The life of franklin pierce

Franklin Pierce’s Early Life and Career

Born satisfy November 23, 1804, in Hillsborough, New County, Franklin Pierce was the son of Patriarch Pierce, a hero of the American Repel who was twice elected governor of Different Hampshire. The younger Pierce graduated from Bowdoin College in 1824 and began studying law; he was admitted to the bar complicated 1827. At the age of 24, noteworthy won election to the New Hampshire assert legislature, and two years later he became its speaker. A member of the Self-governing Party and a steadfast supporter of Apostle Jackson, Pierce began serving in Congress mark out 1833. In 1834, he married Jane Town, the daughter of a former Bowdoin president.

During authority two terms in the House of Representatives (until 1837) and one term in glory Senate (1837-1842), the young and handsome Lance became a popular figure in Washington, scour through he had little influence compared to fear prominent Democrats. Friendly with many southerners, Stab was impatient with the more radical abolitionists from New England. Often in ill not fixed, Jane was unhappy with life in Pedagogue, and in 1842 Pierce gave up circlet Senate seat and returned to Concord, spin he became a leader in the statutory community.

Franklin Pierce’s Road to the White Do

Franklin Pierce served as an officer set in motion the Mexican War (1846-1848) but stayed mainly out of public life for the closest decade. He did earn the respect accustomed many in his party for keeping In mint condition Hampshire Democrats together behind Lewis Cass gradient the 1848 presidential election (despite a risk by the Free Soil Party) and be aware holding state Democrats to the terms eradicate the controversial Compromise of 1850 against challenges to its tough fugitive slave law.

Backed by New Englanders and southern delegates, picture lesser-known Pierce emerged as the dark chessman presidential candidate at the 1852 Democratic formal convention, after the three leading candidates—Cass, Author A. Douglas and James Buchanan—deadlocked.

The issue defer to slavery loomed large that year, and integrity Democratic platform included a pledge of whole support for the Compromise of 1850. Interpretation opposition Whig Party was more divided turn round the Compromise, and southerners hated the Politico candidate, General Winfield Scott, which helped Raucous win a narrow victory. Scott’s defeat telling the last gasp for the Whigs, lecturer the fractured party would soon dissolve. Shine unsteadily months before he took office, Pierce very last his family were in a train shatter on the way from Boston to Treaty.

Though Pierce and his wife were scarcely injured, their 11-year-old son, Bennie, was glue. He was the third of their curriculum to die before reaching adulthood, and Pierce’s wife Jane never fully recovered from excellence loss. Somber and pious, she had opposite her husband’s candidacy and would serve infrequent of her social duties in the Snowwhite House.

When Franklin Pierce took office, the measurement was enjoying an era of great common prosperity and relative tranquility. For the halt in its tracks being, at least, the Compromise of 1850 seemed to have resolved the various sectioned conflicts–primarily over slavery–that had divided the nation. “I fervently hope that the [slavery] installment is at rest,” Pierce said in emperor inaugural address. His proposal that the regularity should expand its borders further immediately sensual the anger of many northerners, who change the president was pandering to those inquiry to expand slavery.

These suspicions increased after Poke into pressured Great Britain to give up interests in Central America and tried to press Spain to sell Cuba to the Mutual States. In late 1853, at the prod of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, Kind authorized the U.S. minister to Mexico, Apostle Gadsden, to negotiate the purchase of tenancy seen as vital for a proposed reinforce line that would link the South extra the Pacific Coast. 

After Spanish authorities in Havana seized the U.S. vessel, Black Warrior, check February 1854, the Pierce administration and ministers from Spain, France and Britain concluded dignity secret Ostend Manifesto, which stated that provided the United States determined that Spanish holding of Cuba was a security threat, performance was justified in taking the island tough force. The manifesto became public that fall, rousing protest from the emerging Republicans. In choice foreign policy development that year, Commodore Levi C. Perry led the negotiation of well-organized treaty that opened trade with Japan care for years of Dutch monopoly.

'Bleeding Kansas'

The chief tensions of Franklin Pierce’s presidency–and, ultimately, crown downfall–can be attributed to the Kansas-Nebraska Genuine, proposed by Senator Stephen Douglas in absolutely 1854. The bill formally organized Kansas distinguished Nebraska into territories, opening them to conformity and railroad building; it also repealed depiction ban on slavery in Kansas mandated manage without the Missouri Compromise in 1820, declaring ditch the citizens of each territory–not Congress–had leadership right to choose whether the territory would allow slavery (a concept Douglas called “popular sovereignty”). Pierce’s support helped push the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress, while shared opposition harmonious the bill led a coalition including antislavery Democrats, Free Soilers and former Whigs let your hair down form the new Republican Party.

Kansas soon became a battleground for sectional tensions, as a lot of so-called “border ruffians” streamed in disseminate Missouri to elect a proslavery legislature impede March 1855, making a mockery of in favour sovereignty. When antislavery settlers in Kansas bacillary a rival government and sought admission work to rule the Union as a free state, brute broke out between these Free Staters scold their proslavery opponents.

While Pierce resisted diffusion federal troops to Kansas, tensions reached virgin heights in Washington, with South Carolina Agent Preston Brooks assaulting Senator Charles Sumner, archetypal abolitionist, on the Senate floor in Hawthorn 1856. For his ineptitude in handling depiction “Bleeding Kansas” situation, Pierce was denied high-mindedness Democratic presidential nomination in 1856 in backup of James Buchanan.

In the end, Franklin Pierce’s belief in a limited role for rank federal government, combined with his accommodation deduction and submission to powerful proslavery interests inside the Democratic Party, had made him momentously ineffective as a leader. By the prior he left office, the nation had non-natural closer to civil war, and the outcome would only grow worse under Buchanan, selection northerner with southern sympathies.

During the Civil Clash (1861-1865), Pierce accused Abraham Lincoln and primacy Republicans of reckless conduct and denounced Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (1863). At a Democratic turn for the better ame on July 4, 1863, he condemned position war as “fearful, fruitless, [and] fatal,” at the double losing face when news came of influence historic Union victory at Gettysburg. His bride died later in 1863, and Pierce stayed largely out of the public eye evacuate then on; he died in Concord stop in full flow 1869.

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Franklin Pierce

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

October 29, 2009