The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1869-10-09
Death OF Ex-Presidens Pierce.

Death OF Ex.Preaident Pierce.
We have the intelligence Of the death, at
Concord, N. H., yesterday morning, of
ex-President Franklin Pierce, in the sixty
ifth year of his age. His name fills an i'm
portant chapter in the political history of the
United States. We give elsewhere In these
columns a sketch Of his character and his
public career; but his administration of the
general government forms 80 conspicuous q
landmark in the transition OF the country from
the old order Of things under African slavery
to the new order Of things under universal
liberty and equal rights, that we cannot forego
the occasion for some additional observations
thereon.
In 1859, in the Democratic National Conven-
ton at Baltimore, after it had been balloting
for nearly week for Presidential candidate,
and upon finding that there was no chance of q
two-thirds vote for Cass, Buchanan, Marcy,
Douglas, Dickinson, Houston, Lane, or any
other man Of the exhausted list before the Con-
vention, the name Of Franklin Pierce was intro
duced, and it carried off the prize. He was
nominated on the platform of Henry Clay's
compromise measures Of 1850 on the slavery
question, including continuance Of the
Missouri compromise Of 1920. The wing party
set up General Scott as it's candidate on the
same platform. The results were the over
whelming election of Pierce and the annihila-
ton of the wing party. The Northern wing
anti-slavery elements were Disguised with their
pro-slavery platform, and the Southern whig
conservatives distrusted the anu-slavery
Northern wing leader, W. Fl. Seward; and so
between these two stools the whig party fell to
the ground, never to rise again.
The pro-slavery Southern democratic
olgarchy hailed the result as license for the
extinction of the Northern abolitionists and
their heresies, and President Pierce became
their compliant instrument In the hands Of
such dictatorial Southern leaders as Mason
ana slideli id TIC Senate and JEFF Davis in
the Cabinet President Pierce was az clay in
the hands of the potter. He became willing
colaborer in the repeal of the Missouri Com
promise, in that disastrous Kansas Nebraska
bill of 1854, which opened the territory north
of the Missouri free line of 36 80 to the
Introduction of slavery. Then followed the
bloody struggle between slavery men and anti
slavery men for the possession of Kansas, and
this was the overture to the great rebellion.
From the ruins of the old whig party and from
the freesoil elements of the democratic party
the new republican party arose and rapidly
came into power. With its success in Lincolns
election in 1860 South Carolina opened the
ball of secession, and we need not here repeat
the consequences.
The administration of Franklin Pierce, then,
stands on the dividing line between the old
and the new order of things-between the reign
of slavery and the new regime of liberty.
He might have extended the reign of
slavery for ten or twenty years longer,
but it was not 80 ordained As the
instrument of the Southern oligarchy, his
policy was disastrous to the South and to the
democratic party; but let us be content with
the conclusion that it was all for the best. He
not only believed in the democratic party, but
his faith was strong in the rights and the power
of the Southern slavery oligarchy. His politi-
cal vision was limited. He saw not the ire
mendous revolution he was invoking, and he
probably died under the firm conviction that
there can be no peace until we are all restored
to "the Union as it was" He belonged to
past age. His administration was a great mis-
take, looking to the interests of slavery; yet
we may justly say of him that he aimed to do
right as public servant, and that in all the
relations of private citizen he leaves behind
him name that will be gratefully remem-
bered.