THE COMPROMISE AND OTHER MATTERS.
The intervening years, since General Pierce’s return from Mexico, and
until the present time, have been spent in the laborious exercise of the
legal profession,--an employment scarcely varied or interrupted, except
by those episodes of political activity which a man of public influence
finds it impossible to avoid, and in which, if his opinions are matter of
conscience with him, he feels it his duty to interest himself.
In the presidential canvass of 1848 he used his best efforts (and with
success, so far as New Hampshire was concerned) in behalf of the
candidate of his party. A truer and better speech has never been uttered
on a similar occasion than one which he made (during a hurried half hour,
snatched from the court rooms) in October of the above year, before the
democratic state convention, then in session at Concord. It is an
invariable characteristic of General Pierce’s popular addresses, that
they evince a genuine respect for the people; he makes his appeal to
their intelligence, their patriotism, and their integrity, and, never
doubtful of their upright purpose, proves his faith in the great mind
and heart of the country both by what he says and by what he refrains
from saying. He never yet was guilty of an effort to cajole his
fellow-citizens, to operate upon their credulity, or to trick them even
into what was right; and therefore all the victories which he has ever
won in popular assemblies have been triumphs doubly honored, being as
creditable to his audiences as to himself.
When the series of measures known under the collective term of The
Compromise were passed by Congress in 1850, and put to so searching a
test here at the North the reverence of the people for the Constitution
and their attachment to the Union, General Pierce was true to the
principles which he had long ago avowed. At an early period of his
congressional service he had made known, with the perfect frankness of
his character, those opinions upon the slavery question which he has
never since seen occasion to change in the slightest degree. There is an
unbroken consistency in his action with regard to this matter. It is
entirely of a piece, from his first entrance upon public life until the
moment when he came forward, while many were faltering, to throw the
great weight of his character and influence into the scale in favor of
those measures through which it was intended to redeem the pledges of the
Constitution, and to preserve and renew the old love and harmony among
the sisterhood of States. His approval embraced the whole series of
these acts, as well those which bore hard upon northern views and
sentiments as those in which the South deemed itself to have made more
than reciprocal concessions.
No friend nor enemy that know Franklin Pierce would have expected him to
act otherwise. With his view of the whole subject, whether looking at it
through the medium of his conscience, his feelings, or his intellect, it
was impossible for him not to take his stand as the unshaken advocate of
Union, and of the mutual steps of compromise which that great object
unquestionably demanded. The fiercest, the least scrupulous, and the
most consistent of those who battle against slavery recognize the same
fact that he does. They see that merely human wisdom and human efforts
cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the Constitution, breaking
the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into distracted fragments
that common country which Providence brought into one nation, through a
continued miracle of almost two hundred years, from the first settlement
of the American wilderness until the Revolution. In the days when, a
young member of Congress, he first raised his voice against agitation,
Pierce saw these perils and their consequences. He considered, too, that
the evil would be certain, while the good was, at best, a contingency,
and (to the clear, practical foresight with which he looked into the
future) scarcely so much as that, attended as the movement was and must
be during its progress, with the aggravated injury of those whose
condition it aimed to ameliorate, and terminating, in its possible
triumph,--if such possibility there were,--with the ruin of two races
which now dwelt together in greater peace and affection, it is not too
much to say, than had ever elsewhere existed between the taskmaster and
the serf.
Of course, there is another view of all these matters. The theorist may
take that view in his closet; the philanthropist by profession may strive
to act upon it uncompromisingly, amid the tumult and warfare of his life.
