safety. The remainder of the march met with little opposition. By the twenty-ninth the sick list had so increased that there were over four hundred on the surgeon's roll. Those who have not had experience in that direction can hardly realize the care needed to move a body of even only twenty-four hundred men, through a hostile land, with four hundred sick men in wagons, so that none should suffer from the movement, from hunger, or the lack of medical care. The morning of the thirtieth saw them halt near the castle of Perote, where they remained several days, to repair damages and rest the sick and wounded, a part of whom were sent to a hospital in the castle. They soon after resumed their march, and on August 7 reached the main body of the army, under General Winfield. Scott, at Puebla.

Thus re-inforced, the commander-in-chief was prepared to make his attack upon the City of Mexico. In the first action that occurred in the fulfillment of that end, where the enemy's works, having been approached with difficulty, were successfully stormed, General Pierce was in command at the outset in the attack upon the front of the intrenchments. It was a position of peculiar danger and responsibility. The ground was a broken, rocky surface, impracticable for cavalry, and difficult for infantry. He was the only mounted officer in the brigade, and as he was pressing to the head of the column, his horse slipped and fell, crushing his rider in the fall. The General was stunned, and almost insensible. His orderly hastened to his assistance, and found him suffering from a sprain of the left knee, upon which his horse had fallen. The shot from the enemy was flying all about them. As the orderly attempted to lift the General up and aid him to the shelter of a projecting rock a shell buried itself at their feet, and exploded, covering them with stones and sand. "That was a lucky miss," said the General, calmly. A surgeon was summoned, and gave such assistance as lay in his power. Leaning on a friendly shoulder he hobbled along until he reached a battery, where he found a horse whose saddle had just been emptied of some brave fellow, by a Mexican bullet. He was assisted into the saddle, when some one remarked, "You will not be able to keep your seat.'

"Then," said he in reply, "You must tie me on."

He then rode forward into the thickest of the fight, which raged until nightfall, and it was eleven o'clock before he left his saddle. He had withdrawn his troops from their exposed position, and had assembled them in a sheltered place where they were to pass the night. The rain was falling in torrents, and there were no tents, but the tired men and officers threw themselves on the wet sod in order to get such sleep and rest as they could. General Pierce's couch was an ammunition wagon, but the pain of his injured knee was such that he could get no sleep.

At one o'clock in the morning he received orders from General Scott

to put his brigade in a new position in front of the enemy's works, to be ready for an assault with the first indication of dawn. When the movement was made General Pierce was in his saddle, at the head of his brigade. The Mexican camp was attacked front and rear, and in seventeen minutes the American flag was afloat over it. The Mexicans were flee. ing, while many of their number had been taken prisoners. As General Pierce and his men were in pursuit of the fugitives, he was summoned into the presence of General Scott, who desired to give him charge of an expedition intended to attack the enemy in the rear. When Scott perceived his shattered and exhausted condition he said to him, "Pierce, my dear fellow, you are badly injured; you are not fit to be in the saddle." "Yes, general, I am," was the earnest response, "in a case like this." "You cannot touch your foot to the stirrup."

"One of them I can," was the answer.

General Scott looked at him, and was about to decide against sending. him on the expedition. "You are rash, General Pierce," said he, "We shall lose you and we cannot spare you. It is my duty to order you back to St. Augustin."

"For God's sake, general," said the other, "don't say that. This is the last great battle, and I must lead my brigade."

Touched by his vehemence, Scott relented. He gave the order to General Pierce to advance with his brigade. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the eminent author, in describing what followed, said: "The way lay through thick, standing corn, and over marshy ground, intercepted with ditches, which were filled, or partially so, with water. Over some of the narrower of these Pierce leaped his horse. When the brigade had advanced about a mile, however, it found itself impeded by a ditch of ten or twelve feet wide, and six or eight feet deep. It being impossible to leap it, General Pierce was lifted from his saddle, and in some incomprehensible way, hurt as he was, contrived to wade or scramble across this obstacle, leaving his horse on the hither side. The troops were now under fire. In the excitement of the battle he forgot his injury and hurried forward, leading the brigade a distance of two or three hundred yards. But the exhaustion of his frame and particularly the anguish of his knee-made more intolerable by such free use of it-was greater than any strength of nerve or any degree of mental energy could struggle against. He fell, faint and almost insensible, within full range of the enemy's fire. It was proposed to bear him off the field, but as some of the soldiers approached to lift him he became aware of their purpose, and was partially revived by his determination to resist it. 'No,' said he, with all the strength he had left, 'don't carry me off. Let me lie here.' And there he lay, under the tremendous fire of Cherubusco, while the enemy, in total rout, was driven from the field."

Santa Anna soon sent forward a flag of truce, proposing an armistice. General Pierce was named as one of the commissioners to meet him. He was unable to walk, and had to be helped into his saddle before proceeding to the place of meeting. The conference was held at Tacubaya, in the house of the British consul, and lasted from late in the afternoon until four o'clock on the following morning. No terms could be arranged to the satisfaction of both parties, and military operations were resumed. On the eighth of September the battle of Molino del Rey was fought. General Worth, leading some three thousand men, boldly attacked fourteen thousand Mexicans, while General Pierce was ordered to his support. At the close of that bloody battle he rendered General Worth a signal service by interposing to receive the fire of the enemy; and, the victory having been gained, occupied the field. He expected to take a promi nent part in the sequel to this battle, the storming of Chapultepec, but he had become so ill as to be compelled to seek relief at the headquarters of General Worth, where he remained while this concluding action of the Mexican war was fought. He rose from a sick bed to report to General Quitman, ready to take part in the final assault upon the City of Mexico, but the capitulation saved him that perilous duty. He remained in the city until December, when the dawn of peace allowed him to return to his country and his home.

