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GENERAL FRANKLIN PIERCE 
 At 57 years of age 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 OF 
 
 A STATUE OF 
 
 GENERAL FRANKLIN PIERCE 
 
 FOURTEENTH PRESIDENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 AT THE STATE HOUSE. CONCORD 
 NOVEMBER 25, 1914 
 
 ERECTED AND DEDICATED 
 
 BY THE 
 
 STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
Edited by 
 
 Henry Harrison Metcalf 
 
 State Historian 
 
 Published by the State 
 1914 
 
 
 t- 
 
 f - 3 2 
 
 .IV 5-4- 
 
THE STATUE 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 History of the Franklin Pierce Statue. 
 
 For many years past the great majority of the people 
 of New Hampshire, who take pride in the honor of their 
 state, and the character and achievements of its able 
 and distinguished sons, have felt that some fitting 
 expression of regard for the name and fame of Franklin 
 Pierce, fourteenth President of the United States, and 
 the only native of New Hampshire to occupy the exalted 
 position of Chief Magistrate of the Republic, should be 
 made, in enduring form, for the benefit of generations to 
 come, in impressing upon their minds the fact that last- 
 ing public recognition of true merit and noble service is 
 among the paramount duties of a free people. 
 
 On several occasions, within the last few years, attempts 
 have been made to secure the passage of a measure by 
 the General Court providing for the erection of a suit- 
 able statue, in the State House park, as a testimonial of 
 the people of New Hampshire in honor of this distin- 
 guished citizen; but, through partisan bitterness, grow- 
 ing out of the Civil War, and the sectional and political 
 controversies antecedent thereto and resulting therein, 
 these attempts had failed, from factious opposition, 
 though favored by the majority sentiment of the 
 people's representatives, as well as by the people 
 themselves. 
 
 Fortunately the legislature of 191 3, nearly fifty years 
 after the delivery of Lincoln's immortal second inaugural 
 address, with its "Malice toward none" and "Charity 
 for all," found within its membership none so imbued 
 
with partisan rancor and prejudice as to offer sub- 
 stantial opposition to such a just and worthy measure, 
 and the following joint resolution passed both branches 
 with practical unanimity, and was approved by the 
 governor : 
 
 Joint Resolution for the Erection of a Statue of 
 Franklin Pierce. 
 
 Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives in 
 General Court convened: 
 
 That the governor and council be hereby directed to 
 cause a statue to Franklin Pierce to be erected in an 
 appropriate place to be by them selected, in the state 
 house yard, the material, design, workmanship and 
 dedication to be left to the discretion of the governor 
 and council; and that to meet the expense thereof the 
 governor be authorized to draw his warrant upon the 
 treasury for a sum not exceeding fifteen thousand dollars. 
 Approved May 13, 1913- 
 
 At a meeting of the governor and council, July 11, 1913, 
 an advisory committee, consisting of five representative 
 citizens of the state, was appointed to act in conjunction 
 with that body in the matter of the erection of the 
 statue in question, as appears from the following copy 
 of record: 
 
 Executive Council Chamber, 
 
 Concord, July 11, 1913. 
 
 The Honorable Board met according to adjournment. 
 
 Present: His Excellency Samuel D. Felker, Governor, 
 and Councilors Badger, Oilman, Noone, Sawyer, and 
 McGregor. 
 
 The Governor with the advice of the Council made 
 the following appointments: 
 
 Advisory Committee relative to the Franklin Pierce 
 statue: Franklin Pierce Carpenter of Manchester, Wil- 
 liam E. Chandler of Concord, Clarence E. Carr of An- 
 
dover, Edgar Aldrich of Littleton, David E. Murphy of 
 Concord. 
 
 A true record: 
 
 Edward N. Pearson, 
 Secretary of State. 
 
 A true copy of record: 
 
 Edward N. Pearson, 
 Secretary of State. 
 
 On August 7, 1913, a joint meeting of the governor 
 and council and advisory committee was held, FrankHn 
 P. Carpenter being elected chairman and Councilor 
 William H. Sawyer, secretary. At this meeting it was 
 voted that William E. Chandler, Edgar Aldrich and 
 Franklin P. Carpenter be a committee to consider the 
 style of the proposed statue; to secure models, bids and 
 specifications, and to report at some future date. 
 
 At a meeting of the governor, council and committee, 
 October 30, 1913, it was voted to invite Mr. Augustus 
 Lukeman of New York to inspect the State House 
 grounds and confer with the governor, council and com- 
 mittee with reference to plans for the statue, and that 
 Mr. Carpenter be requested to inform Mr. Lukeman 
 and to arrange the time for the conference, to which time 
 the meeting was adjourned. 
 
 On November 7, 191 3, the meeting was reconvened, 
 the governor, all the councilors, and all members of the 
 advisory committee, except Judge Aldrich, being in 
 attendance, with Mr. Lukeman. A discussion of plans 
 ensued, and a view of the grounds was taken, and it was 
 finally voted to invite Mr. Lukeman to prepare and 
 present to this body a model showing the general scheme 
 of the proposed monument, as outlined by him, for its 
 consideration. 
 
 The governor, council and committee met, with Mr. 
 
Lukeman, December 31, in the Art room of the New 
 Hampshire Historical Society for an examination of his 
 design and model, after consideration of which they pro- 
 ceeded to the Council Chamber at the State House, 
 where, in the absence of Mr. Carpenter, who was called 
 away, Judge Aldrich was made temporary chairman and 
 Mr. Carr secretary. 
 
 It was voted that the conception, the working model 
 and plans of Mr. Augustus Lukeman of 145 West 55th 
 Street, New York City, for the proposed Franklin Pierce 
 statue be accepted at $14,500, and that Franklin P. 
 Carpenter, Clarence E. Carr and David E. Murphy be 
 constituted a committee to draft proper contracts, the 
 same being subject to the approval of the governor and 
 council. 
 
 The contracts were promptly drawn, signed and 
 approved, October 15, 1914, being fixed as the date for 
 completion of the work. As time passed and the work 
 progressed, the question of location commanded atten- 
 tion, some division of opinion arising regarding the same, 
 but the matter was finally settled in accordance with the 
 judgment of the sculptor, and in due season the work was 
 in position. 
 
 The monument is built of granite and bronze, and 
 stands on the south side of the Memorial Arch, on the 
 State House grounds, fronting Main Street, on a line 
 with the sidewalk. 
 
 The scheme of the monument is simplified Greek, and 
 takes the form of an exedra thirty-five feet by twelve 
 feet. The stylobit, or platform, is inlaid with yellow 
 vitrified brick, and flanked on either end are classic stone 
 seats, while on the corners are granite pedestals on which 
 are tall bronze electroliers. The heroic bronze statue 
 stands on a granite pedestal in the center and a little to 
 the back on the exedra, the four sides of which are suit- 
 ably inscribed, as follows: 
 
AUGUSTUS LUKEMAN 
 Sculptor 
 
On the east side, or front — 
 
 FRANKLIN PIERCE 
 
 FOURTEENTH 
 
 PRESIDENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 On the north side — 
 
 BORN AT HILLSBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 
 NOVEMBER 23, 1804. 
 
 A LAWYER WHO LOVED HIS PROFESSION 
 AND WAS A GREAT LEADER IN IT 
 
 MEMBER NEW HAMPSHIRE LEGISLATURE 
 
 AT 25 AND SPEAKER AT 27 
 
 CONGRESSMAN AT 29 
 
 UNITED STATES SENATOR AT 32 AND 
 
 RESIGNED AT 37 
 
 LATER IN LIFE DECLINED THE OFFICE 
 OF ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED 
 
 STATES, THAT OF SECRETARY OF WAR, 
 
 THE UNITED STATES SENATORSHIP AND 
 
 THE GOVERNORSHIP OF HIS STATE. 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 DIED AT CONCORD, OCTOBER 8, 1869. 
 
 On the south side — 
 
 BRIGADIER GENERAL U. S. A. 
 
 PUEBLA 
 
 CONTRERAS 
 
 CHERUBUSCO 
 
 MOLINO DEL REY 
 
 CHAPULTEPEC 
 
 COMMISSIONER APPOINTED BY GENERAL 
 
 SCOTT TO ARRANGE AN ARMISTICE 
 
 WITH GENERAL SANTA ANNA 
 
 "HE WAS A GENTLEMAN AND A 
 MAN OF COURAGE." 
 
 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 
 
8 
 
 On the west side, or rear — 
 
 ERECTED BY THE 
 
 STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
 1 91 4. 
 
 The statue represents President Pierce standing in an 
 easy position with his right hand resting on a conven- 
 tionaHzed pedestal of fasces draped with the American 
 flag, on which is also a manuscript with the seal of the 
 state, while his left hand rests against his hip. The 
 costume is of the Fifties, with its high neckstock and soft 
 shirt-front, broadcloth frock-coat and square-toed boots, 
 while over his shoulders is thrown a military cloak of the 
 period. 
 
 The statue is cast in United States standard bronze, 
 the alloy of which is 90 per cent, of copper and 10 per 
 cent, of tin and zinc. The weight of the statue is 2,230 
 pounds. The granite pedestal is made of Concord gran- 
 ite, and the entire work, design, plan and scheme, includ- 
 ing the modeling and execution of the statue and the 
 designing of the electroliers is the work of the sculptor, 
 Augustus Lukeman. 
 
 Circumstances delayed the formal dedication of the 
 statue, which was finally arranged for November 25, 
 with Hon. Clarence E. Carr as president of the day. Rev. 
 George H. Reed, D.D., chaplain, and David E. Murphy, 
 marshal. The program included an oration by Hon. 
 Oliver E. Branch of Manchester, with addresses by 
 President Carr, Mr. Carpenter, Governor Felker, Judge 
 Aldrich, ex-Senator Chandler and William F. Whitcher 
 of Woodsville, and music by Nevers' Third Regiment 
 Band of Concord. 
 
 At eleven o'clock a.m., on the day set for the dedica- 
 tion, a procession was formed in front of the Eagle 
 Hotel under the direction of the marshal, headed by the 
 
band, the officers and speakers of the day, governor, 
 council, committee and invited guests, and proceeded 
 to the space in front of the statue for the unveiling. 
 
 After the ceremony of unveiling, it had been planned 
 to introduce Mr. Augustus Lukeman, the sculptor, but, 
 Mr. Lukeman being detained by illness. President Carr 
 made fitting reference to the disappointment, and paid 
 a brief tribute to him and his work. The company then 
 proceeded to Representatives Hall, which, with the 
 spacious gallery, was entirely filled, and the speaking 
 program was fully carried out, the exercises having been 
 enlivened with music by the band, opening with the 
 overture, "II Guaranay" — Gomes. 
 
MISS SUSAN H. PIERCE 
 
DEDICATORY EXERCISES. 
 
 Mr. Carr, Introducing Miss Susan H. Pierce: 
 
 To grace this occasion and assist us in these cere- 
 monies, we are fortunate to have with us kinsfolk of 
 Franklin Pierce. 
 
 To Miss Susan H. Pierce, daughter of Hon. Kirk D. 
 Pierce of the old town of Hillsborough and grandniece 
 of President Pierce, fittingly is accorded the honor of 
 unveiling this statue. 
 
 Mr. Carr, Referring to Mr. Lukeman: 
 
 By love of art and through long years of labor is genius 
 developed. With us we expected to have a distinguished 
 sculptor who knows the cost and ungrudgingly has paid 
 the price. He was a student of one of the best known of 
 the world's sculptors, a son of New Hampshire, whose 
 advice in this composition has been freely sought and 
 gladly given. 
 
 In the love of his art, from the concept of his brain, 
 and with the cunning of his hand he has wrought for us. 
 We behold his story in bronze, and had he not been 
 detained by illness we would have gladly have welcomed 
 here to-day its author, — the artist and sculptor, — Augus- 
 tus Lukeman of New York. 
 
12 
 
 Mr. Carr, Calling upon Doctor Reed for the 
 Invocation: 
 
 When the horror of the cataclysm across the sea broke 
 upon us, men exclaimed, "Can this be possible among 
 Christian nations?" "What of our boasted Christian 
 religion?" " Is it a failure?" 
 
 In the brief period since, we have seen a million men 
 destroyed, a principality crushed, an innocent people 
 ruined. Unnumbered sorrows have been added to un- 
 measured woe. 
 
 But, behold! In spite of all, with steadied judgment, 
 new courage, and clearer vision, we begin to see and 
 understand the abiding strength of the true spirit of 
 the Christian religion. 
 
 All history and all experience teach us that however 
 false a nation's interpretation of that spirit, however 
 wrong its point of view, and however far astray it may 
 go, there is no change in the judgments of the Lord or 
 His purposes. They are true and righteous. 
 
 In the supreme moments to come the world will need 
 much and expect much of American Christian citizen- 
 ship. 
 
 It is fitting and proper then on this occasion, as on 
 all public occasions, that, striving for the true spirit of 
 the Christian religion, we seek Divine help to bring us 
 in harmony with Divine purposes. 
 
 Let us join Doctor Reed in prayer. 
 
REVEREND GEORGE H. REED, D D 
 Chaplain of the Day 
 
13 
 
 PRAYER BY REV. GEORGE H. REED, D.D. 
 
 Almighty god, our heavenly Father, we who 
 ■^*' know not what to pray for as we ought, do now 
 seek the guidance of Thy Spirit that we may see and 
 perceive and understand and remember the significance 
 of this hour. 
 
 May the monument that we dedicate this day keep 
 us from forgetting the debt that we owe to those who 
 have gone before us, and to those who shall come after 
 us, and therefore to this generation, to ourselves and to 
 Thee. 
 
 Hear Thou our prayer that as long as this statue shall 
 stand In its strength and dignity, it may remind the 
 young men of each rising generation that In the land 
 which the Lord their God hath given them it is possible 
 to pass from the common school and the humble home to 
 the high places of power. 
 
 But from a generation of seekers after place, O Lord, 
 defend us! May men ever esteem fitness for office more 
 to be desired than election to office, and the privilege of 
 serving the public the greatest honor the public can con- 
 fer upon them. 
 
 We thank Thee for the gifted men whose vision and 
 toil and sacrifice have made possible the freedom In which 
 we rejoice this day. Continue unto us the mercies 
 wherewith Thou hast blessed our fathers. Lead Thou 
 our leaders. Grant unto the president of this republic 
 and unto all governors, magistrates and judges the spirit 
 of wisdom, of justice and of mercy. 
 
 Give unto all who make and interpret our laws rev- 
 erence for Thy laws. Teach Thou our teachers, that the 
 men and women of to-morrow may come forth from our 
 schools and colleges with wise counsel and high resolve 
 to serve their country and their God. 
 
14 
 
 We pray for all those who mould public sentiment 
 through the printed page, from the platform and in the 
 pulpit, that they may plead with sanity and boldness 
 for that which is right in Thy sight, seeking ever the ap- 
 proval of God rather than the praise of men. 
 
 Prosper all honorable industries and incline the hearts 
 of all employers of labor to do unto men as they would 
 that men should do to them. 
 
 Defend us all from every unhallowed ambition and 
 grant that with breadth of vision, fairness of judgment 
 and sincerity of heart we may finish the work and fulfil 
 the hopes of those whom we hold in grateful remem- 
 brance. 
 
 And all that we ask for America we seek for every 
 nation on earth. Especially do we pray with one heart 
 and with one voice for the nations now at war. We 
 thank Thee for the men in every army who believe that 
 their cause is just, and that they serve the living God. 
 
 O Thou whose ways are higher than our ways and 
 thoughts are higher than our thoughts as the heavens 
 are above the earth, give Thou the victory to those who 
 shall use it best. Turn all men from the fierceness of 
 their anger and the folly of their strife unto the service 
 of Him who was lowly in heart, who made himself of no 
 reputation and who was willing to live and to die for 
 men, unto whom Thou hast given the name that is above 
 every name. 
 
 In His name we seek these unmerited blessings, the 
 forgiveness of our sins and the power to serve Thee 
 better. Amen. 
 
15 
 
 MR. CARR'S ADDRESS. 
 
 'VT'OUR Excellency, the Honorable Council, Members 
 -^ of the Franklin Pierce Statue Commission, Ladies 
 and Gentlemen: 
 
 By Chapter 258 of the Session Laws of 1913, the 
 General Court of New Hampshire adopted the following 
 joint resolution: 
 
 That the governor and council be hereby directed to cause 
 a statue to Franklin Pierce to be erected in an appropriate 
 place, to be by them selected, in the state house yard, the 
 material, design, workmanship and dedication to be left to 
 the discretion of the governor and council; and that to meet 
 the expense thereof the governor be authorized to draw his 
 warrant upon the treasury for a sum not exceeding fifteen 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 This is the authority for our action. 
 
 The Governor and Council invited to join them as an 
 advisory commission to carry out the will and intent 
 of the General Court, Franklin Pierce Carpenter, 
 William E. Chandler, Edgar Aldrich, David E. Murphy 
 and Clarence E. Carr. 
 
 A full account of the work of the united bodies will 
 be a part of the public records. 
 
