to represent it in the United States senate. His term of service commenced with the administration of Martin Van Buren. He took a more active part in the proceedings and debates than when in the lower house, and is described as a remarkable, graceful and fluent speaker, who always kept his temper and never forgot the dignity of his position nor the courtesy due his fellow-senators. In 1842 he resigned his seat in the senate, and returned to the practice of his profession.

In 1834 Mr. Pierce was married to Jane Means Appleton, the daughter of Reverend Jesse Appleton, president of Bowdoin college. "The match," says a biographer of that gifted woman, "was a pleasing union of kindred natures and a source of deep and lasting happiness. The wealth and tenderness of Mr. Pierce's nature, appreciated to its fullest extent by her, had its reflex in the urbanity and courteousness with which his conduct was ever characterized toward others. How well she filled her station as wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend those only can tell who knew her in their private relation. In this quiet sphere she found her joy, and here her gentle but powerful influence was deeply and constantly felt, through wise councils and delicate suggestions, the purest, finest tastes, and a devoted life." In 1838 Mr. Pierce decided to remove from Hillsborough to Concord, the capital of his state, where he would find a professional and social field more commensurate with his growing fame and maturing powers. On retiring from the senate he resumed the practice of law in Concord, and was soon leading a busy and successful life. Political proffers were made to him in vain, and he gave substantial evidence by his declarations that he had retired permanently to private life was made in earnest. In 1845 the governor of New Hampshire requested him to fill an unexpired term in the United States senate, but he declined. He was asked to accept the Democratic nomination for governor of New Hampshire, but refused. He accepted the office of district attorney for New Hampshire, but would not accept the attorney-generalship of the United States when it was tendered him by President Polk in 1846. His reluctance to fill this position arose somewhat from his professional engagements, but more from the ill health of his wife. In his letter of declination he wrote to the President, under date of September 6, 1846: "When I resigned my seat in the senate in 1842, I did it with the fixed. purpose never again to be voluntarily separated from my family for any considerable length of time, except at the call of my country in time of war." This final clause was no mere generalization, as the times were about rife for the issuing of such call, and when it came it found him ready. Only a few months before General Taylor had startled the country with the victories of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and the public mind was filled with a feverish unrest, while men asked each other as to what should or should not be done for the honor of the American flag in

the great crisis that had arisen. Mr. Pierce had supported the annexation of Texas, in opposition to a considerable portion of the Democracy of New England. On the declaration of War he was one of the first to enlist, placing his name as a private soldier on the first volunteer roll made up in Concord. When the bill passed congress creating ten regiments, he was commissioned a brigadier-general, under date of March 3, 1887. The military spirit was a part of his inheritance, and as his father had fought under the American flag in one war and his brothers in another, so he felt it a duty to emulate their deeds by his own, on the far-away frontier of the southwest.

General Pierce, accompanied by a portion of his troops, embarked from Newport, Rhode Island, on May 27. They landed upon the Mexican coast, at Virgara, on June 28. An encampment of five hundred men was already there. He had been ordered to move forward immediately but could not obey, as no preparations had been made for such step. He remained there three weeks, collecting means of transportation, drilling his men, and keeping an outlook against the attack daily expected from the Mexicans. On July 13, after such difficulties as could be removed had been disposed of, the order for an advance was given. On the fourteenth eighty wagons were started, under command of General Wood. They took the road for San Juan, twelve miles distant, where they were to await the remainder of the brigade. The heat was intense, and no movement could be made between nine in the morning. and four in the afternoon. On the sixteenth General Pierce was himself enabled to move forward. "After much perplexity and delay " he writes in his journal, "on account of the unbroken and intractable teams, I left the camp this afternoon at five o'clock, with the Fourth artillery, Watson's marine corps, a detachment of the Third dragoons and about forty wagons. The road was very heavy, the wagon wheels were sinking almost to the hubs in the sand, and the untried and untamed teams, almost constantly bolting in some part of the train. We were occupied rather in breaking the animals to harness than in performing a march. At ten o'clock at night we bivouacked in the darkness and sand by the wagons in the road, having made but three miles from camp." Some idea of the difficulties attending every movement of that campaign can be gleaned from the above. It was nine in the evening of the following day before they reached San Juan, in the midst of a drenching rain. The movement forward was continued, and on the twentieth they reached Telema Uneva, twenty-four miles from Vera Cruz. The enemy twice attacked him on the road from San Juan. As his men were moving forward several shots were fired upon them from an eminence on the left. The advance of a small detachment in that direction caused the enemy to flee, but a few miles farther on a number of mounted Mexicans were noted hovering about.

Soon after a brisk fire opened from the foe in ambush. The Americans responded, the guns were unlimbered, and a few discharges of canister silenced the enemy. Six Americans and forty Mexicans were killed in that encounter. "It was the first time," wrote General Pierce," on the march that any portion of my command had been fairly under fire. I was at the head of the column, on the main road, and witnessed the whole scene. I saw nothing but coolness and courage on the part of both officers and men." A formidable effort was made to bar his progress at the National Bridge. A barricade had been erected, and a temporary breastwork built on a high and commanding bluff. General Pierce found a position on which to place several cannon, while a portion of his command was sent to gain the enemy's works from the rear. "Colonel Bouham, with a few companies of picked men," says one narrator of the scene, "made a rush upon the bridge with a loud battle cry, leaped the barricade of brush and timber, reached the village, rallied his men under cover of its buildings, and rushed up the steep bluff, to gain its summit just in time to see the bewildered and disorganized foe disappear in the distance. One grand cheer from the victors on the bluff, echoed back by the troops below, greeted this heroic achievement. The remainder of the command followed rapidly, and in good order. A company of dragoons dashed through the village, hoping to cut off the retreat of the fugitives; but terror had added such wings to their flight that they had entirely disappeared in the dense chaparral in their rear. General Pierce was under fire in this short but sharp engagement, and received a ball through the rim of his hat. An encampment was ordered at this point for the night, and as if to illustrate the fortunes of war, General Pierce made his headquarters at the large and splendid estate of General Santa Anna, one of the leaders on the Mexican side.

By four o'clock on the following morning the brigade was again in motion. Armed bands of Mexicans could be seen at a distance from points of the march, but as none of them approached in any force no engagement followed. The advance was continued until the Plan del Rio was reached, where the bridge, a fine and grand specimen of masonry left by the old Spanish conquerers, had been destroyed, its main arch, a span of some sixty feet, having been demolished. Below yawned a gulf one hun. dred feet deep, the banks being impassable to wagons. "As far as the eye could reach," says General Pierce in his diary, "above and below, the banks on the west side, of vast height, descended precipitously, almost in a perpendicular line, to the water's edge." Yankee ingenuity and pluck were called into requisition, and in the short space of three hours a new bridge took the place of the broken span, and the troops marching and wagons trundling over it. Before the sun had set on the evening of the twenty-third the whole detachment and accompanying train had crossed in