FRANKLIN PIERCE

THE 14TH PRESIDENT OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(1853-1857)

PIERCE, Franklin (1804–69), 14th president of the U.S. (1853–57). Pierce was born on Nov. 23, 1804, at Hillsborough, N.H., the son of an American Revolution general who was later governor of the state. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1824, he was admitted to the bar in 1827 and practiced first at Hillsborough and then at Concord. He married Jane Means Appleton (1806–63), a member of a distinguished New England family. In politics Pierce was an active Democrat. He was elected to the state legislature in 1829 and was chosen Speaker in 1831; he went to Congress in 1833 and became a U.S. senator in 1837. An opponent of the abolitionists, he was one of the sponsors of the gag rule against antislavery petitions in Congress. After resigning from the Senate in 1842, he returned to Concord, where he became one of the leading members of the Concord Regency, a group of Democratic political leaders who dominated the party in New Hampshire. His participation as a general in the Mexican War under Winfield Scott, and his firm support of the North-South components of the Compromise of 1850, which made him acceptable to the South, enabled him to become the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1852. Nominated on the 49th ballot after a deadlock between his principal rivals, he decisively defeated Gen. Scott, his Whig opponent in the presidential election.   Pierce as President. Shortly before Pierce’s inauguration, he lost his 11-year-old son in a railway accident. The grief caused by this tragedy, and the subsequent withdrawal of his distraught wife from society, may have contributed to his lack of success as president. His failure to distribute patronage to his friends, and the resulting lack of strength in Congress, forced him to support the Kansas-Nebraska bill in order to please its sponsor, Senator Stephen A. Douglas. This ill-considered measure, which for the first time allowed slavery in territories north of 36°30’, split both major parties and greatly aggravated the conflict between the free and the slave states. Pierce’s seeming partiality to the South made him unpopular elsewhere. He vainly sought to bring peace to Kansas by frequently appointing new governors and by opposing the local free state movement. His vetoes of measures for internal improvements further contributed to his troubles in the North, as did his support for southern efforts to obtain Cuba and territories in Central America. He was no more successful in foreign affairs. With the exception of the Gadsden Purchase (1853), by which the U.S. gained a strip of land from Mexico, his expansionary projects miscarried. Publication of the Ostend Manifesto, a declaration by three American ministers in Europe favoring the annexation of Cuba, further undermined the administration in the free states. After failing to obtain renomination in 1856, Pierce withdrew from active politics. During the American Civil War he was widely denounced for his outspoken criticism of the Lincoln administration. He died at Concord on Oct. 8, 1869.   Evaluation. Although personally gracious and politically experienced, Pierce did not measure up to the responsibilities of his high office. Whether because of his personal misfortunes or his inability to understand the moral issues inherent in the antislavery struggle, he was unable to assert himself and provide the leadership needed. This resulted in the destruction of his hopes for sectional peace.