At the Democratic convention of 1852, Pierce was not a candidate for the
nomination, and did not know that any one intended to mention his name,
or even thought of him in that connection. But the convention was unable
to agree on a candidate, and on the fourth day and thirty-third ballot,
some delegate cast his vote for General Franklin Pierce, of New
Hampshire. The name attracted attention, Pierce's career had been
distinguished and above reproach, other delegates voted for him, until,
on the forty-ninth ballot, he was declared the unanimous choice of the
convention. His election was overwhelming, as he carried twenty-seven
states out of thirty-one.

Once in the presidential chair, however, this popularity gradually
slipped away from him. He found himself in an impossible position,
between two fires, for the slavery question was dividing the country
more and more and there seemed no possible way to reconcile the warring
sections. Pierce, perhaps, made the mistake of trying to placate both,
instead of taking his stand firmly with one or the other; and the
consequence was that at the convention of 1856, he received a few votes
from courtesy, but was never seriously in the running, which resulted in
the nomination of James Buchanan. Pierce returned to his home in New
Hampshire, to find his friends and neighbors estranged from him by his
supposed pro-slavery views, which had yet not been radical enough to win
him the friendship of the South; but time changed all that, and his last
years were spent in honored and opulent retirement.

James Buchanan was, like Andrew Jackson, of Scotch-Irish descent, but
there the resemblance between the two ended, for Buchanan had little of
Jackson's tremendous positiveness and strength of character. His
disposition was always to compromise, while Jackson's was to fight. Now
compromise is often a very admirable thing, but where it shows itself to
be impossible and leaves fighting the only resource, the wise man puts
all thought of it behind him and prepares for battle. Which is precisely
what Buchanan did not do. He had been a lawyer and congressman, minister
to Russia, senator, secretary of state and minister to England, and so
had the widest possible political acquaintanceship; he was a man of
somewhat unusual culture; but, alas! he found that something more than
culture was needed to guide him in the troublous times amid which he
fell. I have often thought that Buchanan's greatest hand