HIS SERVICES IN THE STATE AND NATIONAL LEGISLATURES.
After leaving college, in the year 1824, Franklin Pierce returned to
Hillsborough. His father, now in a green old age, continued to take a
prominent part in the affairs of the day, but likewise made his declining
years rich and picturesque with recollections of the heroic times through
which he had lived. On the 26th of December, 1825, it being his
sixty-seventh birthday, General Benjamin Pierce prepared a festival for
his comrades in arms, the survivors of the Revolution, eighteen of whom,
all inhabitants of Hillsborough, assembled at his house. The ages of
these veterans ranged from fifty-nine up to the patriarchal venerableness
of nearly ninety. They spent the day in festivity, in calling up
reminiscences of the great men whom they had known and the great deeds
which they had helped to do, and in reviving the old sentiments of the
era of ‘seventy-six. At nightfall, after a manly and pathetic farewell
from their host, they separated--“prepared,” as the old general expressed
it, “at the first tap of the shrouded drum, to move and join their
beloved Washington, and the rest of their beloved comrades, who fought
and bled at their sides.” A scene like this must have been profitable
for a young man to witness, as being likely to give him a stronger sense
than most of us can attain of the value of that Union which these old
heroes had risked so much to consolidate--of that common country which
they had sacrificed everything to create; and patriotism must have been
communicated from their hearts to his, with somewhat of the warmth and
freshness of a new-born sentiment. No youth was ever more fortunate than
Franklin Pierce, through the whole of his early life, in this most
desirable species of moral education.
Having chosen the law as a profession, Franklin became a student in the
office of Judge Woodbury, of Portsmouth. Allusion has already been made
to the friendship between General Benjamin Pierce and Peter Woodbury, the
father of the judge. The early progress of Levi Woodbury towards
eminence had been facilitated by the powerful influence of his father’s
friend. It was a worthy and honorable kind of patronage, and bestowed
only as the great abilities of the recipient vindicated his claim to it.
Few young men have met with such early success in life, or have deserved
it so eminently, as did Judge Woodbury. At the age of twenty-seven, he
was appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of the state, on the
earnest recommendation of old General Pierce. The opponents of the
measure ridiculed him as the “baby judge;” but his conduct in that high
office showed the prescient judgment of the friend who had known him from
a child, and had seen in his young manhood already the wisdom of ripened
age. It was some years afterwards when Franklin Pierce entered the
office of Judge Woodbury as a student. In the interval, the judge had
been elected governor, and, after a term of office that thoroughly tested
the integrity of his democratic principles, had lost his second election,
and returned to the profession of the law.
The last two years of Pierce’s preparatory studies were spent at the law
school of Northampton, in Massachusetts, and in the office of Judge
Parker at Amherst. In 1827, being admitted to the bar, he began the
practice of his profession at Hillsborough. It is an interesting fact,
considered in reference to his subsequent splendid career as an advocate,
that he did not, at the outset, give promise of distinguished success.
His first case was a failure, and perhaps a somewhat marked one. But it
is remembered that this defeat, however mortifying at the moment, did but
serve to make him aware of the latent resources of his mind, the full
command of which he was far from having yet attained. To a friend, an
older practitioner, who addressed him with some expression of condolence
and encouragement, Pierce replied,--and it was a kind of self-assertion
which no triumph would have drawn oat,--“I do not need that. I will try
nine hundred and ninety-nine cases, if clients will continue to trust me,
and, if I fail just as I have today, will try the thousandth. I shall
live to argue cases in this court house in a manner that will mortify
neither myself nor my friends.” It is in such moments of defeat that
character and ability are mot fairly tested; they would irremediably
crush a youth devoid of real energy, and, being neither more nor less
than his just desert, would be accepted as such. But a failure of this
kind serves an opposite purpose to a mind in which the strongest and
richest qualities lie deep, and, from their very size and mass, cannot at
once be rendered available. It provokes an innate self-confidence,
while, at the same time, it sternly indicates the sedulous cultivation,
the earnest effort, the toil, the agony, which are the conditions of
ultimate success. It is, indeed, one of the best modes of discipline
that experience can administer, and may reasonably be counted a fortunate
event in the life of a young man vigorous enough to overcome the
momentary depression.
