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
sympathies as the justice of the man, showing how vividly he could feel,
and, at the same time, how powerless were his feelings to turn him aside
from the strict line of public integrity.
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