But the statesman of practical sagacity--who loves his country as it is,
and evolves good from things as they exist, and who demands to feel his
firm grasp upon a better reality before he quits the one already gained--
will be likely here, with all the greatest statesmen of America, to stand
in the attitude of a conservative. Such, at all events, will be the
attitude of Franklin Pierce. We have sketched some of the influences
amid which he grew up, inheriting his father’s love of country, mindful
of the old patriot’s valor in so many conflicts of the Revolution, and
having close before his eyes the example of brothers and relatives, more
than one of whom have bled for America, both at the extremest north and
farthest south; himself, too, in early manhood, serving the Union in its
legislative halls, and, at a maturer age, leading his fellow-citizens,
his brethren, from the widest-sundered states, to redden the same
battle-fields with their kindred blood, to unite their breath into one
shout of victory, and perhaps to sleep, side by side, with the same sod
over them. Such a man, with such hereditary recollections, and such a
personal experience, must not narrow himself to adopt the cause of one
section of his native country against another. He will stand up, as he
has always stood, among the patriots of the whole land. And if the work
of antislavery agitation, which it is undeniable leaves most men who
earnestly engage in it with only half a country in their affections,--if
this work must be done, let others do it.
Those northern men, therefore, who deem the great causes of human welfare
as represented and involved in this present hostility against southern
institutions, and who conceive that the world stands still except so far
as that goes forward,--these, it may be allowed, can scarcely give their
sympathy or their confidence to the subject of this memoir. But there is
still another view, and probably as wise a one. It looks upon slavery as
one of those evils which divine Providence does not leave to be remedied
by human contrivances, but which, in its own good time, by some means
impossible to be anticipated, but of the simplest and easiest operation,
when all its uses shall have been fulfilled, it causes to vanish like a
dream. There is no instance, in all history, of the human will and
intellect having perfected any great moral reform by methods which it
adapted to that end; but the progress of the world, at every step, leaves
some evil or wrong on the path behind it, which the wisest of mankind, of
their own set purpose, could never have found the way to rectify.
Whatever contributes to the great cause of good, contributes to all its
subdivisions and varieties; and, on this score, the lover of his race,
the enthusiast, the philanthropist of whatever theory, might lend his aid
to put a man, like the one before us, into the leadership of the world’s
affairs.
How firm and conscientious was General Pierce’s support of The Compromise
may be estimated from his conduct in reference to the Reverend John
Atwood. In the foregoing pages it has come oftener in our way to
illustrate the bland and prepossessing features of General Pierce’s
character, than the sterner ones which must necessarily form the bones,
so to speak, the massive skeleton, of any man who retains an upright
attitude amidst the sinister influences of public life. The transaction
now alluded to affords a favorable opportunity for indicating some of
these latter traits.
In October, 1850, a democratic convention, held at Concord, nominated Mr.
Atwood as the party’s regular candidate for governor. The Compromise,
then recent, was inevitably a prominent element in the discussions of the
convention; and a series of resolutions were adopted, bearing reference
to this great subject, fully and unreservedly indorsing the measures
comprehended under it, and declaring the principles on which the
Democracy of the state was about to engage in the gubernatorial contest.
Mr. Atwood accepted the nomination, acceding to the platform thus
tendered him, taking exceptions to none of the individual resolutions,
and, of course, pledging himself to the whole by the very act of assuming
the candidacy, which was predicated upon them.
The reverend candidate, we should conceive, is a well-meaning, and
probably an amiable man. In ordinary circumstances, he would, doubtless,
have gone through the canvass triumphantly, and have administered the
high office to which he aspired with no discredit to the party that had
placed him at its head. But the disturbed state of the public mind on
the Compromise question rendered the season a very critical one; and Mr.
Atwood, unfortunately, had that fatal weakness of character, which,
however respectably it may pass in quiet times, is always bound to make
itself pitiably manifest under the pressure of a crisis. A letter was
addressed to him by a committee, representing the party opposed to The
Compromise, and with whom, it may be supposed, were included those who
held the more thorough-going degrees of antislavery sentiment. The
purpose of the letter was to draw out an expression of Mr. Atwood’s
opinion on the abolition movement generally, and with an especial
reference to the Fugitive Slave Law, and whether, as chief magistrate of
the state, he would favor any attempt for its repeal. In an answer of
considerable length the candidate expressed sentiments that brought him
unquestionably within the free soil pale, and favored his correspondents,
moreover, with a pretty decided judgment as to the unconstitutional,
unjust, and oppressive character of the Fugitive Slave Law.