Pierce’s distinction at the bar, however, did not immediately follow; nor
did he acquire what we may designate as positive eminence until some
years after this period. The enticements of political life--so
especially fascinating to a young lawyer, but so irregular in its
tendencies, and so inimical to steady professional labor--had begun to
operate upon him. His father’s prominent position in the politics of the
state made it almost impossible that the son should stand aloof. In
1827, the same year when Franklin began the practice of the law, General
Benjamin Pierce had been elected governor of New Hampshire. He was
defeated in the election of 1828, but was again successful in that of the
subsequent year. During these years, the contest for the presidency had
been fought with a fervor that drew almost everybody into it, on one side
or the other, and had terminated in the triumph of Andrew Jackson.
Franklin Pierce, in advance of his father’s decision, though not in
opposition to it, had declared himself for the illustrious man whose
military renown was destined to be thrown into the shade by a civil
administration, the most splendid and powerful that ever adorned the
annals of our country, I love to record of the subject of this memoir
that his first political faith was pledged to that great leader of the
democracy.
I remember meeting Pierce about this period, and catching from him some
faint reflection of the zeal with which he was now stepping into the
political arena. My sympathies and opinions, it is true,--so far as I
had any in public affairs,--had, from the first, been enlisted on the
same side with his own. But I was now made strongly sensible of an
increased development of my friend’s mind, by means of which he possessed
a vastly greater power than heretofore over the minds with which he came
in contact. This progressive growth has continued to be one of his
remarkable characteristics. Of most men you early know the mental gauge
and measurement, and do not subsequently have much occasion to change it.
Not so with Pierce: his tendency was not merely high, but towards a point
which rose higher and higher as the aspirant tended upward. Since we
parted, studious days had educated him; life, too, and his own exertions
in it, and his native habit of close and accurate observation, had
likewise begun to educate him.
The town of Hillsborough, in 1829, gave Franklin Pierce his first public
honor, by electing him its representative in the legislature of the
state. His whole service in that body comprised four years, in the two
latter of which he was elected Speaker by a vote of one hundred and
fifty-five against fifty-eight for other candidates. This overpowering
majority evinced the confidence which his character inspired, and which,
during his whole career, it has invariably commanded, in advance of what
might be termed positive proof, although the result has never failed to
justify it. I still recollect his description of the feelings with which
he entered on his arduous duties--the feverish night that preceded his
taking the chair--the doubt, the struggle with himself--all ending in
perfect calmness, full self-possession, and free power of action when the
crisis actually came.
He had all the natural gifts that adapted him for the post; courtesy,
firmness, quickness and accuracy of judgment, and a clearness of mental
perception that brought its own regularity into the scene of confused and
entangled debate; and to these qualities he added whatever was to be
attained by laborious study of parliamentary rules. His merit as a
presiding officer was universally acknowledged. It is rare that a man
combines so much impulse with so great a power of regulating the impulses
of himself and others as Franklin Pierce. The faculty, here exercised
and improved, of controlling an assembly while agitated by tumultuous
controversy, was afterwards called into play upon a higher field; for,
during his congressional service, Pierce was often summoned to preside in
committee of the whole, when a turbulent debate was expected to demand
peculiar energy in the chair.
He was elected a member of Congress in 1833, being young for the station,
as he has always been for every public station that he has filled. A
different kind of man--a man conscious that accident alone had elevated
him, and therefore nervously anxious to prove himself equal to his
fortunes--would thus have been impelled to spasmodic efforts. He would
have thrust himself forward in debate, taking the word out of the mouths
of renowned orators, and thereby winning notoriety, as at least the
glittering counterfeit of true celebrity. Had Pierce, with his genuine
ability, practised this course; had he possessed even an ordinary love of
display, and had he acted upon it with his inherent tact and skill,
taking advantage of fair occasions to prove the power and substance that
were in him, it would greatly have facilitated the task of his
biographer.
To aim at personal distinction, however, as an object independent of the
public service, would have been contrary to all the foregone and
subsequent manifestations of his life. He was never wanting to the
occasion; but he waited for the occasion to bring him inevitably forward.
