THE POLITICAL IMPERATIVE
 On July 4, 1812, Daniel Webster spoke before a group of leading Federalists to protest President Madison's foreign policy.  Webster hoped he had found an issue that might resurrect the party from the decline began with election of 1800.  On August 5, 1812, Webster delivered a rewrite of the July 4th speech at Rockingham.  He again attacked the administration's prosecution of the war and defended the Constitution.  Within the month, it was revised into a "memorial" or letter of resolution to President Madison by Webster in his role as delegate to the Federalist county convention.  Webster continued this "peace-ticket" drum beat well into 1814, the year of ill-fated Hartford Convention.  There Webster advocated the doctrine of interposition first argued by Jefferson and Madison in the Resolves of 1798.  While disunion was never trumpeted, the Hartford Convention was soon ridiculed when peace broke out.

Federalists realized that the strategy had backfired.  Not only was peace at hand, but Andrew Jackson had scored a tremendous victory over the British in New Orleans.  Neither side in the distant Mississippi River town had gotten the word of the cease fire.  Jackson's victory not only strengthened the President's hand at the negotiating table, it made Jackson into a national hero.  The so-called "Era of Good Feelings" continued as a period of one-party internecine warfare.
 By winning the election of 1816, James Monroe kept the Jeffersonian line of Democratic-Republicans.  By 1823, Webster saw that the Federalist party was dead.  He wrote to Jospeh Story in May that it was crucial to form a fusion with Jeffersonians.   The "Era of Good Feelings" collapsed with election of 1824.  Jackson led a populist-frontier revolt and was nominated by the Tennessee state legislature for President.  South Carolina nominated John C. Calhoun; Virginia nominated William Crawford, the Secretary of Treasury and Monroe hand picked successor; and Kentucky nominated Henry Clay.  John Quincy Adams, the son of the last Federalist president, was nominated by the legislatures of several New England states; but even he called himself a National Republican, avoiding the taint of Federalism the way some politicians avoid the L word today.  Theodore Lyman wrote to Daniel Webster in April of 1824, "[T]he increase of democratic talent, respectability, and wealth in Boston the last two years, entirely owing to gradual secessions [from our party], is very great . . . .  What can we do, therefore having lost our own fortress, but take the enemy's?"  Lyman eventually became a Jacksonian, turned his newspaper against residual Federalists, and libeled even Webster in 1828.

After appraising the political situation, Webster indicated his support for Calhoun; afterall, at this juncture they shared a "free trade" point of view.  But Calhoun soon withdrew from the campaign.  When no candidate received a majority in the electoral college, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives.  During his Christmas vacation in 1824, Webster visited Jefferson, ostensibly to seek his advice on the presidential selection process.  Webster was unhappy about the death of the Federalist party and annoyed with John Quincy Adams for running as a National Republican.  The gentleman-farmer greeted Webster's party from a hill in front of his mansion.  During their meeting at Monticello, Webster learned that Jefferson believed Andrew Jackson to be a dangerous demagogue.  This view reinforced Webster's belief that Jackson threatened established institutions as "the people's candidate in the West and Southwest."  He returned to the Capitol and worked for the candidate from his home state.

Even though he had plurality of the popular vote, Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams, who had secured the support of Henry Clay.  In fact, Clay and Webster worked closely during the caucusing to secure votes for Adams, after Adams promised Webster that he would allow Federalists into his administration.  They were rewarded shortly after Adams took power; he made Clay Secretary of State and Webster his leader in the House.  Federalists did receive appointments.  But the deal may have backfired.  The press and Democrats condemned the appointments as a "corrupt bargain," and much to Clay's and Webster's unhappiness, Adams never recovered.  Jackson was almost immediately nominated for president by the Tennessee legislature and began his campaign for the 1828 election.  (And we think campaigns start too early in the modern era!)  It was clear to Clay and Webster that Jackson was not part of the continuity of the chain that could be traced back to the Founders.  He was a liberal disruption, a clear threat to Webster's national conservatism.  Jackson's attacks on the President, Jackson's call for a "judicious tariff", his frontier mobs and his romantic press disgusted Webster.

