FRANKLIN PIERCE.

OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. BORN 1804; DIED 1857. PRESIDENT, 1853-1857.

Fourteenth President of the United States.

ENERAL BENJAMIN PIERCE, the father of our fourteenth president, was one of the bravest soldiers of the Revolutionary War. He entertained a thorough hatred for England and a warm love for France. He was more famous in his day than his son ever came to be prior to his inauguration to the presidential office. He was for many years a representative of his native town in the legislature of New Hampshire. He was a general in the State militia, a member of the Governor's council, and for two years he served as Governor of the State.

Franklin Pierce, the sixth child of Governor Benjamin Pierce, was born at Hillsborough, N. H., on the 23d of November, 1804. He was a bright, handsome lad, generous and open-hearted, making friends and winning golden opinions on every hand. He worked hard on his father's farm when a boy, learned his first lessons in the district school, and graduated at Bowdoin College in 1824. He resolved to follow the profession of the law, and to this end studied under Judge Levi Woodbury, a distinguished Statesman, and a member of President Jackson's cabinet. He was admitted to the bar in 1827, and began the practice of law in his native town.

It must not be supposed, however, that his mind was wholly absorbed in the dry technicalities of law; the stirring political

questions of the time had a great charm for him, and the atmosphere of his youthful days was most congenial to the development of patriotic hopes and feelings. He regarded his father as an oracle as well as a hero. So cradled and trained, there is no wonder that he should grow up an earnest, enthusiastic politician. He was of course a pronounced Democrat, according to the Democratic doctrines of that day.

He was not eminently successful as a lawyer in his early days, but his practice increased steadily, and he won the confidence of all who knew him as an able and reliable lawyer.

He was elected to the State Legislature when only twentyfive years of age, and he had the further honor of being reelected for four successive years. During the last two years of his service he was Speaker of the House.

In 1833, Mr. Pierce was elected a member of Congress. He was only twenty-nine years of age, and was the youngest member of the House. He was elected a second time to this honorable position, and in 1837, when but thirty-three years old, he was elected to the Senate of the United States. He had been

America's youngest Congressman. He was now her youngest Senator. He found himself surrounded by some of the noblest spirits of the age; a compatriot with such men as Henry Clay, J. C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, T. H. Benton and Silas Wright.

In 1838 Mr. Pierce removed to Concord, New Hampshire. In 1842 he retired from politics, and devoted himself to his profession. In 1846 President Polk offered him the post of Attorney-General of the United States, which, however, he declined, as also the Governorship of New Hampshire.

The future President was destined to play his part also on the tented field. During the Mexican War he enlisted in the Ninth Regiment, and was made a colonel. He was soon after promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He embarked with his troops at Newport, Rhode Island, on the 27th of May, 1847. He played a brave and worthy part, marching to the aid of General Scott at Puebla. The victory won at Contreras, and

the later ones at Cherubusco and Molino del Rey, made Franklin Pierce a hero.

In 1850 General Pierce presided over the Constitutional Convention of New Hampshire.

On the 4th of March, 1853, Franklin Pierce was inaugurated President of the United States. In his inaugural address he proved himself to be a strong partisan, and amongst other things deprecated the discussion of slavery. He chose Jefferson Davis as his Secretary of War. He sided with those who wanted to make Kansas a slave State, the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and he won for himself the unenviable title of "the Northern man with Southern principles." The storm was gathering that was soon to deluge the land with blood. After his term of office he retired to Concord, and when the Civil War broke out he sided with the foes of his country, which course of action lost for him the love and confidence of many of his warmest personal friends.

General Pierce died at his home at Concord on the 8th of October, 1869, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

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JAMES BUCHANAN.

OF PENNSYLVANIA. BORN 1791; DIED 1868. PRESIDENT, 1857-1861.

Fifteenth President of the United States.

The

HE administration of James Buchanan closes an important era in American history. The nation was destined to pass through one of those great upheavals that have marked the history of almost all the great empires of the past. Her fertile fields, North and South, were to be baptized with the life-blood of her bravest sons. whole continent was about to be convulsed with the throes of a revolution, that every thoughtful man knew must come, sooner or later. When James Buchanan retired to his farm in Pennsylvania, the bells at Washington rang out in mournful tones, the old time and the old order; and then pealed forth in melodies of mingled fear and hope, the advent of the new time and the new order.

James Buchanan was of Scotch-Irish extraction; his father came to this country a poor Irish emigrant, in the year 1783. He soon became a settled farmer with a home of his own, taking to wife Elizabeth Spear, who, being the daughter of a good farmer, was just the sort of woman to make a farmer's wife.

James, the first-born son of this thrifty pair, was born at Stony Batter, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, on the 23d of April, 1791. His young life was spent in the woods, in fellowship with nature in her simplest forms. The tall, athletic, vigorous man of after years, built up his strong and robust

health in these early happy days. When quite a boy the family removed to Mercersburg; here the education of James began, which was pursued and consummated at Dickinson College, Carlisle, whence he graduated with high honors in the year 1809, and in his eighteenth year.

His life work now began in earnest. His career had been most honorable, and now, in the young morning of life, he stood face to face with destiny, full of courage and full of hope, but with no dream of the lofty height to which he was to climb. James Buchanan now began the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in the city of Lancaster in his twenty-first year. He rose rapidly in his profession, and soon won an extensive and lucrative practice. He began now to manifest a passion for a public life.

When the second war with England broke out in 1811, James Buchanan enlisted as a private soldier and went to the defense of Baltimore. But happily he was not called to engage in active service. In 1814 he was elected to the Pennsylvania legislature as a representative of the Federalists. In 1820 he was sent to Congress by the Lancaster District; he was re-elected, and retained that honorable position till 1831. He was a zealous Jackson man in Jackson's time, and equally attached to Van Buren when his day of power came. He was opposed to internal improvements by the national government; opposed to a protective tariff, and to the establishment of a national bank. He was for two years chairman of the

Judiciary Committee.

In 1831 President Jackson appointed him to the Court of Russia as American Minister. This office he sustained for two years. In 1833 he was elected to the Senate. Speaking of himself, and of his views, about this period, the new Senator remarked: "If I know myself, I am a politician neither of the East nor of the West, of the North nor of the South. I therefore shall forever avoid any expressions, the direct tendency of which shall be to create sectional jealousies, and at length division-the worst and last of all political calamities."