When he spoke, it was not only because he was fully master of the
subject, but because the exigency demanded him, and because no other and
older man could perform the same duty as well as himself. Of the copious
eloquence--and some of it, no doubt, of a high order--which Buncombe has
called forth, not a paragraph, nor a period, is attributable to Franklin
Pierce. He had no need of these devices to fortify his constituents in
their high opinion of him; nor did he fail to perceive that such was not
the method to acquire real weight in the body of which he was a member.
In truth, he has no fluency of words, except when an earnest meaning and
purpose supply their own expression. Every one of his speeches in
Congress, and, we may say, in every other hall of oratory, or on any
stump that he may have mounted, was drawn forth by the perception that it
was needed, was directed to a full exposition of the subject, and (rarest
of all) was limited by what he really had to say. Even the graces of the
orator were never elaborated, never assumed for their own sake, but were
legitimately derived from the force of his conceptions, and from the
impulsive warmth which accompanies the glow of thought. Owing to these
peculiarities,--for such, unfortunately, they may be termed, in reference
to what are usually the characteristics of a legislative career,--his
position before the country was less conspicuous than that of many men
who could claim nothing like Pierce’s actual influence in the national
councils. His speeches, in their muscular texture and close grasp of
their subject, resembled the brief but pregnant arguments and expositions
of the sages of the Continental Congress, rather than the immeasurable
harangues which are now the order of the day.
His congressional life, though it made comparatively so little show, was
full of labor, directed to substantial objects. He was a member of the
judiciary and other important committees; and the drudgery of the
committee room, where so much of the real public business of the country
is transacted, fell in large measure to his lot. Thus, even as a
legislator, he may be said to have been a man of deeds, not words; and
when he spoke upon any subject with which his duty, as chairman or member
of a committee, had brought him in relation, his words had the weight of
deeds, from the meaning, the directness, and the truth, that he conveyed
into them. His merits made themselves known and felt in the sphere where
they were exercised; and he was early appreciated by one who seldom erred
in his estimate of men, whether in their moral or intellectual aspect.
His intercourse with President Jackson was frequent and free, and marked
by friendly regard on the part of the latter. In the stormiest periods
of his administration, Pierce came frankly to his aid. The confidence
then established was never lost; and when Jackson was on his death-bed,
being visited by a gentleman from the North (himself formerly a
democratic member of Congress), the old hero spoke with energy of
Franklin Pierce’s ability and patriotism, and remarked, as with prophetic
foresight of his young friend’s destiny, that “the interests of the
country would be safe in such hands.”
One of President Jackson’s measures, which had Pierce’s approval and
support, was his veto of the Maysville Road Bill. This bill was part of
a system of vast public works, principally railroads and canals, which it
was proposed to undertake at the expense of the national treasury--a
policy not then of recent origin, but which had been fostered by John
Quincy Adams, and had attained a gigantic growth at the close of his
Presidency. The estimate of works undertaken or projected, at the
commencement of Jackson’s administration, amounted to considerably more
than a hundred millions of dollars. The expenditure of this enormous
sum, and doubtless other incalculable amounts, in progressive increase,
was to be for purposes often of unascertained utility, and was to pass
through the agents and officers of the federal government--a means of
political corruption not safely to be trusted even in the purest hands.
The peril to the individuality of the states, from a system tending so
directly to consolidate the powers of government towards a common centre,
was obvious. The result might have been, with the lapse of time and the
increased activity of the disease, to place the capital of our federative
Union in a position resembling that of imperial Rome, where each once
independent state was a subject province, and all the highways of the
world were said to meet in her forum. It was against this system, so
dangerous to liberty and to public and private integrity, that Jackson
declared war, by the famous Maysville veto.
It would be an absurd interpretation of Pierce’s course, in regard to
this and similar measures, to suppose him hostile either to internal or
coastwise improvements, so far as they may legitimately be the business
of the general government. He was aware of the immense importance of our
internal commerce, and was ever ready to vote such appropriations as
might be necessary for promoting it, when asked for in an honest spirit,
and at points where they were really needed. He doubted, indeed, the
constitutional power of Congress to undertake, by building roads through
the wilderness, or opening unfrequented rivers, to create commerce where
it did not yet exist; but he never denied or questioned the right and
duty to remove obstructions in the way of inland trade, and to afford it
every facility, when the nature and necessity of things had brought it
into genuine existence. And he agreed with the best and wisest statesmen
in believing that this distinction involved the true principle on which
legislation, for the purpose here discussed, should proceed.
