Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/73

 Colonel Fletcher Webster.

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��Twelfth Regiment.* It need not be said that the presentation speech of Mr. Everett, and the reception speech of Colonel Webster, were of the first order. But not even the words of a Webster or an Everett could adequately express the profound emotion of the vast concourse of people then assem- bled. For it was one of those occa- sions when, as the elder Webster said, " Words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory con- temptible."

History will transmit the fact that on that day the simple, homely, stirring, and inspiring melody of Old John Brown was heard for the first time by the people of Boston. It was a sur- prising and a gladsome spectacle — a regiment bearing Daniel Webster's tal- ismanic name, commanded by his only surviving son, carrying a banner pre- pared by the fairest daughters of Massa- chusetts, carrying also the benediction of Edward Everett, and of " the solid men of Boston," and marching to the tune of Old John Brown ! Did the weird prophet-orator who spoke of " carrying the flag and keeping step to the music of the Union " ever dream of such a strange combination?

On the seventeenth of June, 1861, by invitation of Governor Andrew, Col- onel Webster spoke on Bunker Hill : " From this spot I take my departure, like the mariner commencing his voyage, and wherever my eyes close, they will be turned hitherward towards this North ; and, in whatever event, grateful will be the reflection, that this monument still stands — still, still is glided by the earliest beams of the rising sun, and that still departing day Hngers and plays upon its summit."

State House, where its mute eloquence has often started tears, and " thoughts too deep for tears," in many a casual visitor.
 * This banner now hangs in the Doric Hall at the

��After referring to the two former occasions when he had visited that historic shaft, when his father had spoken there, he added, " I now stand again at its base, and renew once more, on this national altar, vows, not for the first time made, of devotion to my country, its Constitution and Union."

With these words upon his lips, with these sentiments in his heart, and in the hearts of the thousand brave men of his command, Colonel Webster went forth, the dauntless champion and willing martyr of the Union. Except that the death of a beloved daughter brought him back for a few days to his family in the following summer, the people of Massachusetts saw his living face no more.

On the thirtieth of August, 1862, the second day of the second battle of Bull Run, late in the afternoon, while gallantly directing the movements of his regiment, and giving his orders in those clear, firm, ringing tones, which, in the tumult of battle, fall so gratefully on the soldier's ear. Colonel Webster was shot through the body ; and the Federal forces being closely pressed at the time, he was left to die on the field in Confederate hands. As the event became known through the country, thousands of generous hearts, in the South as well as in the North, recalled the peroration of his father's reply to Hayne, and bitterly regretted that, when his eyes were turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, it had been his unhappy lot to " see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union, on States dissevered, discordant, bellige- rent, on a land rent with internal feuds, and drenched [as then it was] with fraternal blood."

In the time-honored song of Roland, we are told, " Count Roland lay under

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