Having concluded the Ashburton Treaty, Mr. Webster started for New England to enjoy the rural life so dear to him on his farm at Franklin, New Hampshire, and at Marshfield, Massachusetts. He announced, before he left Washington, that on his arrival at Boston he should address his friends in Faneuil Hall, and there was an intense desire to her what he might have to say on public affairs. The leaders of the Whig party hoped that he would announce a resignation of his office as Secretary of State, denounce the duplicity of President Tyler, and come gracefully to the support of Henry Clay, who had imperiously demanded the Presidential nomination. But Mr. Webster declined to accept the advice given him, and spoke his mind very freely and frankly. There was--said one who heard the speech--no sly insinuation of innuendo, but a straightforward, independent expression of truth, a copious outpouring of keen reproof, solemn admonition, and earnest entreaty.
Among those former home-friends whose behavior was very annoying to Mr. Webster at this time was Mr. Abbott Lawrence, a Boston merchant, who, having amassed a large fortune, coveted political honors, and was a liberal contributor to the campaign fund of his party. Astute and observing, he imagined himself a representative of the merchant-princes of Venice under the Doges and England under the Plantagenets, and he spoke in a measured, stately tone, advancing his ideas with a positiveness that would not brook contradiction. On several occasions he had been one of the "solid men of Boston" who had contributed considerable sums for the pecuniary relief of Mr. Webster, and this emboldened him to assume a dictatorial tone in advising the Secretary of State to resign after the Ashburton Treaty had been negotiated. The command was treated with sovereign contempt, and thenceforth Mr. Lawrence looked upon Mr. Webster as ungrateful, and as standing in the way of his own political advancement. But Mr. Webster defied the would-be cotton-lord, saying: "I am a Whig--a Faneuil Hall Whig--and if any one undertakes to turn me out of that communion, let him see to it who gets out first."
While Mr. Webster had been negotiating the Ashburton Treaty, and after he had found rest at Marshfield, he displayed the same sprightly humor and tender sweetness which so endeared him to those who were permitted to enjoy intimate social relations with him. He always rose with the sun, visiting his farm-yards at Marshfield, and going to market at Washington, before breakfast, with a visit at either place to the kitchen, where he would gravely discuss the culinary programme of the day with Monica, a cook of African descent, whose freedom he had purchased. After breakfast, he would study or write or fish all day, dressing for a late dinner, after which he gave himself up to recreation; sometimes, as Colonel Seaton's daughter has pleasantly told us, singing hymns or songs, generally impartially to the same tune; or gravely essaying the steps of a _minuet de la cour_, which he had seen danced in the courtly Madisonian era; or joining in the jests of the gay circle, magnificent teeth gleaming, his great, living coals of eyes--"sleeping furnaces," Carlyle called them--soft as a woman's; or his rare, tender smile lighting up the dusky grandeur of his face. Mr. Webster was not, at that period of his life, an intemperate drinker, although, like many other gentlemen of that day, he often imbibed too freely at the dinner-table.