While a member of the House of Representatives, he delivered a forcible
speech against the bill authorizing appropriations for the Military
Academy at West Point. He was decidedly opposed to that institution as
then, and at present organized. We allude to the subject in illustration
of the generous frankness with which, years afterwards, when the battle
smoke of Mexico had baptized him also a soldier, he acknowledged himself
in the wrong, and bore testimony to the brilliant services which the
graduates of the Academy, trained to soldiership from boyhood, had
rendered to their country. And if he has made no other such
acknowledgment of past error, committed in his legislative capacity, it
is but fair to believe that it is because his reason and conscience
accuse him of no other wrong.
It was while in the lower house of Congress that Franklin Pierce took
that stand on the slavery question from which he has never since swerved
a hair’s breadth. He fully recognized, by his votes and by his voice,
the rights pledged to the South by the Constitution. This, at the period
when he so declared himself, was comparatively an easy thing to do. But
when it became more difficult, when the first imperceptible movement of
agitation had grown to be almost a convulsion, his course was still the
same. Nor did he ever shun the obloquy that sometimes threatened to
pursue the northern man who dared to love that great and sacred reality--
his whole, united, native country--better than the mistiness of a
philanthropic theory.
He continued in the House of Representatives four years. If, at this
period of his life, he rendered unobtrusive, though not unimportant,
services to the public, it must also have been a time of vast
intellectual advantage to himself. Amidst great national affairs, he was
acquiring the best of all educations for future eminence and leadership.
In the midst of statesmen, he grew to be a statesman. Studious, as all
his speeches prove him to be, of history, he beheld it demonstrating
itself before his eyes. As regards this sort of training, much of its
good or ill effect depends on the natural force and depth of the man.
Many, no doubt, by early mixture with politics, become the mere
politicians of the moment,--a class of men sufficiently abundant among
us,--acquiring only a knack and cunning, which guide them tolerably well
through immediate difficulties, without instructing them in the great
rules of higher policy. But when the actual observation of public
measures goes hand in hand with study, when the mind is capable of
comparing the present with its analogies in the past, and of grasping the
principle that belongs to both, this is to have history for a living
tutor. If the student be fit for such instruction, he will be seen to
act afterwards with the elevation of a high ideal, and with the
expediency, the sagacity, the instinct of what is fit and practicable,
which make the advantage of the man of actual affairs over the mere
theorist.
And it was another advantage of his being brought early into the sphere
of national interests, and continuing there for a series of years, that
it enabled him to overcome any narrow and sectional prejudices. Without
loving New England less, he loved the broad area of the country more. He
thus retained that equal sentiment of patriotism for the whole land with
which his father had imbued him, and which is perhaps apt to be impaired
in the hearts of those who come late to the national legislature, after
long training in the narrower fields of the separate states. His sense
of the value of the Union, which had been taught him at the fireside,
from earliest infancy, by the stories of patriotic valor that he there
heard, was now strengthened by friendly association with its
representatives from every quarter. It is this youthful sentiment of
Americanism, so happily developed by after circumstances, that we see
operating through all his public life, and making him as tender of what
he considers due to the South as of the rights of his own land of hills.
Franklin Pierce had scarcely reached the legal age for such elevation,
when, in 1837, he was elected to the Senate of the United States. He
took his seat at the commencement of the presidency of Mr. Van Buren.
Never before nor since has the Senate been more venerable for the array
of veteran and celebrated statesmen than at that time. Calhoun, Webster,
and Clay had lost nothing of their intellectual might. Benton, Silas
Wright, Woodbury, Buchanan, and Walker were members; and many even of the
less eminent names were such as have gained historic place--men of
powerful eloquence, and worthy to be leaders of the respective parties
which they espoused. To this dignified body (composed of individuals
some of whom were older in political experience than he in his mortal
life) Pierce came as the youngest member of the Senate. With his usual
tact and exquisite sense of propriety, he saw that it was not the time
for him to step forward prominently on this highest theatre in the land.
