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COLONEL FLETCHER WEBSTER.

By Charles Cowley, LL.D.


FLETCHER WEBSTER, son of Daniel and Grace (Fletcher) Webster,
was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 23, 1813. He was but three
years old when his father removed to Boston, where he was fitted for
college in the Public Latin School,--the nursery of so many eminent men.

On the seventeenth of June, 1825, when Lafayette laid the cornerstone
of the monument on Bunker Hill, when Daniel Webster delivered one of the
most famous of his orations, Fletcher Webster, then twelve years old,
was present. "The vast procession, impatient of unavoidable delay, broke
the line of march, and, in a tumultuous crowd, rushed towards the
orator's platform," which was in imminent danger of being crushed to the
earth. Fletcher Webster was only saved from being trampled under foot,
by the thoughtful care of George Sullivan, who lifted the boy upon his
own shoulders, shouting, "Don't kill the orator's son!" and bore him
through the crowd, and placed him upon the staging at his father's feet.
It required the utmost efforts of Daniel Webster to control that
multitudinous throng. "Stand back, gentlemen!" he repeatedly shouted
with his double-bass voice; "you must stand back!" "We can't stand back,
Mr. Webster; it is impossible!" cried a voice in the crowd. Mr. Webster