LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Franklin Pierce: Civil War
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On the domestic scene Pierce stood for development of the West (the Gadsden Purchase was made during his administration), but plans for a transcontinental railroad fell through. The Kansas-Nebraska Act enraged many Northerners and precipitated virtual civil war between the pro- and antislavery forces in Kansas. Pierce, by that time very unpopular, was passed over by the Democrats for renomination, and Buchanan succeeded him. Pierce's opposition to the Civil War made him more than ever disliked in the North, where he died in obscurity.
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At the end of the war, Pierce returned home to his wife and six-year-old son. His law partnership had been dissolved, and he took a new partner. The new firm, like the old one, was highly successful.
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Because of his domestic and foreign policy blunders, Pierce was ignored at the Democratic convention of 1856, and he returned to Concord, New Hampshire. During the Civil War he gained local notoriety by opposing the policies of the Republican party and claiming that the Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional.
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Pierce declined this offer as well as an appointment to the Senate, for he wished to see action in the Mexican War. Enlisting as a private, he was soon appointed a colonel and then a brigadier general. He sailed for Veracruz in May 1847, and in July led his troops on the march to Mexico City. Although his leg was crushed in the Battle of Churubusco in August, he stayed with his command until the capture of Mexico City.
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Because the Whigs had nominated General Winfield Scott, a popular war hero, the Democrats presented Pierce as the heir to Andrew Jackson. The Whigs countered by starting a whispering campaign branding Pierce a coward, a charge easy to disprove but impossible to silence.
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