The Forgotten Founding Father- Noah Webster (23 page)

Webster thus was counting on the Philological Society to help him cash in on the passage of the Constitution, which suddenly improved the commercial prospects for his books.

For the nearly thirty-year-old Webster, the New York procession represented the triumph of everything he stood for—patriotism, national unity and order. He felt a sudden surge of optimism, noting in his August piece in
The Daily Advertiser,
“the great object of exultation . . . was . . . an era in the liberty of man, great glorious and unparalleled, which opens a variety of new sources of happiness and unbounded prospects of national prosperity.” In a life filled with anxiety and toil, it would be a rare day of pure exhilaration, which he would share with the rest of a thoroughly delirious and united Manhattan Island.

 

 

ON THE MORNING OF JULY 23, Webster, dressed in the black uniform of the Philological Society, left his Maiden Lane residence and walked up to the area then known as “the Fields” (today City Hall Park). He soon joined a throng of some five thousand working men, who had been gathering since eight o’clock. Thousands more started lining up on the spotless streets along the parade route, which had been swept and watered both earlier that morning and the night before. The city’s ladies, preferring to avoid the crowds, stationed themselves in doorways and at windowsills.

Just as red, white and blue were the procession’s predominant colors, ten and thirteen were its operative numbers. That’s because at the beginning of July, Virginia had become the tenth of the thirteen states to approve ratification.

At exactly ten o’clock, thirteen guns from the federal ship
Hamilton,
built especially for the occasion, announced that the procession was to begin. Horsemen with trumpets started down Broadway, along with a company of artillery. Then came Grand Marshal Richard Platt, dressed in a blue coat, red sash and white feather, followed by his thirteen deputy marshals.

Finally, the ten divisions of artisans fell into line, each one led by a man carrying a white banner. The workers, forming a mile-and-a-half retinue, came from all walks of life. In this day of unity, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the learned and the uneducated were all marching as one.

The first division consisted largely of artisans whose work had something to do with the land or its by-products: farmers, foresters, gardeners, millers, distillers and bakers. As the new United States of America was largely an agrarian nation, this contingent was the longest, containing fourteen subdivisions. Wit and ingenuity were everywhere on display. The bakers featured four masters who carried a ten-foot-long “federal loaf” upon which was emblazoned the names of the ten ratifying states and the initials of the three holdouts: N.Y., N.C. and R.I.

Coopers (makers and repairers of wooden barrels) led the second division. As Webster would later describe their arithmetically appropriate tribute: “Thirteen apprentice boys, 13 years of age, dressed in white shirts, trowsers, and stockings. . . . their hats ornamented with 13 pillars, colored green and white, with ten branches springing from them.”

A few hundred yards in front of Webster paraded the chocolate makers, who were grouped with the blacksmiths and instrument makers in the eighth division. Their float captured graphically what he had been writing about for the past half-dozen years. To represent the powerless Congress under the Articles of Confederation, they carried a picture of a naked man, whose thirteen heads were all looking in different directions, upon which was written:

Led by Webster, the Philological Society, subdivision 69, marched right behind the “Gentlemen of the Bar” who headed the ninth division. This contingent of the city’s intelligentsia also featured subdivisions 70 and 71: students and professors from Columbia, including the college’s president, William Samuel Johnson, as well as traders and merchants.

Webster carried a scroll containing the principles of a federal language. Behind him walked President Josiah Hoffmann in a sash of blue and white ribbons, and Treasurer William Dunlap carrying the society’s highly intricate coat of arms, which Webster had helped to design two weeks earlier. Its major elements included three tongues, a chevron and an eye over a monument sculpted with Gothic, Hebrew and Greek letters. Its crest, whose symbolism no doubt was understood only by its creators, consisted of a cluster of cohering magnets attracted by a large key, meant to highlight that language was a unifying principle of knowledge. The flag was embellished with the phrase “the Genius of America” and crowned with a wreath of thirteen plumes, ten of them starred. While her right hand pointed to the Philological Society, in her left was a pendant with the word “CONSTITUTION.”