 Franklin Pierce was born in Hillsborough, New Hamp- 
 shire, November 23, 1804. He was educated in acad- 
 emies at Hancock, Francestown, and Exeter, and at Bow- 
 doin College. Among his classmates were Senator John 
 P. Hale, Professor Stowe, that wonderful orator Sergeant 
 S. Prentiss, the poet Longfellow and the novelist Haw- 
 thorne. Studying law with Levi Woodbury, and at the 
 law school at Northampton, Massachusetts, and with 
 Judge Edmund Parker, he was admitted to the bar in 
 1827. He was elected a member of our legislature in 
 
i6 
 
 1829, served there four years, the last two as speaker, 
 was sent to Congress in 1833, and remained there till his 
 election to the United States Senate in 1837. Owing to 
 ill health he resigned his seat in 1842, and returned to 
 New Hampshire and to his law practice. In 1839, he 
 removed to Concord where he ever after made his home. 
 In 1845, he declined an appointment to a vacancy in 
 the United States Senate, the nomination as governor 
 of New Hampshire, and an appointment to the office of 
 attorney-general of the United States. In 1846, at the 
 opening of war with Mexico, he enlisted as a private, was 
 appointed colonel, and March 3, 1847 was commissioned 
 brigadier-general in the volunteer army. He was com- 
 mended for conspicuous bravery. He resigned his com- 
 mission at the close of the war, and in March, 1848, 
 returned home, and by the General Court of this state 
 was voted a sword in honor of his services. He was a 
 member, and president, of our Constitutional Convention 
 held in 1850. In January, 1852, the New Hampshire 
 Democratic State Convention, against his protest, de- 
 clared for him as its candidate for the Presidency ; he was 
 nominated in the Baltimore convention in June of the 
 same year, and elected by a large majority in the Novem- 
 ber following. 
 
 He died in Concord, October 8, 1869. 
 
 Such is the bare and naked outline of a remarkable 
 career. 
 
 History has measured his work and estimated his 
 worth. 
 
 Courtly, brave and chivalrous, he was loved as few 
 men have been loved in New Hampshire, and honored 
 beyond any other of her sons. 
 
 Not alone was Franklin Pierce the only New Hamp- 
 shire President, but he was the last president furnished 
 by one of the smaller states, unless we reckon New 
 
CLARENCE E. CARR 
 President of the Day 
 
17 
 
 Jersey as a smaller state. He came near the close of a 
 definite period of our history which was ended by the 
 Civil War; which, in turn, accustomed the nation to the 
 massing of great bodies of troops or voters. That is, 
 the regiment, so to speak, ceased to figure in political 
 strategy, and we thought and dealt in divisions and 
 corps; in other words, with larger bodies of men and 
 larger and more pivotal states. Have we worked 
 through another period? Are we coming to a third? 
 Is the division of state lines to be more and more ignored 
 as we seek The Man? 
 
 Is there to grow out of the present world-wide up- 
 heaval a wider and better nationality with fading border 
 lines based on the fatherhood of God and the brother- 
 hood of Man? May the sons and daughters of New 
 Hampshire, be wise and fit. Our noblest and highest 
 duty is to become good, upright, efificient and patriotic 
 American citizens. 
 
 It has been said that one of the crowning glories of the 
 life of Stephen A. Douglas was when, in March, 1861, he 
 stood by his great rival and held the hat of the after- 
 wards martyred President during the delivery of that 
 memorable inaugural, and thenceforth devoted the great 
 powers of his intellect and the patriotism of his soul to 
 the cause of the Union. 
 
 We, too, might say that one of the crowning glories of 
 Franklin Pierce's career, illustrating his chivalry and 
 foresight, was when in the storm that followed Webster's 
 seventh of March speech, he understood and defended 
 the physically enfeebled statesman from the bitter and 
 senseless attacks of an angry and misunderstanding 
 people. Subsequent events vindicated Webster's vision 
 and patriotism and honored Franklin Pierce for his 
 understanding and his chivalry. 
 
 It is fitting that we place his statue under the shadow 
 
of our capitol, there to stand as long as the state stands, 
 with Stark and Hale and Webster: — Stark who, with 
 his New Hampshire men, struck the blow at Bunker Hill 
 that gave heart and hope to a cause, and the blow at 
 Bennington that made possible one of the decisive battles 
 of the world, gave us a nation and sent a British king 
 back across the sea; Hale who struggled for the freedom 
 of a race; and Webster whose mighty vision made pos- 
 sible that broader field of opportunity and that greater 
 liberty which blesses our people and will eventually bless 
 all the races of men. 
 
 Proud of Franklin Pierce as a citizen, honoring him 
 with every office in her gift, loving him for the sweetness 
 of his ways, glorying in the exalted station to which he 
 was called by the voice of the people. New Hampshire 
 honors him again with this statue to his memory. It 
 is no light thing to be thus honored by a state that, 
 though it measures so little in square miles of territory, 
 yet weighs so much and has meant so much in the mould- 
 ing and upbuilding of a nation. 
 
 The tributes paid him, and to be paid him, by strong 
 and sterling men opposed to the party and theories of 
 government for which he stood, attest his patriotism, 
 the integrity of his purposes and the charm of his per- 
 sonality. 
 
 Mr. Carr, Introducing Mr. Carpenter: 
 
 Among the many citizens of New Hampshire who love 
 her, — and we all love her, — and who have been constant 
 in their devotion to her interests and the extension of 
 her enterprises, is the chairman of the committee called 
 in consultation by the governor and council on the 
 Franklin Pierce statue. His name is an earnest of things 
 
FRANK P. CARPENTER 
 
19 
 
 done. He has given time and whole-hearted devotion 
 to this cause, and the statue is properly in his hands 
 for disposition. 
 
 It Is my pleasure to present the chairman of the Pierce 
 Statue Commission, Honorable Frank P. Carpenter of 
 Manchester. 
 
 MR. CARPENTER'S ADDRESS. 
 
 WE ARE met to-day to pay our tardy tribute to one 
 of New Hampshire's noblest sons, a soldier and a 
 statesman — to that one who, alone of all the great men 
 born in the Granite State, received the highest honor and 
 bore the heaviest responsibility to which American citi- 
 zenship Is liable. We honor him to whom was given the 
 task of guiding the destinies of the nation when vast 
 forces were working for the ultimate good, but which, 
 during his leadership, had failed to take form and direc- 
 tion. He assumed office on the eve of that great conflict 
 which was to wipe out human bondage. He was called to 
 administer the nation's affairs when the southern half 
 of our people were convinced the North was intent upon 
 dominating in violation of constitutional rights, and the 
 northern half was equally sure the South proposed in- 
 definite expansion of the institution of human slavery. 
 
 It has required years with their healing touch to soften 
 the animosities of his time, to wipe out that fierce bitter- 
 ness which enveloped all who were then prominent In 
 national affairs. To-day we hail this son of New Hamp- 
 shire as one who worked faithfully in performing the 
 duties of his high office, and we seek to perpetuate the 
 memory of him who did not fear to stand for the right, 
 as he saw It, and stand unflinchingly. 
 
 It was given me as a youth to know him personally. 
 My father was his friend, supporter and admirer. It 
 
20 
 
 has been one of the chief joys of my service on this com- 
 mission that I could do my part in honoring his memory. 
 
 It is therefore with keenest pleasure, on behalf of the 
 commission of which I have the honor to be chairman, 
 to present to you, and through you, to the state, whose 
 generosity has made it possible, this splendid statue of 
 Franklin Pierce, fourteenth president of the United 
 States. 
 
 This bronze, heroic in size, is the work of one of Amer- 
 ica's foremost sculptors, Augustus Lukeman of New 
 York City. 
 
 It gives us in enduring form a reminder of a life which 
 saw its beginning amid the Granite hills of New Hamp- 
 shire, but which comprehended in its influence and 
 achievements our whole broad land. May it always be 
 an inspiration to unselfish patriotism and lofty ideals of 
 public service. 
 
 Mr. Carr, Introducing His Excellency, Governor 
 
 Felker : 
 
 The dedication of this statue to-day marks but one of 
 many noteworthy achievements in New Hampshire in 
 the last two years. 
 
 The real legislative accomplishments, the efficiency in 
 business conduct of affairs of state, and the sagacity and 
 economy of this administration will compensate our 
 chief executive for the care he has given it and the task 
 he has performed. 
 
 No governor within my knowledge, — and the com- 
 parison is not invidious, — has conducted the business of 
 this state with greater economy, efficiency and success, 
 or with a more faithful and patriotic devotion to his 
 duty and her interests, than his Excellency, Governor 
 Felker. 
 
HONORABLE SAMUEL D. FELKER 
 Governor 
 
21 
 
 GOVERNOR FELKER'S ADDRESS. 
 
 ly/fR. CHAIRMAN, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 "*■ ■*■ Mr. Blaine says in his "Twenty Years of Con- 
 gress," "for forty years previous to the war, the North 
 and South were growing apart, with different aims, with 
 different interests, and looking toward different destina- 
 tions." This was largely due to that section of the Con- 
 stitution which provides that "no person held to service 
 or labor in one state under the laws thereof, escaping into 
 another, shall in consequence of any law or provision 
 thereof, be discharged from such service or labor, but 
 shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such 
 service or labor may be due." 
 
 The framers of the Constitution were sorely tried, with 
 reference to the question of slavery, and were naturally 
 opposed to it, but in order to have the Constitution 
 adopted by the states of the Union they were obliged to 
 acquiesce in the above section. 
 
 The great leaders before the Civil War looked upon the 
 Federal Constitution as a series of compromises among 
 conflicting interests, and they really believed the Union 
 at times to be in danger, and always met it by a spirit 
 of compromise, especially with reference to slavery, as in 
 the case of the Missouri compromise of 1820, when the 
 Louisiana purchase became available for states ; and that 
 of 1850 when the war with Mexico had given us a large 
 amount of territory. 
 
 "Our whole history," said Rufus Choate in 1841, "is 
 but a history of compromises." But as the country 
 gradually became a nation, and ceased to be a confed- 
 eracy, it could not be a nation of freemen and a nation of 
 slaves, half free and half slave. 
 
 The South reasoned that if slavery was excluded from 
 the territories they themselves were virtually excluded 
 
22 
 
 from living in any of them with their families as then 
 constituted. That there was danger to the Union the 
 Civil War sufficiently proved. When it did occur, the 
 North had increased in population much more than 
 the South, its means of transportation greatly increased, 
 and four states of the South remained with the North, — 
 and still such was the belief of the South in their right 
 to withdraw from the Union and their determination to 
 do so that it took one of the greatest wars of modern 
 times to prevent such withdrawal. 
 
 With the abolishment of the Missouri compromise, the 
 pent up forces of the North which had been gathering 
 from the beginning were set free. On the Fourth of 
 July, 1854, Garrison burned the Constitution of the 
 United States, saying that "the Union must be dis- 
 solved." "We confess," said Wendell Phillips, "that 
 we intend to trample under foot the Constitution of this 
 country." "Slavery is a covenant with hell," "the flag 
 is a flaunting lie," were other expressions of the period. 
 Even Wendell Phillips, the orator of the abolitionists, 
 described Lincoln after his election to the Presidency as 
 "the slave hound of Illinois." 
 
 That there is, indeed, a higher law than mere statute 
 law; a higher law than any decision of the court; a higher 
 law than any written constitution, has not always been 
 recognized. That law is the law of public opinion, 
 especially strong when the demand is backed up by the 
 universal conscience of mankind. And that higher law 
 of public opinion eventually overthrew constitutional 
 provisions, and led to the Civil War, and to a practical 
 revolution in the thought which had been dominant 
 from the beginning of our government. 
 
 The compromise measure of 1850 was adopted by the 
 platforms of both the Democratic and Whig parties in 
 the year 1852. 
 
23 
 
 When the Democratic convention met in June, 1852, 
 the leading candidates for the nomination were James 
 Buchanan, Stephen A. Douglas, Lewis Cass, and William 
 L. Marcy, all men of national reputation, but no one of 
 them was able to secure enough votes to obtain the nom- 
 ination, and on the forty-ninth ballot General Pierce of 
 New Hampshire, who had not been a candidate, was 
 nominated. He was a man of rugged ancestry, the son 
 of General Benjamin Pierce, who, at the age of seventeen 
 left the plow to enlist in the army of the Revolution in 
 1775 and who stayed in that war until its finish in 1783 
 — eight years; who was afterward connected with the 
 militia of New Hampshire until he was raised to the com- 
 mand of the same; ten times elected councilor of the 
 state ; three times high sherifT , and twice governor of the 
 state; a leader of thought and of men, who had taken 
 up his abode in the town of Hillsborough, and from 
 poverty had risen to the rank of the most independent 
 and intelligent farmers in that town. General Ben- 
 jamin Pierce died in 1839, having participated in the 
 war of the Revolution, and having entered into and 
 been a leader in connection with the adoption of the 
 Constitution of the United States. Of such a father was 
 Franklin Pierce, born on November 23, 1804. Oft and 
 repeatedly he had been told of the deprivations of the 
 Revolution, and of the baptism of fire and blood, and 
 learned at his father's knee patriotism and a love of the 
 government under which he lived. His father had in- 
 tense political convictions and was a follower of Jefferson 
 and Jackson. 
 
 After finishing his course at Bowdoin College, in 1824, 
 he read law with Judge Levi Woodbury of Portsmouth, 
 and Judge Edmund Parker of Amherst, and was admitted 
 to the bar in 1827 and commenced practice in his native 
 town. His first case was somewhat of a failure and to a 
 
24 
 
 friend he said: "I will try nine hundred and ninety-nine 
 cases if clients will continue to trust me, and if I fail as I 
 have to-day, I will try the thousandth. I shall live to 
 argue cases in this court room in a manner which will 
 mortify neither myself nor my friends," which certainly 
 proved true, for he was considered one of the best jury 
 lawyers of the state. 
 
 At the age of twenty-five he was elected to the New 
 Hampshire legislature and was three times re-elected, 
 serving the last two terms as speaker. In 1833 he was 
 elected to the lower house of Congress where he remained 
 four years, and then entered the United States Senate, 
 the youngest member of that body. He was there asso- 
 ciated with Webster, Calhoun and Clay, and other great 
 leaders of the times. 
 
 In 1842 he resigned his seat in the Senate and returned 
 to the practice of law in Concord, New Hampshire. In 
 1845 he was tendered the appointment as United States 
 Senator but declined ; he also declined the nomination for 
 governor, and in 1845 President Polk offered him the 
 United States attorney-generalship, which he also de- 
 clined. He was certainly not an ofiice seeker, and few 
 men, in the prime of their lives, would have given up 
 a seat in the United States Senate for the practice of law. 
 
 When the war broke out with Mexico he enlisted as a 
 private in a volunteer company at Concord, and was 
 soon appointed colonel of the Ninth regiment of infantry. 
 In March, 1847, President Polk appointed him brigadier- 
 general in the volunteer army and in the same month he 
 set sail for Vera Cruz, and was with General Scott when 
 he entered the City of Mexico, and was one of the 
 commission to agree on an armistice. On the return of 
 peace in December of the same year he returned to 
 Concord and once again entered into the practice of his 
 profession. 
 
25 
 
 In 1850 he was president of the Constitutional Con- 
 vention, and made a strenuous and successful effort to| 
 eliminate the religious test from the state constitution.! 
 
 In the campaign which followed General Pierce's 
 nomination as President he was triumphantly elected 
 over General Scott, the Whig candidate, receiving two 
 hundred fifty-four electoral votes to his opponent's 
 forty-two. He was then forty-seven years of age. His 
 personal appearance was dignified, if not imposing, al- 
 though he was but five feet and nine inches in height, 
 slenderly built, without that depth of chest or breadth 
 of shoulders which indicates a vigorous constitution; his 
 complexion was pale, and his features were thin and care- 
 worn, yet his deportment was graceful and authoritative; 
 he was capable of enduring great physical fatigue. 
 
 His inaugural was a plain, straightforward document, 
 national in tone, and stirred the hearts of the vast 
 audience which heard it, like the clarion notes of a 
 trumpet. 
 
 "It is my judgment," said Harry Bingham, "that I 
 have never known a more clear headed man than Franklin 
 Pierce, or one who surpassed him in patriotic devotion 
 to his country and to his whole country, or one who had 
 stronger convictions of the paramount value of the Amer- 
 ican Union, and that to maintain it, the rights of all sec- 
 tions as guaranteed by the Constitution must be re- 
 spected. No man surpassed him in qualities of the heart, 
 and the consequent amicability of manner and general 
 courtesy with which he always met his fellow-citizens 
 caused him to be universally beloved and respected." 
 No one President ever won the affections of the people 
 of Washington so completely as did General Pierce. 
 The President's fascinating courtesy and kindness were 
 irresistible. So lasting was this feeling among all classes 
 that twenty years later, our Congressman, Hon, Hosea 
 
26 
 
 W. Parker, says: these traits were often spoken of at the 
 Capital. 
 
 President Pierce appointed one of the strongest cab- 
 inets of any President in the history of the United States, 
 with Marcy of New York as secretary of state, and Caleb 
 Cushing, attorney-general, and one which remained with 
 him to the end of his term. 
 
 He entered upon his term of office with the firm convic- 
 tion that the compromises of the Constitution must be 
 fairly met in order to maintain and preserve the Union, and 
 with this knowledge the country elected him by an over- 
 whelming majority. Buchanan said : " I know you to be a 
 States Rights Democrat of the old Jeffersonian school." 
 
 During his term the boundaries of the United States 
 were extended by treaty with Mexico and included what 
 is now a part of New Mexico and Arizona; a commercial 
 treaty was made with Great Britain, the fishery rights 
 settled, Japan was opened to civilization by Commodore 
 Perry, the United States Court of Claims was established, 
 and in every department the government was honestly 
 and efficiently administered, and everyone admits that 
 aside from the slavery question President Pierce met the 
 expectations of the country. 
 
 "But for slavery," said Senator Bainbridge Wadleigh, 
 "and the questions growing out of it, his administration 
 would have passed into history as one of the most suc- 
 cessful in our national life." 
 
