Throughout his long and varied life Noah Webster worked for progress but often resented its course. An authoritarian both in politics and religion, he became in his later years a self-imposed castaway in a progressive America. While as a youth Webster supported the changes the American Revolution offered (he felt it would bring enlightened ideas and the proper line of authority to the colonies), as an American elder he increasingly became disturbed by the growth of libertarianism and the changing values associated with it. In the end Webster was a Puritanical man desperately trying to hold onto a world which no longer existed while simultaneously making important contributions to the one which did.

Although he was critical of the course America had taken as it entered the nineteenth century, his contributions are nonetheless prodigious. He was the great educator of the period, working as schoolteacher, lawyer, newspaper editor...