graduates of the Academy, trained to soldiership from boyhood, had
rendered to their country. And if he has made no other such
acknowledgment of past error, committed in his legislative capacity, it
is but fair to believe that it is because his reason and conscience
accuse him of no other wrong.

It was while in the lower house of Congress that Franklin Pierce took
that stand on the slavery question from which he has never since swerved
a hair's breadth. He fully recognized, by his votes and by his voice,
the rights pledged to the South by the Constitution. This, at the period
when he so declared himself, was comparatively an easy thing to do. But
when it became more difficult, when the first imperceptible movement of
agitation had grown to be almost a convulsion, his course was still the
same. Nor did he ever shun the obloquy that sometimes threatened to
pursue the northern man who dared to love that great and sacred reality--
his whole, united, native country--better than the mistiness of a
philanthropic theory.

He continued in the House of Representatives four years. If, at this
period of his life, he rendered unobtrusive, though not unimportant,
services to the public, it must also have been a time of vast
intellectual advantage to himself. Amidst great national affairs, he was
acquiring the best of all educations for future eminence and leadership.
In the midst of statesmen, he grew to be a statesman. Studious, as all
his speeches prove him to be, of history, he beheld it demonstrating
itself before his eyes. As regards this sort of training, much of its
good or ill effect depends on the natural force and depth of the man.
Many, no doubt, by early mixture with politics, become the mere
politicians of the moment,--a class of men sufficiently abundant among
us,--acquiring only a knack and cunning, which guide them tolerably well