Franklin Pierce
(1804 - 1869)

Franklin Pierce, one of eight children of Benjamin and Anna Kendrick Pierce, was born in Hillsborough Lower Village, N.H., on Nov. 23, 1804. His father had served in the American Revolution and later, as a Jacksonian, became governor of New Hampshire. Franklin was educated at Hillsborough Center, Hancock Academy and Bowdoin College, from which he graduated in 1824 after advancing from last place to fifth from the top of his class. He then studied law and was admitted to the New Hampshire bar in 1827.

Early Political Career

Entering politics as a Jacksonian, Pierce was elected to the New Hampshire legislature (General Court) in 1829, the year his father began his second term as governor. He served as speaker in 1831 and 1832 and the following year was elected to Congress. In 1837 he became a U.S. Senator. Pierce rarely spoke on the floor, but he engaged actively in committee work and loyally supported the Jacksonian party line. He reflected an intense nationalism, strongly supported adherence to the Constitution, sympathized generally with Southern political views, and denounced the abolition movement as dangerous to the Union. He deplored sectionalism and considered compromise an indispensable tool of politics in a federal system.

On Nov. 19, 1834, Pierce married Jane Means Appleton, a daughter of the former president of Bowdoin College, an aristocratic Whig. The match proved difficult, partly because the family backgrounds differed so markedly and partly because Jane had very strong scruples concerning liquor. Politics and drinking went hand in hand in Washington. The temperance-minded Mrs. Pierce could not endure life in capital and induced her husband to resign from the Senate in 1842 in order to escape the temptations of the city. Pierce returned to Concord, N.H., where he practiced law successfully and conducted a temperance drive, which made the town dry. He took over management of the Democratic campaigns in New Hampshire with such energy that President James K. Polk appointed him federal district attorney of the state in 1845 and in 1846 invited him to join the cabinet as Attorney General.

Military Service

Pierce declined this offer as well as an appointment to the Senate, for he wished to see action in the Mexican War. Enlisting as a private, he was soon appointed a Colonel and then a Brigadier General. He sailed for Veracruz in May 1847, and in July led his troops on the march to Mexico City. Although his leg was crushed in the Battle of Churubusco in August, he stayed with his command until the capture of Mexico City.

Election as President

Returning to Concord early in 1848, Pierce resumed his law practice and gave vigorous support to the Compromise of 1850. He championed his former law preceptor Levi Woodbury as a Democratic presidential prospect. However, when Woodbury died in 1851, the state leaders named Pierce as New Hampshire's favorite son. In June 1852 the Democratic national nominating convention, unable to choose among Stephen A. Douglas , James Buchanan , Lewis Cass and William Marcy , named Pierce on the 49th ballot. William R. King of Alabama was nominated for Vicepresident.

The presidential election of 1852 brought Pierce into contention with his former military commander, Gen. Winfield Scott , the Whig nominee. Scott divided his party by hinting that he might approve modification of the Fugitive Slave Act. The campaign raised few issues and was fought largely on the basis of personalities. Pierce, however, asserted his support of the Compromise of 1850 as a "finality". He pledged a vigorous foreign policy and promised to respect the rights of the states. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a friend since college, wrote Pierce's campaign biography.

A personable candidate, Pierce showed genuine pleasure in meeting people and had a remarkable ability to remember names and faces. The freedom with which he promised to do favors and the difficulty he experienced in saying "no" to admirers brought him votes on election day, but at the cost of problems later, when he found that he had promised more than he could deliver. Pierce won the election by 1,609,038 votes to 1,368,629 for Scott. Carrying all but four states, he captured 254 of the 296 electoral college votes. At age 48, Pierce, now nicknamed "Young Hickory of the Granite Hills", became president.

Family Tragedy

The months between election and inauguration brought tragedy to the Pierce family. From the beginning Mrs. Pierce had deplored her husband's candidacy, and after his election she remained unreconciled to the prospect of returning to Washington, even to enter the White House. Then on Jan. 6, 1853, the Pierces were in a train wreck and saw their third and only surviving child, 11-year-old Benjamin, crushed to death.

As a result of the accident Mrs. Pierce developed an obsession that Providence had exacted this price for her husband's acceptance of the presidency. She became a recluse and throughout the administration declined to participate in public appearances. Her friend and distant relative Abigail Kent Means lived at the White House to provide companionship for Mrs. Pierce and to act as hostess for the president at public functions. The tragedy had important political consequences, for it eroded the president's self-confidence and distracted him with grief and self-reproach at the very time he desperately needed to concentrate all his capacities on the demanding public responsabilities for which he had very little training or emotional preparation.

