And she named the child I-cha-bod, saying,
The glory is departed from Israel:
because the ark of God was taken....

                                 I. Samuel, iv, 21

Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains;
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.

All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!

Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!

                                       From Ichabod by John Greenleaf Whittier

Monday, January 3, 2000. Dr. Edward Fletcher arrived at the cardiac care area of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center at 10:35 a.m. His friend Tim Swift, the chief resident on duty, had called just 20 minutes earlier to ask him to consult on an unusual near-drowning case.

Ted Fletcher, well into his fifties, had the air of a man much younger. A gastroenterologist with research grants from the federal government to study the effects of nutrition on aging, he held positions on the faculty of Dartmouth Medical School and staff of Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. He had come to Dartmouth right after his divorce nearly twenty years ago, and now lived alone in an old farmhouse outside Hanover, not more than a ten minute drive from the DHMC campus in Lebanon.

Brought up in New Hampshire, Ted had gone to Harvard and Harvard Med, interned at Peter Bent in Boston, done his residency at Boston City, and then gone to Vietnam, still a subject he rarely talked about even with close friends. Friendly but necessary, his parting with Grace had nevertheless been difficult, especially since she kept custody of their two dear daughters, then in their early teens but now raising families of their own. Though well-liked by friends and colleagues, Ted knew that they considered him a bit eccentric, which he admitted he probably was. And living alone for so many years in Hanover, still a relatively rural setting, no doubt had made him more so. He spent most of his working time on research in an important but little understood specialty, even within the medical profession. A popular teacher, he was often sought out by students needing advice but only occasionally called upon to consult on real patients.

As Ted entered the cardiac care area, Tim spotted him and came at once to apprise him of the situation.

An unknown white male, apparently 65 to 70 years of age, had been retrieved unconscious from Occom Pond very early Saturday morning. The EMT's, finding no pulse, administered CPR and reestablished both pulse and respiration before arrival at the ER. Little water had been aspirated into the lungs, but the patient was mildly hypothermic and appeared to have been in the water for some time. After warming, his temperature had remained near normal with no evidence of significant fever. Oxygen was administered by nasal cannula for 24 hours and then withdrawn, all blood gases being normal. The EEG showed normal brain wave patterns for deep sleep. There were no signs of cerebral edema. The EKG did not reveal any significant ischemia. Apart from continued coma, the principal problem was cardiac dysrhythmias, apparently caused by severe hypokalemia that was not responding to adjustments in the intake rate of IV fluid, which contained potassium, but overresponding to larger IV boluses of potassium.

Tim added that he had consulted with Tom Bright, the senior staff cardiologist. Potentially life-threatening, electrolyte imbalances of this sort are rare in near-drowning cases, and almost unheard of except when large amounts of water have been aspirated into the lungs. Tom agreed that the erratic potassium values were the probable cause of the disrhythmias, but like Tim had been unable to stabilize the potassium by adjusting the IV delivery of this cation. They both were baffled by the lack of appropriate response to this standard treatment. "So," Tim concluded, "in desperation, we decided to call in the mad nutritionist."

"Well," said Ted, "I can see you guys are out of your league on this one. Let's take a look at the patient and the chart." Tim led the way to the central desk, retrieved the chart, and handed it to Ted. They headed towards the patient's bay.

Scanning the chart, Ted asked absently, noting the "John Doe" entry under name, "Any luck trying to identify this guy?"

"No. But there is one odd thing. The man's clothes. They looked like something out of the last century. Maybe he's an actor. Has the looks, certainly. He's quite a specimen. The police are checking, but so far nothing, at least that we've heard. You know," Tim added, "this is part of the problem. Especially not knowing who he is, or whether he can pay, there will be pressure to move him to custodial care sooner rather than later. So we'd like to get these dysrhythmias under better control as quickly as possible."

"Well," said Ted, "this is a little out of my field, but the prognosis isn't that great, is it? I mean, the coma, lasting this long, is a bad sign. The literature is full of cases where kids survive long-term immersion in a hypothermic state, but I don't think there are many examples of the same thing with adults, never mind senior citizens."

"Not bad for a nutritionist," cracked Tim as they reached the privacy curtain around the patient's bed. He pulled back the curtain.