 John Sherman, who was a member of the House of 
 Representatives in President Pierce's administration, 
 and was appointed upon a committee to investigate 
 affairs in Kansas, in his biography says: "Political oppo- 
 nents were enemies at that time, who did not always do 
 each other justice"; that since that time he had changed 
 his opinions of many of the prominent men of that day 
 and especially of President Pierce. "That he was a genial, 
 
27 
 
 social and agreeable companion is affirmed by all who 
 were familiar with him. That his opinions were honestly 
 entertained and firmly supported is shown by his ad- 
 herence to them without a change or shadow of turning. 
 In this respect he compares favorably with many leading 
 men of his party. He had been a general of distinction 
 in the Mexican War and a member of both the Senate 
 and House of Representatives. He was a leading lawyer 
 in his state. His messages to Congress, considered from 
 a literary view, were able state papers, clearly and 
 strongly expressed. It was his great misfortune to have 
 to deal with a controversy that he did not commence 
 but he did not shrink from the responsibility." 
 
 Mr. Chairman of the Pierce Statue Committee, I 
 accept this statue from your hands, erected by the people 
 of the state of New Hampshire to one of its most dis- 
 tinguished sons, who was always "a gentleman and a 
 man of courage," who believed that constitutional guar- 
 anties should be lived up to, and to whose worth the state 
 of New Hampshire has erected this statue, and of whom 
 in 1863 during the time of our Civil War when most 
 men's motives were impugned, Hawthorne, that man of 
 such fine honor that he called forth the truest attach- 
 ments and noblest friendships, said: 
 
 "Only this let me say, that with the record of your life in 
 my memory and with a sense of your character in my deeper 
 consciousness as among the few things that time has left as it 
 found them, I need no assurance that you continue faithful 
 to that grand idea of an irrevocable nation which as you once 
 told me was the earliest that your brave father taught you. 
 For other men there may be a choice of paths — for you, but 
 one; and it rests among my certainties that no man's loyalty is 
 more steadfast, no man's hope or apprehensions on behalf of 
 our national existence more deeply heartfelt or more closely 
 intertwined with his possibilities of personal happiness than 
 those of Franklin Pierce." 
 
28 
 
 Mr. Carr, Introducing Judge Aldrich: 
 
 His own people, here in New Hampshire, perhaps best 
 knew Franklin Pierce, not as a general, a congressman, 
 a United States senator, or as president even, but in the 
 active practice of his profession as a lawyer. He 
 knew thousands of men by name, and charmed all by 
 the ease and democracy of his manner and speech, and 
 his large-heartedness. In this field, in his time, as a 
 trial lawyer, he was supreme. 
 
 It is fitting and gracious that an eminent judge of 
 the United States Court, a lawyer all his life, should 
 have aided much with counsel and advice in the erec- 
 tion of this statue of Franklin Pierce. 
 
 We may be assured that he will hold the balance 
 with an even hand, and aim to make his estimate as 
 able, fair and just, as are his own decisions. That is 
 what Franklin Pierce would ask. 
 
 I present Hon. Edgar Aldrich. 
 
 JUDGE ALDRICH'S ADDRESS. 
 
 t^RANKLIN PIERCE was a New Hampshire man, 
 -'■ and he achieved the Presidency. 
 
 While official responsibilities came to him early in 
 life, it soon developed that there was in his nature a rare 
 quality which made him shrink from them rather than 
 seek them. 
 
 The first paragraph of his inaugural address reflects 
 the charm of his sentiment in respect to private life and 
 official station. These were his words: 
 
 "It is a relief to feel that no heart but my own can know 
 the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I have been 
 borne to a position so suitable for others rather than desir- 
 able for myself." 
 
HONORABLE EDGAR ALDRICH 
 
29 
 
 The way official responsibility came to him and the 
 way he laid it aside, to the end that he might pursue the 
 peaceful callings of his profession in his beloved state 
 and among neighbors whom he cherished, abundantly 
 demonstrate that he valued private and peaceful pur- 
 suits above the glory of official position. 
 
 Mr. Blaine, in describing Franklin Pierce, says that he 
 presented a rare combination of the qualities which 
 attach friends and win popular support; that he was 
 remarkably attractive in personal appearance, prepos- 
 sessing in manner, ready and even eloquent as a public 
 speaker, fluent and graceful in conversation, and when 
 still a young man that he was preferred to all the other 
 prominent statesmen of his party as a Presidential 
 candidate. 
 
 Franklin Pierce was descended from a patriotic and 
 worthy ancestry, an ancestry which followed the lead of 
 Washington and sturdily helped in the work which 
 created the Union and established the greatest among 
 the governments of the world. 
 
 Franklin Pierce was the product of New Hampshire 
 soil. The blood which gave force and energy to his chiv- 
 alrous life was the blood of New Hampshire, and his 
 qualities were such that they attained for him the chief 
 magistracy of the nation, and it is highly appropriate 
 that New Hampshire should erect a suitable memorial 
 to his great achievements and his picturesque life. 
 
 Franklin Pierce's life covered prominent relations 
 with the state government, the period of the Mexican 
 War, the period of the great and much discussed com- 
 promises, a term as President of the United States, the 
 years of the momentous slavery discussions, the days 
 in which occurred the shock of arms which disturbed 
 the foundations of the government itself, and his 
 status in history is such as not only to justify but to 
 
30 
 
 demand permanent and suitable recognition by his 
 native state. 
 
 This statue is not erected to Franklin Pierce because 
 all agreed in the political views which he held upon the 
 great questions of the period to which he belonged. 
 It is erected to the memory of a New Hampshire man of 
 high and notable accomplishments. Therefore it is not 
 necessary to indulge in arguments in respect to his 
 attitude toward the highly irritating public questions of 
 his time other than to say that it must be conceded 
 and that it ought to be conceded, that conditions in the 
 years preceding the Civil War were such that patriotic 
 men might honestly differ as to the surest way to save 
 the Union. We who held the one opinion as to how the 
 Union could be saved and slavery abolished yield nothing 
 in patriotism or honor by conceding this. It would be 
 uncandid to say that arguments were not then in the 
 balance, or that forces were not then in the balance. 
 The sentiment of the North was so divided that even 
 those who held the view which ultimately triumphed 
 through force of arms were in doubt as to what ought 
 to be done, and as to what could be done to save the 
 Union. 
 
 Many forms of compromise and concession were sug- 
 gested. 
 
 In illustration of the doubt and the uncertainty exist- 
 ing in that period, it is only necessary to refer to the 
 incident of the Conciliatory Committee of Thirty- 
 three, created by the National House of Representa- 
 tives in the winter of 1 860-61, when dark clouds were 
 resting heavily upon a distracted nation. 
 
 In extreme anxiety to conciliate the South, to save 
 the Union and to avoid war, Charles Francis Adams, 
 of Massachusetts, proposed that the Constitution be so 
 amended that no subsequent amendment "having for 
 
31 
 
 its object any interference with slavery shall originate 
 with any state that does not recognize that relation 
 within its own limits, or shall be valid without the 
 assent of every one of the states composing the 
 Union." 
 
 This measure was more extreme and far-reaching than 
 any ever suggested by a southern man, and, as will 
 readily be appreciated, would have made the institu- 
 tion of slavery constitutionally perpetual. This com- 
 mittee of thirty-three was composed of prominent men 
 from the North and South, and Mr. Adams' proposition 
 was reported by a large majority, only two joining in a 
 minority report with a proposed substitute. It is said 
 that the proposed substitute was drawn by Daniel 
 Clark, then a senator from New Hampshire. The house 
 minority report was signed only by Cadwallader C. 
 Washburn of Wisconsin and Mason W. Tappan of New 
 Hampshire. Thus we see how dangerously near we 
 came in that day of emergency, in order that the Union 
 might be saved and war averted, to a unanimous propo- 
 sition which would have perpetuated slavery. 
 
 When reflecting upon results which might have 
 followed a unanimous report, it is well for us to note that 
 two of the three dissentients were New Hampshire men. 
 
 When the measure proposed by Mr. Adams came up 
 for discussion in the House of Congress, Mr. Corwin of 
 Ohio moved a substitute, which changed its substance 
 very little, and this measure, which was numbered the 
 thirteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, and 
 one which Mr. Blaine declares would have made slavery 
 perpetual in the United States, so far as any influence or 
 power of the National Government could affect it, was 
 adopted by a vote of 133 to 65. Among those who 
 supported the resolution in the National House, as one 
 best calculated to save the Union, were John Sherman of 
 
32 
 
 Ohio, Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, Howard 
 of Michigan, Windom of Minnesota, and Morehead and 
 McPherson of Pennsylvania. The proposition was 
 adopted in the Senate by a vote of 24 to 12. Among 
 those voting in the affirmative were Anthony of Rhode 
 Island, Baker of Oregon, Dixon and Foster of Connec- 
 ticut, Grimes and Harlan of Iowa, Morrill of Maine, 
 and Ten Eyck of New Jersey; — Seward of New York, 
 Fessenden of Maine, and Collamer of Vermont not 
 voting. 
 
 Before action could be had in the states, develop- 
 ments were such as to render efforts in the direction of 
 reconciliation fruitless, and the idea of a vigorous prose- 
 cution of a war for the preservation of the Union became 
 dominant and controlling. 
 
 This historical incident is not referred to for the pur- 
 pose of commending, or excusing, particular men or 
 measures, but as illustrating the thought, now univer- 
 sally recognized, that the questions at issue in the United 
 States, preceding the Civil War, were of such a charac- 
 ter that men of strength and patriotism might honestly 
 disagree. 
 
 We must not be too swift in becoming the dictators 
 or the arbiters of the thoughts and the principles of 
 others. We ought and must accord to them the right 
 to hold their own responsibilities and to be the keepers 
 of their own consciences in respect to their duties to their 
 country and to their God. 
 
 It is not a law of human nature that strong men, how- 
 ever honest, shall always agree about the best way of 
 establishing and maintaining a beneficent and lasting gov- 
 ernment. Indeed, men are so prone to disagreements 
 that even the fundamental propositions for creating this 
 government of ours were only saved from wreck by the 
 weight of a hair thrown into the Constitutional Con- 
 
33 
 
 vention in the spirit of conciliation and delicate diplo- 
 macy. 
 
 It is to do honor to a New Hampshire man that we 
 erect this statue. While we of the one way of thinking 
 might well differ with some of the leading thoughts and 
 expressions of Franklin Pierce, during the crisis which 
 was to determine whether the nation should longer exist 
 or perish from the earth, we do not doubt his patriotism 
 or his loyalty, and we question not the honesty of his 
 convictions. 
 
 The chief consideration which led me to take part in 
 these exercises was to put in enduring form the sturdy 
 expressions of a great New Hampshire man, who served 
 his country in Congress during the winters, and in the 
 field as a general during the summer campaigns of the 
 Civil War. I refer to General Gilman Marston. In a 
 conversation while walking from the dedication of the 
 Webster statue in front of the State House, he abruptly 
 stopped near the very spot where the statue stands to- 
 day unveiled and said to me, "There is one more thing 
 that New Hampshire ought to do. New Hampshire ought 
 to erect a statue to Franklin Pierce, her only President. 
 It should not be done by private contribution. It should 
 be done under state authority. I knew Franklin Pierce 
 well. He was a great lawyer, and a gentleman of rare 
 accomplishments. He was the prince of good fellowship 
 and a man of undoubted patriotism. Beyond all ques- 
 tion he honestly believed that the Union would be de- 
 stroyed if we went to war about it; and I believed that 
 it would be destroyed if we didn't go to war about it. 
 He was as honest and sincere in his convictions as I was 
 in mine, and I want to say to you, right here, that if the 
 South had had a little more money and a few more men, 
 Franklin Pierce would have been right and I should have 
 been wrong." 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 In that crucial period when men differed, Franklin 
 Pierce may have misjudged as to the surest way of sav- 
 ing the Union, but it must be true that Hawthorne, who 
 understood the depths of his generous and graceful man- 
 hood better perhaps than any other, in explaining to 
 General Pierce the conviction which led him to dedicate 
 the "Old Home" notes as a tender and lasting monu- 
 ment to his memory, and using the words just quoted 
 by His Excellency, Governor Felker, so expressive of 
 confidence and affection, touched the real soul of the 
 man he knew. 
 
 The idea of a memorial does not rest upon partisan 
 grounds, or upon partisan accomplishments, or, indeed, 
 upon the abstract question of one's being always exactly 
 right upon all of the questions of his day. England puts 
 into her library of the House of Lords a bust of Crom- 
 well, not because he was always politically right accord- 
 ing to English standards, but because he was a great 
 Englishman and a man of notable achievements. 
 
 It is not appropriate on this occasion to discuss the 
 great question as to which was the best way to save the 
 Union. The war came. It involved a strife among 
 brothers of one country, and we must at this late day 
 accord to each and all the honor of having struggled for 
 what, to them, seemed to be the right. The Union was 
 preserved; national authority was permanently estab- 
 lished ; and we are under one flag, respected at home, and 
 everywhere throughout the earth; and it is a happy 
 fruition that all, now, agree that the preservation of the 
 Union was necessary, to the end that we should become 
 a great nation, and, above all, that it was best for the 
 men of the South, as well as for the men of the North. 
 
35 
 
 Mr. Carr, Introducing Ex-Senator Chandler: 
 
 ^ Virile from crown of head to sole of foot; virile from 
 birth to the present live waking moment, the next 
 speaker, as you will all agree, is in spirit and fertility 
 the youngest man in the party. Big enough correctly 
 to estimate a political adversary, large hearted enough 
 ever to have in mind the Master's mandate as to his 
 enemies and friends, he loves us all, even though he 
 sometimes flays us. 
 
 In season and out of season, facing the anger and op- 
 position and criticism of his political associates, he long 
 ago determined the state should do justice to the mem- 
 ory of Franklin Pierce. 
 
 By his work mainly has been restored the birthplace 
 of Daniel Webster. His persistence has largely con- 
 tributed to the memorial we finish to-day. And these 
 are but two of the things, perhaps among the least of 
 his accomplishments, for which New Hampshire will 
 honor and love him. 
 
 He has seen more and will tell us more of the motives 
 and personality of President Pierce than we know. 
 
 We welcome to-day, this distinguished son of New 
 Hampshire, who has represented her ably and always 
 actively in so many fields, whose ability we all admire; 
 whose fame is nation wide, and whose patriotism none 
 may question — 
 
 The Honorable William E. Chandler. 
 
36 
 
 ADDRESS BY EX-SENATOR CHANDLER. 
 
 T T WOULD be impossible for me on this occasion — the 
 ■■■ dedication of a statue in the State House yard at 
 Concord of President FrankHn Pierce — to deal critically 
 with his character and career, or to fail to speak of him 
 in words of deep tenderness, for the simple reason that 
 to me as a boy he was kind and helpful and drew me to 
 his heart with irresistible affection. He was a friend of 
 my father and during the presidential campaign of 1852 
 when I was seventeen years old, he came to my bedside 
 in my home on Centre Street in Concord, where I was 
 sick with fever, and spoke to me cheering words. I was 
 studying law with John H. George and Sidney Webster 
 (George & Webster) and after the canvass opened we 
 moved over to the law office of General Pierce and his 
 partner Josiah Minot where I worked for General Pierce 
 in collecting the fees to which he was entitled alone for 
 cases tried by him outside of Merrimack County where 
 Mr. Minot was an equal partner with him. I took 
 great interest in this collection. His fees were ordinarily 
 from five dollars to ten dollars per day and expenses out- 
 side of Concord! Prior to his going to Washington on 
 March 4, 1853, I think I had managed to collect about 
 five hundred dollars, and my expenses for collection 
 were about fifty dollars. There was one charge of 
 five^hundred dollars which I became exceedingly desirous 
 of collecting through James Bell (later, in 1855, elected 
 United States senator) who was the senior counsel for 
 the Winnipesaukee Lake Cotton and Woolen Manu- 
 facturing Company in a flowage case which had been 
 tried for several weeks. General Pierce gave me a care- 
 fully worded letter which I took to Mr. Bell but came 
 home without the money! The claim was, I believe, 
 
HONORABLE WILLIAM E. CHANDLER 
 
37 
 
 settled with some deduction before the President went 
 to Washington. 
 
 In the spring of 1855 I was in Washington with my 
 friend Isaac Andrew Hill, and Judge Minot took us to 
 the White House up the back stairs where we saw the 
 President and his Secretary, Mr. Sidney Webster, and 
 were invited to tea, on which occasion there were present 
 only the two Concord boys and an old-fashioned Western 
 gentleman of dignity and politeness. The President 
 goodnaturedly reproached Mr. Hill (whose father, Isaac 
 Hill, had been a Jackson democrat and a United States 
 senator) , for leaving the Democratic party and becoming 
 a Know Nothing and a free soiler; but he did not com- 
 plain of me for being a Whig boy from whom he could 
 expect nothing. The White House had been a lonely 
 home by reason of the sudden death by a railroad 
 accident of the boy son, Benjamin Pierce, on January 6, 
 1853, after his father's election, but before his inaugura- 
 tion. 
 
 With all these kindnesses from the President I could 
 never have failed to love him and it has always remained 
 certain that the boy he loved and helped would 
 
 Be to his virtues very kind 
 Be to his faults a little blind. 
 
 So as time passed I came to praise him for his goodness 
 and greatness. 
 
