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"Your thoughts and purposes in this matter are not circumscribed by the limits of New-Hampshire or New-England. You embrace the 12th and 15th regiments, no less warmly than the 9th. It will ever be a matter of gratification to me, that the three regiments of my brigade were composed of men from the extreme south, north and west of the Union, because it illustrated, in an hour of trial and danger, that unity which is our strength. The question never arose, during the varied scenes of that summer, on what side of a geographical line a man was born or reared; he stood upon the field by your side, an American officer or an American soldier, with an American heart—and that was enough for any of us to know. It was a glorious brotherhood. The highest hope of patriotism looks to the permanence and all-pervading power of that feeling. It is the panoply under which, whatever is dear and precious in our institutions, will repose in security. Over it may the stars and stripes float forever!"

CHAPTER VIII.

General Pierce on the Religious Test Question-His Speech-Letter to the Stark Monument Committee.

GENERAL PIERCE now devoted himself to the duties of his legal profession. About this time a State Constitutional Convention was held in New-Hampshire, to revise the Constitution, and General Pierce allowed himself to be elected a member of that body, by the citizens of Concord. The Convention met at Concord in November, 1850, and among its members were Ichabod Bartlett, Levi Woodbury, and Edmund Parker, and many other of the master minds of the State. It was, perhaps, the most dignified body which ever met in New-Hampshire, containing all the men of influence in both parties. General Pierce was elected President of the Convention by a vote of 257 to 6. The course pursued by him at this convention constitutes an important portion of his life, inasmuch as in it he came out boldly for religious freedom. No sooner had the nomination of General Pierce to the Presidency become fairly known, than party presses at once began to accuse him of approving the Religious Test which is a part of the Constitution of the State of New-Hampshire. This Test in theory excludes all

Catholics from office in the State, though, to a certain extent, it has become obsolete and a dead letter. From the first moment of his political life, General Pierce has been entirely opposed to this odious clause in the Constitution.

The present Constitution of New-Hampshire was formed in the year 1792, and has never since been altered. The legal method of amendment is first by a vote of the people to call a convention for that purpose; second, the adoption of amendments by such convention; and third, the ratification of such proposed amendments by a two-thirds vote of the people. Since General Pierce first entered upon the stage of public life, the question of the revision of the Constitution has seven or eight times come before the people, and every time he has used his influence to secure said revision, and avowedly for the main purpose of abolishing the obnoxious and oppressive Religious Test. Every time, however, until 1850, the friends of a convention were defeated. In 1850, every Democratic press in NewHampshire advocated the calling of a convention to abolish all religious tests in the Constitution, and a convention was called by a vote of the people. The subjects of the Religious Test and Property Qualification were taken up at an early day. Such was General Pierce's anxiety to induce the convention to amend the Constitution in reference to the Religious Test, that he left the chair, and entered the arena of debate.

On the fourth day of the session, November 11, the "Bill of Rights" being under consideration in committee of the whole, Judge Woodbury moved to strike out the word "protestant" in the sixth section, where it provides that the Legislature may authorize towns, parishes, &c., to make provision for the support "of public protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality." As there were other amendments to be proposed to this article, Judge Woodbury withdrew his motion, and the article was passed over. At a subsequent stage of the proceedings, as appears by record, General Pierce proposed to Judge Woodbury to renew the above motion, which he did; and the word "protestant" was stricken out. The following is Judge Woodbury's speech made on the occasion-one of the most convincing ever made upon a similar subject. We copy it here, because General Pierce's speech followed it, and is connected with it in a manner, as he refers to it in terms of great commendation:

RELIGIOUS TESTS.

On motion of Mr. Parker, of Nashua, the Convention resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole, on the report of the Committee on Property Qualifications and Religious Tests. (Mr. Sawyer, of Nashua, in the chair.)

RELIGIOUS TEST.-The first resolution, striking out all religious tests, was taken up.

Judge Woodbury made the following remarks:

"MR. CHAIRMAN: Being opposed to the test, that some of our principal offices shall not be filled, except by persons of the Protestant religion, I ask leave to offer a few reasons for it. I do it quite as much to vindicate our fathers, in part, for inserting it, as myself for resisting it. Constitutions, it is conceded, ought to be durable instruments, being the great fundamental laws passed by the people, and lasting at times, as ours has, without a shadow of a change for half a century; yet I am willing, when a provision like this becomes hostile to the tolerant spirit of the age, and a more enlightened public opinion, to expunge it at once from our system of government. I do this too, the more readily at the present moment, in order to present another illustration to the world, how easily laws and even constitutions, where objectionable, can be changed and re-changed in this free country without a resort to violence, and to measures treasonable to public liberty and the safety, as well as the best interest of our blessed Union. Nor is it that I oppose religion, but support it. I am neither deistic nor innovating rashly.

“On a little examination, it will be found that this test crept into the constitution originally, under a temporary impulse, and without having any influence on the affairs of the State, practically, as they then stood. This is the vindication of our fathers.

"Tradition says—and I probably had it in early life, from the venerable parent of the member from

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