Franklin Pierce Biography Presidency Cabinet Supreme Court

Franklin Pierce was a Representative and a Senator from New Hampshire prior to his election as President. He was born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire on November 23, 1804 to Benjamin Pierce and Anna Kendrick. He attended the academies of Hancock and Francestown. He prepared for college at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1824. He studied law, then was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Hillsborough in 1827. He was a member of the State general court from 1829 to 1833, and served as Speaker from 1832 to 1833. He was elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses ( March 4, 1833 - March 3, 1837). He was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1837, to February 28, 1842, when he resigned. He was chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Pensions (Twenty-sixth Congress). He is distant relative of Barbara Bush, mother of US President George W. Bush and wife of US President George H. W. Bush. His nickname was Handsome Frank.

After his service in the Senate, Pierce resumed the practice of law in Concord. He was district attorney for New Hampshire, and declined the appointment as Attorney General of the United States tendered by President James Polk. He served in the Mexican War as a colonel and brigadier general. He was a member of the New Hampshire State constitutional convention in 1850 and served as its president.

2 Presidency

Pierce was elected President of the United States on the Democratic ticket and served from March 4, 1853, to March 3, 1857.

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." He chose to affirm, rather then swear, the "Presidential Oath," being the first president to do so.

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 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 commonly known as the Gadsden Purchase.

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.

After losing the Democratic nomination, he reportedly quipped "there's nothing left to do but get drunk", which he apparently did frequently, once running down a pedestrian while drunk-driving a carriage. Franklin Pierce died in Concord on October 8, 1869, from cirrhosis of the liver, and was interred in Minat Inclosure in the Old North Cemetery.

2.1 Cabinet


OFFICE	NAME	TERM

President	Franklin Pierce	1853–1857
Vice President	William R. King	1853

Secretary of State	William L. Marcy	1853–1857
Secretary of the Treasury	James Guthrie	1853–1857
Secretary of War	Jefferson Davis	1853–1857
Attorney General	Caleb Cushing	1853–1857
Postmaster General	James Campbell	1853–1857
Secretary of the Navy	James C. Dobbin	1853–1857
Secretary of the Interior	Robert McClelland	1853–1857

2.2 Supreme Court appointments

Pierce appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

John Archibald Campbell - 1853

3 Related articles

U.S. presidential election, 1852

4 External links

Preceded by:
Millard Fillmore

President of the United States
1853–1857

Succeeded by:
James Buchanan

Preceded by:
Lewis Cass

Democratic Party Presidential candidate
1852 (won)

Followed by:
James Buchanan

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1 Biography