During a space of about two months, this very important document was kept
from the public eye. Rumors of its existence, however, became gradually
noised abroad, and necessarily attracted the attention of Mr. Atwood’s
democratic friends. Inquiries being made, he acknowledged the existence
of the letter, but averred that it had never been delivered, that it was
merely a rough draught, and that he had hitherto kept it within his own
control, with a view to more careful consideration. In accordance with
the advice of friends, he expressed a determination, and apparently in
good faith, to suppress the letter, and thus to sever all connection with
the antislavery party. This, however, was now beyond his power. A copy
of the letter had been taken; it was published, with high commendations,
in the antislavery newspapers; and Mr. Atwood was exhibited in the
awkward predicament of directly avowing sentiments on the one hand which
he had implicitly disavowed on the other, of accepting a nomination based
on principles diametrically opposite.
The candidate appears to have apprehended this disclosure, and he hurried
to Concord, and sought counsel of General Pierce, with whom he was on
terms of personal kindness, and between whom and himself, heretofore,
there had never been a shade of political difference. An interview with
the general and one or two other gentlemen ensued. Mr. Atwood was
cautioned against saying or writing a word that might be repugnant to his
feelings or his principles; but, voluntarily, and at his own suggestion,
he now wrote for publication a second letter, in which he retracted every
objectionable feature of his former one, and took decided ground in favor
of The Compromise, including all its individual measures. Had he adhered
to this latter position, he might have come out of the affair, if not
with the credit of consistency, yet, at least, as a successful candidate
in the impending election. But his evil fate, or, rather, the natural
infirmity of his character, was not so to be thrown off. The very next
day, unhappily, he fell into the hands of some of his antislavery
friends, to whom he avowed a constant adherence to the principles of his
first letter, describing the second as having been drawn from him by
importunity, in an excited state of his mind, and without a full
realization of its purport.
It would be needlessly cruel to Mr. Atwood to trace with minuteness the
further details of this affair. It is impossible to withhold from him a
certain sympathy, or to avoid feeling that a very worthy man, as the
world goes, had entangled himself in an inextricable knot of duplicity
and tergiversation, by an ill-advised effort to be two opposite things at
once. For the sake of true manhood, we gladly turn to consider the
course adopted by General Pierce.
The election for governor was now at a distance of only a few weeks; and
it could not be otherwise than a most hazardous movement for the
democratic party, at so late a period, to discard a candidate with whom
the people had become familiar. It involved nothing less than the
imminent peril of that political supremacy which the party had so long
enjoyed. With Mr. Atwood as candidate, success might be considered as
certain. To a short-sighted and a weak man, it would have appeared the
obvious policy to patch up the difficulty, and, at all events, to
conquer, under whatever leadership, and with whatever allies. But it was
one of those junctures which test the difference between the man of
principle and the mere politician--the man of moral courage and him who
yields to temporary expediency. General Pierce could not consent that
his party should gain a nominal triumph, at the expense of what he looked
upon as its real integrity and life. With this view of the matter, he
had no hesitation in his course; nor could the motives which otherwise
would have been strongest with him--pity for the situation of an
unfortunate individual, a personal friend, a Democrat, as Mr. Atwood
describes himself, of nearly fifty years’ standing--incline him to mercy
where it would have been fatal to his sense of right. He took decided
ground against Mr. Atwood. The convention met again, and satisfactory to
all parties; and one of his political opponents (Professor Sanborn, of
Dartmouth College) has ably sketched him, both in that aspect and as a
debater.
“In drawing the portraits of the distinguished members of the
constitutional convention,” writes the professor, “to pass Frank Pierce
unnoticed would be as absurd as to enact one of Shakespeare’s dramas
without its principal hero. I give my impressions of the man as I saw
him in the convention; for I would not undertake to vouch for the truth
or falsehood of those veracious organs of public sentiment, at the
capital, which have loaded him in turn with indiscriminate praise and
abuse. As a presiding officer, it would be difficult to find his equal.
