plause in the supreme court room. The first day I easily obtained a seat. With difficulty the next. But on the third I scarcely found standing room.
Mr. Webster won my lasting gratitude by his assistance in the passage of the river and harbor bill, in 1846. The bill had passed the house and had been referred to the committee on commerce, a majority of whom were of the "strict-construction" school, believing that congress could improve a natural harbor but could not make one. I went before the committee to defend the appropriation for a harbor at Little Fort, now called Waukegan. I found I had no friends there but Senator Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland. The committee recommended that the appropriation be struck out. Senator John A. Dix, of New York, led the opposition. He had been a graduate of West Point, was a good engineer, had brought the map of survey into the senate, and was having
GREAT INFLUENCE
against it. I was seated in the lobby directly behind Col. Thomas H. Benton, and Webster was upon his usual walk. He gave me a nod of recognition and passed on. Gen. Dix kept up his fire and I felt it. Our senators, Sidney Breese and James Semple, were both from the southern part of our state and had no personal knowledge of the merits of the case. The Indiana senators were similarly situated. Wisconsin had no senators. And the Michigan senators lived at Detroit, and they had only a general knowledge of Lake Michigan. As Webster was traveling to and fro past me, the thought occured to me that, as he was a "liberal constructionist," he was just the man to rectify all the damage that Gen. Dix was doing. But it was a small matter for so great a man. Besides, I knew that his colleague, Senator John Davis, was taking the side of Gen. Dix. As Webster would pass me I would resolve that the next time he would come I would speak to him. But my courage would forsake me when I reflected that he was a whig and I was a democrat. I wanted some excuse to speak to him. He had known my father. He was a son of New Hampshire and a graduate of the same college with myself. But my heart failed me; and yet it was all the while sighing: "Webster, Webster, do but speak to me." At length came his voice, in deep, sepulchral tone: "Wentworth, what is Dix making all this ado about?" Promptly the answer came: "Mr. Webster, since your trip around the lakes from Chicago, in 1837, we have had but few appropriations for old harbors, and none for new ones. This place is halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, and we want a harbor of refuge there." "I see the point, I see the point," said Webster, and at once went to his seat on the senate floor. When Gen. Dix had concluded, Mr. Webster observed that he could add nothing to the
CONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT
of the senator from New York, in favor of the appropriation. He thought he had satisfied all the senators that there was no harbor at the place, and so the house must have thought when it made the appropriation to construct one there. Upon what did the senator from New York found his doctrine that when God created the world, or even Lake Michigan, he left nothing for man to do? The curse pronounced upon our first parents for their transgression was in entire conflict with any such doctrine. He did not believe that the constitution of the United States was such a narrowly contracted instrument that it would not permit the construction of a harbor where the necessities of commerce required it. He then foreshadowed the growth of the West, its abundant products, its gigantic commerce, its numerous people. He started a steamer from Chicago laden to the guards with freight and passengers. He then de-
