Franklin Pierce

14th President of the United States

### Siblings

Elizabeth Andrews Pierce (half-sister), Benjamin Kendrick Pierce (brother), Nancy M. Pierce (sister), John Sullivan Pierce (brother), Harriet B. Pierce (sister), Charles Grandison Pierce (brother), Charlotte Pierce (sister), Henry Dearborn Pierce (brother)

### Hair color

Dark brown

**Franklin Pierce** became 14th President of the United States at a time of apparent tranquility (1853-1857). By pursuing the recommendations of southern advisers, Pierce — a New Englander — hoped to ease the divisions that led eventually to Civil War.

*The Presidency of Franklin Pierce spanned the period in United States history that encompasses the events of the Secession Era. President Franklin Pierce represented the Democratic political party which influenced the domestic and foreign policies of his presidency. His highly sociable character led to alcoholism which was accompanied by bouts of depression.*

## Biography

Franklin Pierce became President at a time of apparent tranquility. 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.

## Personality

The character traits of President Franklin Pierce can be described as outgoing, pleasant, charming, genial, open and direct. It has been speculated that the Myers-Briggs personality type for Franklin Pierce is an ESTP (introversion, intuition, thinking, perceiving). An outgoing, active, influential and resourceful character with the ability to improvise to achieve desired results. Franklin Pierce Personality type: Socially sophisticated, persuasive, competitive and easily bored.

## Nicknames

* "Handsome Frank"
* "Young Hickory of the Hills"

*Meaning: The nickname of President Franklin Pierce provides an insight into how the man was viewed by the American public during his presidency. The meaning of the nickname "Handsome Frank" obviously refers to his boyish good looks. The meaning of his other nickname 'Purse' was a reference to his sponsorship of the Gadsden Purchase in which $10 million was paid for 45,535 sq. miles in parts of the states of Arizona and New Mexico.*

## Inauguration

The **inauguration of Franklin Pierce** as the 14th president of the United States was held on Friday, March 4, 1853, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 17th inauguration and marked the commencement of the only four-year term of both Franklin Pierce as president and William R. King as vice president. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney administered the presidential oath of office. Pierce affirmed the oath of office rather than swear it, and was also the first president to recite his inaugural address from memory.

Ill with tuberculosis, King was in Spanish Cuba in an effort to recover in the warmer climate, and was not able to be in Washington to take his oath of office on March 4. By a Special Act of Congress, he was allowed to take the oath outside the United States, and was sworn in on March 24, 1853. He is the only vice president to be sworn in while in a foreign country. King died 45 days into his term, and the office remained vacant since there was no constitutional provision which allow an intra-term vice-presidential office filling; it would be regulated by the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967.

## Accomplishments and major events

*The major accomplishments and the famous, main events that occurred during the time that Franklin Pierce was president included the Indian Wars, the Gadsden Purchase (1853), the Treaty of Kanagawa (1854), the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the Ostend Manifesto (1854). The most famous invention of the period was the Steel and the Bessemer Process when, in 1855, Henry Bessemer invented a process to create steel from iron.*

**1853 Gadsden Purchase**

Summary: The Gadsden Purchase negotiated on December 30, 1853 by James Gadsden resulted in the acquisition of 30,000 sq. miles in Arizona and New Mexico for $10 million dollars.

**1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act**

Summary: The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by Congress on May 30, 1854 allowing settlers in the new territories to decide whether or not to have slavery.

**Bleeding Kansas 1854–1861**

Summary: Bleeding Kansas is the term used to refer to the violent confrontations in Kansas, and border towns of Missouri, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The confrontations took place from 1854 - 1861 and involved bloody conflicts between Anti-slavery and Pro-slavery militant activists.

**Popular Sovereignty and Slavery**

Summary: The concept of Popular Sovereignty and Slavery was used in debates concerning the slavery extension issue in new territories.

**The Treaty of Kanagawa**

Summary: The Treaty of Kanagawa, negotiated by Commodore Matthew Perry, was signed between the United States and Japan in Edo (now Tokyo) Bay on  March 31, 1854.

**The Ostend Manifesto**

Summary: The Ostend Manifesto was a secret document drawn up in in October 1854 by advocates of slavery that planned for the annexation of Cuba from Spain. The Ostend Manifesto made the North more suspicious of the South's desire to expand slavery. News of the Ostend Manifesto leaked out and sparked a great controversy in the northern states.

**Steel and the Bessemer Process**

Summary: In 1855 Henry Bessemer invented a process to create steel from iron. The Steel and the Bessemer Process produced steel cheaply and efficiently. The Bessemer Process made stronger rails for constructing the railroads and helped to make innovative architectural structures like skyscrapers as the United States moved from the Age of Iron to the Age of Steel.