 To the Grafton and Coos Bar Association, at Plymouth 
 on January 6, 1888, I said of him from personal knowl- 
 edge : 
 
 All my own observation of this brilliant advocate was 
 while I was a law student under seventeen years of age; but 
 I could even then appreciate the fact and am able now con- 
 fidently to say, that very few American lawyers have equalled 
 him in ingenuity, tact, grace, eloquence and power before a 
 
38 
 
 jury; nor should his abihty and success as a jury lawyer obscure 
 the further truth, that, while not a learned lawyer, he had one 
 of the clearest of legal minds, and an unsurpassed faculty of 
 stating and arguing legal principles. I think a stronger im- 
 pression was made upon my youthful mind by the arguments 
 which I heard him make on legal questions, than by his conduct 
 of jury cases. As a many sided lawyer, capable of conducting 
 trials of all kinds, it seems to me that he stood facile princeps 
 at the New Hampshire bar, not even yielding the palm to the 
 massive and erudite, but eccentric, Ira Perley. 
 
 Further I said on that occasion: 
 
 The fact that Franklin Pierce became President of the 
 United States should lead the people of his native state, 
 without forgetting his mistakes, and without distinction of 
 party, to do to him, in some appropriate method, signal honor. 
 On the first Wednesday in June, 1845, Franklin Pierce and 
 John P. Hale held that memorable debate in the North 
 Church in Concord, which was the actual initiative in New 
 Hampshire of the great political anti-slavery contest, the 
 basis of which made the political issues of the state and the 
 country for the forty years which followed, which had such 
 a controlling influence upon the personal fortunes of both 
 these distinguished and eloquent men, and which, as to 
 some of its incidents and outgrowths, has not yet come to 
 an end. 
 
 The heroic statue of Daniel Webster, whom New Hamp- 
 shire proudly gave to be the great forensic defender of the 
 Union and the Constitution and who, in spite of his political 
 and personal shortcomings, was the greatest intellect that 
 America has yet produced, fitly stands, the gift of a liberal 
 private citizen, in front of the capitol at Concord. To the 
 right and to the left of this massive memorial I hope to live 
 to see erected similar statues of Franklin Pierce, given by New 
 Hampshire to be president of our republic, and John P. 
 Hale, the first distinctive anti-slavery United States senator 
 and New Hampshire's noblest champion in the cause of human 
 freedom. 
 
39 
 
 At an Old Home Day Celebration in Concord on 
 August 24, 1914, I also publicly recorded my opinion of 
 President Pierce and my belief that the people of his 
 native state, without forgetting his mistakes and with- 
 out distinction of party, should do him signal honor by 
 erecting his statue in the State House yard. 
 
 The statue of John P. Hale having been placed in the 
 State House yard on August 13, 1892, once more I 
 ventured to speak in favor of the erection of a statue of 
 President Pierce, at a Republican State Convention of 
 September 17, 1908. I introduced and urged this 
 resolution: 
 
 Resolved, That the Republican State Convention desires 
 that the next legislature provide for the erection in the State 
 House yard at Concord of a statue of Franklin Pierce, a 
 native and distinguished citizen of New Hampshire, an able 
 lawyer, an eloquent orator, a general in the national army, a 
 representative in congress, a United States senator and a 
 President of the United States; and the convention expresses 
 the hope that this movement for the erection of such a me- 
 morial statue will receive the approval and support of all our 
 citizens without regard to party distinctions. 
 
 Unwise opposition arose and the report says: 
 
 Mr. Chandler obtained the floor and stated that he would 
 be unwilling to have the resolution passed by the conven- 
 tion unless by substantially a unanimous vote and therefore 
 that he withdrew the same. 
 
 On March 4, 191 3 — Woodrow Wilson's day — I made 
 my last appeal for the statue, this time to the Democratic 
 legislature of 191 3, saying: 
 
 If the Democrats will all advocate it, enough Republicans 
 will vote for it to make its erection sure. 
 
 All opposition from Republicans should cease. As people 
 
40 
 
 grow old they need not change their opinions, but they ought 
 to moderate their animosities and recognize the good that is 
 in all men. 
 
 General Pierce in his relations with those he loved and 
 those who loved him was one of the gentlest and most joyous 
 of men ; and of the twelve Presidents whom I have known and 
 talked pleasantly with in the White House he came very near 
 to being the most gracious. 
 
 Equally with Lewis Cass and Daniel Webster, Franklin 
 Pierce is entitled to have harsh judgments of anti-slavery men 
 moderated, as time passes, through a recognition of the sin- 
 cerity of their fears of a dissolution of the Union in connection 
 with controversies concerning slavery. 
 
 The strength of this plea in their behalf has been felici- 
 tously shown by Mr. Blaine and distinctly by me as appears 
 in a memorandum published by me in 1908. I earnestly 
 hope that every citizen of New Hampshire will in the era 
 of the present day given his voice in favor of a statue, erected 
 by the state of New Hampshire and not by any individual, 
 of President Franklin Pierce. 
 
 It was most gratifying to me and creditable to the 
 people of New Hampshire that without any further mani- 
 festation of party animosity the legislature on May 13, 
 19 13, passed a law directing the Governor and Council to 
 erect the statue and making an appropriation therefor; 
 and the result of this commendable action stands before 
 us in the graceful statue of Franklin Pierce to-day un- 
 veiled. We are now here, citizens of both politics, to 
 give to the President's memory the praise and honor 
 which is implied in the existence of the memorial. 
 
 On four ofificial occasions it has been my duty to deal 
 with the questions of the judgments which should be 
 dealt out to what were called the pro-slavery statesmen 
 of the ante-war period. 
 
 The first was on the reception by the Congress of a 
 statue of Lewis Cass from the state of Michigan on 
 
41 
 
 February 1 8 and 21, 1889; the second on the reception 
 by Congress of a statue of Daniel Webster (with one of 
 John Stark) from the state of New Hampshire, on 
 December 20, 1894; the third on the unveihng of a 
 statue of Mr. Webster in Washington presented to the 
 United States by Stilson Hutchins on January 18, 1900; 
 and the fourth on the celebration of the restoration of 
 the Birthplace House of Mr. Webster at Franklin, New 
 Hampshire, on August 28, 1913. 
 
 It will be an honor to me whenever a citizen of my 
 native state, which has so much honored me, will read 
 the words of praise which I am able to give to these 
 distinguished men who gave renown to the state of their 
 nativity down to and including the last, whose statue we 
 now unveil — too long delayed in its erection. 
 
 In considering the question there is no wisdom in 
 Ignoring the reasons for the delay which has taken place. 
 They are President Pierce's relations to the subject of 
 slavery. He was a pro-slavery president and therefore 
 must have no statue— it is said. At the end of fifty 
 years after slavery has been blotted out of existence this 
 reason should be disregarded. 
 
 The same objection could be made to statues of two 
 other sons of New Hampshire— Lewis Cass and Daniel 
 Webster; yet the statue of Cass, given by the Republican 
 state of Michigan to the national gallery, was received 
 by congress with eulogies participated in by the New 
 Hampshire delegation, and the statue of Webster was 
 gvien by New Hampshire to that gallery with appropriate 
 ceremonies, and a like statue of Webster was given 
 to the state by a private citizen, was received by 
 the commonwealth and placed conspicuously in the 
 State House yard and now stands there in company with 
 the statues of John Stark and John P. Hale. On none 
 of these occasions was there any attempt to avoid con- 
 
42 
 
 sideration of the hostility which had existed against 
 both Cass and Webster; both had been denounced with 
 extreme bitterness, the one as always a pro-slavery man, 
 the other as having wholly forsaken the anti-slavery 
 cause. You all know the animosities aroused in those 
 days. But they did not continue to prevail against Cass 
 and Webster. They ought not longer to prevail against 
 Pierce. The real reason why we should not at this late 
 day longer refrain from erecting statues to such men is 
 that their hesitancy to make efforts for the abolition of 
 slavery, their willingness to make compromises in behalf 
 of slavery, arose from their deep devotion to the union of 
 these states which it was believed would be endangered if 
 controversy over slavery continued. Bear in mind that 
 these men were nearer to the days of the formation of the 
 constitution than we now are after more than one hun- 
 dred years of national life have passed, and the Union 
 has been cemented and strengthened as the result of 
 bloody war. They felt during the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century that the Union, although a very sacred 
 bond, might easily be broken into numerous discordant 
 single states if the love of the Union was not cherished 
 in the hearts of all men and sacrifices made for its preser- 
 vation. Upon this point Mr. Blaine shows the reasons 
 why the utmost allowance should be made for these 
 great men of New Hampshire who were in favor of yield- 
 ing much to slavery in order to save the Union and who, 
 although they were mistaken in their conclusions, are 
 still entided to be remembered and honored as honest and 
 sincere in their public opinions and patriotic in their 
 national conduct. 
 
 MR. Blaine's explanation of mr. Webster's action. 
 
 Mr. Blaine in his "Twenty Years of Congress" (Vol. i, 
 page 93) attributes Mr. Webster's pro-slavery action to 
 sincere sentiments of patriotism. He says: 
 
43 
 
 "He belonged with those who could remember the first 
 president, who personally knew much of the hardships and 
 sorrows of the Revolutionary period, who were born to poverty 
 and reared to privation. To these the formation of the federal 
 government had come as a gift from Heaven and they had 
 heard from the lips of the living Washington his farewell 
 words that ' the Union is the edifice of our real independence, 
 the support of our tranquillity at home, our peace abroad, our 
 prosperity, our safety and of the very liberty which we so 
 highly prize; that for this Union we should cherish a cordial, 
 habitual, immovable attachment, and should discountenance 
 whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event 
 be abandoned.' 
 
 "Mr. Webster had in his own lifetime seen the thirteen col- 
 onies grow to thirty powerful states. He had seen three 
 millions of people, enfeebled and impoverished by a long 
 struggle, increased eightfold in number, surrounded by all the 
 comforts, charms and securities of life. All this spoke to him 
 of the Union and of its priceless blessings. He now heard its 
 advantages discussed, its perpetuity doubted, its existence 
 threatened. 
 
 "A convention of slaveholding states had been called to 
 meet at Nashville for the purpose of considering the possible 
 separation of the sections. Mr. Webster felt that a genera- 
 tion had been born who were undervaluing their inheritance 
 and who might by temerity destroy it. Under motives 
 imposed by these surroundings, he spoke for the preservation 
 of the Union. He believed it to be seriously endangered. 
 His apprehensions were ridiculed by many who ten years after 
 Mr. Webster was in his grave saw for the first time how real 
 and how terrible were the perils upon which those apprehen- 
 sions were founded. . . . The thoughtful reconsideration 
 of his severest critics must allow that Mr. Webster saw before 
 him a divided duty, and that he chose the part which in his 
 patriotic judgment was demanded by the supreme danger 
 of the hour." 
 
 But while accepting as just, and reiterating as I have 
 
44 
 
 on the occasions referred to, this vindication by Mr. 
 Blaine of the "Union savers" who were unkindly re- 
 proached in their day of debate, it is necessary for me 
 to avow that it is easier for me to do this in behalf of the 
 advocates of the compromise measures of 1850 than in 
 behalf of the statesmen who four years later devised and 
 carried to a passage through Congress the repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise. 
 
 This repeal was utterly indefensible, even although 
 sustained by the unjust and unfortunate Dred Scott 
 decision, and remains a wrongful act of the American 
 Congress, which was fraught with distressing conse- 
 quences. Yet, even here, because their public action 
 was, as much as Mr. Webster's, based upon an "honest 
 motive" Stephen A. Douglas and Franklin Pierce are to 
 be acquitted of unforgivable public acts and are to be 
 praised and honored for their careers as a whole of states- 
 manship and patriotism. 
 
 Therefore, now so it is, that in my declining years, I 
 find myself unable to harshly criticize and condemn any 
 of the leaders of the first ninety years of American In- 
 dependence, or to withhold from any of them, by reason 
 of such faults and mistakes as may be developed in 
 any career of prominence, the praises that are due to 
 them for any wise and noble and patriotic deeds. 
 
 Those of President Pierce were narrated down to 1852 
 by his Bowdoin College associate and constant friend, 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a most attractive and felicitous 
 campaign biography in that year, and were fully re- 
 corded in 1888 in Appleton's "Cyclopaedia of American 
 Biography" by one who had. been a United States senator 
 from New Hampshire — Bainbridge Wadleigh, a Republi- 
 can, in a fair and accurate recital. 
 
 Franklin Pierce was a scholar of superior knowledge, an 
 orator of captivating eloquence, a lawyer of acute learn- 
 
45 
 
 ing, a trial advocate of unsurpassed skill and force, a 
 brave soldier on the battlefield of his country, a public 
 official of ability and fidelity, and a President of conscien- 
 tiousness and patriotism, whose statue in this State 
 House yard is fittingly the companion of that of the 
 soldier John Stark and of those of the statesmen Daniel 
 Webster and John P. Hale. Before future generarions 
 there will continue to stand here this testimonial to 
 President Pierce from all the people of his state asserting 
 his high character, his splendid achievements and the 
 noble traits which made him admired and beloved by his 
 countrymen. 
 
 Mr. Carr, Introducing Mr. Branch : 
 
 Since the formation of our government, American 
 democracy has been on trial. It is to-day. "The basis 
 of a true democracy is moral sovereignty." Experience 
 and the beacon lights of history guide us dimly in our 
 struggle, and patriotism and righteousness alone can 
 guard our way. 
 
 Some phases of the part played in the struggle by him 
 whom we honor on this occasion will be estimated by 
 one of our best students of history, a scholar, lawyer, 
 and a lover of true American democracy. Honorable 
 Oliver E. Branch, who will address us on Franklin 
 Pierce and the War for the Union. 
 
46 
 
 ORATION OF MR. BRANCH. 
 
 XT' OUR Excellency, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentle- 
 -■■ men : 
 At the last session of the legislature the following 
 joint resolution was adopted: 
 
 Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representives in 
 General Court convened: That the governor and council 
 are hereby directed to cause a statue to Franklin Pierce to 
 be erected in an appropriate place, to be by them selected 
 in the state house yard, the material, design, workmanship 
 and dedication to be left to the governor and council, and 
 that to meet the expense thereof the governor be authorized 
 to draw his warrant upon the treasury for a sum not exceed- 
 ing $15,000. 
 
 The passage of this resolution was the gratifying cul- 
 mination of an effort extending over several years on the 
 part of a large number of our citizens without distinction 
 of political parties, to obtain for Mr. Pierce permanent 
 public recognition of his distinguished services, character 
 and career. In the performance of the duty thus imposed 
 upon the governor and council they have been aided by 
 the advice and practical suggestions of several gentle- 
 men, some of whom were personally acquainted with Mr. 
 Pierce, and who, notwithstanding the fierce criticism to 
 which he was subjected in his long public life for his atti- 
 tude on the problems connected with the anti-slavery 
 agitation and the war for the Union, believe in the hon- 
 esty of his convictions, his patriotism, and his loyalty 
 to his country. 
 
 Not long ago the commons of England caused to be 
 erected outside the walls and within the yard of West- 
 minster Hall an heroic statue of Oliver Cromwell, and 
 this notwithstanding Cromwell is still regarded by many 
 
47 
 
 English people with absolute aversion and as a veritable 
 "man of sin." Nevertheless, the people of England were 
 broad-minded enough to recognize the great services 
 Cromwell rendered the cause of constitutional govern- 
 ment, and the high place he merits in the pantheon of 
 English history; and there his statue stands within sight 
 of Temple Bar, where for years after the restoration his 
 body hung in chains, a monument to his extraordinary 
 career and a witness to the fine tolerance of the English 
 people. So, too, this monument which the people of 
 New Hampshire have caused to-day to be erected will 
 stand as a witness to their liberal spirit, and a memorial 
 to the high accomplishments of Franklin Pierce. 
 
 Fifty-three years have passed since the events occurred 
 in which Mr. Pierce bore a conspicuous part. Thousands 
 who were then unborn, now are voters. The restless 
 boys who then filled the benches of the schoolhouses, 
 who were stirred wuth a strange excitement when they 
 heard of Sumter, and saw volunteers marching through 
 quiet towns and villages, thronging the railway stations 
 and departing amid shouts and cheers and tearful good- 
 byes for the camp and field, to-day are men "on whose 
 faces shines the light of life's declining sun." The long 
 line of illustrious men who, in the cabinet and legislature, 
 in army and navy, conducted the nation through the 
 struggle have to a large extent "gone over to the 
 majority," and the broken regiments of scarred vet- 
 erans who came home with torn and tattered battle 
 flags have become decimated In the conflict that sounds 
 no truce. 
 
 Thronging through the cloud-rlft, whose are they, the faces 
 Faint revealed yet sure divined, the famous ones of old? 
 
 "What" — they smile — "our names, our deeds so soon erases 
 Time upon his tablet where Life's glory lies enrolled? 
 
48 
 
 "Was it for mere fool's-play, make-believe and mumming, 
 So we battled it like men, not boylike sulked and whined? 
 
 Each of us heard clang God's 'Come!' and each was coming; 
 Soldiers all, to forward-face, not sneaks to lag behind!" 
 
 Since then we have become substantially a new people 
 with a better understanding of the causes of the war and 
 of the events that led up to the great rebellion than many 
 who witnessed its dramatic beginning. How strange it 
 seems to us that human slavery once existed as a recog- 
 nized protected institution in a large portion of this land! 
 It is as unreal to us as the fact that King George's statue 
 once stood in Bowling Green, and that royal governors 
 from England ruled over what now are sovereign states. 
 How like a dream it seems to those now in the decline of 
 life that for four weary years the resources and the 
 energies of the two great sections of the country were 
 marshalled in a desperate struggle for supremacy! 
 
