His approval embraced the whole series of
these acts, as well those which bore hard upon northern views and
sentiments as those in which the South deemed itself to have made more
than reciprocal concessions.
No friend nor enemy that know Franklin Pierce would have expected him to
act otherwise. With his view of the whole subject, whether looking at it
through the medium of his conscience, his feelings, or his intellect, it
was impossible for him not to take his stand as the unshaken advocate of
Union, and of the mutual steps of compromise which that great object
unquestionably demanded. The fiercest, the least scrupulous, and the
most consistent of those who battle against slavery recognize the same
fact that he does. They see that merely human wisdom and human efforts
cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the Constitution, breaking
the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into distracted fragments
that common country which Providence brought into one nation, through a
continued miracle of almost two hundred years, from the first settlement
of the American wilderness until the Revolution. In the days when, a
young member of Congress, he first raised his voice against agitation,
Pierce saw these perils and their consequences.
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