a
common-school education and of unusual facilities for making an
income--this was the form in which, on the whole, the future most
vividly presented itself, and in which the greatness of the country
was to be recognised of men. There was indeed a faint shadow in the
picture--the shadow projected by the "peculiar institution" of the
Southern States; but it was far from sufficient to darken the rosy
vision of most good Americans, and above all, of most good Democrats.
Hawthorne alludes to it in a passage of his life of Pierce, which I
will quote not only as a hint of the trouble that was in store for a
cheerful race of men, but as an example of his own easy-going
political attitude.

"It was while in the lower house of Congress that Franklin
Pierce took that stand on the Slavery question from which he
has never since swerved by a hair's breadth. He fully
recognised by his votes and his voice, the rights pledged to
the South by the Constitution. This, at the period when he
declared himself, was an easy thing to do. But when it
became more difficult, when the first imperceptible murmur
of agitation had grown almost to a convulsion, his course
was still the same. Nor did he ever shun the obloquy that
sometimes threatened to pursue the Northern man who dared to
love that great and sacred reality--his whole united
country--better than the mistiness of a philanthropic
theory."

This last invidious allusion is to the disposition, not infrequent at
the North, but by no means general, to set a decisive limit to further
legislation in favour of the cherished idiosyncrasy of the other half of
the country. Hawthorne takes the license of a sympathetic biographer in
speaking of his hero's having incurred obloquy by his conservative
attitude on the question of Slavery. The only class in the American
world that suffered in the smallest degree, at this time, from social
persecution, was the little band of Northern Abolitionists, who were as
unfashionable as they were indiscreet--which is saying much. Like most
of his fellow-countrymen, Hawthorne had no idea that the respectable
institution which he contemplated in impressive contrast to humanitarian
"mistiness," was presently to cost the nation four long years of
bloodshed and misery, and a social revolution as complete as any the
world has seen. When this event occurred, he was therefore
proportionately horrified and