On April 3, 1825, less than month after Adams inauguration, Webster spoke in Faneuil Hall.  At this point, he must have realized he had no choice but to join Adams and Clay in the National Republican party.  The Jacksonians soon took the Democratic half of the old Jeffersonian party and added Crawford's and Calhoun's followers to their ranks.  In this speech, Webster made a plea for political harmony as the Massachusetts state elections approached.  The Boston Courier of April 5, 1825, reported that Webster called for "union and conciliation," themes that would pervade his rhetoric to his death.  He also noted that "new parties . . . might arise . . . . Associations formed to support principles may be called parties; but if they have no bond of union but adherence to particular men, they become factions."  (Webster's emphasis.)  Webster was referring to the difference between National Republicans and Democrats; he reinforced the point by explaining that President John Quincy Adams' Inaugural Address had been based on and often articulated conciliatory principles.  He then defended the appointment of Clay as Secretary of State and set off to demonstrate that our "republican institutions" were a model to the world.  By implication, he endorsed the American System and the prosperity it brought to each region of the nation.  The National Republican and the National Union parties would eventually coalesce into the American Whig party; but in 1825, the picture was far less clear.  Webster dare not move too far ahead of Massachusetts voters.  So he kept his speech short on details.  He was now convinced that a new party was needed to balance the excesses of Jacksonian Democracy.  A major step was taken when Levi Lincoln a former Jeffersonian and recent convert to National Republicanism accepted Federalist support from Webster's fusion banner and went on to win the governorship in the election of 1825.
Webster had inherited his Federalist beliefs from his father, whom he often reincarnated in his epideictics to George Washington.  Starting in 1814, these values were given pragmatic application in Webster's illustrious career before the Supreme Court, particularly while John Marshall was Chief Justice.  The two not only preserved Federalist political doctrine but launched a pincer movement on Jeffersonian Democracy and states' rights.  From one side, Webster defended federal powers, as in McCulloch v. Maryland.  From the other side, he defended private property and contracts as in the Dartmouth College case.

While Webster's legal briefs became the basis for several of Marshall's decisions, they were not the stuff out which party platforms are constructed.  The platform would rise from an amalgam of the old Federalist doctrines and Clay's immensely successful American System.  The values of this new party would emerge from national oratory, notably the epideictic speeches of Daniel Webster.  This is not to say that there weren't Southern Whigs who supported states' rights; even Clay, who hoped to lead, differed with Webster on Unionism.  But Webster could build a political constituency north of the Mason-Dixon line which he would inculcate with a civil religion that sometimes moved the whole nation.

EPIDEICTIC SPEAKING
Many of Webster's addresses have been examined by rhetorical critics; but most ignore questions of genre.  Those who do attempt some judgment of form analyze only a single genre.  Thus, when critics discuss Webster's forensic speaking, they ignore epideictic and deliberative elements in his forensic speeches.  And yet Webster's arguments before the Supreme Court are known to have influenced Justice Marshall's decisions on deliberative matters, and reflected Webster's own political positions.  Similarly, although many have studied Webster's deliberative speaking, little attention has been given to forensic and epideictic elements in these addresses.  For example, in the replies to Hayne, Webster praised noninterference and Union, while making a forensic case for disposition of public lands.  In the first reply, Webster's discourse was epideictic:  he "deprecated and deplored" the tone of Hayne's rhetoric.  During the debate over the Missouri Compromise, he spent a good deal of time explaining the "injustices" done to the New England states.  During the 1850 Compromise debates, Webster had praise for some senators and states, and blame for others.  In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a deliberative effort that did not contain forensic and epideictic aspects.  Throughout Webster's ostensibly deliberative speeches, the reader finds references to precedent, certain "injustices," and the Constitution -- all forensic subjects.  One also finds references to freedom, liberty, progress, hard work, and conciliation -- usually epideictic subjects.