In proposing questions to the house, he never hesitates or blunders. In
deciding points of order, he is both prompt and impartial. His treatment
of every member of the convention was characterized by uniform courtesy
and kindness. The deportment of the presiding officer of a deliberative
body usually gives tone to the debates. If he is harsh, morose, or
abrupt in his manner, the speakers are apt to catch his spirit by the
force of involuntary sympathy. The same is true, to some extent, of the
principal debaters in such a body. When a man of strong prejudices and
harsh temper rises to address a public assembly, his indwelling
antipathies speak from every feature of his face and from every motion of
his person. The audience at once brace themselves against his assaults,
and condemn his opinions before they are heard. The well-known character
of an orator persuades or dissuades quite as forcibly as the language he
utters. Some men never rise to address a deliberative assembly without
conciliating good will in advance. The smile that plays upon the
speaker’s face awakens emotions of complacency in those who hear, even
before he speaks. So does that weight of character, which is the matured
fruit of long public services and acknowledged worth, soothe, in advance,
the irritated and angry crowd.
“Mr. Pierce possesses unquestionable ability as a public speaker. Few
men, in our country, better understand the means of swaying a popular
assembly, or employ them with greater success. His forte lies in moving
the passions of those whom he addresses. He knows how to call into
vigorous action both the sympathies and antipathies of those who listen
to him. I do not mean to imply by these remarks that his oratory is
deficient in argument or sound reasoning. On the contrary, he seizes
with great power upon the strong points of his subject, and presents them
clearly, forcibly, and eloquently. As a prompt and ready debater, always
prepared for assault or defence, he has few equals. In these encounters,
he appears to great advantage, from his happy faculty of turning little
incidents, unexpectedly occurring, to his own account. A word carelessly
dropped, or an unguarded allusion to individuals or parties by an
opponent, is frequently converted into a powerful weapon of assault, by
this skilful advocate. He has been so much in office that he may be said
to have been educated in public life. He is most thoroughly versed in
all the tactics of debate. He is not only remarkably fluent in his
elocution, but remarkably correct. He seldom miscalls or repeats a word.
His style is not overloaded with ornament, and yet he draws liberally
upon the treasury of rhetoric. His figures are often beautiful and
striking, never incongruous. He is always listened to with respectful
attention, if he does not always command conviction. From his whole
course in the convention, a disinterested spectator could not fail to
form a very favorable opinion, not only of his talent and eloquence, but
of his generosity and magnanimity.”
Among other antiquated relics of the past, and mouldy types of prejudices
that ought now to be forgotten, and of which it was the object of the
present convention to purge the Constitution of New Hampshire, there is a
provision that certain state offices should be held only by Protestants.
Since General Pierce’s nomination for the presidency, the existence of
this religious test has been brought as a charge against him, as if, in
spite of his continued efforts to remove it, he were personally
responsible for its remaining on the statute book.
General Pierce has naturally a strong endowment of religious feeling. At
no period of his life, as is well known to his friends, have the sacred
relations of the human soul been a matter of indifference with him; and,
of more recent years, whatever circumstances of good or evil fortune may
have befallen him, they have alike served to deepen this powerful
sentiment. Whether in sorrow or success, he has learned, in his own
behalf, the great lesson, that religious faith is the most valuable and
most sacred of human possessions; but, with this sense, there has come no
narrowness or illiberality, but a wide-embracing sympathy for the modes
of Christian worship, and a reverence for individual belief, as a matter
between the Deity and man’s soul, and with which no other has a right to
interfere. With the feeling here described, and with his acute
intellectual perception of the abortive character of all intolerant
measures, as defeating their own ends, it strikes one as nothing less
than ludicrous that he should be charged with desiring to retain this
obsolete enactment, standing, as it does, as a merely gratuitous and
otherwise inoperative stigma upon the fair reputation of his native
state. Even supposing no higher motives to have influenced him, it would
have sufficed to secure his best efforts for the repeal of the religious
test that so many of the Catholics have always been found in the
advance-guard of freedom, marching onward with the progressive party; and
that, whether in peace or war, they have performed for their adopted
country the hard toil and the gallant services which she has a right to
expect from her most faithful citizens.