He beheld these great combatants doing battle before the eyes of the
nation, and engrossing its whole regards. There was hardly an avenue to
reputation save what was occupied by one or another of those gigantic
figures.
Modes of public service remained, however, requiring high ability, but
with which few men of competent endowments would have been content to
occupy themselves. Pierce had already demonstrated the possibility of
obtaining an enviable position among his associates, without the windy
notoriety which a member of Congress may readily manufacture for himself
by the lavish expenditure of breath that had been better spared. In the
more elevated field of the Senate, he pursued the same course as while a
representative, and with more than equal results.
Among other committees, he was a member of that upon revolutionary
pensions. Of this subject he made himself thoroughly master, and was
recognized by the Senate as an unquestionable authority. In 1840, in
reference to several bills for the relief of claimants under the pension
law, he delivered a speech which finely illustrates as well the
sympathies as the justice of the man, showing how vividly he could feel,
and, at the same time, how powerless were his feelings to turn him aside
from the strict line of public integrity. The merits and sacrifices of
the people of the Revolution have never been stated with more earnest
gratitude than in the following passage:--
“I am not insensible, Mr. President, of the advantages with which claims
of this character always come before Congress. They are supposed to be
based on services for which no man entertains a higher estimate than
myself--services beyond all praise, and above all price. But, while warm
and glowing with the glorious recollections which a recurrence to that
period of our history can never fail to awaken; while we cherish with
emotions of pride, reverence, and affection the memory of those brave men
who are no longer with us; while we provide, with a liberal hand, for
such as survive, and for the widows of the deceased; while we would
accord to the heirs, whether in the second or third generation, every
dollar to which they can establish a just claim,--I trust we shall not,
in the strong current of our sympathies, forget what becomes us as the
descendants of such men. They would teach us to legislate upon our
judgment, upon our sober sense of right, and not upon our impulses or our
sympathies. No, sir; we may act in this way, if we choose, when
dispensing our own means, but we are not at liberty to do it when
dispensing the means of our constituents.
“If we were to legislate upon our sympathies--yet more I will admit--if
we were to yield to that sense of just and grateful remuneration which
presses itself upon every man’s heart, there would be scarcely a limit
for our bounty. The whole exchequer could not answer the demand. To the
patriotism, the courage, and the sacrifices of the people of that day, we
owe, under Providence, all that we now most highly prize, and what we
shall transmit to our children as the richest legacy they can inherit.
The War of the Revolution, it has been justly remarked, was not a war of
armies merely--it was the war of nearly a whole people, and such a people
as the world had never before seen, in a death struggle for liberty.
“The losses, sacrifices, and sufferings of that period were common to all
classes and conditions of life. Those who remained at home suffered
hardly less than those who entered upon the active strife. The aged
father and another underwent not less than the son, who would have been
the comfort and stay of their declining years, now called to perform a
yet higher duty--to follow the standard of his bleeding country. The
young mother, with her helpless children, excites not less deeply our
sympathies, contending with want, and dragging out years of weary and
toilsome days and anxious nights, than the husband in the field,
following the fortunes of our arms without the proper habiliments to
protect his person, or the requisite sustenance to support his strength.
Sir, I never think of that patient, enduring, self-sacrificing army,
which crossed the Delaware in December, 1777, marching barefooted upon
frozen ground to encounter the foe, and leaving bloody footprints for
miles behind then--I never think of their sufferings during that terrible
winter without involuntarily inquiring, Where then were their families?
Who lit up the cheerful fire upon their hearths at home? Who spoke the
word of comfort and encouragement? Nay, sir, who furnished protection
from the rigors of winter, and brought them the necessary means of
subsistence?’
“The true and simple answer to these questions would disclose an amount
of suffering and anguish, mental and physical, such as might not have
been found in the ranks of the armies--not even in the severest trial of
that fortitude which never faltered, and that power of endurance which
seemed to know no limit. All this no man feels more deeply than I do.