Much less research has been dedicated to uncovering the strategies that Webster used in ceremonial addresses.  An examination of them makes clear that Webster used epideictic form to house elements of the other genres in order to accomplish his rhetorical end.  Webster's ceremonial speaking demonstrates that effective discourse has elements of all three forms of address and that interaction among forms within an address may explain its effectiveness or lack thereof.
An analysis of Webster's major ceremonial addresses demonstrates an effective fusion of deliberative and forensic elements with epideictic form.  And this sophisticated form allowed Webster to advance the National Republican agenda in the sheep's clothing of American civil religion.  For example, "The First Settlement of New England" was delivered in 1820 to celebrate the bicentennial of the landing of the Pilgrims.  This speech, like many other of his ceremonial addresses, revealed Webster's ecumenical Protestantism.  His belief in God, the Ten Commandments, and the righteousness of revenge was softened by his faith in New Testament redemption.  But these values, played a secondary role to his political philosophy, which had been enriched by the reading of Bacon, Macaulay, Dryden, and Moore.  Webster's respect for past generations and traditions is traceable directly to Edmund Burke, whom Webster greatly admired.  It is without doubt his firm belief that history, tradition, and generational loyalty are the mystical cords that bind a people into a nation:

Standing in this relation to our ancestors and our posterity, we are assembled on this memorable plot, to perform the duties which that relation and the present occasion impose upon us.  We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty with which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and establish.

In form, this passage reveals the periodic cadence that typified Webster's style.  In substance, this perspective on what citizens owe their ancestors framed the obligation that Webster's audience owed to future generations.  "Advance, then, ye future generations," said Webster.
Having reinforced transcendent values and a sense of linkage with the past, Webster moved to the course he believed the nation should take.  Here he most clearly fused deliberative argument with epideictic form.  He endorsed protection of property as the foundation of constitutional law.  But not to be misunderstood, he added this powerful passage:

If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this [slave] traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the Rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it.  It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer.  I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnace, where the manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs.  I see the visages of those, who by stealth, and at midnight, labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture.  Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England.

Webster recommended a course of action for the country and at the same time condemned slavery.  He thereby concealed a deliberative and a forensic argument in the epideictic form by reinforcing the seminal value of New England's Puritan founders, who would cleanse impurities in the body politic.  John Adams was effusive in his praise of the address in calling Webster "the most consummate orator of modern times."  Adams said the speech would live for "five hundred years hence."
On June 17, 1825, in his "First Bunker Hill Address," also known as "Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument" Webster argued for national defense, individual liberty, union, preservation of the Constitution, Greek independence and speculated on South American revolutions.  The Marquis de Lafayette, the most noted foreign ally of the war, and two hundred veterans of the battle sat on the stage near Webster.  This situation allowed him to place the moment into the context of the American heritage and then use it to reinforce the most important values in civil life: "We consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it forever."

Webster's growth as an orator was marked by a passage in which Webster evoked the spirits of those killed at Bunker Hill and then dispensed their blessing on the crowd.  In the eulogy to Adams and Jefferson, soon to be discussed, Webster became Adams and uttered what has been called the greatest "ghost speech" in American public address.  Perhaps Webster's success at Bunker Hill gave him the courage to be even more daring with invented dialogue at Faneuil Hall a year later.
Once Webster had fixed the moment at Bunker Hill, once the values he preferred were endorsed, he moved on to espouse the spread of democratic revolution and the manifest destiny of civilized men.  Throughout his defense of revolution, Webster contrasted American democratic values with the autocratic tendencies of the Old World.  While Europe fought wars to maintain alliances and power, America fought for freedom.  Webster then praised the Greek Revolution and the revolutions underway in Latin America as part of a new wave of freedom sweeping from the cradle of liberty to the New World.  In the end, Webster reinforced the ideals he believed would deliver America to her destiny.  The speech helped to establish the genre of ceremonial speaking in America.  The Cyclopedia of American Biography states, "Achieving another great oratorical triumph at the laying of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill monument on June 17, 1825, he made popular the occasional oratory that was to thrive for decades."  Events of a mystical nature would soon give Webster a chance to reinforce this judgment.

THE EULOGY TO ADAMS AND JEFFERSON
Webster's concealment of one form inside of another is neo-Aristotelian.  For example, Aristotle described one tactic of this overall strategy when he wrote:
To praise a man is in one respect akin to urging a course of action.  The suggestions which would be made in the latter case become encomiums when differently expressed. . . .  Consequently whenever you want to praise anyone, think what you would urge people to do; and when you want to urge the doing of anything, think what you would praise a man for having done.  Since suggestion may or may not forbid any action, the praise into which we convert it must have one or other of two opposite forms of expression accordingly.

