Never before nor since has the Senate been more venerable for the array
of veteran and celebrated statesmen than at that time. Calhoun, Webster,
and Clay had lost nothing of their intellectual might. Benton, Silas
Wright, Woodbury, Buchanan, and Walker were members; and many even of the
less eminent names were such as have gained historic place--men of
powerful eloquence, and worthy to be leaders of the respective parties
which they espoused. To this dignified body (composed of individuals
some of whom were older in political experience than he in his mortal
life) Pierce came as the youngest member of the Senate. With his usual
tact and exquisite sense of propriety, he saw that it was not the time
for him to step forward prominently on this highest theatre in the land.
He beheld these great combatants doing battle before the eyes of the
nation, and engrossing its whole regards. There was hardly an avenue to
reputation save what was occupied by one or another of those gigantic
figures.

Modes of public service remained, however, requiring high ability, but
with which few men of competent endowments would have been content to
occupy themselves. Pierce had already demonstrated the possibility of
obtaining an enviable position among his associates, without the windy
notoriety which a member of Congress may readily manufacture for himself
by the lavish expenditure of breath that had been better spared. In the
more elevated field of the Senate, he pursued the same course as while a
representative, and with more than equal results.

Among other committees, he was a member of that upon revolutionary
pensions. Of this subject he made himself thoroughly master, and was
recognized by the Senate as an unquestionable authority. In 1840, in
reference to several bills for the relief of claimants under the pension
law, he delivered a speech which finely illustrates as well the