For forty years, until his death in 1852, Daniel Webster played a dominant national role as a lawyer, orator, congressman, senator, secretary of state, leader of two major parties, and perennial presidential candidate. This new biography, drawing on the recently collected Webster papers, explains the Webster phenomenon in terms of the powerful positive and negative images he projected for nineteenth-century Americans.

For forty years, until his death in 1852, Daniel Webster played a dominant national role as a lawyer, orator, congressman, senator, secretary of state, leader of two major parties, and perennial presidential candidate. This new biography, drawing on the recently collected Webster papers, explains the Webster phenomenon in terms of the powerful positive and negative images he projected for nineteenth-century Americans.

For forty years, until his death in 1852, Daniel Webster played a dominant national role as a lawyer, orator, congressman, senator, secretary of state, leader of two major parties, and perennial presidential candidate. This new biography, drawing on the recently collected Webster papers, explains the Webster phenomenon in terms of the powerful positive and negative images he projected for nineteenth-century Americans.