The truth is that, ever since his entrance upon public life, on all
occasions,--and often making the occasion where he found none,--General
Pierce has done his utmost to obliterate this obnoxious feature from the
Constitution. He has repeatedly advocated the calling of a convention
mainly for this purpose. In that of 1850, he both spoke and voted in
favor of the abolition of the test, and, with the aid of Judge Woodbury
and other democratic members, attained his purpose, so far as the
convention possessed any power or responsibility in the matter. That the
measure was ultimately defeated is due to other causes, either temporary
or of long continuance; and to some of them it is attributable that the
enlightened public sentiment of New Hampshire was not, long since, made
to operate upon this enactment, so anomalous in the fundamental law of a
free state.
In order to the validity of the amendments passed by the convention, it
was necessary that the people should subsequently act upon them, and pass
a vote of two thirds in favor of their adoption. The amendments proposed
by the convention of 1850 were numerous. The Constitution had been
modified in many and very important particulars, in respect to which the
popular mind had not previously been made familiar, and on which it had
not anticipated the necessity of passing judgment. In March, 1851, when
the vote of the people was taken upon these measures, the Atwood
controversy was at its height, and threw all matters of less immediate
interest into the background. During the interval since the adjournment
of the convention, the whig newspapers had been indefatigable in their
attempts to put its proceedings in an odious light before the people.
There had been no period, for many years, in which sinister influences
rendered it so difficult to draw out an efficient expression of the will
of the Democracy as on this occasion. It was the result of all these
obstacles that the doings of the constitutional convention were rejected
in the mass.
In the ensuing April, the convention reassembled, in order to receive the
unfavorable verdict of the people upon its proposed amendments. At the
suggestion of General Pierce, the amendment abolishing the religious test
was again brought forward, and, in spite of the opposition of the leading
whig members, was a second time submitted to the people. Nor did the
struggle in behalf of this enlightened movement terminate here.
At the democratic caucus, in Concord, preliminary to the town meeting, he
urged upon his political friends the repeal of the test, as a party
measure; and again, at the town meeting itself, while the balloting was
going forward, he advocated it on the higher ground of religious freedom,
and of reverence for what is inviolable in the human soul. Had the
amendment passed, the credit would have belonged to no man more than to
General Pierce; and that it failed, and that the free Constitution of New
Hampshire is still disgraced by a provision which even monarchical
England has cast off, is a responsibility which must rest elsewhere than
on his head.
In September, 1851, died that eminent statesman and jurist, Levi
Woodbury, then occupying the elevated post of judge of the Supreme Court
of the United States. The connection between him and General Pierce,
beginning in the early youth of the latter, had been sustained through
all the subsequent years. They sat together, with but one intervening
chair between, in the national Senate; they were always advocates of the
same great measures, and held, through life, a harmony of opinion and
action, which was never more conspicuous than in the few months that
preceded Judge Woodbury’s death. At a meeting of the bar, after his
decease, General Pierce uttered some remarks, full of sensibility, in
which he referred to the circumstances that had made this friendship an
inheritance on his part. Had Judge Woodbury survived, it is not
improbable that his more advanced age, his great public services, and
equally distinguished zeal in behalf of the Union might have placed him
in the position now occupied by the subject of this memoir. Fortunate
the state which, after losing such a son, can still point to another, not
less worthy to take upon him the charge of the nation’s welfare.
We have now finished our record of Franklin Pierce’s life, and have only
to describe the posture of affairs which, without his own purpose and
against his wish, has placed him before the people of the United States
as a candidate for the presidency.