Recognizing that the interplay of the various forms produces a unique speech for a rhetorical situation, the critic is more likely to make useful and complete judgments.
Webster's eulogy to Adams and Jefferson gives the critic an opportunity to examine Webster's epideictic oratory in detail.  His apparent faithfulness to the epideictic form is a function of several factors.  The address came six years after the Missouri Compromise and at least 18 months before the tariff issue would heat up again.  Thus, the slavery issue was at low ebb.  The address came midway between presidential election years, thus somewhat removing the occasion from national politics.  Furthermore, in 1826 Webster was less clear about his political future than on other occasions.  The death of John Adams, the last Federalist President, and the death of Thomas Jefferson, the first Democratic-Republican elected President, must have emphasized the unstable nature of political partisanship in America.  Finally, the event was so mystical and so concerned with national heroes that it required the epideictic form to meet expectations of the audience.  Obvious deliberative and forensic elements might demean the occasion.

On July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died.  A eulogy was required and Daniel Webster was the orator that leapt to mind within days of the event.  He was deeply honored but not surprised when the Boston council asked him make the speech.  Edward Everett, who was gaining a reputation for oratorical skill himself, had planned to speak about this event in New Hampshire a few weeks earlier, but Webster talked him out of it, not so subtly implying that speaking before Webster would be politically unwise.  There was hardly a prominent citizen of Boston who had not heard of and admired Webster.  The glow from the Bunker Hill address was still warm.  Furthermore, Webster had an association with Adams, whose Federalist positions he admired.  Adams had worked closely with Webster in 1820 at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention and praised Webster's speech at Plymouth that year.  We have also seen that Webster had at least a passing acquaintance with Jefferson.

As usual Webster sought the advice of many friends in preparation for the address.  Webster evidently had his own notes on Jefferson's involvement in the Declaration of Independence.  He poured over letters of Adams that focused on July of 1776.  Thomas Pickering, Secretary of State in the Adams Administration, supplied the letter which may have inspired the famous "ghost speech" in the address.

For my analysis, I rely on the text in Webster's own hand now housed at the New Hampshire Historical Society and reproduced with notes in Charles Wiltse's edition of The Papers of Daniel Webster: Speeches and Writings, vol. 1, 1800-1833.  This version is considered the most authentic since the published version makes several changes including added passages which Wiltse is good enough set in brackets.

On the day of the eulogy, August 2, 1826, all business were closed.  Thousands of people tried to crowd into Faneuil Hall in Boston's financial district near the harbor.  The doors were closed at noon when the dignitaries were seated and the mob outside began a loud protest.  To prevent a riot, Webster strode to the front of the stage and yelled, "Let the doors be opened!"  Those in the mob who could squeeze in did so; the rest quieted and strained to hear.  For the first time, the balconies of the hall were draped in black.  Near Webster on the stage sat Governor Lincoln, Major Josiah Quincy, Harvard's President Kirkland and John Quincy Adams, whose father would receive most of Webster's attention.  The President led the funeral service which celebrated an event that captured the national imagination and seemed marked by providence.  It would become part of American civil religion: any speaker addressing the moment needed to take care not to offend sensibilities.  Futhermore, the task was complicated by the fact that Jefferson and Adams represented very different personalities and political philosophies.

Webster's challenge was to weld occasion and subjects into one piece of discourse.  Webster employed the epideictic form with only a few traces of forensic and deliberative elements to achieve this convergence and enhance the mystical nature of the moment.

Aristotle specifically recommended appeals to honor and dishonor for the epideictic address, and his discussion of the other virtues indicates that they were to support the strategies surrounding honor or dishonor, and to make all of these claims believable.  One way to make them believable was to ascribe to the subject those "qualities an audience esteems."  Aristotle's recommendations for arrangement in epideictic speaking began with a call for a preview of ideas.  He suggested that themes be integrated into the text to insure continuity.  Consistent with this advice is the recommendation that the narration be intermittent throughout the speech, and that eulogy and argument be interwoven.  Aristotle was concerned not only with an organizational structure appropriate to the occasion, but a structure that demonstrated some sense of proportion.  Aristotle realized how easy it would be for a speaker to exclude his audience while eulogizing the dead, a past event, or while vilifying an opponent, or a nasty deed. So he also advised the speaker to bring his audience into the occasion.  Of the three forms, Aristotle claimed that the epideictic "is the most literary, since it is meant to be read."  We find support for Aristotle's claim among modern critics, in Webster's practice of not publishing his speeches until he had revised them, and in the success Webster's published speeches enjoyed.

