Had the
amendment passed, the credit would have belonged to no man more than to
General Pierce; and that it failed, and that the free Constitution of New
Hampshire is still disgraced by a provision which even monarchical
England has cast off, is a responsibility which must rest elsewhere than
on his head.
In September, 1851, died that eminent statesman and jurist, Levi
Woodbury, then occupying the elevated post of judge of the Supreme Court
of the United States. The connection between him and General Pierce,
beginning in the early youth of the latter, had been sustained through
all the subsequent years. They sat together, with but one intervening
chair between, in the national Senate; they were always advocates of the
same great measures, and held, through life, a harmony of opinion and
action, which was never more conspicuous than in the few months that
preceded Judge Woodbury's death. At a meeting of the bar, after his
decease, General Pierce uttered some remarks, full of sensibility, in
which he referred to the circumstances that had made this friendship an
inheritance on his part. Had Judge Woodbury survived, it is not
improbable that his more advanced age, his great public services, and
equally distinguished zeal in behalf of the Union might have placed him
in the position now occupied by the subject of this memoir.
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