 Now the war was not a conflict that was desired or 
 even encouraged, at the outset, by the masses. North or 
 South. It may be doubted whether the party leaders at 
 that time really anticipated that a great civil war would 
 be the final result of the mighty political struggle which 
 had been going on for more than half a century. The 
 people were happy, united by sympathy and community 
 interest, national pride and national glory. There was 
 no general prevailing sentiment that slavery was inher- 
 ently wrong and should be destroyed, for it was an 
 institution that the fathers found here, that had existed 
 before the foundations of the government were laid, 
 which was protected by the Federal Constitution and 
 the decisions of the supreme court, an institution which 
 had flourished in Massachusetts as well as in Virginia, 
 and which had died out of the northern states through 
 economic rather than humane causes. To the southern 
 people born, reared and educated under its shadow, it 
 
HONORABLE OLIVER E. BRANCH 
 Orator of the Day 
 
49 
 
 appeared not only right but natural and necessary, and 
 absolutely indispensable to their industrial and com- 
 mercial existence, while New England believed that her 
 primacy in cotton manufactures would be destroyed 
 without slave labor in the cotton fields of the South. 
 
 When the Federal Constitution was framed and 
 adopted, slavery was of necessity recognized as an 
 ineluctable part of the social and political system, which 
 must be so regarded, and consequently allowed and pro- 
 tected. The Federal Union could not be created without 
 the concurrence of the southern states, nor the Federal 
 Constitution adopted without their votes, and to have 
 proposed and insisted at that critical time, even had there 
 been any great sentiment in favor of it, that slavery 
 could be abolished, would have been equivalent to saying 
 that there should be no Federal Union and Constitution. 
 
 And so, upon the quicksands of slavery was built the 
 majestic temple of liberty. Such a condition of things 
 was, of course, an anomaly. Here was a people that 
 proposed a new era in government. They announced as 
 the foundation principles of that government, the largest 
 freedom to all, consistent with the rights of all, and that 
 "all men are endowed by their Creator with the inalien- 
 able rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
 And yet, that people, actuated by the purest motives and 
 the highest patriotism, and proclaiming a code of politi- 
 cal principles, as luminous as a star, were by an over- 
 mastering necessity, compelled at the very outset of their 
 career, to violate and affront those principles when put 
 into practical operation, by preserving and fostering 
 under their organic law an institution as dark as " Erebus 
 and Old Night." Could such a condition of things long 
 endure? Could abstract right and active wrong be made 
 to work in harmony? Such a thing was opposed to the 
 very spirit and genius of the government, to natural 
 
50 
 
 justice and to the eternal decrees of God. It bore the 
 seeds of its own destruction within itself. "The irre- 
 pressible conflict" could not be postponed, and it came. 
 
 There was one capital defect in the Federal Constitu- 
 tion. It left the question in dispute whether the states 
 constituted a nation, an indissoluble union of indestruct- 
 ible states, or a mere confederation of absolutely inde- 
 pendent states, which had reserved to themselves the 
 same choice and power to withdraw from the Union when 
 in their judgment they saw fit, as they had to join it in 
 the beginning. The former is the true theory, said the 
 North ; the latter is the true theory, said the South. Nor 
 was the South alone in her interpretation of the nature of 
 the Union. It prevailed to a large extent in the North 
 among Democrats, Whigs, Republicans and Abolitionists. 
 It was a question of constitutional law which neither 
 Webster nor Calhoun could decide, but so long as an hon- 
 est difference of opinion was possible, so long the stabil- 
 ity of the government and the permanence of the Union 
 were imperiled. 
 
 The immediate cause of the war was the result of these 
 opposing theories respecting the structure of the Union, 
 which on the part of the South had been forced into 
 growing importance by the anti-slavery agitation and 
 the increasing conviction in the minds of conservative 
 men of all parties that slavery should be confined to the 
 states in which it then existed. Its subsequent cause 
 was the necessity which compelled the government as a 
 war measure to strike at the institution of slavery and 
 through its destruction at the rebellion itself. 
 
 It is not always considered, in the discussion of the 
 issues that agitated the country during the presidency 
 of Mr. Pierce and Mr. Buchanan, that for the most part 
 they involved great questions of law upon which the 
 ablest lawyers of the country might, and did honestly 
 
51 
 
 differ, but which, as the struggle progressed and civil war 
 became imminent, following the election of Abraham 
 Lincoln to the Presidency, forced to the front the ques- 
 tion of the destruction of slavery. 
 
 Naturally, Mr. Pierce's point of view in regard to these 
 great questions was that of the trained constitutional 
 lawyer, who believed that the safety and perpetuity of 
 the Union absolutely depended upon a strict adherence 
 to the Federal Constitution, and the decisions of the 
 supreme court in cases where those laws were Involved, 
 and that if the restraints of the Constitution and of the 
 courts upon the powers of Congress were destroyed, the 
 destruction of the Union would be the unescapable con- 
 sequence and result. 
 
 It was, therefore, inevitable that in the midst of the 
 passions excited by the progress of the war, and espe- 
 cially by the issuance of the emancipation proclamation, 
 Mr. Pierce's loyalty to the Union was seriously ques- 
 tioned, but I think it is beyond doubt that during this 
 period he was sincerely concerned over the threatened 
 dismemberment of the Union, and felt that in comparison 
 with this menace the question of the destruction or the 
 continuance of slavery was of secondary concern; and 
 thus it was that when the slavery question had come to 
 be a moral issue and its destruction urged as a legitimate 
 exercise of the war powers of the government that Mr. 
 Pierce's position upon these matters was bitterly attacked 
 and condemned in the North, especially in New Hamp- 
 shire, and his loyalty to the Union openly challenged. 
 
 There is another fact that is often lost sight of in con- 
 sidering the causes that led to the great rebellion, and 
 to the position which Mr. Pierce took in regard to them, 
 and that is, that the Republican party came into power, 
 not upon the issue of abolishing slavery, but instead, 
 upon the issue of confining it to the states where it then 
 
52 
 
 -existed; and that the war was not undertaken by the 
 government for the purpose of destroying slavery, but 
 for the purpose of putting down the rebelHon and pre- 
 serving the Union. 
 
 In his first inaugural address, Mr. Lincoln said: 
 
 I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the 
 institution of slavery in the states where it now exists. I 
 believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclina- 
 tion to do so. Those who nominated me and elected me did 
 so with the full knowledge that I had made this and many 
 similar declarations and had never recanted them. 
 
 Again, he said in his letter to Horace Greeley, in 
 August, 1862, — 
 
 I would save the Union. I would save it in the shortest 
 way under the Constitution. The sooner the national author- 
 ity can be restored, the nearer the Union will be "the Union 
 as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union 
 unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree 
 with them. If there be those who would not save the Union 
 unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not 
 agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle 
 is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or 
 to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without 
 freeing any slave I would do it. If I could save it by 
 freeing all the slaves I would do it. If I could save it by 
 freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. 
 What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because 
 I believe it helps to save the Union. What I forbear, I for- 
 bear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. 
 I have so stated my purpose according to my view of official 
 duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed per- 
 sonal wish that all men everywhere could be free. 
 
 This letter of Mr. Lincoln immediately subjected 
 him to a storm of condemnation, quite as violent as 
 those to which Mr. Pierce had been subjected; but so 
 
 I 
 
53 
 
 inflamed had public sentiment become in regard to 
 slavery and putting down the rebellion, that all appeals 
 for conservative action in dealing with them were with 
 many regarded as little short of disloyalty. 
 
 I think it is beyond question that before Mr. Lincoln 
 assumed the duties of his office he was profoundly appre- 
 hensive that the secession movement, which for the time 
 seemed to have lost something of its momentum, fol- 
 lowing the action of the seven states that had already 
 passed secession ordinances, would be followed by the 
 secession of other states upon the turning over of the 
 government to the victorious Republican party, in which 
 event nothing but war could stay the progress of the 
 slave states in setting up a separate government in which 
 their constitutional rights would find the protection 
 which, it was insisted, they had not had under the 
 Federal Union, and the way opened for the ultimate 
 triumph of the secession cause. Herein we may find an 
 explanation of the highly conciliatory tone of Mr. Lin- 
 coln's first inaugural address, and in which he sought 
 to allay the fears of the South that it was the intention 
 of the Republican administration to interfere with slav- 
 ery in the states where it then existed. But secession 
 triumphant meant something more than a particular 
 theory of the Union established; it meant slavery pre- 
 served and extended by the power of a new empire of 
 which it should be the cornerstone. Nevertheless, 
 when the guns of Fort Moultrie opened on the "Star 
 of the West," the challenge which was then made to the 
 government and which the government accepted was 
 simply whether there should be a Union or a Confed- 
 eration, not whether there should be a Union with or 
 without slavery. Well, that was something worth fight- 
 ing for, yet it lacked on the side of the North, to some 
 extent, the incentives which spring from a sense of 
 
54 
 
 high conviction, which inspire popular enthusiasm and 
 which, when they once seize upon a great people, make 
 their armies invincible and their cause triumphant. 
 Small wonder that between 1861 and 1863 patriotic 
 men often said, "Are we not fighting for a principle which 
 is purely academic? It is not after all simply a ques- 
 tion of constitutional law, which the greatest lawyers 
 of the country cannot decide, and which, though its 
 solution affects the form of our government, is not abso- 
 lutely necessary \ for our existence or our happiness? 
 Well might men say, as they often did, when the news 
 of defeat and loss upon loss came up from our armies, 
 "Are we not paying too dearly for an experiment of 
 government by the people? Is not the prophecy of 
 Mr. Lincoln being fulfilled that 'should we go to war 
 after great losses on both sides and nothing gained, the 
 same questions will be forced upon us?'" 
 
 It was not until the Emancipation Proclamation was 
 issued, when the struggle for "the Union as it was" and 
 "the Constitution as it was," became the struggle for 
 "the Constitution as it is" and "the Union as it is," 
 when the cause became one not of politics only, but of 
 morals; not of governmental philosophy, but of human- 
 ity; not of theoretical liberty, but of practical freedom; 
 that the North and her armies caught the inspiration 
 which swept them straight on to victory. The national 
 conscience which had been paralyzed for a hundred 
 years was suddenly quickened into life, and as if to 
 atone in an hour for the sins of a century, the power of the 
 government was hurled at the confederacy with the 
 fury of retribution. The question of secession and 
 slavery was decided beyond appeal, and for the first 
 time in its history the nation became worthy of the 
 exalted position it had so long and so falsely assumed. 
 
 Mr. Pierce's professional and political career was 
 
55 
 
 coincident with the most critical years in the history 
 of the republic; years when the very life of the nation 
 was at stake, when the threat of secession was heard in 
 the North as well as in the South; years when the 
 institution of slavery was defended in many a northern 
 pulpit as something divinely ordered; years when the 
 possibility of a disruption of the Federal Union was 
 regarded with complacency and excited no general 
 alarm, and when great issues that agitated the country 
 involved questions of organic law instead of morals and 
 the sentiments of patriotism. 
 
 The situation prior to the actual opening of hostilities 
 was most extraordinary. Truly, it was a time "that 
 tried men's souls." Here was slavery firmly intrenched 
 in sixteen states, protected and buttressed by the Fed- 
 eral Constitution and the Federal statutes, and the 
 decisions of the supreme court, and representing mil- 
 lions of money invested in slaves and threatening seces- 
 sion if their right to hold slaves was assailed. Here 
 were the Abolitionists, demanding the immediate over- 
 throw of the whole slavery system. Here were the 
 great senators of the North, attacking in high debate 
 the right of secession, and on the other hand, the South- 
 ern senators passionately defending secession and pro- 
 claiming the absolute right of states to order and direct 
 their own domestic affairs without interference from 
 the general government or the free states. Here was 
 Mr. Lincoln, despairing of any agreement for composing 
 the warring parties, proposing that slavery should be 
 abolished by the payment of four billion dollars to the 
 slave owners to compensate them for the deprivation of 
 their property. Here was the Republican party pro- 
 posing that slavery should not be abolished but confined 
 to the states where it then existed ; and on the other hand, 
 here were the Douglas Democrats, proposing to let 
 
56 
 
 the new states decide for themselves whether or not they 
 would permit slavery. No wonder that the lines of care 
 deepened on the sad face of Mr. Lincoln, when day after 
 day the possibility of saving the Union grew more and 
 more hopeless. Little wonder that patriotic men, amidst 
 these warring and mutually extinctive factions knew 
 not where the right lay nor where the path of duty led, 
 and that they sometimes erred in judgment, especially 
 when over all that wide welter of strife there hung the 
 portentous clouds of civil war. 
 
 There was one thing, which perhaps more than any 
 other intensified public excitement over the anti-slavery 
 issue and the secession movement, and that was the 
 decision of the supreme court of the United States in the 
 Dred Scott case, a decision which was long misrepre- 
 sented and which caused the chief justice and the justices 
 who concurred with him in the opinion to be unsparingly 
 assailed and the honesty of their conclusions denied on 
 hundreds of platforms and in thousands of newspapers 
 and pamphlets throughout the North. The specific 
 charge which was made against the opinion, and which 
 roused the bitterest feeling, was that it decided that "a 
 negro has no rights that a white man is bound to respect. " 
 That this was an absolute perversion of what the court in 
 fact decided is apparent upon the briefest examination, 
 but the charge was made so persistently and so often that 
 no denial of its truth was listened to, so tense had public 
 feeling become in regard to slavery in the southern as 
 well as in the northern states. 
 
 The facts in brief were these: One of the important 
 issues raised in the case was whether negroes were "citi- 
 zens" of the United States within the meaning of that 
 term as used in the Federal Constitution, and it was held 
 by a majority of the court that they were not. In 
 support of this conclusion, Chief Justice Taney went 
 
THE STATUE 
 (Another Viewi 
 
57 
 
 into an historical account of the condition of the negro 
 in this country and in England previous to the adoption 
 of the Constitution, and especially as to the light in 
 which that race was regarded at the time the Constitu- 
 tion was framed. In the course of his remarks he said: 
 
 It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion 
 in relation to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the 
 civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of 
 the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution 
 was framed and adopted, but the history of every European 
 nation displayed it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They 
 had for more than a century been regarded as beings of an 
 inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white 
 race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior 
 that they had no rights which the white man was bound to 
 respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be re- 
 duced to slavery for his benefit. . . . And in no nation 
 was this opinion more firmly fixed or uniformly acted upon 
 than by the English government and the English people. The 
 opinion thus sustained and acted upon in England was natu- 
 rally impressed upon the colonies which they founded on this 
 side of the Atlantic, and accordingly, a negro of the African 
 race was regarded by them as an article of property and held 
 and bought and sold as such by everyone of the thirteen colon- 
 ies which united in the Declaration of Independence and 
 afterwards formed the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 It will be seem, then, that the statement to which we 
 have referred was only that of an historical fact made by 
 Judge Taney for the purpose of ascertaining the probable 
 meaning of the word "citizen," as used in the Constitu- 
 tion. He did not make it as a judicial decision, nor 
 state it as an axiom of morality or justice. It was simply 
 a statement of an historical fact relative to an opinion 
 formerly held. Still less did he afhrm that such was his 
 opinion, for in speaking of certain laws made in view of 
 such opinion, he said: 
 
58 
 
 It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice 
 or injustice, policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision 
 of that question belongs to the political or law-making power, 
 to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the Con- 
 stitution. The duty of the court is to interpret the instrument 
 they have framed with the best lights we can obtain upon the 
 subject, and to administer it according to its true intent and 
 meaning when it was adopted. 
 
 Mr. Pierce defended the decision of the supreme court 
 in this case, and as was inevitable, had to share the odium 
 that was cast upon the decision long after it had become 
 a closed chapter in the constitutional history of the 
 nation. I venture, however, to say that a calm, dis- 
 passionate examination of the opinion of Judge Taney 
 will lead to the conclusion that his argument was not 
 answered by Judge Curtiss, who wrote the principal 
 dissenting opinion, and should absolutely refute the 
 charge so often made that the gentle, high-minded, 
 incorruptible, accomplished chief justice made himself 
 the willing agent for keeping in slavery thousands of the 
 human race. 
 
 The fugitive slave law, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
 and the Missouri Compromise were all party and admin- 
 istration measures which Mr. Pierce could not do other- 
 wise than support, and which were designed to protect 
 slavery and to counteract the effects which were being 
 made in the North to abolish it. But so long as slavery 
 was sanctioned and protected by the Federal Constitu- 
 tion it could not be said that the South was not justified 
 in demanding that its constitutional right to hold slaves 
 should not be questioned or attacked. To the people 
 of this day it seems incredible that such legislation 
 could have been enacted or defended. It is only in the 
 retrospect of fifty years and by putting ourselves in 
 imagination in the place of the southern people that we 
 may find justification for the motives that actuated them, 
 
59 
 
 and for the sincerity of their belief, not only that their 
 cause was just, but that secession and the establishment 
 of a separate nation were the only alternative remaining 
 to them if they were to be denied or deprived of their 
 rights under the Federal compact. 
 
 In the light of these facts, we may now see how unjust 
 were the assaults which at the time were made upon Mr. 
 Pierce because he differed with other great statesmen 
 and lawyers upon these questions of constitutional law, 
 and how easy it was to blame him because he did not look 
 upon secession and slavery as they are now looked upon 
 after fifty years of moral progress and social and political 
 reform. He should be judged in thelight of thecondltions 
 as they existed in his time, and in view of the conflicting 
 interests that were struggling for the mastery, the complex 
 character of the questions of law that entered into the 
 controversy, and the far-reaching disastrous consequences 
 that would follow the destruction of the Union. 
 