But they were common sacrifices in a common cause, ultimately crowned
with the reward of liberty. They have an everlasting claim upon our
gratitude, and are destined, as I trust, by their heroic example, to
exert an abiding influence upon our latest posterity.”
With this heartfelt recognition of the debt of gratitude due to those
excellent men, the senator enters into an analysis of the claims
presented, and proves them to be void of justice. The whole speech is a
good exponent of his character; full of the truest sympathy, but, above
all things, just, and not to be misled, on the public behalf, by those
impulses that would be most apt to sway the private man. The mere
pecuniary amount saved to the nation by his scrutiny into affairs of this
kind, though great, was, after all, but a minor consideration. The
danger lay in establishing a corrupt system, and placing a wrong
precedent upon the statute book. Instances might be adduced, on the
other hand, which show him not less scrupulous of the just rights of the
claimants than careful of the public interests.
Another subject upon which he came forward was the military establishment
and the natural defences of the country. In looking through the columns
of the “Congressional Globe,” we find abundant evidences of Senator
Pierce’s laborious and unostentatious discharge of his duties--reports of
committees, brief remarks, and, here and there, a longer speech, always
full of matter, and evincing a thoroughly-digested knowledge of the
subject. Not having been written out by himself, however, these speeches
are no fair specimens of his oratory, except as regards the train of
argument and substantial thought; and adhering very closely to the
business in hand, they seldom present passages that could be quoted,
without tearing them forcibly, as it were, out of the context, and thus
mangling the fragments which we might offer to the reader. As we have
already remarked, he seems, as a debater, to revive the old type of the
Revolutionary Congress, or to bring back the noble days of the Long
Parliament of England, before eloquence had become what it is now, a
knack, and a thing valued for itself. Like those strenuous orators, he
speaks with the earnestness of honest conviction, and out of the fervor
of his heart, and because the occasion and his deep sense of it constrain
him.
By the defeat of Mr. Van Buren, in the presidential election of 1840, the
administration of government was transferred, for the first time in
twelve years, to the Whigs. An extra session of Congress was summoned to
assemble in June, 1841, by President Harrison, who, however, died before
it came together. At this extra session, it was the purpose of the whig
party, under the leadership of Henry Clay, to overthrow all the great
measures which the successive democratic administrations had established.
The sub-treasury was to be demolished; a national bank was to be
incorporated; a high tariff of duties was to be imposed, for purposes of
protection and abundant revenue. The whig administration possessed a
majority, both in the Senate and the House. It was a dark period for the
Democracy, so long unaccustomed to defeat, and now beholding all that
they had won for the cause of national progress, after the arduous
struggle of so many years, apparently about to be swept away.
The sterling influence which Franklin Pierce now exercised is well
described in the following remarks of the Hon. A. O. P. Nicholson:--
“The power of an organized minority was never more clearly exhibited than
in this contest. The democratic senators acted in strict concert,
meeting night after night for consultation, arranging their plan of
battle, selecting their champions for the coming day, assigning to each
man his proper duty, and looking carefully to the popular judgment for a
final victory. In these consultations, no man’s voice was heard with
more profound respect than that of Franklin Pierce. His counsels were
characterized by so thorough a knowledge of human nature, by so much
solid common sense, by such devotion to democratic principles, that,
although among the youngest of the senators, it was deemed important that
all their conclusions should be submitted to his sanction.
“Although known to be ardent in his temperament, he was also known to act
with prudence and caution. His impetuosity in debate was only the result
of the deep convictions which controlled his mind. He enjoyed the
unbounded confidence of Calhoun, Buchanan, Wright, Woodbury, Walker,
King, Benton, and indeed of the entire democratic portion of the Senate.
When he rose in the Senate or in the committee room, he was heard with
the profoundest attention; and again and again was he greeted by these
veteran Democrats as one of our ablest champions. His speeches, during
this session, will compare with those of any other senator. If it be
asked why he did not receive higher distinction, I answer, that such men
as Calhoun, Wright, Buchanan, and Woodbury were the acknowledged leaders
of the Democracy. The eyes of the nation were on them. The hopes of
their party were reposed in them. The brightness of these luminaries was
too great to allow the brilliancy of so young a man to attract especial
attention. But ask any one of these veterans how Franklin Pierce ranked
in the Senate, and he will tell you, that, to stand in the front rank for
talents, eloquence, and statesmanship, he only lacked a few more years.”
