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Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise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.
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Franklin
Pierce