It so happened that some of us were much interested in a poor, worthy young man, who desired a position in the State Department. His application had long ago been filed in the office and we were afraid he had been forgotten. We longed to ask Mr. Marcy about it, but did not know how we could manage to bring the subject to his notice.
"Let's make Ann Eliza ask him," suggested one. Now, Ann Eliza Ritchie was a beauty, as fascinating a young creature as the Lord ever made, irresistible alike to man and woman. She hesitated,—everybody was afraid of Mr. Marcy—but goaded on by us, she ventured:—
"Oh, Mr. Marcy" (Virginia girls always begin with "Oh"), "Oh, Mr. Marcy! They all want to know if you are going to appoint Mr. Randolph in your department."
The lion turned. He did not growl, he simply roared: "What do you mean, madame? How dare you take the bull by the horns in this unseemly manner?"
And so no more of Ann Eliza Ritchie. And so no more of the rest of us. We learned a lesson we never forgot; namely, not to meddle in Cabinet affairs, but to content ourselves with the honor of amusing great men,—in short, to know our place and keep it.
Mr. Jefferson Davis had been an eminent public man long before the presidency of Mr. Pierce. He was a graduate of West Point. He had been an officer in the Indian wars. He was in the House of Representatives at the age of thirty-seven. John Quincy Adams heard his maiden speech and said: "That young man is no ordinary man. He will make his mark yet, mind me." His devotion to reading and study amounted to a passion. He had served as a colonel in the Mexican War. It was said of him that "his brilliant movement at Buena Vista carried the day, and that his tactical conception was worthy of a Cæsar or a Napoleon."[2]
He was afterward a member for four years of the United States Senate, and although defeated in a gubernatorial contest in Mississippi, he rose rapidly in the esteem of the people of his own section; and now, at the age of forty-five, he was the "leader of the Southern people, and successor of John C. Calhoun." He was leader a few years later in the Battle of the Giants, fought so bitterly in Mr. Buchanan's time.
Of Mr. Caleb Cushing I knew less than I did of Mr. Davis and Mr. Marcy. He had great learning, great ability, wide experience in public life. He has been described as a "scholar, author, lawyer, statesman, diplomatist, general, and judge." He was one of the rare class of men who are precocious in childhood and youth, and who go intellectually from strength to strength as long as they live. He was graduated from Harvard when only seventeen years of age. He was a most attractive man in manner and address, and a fascinating public speaker. He could quote the "Iliad" from beginning to end, and could speak to each one of the foreign ambassadors in his own tongue.
Mr. Cushing sent an editorial nearly every day to the Washington Union, of which my husband was associate editor. No compliment upon his own articles which my husband ever received was more gratefully appreciated than one from Mr. Cushing. A serious difference of opinion had arisen with the senior editor, because of a paper upon the Anglo-Russian war, in which my husband warmly advocated the side of Russia. He declined retracting his words (which were copied and translated abroad), and finally gave up his position on the paper rather than express sentiments other than his own. Mr. Cushing applauded him, and bade him stand fearlessly by an argument, "unanswered and unanswerable."
Shortly after this Mr. Pierce appointed my husband special Minister to Greece. I longed to go with him to Athens, but my mother's health was frail, and I felt I could not leave her. So I returned to my home in Virginia with my children, and their father went on his mission alone. When it was accomplished, the Pierce administration was drawing to a close.