 Time has softened the passions that were aroused by 
 that mighty struggle and has lifted into truer perspective 
 the tremendous issues that divided the country and 
 which brought the Union to the perilous verge of de- 
 struction, and it has also brought into clearer light Mr. 
 Pierce's integrity of purpose, his real loyalty to the coun- 
 try which had so greatly honored him, at the time when 
 the unsettled problems of the government were remorse- 
 lessly dragging the nation into a war, the consequences of 
 which no man could foresee. But may we not now see, 
 that although Mr. Pierce may have made serious mis- 
 takes, as the events finally showed, in the position which 
 he took upon the momentous questions that concerned the 
 nation in the supreme crisis of its existence, he was not a 
 traitor, nor an ingrate, nor a coward, but a true lover of 
 his country, and a statesman in whose accomplishments 
 his native state may take a just and lasting pride. 
 
60 
 
 Mr. Carr, Introducing Mr. Whitcher: 
 
 We have, as our last speaker, one who is not of the 
 political faith of Franklin Pierce but who always, in 
 this hall and elsewhere, has striven to obtain this statue 
 to New Hampshire's only President. We are glad to 
 welcome him, — Honorable William F. Whitcher. 
 
 MR. WHITCHER'S ADDRESS. 
 
 nn HE memorial, to-day dedicated, is the well-considered 
 ''■ tribute the state of New Hampshire pays to the 
 honorable service, the lofty achievements and the de- 
 voted patriotism of a distinguished son. No feature of 
 his life and character was more marked and prominent 
 than such patriotism. Patriotism is a passion for country, 
 and Franklin Pierce loved his country thus, and gave 
 it his best service. He came of sturdy Revolutionary 
 stock, and love of country, and devotion to its interests 
 were his by inheritance. This love and devotion grew 
 with his growth and ripened into fullness with his ripen- 
 ing years. 
 
 I quote two characteristic utterances of his, made 
 under circumstances which preclude all doubt of their 
 thorough sincerity. On the solemn occasion of his in- 
 auguration as President of the United States he said: 
 
 With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are 
 entwined. . . . It's with me an earnest and vital belief 
 that as the Union has been the source, under Providence, of 
 our prosperity to this time, so it is the surest pledge of a 
 continuance of the blessings we have enjoyed, and which 
 we are sacredly bound to transmit undiminished to our 
 children. 
 
 Ten years later in the dark days of Civil War, when 
 
WILLIAM F. WHITCHER 
 
6i 
 
 the fate of the Union yet hung in the balance, in an ad- 
 dress made on that memorable Fourth of July, 1863, 
 near where his statue now stands he said : 
 
 I will not believe that the experiment of man's capacity 
 for self-government, which was so successfully illustrated 
 until all the Revolutionary men had passed to their final re- 
 ward, is to prove a humiliating failure. Whatever others may 
 do, we will never abandon the hope that the Union is to be 
 restored; whatever others may do, we will cling to it as the 
 mariner clings to the last plank when night and tempest close 
 around him. 
 
 With him Country and Union were one. The Union 
 he ardently loved and devotedly served, was the Union 
 formed by the Constitution, a Constitution he regarded 
 with reverence, and the terms of which he believed should 
 be strictly construed. It was a Union of sovereign 
 states. The Constitution gave certain broad and general 
 powers, powers, however, clearly defined, to a Federal 
 Government. All others, he firmly believed, were re- 
 tained by the states. Thus his country's welfare de- 
 pended upon a constant discrimination between the sepa- 
 rate rights and responsibilities of the states, and the 
 common rights and obligations of the whole people 
 under the general government. In a word, the country 
 he loved and to which he gave his life devotion was "an 
 indissoluble Union of indestructible states." From this 
 conception of Country and Union he never swerved in 
 word or deed during a career in which he was often mis- 
 understood, often cruelly maligned. For his course 
 and conduct he was calmly content to wait the judgment 
 of later generations. 
 
 We have come upon a time when the old idea of 
 statehood is being obscured by a cloud of fantastic experi- 
 ments under the name of a centralized "New National- 
 
62 
 
 ism," but there are happily indications that the pendu- 
 lum will yet swing towards a reasonable regard for 
 reasonable and constitutional statehood. 
 
 Franklin Pierce had thirteen predecessors in his ex- 
 alted office of President. His successors also number 
 thirteen. He stands midway in a distinguished line. He 
 may not have been the greatest in that line ; his star may 
 not shine the most resplendent; but in purity of purpose 
 and of character, in unswerving loyalty to conviction, in 
 love of Country and Union, in steadfast devotion to the 
 right, as God gave him to see the right, we may invite 
 comparison with those who preceded him, and with 
 those who have followed. 
 
 New Hampshire pays him honor to-day — belated per- 
 haps, — but all the more emphatic because belated. New 
 Hampshire honors his memory, not impulsively or un- 
 thinkingly, but soberly, thoughtfully, reverently. In 
 honoring him, she honors herself. 
 
 At the close of the exercises the large audience joined 
 in singing "America," led by the band. The other 
 numbers by the band, interspersed with the addresses, 
 included : 
 
 Sextette—' ' Lucia ' ' Donizetti 
 
 Ballet— " Dance of the Hours" Ponchielli 
 
 Intermezzo — " Cavallieria Rusticana" Mascagni 
 
 ending with a selection from Wagner's "Lohengrin." 
 
DAVID E. MURPHY 
 Marshal of the Day 
 
APPENDIX 
 
FRANKLIN PIERCE, THE LAWYER. 
 By Hon. David Cross.* 
 
 ]\/rR. PRESIDENT and Brethren of the New Hamp- 
 -'^ -^ shire Bar Association : 
 
 Charles H. Bell, of Exeter, died in 1893, leaving in 
 manuscript and pardy printed "The Bench and Bar of 
 New Hampshire," a book of 795 pages of rare excellence, 
 remarkable discrimination, and great ability, containing 
 the names of 1,472 lawyers, including the name of every 
 member of the bar who has lived and practised in the 
 state, together with biographical notes of all deceased 
 lawyers and the judges of the higher courts. The prepa- 
 ration of this book must have taken the patient labor of 
 Mr. Bell for many years. It is a noble and enduring 
 monument to his memory. It is remarkable for what 
 it says clearly and fully of each, and for what it omits to 
 say according to usual eulogy. 
 
 Mr. Bell had rare ability for clear statement of facts 
 in his profession and he brought to this work the enthu- 
 siasm and earnest devotion of years of observation and 
 study. There is no sameness in the sketches; each 
 shows the lawyer or the judge as he was known. Some 
 might think that their relative or friend was not given 
 sufficient credit for legal learning, or that faults were 
 too freely recorded. On the whole, as I have read and 
 re-read sketches of those I have known, I am gratified 
 and delighted at their fairness and justice, and sur- 
 prised that any man had the ability to give such a varied 
 
 ♦Delivered before .^ New Hampshire Bar Association, March is, 1900. 
 5 
 
66 
 
 and truthful memorial of the deceased judges and law- 
 yers of the state. 
 
 After having given considerable time to the study of 
 the life of Franklin Pierce as a lawyer, and made inquir- 
 ies of members of the bar, I come back to the record as 
 given by Mr. Bell and find that on three printed pages 
 he has given such a portraiture, so comprehensive, so 
 clear, so exact, that at first it seems as though nothing 
 can be added. 
 
 As I have read over the names in Brother Bell's book, 
 as I have looked into the sixty-eight volumes of New 
 Hampshire Reports and examined the names of the 
 judges, I am surprised to find that with the exception of 
 Chief Justice Richardson, Jeremiah Smith, senior, and 
 Samuel Bell, I have seen every judge who presided at 
 trial terms, and every one whose recorded opinions are 
 in the New Hampshire Reports. 
 
 As a boy at school in Hopkinton I remember Judges 
 Harris and Green. I remember the scholarly, genial, 
 high-minded Gilchrist who pleased everybody by his 
 fairness, and who left in the New Hampshire Reports evi- 
 dence of his learning and ability. I remember the even- 
 tempered, patient, upright, modest but firm Judge Woods 
 who filled his office with credit to himself and to the 
 Bench. I remember Joel Parker whose very look and 
 presence commanded respect and confidence and whose 
 ability as a lawyer, while upon the Bench, and while a 
 professor at Harvard Law School, have been an honor to 
 the state, and placed him among the leading jurists of the 
 country. I remember, as some few of you may, Judge 
 Charles F. Gove, able, honest and forceful, yet irritable 
 and nervous to such a degree that lawyers and clients felt 
 obliged to move with softness while the court was in session 
 lest they be rebuked and perhaps ordered into custody. 
 I remember Judges Bellows, Eastman, Pcrley, Sargent, 
 
67 
 
 Bell, Bartlett, Gushing, Doe, Ladd, Bingham, Smith, 
 and others. 
 
 The Bar of the state may well be proud of the men who 
 have presided in our highest courts. The decisions in 
 our sixty-eight volumes are recognized in the judicial 
 tribunals of the English-speaking world as authority upon 
 the questions discussed. 
 
 Of the lawyers, as well as the judges, whose names 
 appear in Mr. Bell's book, it seems as though I had also 
 seen nearly every prominent one among them. 
 
 I remember being introduced to Jeremiah Mason by 
 Judge Story at the Harvard Law School in 1842. He 
 was a wonder to look upon, six and one-half feet tall 
 and well proportioned. He was a giant physically, and 
 Daniel Webster declared him to be the greatest lawyer 
 in the country. 
 
 I saw Joseph Bell many times. Daniel Webster I 
 heard in several cases in Boston; Ichabod Bartlett and 
 Attorney-General George Sullivan I heard in the Old 
 North Meeting-house at Concord in the trial of Prescott 
 for murder in the fall of 1834. The musical voice and 
 fascinating manner of Mr. Sullivan and the eloquence 
 and forceful manner of Ichabod Bartlett hold an abiding 
 place in my memory as I recall their arguments. John 
 S. Wells, Daniel M. Christie, James Bell, Daniel Clark, 
 George W. Morrison, George Y. Sawyer, A. F. Stevens, 
 Bainbridge Wadleigh, A. F. Pike, Gilman Marston, 
 Mark Farley, Charles G. Atherton, James Wilson, 
 William P. Wheeler, Thomas J. Whipple, John H. George, 
 John Y. Mugridge, Daniel Barnard, Ossian Ray, A. R. 
 Hatch and many others, I saw in court and know some- 
 thing of their ability and success as lawyers. As I 
 attempt to characterize such men as Joel Parker, Gil- 
 christ and Woods as I saw them as a student and an 
 attorney beginning practice, a sort of reverence comes 
 
68 
 
 over me and I cannot help regarding them as superior 
 to the judges of the present day. I beheve that Judge 
 Doe spoke correctly when he said that the lawyers and 
 judges of the present day are better educated and more 
 thoroughly equipped in the law than sixty years ago. 
 I cannot, however, look up to the present court with 
 quite the wonder and timidity that I did in 1841. 
 
 As illustrating this principle of reverence for older 
 lawyers and judges I recollect a peculiar incident of my 
 early schoolboy days. In 1829 a man was arrested in 
 the town of Weare for assault and battery. David 
 Steele of Goffstown appeared upon one side and Josiah 
 Danforth of Weare on the other. The trial was held 
 in the schoolhouse and crowds attended the hearing 
 for two days. I can remember some of the words 
 spoken upon that trial. Mr. Danforth, in his desire to 
 impress upon the justice of the peace who held the court, 
 the solemnity and importance of the occasion, paid a 
 high tribute to the cause of education and the school- 
 house in which the court was held. Among other things 
 he said, "The schoolhouse is the sentinel-box of liberty." 
 I have heard many tributes paid to the cause of common 
 school education and to the schoolhouse of New England, 
 but I have never heard a higher than this by Mr. Dan- 
 forth. The two men, Steele and Danforth, with their 
 ruffled shirts and dignified appearance, continue to 
 impress me as somehow different and superior to other 
 men, although subsequent acquaintance and experience 
 convinced me that they were ordinary lawyers. 
 
 As I recall the lawyers of the past seventy years, as I 
 read their names in this bopk of Mr. Bell, I can see them, 
 one and all; they are real to me; I knew them; I remem- 
 ber them now. They all like the rest of us struggled 
 their brief day, most of them with success. 
 
 As we read name after name of the i ,472 lawyers, we 
 
69 
 
 are conscious In so many instances that it is only a name 
 to us, and that the real life and what it accomplished is 
 not recorded, and that the reputation of a lawyer, as of 
 most men, is limited to his own time. 
 
 This Association, as I understand it, proposes to per- 
 petuate the memory of the lawyers of the past, and at 
 each returning annual meeting give some account of 
 those who have finished their work. In this record of 
 Mr. Bell, and in our records of the future will be the 
 names of many, very many, not known beyond their 
 immediate neighborhood but who in educational, moral, 
 and social influence wrought a good work and lived 
 honorable and useful lives. There is hardly a statute 
 from 1776, which has not been modified and improved 
 by the influence and work of members of our profession. 
 The strange and senseless methods of procedure in court 
 have given place to good sense and just rules, the work 
 entirely of judges and lawyers. 
 
 Brethren, we have a rich inheritance. Among the 
 recorded names of the bar of this state are men who 
 achieved a national, and some of them a world-wide, 
 fame. What these men wrought in life is before us. 
 What they did worthily we can attempt to do. The 
 record of their lives is a bond of brotherhood; it is an 
 encouragement and inspiration to us, and to those who 
 shall follow, to recall them from time to time and to 
 learn how they lived. What helped them in their suc- 
 cesses and defeats may well be worthy of our considera- 
 tion. 
 
 I am honored by the invitation of the officers of this 
 Association, at this first annual meeting, to bring to 
 your attention Franklin Pierce, one of these brothers of 
 the past, that I may fulfil the obligation that each and 
 all owe to our profession, and comply with one of the 
 leading purposes of our organization, so clearly stated 
 
70 
 
 in Article 3 of the Constitution which reads, — "To pre- 
 serve the memory of worthy members of the profession 
 by publishing such modest and truthful accounts of their 
 lives and doings as may be worthy to be rescued from the 
 oblivion which otherwise so inevitably swallows up the 
 most devoted and useful labors, as well as the most 
 brilliant achievements of the lawyer, as soon as he is 
 overtaken by the fate which awaits us all, and retires 
 from the field of his activity, — his victories and defeats." 
 
 Almost a generation has passed since the death of 
 General Pierce. But few remain who can speak of him 
 from personal knowledge during the period of his active 
 life from 1826 to 1857. 
 
 The law was his chosen profession and he honored it. 
 The foundation of what he accomplished was laid in the 
 study and practice of law. He was taken from our ranks 
 to the House of Representatives and Senate, and returned 
 to the profession with such enthusiasm as has been rarely 
 seen. He was again called to the highest official position 
 in the world as President of the United States. He 
 lived in such an eventful period of our national history, 
 was so much a part of it, that his ability and rank as a 
 lawyer are obscured and forgotten. 
 
 It is due to him as our brother that this Association 
 review his life and place upon its records some apprecia- 
 tive memorial. 
 
 His life as a lawyer and his official life are so blended 
 that it is impossible adequately to present one without 
 giving consideration to the other, and full justice to him 
 as lawyer, citizen and high official can only be done by 
 presenting him as a man,, and what in his early life and 
 maturing years made him what he was. 
 
 He was born in Hillsborough, November 23, 1804. 
 He was graduated at Bowdoin College at twenty years 
 of age. He took an honorable position as a scholar dur- 
 
71 
 
 ing his college course. He studied law in the offices of 
 Levi Woodbury in Portsmouth, Edward Parker at 
 Amherst and at the Northampton Law School, under 
 Judge Samuel Howe, Elijah H. Mills and John H. Ash- 
 man. Ashman was afterwards one of the professors at 
 the Harvard Law School. The system of instruction of 
 the law school of that time comprised a course of lectures 
 in the various departments of the law, recitations and 
 examinations in the principal elementary works, moot 
 courts and discussions, oral and written, upon legal 
 questions. His opportunity for learning law was excep- 
 tionally good, better than most young men of his time. 
 In 1827, at twenty- three years of age, he was admitted 
 to the bar and opened an office in the lower village of 
 Hillsborough, in a small building of the kind such as 
 country lawyers were accustomed to use, and there con- 
 tinued his office until he moved to Concord about 1838. 
 
 In 1834 he was married to Jane Means Appleton, 
 daughter of Rev. Dr. Jesse Appleton, president of Bow- 
 doin College. There were three children born to them: 
 the first died in infancy, the second, Frank Robert, 
 in 1844, in his fourth year, and the third, Benjamin, in 
 January, 1853, in the eleventh year of his age. 
 
 It is said of her: "Her fine natural endowments were 
 developed by a careful and generous culture, not merely 
 under the forms of education, but through the agency of 
 all the impressions and influences of her early home, and 
 the circle of related families. Her tastes were of exceed- 
 ing delicacy and purity. Her eyes appreciated in a 
 remarkable degree whatever was beautiful in nature and 
 art. She shrank with extreme sensitiveness from public 
 observation. It is no disparagement to others who have 
 occupied her station at the White House to claim for her 
 an unsurpassed dignity and grace, delicacy and purity in 
 all that public life. There was a home — a Christian 
 
72 
 
 home — quietly and constantly maintained, and very 
 many hearts rejoice in its blessedness," 
 
 From 1842 to 1852, with the exception of one year 
 while in the Mexican War, was the time of his most 
 entire and devoted attention to the practice of law. 
 
 Let me give a brief outline of his life outside of the 
 practice of law from his twenty-fifth to his forty-eighth 
 year. 
 
 From his twenty-fifth to his twenty-ninth year of age 
 he was a member of the House of Representatives from 
 Hillsborough for four years, two of which he was speaker. 
 At the age of twenty-nine he was elected to the United 
 States House of Representatives and held the office for 
 four years. At thirty-three years of age he was elected 
 United States senator for six years, and there with Web- 
 ster, Clay, Benton, Calhoun and other great men of the 
 time, held a respectable standing for five years, and then 
 resigned and returned to New Hampshire to practise 
 law. 
 
