1607, two comedies and a tragedy, “written by Thomas Dekker and John Webster,” were given to the press. The comedies are lively and humorous, full of movement and incident; but the beautiful interlude of poetry which distinguishes the second scene of the fourth act of Westward Ho! is unmistakably and unquestionably the work of Dekker; while the companion comedy of Northward Ho! is composed throughout of homespun and coarse-grained prose. The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt is apparently a most awkward and injurious abridgment of an historical play in two parts on a pathetic but undramatic subject, the fate of Lady Jane Grey. In this lost play of Lady Jane (noted by Henslow in 1602) Heywood, Dekker, Chettle and Smith had also taken part; so that even in its original form it can hardly have been other than a rough piece of patchwork. There are some touches of simple eloquence and rude dramatic ability in the mangled and corrupt residue which is all that survives of it; but on the whole this "history" is crude, meagre, and unimpressive. In 1612 John Webster stood revealed to the then somewhat narrow world of readers as a tragic poet and dramatist of the very foremost rank in the very highest class. The White Devil, also known as Vittoria Corombona,[1] is a tragedy based on events then comparatively recent — on a chronicle of crime and retribution in which the leading circumstances were altered and adapted with the most delicate art and the most consummate judgment from the incompleteness of in composite reality to the requisites of the stage of Shakespeare. By him alone among English poets have the finest scenes and passages of this tragedy been ever surpassed or equalled in the crowning qualities of tragic or dramatic poetry— in pathos and passion, in subtlety and strength, in harmonious variety of art and infallible fidelity to nature. Eleven years had elapsed when the twin masterpiece of its author—if not indeed a still greater or more absolute masterpiece— was published by the poet who had given it to the stage seven years before. The Duchess of Malfy[2] (an Anglicized version of Amalfi, corresponding to such designations as Florence, Venice and Naples) was probably brought on the stage about the time of the death of Shakespeare; it was first printed in the memorable year which witnessed the first publication of his collected plays. This tragedy stands out among its compeers as one of the imperishable and ineradicable landmarks of literature. All the great qualities apparent in The White Devil reappear in The Duchess of Malfy, combined with a yet more perfect execution, and utilized with a yet more consummate
- ↑ The White Devil; or, The Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, with the Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona, the famous Venetian Curtizan (1612). Other editions, with varying title-pages, 1631, 1665, 1672.
- ↑ The Dutchess of Malfey, A Tragedy. As it was approvedly well acted at Blackfriers . . . (1623). The plot is taken from a novel by Bandello, and is also the subject of a tragedy by Lope de Vega, El Mayor Domo de la duquessa d’Amalfi.
