Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/341

 THE

��GRANITE MONTHLY,

A NEW IIAMl'SHIRE MAGAZINE

Devoted to Literature, Biography, History, and State Progress.

��VoL.y. JULY, 1882. :^o. 10.

��ADMINISTRATION OF FRANKLIN PIERCE ON SEC- TIONAL QUESTIONS.

��BY HON. WILLIAM D. NORTHEND.

HE, who after a successful political revolution, attempts to write a history of the administrations of the government that immediately preceded the struggle which will be read by the people, has a difficult task to perform. The very existence of the party in power which has accomplished the revolution, depends upon its ability to maintain successfully before the people the correct- ness of the principles and action on which it has succeeded ; and history shows how often, to this end, the principal effoits have been directed to the making of persistent misrepresentations, not only of the acts, but of the objects and motives of those who administered the government under the system it has been instrumental in overturning. Perhaps the time has not yet come when a correct history of the administrations of the general government during the decade preceding the late sectional struggle can be written which will be read and carefully considered by the people of the country. Yet it is the duty of those who believe that the statesmen who were at the head of affairs during these administrations were actuated by a sincere desire to serve their country faithfully, and to preserve peace and tranquillity under, and strictly in accord- ance with the constitution and laws of the land, to attempt to correct the gross perversions of the facts of the time, which have been so often repeated by the representative men of the party in power, that they have come to be regarded by large masses of the people as historical truths.

It is our purpose in this article, principally, to review the acts under the ad- ministration of Franklin Pierce, from 1853 to 1857, so far as they relate to the sectional agitation out of which our late war was originated. The records of this administration constitute only a chapter in the history of this agitation, which was commenced on the purchase of Louisiana, in 1804; and which, subsequently, threatened the existence of the Union in the war of 181 2, in the controversy upon the admission of Missouri, in 1820, in the disaffection in South Carolina in 1S30, and in the settlement of territorial questions in 1850. It arose out of jealousies in regard to the balance of power between the sec- tions in the future. The people of the northern section regarded the acquisition of Louisiana as giving an undue influence to the southern section, and the war of 181 2 as a contest waged in the interests of the South to the injury of the busi-

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