 In 1838, when he wasabout to change his residence from 
 Hillsborough to Concord, the citizens of Hillsborough 
 tendered him an invitation to a public dinner, and in 
 his answer declining he said, "I shall leave Hillsborough 
 with no ordinary regret. There are a thousand reasons 
 why it cannot be otherwise — I have hitherto known no 
 other home. 
 
 "Here have passed many of the happiest days and 
 months of my life. With these streams and mountains 
 are associated most of the delightful recollections of 
 buoyant and happy boyhood, and in my early intercourse 
 with the generous, independent and intelligent yeomanry 
 of Hillsborough I became attached to, and learned how 
 highly to appreciate that class of the community which 
 constitutes the true nobility of this country. I need 
 hardly say that I shall never cease to remember my 
 
73 
 
 birthplace with pride as well as with affection, and with 
 still more pride shall I recollect the steady, unqualified 
 and generous confidence which has been reposed in me 
 by its inhabitants." 
 
 Upon the appointment of Levi Woodbury as judge of 
 the United States Supreme Court in 1846, he was offered 
 by Governor Steele the appointment of United States 
 senator and declined it. In his letter declining to accept, 
 he said: "My personal wishes and purposes in 1842, 
 when I resigned the seat in the senate were, as I sup- 
 posed, so perfectly understood that I have not, for a 
 moment, contemplated a return to public life. Without 
 adverting to other grounds which would have much 
 influence in forming my decision, the situation of my 
 business, professional and otherwise, is such that it would 
 be impossible for me to leave the state suddenly, as I 
 should be called upon to do, and be absent for months, 
 without sacrificing, to a certain extent, the interests, 
 and disregarding the reasonable expectations, of those 
 who rely upon my services." 
 
 In 1846 his party offered to nominate him for governor 
 of the state and he, declined it. The same year he was 
 offered by President Polk a place in his cabinet as 
 attorney-general. President Polk in his letter tender- 
 ing him the office, said, "I have selected you for this 
 important ofiice from my personal knowledge of you, 
 and without the solicitation or suggestion of anyone. 
 I have done so because I have no doubt your personal 
 association with me would be pleasant, and from the 
 consideration that, in the discharge of the duties of the 
 office, you could render me important aid in conducting 
 my administration." 
 
 In declining to accept this position General Pierce said : 
 "Although the early years of my manhood were devoted 
 to public life, it was never really suited to my taste. I 
 
74 
 
 longed, as I am sure you must often have done, for the 
 quiet and independence that belongs only to the private 
 citizen, and now, at forty, I feel that desire stronger 
 than ever. 
 ^ "Coming unexpectedly, as this offer does, it would 
 be difficult, if not impossible, to arrange the business of 
 an extensive practice, in a manner at all satisfactory to 
 myself, or to those who have committed their interests 
 to my care, and who rely on my services. When I 
 resigned my seat in the senate in 1842, I did it with the 
 fixed purpose never again to be voluntarily separated 
 from my family for any considerable length of time, 
 except at the call of my country in the time of war." 
 
 During the same year he accepted the office of United 
 States district attorney for the state of New Hampshire 
 as in the line of his profession. 
 
 In 1847 he enlisted as a private in a New Hampshire 
 company for the war with Mexico, and was made colonel, 
 brigadier-general, and major-general, and served during 
 that campaign. In 1852 the delegates from New Hamp- 
 shire to the National Democratic Convention desired to 
 bring his name before the convention as President of the 
 United States, and he refused to allow them to present 
 his name. In 1850 he was elected president of the New 
 Hampshire Constitutional Convention by a vote of 257 
 to 6. In a letter to a New Hampshire delegate to the 
 National Convention he wrote, in 1852, "The same 
 motive which induced me several years ago to retire 
 from public life, and which since that time has controlled 
 my judgment in this respect, now impels me to say that 
 the use of my name, in ahy event, before the Democratic 
 National Convention at Baltimore, to which you are a 
 delegate, would be utterly repugnant to my tastes and 
 wishes." 
 
 In a letter dated May 27, 1852, to another of the New 
 
75 
 
 Hampshire delegates, he wrote, "As I told you, my 
 name will not be before the convention; but I cannot 
 help feeling that what there is to be done will be impor- 
 tant beyond men and parties — transcendently important 
 to the hopes of Democratic progress and civil liberty." 
 
 In June, 1852, at the age of forty-seven he was nomi- 
 nated for President of the United States and in November 
 was elected, receiving the electoral vote of twenty-seven 
 out of thirty-one states of the Union, No other man in 
 New Hampshire has ever held the office of President of 
 the United States, no man has held offices such as he 
 held with less apparent effort to obtain them. No law- 
 yer has ever been elected to the place of senator of the 
 United States and resigned before his term of office had 
 expired and returned to the drudgery and routine of 
 the profession. 
 
 What was there in his parentage, his early life and 
 association, which might tend to give him mental fiber 
 and character and to give to the world a prophecy of 
 his qualities as a lawyer? 
 
 The town of Hillsborough where he was born, the 
 scenery, the hills, the winter and summer life upon the 
 farm, were much the same as country boys of the first 
 part of the century saw throughout New Hamsphire. 
 
 His father, Governor Benjamin Pierce, was a marked 
 man in appearance, rather short, thick-set, an honest, 
 inviting face, his eyes bright and merry, his lips firm, 
 his words nervous, quick and decisive, as I saw him 
 during two winters of 1834-35 and 1835-36. He was a 
 successful farmer of more than average property for 
 farmers of his time. Night after night, during the win- 
 ter months, around the big, open fireplace with its bright 
 light, gathered his group of children. I can seem to see 
 the old man as he calls the curly-headed, bright-eyed 
 Frank to his side and tells him of his early life. Over 
 
76 
 
 and over again he relates to the eager and attentive boy 
 facts which seem now to be romantic legends. 
 
 In substance a part of the story was that at six years 
 of age his father died; that at eighteen years of age notice 
 came to Chelmsford, Massachusetts, April 19, 1775, 
 while he was plowing in the field, of a battle going on at 
 Lexington; that he left the plough, took his uncle's gun 
 and military equipments, and started for Lexington; 
 that he was one of the "irregulars" who rode and fired 
 at will, following Pitcairn's soldiers towards Boston; 
 that he took part in the Battle of Bunker Hill; that he 
 enlisted in the army of the United States, and was present 
 in many a hard-fought battle ; that at one time seeing the 
 flag struck down, he rushed forward, seized the staff, 
 and raised the flag, and led on the fight for which he was 
 promoted to the rank of ensign; that he was afterwards 
 made captain; that Washington called him into his 
 presence and made him a member of his staff; that for 
 nine years he continued in the service of the United 
 States engaged in every vicissitude of battle until the 
 close of the Revolutionary War; that at the close of the 
 war he came to the town of Hillsborough, then almost 
 a wilderness, and purchased fifty acres of land and built 
 upon it a log hut, and for a year lived alone, getting his 
 own meals, sleeping upon a blanket as he had been 
 accustomed to do during the years of his service in the 
 army. 
 
 Governor Pierce was always a generous, kind-hearted 
 man and liberal at all times for public, religious and 
 charitable purposes. One of the most characteristic 
 acts of his life, which tells us more than words can 
 express his liberality and kindness of heart, was that 
 when he was elected sheriff of Hillsborough County in 
 181 8 he found in the jail at Amherst three men imprisoned 
 for debt. One had been there four years, one three, and 
 
77 
 
 the third for one year. Governor Pierce, then sheriff, 
 had no legal right or authority to discharge these men 
 from prison, but moved by his own kindly feelings he 
 paid the debt of each for which they were imprisoned 
 and set them free. By the law of the state at that time 
 anyone who failed to pay his debts might be imprisoned. 
 
 Benjamin Pierce, although uneducated, had the capac- 
 ity, the energy and the character to gain the respect and 
 confidence of the people of his town and the state, so 
 that he held for thirteen years the office of representative 
 from Hillsborough, and subsequently of sheriff of the 
 county, of state councilor and governor, and in all the 
 positions he acquitted himself with honor and credit to 
 himself and the state. 
 
 Franklin Pierce must have been present when. In 1816, 
 his father invited all the surviving officers and soldiers 
 who had served in the War of the Revolution and the 
 War of 1812, to an entertainment at his home. The 
 day was spent in feasting and in reminiscence of their 
 past lives. It was an event calculated to impress upon 
 the mind of any sensitive and enthusiastic boy feelings 
 of loyalty and patriotism. 
 
 From his birth to his entering college in 1820, there 
 lived in the town of Hillsborough such men as John 
 Gilbert, who was at the Battle of Bunker Hill and through 
 the War of the Revolution; the descendants of Isaac 
 Baldwin, killed in the same battle; John McNeil, a cap- 
 tain in the War of the Revolution; General John McNeil, 
 distinguished in the Battle of Chippewa and at Lundy's 
 Lane. These men and their associates were often visi- 
 tors and on the most intimate terms with the family of 
 Governor Pierce. 
 
 From such parentage, with such associations in his 
 boyhood and early manhood, he could not help being 
 imbued with the strongest feelings of patriotism and 
 
78 
 
 devotion to his country, with the highest regard for men 
 of every class, with the highest and best idea of integrity 
 and honor, and no son with such parents, brothers, 
 friends and townsmen could fail to be impelled by every 
 thought and impulse to choose for himself what was 
 highest and noblest. 
 
 Between 1844 and 1852 I heard General Pierce in 
 several trials before a jury. 
 
 In 1845 he assisted me in the trial of my first case 
 before the jury at Amherst. George W. Morrison was 
 on the other side. 
 
 Mr. Pierce came to my room, examined the writ and 
 pleadings, and talked with the witnesses. After we were 
 alone he said to me: "You can try this case alone. 
 There is no need of my assistance." I told him I wanted 
 his help. He then said: " I advise you to try every case 
 you get a chance to try. You may fail, but no matter. 
 I failed in my first case, but I then resolved that I would 
 try 999 cases and fail every time, if clients gave me a 
 chance, rather than give up." 
 
 His manner of examining the papers and preparing for 
 trial was so kind and brotherly and his suggestions 
 about trials so useful that it made an impression, and 
 gave me courage to attempt success. 
 
 I have never found another lawyer, possibly excepting 
 George Y. Sawyer, who was so kind and so frank and full 
 of suggestive points. 
 
 As a typical case allow me to give somewhat in detail 
 one trial as I saw it. The case of McDougal v. Shirley 
 was a libel for publishing an article in a newspaper called 
 The Gleaner, and attracted more public attention at the 
 time than that of any civil case. This newspaper from 
 somewhere in 1838 to 1846 was published in Manchester 
 by John Caldwell. It was a vile sheet, and was filled 
 weekly with vile and slanderous talk about men and 
 
79 
 
 women in all stations of life. From country towns 
 letters were written to the editor for fun, but generally 
 from malice. 
 
 In 1845 an article appeared libelling the character of 
 Mr. McDougal of Goffstown. He was a substantial 
 farmer, a man of good standing in society, and good 
 character in every respect. He was much incensed at 
 the charges made in The Gleaner, and called upon the 
 publisher of the paper to learn the author. The editor, 
 or some of his employees, gave him to understand that 
 it was Mr. Shirley, another respectable farmer of the 
 town. A suit was brought by George Barstow, a lawyer 
 in Manchester, against Shirley, and at the April term, 
 1846, there was a trial at Amherst. George Barstow 
 and Governor Henry Hubbard appeared for the plain- 
 tiff; David Steele of Goffstown, J. U. Parker of Merri- 
 mack, and Franklin Pierce for the defendant. 
 
 Judge Gilchrist with two side judges presided. The 
 people of Goffstown, Bedford, Manchester, and Am- 
 herst were all deeply interested in the parties and the 
 result of the trial. The good character and standing 
 of the parties brought many friends to each side, and the 
 court-house was filled with spectators for many days 
 during the trial. A large number of witnesses were 
 called upon both sides. At that time neither the plain- 
 tiff nor the defendant was allowed to testify. 
 
 George Barstow, for the plaintiff, was an accomplished, 
 scholarly man and learned in the law. He occupied 
 quite a conspicuous position in Manchester for many years 
 as a lawyer. He was the author of a history of New 
 Hampshire and went from Manchester to San Francisco 
 where it is said he acquired wealth and reputation. 
 
 Henry Hubbard had been governor of the state and 
 United States senator and was regarded as one of the 
 ablest lawyers of the state. 
 
8o 
 
 For the defense David Steele of Goffstown who had 
 acquired such a reputation in laying out and discon- 
 tinuing highways that Charles G. Atherton, at one time 
 in discussing some questions before the court in which 
 Mr. Steele was upon the other side, in his quiet, crisp 
 way said, "I cannot be expected to dispute my brother 
 Steele upon this point when we all recognize in him 'The 
 Collossus of Rhodes.' " 
 
 James U. Parker of Merrimack was an entirely differ- 
 ent man. He was a sharp, keen man, armed at all points 
 upon questions of evidence before a jury and never for- 
 got to take advantage of the weak points of his adversary 
 or to use to the utmost the good points upon his own side. 
 
 Many people besides the publisher of The Gleaner and 
 the parties had an interest in the trial of this case, and 
 Governor Hubbard had been selected as the ablest and 
 best lawyer to meet Mr. Pierce. Hubbard, as governor 
 and United States senator, was known politically but 
 had no hold upon the jury in Hillsborough County. 
 Pierce, as was his custom in every case in which he was 
 engaged, knew the name and locality of every juryman, 
 and not only knew everyone during the trial but if he 
 had met him one year or ten years afterwards anywhere he 
 could have called him by name. In this respect Pierce 
 was like James G. Blaine and Ben Butler, who never for- 
 got the face or name of any man they had once become 
 acquainted with, and at one time after his presidential 
 term of office was over said, that until he went to Wash- 
 ington as President, he never forgot any man whom he 
 had once met and whose name he had learned. 
 
 Another advantage, which Pierce had at this trial was, 
 that every juryman not only respected him, but had a 
 sort of love and state pride in him beyond what had 
 been towards any other man in the history of our state. 
 In the course of the trial a son of the defendant, then 
 
thirteen years of age, now well known as Colonel Shirley, 
 was called as a witness. His testimony was important 
 for the defense, as it contradicted one of the principal 
 witnesses for the plaintiff. It related to the plaintiff's 
 witness visiting the defendant to buy a yoke of oxen, and 
 to conversation that passed between the parties. The 
 boy testified that he remembered the circumstances 
 and the talk, because the oxen were his favorites and he 
 called it that he owned them, and did not wish his father 
 to sell them. 
 
 Hubbard cross-examined the boy quietly and gently 
 but could not lead him in any way to contradict his testi- 
 mony. Then finally he arose from his seat, approached 
 him, and in earnest and almost savage manner attempted 
 to overawe and frighten him. The boy stood the test 
 and waited with perfect ease to see what was next, turn- 
 ing his eyes affectionately and reliantly upon Pierce. 
 
 Pierce had watched this cross-examination. His in- 
 terest in the case and his sympathy for the boy were in- 
 tense, and as the last answer was given and as their eyes 
 met, there was such a glow in the face and eyes of Pierce 
 that as Colonel Shirley to-day will tell you, it seemed 
 as if a sunburst with a soft mellow light fell upon him 
 and every juryman. It touched the hearts of everyone 
 who saw it. This appearance upon the face of General 
 Pierce has been noted by others in similar cases. 
 
 Hon. Joseph W. Fellows of Manchester relates an in- 
 cident of a trial in some country town, when he was a 
 boy of some fifteen or sixteen years of age, and he de- 
 scribes the appearance as a sort of illumination on the 
 face which made a deep and lasting impression upon his 
 memory. This same appearance although peculiar to 
 General Pierce, has been noticed in the description of 
 S. S. Prentiss of Mississippi, of William Pinckney and 
 others. 
 
82 
 
 Pierce was fully prepared upon the facts and law of the 
 case. He knew and was prepared to prove that two of 
 the witnesses for the plaintiff were absolutely and wil- 
 fully false. There was one Plynn White, witness for the 
 plaintiff, an associate of the publisher of The Gleaner, 
 who had testified to seeing the defendant in Manchester 
 in conversation with Caldwell, the publisher, whose testi- 
 mony, if true, would tend strongly against the defendant. 
 At first Pierce quietly questioned Plynn White and led 
 him to thoughts almost entirely outside of the case; he 
 then called the witness's attention to the exact locality 
 where he stood, and where Shirley and Caldwell stood, 
 and in various ways brought White to swear positively 
 over and over again as to the exact position. 
 
 The whole cross-examination was so apparently fair 
 and yet brought the witness to testify so positively that 
 anyone who was previously familiar with the facts, or 
 as they were afterwards developed, recognized Pierce's 
 tact and ingenuity. In rebuttal, General Pierce showed 
 by the testimony of two reliable witnesses, that if Plynn 
 White's story was true he must have seen through the 
 brick walls of the city hall. 
 
 He made no mistake in his cross-examination in this 
 case, and it was one of his greatest qualifications in the 
 trial before a jury that he never made a mistake in his 
 appreciation of the witness before him. He seemed to 
 have an intuitive knowledge of the honesty or dishonesty, 
 or the mental weakness or strong points, of a witness. It 
 was the custom at that time for counsel to contest the 
 admissibility of much of the evidence brought before the 
 court. This was so customary that no one thought such 
 objections would injure his case in the minds of the jury, 
 in fact, no lawyer was thought to have done his duty 
 unless he objected to the utmost to the admissibility of 
 much of the evidence. 
 
