Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/459

Rh refined tone of its social circles, the fame of its public men, made the Boston of that period, in the main attributes of civilized life, the foremost city in the United States. Boston society received Webster with open arms, and presently he became, in an almost unexampled measure, its idol. Together with the most distinguished personages of the State, among them the venerable John Adams, he was elected a member of the convention called to revise the State constitution, where, as the champion of conservative principles, he advocated and carried the proposition that the State senate should remain the representative of property. When, in 1820, the day arrived for the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, it was he whom the public voice designated as the orator of the day. The oration, with its historical picturesqueness, its richness of thought and reasoning, its broad sweep of contemplation and the noble and magnificent simplicity of its eloquence, was in itself an event. No literary production of the period in America achieved greater renown. From that time on Massachusetts loved to exhibit herself in his person on occasions of state, and, in preference to all others, Webster was her spokesman when she commemorated the great events of her history. As such he produced a series of addresses—at the laying of the corner-stone and, later, at the completion of the Bunker Hill monument, on the death of John Adams and of Thomas Jefferson and on other occasions—which his contemporaries acclaimed as ranking with the greatest oratorical achievements of antiquity.

Webster soon appeared in Congress again, first in 1823, in the House of Representatives, as the member from the Boston district, and a few years later in the Senate. Then began the most brilliant part of his political career. It was the period when the component elements of the