Nothing in Vietnam, nothing in his medical experience, had prepared Dr. Edward Fletcher for the sight before him. He stood motionless, transfixed really, just staring at the patient: the massive head and brows, eyes closed; the mastiff mouth and prominent, well-formed nose; the high, domed forehead framed by graying but still dark hair, long at the sides; the craggy face, strong jaw and dark complexion. In a barely audible, tremulous voice Ted murmured to himself: "New England's stateliest type of man...whom no one met, at first, but took a second awed and wondering look."

Regaining his composure, or at least hoping that it appeared so to Tim, Ted moved closer to examine the patient. Noting the large barrel chest and obvious paunch, he lifted each eyelid. The black eyes glared reproachfully at his penlight, as if angry at the intrusion. Feeling a bit foolish, but now unable to contain his curiosity, Ted took out a tape and measured the circumference of the head: almost 25 inches. Surprisingly, Tim did not ask the reason for this measurement, much to Ted's relief. What could he say? The patient was a dead ringer for Daniel Webster? The great statesman had gone to his grave nearly a century and a half ago. "Christ," Ted thought, smiling to himself, "anyone's electrolytes would be screwed up if he hadn't eaten for 150 years."

"Make me a copy of the chart," said Ted. "I want to think about this one, maybe even open a book or two. I'll get back to you as quick as I can."

Walking back to his office, Ted could think of nothing but the picture of Daniel Webster that his grandfather had given him. He could remember that Sunday dinner like it was yesterday. Not more than nine or ten, he had spent the morning memorizing John Greenleaf Whittier's famous poem "Ichabod" for school the next day. His grandfather had come to dinner, like he usually did on Sundays, and Ted's mother had made him recite the poem for Gramps. The old man had stood and applauded. Then, seating himself, he started to recount how his father had fought in the Civil War and been wounded at Gettysburg, and how he revered Daniel Webster as the greatest American ever, greater than Washington or Lincoln.

"Dad always said that Robert E. Lee was a good general and a fine man, but if he'd stood up to his friends in Virginia the way Daniel Webster did to the abolitionists in Massachusetts, there might never have been a war. And if Lee had commanded the Union Army like Mr. Lincoln wanted, the war would have been a short one." Gramps had paused. Ted had thought he was done speaking. There was silence at the table, a rare event with his younger brother and sister. But his grandfather wasn't finished. "General Lee, you see, was a Virginian first and an American second. Daniel Webster was an American, first, always, and to the death." Then, looking at Ted, he said, "That poem you've learned is a good one, but it's wrong." Ted, expecting some further explanation, had been surprised and a little disappointed when, turning to his sister, Gramps had asked, "And what bad things did you do this morning?"

The next day his grandfather had brought to the house a framed picture of Daniel Webster and left it for Ted, who was at school. The picture, a fine print from a daguerreotype of Webster near the end of his career, hung on Ted's bedroom wall until he finished high school. Now it hung on the wall of his study at home.

A week after the "Ichabod" assignment, Ted's teacher had required the class to memorize Whittier's sequel, "The Lost Occasion." It was lines from this poem, remembered all these years, that had sprung to Ted's mind at first sight of the patient. The God-like Daniel and Black Dan, two images at war, a battle that couldn't be resolved in Webster's lifetime and probably never would be.

Ted took out a piece of paper to make some notes while he studied the patient's medical record. At the top he wrote a single word: "Ichabod."

An hour later, Ted was as baffled as Tim and Tom. Nothing in the medical record, nothing in the books Ted consulted, explained the strange behavior of Ichabod's potassium. What is more, the man seemed in unusually good shape for a near-drowning victim still in a coma. His pupillary reflexes and ocular movements were normal. Spontaneous respiration had been restored quickly, and except for coma, there were no other signs or symptoms of significant neurologic damage. "The case just doesn't make any sense," Ted thought. "An impossible riddle. Unless, unless the man in that bed really is Daniel Webster come back to earth. And then, well then the new millennium is off to quite a start"

Ted reached for telephone. "Tim, Ted here. Look, I can't find anything to explain your John Doe's hypokalemia. I would have delivered his additional potassium the same as you and Tom. But maybe we need to stand back. When I don't know what to do, I usually find it's best to do nothing. Doing no harm is better than what we're doing now. So I suggest normal saline, no potassium, and let's follow his electrolytes."

"Good idea. I was thinking sort of the same thing. I'll keep you informed. Thanks, Ted."

