Edward Everett Biography Quotes 15 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Edward Everett was born on April 11, 1794, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, into a New England family steeped in the ministry and public service. His father, a clergyman, and his mother encouraged rigorous study, and his precocious intellect showed early. At Harvard College he graduated at the top of his class in 1811, and soon undertook theological training. After a brief but notable period as a Unitarian minister in Boston, he continued his education abroad, studying philology and classical scholarship at the University of Gottingen. There he joined the first wave of Americans shaped by German scholarship and is often remembered as among the earliest Americans to complete a doctoral course of study in Germany. That continental training marked his style for life: precise, polished, and deeply committed to the power of letters and learning. His elder brother, Alexander Hill Everett, would also become a diplomat and man of letters, and the two brothers moved in overlapping circles of scholarship and statecraft.

Scholar, Editor, and Orator
Returning to Massachusetts, Everett became a professor of Greek literature at Harvard, a position that helped anchor the college in modern classical philology. He contributed to and helped edit the North American Review in the 1810s, shaping American literary culture and public argument. In an age that prized public speaking, his orations drew crowded halls; he refined a style of learned eloquence that would carry him through a long political life. Marriage in 1822 to Charlotte Gray Brooks, daughter of the Boston merchant Peter Chardon Brooks, linked him to one of the region's prominent families, reinforcing his standing in the Commonwealth's civic elite.

Congressman and Whig Statesman
Everett entered national politics in 1825 as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving for a decade. He aligned with the National Republicans and then the Whig Party, working alongside figures such as John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. He backed protective tariffs, internal improvements, and a national outlook that blended commerce, education, and infrastructure. In Massachusetts he cooperated with Daniel Webster, the state's towering orator and senator, and together they articulated a brand of Unionism that resisted both sectional extremism and narrow local interests. Everett's speeches in the House displayed careful reasoning and literary polish rather than thunderous invective, a temperament that made him a natural mediator but sometimes left him vulnerable in times of sharp political conflict.

Governor of Massachusetts
Elected governor in 1835 and serving from 1836 to 1840, Everett pursued a program of modernization. He supported the expansion of railroads and canals, fostered charitable and penal reform, and, most decisively, championed public education. With the creation of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, he helped put in place the framework that Horace Mann, as its secretary, would use to professionalize teaching and expand access to common schools. Everett's annual messages and addresses wove together moral uplift with practical administration, reflecting his conviction that a cultivated citizenry undergirded a stable republic. The politics of annual elections were relentless, however, and after several closely contested races he left the governorship at the close of the decade.

Diplomat in London
In 1841 Everett was appointed U.S. Minister to Great Britain. He arrived in London amid tense Anglo-American disputes over borders and maritime questions. Working from the legation while Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton negotiated in Washington, Everett helped sustain a calmer climate for agreement, and relations improved with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. In Britain he met regularly with senior officials, including Lord Aberdeen, and cultivated a style of diplomacy that blended courtesy with firmness about American interests. The experience deepened his appreciation for balance-of-power politics and the value of patient negotiation.

President of Harvard
Returning home, Everett served as president of Harvard University from 1846 to 1849. He modernized elements of the curriculum, encouraged scientific study, and sought institutional reforms, though the post taxed his health. His tenure was marked by efforts to reconcile traditional classical education with new demands for professional and scientific training. Colleagues such as historian Jared Sparks and educator George Ticknor were part of the intellectual environment he navigated, even as faculty governance and student discipline posed perennial challenges. Persistent illness and the strain of administration led to his resignation.

Secretary of State and U.S. Senator
After Daniel Webster's death in 1852, President Millard Fillmore called Everett to the State Department. In these closing months of the administration he defended American positions with notable clarity, particularly in correspondence declining a British and French proposal to guarantee Spanish control of Cuba, an exchange that underscored the Monroe Doctrine's continuing force. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1853, Everett found himself squeezed between intensifying antislavery sentiment in Massachusetts, represented by Charles Sumner, and Southern demands for the extension of slavery. Though he had supported the Compromise of 1850 as a way to preserve the Union, he resisted the repeal of the Missouri Compromise line in the Kansas-Nebraska controversy. Beset by ill health and political strain, he resigned in 1854.

Preservation Work and the Washington Orations
In the 1850s Everett took to the lecture circuit, donating proceeds from his celebrated address on George Washington to the effort to preserve Mount Vernon. He worked closely with the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, led by Ann Pamela Cunningham, and his published Mount Vernon Papers widened public support for historical preservation. These labors brought him before audiences across North and South and served as a form of civic peacemaking, even as the political center of the old Whig coalition collapsed.

The 1860 Campaign and the Coming of War
In 1860, as the Democratic Party split and sectional tensions sharpened, the Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell for president and Edward Everett for vice president. The ticket, supported by elder Whigs such as John J. Crittenden, appealed to voters who prized the Union and the Constitution above partisan or sectional demands. Bell and Everett carried several Upper South states, but Abraham Lincoln's victory made secession the decisive crisis. Everett rejected secession as unconstitutional and urged compromise to avert war, while recognizing that the Union had to be preserved.

Orator of the Union and Gettysburg
During the Civil War, Everett supported Lincoln's administration and spoke widely for the Union cause, raising funds for wounded soldiers and for civic relief. On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, he delivered the formal oration, a sweeping, classical address that surveyed the battle and the stakes of the conflict. President Lincoln followed with the brief remarks that became known as the Gettysburg Address. Everett later wrote to Lincoln acknowledging that the president had captured the meaning of the day with unmatched concision, a gracious tribute that has ever since linked the two men in the memory of that ceremony.

Final Months and Death
In the last years of his life Everett remained an elder statesman, offering counsel and defending national unity. He spoke repeatedly in Boston and beyond to rally morale and encourage charity for soldiers and civilians caught in the conflict. In January 1865, after addressing a public meeting in winter weather, he fell ill and died on January 15 in Boston, only months before the war's end. He left a family that included his son William Everett, who would follow him into scholarship and public life, and a legacy interwoven with that of contemporaries from Webster and Clay to Lincoln.

Legacy
Edward Everett embodied the Whig ideal of educated statesmanship: scholar, minister, legislator, governor, diplomat, university president, cabinet officer, and senator. His promotion of public education in Massachusetts helped lay foundations for the common school movement; his diplomacy steadied Anglo-American relations; his brief stewardship at the State Department articulated clear American principles; and his preservation work ensured that Mount Vernon would become a national shrine. Although his two-hour oration at Gettysburg was eclipsed in fame by Lincoln's brief address, it testified to a lifetime belief in reasoned eloquence as a civic force. In an age of fracture, he stood for Union and constitutional order, a voice of cultivation and moderation amid the storms that remade the United States.

Our collection contains 15 quotes who is written by Edward, under the main topics: Learning - Military & Soldier - Peace - Legacy & Remembrance - Kindness.