Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/458

434 which he represented a New Hampshire constituency were a mere prelude to his great political career. In 1817 he left Congress to give himself to his legal practice, which gained much in distinction and lucrativeness by his removal to Boston. He rose rapidly to National eminence as a practitioner in the Federal as well as the State tribunals. It was there that he won peculiar luster through his memorable argument in the famous Dartmouth College case before the Federal Supreme Court, which fascinated John Marshall on the bench, and moved to tears the thronged audience in the courtroom. It left Webster with no superior and with few rivals at the American bar. It may be questioned whether he was a great lawyer in the highest sense. There were others whose knowledge was larger and more thorough, and whose legal opinion carried greater authority. But hardly any of these surpassed him in the faculty of seizing with instinctive sureness of grasp the vital point of a cause, of endowing mere statement with the power of demonstration, of marshaling facts and arguments in massive array for concentric attack on the decisive point, of moving the feelings together with the understanding by appeals of singular magic and also of so assimilating and using the work of others as if it had been his own. Adding to all this the charm of that imposing personality which made every word falling from his lips sound as if it were entitled to far more than ordinary respect, he could not fail to win brilliant successes. He was engaged in many of the most important and celebrated cases of his time—some then celebrated and still remembered because of the part he played in them.

In Boston Webster found a thoroughly congenial home. Its history and traditions, its wealth and commercial activity, the high character of its citizenship, the academic atmosphere created by its institutions of learning, the