## Post Presidency

After leaving the White House, the Pierces remained in Washington for more than two months, staying with former Secretary of State William L. Marcy. Buchanan altered course from the Pierce administration, replacing all his appointees. The Pierces eventually moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Pierce had begun to speculate in property. Seeking warmer weather, he and Jane spent the next three years traveling, beginning with a stay in Madeira and followed by tours of Europe and the Bahamas. In Rome, he visited Nathaniel Hawthorne; the two men spent much time together and the author found the retired president as buoyant as ever.

Pierce never lost sight of politics during his travels, commenting regularly on the nation's growing sectional conflict. He insisted that northern abolitionists stand down to avoid a southern secession, writing that the bloodshed of a civil war would "not be along Mason and Dixon's line merely", but "within our own borders in our own streets". He also criticized New England Protestant ministers, who largely supported abolition and Republican candidates, for their "heresy and treason". The rise of the Republican Party forced the Democrats to defend Pierce; during his debates with Republican Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1858, Douglas called the former president "a man of integrity and honor". As the Democratic Convention of 1860 approached, some asked Pierce to run as a compromise candidate that could unite the fractured party, but Pierce refused. As Douglas struggled to attract southern support, Pierce backed Cushing and then Breckinridge as potential alternatives, but his priority was a united Democratic Party. The split Democrats were soundly defeated for the presidency by the Republican candidate, Lincoln. In the months between Lincoln's election, and his inauguration on March 4, 1861, Pierce looked on as several southern states began plans to secede. He was asked by Justice Campbell to travel to Alabama and address that state's secession convention. Due to illness he declined, but sent a letter appealing to the people of Alabama to remain in the Union, and give the North time to repeal laws against southern interests and to find common ground.

### Civil War

After efforts to prevent the Civil War ended with the firing on Fort Sumter, Northern Democrats, including Douglas, endorsed Lincoln's plan to bring the Southern states back into the fold by force. Pierce wanted to avoid war at all costs, and wrote to Van Buren, proposing an assembly of former U.S. presidents to resolve the issue, but this suggestion was not acted on. "I will never justify, sustain or in any way or to any extent uphold this cruel, heartless, aimless, unnecessary war," Pierce wrote to his wife. Pierce publicly opposed President Lincoln's order suspending the writ of *habeas corpus*, arguing that even in a time of war, the country should not abandon its protection of civil liberties. This stand won him admirers with the emerging Northern Peace Democrats, but others saw the stand as further evidence of Pierce's southern bias.

In September 1861, Pierce traveled to Michigan, visiting his former Interior Secretary, McClelland, former senator Cass, and others. A Detroit bookseller, J. A. Roys, sent a letter to Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H. Seward, accusing the former president of meeting with disloyal people, and saying he had heard there was a plot to overthrow the government and establish Pierce as president. Later that month, the pro-administration *Detroit Tribune* printed an item calling Pierce "a prowling traitor spy", and intimating that he was a member of the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle. No such conspiracy existed, but a Pierce supporter, Guy S. Hopkins, sent to the *Tribune* a letter purporting to be from a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, indicating that "President P." was part of a plot against the Union. Hopkins intended for the *Tribune* to make the charges public, at which point Hopkins would admit authorship, thus making the *Tribune* editors seem overly partisan and gullible. Instead, the *Tribune* editors forwarded the Hopkins letter to government officials. Seward then ordered the arrest of possible "traitors" in Michigan, which included Hopkins. Hopkins confessed authorship of the letter and admitted the hoax, but despite this, Seward wrote to Pierce demanding to know if the charges were true. Pierce denied them, and Seward hastily backtracked. Later, Republican newspapers printed the Hopkins letter in spite of his admission that it was a hoax, and Pierce decided that he needed to clear his name publicly. When Seward refused to make their correspondence public, Pierce publicized his outrage by having a Senate ally, California's Milton Latham, read the letters between Seward and Pierce into the Congressional record, to the administration's embarrassment.

The institution of the draft and the arrest of outspoken anti-administration Democrat Clement Vallandigham further incensed Pierce, who gave an address to New Hampshire Democrats in July 1863 vilifying Lincoln. "Who, I ask, has clothed the President with power to dictate to any one of us when we must or when we may speak, or be silent upon any subject, and especially in relation to the conduct of any public servant?", he demanded. Pierce's comments were ill-received in much of the North, especially as his criticism of Lincoln's aims coincided with the twin Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Pierce's reputation in the North was further damaged the following month when the Mississippi plantation of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was seized by Union soldiers. Pierce's correspondence with Davis, all pre-war, revealing his deep friendship with Davis and predicting that civil war would result in insurrection in the North, was sent to the press. Pierce's words hardened abolitionist sentiment against him.