The Presidency

Pierce delivered his inaugural address from memory in weather that symbolized his private feelings - a chilling March snowstorm. As befitted a man publicized as the nation's youngest president, he dwelt on the theme of "Young America" and demanded a bold program of territorial expansion. He proclaimed that his administration would "not be controlled by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion". He promised to develop an adventurous foreign policy, to abide strictly by the Compromise of 1850, and to protect scrupulously the constitutional rights of the states. He expressed the hope that "no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excitement" would arise over slavery and that issue could now be removed from national politics.

Cabinet

In the formation of his cabinet, Pierce proposed to incorporate a cross section of party leaders rather than to assemble a politically coherent group. He chose men for their administrative capacity rather than for their reputation in the party. He named William L. Marcy of New York for the State Department, James Guthrie of Kentucky for the Treasury, Robert McClellan of Michigan for the Interior, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi for War, James C. Dobbin of North Carolina for Navy, Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts for Attorney General and James Campbell of Pennsylvania for Postmaster General. Although its members represented many different views, Pierce's cabinet proved to be the only one in American history to endure without a change throughout an administration.

The appointment of Campbell, the first Catholic cabinet officer, and the American visit of the papal nuncio Monsignor Gaetano Bedini in 1853 raised an anti-Catholic storm that brought the Nativist American (or Know - Nothing ) party to prominence. Know -Nothingism was to affect politics throughout Pierce's administration.

Domestic Issues

Pierce wished the Senate to confirm several crucial pending appointments and to complete the ratification of the Gadsden Purchase treaty. These hopes ran into difficulty when Sen Stephen A. Douglas, in Jan. 1854, introduced the Kansas - Nebraska Bill , which proposed to abolish the Missouri Compromise of 1820, to create the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and to permit settlers in these territories to decide for themselves, when they adopted their state constitutions, whether to permit slavery. The bill did not define clearly the status of slavery during the territorial period. Pierce disliked the proposal, for he saw that it might reopen the slavery controversy at the national level. But pressure from a group of senators who threatened to block approval of his appointments and his treaty induced him to endorse the Kansas - Nebraska Bill and to make it an administration measure.

A furious debate ensued in Congress, bringing the slavery issue to the forefront of national politics. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise split the Democratic party, killed the Whig party, and created the Republican party. The Kansas - Nebraska Bill was approved by Congress and precipitated a wild rush of proslavery and antislavery adherents into Kansas, where they promptly began a local civil war and fueled a national emotional outburst over slavery.

The last two years of Pierce's administration centered on the expanding civil war in Kansas, where two governments had come into being - a southern administration at Lecompton, which Pierce recognized as legal, and a northern one at Topeka, which he declared treasonable and ordered to disband. He sent troops to maintain order, but did not succeed in quieting Kansas or dislodging the Topeka free - state government.

Foreign Policy

In part because of the rising domestic excitement over slavery, Pierce pursued an aggressive, though largely unproductive, foreign policy. He negotiated a tariff reciprocity treaty with England, which gained rights for U.S. fishermen in the waters of Canada in return for trade privileges granted to Canada. He protested Britain's continued maintenance of colonies in Central America, asserting that this was outlawed by the Clayton - Bulwer Treaty of 1850.

When Capt. George N. Hollins of the USS Cyane bombarded Grey Town, a British protectorate in Nicaragua, because of a local attack on a U.S. minister, Pierce sustained the act though many thought it too drastic as a response. During the Crimean War, Pierce dismissed the British minister in Washington for participating in the illegal recruitment of troops in America. These events brought the United States and Britain to the verge of war. During Pierce's term, Commodore Matthew C. Perry, commanding a naval force, entered Japanese waters and inaugurated U.S. diplomatic and trade relations with Japan.

Plans to acquire Cuba became the focus of Pierce's diplomacy. Cuba's seizure of the U.S. merchantman Black Warrior and an incipient Republican revolution in Spain gave Pierce some leverage to achieve his hopes. He instructed his European ministers, who conferred at Ostend, Belgium, and later at Aix-la-Chapelle in the autumn of 1854, to "detach" Cuba from Spain. They produced a document, the Ostend Manifesto , that proposed to purchase Cuba from Spain through pressure from European bankers but concluded with a veiled threat that the United States might seize Cuba under certain remote contingencies. This report, intended only for official eyes, leaked into the press in garbled form and raised a storm about the extension of slavery that damaged the administration and terminated all prospect of a purchase of the island.

Retirement

Pierce hoped to be renominated in 1856, but the rising agitation over slavery and his connection with the Kansas controversy ruled him out of the running. The Democratic convention turned instead to James Buchanan.

Pierce left the White House with little sense of gratification and set out with his wife on an European tour. After additional traveling in the United States and the West Indies, he settled permanently in Concord in 1860. He attacked the Lincoln administration for provoking the Civil War and disregarding the Constitution in prosecuting it. He spent his last years in virtual seclusion and died in Concord on Oct. 8, 1869.

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