Pierce, Franklin (Administration)

FRANKLIN PIERCE WAS BORN in 1804 in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. His father was a prosperous farmer and Democratic politician, later becoming governor. [Page 827]Pierce was elected to the state legislature at the age of 24, where he soon became speaker. In 1833 he was elected to the first of two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, moving to the Senate in 1837, as that body's youngest member. In 1842 Pierce resigned from the Senate and returned to the practice of law, rejecting several offers to return to politics, including an offer to become James Polk's attorney general. He did serve as federal district attorney for New Hampshire.

At the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, Pierce enlisted as a private, but because of his political prominence was promoted to brigadier general, serving under General Winfield Scott. Following the war in 1848, Pierce rejected the Democratic nomination for governor and returned to private practice.

A deadlock at the 1852 Democratic Convention resulted in Pierce's nomination for president on the 49th ballot. Pierce's nomination came as a surprise to him—and most other people. He had not been seeking the nomination nor planning any return to politics. The party was deeply divided over slavery, making most pro-slave southerners or anti-slave northerners incapable of getting the necessary two-thirds vote for the nomination. Pierce was an attractive compromise because he was a proslavery northerner. He was also young and charismatic. His absence from politics also saved him from having too many political enemies who might have blocked his nomination.

The election itself was as divided as the party. Both parties tried to avoid any discussion of the slavery question. When Whig candidate Winfield Scott, Pierce's former commander, finally spoke out on his anti-slavery positions, his support in the south dried up, giving Pierce an easy victory.

Pierce entered the presidency on a somber note. Two months before his inauguration Pierce was in a train accident with his family. His last surviving son was killed. Both he and his wife were devastated. His wife fell into a deep depression and he was not much better. Thus he began his presidency without a real focus on the job. The Pierce administration upset northerners by taking pro-southern stands. He immediately alienated northerners by selecting the radically pro-slavery Jefferson Davis as his secretary of war.

Pierce's most controversial act was his reluctant support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Since 1820 it had been federal law that no northern territory could become a slave state. The act repealed this rule, allowing the residents of those territories to decide whether to be admitted as slave or free states. This resulted in a bloody war, primarily in Kansas, as advocates from both sides tried to use violence and intimidation to win the fight. Many abolitionists and slave owners were murdered simply for moving into the territory and trying to influence the decision to keep the territory slave or free. Pierce had originally opposed the act, but acceded to Senator Stephen Douglas's argument that federal support for such a law was the only way to prevent eventual southern secession.

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