Our candidate, throughout his life, has proved himself to be peculiarly unselfish. The offices and honors which other men seek with so much eagerness, have sought him only to be refused. He has either positively declined to accept, or has resigned the highest stations which the Federal Government or his own native State could bestow upon him.
Indeed, the public character of General Pierce is so invulnerable that it has scarcely been seriously assaulted. Our political opponents have, therefore, in perfect desperation, been driven to defame his private character. At first, they denounced him as a drunkard, a friend of the infamous anti-Catholic test in the Constitution of New Hampshire, and a coward. In what have these infamous accusations resulted? They have already recoiled upon their inventors. The poisoned chalice has been returned to their own lips. No decent man of the Whig party will now publicly venture to repeat these slanders.
Frank Pierce a coward! That man a coward, who, when his country was involved in a foreign war, abandoned a lucrative and honorable profession and all the sweets and comforts of domestic life in his own happy family, to become a private volunteer soldier in the ranks! How preposterous! And why a coward?
According to the testimony of General Scott himself, he was in such a sick, wounded, and enfeebled condition, that he was “just able to keep his saddle!” Yet his own gallant spirit impelled him to lead his brigade into the bloody battle of Churubusco. But his exhausted physical nature was not strong enough to sustain the brave soul which animated it, and he sank insensible on the field in front of his brigade. Was this evidence of cowardice? These circumstances, so far from being an impeachment of his courage, prove conclusively that he possesses that high quality in an uncommon degree. Almost any other man, nay, almost any other brave man, in his weak and disabled condition, would have remained in his tent; but the promptings of his gallant and patriotic spirit impelled him to rush into the midst of the battle. To what lengths will not party rancor and malignity proceed when such high evidences of indomitable courage are construed into proofs of cowardice? How different was General Scott’s opinion from that of the revilers of Franklin Pierce! It was on this very occasion that he conferred upon him the proud title of “the gallant Brigadier-General Pierce.”