vigor and variety. The Breakfast-Table series as a whole is almost unique; it is more sparkling than the best of Addison or Goldsmith, and it stands so far above Johnson's Rambler and Idler as to make comparison absurd. Only in the best conversational passages of Boswell's Johnson do we find a comparable body of good talk on such an endless variety of subjects. BIBLIOGRAPHY EDITIONS. The Riverside Edition of Holmes's collected works, Boston, 1891, 14 vols., is the best readily available. For the poetry, the most useful one volume edition is the Cambridge, ed. Horace Scudder, Boston, 1895. BIOGRAPHIES. The standard biography is J. T. Morse's The Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston, 1896, 2 vols. CRITICAL ARTICLES. Edmund Gosse's An English View of the Autocrat, in The Critic, December 1, 1894, and Sir Leslie Stephen's Oliver Wendell Holmes, in The National Review, July, 1896, are interesting English comments. Edward Everett Hale's Personal Recollections of Oliver Wendell Holmes, in The Arena, December, 1895, is an intimate picturing of Holmes's personality. W. D. Howells Oliver Wendell Holmes, first published in Harper's Monthly for December, 1896, is as good an essay on Holmes as has yet appeared. NOTES THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 691. Holmes's most famous work of any considerable length, The Autocrat, was first published in the Atlantic during 1857 and 1858. As was quite appropriate in what purported to be the record of a long series of conversations, held around a boarding-house table, the first number opened with the phrase, "I was just going to say, when I was interrupted." The conversation thus begun continued, with longer or shorter interruptions, through four series of papers, and ended only with Over the Teacups in 1888. 692. a. 27. C'est le dernier pas. It is the last step which comes hardest. 693. b. 26. Hunc lapidem. His mourning comrades erected this stone. b. 46. Arcus senilis. A whitish ring in the eye, caused by old age. 694. b. 29. Μήνιν ἄειδε Θεά. The opening words of the Iliad: "Sing, O Goddess, the wrath [of Achilles]." b. 45. McFingal. For selections from this once-popular piece of satire by John Trumbull, see pages 183 ff., above. b. 52. The spacious firmament on high. The opening lines of Addison's hymn. OLD IRONSIDES 697. In September, 1830, when Holmes read of the proposal to break up the famous frigate Constitution, popularly known as "Old Ironsides," he wrote this almost impromptu outburst, which appeared first in the Boston Advertiser, and was at once so widely reprinted that it brought him an immediate fame. THE LAST LEAF First published in 1831. The subject of The Last Leaf was Major Thomas Melville, one of the "Indians" of the "Boston Tea Party." When Holmes saw him he was an old man, but still a picturesque figure on the streets of Boston. The poet retained his youthful fondness for the poem, and allowed it to be reprinted in his own extreme old age, saying, "I have lasted long enough to serve as an illustration of my own poem." NON-RESISTANCE 699. Written in 1852, but withheld from publication until 1862. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS First published in The Autocrat. 700. 26. Than ever Triton blew. The adaptation of the line from Wordsworth's sonnet, The World is too Much With Us, is obvious. THE LIVING TEMPLE First published in The Autocrat. The poem has been called "the anatomist's hymn." THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE Another of the poems woven into The Autocrat. It is probable that Holmes intended the poem to be considered as an allegory of the breakdown of Calvinism in New England. CONTENTMENT 702. Also from The Autocrat. 21. Be Plenipo. Be Minister to England, or, in diplomatic parlance, "Minister Plenipotentiary." THE BOYS 703. Written for the thirtieth reunion of Holmes's class (1829) at Harvard, a class which contained many persons of distinction. Those named are identified in the Cambridge Edition of Holmes's poems, p. 340. A HYMN OF TRUST 704. From The Professor at the Breakfast Table, 1859. JOHN C. CALHOUN (1782-1850) houn's position in American history and ture is not difficult to state: among the persons who between 1830 and 1850 sed the centralization of power in the al government, and attempted to prethe attributes of sovereignty to the inal states which had formed the Union, un was probably the most influential. Webster was to the North, with its ng faith in a Union "one and inseparaCalhoun was to the South, where the s Rights theory became increasingly ar as the breach between the two secsteadily widened. The two men are nly figures in American literature by of their ability to write political prose of a masterly sort, but, taken together, stand in much the same relation to the constitutional questions of 1850 that Hamilton and Jefferson had occupied half a century before. Their significance in the chronicle of American civilization is consequently far greater than the space allotted to them in this volume would indicate. Calhoun was born in South Carolina, in March, 1782. Twenty-two years later he graduated with high honors from Yale. In 1807 he was admitted to the South Carolina Bar. Twice he served in the legislature of his state, and from 1811 to 1817 was a member of the House of Representatives. As the most influential member of the important committee on foreign affairs he played a large part in inducing Congress, in 1812, to declare war against Great Britain. During the eight years of Monroe's administration (1817-1825) he was Secretary of War, and from 1825 to 1832 was Vice-President of the United States. It was during this period of his life that he became an eager