After reaching the bottom of Broadway, the procession looped around and headed back north via Queen and Arundel streets. Webster was energized by occasionally glancing over at the ladies, those “fair daughters of Columbia whose animated smiles and satisfaction,” he would later write, “contributed not a little to complete the general joy.” There was no music and the solemnity of the event precluded cheering: “No noise was heard but the deep rumbling of carriage wheels, with the necessary salutes and signals. A glad serenity enlivened every countenance.”

As the marchers arrived at City Alderman Nicholas Bayard’s farm, which bordered on the upper reaches of Broadway, they were reviewed by Grand Marshal Richard Platt before dispersing. Leaving their signs on the fields, they headed to dining tables located in the three pavilions built by the architect Pierre L’Enfant (whom Washington would later commission to design the new federal city on the Potomac), in just five days. The banquet area, which was some 600 by 900 feet, featured ten colonnades festooned with wreaths. Under the dome of the middle pavilion—topped by the figure of Fame, carrying a parchment alluding to the three phases of the late war (Independence, Alliance with France, Peace)—sat members of Congress, foreign dignitaries and the city’s clergy.

Along with some six thousand other revelers, Webster feasted on roasted mutton and ham and imbibed abundant amounts of beer. At the end of the meal, he raised his glass to thirteen toasts—the last one being “May the union of the United States be perpetual”—each of which was marked by shots from ten cannons.

In this celebration of unity, no New Yorkers would be left out. Afterward, the same repast was passed on to all the city’s prisoners.

At five thirty, the marchers returned to their original stations and were dismissed.

That night, just as Webster was describing the procession in his diary as “very brilliant, but fatiguing,” Richard Platt wrote to the Poughkeepsie delegates that “the most remarkable regularity and decorum prevailed during the whole day.”

Platt, Webster and their fellow arrangers soon achieved their primary political objective. At nine o’clock on Saturday evening, July 26, as Webster was working away at his newspaper account of the event, he heard shouting in the streets; Poughkeepsie had rendered its final verdict. “News of the Convention’s adopting the Constitution received,” he wrote in his diary, “& great joy testified.”

 

 

ON AUGUST 2, Ebenezer Hazard wrote to the Boston pastor Jeremy Belknap, “I hear the Monarch (not of France) intends to honour this town with a visit.”

Webster was indeed heading north to see Rebecca for the first time in more than a year. On Sunday, August 10, along with Hazard and Rhode Island’s congressional delegation, he sailed to Providence. Two days later, he waited on “the dear girl” at her home in Dorchester. And on the fourteenth, he officially asked for her hand in marriage. “Ask consent of Mr. Greenleaf,” he noted in his diary, “& am happy in receiving it.” However, to reassure the Greenleafs of his suitability as a breadwinner, Webster had to promise to give up his literary career and return to law. This decision would soon become a source of constant anguish.

Once back in New York, Webster made plans to dispose of his magazine. In November, he negotiated a deal with both Hazard and another New York publisher, Francis Childs, who planned to revive it the following year under the title
The American Magazine and Universal Register.
Under this proposal, the magazine would be expanded to a hundred pages, and the second half of each issue would feature key documents from American history. “It has been . . . frequently lamented by the lovers of useful license that no particular account of the origin and complete establishment of this rising empire hath yet been given to the world,” ran the announcement in New York’s
Daily Advertiser
. Webster had hoped to print, for example, John Winthrop’s journal, which he had recently discovered at the house of former Connecticut governor Jonathan Trumbull. But nothing came of it. With circulation down to just two hundred, the magazine ceased publication after its one-year run. Rather than adding anything to his coffers, this venture had ended up costing him about two hundred and fifty pounds (five hundred dollars).

That fall, Webster’s future in-laws sent him congratulatory notes on his engagement. Writing from Amsterdam, where he had gone to pursue various business opportunities, James Greenleaf assured him, “As you have gained the consent of my parents & friends, if mine is either necessary or acceptable, you have it in the fullest manner.” Greenleaf also offered to help Webster financially, though he didn’t specify exactly how much money he could provide. In late November, Dr. Nathaniel Appleton of Boston, who had known Rebecca for a decade, observed, “If you make this girl your partner for life, you will have acquired the most amiable and all accomplished lady for a man of sentiment and taste for domestic life, which this metropolis affords. You cannot prize her too highly.” With Webster deciding to move to Boston, Appleton found him temporary lodgings: the best room at Mrs. Archibald’s, the Court Street residence where he had lived the summer before, for twenty-four pence a week. Webster was looking forward to living near all the Greenleafs.