Jane Pierce died of tuberculosis in Andover, Massachusetts in December 1863; she was buried at Old North Cemetery in Concord, New Hampshire. Pierce was further grieved by the death of his close friend Nathaniel Hawthorne in May 1864; he was with Hawthorne when the author died unexpectedly. Hawthorne had controversially dedicated his final book to Pierce. Some Democrats tried again to put Pierce's name up for consideration as the 1864 presidential election unfolded, but he kept his distance; Lincoln easily won a second term. When news spread of Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, a mob gathered outside Pierce's home in Concord, demanding to know why he had not raised a flag as a public mourning gesture. Pierce grew angry, expressing sadness over Lincoln's death but denying any need for a public gesture. He told them that his history of military and public service proved his patriotism, which was enough to quiet the crowd.

## Death

Pierce's drinking impaired his health in his last years, and he grew increasingly spiritual. He had a brief relationship with an unknown woman in mid-1865. During this time, he used his influence to improve the treatment of Davis, now a prisoner at Fort Monroe in Virginia. He also offered financial help to Hawthorne's son Julian, as well as to his own nephews. On the second anniversary of Jane's death, Pierce was baptized into his wife's Episcopal faith at St. Paul's Church in Concord. He found this church to be less political than his former Congregational denomination, which had alienated Democrats with anti-slavery rhetoric. He took up the life of an "old farmer", as he called himself, buying up property, drinking less, farming the land himself, and hosting visiting relatives. He spent most of his time in Concord and his cottage at Little Boar's Head on the coast, sometimes visiting Jane's relatives in Massachusetts. Still interested in politics, he expressed support for Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policy and supported the president's acquittal in his impeachment trial; he later expressed optimism for Johnson's successor, Ulysses S. Grant.

Pierce's health began to decline again in mid-1869; he resumed heavy drinking despite his deteriorating physical condition. He returned to Concord that September, suffering from severe cirrhosis of the liver, knowing he would not recover. A caretaker was hired; none of his family members were present in his final days. He died at 4:35 am on Friday, October 8, 1869, at the age of 64. President Grant, who later defended Pierce's service in the Mexican-American War, declared a day of national mourning. Newspapers across the country carried lengthy front-page stories examining Pierce's colorful and controversial career. Pierce was interred next to his wife and two of his sons in the Minot enclosure at Concord's Old North Cemetery.

In his last will, which he signed January 22, 1868, Pierce left a large number of specific bequests such as paintings, swords, horses, and other items to friends, family, and neighbors. Much of his $72,000 estate (equal to $1,580,000 today) went to his brother Henry's family, and to Hawthorne's children and Pierce's landlady. Henry's son Frank Pierce received the largest share.

