Whittle was named af­ter Amer­i­can pol­i­ti­cian Dan­i­el Web­ster. Whit­tle reached the rank of ma­jor in the Amer­i­can ci­vil war, and for the rest of his life was known as “Ma­jor” Whit­tle. Dur­ing the war, Whit­tle lost his right arm, and end­ed up in a pris­on­er of war camp. Re­cov­er­ing from his wounds in the hos­pi­tal, he looked for some­thing to read, and found a New Test­a­ment. Though its words res­o­nat­ed with him, he was still not rea­dy to ac­cept Christ. Short­ly af­ter, a hos­pit­al or­der­ly woke him and said a dy­ing pris­on­er want­ed some­one to pray with him. Whit­tle de­murred, but the or­der­ly said, “But I thought you were a Christ­ian; I have seen you read­ing your Bi­ble.” Whit­tle then agreed to go. He re­cord­ed what took place at the dy­ing youth’s bed side:

I dropped on my knees and held the boy’s hand in mine. In a few brok­en words I con­fessed my sins and asked Christ to for­give me. I be­lieved right there that He did for­give me. I then prayed ear­nest­ly for the boy. He be­came qui­et and pressed my hand as I prayed and plead­ed God’s prom­ises. When I arose from my knees, he was dead. A look of peace had come over his trou­bled face, and I can­not but be­lieve that God who used him to bring me to the Sav­ior, used me to lead him to trust Christ’s pre­cious blood and find par­don. I hope to meet him in hea­ven.

After the war, Whit­tle be­came trea­sur­er of the El­gin Watch Com­pany in Chi­ca­go, Ill­i­nois. In less than 10 years, though, he en­tered the evang­el­ism field. Dur­ing this per­i­od, he worked with mu­si­cians Phil­lip Bliss and James Mc­Gran­a­han. His daugh­ter May Moody al­so wrote mu­sic for some of his lyr­ics.

Of his de­ci­sion to de­vote his life to the Gos­pel, Whitt­le said that, while at work, he:

…went into the vault and in the dead si­lence of the qui­et­est of plac­es I gave my life to my Hea­ven­ly Fa­ther to use as He would.

Whittle’s works in­clude:

• Memoirs of Phil­ip P. Bliss (Chi­ca­go, Il­li­nois: A. S. Barnes & Com­pa­ny, 1877)