And he agreed with the best and wisest statesmen
in believing that this distinction involved the true principle on which
legislation, for the purpose here discussed, should proceed.
While a member of the House of Representatives, he delivered a forcible
speech against the bill authorizing appropriations for the Military
Academy at West Point. He was decidedly opposed to that institution as
then, and at present organized. We allude to the subject in illustration
of the generous frankness with which, years afterwards, when the battle
smoke of Mexico had baptized him also a soldier, he acknowledged himself
in the wrong, and bore testimony to the brilliant services which the
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.
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