"Oh, Tim, let me know if Ich, er, the patient shows signs of regaining consciousness."

"Okay," Tim laughed. "Spooked ya, did they, those big black eyes, the way they almost seem to glow. Bye, bye."

"Yes," thought Ted, listening to the now dead line and remembering Thomas Carlyle's description of Webster's eyes as "dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be blown."

That afternoon Ted Fletcher left DHMC sooner than he had planned. On his way home he stopped at the Dartmouth Bookstore, where he bought two books: Daniel Webster - "The Completest Man" and Lincoln at Gettysburg.(1) These, together with some earlier works on Webster in his study, would provide a long but pleasant evening of reading, a nice change from the medical literature that he struggled so to keep up with.

Daniel Webster passed away at his farm in Marshfield, Massachusetts, on October 24, 1852, in his seventy-first year. At the time he was Secretary of State, having resigned from the Senate in July 1850 to serve in that post for a second time. Not since the death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and not until the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, were the American people as moved by the death of a public figure.

Indeed, the death of the two great architects of America's independence was remembered almost as much for Webster's address at Faneuil Hall in their memory as for the event itself, providential as it seemed. Generations of American school children learned the words Daniel Webster put in the mouth of John Adams defending the Declaration of Independence at the Revolutionary Congress as if they were Adams' own. The address on Adams and Jefferson, together with earlier addresses at Plymouth on the bicentennial of the landing of the Pilgrims and Bunker Hill at the laying of the cornerstone for the monument on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, established Webster's reputation as the leading orator of his day even before he entered the Senate.

George Ticknor, a sophisticated young Harvard professor, heard Webster's oration at Plymouth. He wrote: "I was never so excited by public speaking before in my life. ... When I came out, I was almost afraid to stand beside him. It seemed to me he was like the mount that might not be touched and that burned with fire." John Adams was not at Plymouth that day. Like most Americans, he read the published version released almost a year later, and spoke for many when he said that the address should be read "every year forever and ever."

By the time of Lincoln's death, Webster's prophesy, made on the Senate floor in his last grand performance on the seventh of March, 1850, had proved all too true. "Secession! Peaceable secession!" he had thundered, "Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. ... [D]isruption of the Union... must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its twofold character."

A century later John F. Kennedy wrote that on that day Daniel Webster: "abandoned his previous opposition to slavery in the territories, abandoned his constituents' abhorrence of the Fugitive Slave Law,...and abandoned his last chance for the goal that had eluded him for over twenty years -- the Presidency."(2) Years before he had promised the Senate that no man would ever charge him with an "inconsistency between [his] conviction and his vote, between his conscience and his conduct." And so, believing that Henry Clay's proposed compromise measures, including an effective fugitive slave law, were necessary to save the Constitution and the Union, Daniel Webster, to use Kennedy's words, "preferred to risk his career and his reputation rather than risk the Union." With Webster's support, the Compromise of 1850 passed into law. The ugly spectre of secession retreated for another ten years, giving the northern states time to amass the industrial strength that all but assured their victory when the war came.

But the abolitionists and free soilers in the north never forgave Daniel Webster for what his successor in the Senate, Charles Sumner, labeled: "Mr. Webster's elaborate treason." No politician ever endured more severe criticism from more eloquent constituents. Whittier, Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Mann, William Cullen Bryant and James Russell Lowell denounced him. Webster's all too human flaws and shortcomings were manifest. Now they were embellished and exaggerated in the seamiest tales about Black Dan. Theodore Parker continued the attack from his pulpit even as Webster was laid to rest in Marshfield. "I know of no deed in American history," he cried, "done by a son of New England to which I can compare this, but the act of Benedict Arnold."

No one, however, could deny Daniel Webster's heroic aura and personal charisma. The man made an indelible impression on all who saw him. Even Parker conceded that not since Charlemagne had there been "such a grand figure in Christendom." A contemporary called Webster a living lie, "because no man on earth could be so great as he looked." Emerson shunned the great funeral in Marshfield. But walking on the beach in Plymouth, he wrote in his journal: "The sea, the rocks, the woods, gave no sign that America and the world has lost the completest man. Nature had not in our days, or not since Napoleon, cut out such a masterpiece."

