Franklin Pierce
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which repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of slavery in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. |
