Franklin Pierce

(PD) Image: Library of Congress
Franklin Pierce, around 1860.

Franklin Pierce, born November 23, 1804 in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, became 14th President of the United States at a time of apparent tranquility. The United States of America, by virtue of the Compromise of 1850, seemed to have weathered its sectional storm. By pursuing the recommendations of southern advisors, Pierce--a New Englander--hoped to prevent still another outbreak of that storm. But his policies, far from preserving calm, hastened the disruption of the Union.

After graduating from Bowdoin College, he studied law and then entered politics. At 24, he was elected to the New Hampshire legislature; two years later he became its Speaker. During the 1830's he went to Washington (U.S. state), first as a Congressional Representative, then as a Senator.

Pierce, after serving in the Mexican War, was proposed for the Presidential nomination in 1852 by his New Hampshire friends. At the Democratic Convention, the delegates agreed easily enough upon a platform pledging undeviating support of the Compromise of 1850 and hostility to any efforts to agitate the slavery question. But they balloted 48 times and eliminated all of the well-known candidates before nominating Pierce, a true "dark horse."

Probably because the Democrats stood more firmly for the Compromise than the Whigs did, and because Whig candidate Gen. Winfield Scott was suspect in the South, Pierce won the election with a narrow margin of popular votes.

Two months before he took office, he and his wife saw their eleven-year-old son killed when their train was wrecked. Grief-stricken, Pierce entered the Presidency nervously exhausted.

In his inaugural address he proclaimed an era of peace and prosperity at home, and vigor in relations with other nations. The United States might have to acquire additional possessions for the sake of its own security, he pointed out, and would not be deterred by "any timid forebodings of evil."

Pierce had only to make gestures toward expansion to excite the wrath of northerners, who accused him of acting as a cat's-paw of Southerners eager to extend slavery into other areas. Therefore, he aroused apprehension when he pressured the United Kingdom to relinquish its special interests along part of the Central American coast, and even more when he tried to persuade Spain to sell Cuba.

But the most violent renewal of the storm stemmed from the Kansas Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of slavery in the West. This measure, the handiwork of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, grew in part out of his desire to promote a railroad running from Chicago, Illinois to California (U.S. state) and passing through Nebraska. Already the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, an advocate of a southern transcontinental route, had persuaded Pierce to send James Gadsden to Mexico to buy land for a southern railroad. He purchased the area now comprising southern Arizona and part of southern New Mexico for $10,000,000.

Douglas's proposal, to organize western territories through which a railroad might run, caused extreme trouble. Douglas provided in his bills that the residents of the new territories could decide the slavery question for themselves. The result was a rush into Kansas, as southerners and northerners vied for control of the territory. Shooting broke out, and "bleeding Kansas" became a prelude to the Civil War.

By the end of his administration, Pierce could claim "a peaceful condition of things in Kansas." But, to his disappointment, the Democrats refused to renominate him, turning to the less controversial James Buchanan. Pierce returned to New Hampshire, leaving his successor to face the rising fury of the sectional whirlwind. He died in October 8, 1869 in Concord, New Hampshire.

Attribution

Some content on this page may previously have appeared on Wikipedia. Also, the Wikipedia article from which this article was derived was sourced originally from the public domain work Biography of Franklin Pierce, White House, accessed January 6, 2008.