I just love when a PBG (Presidential BioGraphy) starts this way! “Franklin Pierce was arguably the most handsome man ever to serve as president of the United States. He was certainly one of the most amiable and congenial men to hold that office. Because of his popularity, personal charm, and family lineage, he enjoyed a meteoric political career in New Hampshire” (p. 1). And just like that, the author, Michael Holt, describes the keys to a successful political career that have been around since the beginning of time.
Interestingly, there are not very many PBGs of Franklin Pierce and so, since I was quite limited, I found myself falling back on the old standby—the American Presidents Series. Thus, I read Franklin Pierce: American Presidents Series by Michael F Holt (Times Books: New York, 2010). As I’ve mentioned before, I was looking forward to this biography with some anticipation. Other authors have stated that Pierce was a pretty total loss as a president and of course, this has got to mean some eye-opening material. And after all, he’s soooo cute!
Frank was born on November 23, 1804 to a very prestigious family in New Hampshire. His father was not only a general in the Revolutionary War but also a sheriff and a governor of the state. It was a relatively happy household and Frank thrived, growing tall and brawny.
The Pierces were always staunch Democratic-Republicans, in the vein of Jefferson and Madison, and so Pa Pierce decided that his son, on his way to college, must not be sent to Harvard, bastion for Federalism. Instead Frank attended Bowdoin College in Maine where he mainly drank, partied, and generally did pretty poorly at school. He graduated however and went on to read law, in which he excelled. Correction: his personal appeal and not his logic was a prime factor in the success of his cases. “He displayed a prodigious memory for names and faces, a trait that obviously benefited him in his political career as well…he had a deep, rich voice, again a trait that helped his political career because his audience could actually hear his unamplified voice at political rallies. Most important, he exuded a personal charm, an amiable temperament, and an instinctive human empathy. Pierce directed his arguments to the emotions of the jurors, not to the collective logic, and he usually won” (p. 10). He was admitted to the bar in 1827 and then as he slowly joined political movements, was elected to the state legislature in 1829 when he was only 25 years old.
In 1832, he was elected to the US Congress and by 1834 had married Jane Means Appleton, a girl he met while studying law in Amherst. If opposites attract, then it is understandable how they got together. Jane’s family was staunch Federalists, while Jane herself was very plain, shy and sickly. And on top of all that, she hated Frank’s political career and urged him to retire all the time.
He was elected to the US Senate in 1837 and served steadily until 1841 when he resigned before his requisite six-year term could expire. He stated that it was important to be home with his wife and to supplement their income by a return to his law practice but there may have been other reasons. “That Pierce resigned his Senate seat after spending only four months in the minority [as a Democrat] is telling. He liked to compete only when he held a winning hand. Political defeat was a new and intolerable experience” (p. 25).
Under the Polk administration, Pierce was appointed the US Attorney General of the state of New Hampshire. When the Mexican War began, however, Pierce was ready. In 1847, he was commissioned a brigadier general and was told to recruit regiments for the war which he would then lead to Mexico. He and his regiment joined the Winfield Scott expedition that would take them to Veracruz and ultimately Mexico City.
Frank, though capable of getting his men to General Scott across some hostile Mexican land, proved less than able when actually confronted with a battle. In Pierce’s first military engagement, during the initial charge, the gunfire from the Mexican artillery startled his horse, causing it to buck, pushing Pierce’s groin across the saddle pommel. He briefly lost consciousness. When he fell to the ground, the horse stepped on his knee, leaving him too wounded to continue. He was accused by his men of fainting at the imminent sign of fighting. In the next battle, Pierce twisted the same knee that had just healed. “Again his men marched by as their commander lay on the ground” (p. 29). In his regiment’s final battle, “He lay instead in a sick tent plagued with acute diarrhea” (p. 29). By December of 1847, Frank had had enough and requested a leave of absence. A few months later he resigned his commission and returned to his private life of law and politics.
At his years at home in New Hampshire, Frank played an increasingly large role in the local Democratic machinery so it was no surprise that his name would continue to make the political rounds. As the 1852 election neared, the Democrats met for their presidential convention with Lewis Cass, James Buchanan, and Stephen Douglas garnering most of the votes. However, neither of them could win with a clear majority and so people began bantering Pierce’s name around as a true dark horse candidate. By the forty-ninth ballot, Pierce became the Democratic candidate for president of the United States. “On their [Frank and Jane’s] return trip they were met by a horseback rider with the news the Pierce had been nominated. Pierce seemed stunned. Jane fainted dead away” (p. 43).
With the Whigs in freefall, splitting over their nominee, General Winfield Scott, it was probably not a surprise that Franklin Pierce was elected the 14th President. Democrats around the country unified under his name—a northern man with prosouthern leanings.
Although Frank had won a great victory, the months before the inauguration were not happy ones for him and his family. In January 1853, Frank, Jane and their only child, eleven-year-old Benjamin, were heading back to Concord on a tiny one-car train when the train derailed, slid down an embankment, and landed on its roof. Frank and Jane, who had been sitting together, were bruised and shaken but alive, whereas their son was killed instantly. Benny had been sitting behind them and during the accident, had the back of his head sheared off. “Father and mother had to view this ghastly sight and both were badly shaken” (p. 50). Under these circumstances, Franklin Pierce returned to Washington in an effort to finish his cabinet selections before his inauguration. “Carefully balanced by region, Pierce’s cabinet would prove to be one of the most ethical and effective group of advisers to serve the nation in the nineteenth century” (p. 52).