While Aristotle's commentary on epideictic speech is seminal, it is not the only advice useful to assess Webster's effectiveness.  Webster, particularly in this Eulogy, also understands Plato's notion of epideictic wherein lessons from history are reinforced and politics is merged with ethics.  Webster also seems to have read Cicero's advice on epideictic being useful to reinforcing "statements that are certain. . . ."  In fact, the discussion of civic virtue in this speech seems very much in line with Cicero's and Quintilian's paradigm for the "good speaker."

Webster's eulogy meets the common criteria of the form by dealing with a present occasion and praising its subjects, but it meets the standards of structure in more subtle ways.  The proportioning of the speech is almost poetic.  If the letter A represents the discourse devoted to Adams, the letter J the discourse devoted to Jefferson, and AJ the discussion of the two together, the following general pattern emerges:

Introduction:  AJ.
Body:  A then J, then AJ, then A, then J, then AJ, and   AJ again.
Conclusion:  AJ, digression, AJ, peroration.

This rhythmic progression houses Webster's line of thought, which is clothed in appropriate style throughout the address.

The introduction is concerned with describing the extraordinary coincidence that has brought the audience together.  From the first sentence, Webster brings the event into Faneuil Hall calling attention to the room itself.  He then connects the mourning in the hall to his conservative sense of history: "The tears which flow, and the honors that are paid, when the founders of the republic die, give hope that the republic itself may be immortal."  Death reinforces life.  This sublime contrast is soon matched by another when Webster tells his audience that Adams and Jefferson "took their flight together to the world of spirits" in the midst of national rejoicing over the fiftieth anniversary of independence.  Then the parallel lives of the two patriots are explored generally as a preview of what will come.  Throughout this section, the audience is described and drawn into the speech.
Already, Webster had created a pattern that would guide him through the speech.  The audience would be involved in the "account of the lives" by references to the occasion.  The occasion would be explored by references to the parallel lives of the two patriots.  Also foreshadowed in the introduction is a wonderful metaphor concerning the universe; it surfaces several more times in the speech and is brought to culmination near the end.  The stars in the sky, and then later the planets and their orbits provide a unifying image for the address.  "These suns, as they rose slowly and steadily, amidst clouds and storms, in their ascendant, so they have rushed from their meridian to sink suddenly in the west."

The introduction is also ordered by a movement forward in Webster's argument:  "The live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country, but through out the civilized world."  Death reinforces life; it perpetuates "the stream of time."

The introduction is also marked by the grand periodic style of Webster at his most literate.  Metaphors and antitheses abound; commas, semicolons, and prepositional phrases march across the page.  Just at the right moment, short simple sentences give the audience a relief from the onslaught of the tropes and figures.  "We are not deceived.  There is no delusion here," concludes Webster after two huge train-length sentences.

The first section after the introduction is devoted to John Adam's life to the year 1776.  The section that follows explores Jefferson's life to the same year.  Webster knew Adams better than he knew Jefferson, and certainly preferred the politics of the former to the politics of the latter.  This familiarity and the fact that the speech is delivered on Adams' home turf explains why Adams biography is nearly three times as long as Jefferson's.  The praise of both men centered on their particular accomplishments as evidence of honor.  Jefferson's role as leader-statesman, philosopher and founding father was compared to Adams' political commitments and service on the Massachusetts Supreme Court.  Other accomplishments were used to demonstrate virtues attendant upon honor.  For example, Adams does not abandon his duty when faced with having to defend Captain Preston whose troops killed Bostonians.  Jefferson's "love of letters" was "postponed" when duty called.  He is said to have received the highest honors at William and Mary College, an obvious attempt on Webster's part to demonstrate the intelligence of his subject.  Adams educational career leads to his having argued before his state's Supreme Court at the early age of twenty-four and having written a distinguished series of essays in 1765.  Jefferson is pictured as just in representing his constituents.  With Adams, Webster is more direct, "Mr. Adams himself seems never to have lost the feeling [justice] produced, and to have entertained constantly the fullest conviction of its important effect."  These biographies are written in a plain, declarative style that allows them to speak for themselves, and to provide a much needed contrast to the florid introduction.