This passage, of course, was the source of the title for the first book Ted had picked up at the bookstore. One of the few recent books on Webster, this volume is a collection of essays and documents published to celebrate the completion of publication of The Papers of Daniel Webster.(3) The four essays chronicle his career as politician, orator and writer, lawyer, and diplomat; and each essay is supplemented with selected documents. The book also contains a foreword by William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, who points out that Webster "...argued 170 cases before the Supreme Court over a span of thirty-eight years, an amazing achievement and a record never surpassed." Although he won not quite half of these cases, his victories included some of the Court's most famous decisions, such as: Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1 (1824), the New York steamboat case, containing Chief Justice Marshall's expansive view of the federal government's power over interstate commerce; and McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819), the bank case, in which Marshall, while upholding the power of Congress to charter a national bank, gave broad scope to its implied powers under the Constitution.

But in Hanover, New Hampshire, these are pale triumphs indeed beside Daniel Webster's defense of his alma mater in the Dartmouth College Case, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518 (1819). By his will, Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth's founder who died in 1779, passed the presidency of the college to his son, John. In 1815 the predominantly Federalist board of trustees, appointed under the provisions of the college's 1769 charter from the colonial governor, became involved in a dispute with John that led to his ouster, and he appealed to the state's Republican politicians for help. At first opportunity they passed laws packing the board with Republicans and changing the college into a university subject to supervision by the state. The old trustees contested the validity of the new laws in the state courts, where they lost.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, the principal question was whether the state had impaired the obligation of a contract, i.e., the college's 1769 charter, in violation of the contract clause of the Constitution. The case was argued before the Supreme Court in March 1818, with Webster and Joseph Hopkinson of Philadelphia presenting the argument for the college. When the Court convened in February 1819, Chief Justice Marshall delivered his opinion, holding that the new state laws violated the contract clause and were therefore invalid. Although subsequent decisions substantially limited the broad protection of contracts announced by Marshall, most historians agree that the decision played an important role in the early growth and prosperity of the American republic.

Today the case is remembered most for the eloquent and emotional plea that Webster added to his prepared peroration but omitted from the subsequently published text of his argument. Rufus Choate, in his eulogy of Webster delivered at Dartmouth College in 1853, first revealed to the world at large this dramatic event, as related to him by Chauncey A. Goodrich, professor of oratory at Yale, who was there. According to legend, Webster had apparently finished his argument. He stood silently before the Court for some moments, all eyes turned toward him. Then, addressing the Chief Justice, he began:(4)

This, Sir, is my case! It is the case not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our Land! It is more! It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout our country -- .... It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be stripped, for the question is simply this: "Shall our State Legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends and purposes as they in their discretion shall see fit!"

Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak, it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out! But if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land! It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!

Here, according to Goodrich, Webster broke down. "His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears; his voice choked; and he seemed struggling to the utmost, simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling." Then, in a "few broken words of tenderness," he spoke of his love for Dartmouth and the difficulties of his early life. The Chief Justice's eyes, reported Goodrich, were "suffused with tears," and Justice Washington, at his side, wore "an eager, troubled look." Then, recovering "his composure and fixing his keen eye on the Chief Justice," Webster, "in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience," exclaimed:

Sir, I know not how others may feel [glancing at the opponents of the college before him], but for myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Caesar in the senate house, by those who are reiterating stab upon stab, I would not for this right hand have her say to me, "Et tu quoque, mi fili!"

Daniel Webster made his greatest constitutional argument not in the Supreme Court but on the floor of the Senate in January 1830. In a debate on a resolution concerning public lands, Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina had presented with ability and force the doctrine of nullification developed by John C. Calhoun, then as Vice President presiding over the Senate. Calhoun's theory rested on the notion that the United States under the Constitution consisted of a compact of sovereign states, each retaining for itself the right to determine whether acts of the federal government were constitutional. Webster believed otherwise. He traced the constitutional union of the American people from before the Declaration of Independence, and he viewed the Constitution as the creation of one people, not of the individual states.

"It is, Sir, the people's Constitution," said Daniel Webster in his Second Reply to Hayne, "the people's government; made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people." He continued:

The people, then, Sir, erected this government. They gave it a Constitution, and in that Constitution they have enumerated the powers which they bestow on it. They have made it a limited government. They have defined its authority. They have restrained it to the exercise of such powers as are granted; and all others, they declare, are reserved to the States or the people. But, Sir, they have not stopped here. If they had, they would have accomplished but half their work. No definition can be so clear, as to avoid possibility of doubt; no limitation so precise, as to exclude all uncertainty. Who, then, shall construe this grant of the people? Who shall interpret their will, where it may be supposed they have left it doubtful? ...

