They see that merely human wisdom
and human efforts cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the
Constitution, breaking the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into
distracted fragments that common country which Providence brought into
one nation, through a continued miracle of almost two hundred years,
from the first settlement of the American wilderness until the
Revolution."
He predicted, too, the evils of forcible abolition being certain, and
the good only a contingency, that the negroes would suffer aggravated
injuries from the very process designed to better their state. It is
useless here to enter into the question of degrees of right and wrong on
either side, in the struggle which had already become formidable before
Pierce's election; but one can see how sincerely, and with what generous
motives, a man like Hawthorne would feel that the Union must be
maintained peacefully. Without questioning the undoubted grandeur of
achievement which we sanely fell upon through the insane fit of civil
war, we may recognize a deep patriotism consistent with humanity which
forced itself to dissent from the noble action of the fighters, because
it could not share in any triumph, however glorious, that rested on the
shedding of brothers' blood. It was this kind of humanity that found
shelter in the heart of Hawthorne.
Unwelcome as was the task, he wrote the biography of Pierce, in
friendship, but in good faith also, even seeing the elements of
greatness in his old classmate, which might yet lead him to a career.
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