Unlike many foolish Americans, who waste their time in foreign capitals,
he never harbored the slightest regret that he had not been born
something other than an American; he never desired to be anything but a
free citizen of the great republic of the West.

He prepared a lecture on China, which he delivered in many of the cities
and large towns. Mr. Cushing had already entered the lecture field with
a discourse on China, and some thought Mr. Webster presumptuous in thus
inviting comparison between his own discourse and Mr. Cushing's. But
competent critics, who heard both these efforts, expressed a preference
for that of Mr. Webster. Vast as was Mr. Cushing's learning, his
oratorical style was never one of the best; while Fletcher Webster's
style, for clearness, simplicity, strength, and majesty, was little
inferior to that of his illustrious father. He afterward expanded this
lecture to the dimensions of a book, but never published it; and, in
1878, this manuscript, and all others left by him, perished by the fire
which destroyed the Webster House at Marshfield. One of the few scraps
which have survived this fire is a Latin epitaph which he wrote for his
father's horse, Steamboat,--a horse of great speed and endurance,--and
which seldom lay down at night unless he had been overdriven. In
English, it ran thus: "Stop, traveler, for a greater traveler than thou
stops here."

On the Fourth of July, 1845, Charles Sumner delivered, before the
municipal authorities of Boston, an oration on Peace, which provoked
much hostile criticism; and on the next succeeding anniversary of
American Independence, Fletcher Webster delivered an oration on War,
which was designed to show that there are cases "where war, with all its
woes, must be endured."