Webster has little difficulty imputing courage and sacrifice to the two patriots in the early sections of the speech and then re-establishing these virtues toward the conclusion.  Praise is contained within the AJ proportion and reasserted to maintain continuity and consistency.  The fact is Webster maintains continuity by referring to certain virtues throughout the speech.  He also maintains continuity with three striking metaphors.  We have already heard the first concerning the universe.  The second appeared in other Webster speeches.  It involved the turbulent ocean and role of the mariner in bringing his ship safely home.  The metaphor had great appeal to Americans at the time because the great bulk of the population lived in such ports as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston.

The third metaphor concerned the growth cycle and helped unify various elements in the speech.  In its simplest form, the metaphor was a reference to the past, the present, and the future.  In this speech, it concerned the seed, the sapling, and the tree.  The seed was the accomplishments of the two patriots; the sapling was the present and the audience's understanding of virtue; and the tree, which reaches to heaven, was the future guiding the living and providing a lasting tribute to the dead patriots.  This stream of time led Webster and his audience to transcendence.  It allowed Webster to say that while Jefferson and Adams "are no more," "they live" nonetheless.  The oxymoron was transcended by the metaphor of time.

Webster also manipulated certain themes to achieve cohesiveness.  His use of "liberty" is typical.  The concept, which is introduced in paragraph one, reappears in paragraphs nine and fifteen in the beginning, and is still evident in paragraphs sixty-nine, seventy-one, and seventy-two at the end.
Webster also showed great skill in making the virtues he attributed to his subjects believable.  The next major division of the speech is a case in point.  It combined the lives of Adams and Jefferson and was composed of Webster's nearly forty-five-minute review of the writing and approval of the Declaration of Independence.  His recollection of Jefferson's involvement was easily researched; historians knew that Jefferson was the major drafter of the document.  Webster acknowledged as must in a quick phrase or two.  It was not difficult for Webster to render Jefferson's contribution believable.  And yet he went a step further by rebutting the charge by Tim Pickering in an oration of 1823 that Jefferson's draft "contains nothing new."

Webster then digressed into a discussion of the relationship between the colonies and England in an effort to set the scene for what follows.  The issues of the day and the feel of the debate are crucial to his daring strategy.  Though no record of the debates was extant, Webster contended that Adam's debating skill was crucial to the passage of the Declaration: "John Adams had no equal."
But how to convey Adams' contribution.  First, Webster cited Jefferson's praise for Adams as a "colossus. . . not elegant, not always fluent" but capable of "thought and expression, which moved us from our seats."  Second, Webster heaped praise on Adams and described his eloquence:  "It was bold, manly, energetic."  These passages undoubtedly created an expectation in the audience that Webster then fulfilled with his famous "ghost speech."  Webster wrote the speech in the plain, bold, manly style he attributed to Adams.  Those in the audience who knew the acerbic Adams were willing to accept this portrayal; those in the audience who did not know Adams oratory were primed by Webster's forgoing descriptions.  The strategy demonstrates Webster's mastery of the Roman notion of decorum.

The opening of the "ghost speech" is stunning and powerful: "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote."  The hail of rhetorical questions that follows held attention.  The extended metaphor at the end is all the more glorious because it rises from the declarative desert that precedes it.  And then comes the last line which presages Webster's magnificent conclusion to the debate with Hayne in 1830: "It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, Independence, now, and independence for ever."  Later, Webster claimed to have written the "ghost speech" over breakfast at his home on Summer Street and that his stationery was wet with tears when he finished.  But other records indicate that he was unsure of this section of the speech.  The day before the speech, he rehearsed this section in front of George Ticknor and asked him if it should be deleted.  Ticknor told him to retain it.
Aside from its fitting timing, the impersonation of Adams worked because it is explosive and dramatic in marked contrast to the dry exposition of Jefferson's involvement and because it refuted the very strong arguments Webster presented on behalf of Adams' opposition.  Furthermore, the use of the ethopoiia reinforced the AJ structure, keeping the lines of organization clear while filling the units with exciting discourse.

