Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/345

 ADMINISTIL^TION OF FRANKLIN PIERCE. 313

"The American Conflict," closes the chapter giving an account of this election as follows : " And whatever else the election might have meant there was no doubt that the popular verdict was against 'slavery agitation,' and in favor of maintaining the compromise of 1850." We have been thus particular in stat- ing this result, and the principles upon which it was accomplished, that the reader may understand how far President Pierce carried out to the letter and in the spirit, the declared wishes of the people of the United States.

Franklin Pierce was inaugurated president iSIarch 4, 1S53. In his first mes- sage to Congress he said :

" The controversies which have agitated the country heretofore are passing away with the causes which produced them and the passions which they had awakened, or if any trace of them remains, it may be reasonably hoped that it will be only perceived in the zealous rivalry of all good citizens to testify their respect for the rights of the states, their devotion to the Union, and their com- mon determination that each one of the states, its institutions, its welfare, and its domestic peace, shall be held alike secure under the sacred aegis of the con- stitution," and, " recurring to these principles, which constitute the organic basis of union, we perceive that, vast as are the functions and duties of the Federal government, vested in, or entrusted to, its three great departments, the legislative, executive, and judicial, yet the substantive power, the popular force, and the large capacities for social and material development, exist in the re- spective states, which, all being of themselves well constituted republics, as they preceded, so they alone are capable of maintaining and perpetuating, the American Union. The Federal government has its appropriate line of action in the specific and Umited powers conferred on it by the constitution, chiefly as to those things in which the states have a common interest in their relations to one another and to foreign governments ; while the great mass of interests which belong to cultivated men, the ordinary business of life, the springs of in- dustry, all the diversified personal and domestic affairs of society, rest securely upon the general reserved powers of the people of the several states. There is the effective Democracy of the nation, and there the vital essence of its being and greatness;" and "The minimum of Federal government compatible with the maintenance of national unity and efficient action in our relations with the rest of the world, should afford the rule and measure of construction of our powers under the general clauses of the constitution. A spirit of strict deference to the sovereign rights and dignity of every state, rather than a dis- position to subordinate the states into a provincial relation to the central authority, should characterize all our exercise of the respective powers tempo- rarily vested in us as a sacred trust from the generous confidence of our con- stituents. In like manner, as a manifestly indispensable condition of the perpetuation of the Union and of the realization of that magnificent national future adverted to, does the duty become yearly stronger and clearer upon us, as citizens of the several states, to cultivate a Iraternal and affectionate spirit, language, and conduct, in regard to other states and in relation to the varied interests, institutions, and habits of sentiment and opinion, which may respect- ively characterize them. Mutual forbearance, respect, and non-interference in our personal action as citizens and an enlarged exercise of the most hberal principles of comity in the public dealings ot state with state, whether in legis- lation, or in the execution of laws, are the means to perpetuate that confidence and fraternity, the decay of which a mere political union, on so vast a scale, could not long survive."

In reference to the compromise of 1S50, he said :

" When the grave shall have closed over all who are now endeavoring to meet the obligations of duty, the year 1850 will be recurred to as a period

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