event in the life of a young man vigorous enough to overcome the
momentary depression.

Pierce's distinction at the bar, however, did not immediately follow; nor
did he acquire what we may designate as positive eminence until some
years after this period. The enticements of political life--so
especially fascinating to a young lawyer, but so irregular in its
tendencies, and so inimical to steady professional labor--had begun to
operate upon him. His father's prominent position in the politics of the
state made it almost impossible that the son should stand aloof. In
1827, the same year when Franklin began the practice of the law, General
Benjamin Pierce had been elected governor of New Hampshire. He was
defeated in the election of 1828, but was again successful in that of the
subsequent year. During these years, the contest for the presidency had
been fought with a fervor that drew almost everybody into it, on one side
or the other, and had terminated in the triumph of Andrew Jackson.
Franklin Pierce, in advance of his father's decision, though not in
opposition to it, had declared himself for the illustrious man whose
military renown was destined to be thrown into the shade by a civil
administration, the most splendid and powerful that ever adorned the
annals of our country, I love to record of the subject of this memoir
that his first political faith was pledged to that great leader of the
democracy.

I remember meeting Pierce about this period, and catching from him some
faint reflection of the zeal with which he was now stepping into the
political arena. My sympathies and opinions, it is true,--so far as I
had any in public affairs,--had, from the first, been enlisted on the
same side with his own. But I was now made strongly sensible of an
increased development of my friend's mind, by means of which he possessed