On his return to New Hampshire, General Pierce was received with acclamations of delight and words of praise by those who had favored the prosecution of the war. The people of Concord, regardless of party feeling, gave him a noble welcome, and he was greeted by an eulogistic speech from General Low. He responded in an address of great modesty and propriety, in which he praised not himself but the New England troops who had been under his command. He paid a glowing tribute to the dead, and also a compliment to the officers furnished from the military academy of West Point-which came with redoubled force from him because of his avowed opposition to that institution in the old Congressional days. Mere words of welcome were not alone showered upon him,. as he was formally presented with a sword by the legislature of New Hampshire.

As in the previous days of peace, he once more settled himself to the practice of his profession, and the cares and duties of home life. As ever an earnest Democrat he took part in the Presidential campaign of 1848, giving the candidate of his party, Lewis Cass of Michigan, a loyal and active support. He was made a member of the Constitutional convention of New Hampshire in 1850, and was chosen to preside over its deliberations.

In 1852 came the call to a higher station and a greater responsibility than any that had yet been given him. The fast gathering storm that

broke a few years later had been sounding its signs of warning through several administrations, and a presidential contest meant more than a mere change in office or a succession of officers. The slavery question that had been so great a burden upon southerner and northerner alike—on Taylor and Fillmore, was by no means settled, and the compromise measures by which Mr. Clay had set such store, had proved that they were but flag of truce marking a preparation for a more bitter renewal of hostilities. It was under these circumstances that the Democratic national convention met. at Baltimore on the twelfth of June. Many strong and able statesmen and public leaders were among the candidates for the Presidential nomination-Cass, who had been the standard bearer in 1848; Buchanan, who was to be elected in 1856; Stephen A. Douglas, who was to make the memorable fight against Abraham Lincoln in 1860; W. L. Marcy and others. The contest was long and earnest; and on the thirty-fifth ballot, when it was seen that none of those named could secure the prize, Virginia opened the way to a settlement by casting her vote for General Franklin Pierce. The suggestion met with a ready response. The Democracy of General Pierce, as that of his father before him, had never been questioned. He was a northern man with proslavery views, and had ever been outspoken in the belief that as that institution had been recognized in the Constitution there was no powerin. the government to destroy it. He had supported the compromise measures, and defended the fugitive slave law. He was one whom the southerners, who then controlled the Democratic party, could trust to support and carry out their views. Consequently the movement of Virginia soon found a following. General Pierce gained in strength with each ballot until the forty-ninth, when he was nominated by 282 votes against II that opposed. The election was one of intense excitement, General Scott, another hero of the Mexican war, being the standard bearer for the opposition. General Pierce was successful, receiving all the electoral votes except those of Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee-a total of 254 against 42.

Between his election and inauguration the President-elect was called upon to pass through a severe domestic grief which has been thus described in a tribute to the stricken mother of whom it speaks: "The mother of three children, none survived her, and the death of the last under circumstances so peculiar, shattered the small remnant of remaining health, and left her mother's heart forever desolate. On the fifth of January, previous to the inauguration of Mr. Pierce as President, an accident occurred on the Boston & Maine railroad which resulted in a great calamity; among the passengers were the President-elect, his wife and only son, a bright boy of thirteen years. The family were on their return to Concord from Boston, and it was between Andover and Lawrence that

the axle of one of the passenger cars broke, and the cars were precipitated down a steep embankment. Mr. Pierce, sitting beside his wife, felt the unsteady movements of the train, and instantly divined the cause. Across the seat from them sat their son. A crash, a bounding motion as the cars were thrown over and over down the hill, and men began to recover from their fright and assist in aiding those injured in the fearful accident. Mr. Pierce, though much bruised, succeeded in extricating his wife from the ruins, and bearing her to a place of safety returned to hunt his boy. He was soon found; his young head crushed and confined under a beam, his little body still in death." The bereavement was one that lay heavily on the hearts of the father and mother all through life.

The inauguration of President Pierce drew to Washington the largest number of visitors that had ever been at the capital city on such an occasion. The inauguration procession was a mile long; besides the military, a large number of political and other civic associations being in the line. The President and President-elect rode in a carriage together, and were repeatedly cheered by the spectators, who filled every seat or standing place along the line of march. General Pierce delivered his inaugural without the aid of manuscript. In that address he maintained that slavery was recognized by the Constitution, and that the fugitive slave law was constitutional, and should be strictly maintained. He also dedenounced in strong terms the agitation of the slave question, that was then becoming the leading issue of the land. In the course of the address he said:

"In the administration of domestic affairs you expect a devoted integrity in the public service, and an observance of rigid economy in all departments, so marked as never justly to be questioned. If this reasonable expectation be not realized, I frankly confess that one of your leading hopes is doomed to disappointment, and that my efforts in a very important particular must result in a humiliating failure. Offices can be properly regarded only in the light of aids for the accomplishment of these objects, and as occupancy can confer no prerogative, nor importunate desire for preferment any claim, the public interest imperatively demands that they be considered with sole reference to the duties to be performed. The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy like ours are too obvious to be disregarded. You have a right therefore to expect your agents in every department to regard strictly the limits imposed upon them by the Constitution of the United States.' In approaching the great question of slavery, he voiced his views in the following language: "In expressing briefly my views upon an important subject which has recently agitated the nation to almost a fearful degree, I am moved by no other impulse than a most earnest desire for the perpetuation of that Union which has made us what we are, showering upon