In the course of this session he made a very powerful speech in favor of
Mr. Buchanan’s resolution, calling on the President to furnish the names
of persons removed from office since the 4th of March, 1841. The Whigs,
in 1840, as in the subsequent canvass of 1848, had professed a purpose to
abolish the system of official removals on account of political opinion,
but, immediately on coming into power, had commenced a proscription
infinitely beyond the example of the democratic party. This course, with
an army of office-seekers besieging the departments, was unquestionably
difficult to avoid, and perhaps, on the whole, not desirable to be
avoided. But it was rendered astounding by the sturdy effrontery with
which the gentlemen in power denied that their present practice had
falsified any of their past professions. A few of the closing paragraphs
of Senator Pierce’s highly effective speech, being more easily separable
than the rest, may here be cited.
“One word more, and I leave this subject,--a painful one to me, from the
beginning to the end. The senator from North Carolina, in the course of
his remarks the other day, asked, ‘Do gentlemen expect that their friends
are to be retained in office against the will of the nation? Are they so
unreasonable as to expect what the circumstances and the necessity of the
case forbid?’ What our expectations were is not the question now; but
what were your pledges and promises before the people. On a previous
occasion, the distinguished senator from Kentucky made a similar remark:
‘An ungracious task, but the nation demands it!’ Sir, this demand of the
nation,--this plea of STATE NECESSITY,--let me tell you, gentlemen, is as
old as the history of wrong and oppression. It has been the standing
plea, the never-failing resort of despotism.
“The great Julius found it a convenient plea when he restored the dignity
of the Roman Senate, but destroyed its independence. It gave countenance
to and justified all the atrocities of the Inquisition in Spain. It
forced out the stifled groans that issued from the Black Hole of
Calcutta. It was written in tears upon the Bridge of Sighs in Venice,
and pointed to those dark recesses upon whose gloomy thresholds there was
never seen a returning footprint.
“It was the plea of the austere and ambitious Strafford, in the days of
Charles I. It filled the Bastile of France, and lent its sanction to the
terrible atrocities perpetrated there. It was this plea that snatched
the mild, eloquent, and patriotic Camillo Desmoulins from his young and
beautiful wife, and hurried him to the guillotine with thousands of
others equally unoffending and innocent. It was upon this plea that the
greatest of generals, if not men,--you cannot mistake me,--I mean him,
the presence of whose very ashes within the last few months sufficed to
stir the hearts of a continent,--it was upon this plea that he abjured
the noble wife who had thrown light and gladness around his humbler days,
and, by her own lofty energies and high intellect, had encouraged his
aspirations. It was upon this plea that he committed that worst and most
fatal acts of his eventful life. Upon this, too, he drew around his
person the imperial purple. It has in all times, and in every age, been
the foe of liberty and the indispensable stay of usurpation.
“Where were the chains of despotism ever thrown around the freedom of
speech and of the press but on this plea of STATE NECESSITY? Let the
spirit of Charles X. and of his ministers answer.
“It is cold, selfish, heartless, and has always been regardless of age,
sex, condition, services, or any of the incidents of life that appeal to
patriotism or humanity. Wherever its authority has been acknowledged, it
has assailed men who stood by their country when she needed strong arms
and bold hearts, and has assailed them when, maimed and disabled in her
service, they could no longer brandish a weapon in her defence. It has
afflicted the feeble and dependent wife for the imaginary faults of the
husband. It has stricken down Innocence in its beauty, Youth in its
freshness, Manhood in its vigor, and Age in its feebleness and
decrepitude. Whatever other plea or apology may be set up for the
sweeping, ruthless exercise of this civil guillotine at the present day,
in the name of LIBERTY let us be spared this fearful one of STATE
NECESSITY, in this early age of the Republic, upon the floor of the
American Senate, in the face of a people yet free!”
In June, 1842, he signified his purpose of retiring from the Senate.
