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.
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.
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.