supporter of the State's Rights theory. In this connection it is interesting to note that it was not the slavery question, but solely the protective tariff fostered by the North, which occasioned in 1828 his first significant political writing, the so-called "South Carolina Exposition." In this he asserted that if the Federal government exercised any powers which infringed upon the sovereignty of an individual state, that state had the inherent right of nullifying the act of the federal power. This is the thesis upon which his subsequent political work was to rest. In 1833, after having resigned the Vice-Presidency, he was elected Senator from South Carolina. His first debate concerned the 1832 nullification bill, and his chief opponent was Daniel Webster. From that time until his death in 1850, less than a month after his last great speech in opposition to Webster, he was the foremost champion of Southern rights, protesting against what he considered the unconstitutional encroachment of the North. By 1850 the tariff was no longer of chief consequence; the one question of the hour was slavery. But whether discussing the nullification bill in 1832, or opposing Clay's compromise in 1850, his position was the same: the United States, he held, was but a voluntary association of sovereign_states. Any state could nullify an act of the Federal Congress, and as an ultimate resort-could withdraw from the Union. That Calhoun's theory was destined to fall, when tested on the battlefields of the Civil War, is not necessarily to be taken as a proof that it was either logically or historically invalid. At the time of his "Fourth of March speech"-here reprinted-Calhoun was seriously ill. Three days later he again rose from a sick-bed to be present during Webster's reply. On the thirty-first of the same month he died, honored both in the North and in the South for his ability and unquestioned sincerity. Interestingly enough, the chief eulogy on Calhoun was pronounced in the Senate chamber by Webster himself. BIBLIOGRAPHY The Works of John C. Calhoun, N. Y. 1853-1855, 6 vols., is a readily accessible edition of Calhoun's writings. The Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1899, vol. 2, contains several hundred of his letters. Among many biographies two should be mentioned: H. von Holst's John C. Calhoun, Boston, 1882 and 1899 (American Statesmen Series), and W. M. Meigs's The Life of John Caldwell Calhoun, N. Y. 1917, 2 vols. The latter is the best treatment of Calhoun. NOTES SPEECH ON THE SLAVERY QUESTION 709. On March 4, 1850, Calhoun was too ill to stand the strain of speaking. He was in his seat in the Senate chamber, but his address was read for him by Senator Mason of Virginia. As regards the question immediately before the Senate at the time, Calhoun's contention proved correct. The Compromise of 1850 failed, as Calhoun, in this speech, foretold it would fail. Webster and Clay supported it because they believed it would save the Union. It did not. It merely postponed the already inevitable trial by battle. (Curiously enough, no one of the three statesmen most intimately connected with it, lived to see it fail.) This address of Calhoun's however, barely touches upon the Compromise. It is rather a masterly review of the entire slavery question, and of the events which had brought about the situation that existed in 1850. 711. b. 53. Its effect was to exclude the South. I.e., to exclude slavery. 712. a. 5. The Missouri Compromise. The Compromise of 1820. 717. a. 16. Methodist Episcopal Church. Neither the Methodist nor the Baptist 719. a. 24. The plan proposed by the Senator from Kentucky. Henry Clay (1777-1852) was the chief sponsor of what has come to be called the Compromise of 1850. 720. b. 44. California will become the test question. The bill to admit California to the Union with a free-soil constitution finally passed on September 7, 1850, six months after the Webster-Calhoun debate. 721. a. 11. To arrest it. To check the antislavery agitation. DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852) Webster is entitled to representation in any collection of American literature. He belonged, to be sure, to the "old school" of oratory; his rhetoric is more Ciceronian than that of the twentieth century; his periods are at times too long and involved to appeal to readers fed on the "pep" and "punch" of modern journalism; above all, his arguments are too full of facts to allure a public accustomed to draw its information from headlines and tabloid summaries. But when all allowances have been made, the fact remains that he could speak in a manner which no other American has ever been able to equal, and could impart to his best work a quality of style which puts it definitely in the class with the work of Burke, of Cicero, and of Demosthenes. His abilities were recognized-and honored -during his life-time. When Webster was in England in 1839 he met Carlyle, and Carlyle thus described him in a letter to Emerson: "Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notablest of all your Notabilities, Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent specimen; you might say to all the world, This is your Yankee Englishman; such Limbs we make in Yankee land! As a Logicfencer, Advocate, or Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:-I have not traced as much of silent Bersirkir-rage, that I remember of, in any other man." At the time this letter was written, Webster was fifty-seven years old, and was recognized at home and abroad as America's foremost orator, and as the ablest expounder of that theory of government which Hamilton had sponsored half a century before, but which Webster's