After the ethopoiia, Webster paid homage to the other patriots present at the debate, particularly those from the "commonwealth."  Then Webster resumed his "narrative" of the life of Adams, outlining briefly various accomplishments and honors.  Wiltse's edition indicates that this section was almost doubled in length in the pamphlet version.  Both versions end by claiming that Adams' last words "which trembled on his lips" were "Independence for ever!"

The recounting of Jefferson's life from 1776 to 1826 follows.  Again, the plain style allows the narrative to speak for itself, which concludes with the incorporation of the "infant seminary," the University of Virginia.  Webster then returned to the grand style and painted a moving picture of the man of letters beholding "his last sands . . . falling."  He attributed a dying phrase to Jefferson in Latin from Tacitus' tribute to Agricola.  We know, of course, that Jefferson, under a mistaken impression, actually said, "I have but one regret, that Adams has outlived me."

Webster then united his subjects again discussing their successive presidencies and comparative merits in plain narrative style.  His "faint and feeble tribute," as he called it at the beginning of the conclusion, argued that Adams' and Jefferson's "fame is safe."  He marked the passage of a generation by pointing out that only one signer of the Declaration remains, like "an aged oak, standing alone on the plain. . . ."  This metaphor also signaled the return to the grand style; parallel structure, extended metaphors and similes, apostrophes, repetitions, periodic rhythms, and alliteration filled the paragraphs in anticipation of the closing lines:  "Washington is in the clear, upper sky.  These other stars have now joined the American constellation; they circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with new light.  Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, and at its close devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent of us all, to the Divine Benignity."

Within the epideictic form, Webster satisfied the needs of this particular rhetorical situation with proportion and grace.  He trated the subjects separately and then united them:  "Both had been presidents, both had lived to great age, both were early patriots, and both were distinguished and ever honored."  Paragraph twenty-eight rendered an example of the same strategy but with the use of historic events instead of thematic material:  "Mr. Jefferson . . . had received the highest and Mr. Adams the next highest number of votes.  The difference is said to have been but a single vote."  Near the end of the address, Webster expanded the strategy to include the occasion when he spoke again of the common death day.  Thus, in substance and in form, the A, J, AJ structure is evident.
Perhaps because he was so effective, writers have ignored the possibility that deliberative and forensic elements might also surface in this epideictic address.  Possibly the concealment is so subtle as to mask the elements.  After all, Webster was steeped in the classical tradition.  Not only had he read Cicero and Quintilian on rhetoric, he was fond of Bishop Richard Whately's Elements of Rhetoric.

Webster learned well Aristotle's lesson concerning praising a man for a course of action the orator would have others follow.  He uses this device to organize the deliberative themes around praise of Adams and Jefferson.  Thus, he encapsulated the deliberative advice inside the AJ structure:
They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men not only in their country, but throughout the civilized world.

This passage appeared early in the speech (paragraph six) and foreshadowed Webster's use of "principles and opinions" for deliberative ends.  Subsequent paragraphs reinforced this preview, which seems both to justify and to mask Webster's deliberative remarks.  When Webster finally translated the patriots' "principles" into a course of action, the deliberative advice seemed natural to the discourse:  "Be it remembered . . . that liberty must, at all hazards, be supported."  Later, he reasserted his commitment to continuity:

And now, fellow citizens, let us not retire from this occasion without a deep and solemn conviction of the duties which have devolved upon us.  This lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase of our fathers, are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, ours to transmit.

In the last paragraph, Webster admited that he might have spent too much time on these themes, but continued to discuss them anyway.  He argued that America was a model for the world, that it embodied a new approach to government, that its citizens must preserve its institutions, and that all must be guided by God.  Only Webster's references to the occasion and the forefathers maintained an epideictic veneer over a deliberative message concerned with the ways to achieve and preserve happiness, with the good in society, with forms of government, and with duties of citizens.  Each of these themes was treated by Aristotle under the deliberative heading in Book One, Chapters Five through Eight of the Rhetoric.

