Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce became President at a time of apparent tranquillity. The United States,
by virtue of the Compromise of 1850, seemed to have weathered its sectional storm. By
pursuing the recommendations of southern advisers, 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.
Born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, in 1804, Pierce attended Bowdoin
College. After graduation he studied law, 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, first as a Representative, then as a
Senator.
Pierce, after serving in the Mexican War, was proposed by New Hampshire
friends for the Presidential nomination in 1852. 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 the well-known candidates
before nominating Pierce, a true "dark horse."
Probably because the Democrats stood more firmly for the Compromise than
the Whigs, and because Whig candidate Gen. Winfield Scott was suspect in the
South, Pierce won 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 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 Great Britain 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Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of slavery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 from Chicago to California through
Nebraska. Already 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. 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 Buchanan. Pierce returned to
New Hampshire, leaving his successor to face the rising fury of the sectional
whirlwind. He died in 1869.