phrase, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," had seemed to make peculiarly his own. As has often been said, Webster believed that the United States is rather than are a nation; that nullification and secession were possibilities that should not even be considered; and that the preservation of the Union was of more significance than the preservation or destruction-of any institution or local interest. This theory, that the agreement between the states "to form a more perfect union" was a contract which could not be broken, was the theory which Calhoun, among others, opposed, and which was to be a matter of debate until the argument was ended by the outcome of the Civil War. But in the mind of Webster there was never any doubt. He lost no chance to impress his views upon the minds of his countrymen, and by his powerful and repeated iteration of his ideas he did much to make possible the ultimate triumph of the Union cause. It is interesting to note that at the very beginning of his career Webster had taken the position which he was to maintain till his death. A New Hampshire lad, born in 1782, receiving his early schooling at Philips Academy, Exeter, he naturally attended Dartmouth College, the chief educational institution of his native state. At the close of his junior year he delivered the Fourth of July oration on the college campus, and by implication at least committed himself to the Hamiltonian theory of a strong central government. When on March 7, 1850, he made his last great speech in the Senate, he had gained greatly in power, but his fundamental position was what it had been half a century before. Interestingly enough, Webster's first important case before the Supreme Court of the United States involved the same question of the inviolability of contracts, and the supremacy of the Federal government over a single state. He had been a member of the Bar since 1805, and after ten years of practice was chosen one of three attorneys to represent his college in a suit which in 1817 reached the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. That court decided that certain acts of the state legislature, which had in effect repealed the college charter, were valid. An appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, where Webster made the chief argument. The decision, written by Chief Justice Marshall, reversed the New Hampshire court, on the ground that the acts of the state legislature constituted a violation of a contract. Webster had thus assisted in establishing a precedent which has been of value to more than one American educational institution, at the same time that he was preparing for the greater debates with Hayne and Calhoun on the contractual nature of the Constitution, and on the right of the Federal government to over-ride the act of a state legislature. Despite his early successes as a lawyer, Webster found his life work in politics. He first entered Congress in 1813, as Representative from New Hampshire. In 1827 he was elected Senator from Massachusetts. Except for the years 1841-45, when he was Secretary of State, he remained till July of 1850 in the Senate, where he fought his greatest battles and won his chief honors. In the debates with Hayne in 1830 and 1831 concerning nullification, and again in 1850 when Calhoun was opposing Clay's compromise measure, Webster announced his Unionist doctrines with such force and eloquence that the speeches made on these occasions have become classics of the world's oratory. Webster's claim to distinction, then, appears to be three-fold: he was the greatest orator of an age which set great store by public eloquence; he was a lawyer of unusual ability; he was the chief expounder of that constitutional theory which time has established as the only tenable foundation for the United States government. His death on October 24, 1852, deprived the Unionist cause of its foremost leader, albeit his influence can be traced in the later work of Lincoln, andindirectly but none the less surely-in the response of the North when the argument over "State's rights" passed from the Senate chamber to the fields of Antietam and Gettysburg. BIBLIOGRAPHY Webster's work is available in extenso, in The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, National Edition, Boston, 1903, 18 vols. The first volume contains an adequate biographical memoir. Either Henry C. Lodge's Daniel Webster, Boston, 1883 and 1899 (American Statesman Series), or Frederick A. Ogg's Daniel Webster, Philadelphia, 1914, will serve as a starting point for further study. NOTES THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION 721. The speech was Webster's reply to Calhoun's speech of March 4, and was delivered on March 7, 1850. To Webster's anti-slavery constituents in Massachusetts it seemed to indicate that he had gone too far in his willingness to compromise with slavery. The reader of today, however, realizes that Webster's position in 1850 was approximately that of Lincoln at the time of his "open letter" to Horace Greeley (p. 787, above). The preservation of the Union was to him of more importance than either the preservation or destruction of slavery. Whittier's Ichabod (p. 666, above) indicates the feeling which the address aroused among the more outspoken opponents of slavery. It should be remembered, however, that Whittier's bitterness passed with the years, and that he later made amends for Ichabod by publishing The Lost Occasion. 723. a. 13. It was prosecuted for the . . . acquisition of territory. In his first speech as Representative from Illinois, Lincoln took a similar position. 724. b. 30. Senator from South Carolina. Calhoun. 