Remarks By David T. McLaughlin, January 28, 1995

Dartmouth Club Of Washington, Webster Award Ceremony

Peter Pratt, Dave Martin, Trustee Susan Dentzer, members of the Dartmouth Club of Washington, and friends within the Dartmouth Fellowship.

I am deeply honored to receive this award — the more so because I know personally each of the last five recipients — all of whom I respect immensely. I am, therefore, all the more grateful to the Dartmouth Club of Washington for the recognition it has accorded me, and I am touched by the number of my friends and associates who have gathered this evening on this occasion, and especially the opportunity to see Ruth and Bill Frenzel. I thank all of you very much and particularly Ed Lathem who came from Hanover for the occasion.

There is, for me, a sense of deja vu to this evening. When I occupied the President's office in Parkhurst Hall, over the fireplace hung a painting by Gilbert Stuart of a young Daniel Webster. I spoke with him every day, seeking his advice and wisdom — some days more than once!! For those of you acquainted with events on the campus in the early 1980s, you will understand that. He became a trusted friend!!

Most of us have in our minds a vivid picture of Daniel Webster — particularly as he defended, emotionally, the cause of Dartmouth College and the rights of all independent eleemosynary institutions in the Dartmouth College Case. Our image of Webster is perhaps, more often than not, shaped by descriptions of his imposing physical appearance than by our awareness of his ideas and of his specific actions.

The playwright, Vincent Benet, said of Webster that he was, "a man with a mouth like a mastiff, a brow like a mountain and eyes like burning anthracite."

Carlyle used similar words when he described Webster, "The tanned complexion; the amorphous crag like face; the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows; like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be blown; the mastiff mouth accurately, closed."

Emerson said Webster was truly, "the great cannon loaded to the lips," and Sydney Smith added, "Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam-engine in trousers."

He was surely an unforgettable figure. He was the most celebrated orator of his time, and the preeminent lawyer of his era. But, he was also much more. He was a statesman of great distinction, and it was the causes that he championed and what he made happen, that are, it seems to me, the defining contributions that Daniel Webster made to the Republic that he loved so dearly. This evening, I should like to touch briefly on one such contribution.

The Compromise of 1850, you may recall, was crafted to prevent the secession from the Federal Union of the Southern states — this over the issue of the abolition of slavery. It has long been acknowledged that the Compromise of 1850 provided the means of holding the nation together for another decade at a time when, in fact, its continuance was severely threatened. While the Civil War did eventually occur, by narrowing the differences between the North and the South, Webster helped, crucially, over the course of history, to preserve the Union.

As a man who himself viewed slavery as a "great moral and political evil," Daniel Webster paid a fearful price for his central role, within the United States Senate, in designing and advocating a compromise on the slavery issue. As chronicled in John F Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage, it is explained that Webster feared that 'civil violence' would only rivet the chains of slavery more strongly. And the preservation of the Union was far dearer to his heart than his opposition to slavery.

Webster's position on the "Great Compromise of 1850." and his willingness to subordinate his views to serve a greater good, so alienated his friends and further aggravated his enemies, that he lived with the consequences for the rest of his life. It was arguably the reason he never achieved his lifelong ambition to become President of the United States.

On the other hand, the New Orleans Picayune hailed Webster for "the moral courage to do what he believes to be just in itself and necessary for the peace and safety of the country."

Daniel Webster, a man not noted for humor, once said , "There is nothing more powerful than truth ... and often nothing stranger."

The Aspen Institute tries to address that condition each year. The Institute convenes leaders from all sectors of society to examine, from the perspective of the values and great ideas on which our democratic principles are founded, the critical issues confronting our democratic institutions.

Annually, up to two thousand men and women from the United States, Asia, Europe, and the North and South American Continents, attend our programs in this country or at one of our four international centers. They come to examine the enduring truths of our culture. It is an exhilarating experience — one that Jim Freedman and Susan and Jim Wright and others in this room have witnessed.

In the course of these seminars, leaders address themselves to how one responds positively to change within the value systems of various societies and cultures.

Increasingly, and with a greater sense of urgency, the issues entail the ways and means of our maintaining and nurturing civil society in an uncivilized age.

How do we sustain civic values in a time of polarization, tribal conflict, and communities of self-interest?

How do leaders lead when the quality of followership is diminished by failed education systems and a lack of consensus about the responsibilities of citizenship?

These are among the many daunting questions that confront not only private- and public-sector leaders in this country, but those in all democratic societies.

We live in a period when citizens are becoming separated from the underlying principles of a civic society.

There is no commonly held understanding of the obligations of citizenship — no informed dialogue about the basic issues confronting our society. We no longer celebrate our diversity and honor our union.

Skepticism of traditional leadership has replaced confidence — confidence that our leaders have, to quote again from the New Orleans Picayune, "the moral courage to do what [they] believe to be just. . . and necessary to preserve the peace and safety of our [nation]."

This "disconnection" between citizens and their leaders is a serious challenge to our democratic system. While perhaps not of the dimension that faced Daniel Webster in the 1850s when the Union was on the precipice of imploding, I am persuaded that, as a nation, we are currently engaged in a redefinition of our civic society, and that to traverse this period in our history, we will need leaders that have the moral courage and the cultural understandings to guide us through this transition.

The role of institutions that instill the teachings of the liberating arts — that give men and women an understanding and an appreciation of the fundamental values that form the bases on which they can address these challenges — this role is more important than ever before to the future of our Republic.

Dartmouth College may not, in our time or in the years ahead, produce many Daniel Websters - but she is positioned uniquely to instill in her sons and daughters the experiences and lessons on which great leadership can flourish. Her cause is just and we should be grateful that this great institution continues to serve our society. She deserves our commitment and support.

Once, while Daniel Webster was serving as Secretary of State, he hosted a private dinner for a group of Dartmouth alumni. There followed after the meal a spirited discussion on a number of matters . Then, at the conclusion of the evening, Secretary Webster declared of his alma mater:

"I have done for Dartmouth all that I can. Yet I feel indebted to her — indebted for my early education, indebted for her early confidence, indebted" he said, referring to the Dartmouth College Case, "for a chance to show to men, whose support I was to need for myself and my family, that I was equal to the defense of vested interests against state courts and sovereignties."

As I reflect on Webster's confidence in the Union, I am attracted to the thought that we would be a better country if at least one day a week we celebrated the greatness of this remarkable country in which we are privileged to live rather than to bombard her shores with criticism and cynicism. One day to look for the good and to honor it collectively as a nation.

I am unabashedly a sentimentalist, so let me close with two quotations from Mr. Webster that seem to me particularly timely today.

The first is his declaration of fidelity to his country.

"I was born an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career. I mean to do this with absolute disregard of personal consequences."

I thank you very much for the honor that you have conferred upon me this evening.

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