Part 5

“How comes it,” I asked, “that a big old loafer gets a letter from a candidate for President and talks it over with the keeper of a livery stable? What have such people to do with such things?”

My father said: “My son, Mr. Kimball is an estimable man. He has been an important and popular Democrat in New Hampshire. He is not without influence here. The Frank they talked about is Gen. Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, an old friend and neighbor of Mr. Kimball. General Pierce served in Congress with me and some of us are thinking that we may nominate him for President. The ‘big old loafer,’ as you call him, was Mr. John C. Rives, a most distinguished and influential Democrat indeed.”

Three months later, when the event came to pass, I could tell all about Gen. Franklin Pierce. His nomination was no surprise to me, though to the country at large it was almost a shock. He had been nowhere seriously considered.

In illustration of this a funny incident recurs to me. At Nashville the night of the nomination a party of Whigs and Democrats had gathered in front of the principal hotel waiting for the arrival of the news, among the rest Sam Bugg and Chunky Towles, two local gamblers, both undoubting Democrats. At length Chunky Towles, worn out, went off to bed. The result was finally flashed over the wires. The crowd was nonplused. “Who the hell is Franklin Pierce?” passed from lip to lip.

Sam Bugg knew his political catechism well. He proceeded at length to tell all about Franklin Pierce, ending with the opinion that he was the man wanted and would be elected hands down, and he had a thousand dollars to bet on it.

Then he slipped away to tell his pal.

“Wake up, Chunky,” he cried. “We got a candidate—Gen. Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire.”

“Who the——”

“Chunky,” says Sam. “I am ashamed of your ignorance. Gen. Franklin Pierce is the son of Gen. Benjamin Pierce, of Revolutionary fame. He has served in both houses of Congress. He declined a seat in Polk’s Cabinet. He won distinction in the Mexican War. He is the very candidate we’ve been after.”

“In that case,” says Chunky, “I’ll get up.” When he reappeared Petway, the Whig leader of the gathering, who had been deriding the convention, the candidate and all things else Democratic, exclaimed:

“Here comes Chunky Towles. He’s a good Democrat; and I’ll bet ten to one he never heard of Franklin Pierce in his life before.”

Chunky Towles was one of the handsomest men of his time. His strong suit was his unruffled composure and cool self-control. “Mr. Petway,” says he, “you would lose your money, and I won’t take advantage of any man’s ignorance. Besides, I never gamble on a certainty. Gen. Franklin Pierce, sir, is a son of Gen. Benjamin Pierce of Revolutionary memory. He served in both houses of Congress, sir—refused a seat in Polk’s Cabinet, sir—won distinction in the Mexican War, sir. He has been from the first my choice, and I’ve money to bet on his election.”

Franklin Pierce had an only son, named Benny, after his grandfather, the Revolutionary hero. He was of my own age. I was planning the good time we were going to have in the White House when tidings came that he had been killed in a railway accident. It was a grievous blow, from which the stricken mother never recovered. One of the most vivid memories and altogether the saddest episode of my childhood is that a few weeks later I was carried up to the Executive Mansion, which, all formality and marble, seemed cold enough for a mausoleum, where a lady in black took me in her arms and convulsively held me there, weeping as if her heart would break.

Sometimes a fancy, rather vague, comes to me of seeing the soldiers go off to the Mexican War and of making flags striped with pokeberry juice—somehow the name of the fruit was mingled with that of the President—though a visit quite a year before to The Hermitage, which adjoined the farm of an uncle, to see General Jackson is still uneffaced.

I remember it vividly. The old hero dandled me in his arms, saying “So this is Harvey’s boy,” I looking the while in vain for the “hickory,” of which I had heard so much.

On the personal side history owes General Jackson reparation. His personality needs indeed complete reconstruction in the popular mind, which misconceives him a rough frontiersman having few or none of the social graces. In point of fact he came into the world a gentleman, a leader, a knight-errant who captivated women and dominated men.

I shared when a young man the common belief about him. But there is ample proof of the error of this. From middle age, though he ever liked a horse race, he was a regular if not a devout churchman. He did not swear at all, “by the Eternal” or any other oath. When he reached New Orleans in 1814 to take command of the army, Governor Claiborne gave him a dinner; and after he had gone Mrs. Claiborne, who knew European courts and society better than any other American woman, said to her husband: “Call that man a backwoodsman? He is the finest gentleman I ever met!”

There is another witness—Mr. Buchanan, afterward President—who tells how he took a distinguished English lady to the White House when Old Hickory was President; how he went up to the general’s private apartment, where he found him in a ragged robe-de-chambre, smoking his pipe; how, when he intimated that the President might before coming down slick himself a bit, he received the half-laughing rebuke: “Buchanan, I once knew a man in Virginia who made himself independently rich by minding his own business”; how, when he did come down, he was en règle; and finally how, after a half hour of delightful talk, the English lady as they regained the street broke forth with enthusiasm, using almost the selfsame words of Mrs. Claiborne: “He is the finest gentleman I ever met in the whole course of my life.”

The Presidential campaign of 1848—and the concurrent return of the Mexican soldiers—seems but yesterday. We were in Nashville, where the camp fires of the two parties burned fiercely day and night, Tennessee a debatable, even a pivotal state. I was an enthusiastic politician on the Cass and Butler side, and was correspondingly disappointed when the election went against us for Taylor and Fillmore, though a little mollified when, on his way to Washington, General Taylor grasping his old comrade, my grandfather, by the hand, called him “Billy,” and paternally stroked my curls.

Though the next winter we passed in Washington I never saw him in the White House. He died in July, 1850, and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore. It is common to speak of Old Rough and Ready as an ignoramus. I don’t think this. He may not have been very courtly, but he was a gentleman.

Later in life I came to know Millard Fillmore well and to esteem him highly. Once he told me that Daniel Webster had said to him: “Fillmore, I like Clay—I like Clay very much—but he rides rough, sir; damned rough!”

I was fond of going to the Capitol and of playing amateur page in the House, of which my father had been a member and where he had many friends, though I was never officially a page. There was in particular a little old bald-headed gentleman who was good to me and would put his arm about me and stroll with me across the rotunda to the Library of Congress and get me books to read. I was not so young as not to know that he was an ex-President of the United States, and to realize the meaning of it. He had been the oldest member of the House when my father was the youngest. He was John Quincy Adams. By chance I was on the floor of the House when he fell in his place, and followed the excited and tearful throng when they bore him into the Speaker’s Room, kneeling by the side of the sofa with an improvised fan and crying as if my heart would break.

One day in the spring of 1851 my father took me to a little hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol and into a stuffy room, where a snuffy old man wearing an ill-fitting wig was busying himself over a pile of documents. He turned about and was very hearty.

“Aha, you’ve brought the boy,” said he.

And my father said: “My son, you wanted to see General Cass, and here he is.”

My enthusiasm over the Cass and Butler campaign had not subsided. Inevitably General Cass was to me the greatest of heroes. My father had been and always remained his close friend. Later along we dwelt together at Willard’s Hotel, my mother a chaperon for Miss Belle Cass, afterward Madame Von Limbourg, and I came into familiar intercourse with the family.

The general made me something of a pet and never ceased to be a hero to me. I still think he was one of the foremost statesmen of his time and treasure a birthday present he made me when I was just entering my teens.

The hour I passed with him that afternoon I shall never forget.