Edward Everett


Edward Everett was an American politician, Unitarian pastor, educator, diplomat, and orator from Massachusetts. Everett, as a Whig, served as U.S. representative, U.S. senator, the 15th governor of Massachusetts, minister to Great Britain, and United States secretary of state. He also taught at Harvard University and served as its president.
Everett was one of the great American orators of the antebellum and Civil War eras. He was the featured orator at the dedication ceremony of the Gettysburg National Cemetery in 1863, where he spoke for over two hoursimmediately before President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous two-minute Gettysburg Address.
The son of a pastor, Everett was educated at Harvard, and briefly ministered at Boston's Brattle Street Church before taking a teaching job at Harvard. The position included preparatory studies in Europe, so Everett spent two years in studies at the University of Göttingen, and another two years traveling around Europe. At Harvard he taught ancient Greek literature for several years before starting an extensive and popular speaking career. He served ten years in the United States Congress before winning election as Governor of Massachusetts in 1835. As Governor he introduced the state Board of Education, the first of its type in the nation. In 1831, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.
After being narrowly defeated in the 1839 election, Everett was appointed Minister to Great Britain, serving until 1845. He next became President of Harvard, a job he quickly came to dislike. In 1849, he became an assistant to longtime friend and colleague Daniel Webster, who had been appointed Secretary of State. Upon Webster's death Everett served as Secretary of State for a few months until he was sworn in as U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. In the later years of his life, Everett traveled and gave speeches all over the country. He supported efforts to maintain the Union before the Civil War, running for Vice President on the Constitutional Union Party ticket in 1860. He was active in supporting the Union effort during the war and supported Lincoln in the 1864 election.

Early life and education

Edward Everett was born on April 11, 1794, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the fourth of eight children, to the Reverend Oliver Everett and Lucy Hill Everett, the daughter of Alexander Sears Hill. His father, a native of Dedham, Massachusetts, was a descendant of early colonist Richard Everett, and his mother's family also had deep colonial roots. His father had served as pastor of New South Church, retiring due to poor health two years before Everett was born. He died in 1802, when Edward was eight, after which his mother moved the family to Boston. He attended local schools, and then a private school of Ezekiel Webster. During this time Ezekiel's brother Daniel sometimes taught classes; Everett and Daniel Webster would later form a close friendship. His sister was Sarah Preston Hale.
Everett attended Boston Latin School in 1805, and then briefly Phillips Exeter Academy, where his older brother Alexander Hill Everett was teaching. At the age of 13, he was admitted to Harvard College. In 1811, at age 17, he graduated as the valedictorian of his class. Unlike some of the other students at the time, Everett was an earnest and diligent student who absorbed all of what was taught. While a student, he was a member of the Porcellian Club, and of the Hasty Pudding Club.

