Daily national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1854, 1854-04-08
xoRx ABOUT THE HuIsEMANN LErrER.

Especial Correspondence Of the Boston Evening Post
Bosros, April 6, 1884,
DEAR Sir: Since wrote you yesterday,
have learned the interesting denouement OF Mr..
Everetts and MIR. Fletcher Webster's cores
pondence As | told you, the other executors,
and suoh of the old friends of Daniel Webster
as were informed of Mr.. Everetts application,
were very much excited; but when they learned
that he had ordered thousand printed copies
Of tho draft for general circulation, they were
alarmed, and, after putting their heads to-
gether awhile, resolved that it must be stopped.
They went to Mr. Everett and, between ar
guments and threats, made him tear up the
draft letter, and abandon his preteusions for
ever.
The principal ground of their insisting upon
this course was, that the whole world had been
taught to believe that Webster wrote that let:
ter and, what was worse Webster himself,
in one of his letters, in 1852, had boosted Of
having written it at Franklin, New Hamp-
shire, and referred to it in reply to Horace
Mann's attacks upon his incorporate habits
and decrepitude, az evidence that he was as
good as new.n
After thus running himself for the Presi-
dency, and being run by all his friends, incln-
ding Mr.. Everett, on the strength of this letter,
they insisted that it would never do, whether
they looked to the good name Of the dead or
Of the living, to come out with the admission
that both Webster and Everett knew that they
were humbugging the public all the time.
Everett had not looked at it in this light ex-
actly, and was entirely unprepared for the OPP
position he encountered. Of COURSE therefore,
he backed out, and, am assured, tore up the
draft, and threw it into the fire. ! presume
ell his printed copies experienced similar
fate.
When heard Of Everetts pretensions to
the authorship Of the Hulsemann letter, was
q little curious to see what he had said of it in
his memoir Of Webster. On turning to the
volume, fiud only this paragraph:
The correspondence with the Austrian
Charge dAffaires is the worthy complement,
after an interval of quarter of q century, to
the profound discussion of international poll
tics contained in the speech Of January, 1924,
on the revolution of Greece, and that of 1926,
on the Congress Of Panama"
This is the only allusion to the subject in
Everett's edition Of Webster's works. The
letter taelf is copied without note or comment
This extraordinary silence about document
which gave Webster more foreign and about
as much domestic reputation as any one thing
he ever did, may now be construed to imply u
purpose on the part Of Mr.. Everett even during
Mr.. Webster's life, to be ready to reclaim his
epistolary offspring, whenever the occasion
should be propitious.
His case is hard one, but ! fear it is past
cure The friends of Mr.. Webster will insist
that even if Everett did hold the pen, he had
been first crammed by the Secretary, and the
substantial merit and power of the document
were derived from him. This cannot easily be
gpinsaid, whether true or false; and Mr.. Ever
ett's draft, after all, is only proof that the
phraseology is his except to those who are pre-
pared TO believe him better informed and pre-
pared to write the document in question than
Mr. Webster was.