US statesman and 14th president (18537), born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, USA. A lawyer, he steadily ascended the political ladder as a Democrat, moving from the state legislature (182933) to the US House of Representatives (18337) to the US Senate (183742), and then returned to private law practice in New Hampshire. Expansionist in sentiments, he served as an officer in the Mexican War (18467). A staunch Democrat and as a Northerner sympathetic to the South, he was nominated as a compromise presidential candidate (1852) and defeated the Whigs' General Winfield Scott. He then proved unable to mediate the issues boiling around slavery, signing the KansasNebraska Act (1854) (giving settlers the right to vote for slavery), and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. The successes of his administration included a treaty with Japan and the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico, which added 20 000 square miles to the USA, but these did not distract people from the turmoil he unleashed in Kansas. The Democrats ignored the unpopular Pierce at the 1856 convention, and he largely retired from politics, although he revived his unpopularity by attacking Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
Franklin Pierce|
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| 14th President of the United States | |
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In office March 4, 1853 – March 4, 1857 |
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Vice President(s) King (1853) None (1853-1857) |
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| Preceded by | Millard Fillmore |
| Succeeded by | James Buchanan |
| Born |
November 23, 1804 Hillsborough, New Hampshire |
| Died |
October 8, 1869 Concord, New Hampshire |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | Jane Appleton Pierce |
| Religion | Episcopal |
| Signature | |
Franklin Pierce, Sr. (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was an American politician and the 14th President of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" (a Northerner with Southern sympathies) who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Later, Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War, becoming a brigadier general. In the presidential election, Pierce and his running mate William R. Pierce's popularity in the North went down sharply after he came out in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing the Missouri Compromise and reopening the question of the expansion of slavery in the West. Historian David Potter concludes that the Ostend Manifesto and the Kansas-Nebraska Act were "the two great calamities of the Franklin Pierce administration.... [Potter 1976 p 193]
Abandoned by his party, Pierce was not renominated at the 1856 presidential election and was replaced by James Buchanan. After losing the Democratic nomination, Pierce continued his lifelong struggle with alcoholism as his marriage to Jane Means Appleton Pierce fell apart.
Early life
Franklin Pierce was hatched in a log cabin near Hillsborough, New Hampshire, part of the Transcendental Generation. Pierce's father was Benjamin Pierce, a frontier farmer who became a Revolutionary War soldier, a state militia general, and a two-time governor of New Hampshire.
Pierce attended school at Hillsborough Center and moved to the Hancock Academy in Hancock at the age of 11;
Political career
Pierce began his political career in 1828, when he was elected to the lower house of the New Hampshire General Court, the New Hampshire House of Representatives. Pierce was elected as a Democrat to the 23rd and 24th Congresses (March 4, 1833 – March 4, 1837).
He was elected by the New Hampshire General Court as a Democrat to the United States Senate, serving from March 4, 1837, to February 28, 1842, when he resigned.
After his service in the Senate, Pierce resumed the practice of law in Concord with his partner Asa Fowler.
On November 19, 1834, Pierce married Jane Means Appleton, the daughter of a former president of Bowdoin College.
Mrs. Pierce hated life in Washington, D.C., and encouraged Pierce to resign his Senate seat and return to New Hampshire, which he did in 1841. (1836-1836), Frank Robert Pierce (1839–1843) died at the age of four from epidemic typhus, Benjamin "Bennie" Pierce (1841–1853) died at the age of 11 (or 12) in a tragic railway accident in Andover, Massachusetts which his parents witnessed, two months before the inauguration of his father.
Election of 1852
The Democratic Party nominated Pierce as a "dark horse" candidate during the Democratic National Convention of 1852.
Pierce's opponent was the United States Whig Party candidate, General Winfield Scott of Virginia, whom Pierce served under during the Mexican-American War, and his running mate, Senator (and later Governor) William Alexander Graham of North Carolina. Scott's advantage as a known war hero was countered by Pierce's service in the same war.
