LS signed “Dan'l Webster,” three pages on two adjoining sheets, 7.75 x 13, October 16, 1851. Letter to J. T. Woodbury, in full: "If my public duties would permit, there is no occasion of the kind, which I would attend with more pleasure than the erection of a monument to the memory of Isaac Davis. His brief, public history and untimely grave, not only called forth to my admiration, but enkindled my enthusiasm; and in later years, when I have conversed respecting him, with those who saw him on the morning of that eventful nineteenth of April, marked the undaunted courage, with which he marched up, and met the fire of the foe, the manner in which he received the fatal shot, and the complacency and beauty of his manly countenance, as he lay a corpse, with wounds still fresh & bleeding, my heart has melted within me, and my eyes gush out with tears.
I have read all that I could find, and gathered up all that I could learn of his high and noble character. He fell in his early manhood, one of the very first martyrs in the cause of Liberty, and, if I mistake not, the first American officer who sealed his devotion to the cause with his own blood. In the scene at Concord Bridge, he seems to stand out in marked, prominent and bold relief. I have had the pleasure of speaking of him, according to my high estimate of his character, in the councils of the nation. Most happy should I be, in passing a day with those, who are the children of Fathers who were his neighbors, and perhaps of some, who may remember to have seen him. Let me ask you to present, in my name, the following sentiment to the company. Isaac Davis—an early grave in the cause of Liberty has secured to him the long and grateful remembrance of his country." In fine condition.
Isaac Davis (1745–1775) was a gunsmith and a militia officer who commanded a company of Minutemen from Acton, Massachusetts, at the Battle of Concord. During the American advance on the British at the Old North Bridge, Davis was among the first killed and was the first American officer to die in the Revolution.
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