But, Sir, the people have wisely provided, in the Constitution itself, a proper, suitable mode and tribunal for settling questions of constitutional law. ... How has it accomplished this great and essential end? By declaring, Sir, that "the Constitution, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

This, Sir, was the first great step. ... But who shall decide this question of interference? To whom lies the last appeal? This, Sir, the Constitution itself decides also, by declaring, "that the judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States." These two provisions cover the whole ground. They are, in truth, the keystone of the arch! With these it is a Constitution; without them it is a Confederacy.

The second book that Ted had purchased at the bookstore, Lincoln at Gettysburg, examines what is surely the most famous of all American speeches. But Abraham Lincoln built on the constitutional foundation laid by Daniel Webster in his Second Reply to Hayne.(5) Lincoln considered it "the greatest American speech," notes author Garry Wills, "and he consulted it in composing his House Divided Speech and the First Inaugural. Echoes of it can be found in other Lincoln speeches, including the Gettysburg Address." Wills adds, "It would be hard to find any other text, except the Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln used with such familiarity and respect."

So far as is known, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln met only once, in 1837 when Webster on a trip through the west visited Springfield, Illinois, just recently chosen as the state capital due in part to the efforts of Lincoln, then a Whig leader in the Illinois House.(6) Like most Americans, Lincoln knew Webster by reading his speeches, not hearing them. The published versions were carefully edited by Webster, and often longer and more elaborate than the spoken. At least a hundred thousand copies of the published version of the Second Reply to Hayne were distributed, with special emphasis on the west where its distribution was subsidized by Abbott Lawrence, a wealthy Boston merchant and friend of Webster.(7)

On the seventh of March, 1850, Daniel Webster opened with words that became immortal the moment they were uttered: "Mr. President, -- I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States." That day Webster did not just buy time for the Union to gain in relative strength against the future Confederacy. He stood, as he always had, foursquare for the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution.

All the hullabaloo caused by the Seventh of March Speech, which Webster himself entitled The Constitution and the Union, proceeded from a single point: his insistence that in America there is no higher law than the Constitution, and that all parts of the Constitution -- even a part as offensive as the fugitive slave clause(8) -- must be observed and defended until lawfully amended as the Constitution provides. These were the words that enraged many of his constituents:

Every member of every Northern Legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the Constitution of the United States; and the article of the Constitution which says to these States that they shall deliver up fugitives from service is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article. No man fulfils his duty in any Legislature who sets himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes from this Constitutional obligation.

Although Daniel Webster never achieved the Presidency, from the Second Reply to Hayne in 1830 to his death in 1852, "he was," in the words of Stephen Vincent Benet's famous short story, "the biggest man in the country."(9) In 1900, when 97 electors cast ballots for the Hall of Fame about to be opened in New York, Washington received 97 votes, Lincoln and Webster tied for second with 96 votes each, Franklin received 94 and Jefferson 91.(10) The following year, in what must be the only honor of its kind ever bestowed by an American college or university, Dartmouth celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of Webster's graduation.(11) For half a century after his death, Webster was by far the most quoted person in Congressional debates. In 1859, as the nation careened toward crisis and possible civil war, Rufus Choate must have given voice to the sentiments of many when, at a Boston dinner in observance of Webster's birthday, he mourned his lost leader and cried: "Oh, for an hour of Webster now!"

Tuesday, January 4, 2000. On his way to lunch, Ted passed by the cardiac care area to check on Ichabod. Tim wasn't there, but the chief nurse advised Ted that the unknown patient's dysrhytmias seemed to be improving. She also said that the police had failed to come up with anything on his identity. Even a complete check on his fingerprints had drawn a total blank.

That evening Ted resumed his reading on Daniel Webster. The previous evening Ted had concentrated on the public man, the historic figure. Now he focused more on Webster's private life, which held more tragedy that most men are asked to bear.