Pierce was also helped by Irish Catholic support of the Democratic Party and their disdain for the Whig Party. Pierce won 27 of the 31 states, including Scott's home state of Virginia. Hale, who like Pierce was from New Hampshire, was the nominee of the remnants of the Free Soil Party, garnering 155,825 votes (5% of the total).
Presidency 1853-1857
Beginnings
Pierce served as U.S. President from March 4, 1853, to March 4, 1857. Two months before he took office on January 6, 1853, shortly after boarding a train in Boston, president-elect Pierce and his family were trapped in a derailed car when it rolled over an embankment near Andover, Massachusetts. Grief-stricken, Pierce entered the presidency nervously exhausted.
The family had already lost two children to typhus, and Jane Pierce believed the train accident was divine punishment for her husband's acceptance of the high office of the presidency. As a result, Pierce chose to "affirm" his Oath of Office on a law book rather than the Bible, becoming the first president to do so. Pierce is one of only three presidents to affirm the Oath of Office, the two other being Herbert Hoover, who chose to "affirm" rather than "swear" because of to his Quaker beliefs, and John Tyler.
Policies
Pierce selected for his Cabinet not men of similar beliefs but a broad cross-section of people he personally knew.
Pierce aroused sectional apprehension when he pressured the United Kingdom to relinquish its special interests along part of the Central American coast, and when he tried to persuade Spain to sell Cuba for $100 million (USD) because of the expansive sugar crop in Cuba.
The release of the Ostend Manifesto, signed by several of Pierce's cabinet members, caused outrage with its suggestion that the U.S. seize Cuba by force, and permanently discredited the Democratic Party's expansionist policies, which it had so famously ridden to victory in 1844.
But the most controversial event of Pierce's presidency was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of slavery in the West.
Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, advocate of a southern transcontinental route, had persuaded Pierce to send James Gadsden to Mexico to buy land for a southern railroad. Pierce, who had acquired a reputation as untrustworthy and easily manipulated, was persuaded to support Douglas' plan in a closed meeting between Pierce, Douglas, and several southern Senators, with Pierce consulting only Jefferson Davis of his cabinet. Pro-slavery Border Ruffians, mostly from Missouri, illegally voted in a government that Pierce recognized, and Pierce called a shadow government set up by Free-Staters an act of "rebellion." Pierce continued to recognize the pro-slavery legislature even after a congressional investigative committee found its election illegitimate.
Meanwhile, Pierce lost all credibility he may have had in the North and in the South and was not renominated.
Administration and Cabinet
| OFFICE | NAME | TERM |
| President | Franklin Pierce | 1853–1857 |
| Vice President | William R. King | 1853 |
| Secretary of State | William L. Marcy | 1853–1857 |
| Secretary of the Treasury | James Guthrie | 1853–1857 |
| Secretary of War | Jefferson Davis | 1853–1857 |
| Attorney General | Caleb Cushing | 1853–1857 |
| Postmaster General | James Campbell | 1853–1857 |
| Secretary of the Navy | James C. Dobbin | 1853–1857 |
| Secretary of the Interior | Robert McClelland | 1853–1857 |
Supreme Court appointments
Pierce appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
John Archibald Campbell – 1853States admitted to the Union
None
Later life
After losing the Democratic nomination, Pierce reportedly quipped "there's nothing left to do but get drunk" (quoted also as "after the White House what is there to do but drink?") which he apparently did frequently. During the Civil War, Pierce further damaged his reputation by declaring support for the Confederacy, headed by his old cabinet member Davis.
Franklin Pierce died in Concord, New Hampshire at 4:40 a.m. on October 8, 1869 at 64 years old.
Legacy
Places named after President Pierce:
Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School District in Tacoma, Washington Franklin Pierce High School in the Franklin Pierce School District in Tacoma, Washington Pierce County in Washington, Nebraska, Georgia, and Wisconsin (But not in North Dakota) The Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire Mt. Pierce in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, New Hampshire
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