Things did not look up for Frank Pierce however. One month after his inauguration, William King, the Vice President, died, leaving Pierce vulnerable. “His death [King’s], however, meant that the president pro tempore of the Senate, David R Atchison, stood next in line for the succession, a fateful change in leadership as time would show” (p. 54). Not to mention, Pierce made a dreadful hash of his patronage opportunities. In the mid-1800’s patronage appointments were used to swing votes toward one candidate or another and to reward the party faithful that had worked hard during the election. Instead of rewarding the men that voted for him, Pierce used his patronage to promote both extremes of the Democratic Party into federal jobs. “Rather than relying on the solid men in the center of the party who had stood by the compromise [Compromise of 1850] from the start, the paper’s editors carped, Pierce had favored former Free Soilers from the North and disunionist Southern Rights Democrats with the juiciest plums” (p. 66). This mistake would ultimately aid in ruining Pierce’s presidency. “In hindsight, it is clear that Pierce’s attempts to distribute the loaves and fishes among all elements of the party proved an unmitigated disaster” (p. 67).
But then the biggest bombshell of Pierce’s presidency occurred. We all know that slavery was the powder keg of this era and most political decisions at this time were made with it in mind. To understand the full implications of what happened next, we’ll have to travel back in time to James Monroe’s presidency and recall the temporary band-aid called the Missouri Compromise. When Jefferson had bought the Louisiana Purchase, people were excited but only until the slavery question came up. Where should slavery stop inside this new big piece of land? Monroe was the president that had to deal with the repercussions because by 1820, some of the Louisiana Purchase had reached the requisite population requirement and wished to become states. Now all of sudden, people were upset—Missouri wished to be a slave state but that would throw the balance off in Congress. The band-aid, otherwise known as the Missouri Compromise, said three things: 1. Missouri will enter the Union as a slave state, 2. Maine will enter the Union as a free state (thus keeping the balance), and 3. slavery will stay below the 36º30’ latitude line.
Fast forward to the 1850s. The Compromise of 1850, which had been pushed through Congress by Millard Fillmore, tentatively negated the Missouri Compromise by allowing New Mexico and California (clearly below the 36º30’ line) to enter the Union as free states without giving the slave states anything in return except a harsher Fugitive Slave Law. Thus, when people clamored for the states of Kansas and Nebraska to be settled and then worked into the Union, the shit literally hit the fan. Both Kansas and Nebraska were technically above the Missouri Compromise line and therefore were ineligible to become slave states. However, the slave states simply wanted more states. “What made the Nebraska question so explosive was slavery. All of the area in any proposed territory that would be carved out lay north of the latitude line thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, from which slavery had been ‘forever prohibited’ by the Missouri Compromise of 1820” (p. 73).
Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois, was chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories and it fell to him to draft a compromise measure that would successfully please all parties and allow Kansas and Nebraska into the Union. He advocated “popular sovereignty” in the territories in question which basically would allow the populations of both territories to vote on whether they wished to be pro- or anti-slavery. Douglas felt he could offer this because he claimed that the Compromise of 1850 had abrogated the Missouri Compromise and thus the 36º30’ line was immaterial. The Kansas-Nebraska bill was then pushed forward under the assumption that Kansas would become a slave state and Nebraska a free one, which Franklin Pierce ultimately approved. “Pierce signed the bill into law at the end of May 1854, the second biggest mistake of his political career” (p. 82).
The Kansas-Nebraska situation would simply not go away, though. The issues merely got worse and would remain a thorn in Pierce’s side throughout the rest of his tenure as president. Because the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a nebulous idea at best, it is not surprising that the situation soon deteriorated into violence. Kansas was assumed to be a slave state but the problem lay in the fact that no one asked the Kansans what they wanted—and they wanted to be a free state. Thus, when the first elections occurred there in 1855, some fishy business seemed inevitable. “Egged on by former Senator David R Atchison, whose Senate term had ended early that March, hundreds of heavily armed Missourians, aiming to exploit an ambiguity in the original act as to what constituted ‘residency’ in Kansas, poured across the border on election day. These ‘Border Ruffians’ took over polling places in sparsely populated hamlets and cast not only their own ballots but hundreds of additional, wholly fictitious, ballots for proslavery legislative candidates” (p. 91). Pierce had unwittingly sent a proslavery territorial governor who allowed the false election results to stand. The new proslavery legislature of Kansas immediately set up shop in Lecompton and proceeded to hammer out a constitution that made the state a slaveholding one, along with an extremely strict slave code. Conversely, the majority of Kansans had a free-state mentality so they then set up their own government and constitution at Topeka, which Pierce accused of being in opposition to the federally recognized government at Lecompton.
Due to his catastrophic decision-making, Franklin Pierce effectively split his party and basically assured his own retirement at the end of his first term. At the Democratic national convention, Pierce’s own party failed to re-nominate him and instead focused on James Buchanan, the politician from Pennsylvania. Frank, then still young, found himself and Jane back in New Hampshire. Jane, however, was never quite well and so Frank took care of her most of his time. They toured Europe together in an effort to alleviate her suffering but she died in 1863.
Pierce was unhappy with the Civil War, due to his prosouthern leanings, but he never made mention of that fact in public. In fact, he outwardly supported the war effort. After his wife’s death, he purchased a farm in New Hampshire but was increasingly alone and drank heavily. On October 8, 1869, Franklin Pierce died of liver failure.
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