Pastor and student

Uncertain what to do next, Everett was encouraged by his pastor, Joseph Stevens Buckminster of the Brattle Street Church, to study for the ministry. This Everett did under the tutelage of Harvard President John Thornton Kirkland, earning his MA in 1813. During this time in particular he developed a facility for working with both the written and spoken word. The Reverend Buckminster died in 1812, and Everett was immediately offered the post at the Brattle Street Church on a probationary basis after his graduation, which was made permanent in November 1813. Everett dedicated himself to the work, and became a highly popular Unitarian preacher. Listeners wrote of his "florid and affluent fancy", and his "daring imagery", while one critic wrote what would become a common criticism of his speaking style: " spoke like some superior intelligence, discoursing to mortals of what they ought to feel and know, but as if himself were too far exalted to require such feelings, and such knowledge himself." Everett, over the year he served in the pulpit, came to be disenchanted with the somewhat formulaic demands of the required oratory, and with the sometimes parochial constraints the congregation placed on him.
The workload also took its toll on young Everett, who around this time acquired the nickname "Ever-at-it", which would be used throughout his life. For a change of pace, Everett traveled to Washington, D.C., where he visited with Daniel Webster and other Federalist Party luminaries from Massachusetts. In late 1814 Everett was offered a newly endowed position as professor of Greek literature at Harvard. The position came with authorization to travel for two years in Europe, and Everett readily accepted. He was formally invested as a professor in April 1815. Everett was also elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1815.
Everett made his way across western Europe, visiting London and the major Dutch cities en route to the German city of Göttingen. There he entered the university, where he studied French, German, and Italian, along with Roman law, archaeology, and Greek art. He was a disciplined student, but he and George Ticknor, with whom he had traveled, were also quite sociable. Everett noted that they were viewed by many at the university as curiosities, and were often the focus of attention. He was granted a Ph. D in September 1817, which he believed to be the first such degree awarded to an American.
During his sojourn at Göttingen, Everett traveled to see other German cities, including Hanover, Weimar, Dresden, and Berlin. He received permission from Harvard to extend his time in Europe, and spent two more years traveling across the continent, visiting the major cities of the continent before returning to the United States in 1819. Among those he met in England were the Prussian diplomat Wilhelm von Humboldt, an influential architect of the Prussian education system, and William Wilberforce, a leading English abolitionist. While in Constantinople Everett acquired a number of ancient Greek texts which are now in the Harvard archives.

Teacher, writer, and speaker

Everett took up his teaching duties later in 1819, hoping to implant the scholarly methods of Germany at Harvard and bring a generally wider appreciation of German literature and culture to the United States. For his Greek class he translated Philipp Karl Buttmann's Greek lexicon. Among his students were future Speaker of U.S. House of Representatives Robert Charles Winthrop, presidential son and future U.S. Representative Charles Francis Adams, and future philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson had first heard Everett speak at the Brattle Street Church, and idolized him. He wrote that Everett's voice was "of such rich tones, such precise and perfect utterance, that, although slightly nasal, it was the most mellow and beautiful and correct of all instruments of the time."
In 1820 Everett was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. That year he became editor of the North American Review, a literary magazine to which he had contributed articles while studying in Europe. In addition to editing he made numerous contributions to the magazine, which flourished during his tenure and reached a nationwide audience. He was also instrumental in expanding Harvard's collections of German language works, including grammars, lexicons, and a twenty-volume edition of the collected works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom Everett had visited in Weimar and whose works he championed on the pages of the Review.
Everett began his public speaking career while he taught at Harvard, which combined with his editorship of the Review to bring him some national prominence. He preached at a service held in the United States Capitol that brought him wide notice and acclaim in political circles. In 1822, he delivered a series of lectures in Boston on art and antiquities. The series was well attended, and he repeated it in subsequent years. He made a major speech in December 1823 advocating American support of the Greeks in their struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. This subject was adopted by Daniel Webster, who also made it the subject of a speech in Congress. This collaboration between Webster and Everett was the start of a lifelong political association between the two men.
Everett delivered speeches commemorating the opening battles of the American Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts in 1825 and Lexington, Massachusetts in 1835.

Marriage and children

On May 8, 1822, Everett married Charlotte Gray Brooks, a daughter of Peter Chardon Brooks and Ann Gorham, who like Everett were of old New England lineage. Brooks had made a fortune in a variety of business endeavors, including marine insurance, and would financially support Everett when he embarked on his career in politics. Everett would also become associated through the Brooks family with John Quincy Adams' son Charles Francis Adams, Sr., who married Charlotte's sister Abigail.
The Everetts had a happy and fruitful marriage, producing six children who survived infancy:
  1. Anne Gorham Everett
  2. Charlotte Brooks Everett ; married Captain Henry Augustus Wise USN
  3. Grace Webster Everett
  4. Edward Brooks Everett ; married Helen Cordis Adams
  5. Henry Sidney Everett ; married Katherine Pickman Fay
  6. William Everett ; U.S. Representative from Massachusetts