Even less apparent were the forensic elements.  While accusation and defense rarely appear, Webster did employ them to set the scene for the all-important "ghost speech."  And throughout the speech, he used the defense of the forefathers as reinforcement of praise and a backdrop for the deliberative themes.  This passage near the end of the speech reinforces Aristotle's belief that any praise of a person is closely akin to forensic pleading:

No men, fellow citizens, ever served their country with more entire exemption from every imputation of selfish and mercenary motives, than those to whose memory we are paying these proofs of respect.  A suspicion of any disposition to enrich themselves, or to protect by their public employment, never rested on either.

The setting and the audience made this passage epideictic; however, were the same passage uttered before a jury, it would be changed into a forensic pleading.  Here is a case where the situation transforms the matter in such a way as to make it appropriate to the occasion.

The issue of England's treatment of the colonies is more clearly forensic.  Paragraphs twenty-nine through thirty-two condemn the unjust action of Parliament and the King and vindicate the just actions of the patriots.  Webster used this section to establish his probity regarding the debate over the Declaration, its intent, and composition.  Thus, the masking of forensic elements works to make the epideictic persuasion more effective.

The speech was an enormous success.  Richard Rush wrote to Webster: "The speech . . . made my hair rise. . . . Nothing of Livy's ever moved me so much."  From that time, Webster was often referred to as the "Godlike Daniel."   Within a year, the state legislature elected Webster to the United States Senate when Governor Levi refused to serve.  Webster was the political beneficiary of his fusion politics and his civil religion.  He had moved beyond being a great lawyer; he became a man of letters, a force in American literary circles.  Few political leaders have equalled that achievement.  The most noted, Abraham Lincoln, never produced the variety or volume of work that Webster did, although he was able to match the quality of Webster's best poetic lines.

CONCLUSION
This analysis reveals several important strategies that Webster used in ceremonial addresses.  First, the overlap between genres occurs in two theoretically distinct ways:  (1) a masking process where purposes proper to one genre are developed in a speech ostensibly belonging to another genre, and (2) a borrowing process in which the purposes of one genre are served by using the devices from another.  The latter case is exemplified in the above analysis where Webster in the body of the address uses deliberative and forensic elements to reinforce the epideictic telos or end.
Second, there seems always to be a controlling or dominant form.  Generally, audiences that gather to hear a speech are often called upon to serve in a loose sense as jurors, observers, or deliberators, but they may also serve a secondary function at the same time with or without the encouragement of the speaker.  For example, those gathered as observers of Webster's "Eulogy" could think as jurors or policy makers at various points in the address.  Thus, audience role stands out as one of the major constituents by which we can identify the controlling form.   Setting is also useful: that a speech is given in court, or in Congress, or in celebration of a holiday helps the critic determine the dominant form shaping the discourse.  But again we should note that while one setting may dominate, another may be called to mind.  Webster's conversion of Faneuil Hall into the Congress for the "ghost speech" is a case in point.

Aristotle also used time as a determinant of controlling form.  If one intended to issue a judgment about the past, the forensic form was useful.  Speaking to the future necessitated deliberative utterance, and endorsing values for the present was epideictic.  Yet again while one time period may be emphasized, and thereby help us identify the controlling form, secondary time periods often appear.  Webster's vindication of Jefferson's past was part of an overall strategy to reinforce present values so that future policies would be improved.

The notion of form examined here is useful in explaining why Webster was so successful.  He adapted epideictic rhetoric to fit the audience, subject, time, and setting.  He understood that Aristotle's three genre cast three different lights on the persuasive situation.  Each light revealed different "available means of persuasion" that Webster employed, which explains why his public address was complex, effective, and enduring.

Through Webster, the Federalist virtues of Union, opportunity, and propertied rights not only survived but flourished in the birth of the new Whig party.  Webster played a key role in the evolution of America's representative federal system.  His ceremonial speeches brought this platform to the public where he reinforced values that devolved from the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution.  These same values would serve later presidents well, particularly Lincoln as he preserved and protected the Union a decade after Webster's death.