On December 20, Webster was “happy to quit New York.” He spent Christmas with his parents in the West Division. On New Year’s Eve, Webster arrived in Boston, where he soon enjoyed frequent visits with his “agreeable new friends.” On those evenings when he wasn’t having dinner with Rebecca or other members of the extended family, he was socializing with the city’s elite. On January 28, 1789, he met the incoming vice president, John Adams, at the home of former governor James Bowdoin.

Building a legal practice, he soon realized, would take at least a few years. On February 1, in a letter to James Greenleaf, then still in Amsterdam, Webster highlighted his precarious finances: “I have done with making books. I shall enter upon the pursuit of law immediately and practise either in Hartford or this town. . . . I am as happy as the heart of the loveliest of her sex and the kindness and esteem of all your connections can make me. . . . I shall try to make it convenient to marry in the course of the year, but it depends partly on your assistance and partly on the events that are not altogether in my power.”

Two weeks later, Webster received his first letter from Greenleaf in months, in which he learned that his future brother-in-law had married a Dutch woman, Antonia von Scholten. Webster wrote back the next day, once again stressing his need for a handout: “I perceive by your letter . . . that you have engaged some provision for Becca at her marriage. This will furnish a house genteelly. . . . As a person interested in your favors to your sister, I feel grateful and number you among my benefactors as well.” As Webster also explained to Greenleaf, he now planned to move back to Hartford where he had more contacts in the legal community.

That winter in Boston, Webster superintended the publication of what he thought would be his final book,
Dissertations of the English Language,
the four-hundred-page tome that featured the language lectures from his two-year book tour. Published in May, it fell on deaf ears. On account of the printing costs, Webster was out four hundred dollars. His only consolation was praise from Benjamin Franklin, to whom he had dedicated it. At the close of 1789, just a few months before his death, the Doctor would write Webster a long letter about this “excellent work . . . [which] will be useful in turning the thoughts of our country men to correct writing.”

In May, Webster moved back into the Hartford residence of his longtime friend John Trumbull, where he would be paying tenpence a week. Upon his return to his hometown, his former boss Oliver Ellsworth wrote him a welcoming note from New York, where he was serving in the U.S. Senate: “I congratulate you and the city of Hartford on your settlement there in the practice of law.” Ellsworth also offered Webster the option of moving back into his home—now vacant—where he had lived a few years earlier. (Two years later, Webster and his wife would wind up there.) Webster was once again circulating among the town’s beau monde. That summer, he dined with Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth, the influential merchant then serving in the House of Representatives; Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, the well-known poet; Nathan Perkins, the West Division pastor; as well as his Yale classmates Oliver Wolcott and Uriah Tracy.

Though he enjoyed reconnecting with his Hartford friends, Webster was feeling frustrated. His new profession was turning out to be no more lucrative than his old one. Legal work was hard to come by. And for the first time in years, he had no new literary project to fall back on. In addition, that summer, due to a hand injury, he could barely manage to keep up with his correspondence. Bored, he didn’t know what to do with himself. On June 17, he wrote in his diary, “Begin to bathe in the morning.” The following day, he added, “Repeat it with benefit.” “Ditto” was his wrap-up of the nineteenth.

In late August, Webster’s spirits revived when he heard from Greenleaf for the first time since April. “I cannot refuse,” his soon-to-be brother-in-law wrote, “to join my approbation to that of my family that your marriage may take place as soon as you think prudent.” To express his affection for the young couple, Greenleaf advanced them a thousand dollars. Webster promptly rented a comfortable house in the center of town from Colonel Wadsworth for a hundred dollars a month. Throughout the first week of September, as he recorded in his diary, he was “still employed in getting furniture.” Starting a new life with Rebecca was now his top priority. For the time being, he would do without words.