It was now more than sixteen years since the author of this sketch had
been accustomed to meet Frank Pierce (that familiar name, which the
nation is adopting as one of its household words) in habits of daily
intercourse. Our modes of life had since been as different as could well
be imagined; our culture and labor were entirely unlike; there was hardly
a single object or aspiration in common between us. Still we had
occasionally met, and always on the old ground of friendly confidence.
There were sympathies that had not been suffered to die out. Had we
lived more constantly together, it is not impossible that the relation
might have been changed by the various accidents and attritions of life;
but having no mutual events, and few mutual interests, the tie of early
friendship remained the same as when we parted. The modifications which
I saw in his character were those of growth and development; new
qualities came out, or displayed themselves more prominently, but always
in harmony with those heretofore known. Always I was sensible of
progress in him; a characteristic--as, I believe, has been said in the
foregoing pages--more perceptible in Franklin Pierce than in any other
person with whom I have been acquainted. He widened, deepened, rose to a
higher point, and thus ever made himself equal to the ever-heightening
occasion. This peculiarity of intellectual growth, continued beyond the
ordinary period, has its analogy in his physical constitution--it being a
fact that he continued to grow in stature between his twenty-first and
twenty-fifth years.
He had not met with that misfortune, which, it is to be feared, befalls
many men who throw their ardor into politics. The pursuit had taken
nothing from the frankness of his nature; now, as ever, he used direct
means to gain honorable ends; and his subtlety--for, after all, his heart
and purpose were not such as he that runs may read--had the depth of
wisdom, and never any quality of cunning. In great part, this
undeteriorated manhood was due to his original nobility of nature. Yet
it may not be unjust to attribute it, in some degree, to the singular
good fortune of his life. He had never, in all his career, found it
necessary to stoop. Office had sought him; he had not begged it, nor
manoeuvred for it, nor crept towards it--arts which too frequently bring
a man, morally bowed and degraded, to a position which should be one of
dignity, but in which he will vainly essay to stand upright.
In our earlier meetings, after Pierce had begun to come forward in public
life, I could discern that his ambition was aroused. He felt a young
man’s enjoyment of success, so early and so distinguished. But as years
went on, such motives seemed to be less influential with him. He was
cured of ambition, as, one after another, its objects came to him
unsought. His domestic position, likewise, had contributed to direct his
tastes and wishes towards the pursuits of private life. In 1834 he had
married Jane Means, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Appleton, a former
president of Bowdoin College. Three sons, the first of whom died in
early infancy, were born to him; and, having hitherto been kept poor by
his public service, he no doubt became sensible of the expediency of
making some provision for the future. Such, it may be presumed, were the
considerations that induced his resignation of the senatorship, greatly
to the regret of all parties. The senators gathered around him as he was
about to quit the chamber; political opponents took leave of him as of a
personal friend; and no departing member has ever retired from that
dignified body amid warmer wishes for his happiness than those that
attended Franklin Pierce.
His father had died three years before, in 1839, at the mansion which he
built, after the original log-cabin grew too narrow for his rising family
and fortunes. The mansion was spacious, as the liberal hospitality of
the occupant required, and stood on a little eminence, surrounded by
verdure and abundance, and a happy population, where, half a century
before, the revolutionary soldier had come alone into the wilderness, and
levelled the primeval forest trees. After being spared to behold the
distinction of his son, he departed this life at the age of eighty-one
years, in perfect peace, and, until within a few hours of his death, in
the full possession of his intellectual powers. His last act was one of
charity to a poor neighbor--a fitting close to a life that had abounded
in such deeds. Governor Pierce was a man of admirable qualities--brave,
active, public-spirited, endowed with natural authority, courteous yet
simple in his manners; and in his son we may perceive these same
attributes, modified and softened by a finer texture of character,
illuminated by higher intellectual culture, and polished by a larger
intercourse with the world, but as substantial and sterling as in the
good old patriot.
Franklin Pierce had removed from Hillsborough in 1838, and taken up his
residence at Concord, the capital of New Hampshire. On this occasion,
the citizens of his native town invited him to a public dinner, in token
of their affection and respect. In accordance with his usual taste, he
gratefully accepted the kindly sentiment, but declined the public
demonstration of it.