Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-04-24
Fiue Minutes A Day
With Our Presidents
New EngIand's Latest President
BY JAMES MORGAN.


Franklin Pierce was the second
dark horse and the third New Eng
lander to enter the White House.
After three score years and ten he
remains the latest President to be
drawn from the six States which &C.
lcupy the upper right hand corner of
the National map. Even he was
chosen not as a representative of New
England, but rather as an agent of
the South, and New Hampshire de-
bated half a century before 1t grud-
ingly set up in the yard of the capital
lat Concord a statue of her only Presi-
dent.
Franklin Pierce. the President may
have few friends; but Frank Pierce,
the man, had more friends than most
Presidents have been able to boast.
One of his fellow-students at Bowdoin
College was Hawthorne, and their
lifelong friendship bridge the wide
gulf between politics and literature.
The author of the Scarlet Letter"
wrote Pierce's campaign biography,
received from him an appointment as
consul at Liverpool, and at last he
died in the company of the ex-Presi-
dent while the two friends were en-
joying together a White Mountain va
|~cation.
Hawthorne admitted in his cam
paign eulogy that Pierce was not dis
tinguished for scholarship in the earl
Ter part of his stay at Bowdoin. The
unveneered fact is that the genial
Frank was q registering youth who
did not let liz studies interfere with
his pleasures. When he discovered
inI his junior year hat he stood at
the DOT of his class his first impulse
was to cut out college altogether
ather than cut out the designations. He
.absented himself from all the exercises
for several days in the hope of ex-
.pulsion, or of suspension, at least.
After devoted friends had wrestled
with him, he called off his strike and
did his best to make good
in their eyes. For three months,
Hawthorne tells us, he rose at 4 and
retired at midnight and gave to his
studies all but four of the "a hours.
Once he had conquered the mind
which had run wild so long, he could
take his work easier, but he never
again received a black mark, and he
third in his class.
Entering law and politics at a time
when his father was a Democratic
leader in New Hampshire, an easy
path to promotion lay before this
handsome, friendly young a He
declined as many offices as he ac-
cepted. Political honors ~gravitated to
him so unsought that his ambition
was dulled, and at last he vas per-
haps as unambitious as any man who |
ever gained the Presidency.
A member of the Legislature at 20. |
while his father was Governor, and
twice n member of Congress, he was
a Senator of the United States at 33,
Resigning when his term had yet a
year to run. he afterward refused a
second election to the Senate and re- |
fused the ~Governorship and also the
Attorney Generalship of the United
States.
Mrs. Pierce was the daughter of a
former President of Bowdoin College
and a delicate, retiring woman, who
massed her life in the shadows of thej
early loss of two of her three chill
dren. Stunning the glare of public
station, she fled from Washington.
Rather than be separated from his
wife. her husband, who felt for her
a chivalrous devotion, quit the Senate
and declined a seat in Folks cabinet.
In a little f%ootnote to history Henry
Watterson adds that the convivial
Senator was doing no good in Wash
ington anyhow. and that Washington
was doing him no good.
The Mexican Wal tempted Pierce
from his retirement and, as a Briga-
der General, he served with Scott in
the advance on the City of Mexico.
Afterward there were partisan slurs
on his military service. but his SOL
dierly courage has been vouched for
by Grant, who says that he knew him
more intimately than any other of
citizen Generals in that war.
Returning to his family and a first
class law practice at Concord, Gen
eral Pierce, at 43, had no thought
that any further public distinction
awaited him. Yet the White House
was only foul years off.