Life of Daniel Webster [Together With] Speeches of the Hon. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Delivered At the Festival of the Sons of New Hampshire, in Boston, Nov. 7th, 1849

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1870; (1869 copyright). First Edition. Two large quartos in polished green, gilt-stamped cloth; illustrations, 3 portraits (including frontispieces); 23 cm; 589p, 729p + adverts; index. Speeches pamphlet is 23p, published in 1849. 7lbs A remarkably crisp near fine+ set, with very gently rubbed board corners and edges. Pamphlet is about good+ with large dampstain to front wrapper which affects interior. Hardcover. ISBN: National Library: (AMICUS)000013343816; 000840579 LCCN: 13-33792

Copyright states 1869. Published in New York by D. Appleton and Company in 1870, this two-volume biography is the authoritative nineteenth-century life of the great Massachusetts senator, orator, and secretary of state. It was written by one of Webster’s literary executors, which gave the author privileged access to the statesman’s papers and correspondence. George Ticknor Curtis (1812–1894) was a Harvard-trained Boston lawyer and constitutional historian, a close friend and political admirer of Webster, and the nephew of the historian George Ticknor. He brought both intimacy and a lawyer’s command of constitutional questions to the work, tracing Webster’s career from New Hampshire boyhood and Dartmouth College through his landmark Supreme Court arguments, his celebrated reply to Hayne, and his diplomacy as secretary of state. The account runs to the bitter final years after his support for the Compromise of 1850. Curtis’s own history gives the book an added edge: he argued the constitutional question for Dred Scott before the Supreme Court, and as a federal commissioner in Boston he ordered the return of the fugitive Thomas Sims, so he wrote as a participant in the very sectional crisis that consumed Webster’s reputation. Long regarded as the most valuable biography of Webster, the work remains a primary source because of the letters and documents it print. ¶  **Somewhat heavy item. 7 lbs. Additional shipping fees may be requested, especially for expedited, priority, or international orders. Please inquire**