



Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger








SKETCHES AND STUDIES

by

Nathaniel Hawthorne



CONTENTS

 Life of Franklin Pierce
 Chiefly about War Matters
 Alice Doane's Appeal
 The Ancestral Footstep





LIFE OF FRANKLIN PIERCE.


PREFACE.

The author of this memoir--being so little of a politician that he
scarcely feels entitled to call himself a member of any party--would not
voluntarily have undertaken the work here offered to the public.  Neither
can he flatter himself that he has been remarkably successful in the
performance of his task, viewing it in the light of a political
biography, and as a representation of the principles and acts of a public
man, intended to operate upon the minds of multitudes during a
presidential canvass.  This species of writing is too remote from his
customary occupations--and, he may add, from his tastes--to be very
satisfactorily done, without more time and practice than he would be
willing to expend for such a purpose.  If this little biography have any
value, it is probably of another kind--as the narrative of one who knew
the individual of whom he treats, at a period of life when character
could be read with undoubting accuracy, and who, consequently, in judging
of the motives of his subsequent conduct, has an advantage over much more
competent observers, whose knowledge of the man may have commenced at a
later date.  Nor can it be considered improper (at least, the author will
never feel it so, although some foolish delicacy be sacrificed in the
undertaking) that when a friend, dear to him almost from boyish days,
stands up before his country, misrepresented by indiscriminate abuse on
the one hand, and by aimless praise on the other, he should be sketched
by one who has had opportunities of knowing him well, and who is
certainly inclined to tell the truth.

It is perhaps right to say, that while this biography is so far
sanctioned by General Pierce, as it comprises a generally correct
narrative of the principal events of his life, the author does not
understand him as thereby necessarily indorsing all the sentiments put
forth by himself in the progress of the work.  These are the author's own
speculations upon the facts before him, and may, or may not, be in
accordance with the ideas of the individual whose life he writes.  That
individual's opinions, however,--so far as it is necessary to know them,
--may be read, in his straightforward and consistent deeds, with more
certainty than those of almost any other man now before the public.

The author, while collecting his materials, has received liberal aid from
all manner of people--Whigs and Democrats, congressmen, astute lawyers,
grim old generals of militia, and gallant young officers of the Mexican
war--most of whom, however, he must needs say, have rather abounded in
eulogy of General Pierce than in such anecdotical matter as is calculated
for a biography.  Among the gentlemen to whom he is substantially
indebted, he would mention Hon. C. G. Atherton, Hon. S. H. Ayer, Hon.
Joseph Hall, Chief Justice Gilchrist, Isaac O. Barnes, Esq., Col. T. J.
Whipple, and Mr. C. J. Smith.  He has likewise derived much assistance
from an able and accurate sketch, that originally appeared in the "Boston
Post," and was drawn up, as he believes, by the junior editor of that
journal.

CONCORD, MASS., August 27, 1852.




CHAPTER I.

HIS PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE.


Franklin Pierce was born at Hillsborough, in the State of New Hampshire,
on the 23d of November, 1804.  His native county, at the period of his
birth, covered a much more extensive territory than at present, and might
reckon among its children many memorable men, and some illustrious ones.
General Stark, the hero of Bennington, Daniel Webster, Levi Woodbury,
Jeremiah Smith, the eminent jurist, and governor of the state, General
James Miller, General McNeil, Senator Atherton, were natives of old
Hillsborough County.

General Benjamin Pierce, the father of Franklin, was one of the earliest
settlers in the town of Hillsborough, and contributed as much as any
other man to the growth and prosperity of the county.  He was born in
1757, at Chelmsford, now Lowell, in Massachusetts.  Losing his parents
early, he grew up under the care of an uncle, amid such circumstances of
simple fare, hard labor, and scanty education, as usually fell to the lot
of a New England yeoman's family some eighty or a hundred years ago.  On
the 19th of April, 1775, being then less than eighteen years of age, the
stripling was at the plough, when tidings reached him of the bloodshed at
Lexington and Concord.  He immediately loosened the ox chain, left the
plough in the furrow, took his uncle's gun and equipments, and set forth
towards the scene of action.  From that day, for more than seven years,
he never saw his native place.  He enlisted in the army, was present at
the battle of Bunker Hill, and after serving through the whole
Revolutionary War, and fighting his way upward from the lowest grade,
returned, at last, a thorough soldier, and commander of a company.  He
was retained in the army as long as that body of veterans had a united
existence; and, being finally disbanded, at West Point, in 1784, was left
with no other reward, for nine years of toil and danger, than the nominal
amount of his pay in the Continental currency--then so depreciated as to
be almost worthless.

In 1780, being employed as agent to explore a tract of wild land