## Facts and trivia

* Franklin Pierce was the only President in American History to affirm the Oath of Office.
* Pierce was a sixth-generation descendant of Thomas Pierce, who had moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from Norwich, Norfolk, England in about 1634. Barbara Bush, the wife of President George H.W. Bush, was a fourth cousin once removed of Pierce.
* Pierce's father Benjamin was a lieutenant in the American Revolutionary War who moved from Chelmsford, Massachusetts to Hillsborough after the war, purchasing 50 acres (20 ha) of land.
* During Pierce's childhood, his father was deeply involved in state politics, while two of his older brothers fought in the War of 1812; public affairs and the military were thus a major influence in his early life.
* Pierce's father ensured that his sons were educated, and he placed Pierce in a school at Hillsborough Center in childhood and sent him to the town school at Hancock at age 12. The boy, not fond of schooling, grew homesick at Hancock and walked 12 miles (19 km) back to his home one Sunday. His father fed him dinner and drove him part of the distance back to school before kicking him out of the carriage and ordering him to walk the rest of the way in a thunderstorm. Pierce later cited this moment as "the turning-point in my life".
* In fall 1820, Pierce entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, one of 19 freshmen. He joined the Athenian Society, a progressive literary society, alongside Jonathan Cilley (later elected to Congress) and Nathaniel Hawthorne, with whom he formed lasting friendships.
* Pierce read law briefly with former New Hampshire Governor Levi Woodbury, a family friend in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He then spent a semester at Northampton Law School in Northampton, Massachusetts, followed by a period of study in 1826 and 1827 under Judge Edmund Parker in Amherst, New Hampshire.
* Pierce was admitted to the New Hampshire bar in late 1827 and began to practice in Hillsborough. He lost his first case, but soon proved capable as a lawyer. Despite never being a legal scholar, his memory for names and faces served him well, as did his personal charm and deep voice.
* Like all white males in New Hampshire between the ages of 18 and 45, Pierce was a member of the state militia, and was appointed aide de camp to Governor Samuel Dinsmoor in 1831. He remained in the militia until 1847, and attained the rank of colonel before becoming a brigadier general in the Army during the Mexican–American War.
* Pierce served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1833, before being elected to the Senate where he served from March 1837 until his resignation in 1842. His private law practice was a success, and he was appointed New Hampshire's U.S. Attorney in 1845.
* On November 19, 1834, Pierce married Jane Means Appleton (March 12, 1806 – December 2, 1863), a daughter of Congregational minister Jesse Appleton and Elizabeth Means. The Appletons were prominent Whigs, in contrast with the Pierces' Democratic affiliation.
* Jane Pierce was shy, devoutly religious, and pro-temperance, encouraging Pierce to abstain from alcohol. She was somewhat gaunt, and constantly ill from tuberculosis and psychological ailments. She abhorred politics and especially disliked Washington, DC, creating a tension that would continue throughout Pierce's political ascent. Jane Pierce disliked Hillsborough as well, and in 1838, the Pierces relocated to the state capital, Concord, New Hampshire.
* Pierce and his wife had three children together. Sadly, all of them died young; none even lived long enough to see their father become president. The firstborn, Franklin Jr., died as an infant, and Frank Robert died from typhus when he was 4. Benjamin lived to be 11, but died in a horrific train accident just after his father's presidential election victory.
* Pierce was popular and outgoing, but his family life was difficult; his three children died young and his wife Jane suffered from illness and depression for much of her life.
* A northern Democrat, who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation, Pierce was seen by fellow Democrats as a compromise candidate uniting Northern and Southern interests and was nominated as the party's candidate for president on the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. He and running mate William R. King easily defeated the Whig Party ticket of Winfield Scott and William A. Graham in the 1852 presidential election.
* Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, a lifelong friend of Pierce, wrote the biography *The Life of Franklin Pierce* in support of Pierce's 1852 presidential campaign.
* When Pierce departed New Hampshire for the inauguration, Jane Pierce chose not to accompany him. Pierce, then the youngest man to be elected president, chose to affirm his oath of office on a law book rather than swear it on a Bible, as all his predecessors except John Quincy Adams, who swore on a book of law, had done.
* Pierce was the first president to deliver his inaugural address from memory.
* In his Cabinet appointments, Pierce sought to unite a party that was squabbling over the fruits of victory. Most in the party had not originally supported him for the nomination, and some had allied with the Free Soil party to gain victory in local elections. Pierce decided to allow each of the party's factions some appointments, even those that had not supported the Compromise of 1850.
* All of Pierce's cabinet nominations were unanimously and immediately confirmed by the Senate.
* Pierce's Vice President William R. King died a little more than one month into his term, leaving a vacancy that could not be filled for the next three years.
* As president, Pierce simultaneously attempted to enforce neutral standards for civil service while also satisfying the diverse elements of the Democratic Party with patronage, an effort that largely failed and turned many in his party against him.
* Pierce was a Young America expansionist who signed the Gadsden Purchase of land from Mexico and led a failed attempt to acquire Cuba from Spain.
* Pierce signed trade treaties with Britain and Japan, while his Cabinet reformed their departments and improved accountability, but these successes were overshadowed by political strife during his presidency.
* Pierce's popularity declined sharply in the Northern states after he supported the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which nullified the Missouri Compromise, while many whites in the South continued to support him. Passage of the act led to violent conflict over the expansion of slavery in the American West.
* Pierce's administration was further damaged when several of his diplomats issued the Ostend Manifesto calling for the annexation of Cuba, a document that was roundly criticized.
* Pierce fully expected to be renominated by the Democrats in the 1856 presidential election, but was abandoned by his party and his bid failed.
* After leaving the White House, the Pierces remained in Washington for more than two months, staying with former Secretary of State William L. Marcy. They eventually moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Pierce had begun to speculate in property.
* As the Democratic Convention of 1860 approached, some asked Pierce to run as a compromise candidate that could unite the fractured party, but Pierce refused.
* Pierce's reputation in the North suffered further during the American Civil War as he became a vocal critic of President Abraham Lincoln.
* Pierce's drinking impaired his health in his last years, and he grew increasingly spiritual. He had a brief relationship with an unknown woman in mid-1865.
* A heavy drinker for much of his life, Pierce died in 1869 of cirrhosis of the liver.
* Pierce was interred next to his wife and two of his sons in the Minot enclosure at Concord's Old North Cemetery.
* In his last will, which he signed January 22, 1868, Pierce left a large number of specific bequests such as paintings, swords, horses, and other items to friends, family, and neighbors. Much of his $72,000 estate (equal to $1,470,000 today) went to his brother Henry's family, and to Hawthorne's children and Pierce's landlady. Henry's son Frank Pierce received the largest share.
* Historians and scholars generally rank Pierce as one of the worst and least memorable U.S. presidents.

## References

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin\_Pierce#Post-presidency\_(1857%E2%80%931869)
* https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/franklin-pierce/
* https://www.american-historama.org/presidents-united-states/franklin-pierce.htm
* https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pierce-177