“You well know, Mr. Editor, my exalted appreciation of the conduct and services of General Scott in Mexico. It has been a pleasing reflection that the standard-bearers of the two great parties were warm personal friends, each possessing in an eminent degree the respect and confidence of the other. The friends of General Pierce have never claimed that he was a great military man. They concede with pride and gratification that General Scott is, and that he is a judge of military qualities. They simply claim that General Pierce in his service in Mexico did his whole duty as a son of the Republic, that he was eminently patriotic, disinterested, and gallant, and that it has added a laurel to his beautiful civic wreath: as a citizen he has been ready to make sacrifices for his country; as a soldier and commander, he has shown gallantry before the enemy, and was eminently the friend and father of his command.”
Colonel Charles G. Greene, editor of the “Post,” writes that General Pierce was much pleased with, and highly commended, these letters.
Major Stevens always took great interest in public affairs. He was emphatically a national man. He held the Union as the noblest work of our Revolutionary patriots, and as indispensable to liberty and national greatness. An ardent Democrat from boyhood, he regarded the Democratic party as preëminently the national party, the party of progress. He fully justified the Mexican war, the great Democratic measure, and believed with full faith in the future growth and destiny of the Great Republic. The slavery question, destined in a few brief years to wreck that party and so nearly destroy the nation, was still in abeyance, and it was almost universally believed that the compromise of 1850 had averted all danger from that quarter.
Not content with vindicating Pierce in the papers, Major Stevens now concluded to support him on the stump. He wrote Gayton P. Osgood, and other friends in Massachusetts, as to the advisability of this step, but received rather discouraging replies, one correspondent even taking him to task for speaking so highly of General Scott in his articles, and recommending him to become a thoroughgoing partisan if he took the stump. But as usual he held to his own opinion, and in August addressed a large public meeting in Hillsborough, N.H., in support of the Democratic principles and candidate, and later, in October, spoke in Andover, Newport, and Portsmouth. His brother officer and friend, Colonel James L. Mason, also addressed the meeting in Newport, and Hon. Charles Levi Woodbury spoke with him in Portsmouth. In his speeches Major Stevens took pains to do full justice to General Scott as a military man, without disparaging him as a statesman or otherwise. His arguments were drawn from the ideas and objects of the two parties,—a contest of principles, not men.
It appears that the course of the young army officer in stumping for Pierce, and as in Mason’s case even stirring up other officers to do likewise, excited no little commotion in the War Department, for it was a Whig administration. On his return, the Secretary of War, Charles M. Conrad, undertook to take him to task for it, and wrote Major Stevens a severe letter, demanding an explanation of his conduct. This was soon bruited about Washington, and many of his friends and brother officers came anxiously to advise with him about it. They felt that he was in an embarrassing position, and one from which he could hardly hope to extricate himself with credit, and they were not a little troubled as to the outcome.
At length Major Stevens prepared his answer to the Secretary, and, before sending it, read it to a group of his anxious brother officers. In a direct, forcible, but courteous style, he reminded the Secretary that, in becoming an officer of the army, he had not forfeited his rights as a citizen, nor become relieved from his duties as such; that, while he had never failed in the respect due his superior officers, he had the right of an American citizen to advocate such public measures as he deemed best for the country, and to vote for the public servants best fitted to carry them out; and he concluded in a somewhat sarcastic but perfectly respectful way by calling the Secretary’s attention to the fact that General Scott himself was a candidate for the presidency, and was setting the example of that participation in politics which the Secretary so severely reprobated, and suggested that his animadversions would have greater weight with the service, and be more worthy the dignity of the War Department, if launched against the senior major-general of the army instead of a simple lieutenant and brevet major; that they were more applicable to the former than the latter, and might well be deemed an attempt to scourge General Scott over his back.
As Major Stevens read aloud this letter, the faces of his friends cleared up; soon they began to applaud it, and as he finished they crowded around him with cheers and laughter and exclamations,—“That’s good! that covers the ground!” “You are right, Stevens. You are perfectly right.” “He can’t answer it,” etc. Sure enough, the Secretary did not answer it, and attempted no further action.
In fact, Major Stevens had now become quite a leader among the able young officers. They were constantly calling at his house, and discussing with him the measures he was pushing forward for the improvement of the army, fortifications, etc. He was always ready to assist any of them, too, and it was known that his aid was frequently effective. He obtained a detail on the Coast Survey for his friend, Captain J.C. Foster, and secured for several others lighthouse inspectorships. He also had a number of the engineer company detailed on the Coast Survey, although his friends Cullum, G.W. Smith, and McClellan strenuously opposed it.
Writes a young man on the survey, whose pay Major Stevens had tried to increase but without success:—
“Having been informed to-day that you did not succeed in your efforts to make my compensation $1500 per annum from October 1, 1851, and consequently was obliged to pay out of your own pocket $50 to make your word good, I believe it unbecoming a gentleman to remain a moment longer in possession of said money. The inclosed check will indemnify you for your loss sustained for my sake, and joyfully I return my heartfelt thanks for the efforts you have made in my behalf.”