83 
 
 It was a rare treat, when such a question came up, 
 to see the quiet, yet dignified and deferential manner 
 of General Pierce towards the court, and towards the 
 counsel in presenting objections. If the court should 
 rule against him he made the jury believe that he was 
 right and the court was wrong. 
 
 After many days of trial Pierce's argument for the 
 defense occupied, as I remember it, some three or four 
 hours. He began in a conversational tone, presenting 
 to the jury the importance of the case and the duty de- 
 volving upon each of them. He spoke of the plaintiff 
 and the defendant in equal terms of kindness, that they 
 were both honest, fair-minded farmers and neighbors 
 in Goffstown, that the plaintiff had been deceived by 
 others and led to the belief of the guilt of the defendant, 
 that when the article appeared in the newspaper and the 
 plaintiff called upon the publisher demanding the name 
 of the author, Caldwell, knowing that Shirley was a man 
 of property, insinuated first that he was the author, and 
 finally both Caldwell and Plynn White asserted posi- 
 tively that Shirley was the guilty man. 
 
 It was contended by Pierce that a man by the name of 
 Wells had written the article, partly in fun and partly 
 in revenge. Wells was a man of no property, and 
 Caldwell with Wells' assistance made McDougall, the 
 plaintiff, believe that it was the work of Shirley. The 
 arraignment of the three conspirators, Caldwell, White, 
 and Wells, for sarcasm and bitterness of invective, and 
 at the same time so just according to the evidence, I 
 have never seen or heard equaled in any court. While 
 he commented upon the testimony of the boy Shirley, 
 and the weight the jury should give to it compared with 
 that given by the man proven guilty of perjury, he ex- 
 hibited a specimen of eloquence rarely seen anywhere. 
 I wish I could give his words; I cannot, but I remember 
 
84 
 
 dearly the apology and sympathy for his distinguished 
 ■opponent, his imploring the jury to fairly and dispas- 
 sionately consider and weigh the testimony of the boy, 
 and this man, exclaiming in a quotation from one of 
 William Pinckney's arguments, "Place the testimony 
 of this man in one scale, and of the boy in the other scale, 
 and the weight of the man's testimony is lighter than the 
 down which flies from a linnet's wing," 
 
 His argument in this case for ability, clear and beauti- 
 ful illustration, apt quotations and pathos, has never 
 been equaled in New Hampshire. It was the eloquence 
 which stirs and rules the heart and conquers the reason. 
 
 When General Pierce closed his argument there was not 
 a juryman and hardly a man in the court-house whose 
 cheeks were not wet with tears. 
 
 Governor Hubbard, with his first words, said, "Gentle- 
 men, I did not come to bore for water." These words 
 were a sad mistake. Every person felt it a sort of criti- 
 cism upon himself for the exhibition of sympathy which 
 he could not control. Hubbard, in a long argument, 
 was able, energetic, and logical. With splendid figure, 
 head leaning back somewhat in the attitude we see in the 
 pictures of Henry Clay, he walked up and down by the 
 side of the table before the jury and argued and pleaded 
 with great ability. Although at times quiet and sub- 
 dued, he was often fierce, declamatory and thunderous 
 in voice, and towards the close he was actually frothing 
 at the mouth with the spittle scattered around him. 
 Hubbard failed utterly to reach the hearts of the jury. 
 He talked and talked and argued and declaimed in vain, 
 for Pierce had captured the heart of every juryman, and 
 when they retired they immediately gave a verdict for 
 the defendant. 
 
 I heard General Pierce in many other cases in Hills- 
 borough County between the years of 1843 and 1852, 
 
85 
 
 notably his defense of the Wentworths for the Parker 
 murder in 1846. In every case he was master of the sit- 
 uation. Friends, poHtical and social, never stood in his 
 way of doing justice to his client. There was never any 
 indifference or half-heartedness in his efforts. He did 
 his best in every case ; there was an apparent seriousness 
 in every case. The first thing that attracted one's atten- 
 tion in listening to his arguments was the absolute sincer- 
 ity, depth and fervor of his conviction. It may be truth- 
 fully said of him as was said of S. S. Prentiss of Missis- 
 sippi, " Before he uttered a word you felt by his very look 
 and air that he was deeply in earnest, and no sooner had 
 he opened his lips than you felt it by the quick, respon- 
 sive sympathy in your own bosom." Some men, like 
 Webster, require a great occasion or a case of unusual 
 importance to arouse them to their best efforts. I have 
 heard Webster when to all appearances he was indiffer- 
 ent and slow. 
 
 Rufus Choate and Franklin Pierce could not help 
 being stirred and nerved to their utmost effort in every 
 case, and on every occasion when they made an argu- 
 ment before a jury. Eloquence with them was as natural 
 as a song with the thrush. When I say it was natural, 
 I mean that it was inborn; that physically and mentally 
 they were fitted for eloquent speakers, and these natural 
 gifts had been cultivated and improved by years of per- 
 sistent labor and effort. Pierce's first efforts before a 
 jury were failures, but by perseverance he overcame 
 all obstacles. Judge Perley said of him, "He always 
 knew the law in every case." 
 
 Joel Parker, in his address before the Harvard Law 
 School in 1853 upon Daniel Webster, in speaking of 
 courtesy towards opposing counsel said: "And in this 
 connection I may repeat to you, that I have never wit- 
 nessed professional civility of a higher or more uniform 
 
86 
 
 character than that exhibited by the gentleman who 
 now holds the office of the president of United States, 
 and by the learned brother (Judge Perley), for years his 
 opposing counsel at the bar, who has since adorned the 
 bench of the Superior Court of New Hampshire." 
 
 Judge William L. Foster, in his address before the 
 Southern Bar Association in 1894, said: "I shall only 
 express the universal sentiment of all who knew him, 
 when I say that he was probably the most brilliant ad- 
 vocate ever known in New Hampshire. His fascinating 
 grace, eloquence and power were unequaled; and his 
 success as a jury lawyer was unattained by any other 
 member of the profession." 
 
 Judge Sylvester Dana, who was a student in the office 
 of Pierce & Minot from 1839 to 1843, writes me as fol- 
 lows: "Pierce was the most affable of men, and his stu- 
 dents shared largely in his kindly courtesies. He was 
 accustomed to discuss with us legal and other questions 
 as though we were his equals, and contributed in many 
 ways to make us feel at home. He gave to his cases the 
 most laborious and exhaustive preparation, leaving no 
 details, however minute, unexplored. He never took a 
 legal position before the court which he did not believe 
 to be tenable." 
 
 Honorable Benjamin F. Ayer, who commenced prac- 
 tice of the law in Manchester, and for many years has 
 been one of the foremost lawyers in Chicago, in writing 
 me of General Pierce says: "He was a lawyer of very 
 remarkable powers, and I am chargeable with no exag- 
 geration in saying that among those I have known in the 
 profession who have been distinguished as advocates 
 before juries, I have never met his superior. He was 
 eminently a man of whom the bar in his native state — 
 and no state has been more prolific of great lawyers — 
 may be justly proud." 
 
87 
 
 Brother J. W. Fellows says that in 1845 a school 
 teacher was arrested in the town of Sutton for too severely 
 punishing two pupils in a district school. The trial at- 
 tracted much attention, and the whole town of Sutton, 
 men, women and children, were present as interested 
 parties. The court consisted of two justices of the peace. 
 Pierce was defending the school teacher. I cannot re- 
 member the words and I cannot describe his manner, but 
 I shall never forget his eulogium upon the efforts of the 
 school teacher, nor the scorn with which he scourged 
 those who were attempting to bring the teacher into 
 ridicule and to defeat the purposes of education. "But 
 more than anything else is impressed upon my mind," 
 says Brother Fellows; "the radiant light like a halo 
 which seemed to beam into the face of General Pierce as 
 he made his appeal for the school teacher and the vindi- 
 cation of good order and good morals in the community." 
 
 Franklin Pierce cannot be placed in the list of learned 
 and profound lawyers with Ira Perley, Jeremiah Mason, 
 Daniel M. Christie, George Y. Sawyer, and many others 
 whose lives were devoted exclusively to law. His supe- 
 riority was in his tact, ability and eloquence before a 
 jury. What was there in his mental and physical en- 
 dowments that fitted him for a great advocate? 
 
 In the first place he had a love — a passion — for the 
 law as a profession, and an indomitable determination 
 to become the best advocate that courage, labor, un- 
 tiring zeal and effort could make him. This love is 
 evidenced from his declining from time to time official 
 positions and returning to the practice of the law. This 
 is evident, too, from the enthusiasm with which he en- 
 tered upon its pursuit. 
 
 He had an attractive physique, his manner was grace- 
 ful, yet strong and manly. There was a sort of chivalrous 
 bearing towards the court, counsel and witnesses, that 
 
88 
 
 won the respect and affection of all who met him. He 
 had the will power and the habit to throw off for the 
 time all thought of business and all anxieties, and to 
 sleep day or night almost as he wished. He had won- 
 derful recuperative power. I have known him while 
 engaged for many days in the trial of an important 
 case, to say to his associate at the noon recess, "I am 
 tired and will sleep for an hour." It seemed but a 
 minute later when he was sleeping as a child, and at 
 the end of an hour's solid sleep arose refreshed and 
 ready for his case. 
 
 He had a vigorous understanding, gifted with a rare 
 faculty of analysis. He had a quick, inventive fancy, 
 strong memory and an impressionable temperament. His 
 voice was pleasant and finely modulated. His memory 
 of the names of persons and localities was remarkable. 
 This was a natural gift, but yet cultivated during all his 
 professional life. He had an intuitive sense of "men and 
 life by which the falsehood and veracity of witnesses, 
 the probability and improbability of transactions, as 
 sworn to, were discerned in a moment." 
 
 From childhood he entered sympathetically into the 
 lives of all classes. He had a frankness and openness of 
 manner which attracted all who had to do with him. 
 As Hawthorne, his college classmate and lifelong per- 
 sonal friend, in his biography published in 1852, in 
 speaking of his college life says: "He was distinguished 
 by the same fascination of manner that has proven so 
 magical in winning him an unbounded personal popu- 
 larity. It is wronging him, however, to call this peculi- 
 arity a mere effect of manner; its source lies deep in the 
 kindliness of his nature, and in the liberal, generous, 
 catholic sympathy that embraces all who are worthy of 
 it. Few men possess anything like it; so irresistible as 
 it is, so sure to draw forth an undoubting confidence, and 
 
89 
 
 so true to the promise which it gives. It belongs to him 
 at this moment and will never leave him." 
 
 He was fair and just to every honest witness, and he 
 had the ability to make the jury see and feel the false- 
 hood of the pretender or the liar. He knew what would 
 appeal to the average juror. As was said of Rufus 
 Choate I can say of him, "He treated every man as 
 though he was a gentleman, and he treated every gentle- 
 man almost as he would a lady." 
 
 As was said of Prentiss, "There was nothing to imply 
 that while his lips were on fire, his heart might be cold; 
 but every look, tone and gesture carried with them the 
 conviction that he was honest, sincere and spoke the 
 motives of his inmost heart and conscience." 
 
 At the end of his presidential term of office he spent 
 the next two years with his invalid wife at the Madeira 
 Islands and in foreign travel. Ever since the death of 
 her son by a railroad accident, in January, 1853, she had 
 never known vigorous health or freedom from consum- 
 ing grief. All that anxious, constant care and love could 
 do was done by the General with the devotion and ten- 
 derness such only as a husband with the same deep sor- 
 row could bestow upon his sorrowing wife. In December, 
 1863, Mrs. Pierce died, and General Pierce died in 
 October, 1869. 
 
 Thus, brethren, I have touched upon Franklin Pierce 
 as a lawyer, with some of the prominent events of his 
 life. He was in many respects the most remarkable man 
 in the history of the state of New Hampshire. He had 
 honors thrust upon him, and he wore them modestly 
 and nobly. He cast aside high offices like toys of small 
 value, preferring the routine of professional life and his 
 home with his wife and children and the enthusiastic 
 friends of his early life. He was called again to the 
 highest office in the nation, and administered its affairs 
 
90 
 
 with dignity, with ability, with honor, and with the per- 
 sonal regard of all who had to do with him. 
 
 Colonel Forney, a political opponent, in writing of him 
 immediately after his death in 1869, among other things 
 said: "Let us think of Franklin Pierce as a man of that 
 greatness of heart which constitutes the true nobility 
 of character, and which constantly exhibits itself in 
 words, looks, tone, and accents and works of kindness. 
 Kindness of heart was his great quality. No exaltation 
 of station, no degree of prosperity, no applause of men, 
 no adventitious circumstances whatever, caused him to 
 overlook, much less to neglect, an appeal for aid by the 
 lowly and suffering. Thoughts of others were his dis- 
 tinguishing quality. Who so forward as he to see virtue 
 in the humblest guise, and to recognize and respect it as 
 much or more than if the subject of it were of the highest 
 name and of loftiest lineage? The peer in eloquence and 
 oratory and argumentation of his contemporaries at the 
 bar and in public life, yet who so prompt to express en- 
 comium of the great efforts of others? 
 
 "Of human feelings the unbounded lord, and there- 
 fore the charm of the social circle, who was so stricken 
 by public or private misfortune? Who so profoundly 
 awed by the dispensations of Divine Providence?" 
 
 I shall fail to give a fair sketch of the life of this man if 
 I omit an event which to him and his wife, in their inner- 
 most selves, was of more lasting effect than all else be- 
 sides. 
 
 In January, 1853, before he had taken his seat as 
 President, while traveling between Boston and Concord 
 with his wife and only Child, a boy of eleven years of age, 
 the car was thrown from the track, and the child instantly 
 killed. It is an event too near the heart for speech, 
 written or spoken. Words of themselves have no heart- 
 beat, except to the few who have been compelled by like 
 
91 
 
 affliction to listen. I can well understand how com- 
 pletely overwhelmed was the delicate and sensitive mother 
 with a grief from which she could never recover. 
 
 How worthless seemed the prospective honors and the 
 pageantry of the presidential life; how empty and vain 
 all earthly things in the presence of their dead child, 
 and what terrible grief swept over him as he saw his 
 fondest hopes suddenly blasted. 
 
 An intimate friend of the General told me that General 
 Pierce was never the same man after this event as before. 
 Some of us know he could never have been the same to 
 himself, however he might appear to others. 
 
 He brought to this sad experience the same will power 
 to bear up wonderfully and heroically and to go about 
 his home life and public duties during his term of office 
 as if nothing had happened, while at the same time there 
 was a continued sense of something gone out of his life 
 that he had counted on, a longing — a tearful longing — 
 for that boy who bore the honored name of his father, 
 Benjamin Pierce, and upon whom he expected his own 
 mantle of successful life to fall. 
 
 That event was a mystery. We cannot explain it. 
 For one, I feel, as I presume many of you do, like reach- 
 ing out my hands and calling with subdued and sad- 
 dened heart, "My brother, oh! my brother! is the mys- 
 tery of life and death solved? Is the mystery of the 
 death — the tragic death — of that boy explained? Are 
 you satisfied that what then seemed so grievous and 
 terrible is well for you and best for the child?" 
 
 This is not the time nor occasion to give Franklin 
 Pierce his just and true position as a politician and states- 
 man. He lived at a period in our history when the people 
 of the United States were divided. We begin to learn 
 that there were patriotic men South as well as North; 
 we begin to learn that as true hearts beat under the out- 
 
92 
 
 ward covering of the gray as the blue ; we begin to learn 
 that Stonewall Jackson of Virginia was as pure and honest 
 in heart and as true in patriotic principle, as he saw his 
 duty in the sacrifice of his life, as any Northern man. 
 
 We begin to learn that Daniel Webster, Franklin 
 Pierce, and many who agreed with them were as truly 
 patriotic as those who reviled them. We begin to feel 
 with Lincoln "Charity for all." 
 
 In this charitable spirit may we not expect, when all 
 partisan bitterness has faded away, and when the future 
 historian shall in historic perspective consider the sur- 
 roundings, the education, the prejudices, and the motives 
 of all men, North and South, that by the side of Daniel 
 Webster in patriotic devotion to his country will stand 
 our Franklin Pierce? 
 
 Brethren, I have presented Franklin Pierce as a New 
 Hampshire lawyer as well as the limits of this occasion 
 and my ability will allow. 
 
 He had his failings, as may be said of every one of us, 
 and they have been exaggerated. I am not here to excuse 
 or condone them. He was our brother lawyer. He was 
 a son of New Hampshire, honored more by high official 
 positions and more loved and idolized in his day than 
 any other member of our profession in this state. 
 
 As a lawyer his integrity, fearlessness, indomitable 
 industry and enthusiasm were unsurpassed in the history 
 of our profession in the state. He was persuasive and 
 resistless by sincere superiority; as an advocate he had 
 no equal among us. He never had a fair-minded client 
 find fault with his efTorts. No lawyer of his years in the 
 profession ever had so many grateful and enthusiastic 
 clients. 
 
 If the veterans of the Revolution and of 1812 and 
 their descendants who knew him could speak; if his 
 townspeople and others who knew him from childhood 
 
93 
 
 to mature years could speak; if thousands of people who 
 knew the tenderness of his heart and the generosity of 
 his instincts, and the lavish wealth of his affectionate 
 nature could speak, forgetting or disregarding him as a 
 lawyer, senator, general and president, they would point 
 to the crowning glory of his life, his kindness, his gener- 
 osity, his unselfishness and his true and enduring friend- 
 ship. 
 
 His name upon our records will be to us, and to those 
 who shall come after us, an inspiration to loftier ideals 
 in our profession and to nobler ambition in citizenship. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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