726. a. 11. There was then no diversity of opinion. Compare Lincoln's argument throughout the first part of the Cooper Union address, above, p. 767. 727. b. 36. 730. a. 16. An honorable member. Calhoun. There is not at this moment, etc. Many of Webster's constituents objected to this statement that slavery was established by an "irrepealable law." 731. b. 54. The Wilmot Proviso. A proviso, moved in the House of Representatives by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, on August 4, 1846, and adopted by the House as an amendment to the bill appropriating a sum of money to be used in negotiating peace with Mexico, to the effect that slavery should never exist in any part of the territory ceded by Mexico. The Senate twice rejected the proviso, which never became law. 732. b. 29. The Greek Kalends. A famous if somewhat shop-worn classical joke. There were no Kalends in the Greek calendar; hence the expression "To the Greek Kalends" means forever. 736. b. 16. The South.. is right. Another statement objectionable to many at the North. 737. a. 10. A bill on the subject. The "Fugitive Slave Law," adopted as part of the Compromise of 1850. Webster's announcement that he would support it gave great offense to many of his friends in Massachusetts. 742. b. 49. Now, the broad shield. Quoted from the concluding section of Book XVIII of Pope's translation of the Iliad. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896) Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811, of an old and distinguished New England family. In 1832 her father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was elected President of the newly established Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, and when he moved west, his daughter Harriet naturally accompanied him. In Cincinnati she first came in direct personal contact with slavery, for with only the Ohio river separating the slave state of Kentucky from the free soil of Ohio, it was inevitable that she should see for herself certain phases of "the institution" which in Connecticut she had only read of. The Seminary buildings soon became a station on the "Underground Railroad"; Harriet herself gave aid and shelter to many a runaway negro-and apparently she remembered the stories they told her. Her marriage to Calvin Stowe took place in 1836. He was a widower with several children; more were born to his second wife; and by 1850, when he was called to the Professorship of Greek in Bowdoin College, Mrs. Stowe was worn with the manifold obligations which life had forced upon her. Before leaving Cincinnati for Brunswick, Maine, she had written stories and sketches, but had done nothing to attract the notice of more than a very limited circle of readers, or to indicate that she possessed any but the most ordinary sort of literary talent. The year 1850, however, in which the Stowes moved to Brunswick, was the year of the fugitive slave law, and even the quiet Maine village found itself aroused by the statute. It was as a protest against this law, and against the institution which it fostered, that Mrs. Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. The story was first published as a serial in The National Era, an anti-slavery journal of relatively little influence, in which it ran from June, 1851, to April, 1852. In this form it attracted but little attention. When it was published in complete form in the spring of 1852, however, it became almost over-night -not the most widely read piece of fiction of the year, or of the century, but perhaps of all time. It is doubtful whether any book save the Bible has enjoyed such a circulation. Translations have appeared in at least twenty-three languages, and in the dramatized form it is still (1927) a living document. To answer the charge that Uncle Tom's Cabin grossly misrepresented conditions in the South, Mrs. Stowe published in 1853 A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, giving the documentary evidence on which she had based the tale. In 1856 her novel Dred: a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, added another title to the list of anti-slavery publications, and for several years thereafter her pen was constantly busy. Never again, however, did she equal the success of Uncle Tom, and today all that she wrote save this one book is virtually forgotten. She died in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 1, 1896. Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of the books that can be understood only when seen against its own proper historical background. It is a book which belongs definitely to one particular period in the history of one peopleto the period when the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was about to be repealed, and when the Compromise of 1850, sponsored by Clay and Webster in a final attempt to save the Union, was offending both North and South because, while satisfying neither, it angered both. It belongs to an age of discontent and uncertainty, to an age when secession was in the air, and when disunion, no longer covertly threatened, was being openly and unqualifiedly advocated. But Uncle Tom's Cabin was more than a document in the history of the struggle against slavery. It is as surely part and parcel of the literature of what is usually called the Romantic Revolt as was Burns's Jolly Beggars or Shelley's Queen Mab. The humanitarian impulse which is in part exemplified by the French Revolution was not yet played out; and at the same time that Dickens, in England, was striking his passionate blows for justice and kindliness and decency, Mrs. Stowe was doing the same thing in America. Consequently, though the antislavery people of the North praised the book because of the fearless way in which it ex |