14. FRANKLIN PIERCE 1853-1857
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Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and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.