Webster's first wife, the former Grace Fletcher, died in 1828 after twenty years of marriage. Of their five children, four died during Webster's lifetime. Two, Grace, their first child, and Charles, their last, died young. Of the three who lived to adulthood, Edward, the second son, died of typhoid in January 1848 while serving as a captain with the First Massachusetts Volunteers during the Mexican War. Three months later Julia died at age 30 from tuberculosis. She had married Samuel A. Appleton. They had five children, four of whom were living at the time of Webster's death, and three of whom later married and had children.

Only Webster's oldest son, Fletcher, survived him. After the change in administration in March 1861, Fletcher lost his position as Surveyor of the Port of Boston. He then issued a call for volunteers and recruited the Twelfth Massachusetts Infantry, of which he was made colonel. He fell leading his men at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 30, 1862, and little more than a week later was laid to rest beside his father in the family plot in Marshfield.

Fletcher's older son, Daniel Fletcher Webster, also served in the Union Army and was wounded. He died of tuberculosis in 1865, as did Fletcher's younger son, Ashburton, fourteen years later. Thus within twenty-eight years after Daniel Webster's death, there were no male descendants to carry on the dynasty of which he had dreamed.

Nor did his beloved properties, the farm in Marshfield and The Elms, his old family home in Salisbury, New Hampshire, fare any better. Circumstances, including debts inherited from his father, compelled Fletcher Webster to sell much of the Marshfield land. In 1870, fire destroyed the huge barn, and in 1878 the same fate befell the great Marshfield house and all the outbuildings except the shed which had been Webster's law office. Fletcher's widow finally sold what was left of the estate in 1884, two years before her death. The Elms, too, fell victim to the family's financial difficulties. Sold in 1871, it became the New Hampshire Orphans' Home for more than half a century, fell into disuse, and later was purchased by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, its current owners.

Poignant as they were, these sorrows were overshadowed in Ted's mind by a sense of foreboding. Maybe it was the coincidence of family names, or his younger brother's death in Vietnam, or perhaps the lack of a male heir. But somehow he felt certain that Ichabod would prove no ordinary patient.

1. K. E. Shewmaker, ed., Daniel Webster - "The Completest Man" (Univ. Press of New England, 1990); G. Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg (Simon & Schuster, 1992). Daniel Webster does not seem to have engaged the attention of many modern historians. Two notable exceptions are: R. V. Remini, Daniel Webster - The Man and His Times (Norton, 1997); and M.. D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate - Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (Oxford Univ. Press, 1987).

2. J. F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (Cardinal, 1957), p. 60.

3. C. M. Wiltse et al., eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster, Correspondence (7 vols.) (Univ. Press of New England, 1974-1986); K. E. Shewmaker et al., eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster, Diplomatic Papers (2 vols.) (Univ. Press of New England, 1983-1987); A. S. Konefsky et al., eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster, Legal Papers (3 vols.) (Univ. Press of New England, 1982-1989); C. M. Wiltse et al., eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster, Speeches and Formal Writings (2 vols.) (Univ. Press of New England, 1986-1988). See also J. W. McIntyre, ed., The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (18 vols.) (New York, 1903).

4. See K. E. Shewmaker, ed., Daniel Webster - "The Completest Man," supra, pp. 168-169; IV A. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (Houghton Mifflin, 1919), pp. 249-250.

5. G. Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, supra, pp. 123-132. See W. L. Phelps, Some Makers of American Literature (Marshall Jones, 1923), p. 85. ("Lincoln was the heir of Webster. He regarded the Union and the Constitution with his predecessor's eyes. Moderation, fundamental in both men, was then regarded as indecision and time-serving. Now we recognize it as the purest wisdom. What then seemed faltering we now know to have been firmness.")

6. II C. M. Fuess, Daniel Webster (Little, Brown, 1930), p. 64.

7. M. D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, supra, p. 179. A reporter trained in shorthand was in the gallery and took down the Second Reply to Hayne, which thus got reported almost verbatim in the press before the published version came out.

8. U.S. Const., Art. IV, s. 2, cl. 3, repealed by the amendments adopted after the Civil War, provided: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

9. S. V. Benet, "The Devil and Daniel Webster," Thirteen O'Clock - Stories of Several Worlds (Farrar & Rinehart, 1937), p. 162. See II C. M. Fuess, Daniel Webster, supra, p. 364.

10. II C. M. Fuess, Daniel Webster, supra, p. 375.

11. E. M. Hopkins, ed., The Proceedings of The Webster Centennial at Datmouth College (1901).