Then there was a stampede to Pierce. The West had lost.
Young America was put aside for a fair-sized man from New Hampshire.
The Whigs met the same month in Baltimore. Webster, soon to die, was
again a candidate. The platform was made and submitted to him. He
approved of it. It indorsed the Compromises. But again there was an old
soldier in the field, in the person of General Scott. He had fought the
British in 1812. He had made treaties with the Sauk, Fox, Winnebago, and
Sioux tribes after the Black Hawk War. Yes, he had made a brilliant
record in the Mexican War. In mental stature he was up to the knees of
Webster, and no more. But Webster had no imaginative appeal. He could
only pull twenty-nine votes on the first ballot, as against Scott's one
hundred and thirty-one votes. Webster never had more than thirty-two
votes. On the fifty-third ballot Scott was nominated. And in a few
months Webster died, and left the tangles of statecraft to other hands.
Who was Franklin Pierce? Pretty soon Hawthorne, whose romances I had
enjoyed so much, put forth a life of his long-time friend. "When a
friend dear to him almost from boyhood days stands up before his
country, misrepresented by indiscriminate abuse on the one hand, and by
aimless praise on the other, it is quite proper that he should be
sketched by one who has had opportunities of knowing him well and who is
certainly inclined to tell the truth.
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