Franklin Pierce – 14th President

October 1, 2019 (Tuesday)
The material in this blog has come from the web site, “Biography.” Much of it is copied “word for word.”

Franklin Pierce, the 14th U.S. President, was born on November 23, 1804, in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. His father, Benjamin, was an American Revolutionary War hero who held some political prowess in the family’s rural town. His mother, Anna Kendrick Pierce, had eight children, whose education she made her top priority.

At the age of 12, Pierce left the public schools system to attend private academies. When he turned 15, he enrolled at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he excelled at public speaking. In 1824, Pierce graduated fifth in his class.

In 1829, when Pierce was 24 years old, he was elected to the New Hampshire State Legislature. Within two years, he was selected as its Speaker of the House, with the aid of his father, who had by then been elected governor.

In the 1830s, Pierce was sent to Washington as a state representative. Despite his rapid ascent in the world of politics, Pierce soon found his life in Washington both tedious and lonesome. After developing a dependency on alcohol, he decided it was time to settle down. In 1834, he married a shy religious woman named Jane Means Appleton, who supported the temperance movement. Jane disliked the Washington lifestyle even more than her husband did. Nevertheless, a year after the couple’s first of three sons were born, Pierce was elected to the U.S. Senate.

In 1841, under his wife’s persistent urging, Pierce finally agreed to resign from the Senate. Afterward, he joined the temperance movement and started working as an attorney.

When the Mexican-American War began, Pierce became a private, helping to recruit men for the New Hampshire Volunteers. In 1847, Pierce, by then a brigadier general, led an expedition to invade the Mexican shores of Veracruz under General Winfield Scott.

When the Mexican government was still unwilling to accept America’s demands, Pierce and Scott headed to Mexico City. Although they scored two victories there, Pierce injured his leg when he was thrown from his horse. While still recovering, he missed the Army’s final victory at the Battle of Chapultepec, in 1847. After the war, Pierce went home to his family in New Hampshire.

Back in New Hampshire, Pierce became the leader of the state’s Democratic Party. As the presidential election of 1852 approached, the Democratic Party sought a candidate who was a pro-slavery Northerner–to attract voters on both sides of the slavery issue. Based on that agenda, Pierce made the ideal candidate, even if it meant that he had to run against his former commander, General Winfield Scott of the Whig Party. After a deadlock, Pierce was elected president, but the joy of his victory was soon eclipsed by the death of one of his sons, caused by a train accident.

Once in office, Pierce faced the question of Kansas’ and Nebraska’s slavery status. When he agreed to sign the Kansas-Nebraska Act * in 1854, it turned Kansas into a battleground for the country’s conflict over slavery. Pierce’s handling of the affair caused his democratic supporters to abandon him during the 1856 presidential election, in favor of his successor, James Buchanan.

Following his term as president, Pierce retired to Concord, New Hampshire. During the Civil War, he was once again vocal about his point-of-view as a Northerner, with a more typically Southern view of slavery. He was also outspoken in his opposition to the nation’s new president, Abraham Lincoln. Pierce’s unpopular view garnered him several enemies among his fellow Northerners.

Nearing the end of his life and fading quickly into obscurity, Pierce took up drinking again. He died on October 8, 1869, in Concord, New Hampshire. He was buried there, in the Old North Cemetery.

Franklin Pierce – President 1853-1857

* The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated many in the North who considered the Missouri Compromise to be a long-standing binding agreement. In the pro-slavery South it was strongly supported.
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters rushed in to settle Kansas to affect the outcome of the first election held there after the law went into effect. Pro-slavery settlers carried the election but were charged with fraud by anti-slavery settlers, and the results were not accepted by them.
The anti-slavery settlers held another election, however pro-slavery settlers refused to vote. This resulted in the establishment of two opposing legislatures within the Kansas territory.
Violence soon erupted, with the anti-slavery forces led by John Brown. The territory earned the nickname “bleeding Kansas” as the death toll rose.
President Franklin Pierce, in support of the pro-slavery settlers, sent in Federal troops to stop the violence and disperse the anti-slavery legislature. Another election was called. Once again pro-slavery supporters won and once again they were charged with election fraud.
As a result, Congress did not recognize the constitution adopted by the pro-slavery settlers and Kansas was not allowed to become a state.
Eventually, however, anti-slavery settlers outnumbered pro-slavery settlers and a new constitution was drawn up. On January 29, 1861, just before the start of the Civil War, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. (Footnotes from “The History Place”).