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Pierce, Franklin: Franklin Pierce
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Franklin Pierce was the son of Benjamin Pierce, a revolutionary war hero who was twice elected governor of New Hampshire. Franklin attended Bowdoin College, where he became friendly with Nathaniel Hawthorne, who later wrote his biography. At age 23 he became a lawyer and began his own spectacular rise in state Democratic politics, becoming speaker of the state legislature at age 26. He then served several terms in Congress, where he strongly supported the policies of President Andrew Jackson, especially the veto of the national bank. He became a U.S. senator at age 36. Pierce served in the Mexican-American War as a brigadier general of volunteers from his state under the overall command of General Winfield Scott and was injured at the Battle of Contreras when he fell off his horse.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne, Life of Franklin Pierce (Boston, 1852), the first biography of Pierce, was written by his college friend. Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, 2 vols. (New York, 1947), is a massive, wonderfully readable narrative of national history during the Pierce years. Roy Nichols, Franklin Pierce: Young Hickory of the Granite Hills (Philadelphia, 1931), the best biography of Pierce and one of the best of any president, is still very reliable. Larry Gara, The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (Lawrence, Kans., 1991), is especially informative on foreign policy matters. See ... Wilfred J. Bisson, comp., Franklin Pierce: A Bibliography (Westport, Conn., 1993).
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Franklin Pierce, born in New Hampshire in 1804, began his political life at the young age of 24. Having just graduated from law school, he was elected to the New Hampshire legislature in 1829 before becoming the state’s Speaker two years later. During the 1930’s Pierce continued his climb up the political ladder, becoming a Representative, then a Senator. It was in 1852, after serving as a general in the Army during the Mexican War, that Pierce was nominated by the Democratic Party to be the 14th President of the United States.
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Franklin Pierce was born in a log cabin near Hillsborough, New Hampshire, the first future U.S. president to be born in the nineteenth century. The site of his birth is now under Franklin Pierce Lake. Pierce's father was Benjamin Pierce, a frontier farmer who became a Revolutionary War soldier, a state militia general, and a two-time governor of New Hampshire. His mother was Anna Kendrick. He was the seventh of eight children; he had four brothers and three sisters.
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Franklin Pierce was born at Hillsboro, N.H., on Nov. 23, 1804. A Bowdoin graduate, lawyer, and Jacksonian Democrat, he won rapid political advancement in the party, in part because of the prestige of his father, Gov. Benjamin Pierce. By 1831 he was Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives; from 1833 to 1837, he served in the federal House and from 1837 to 1842 in the Senate. His wife, Jane Means Appleton, whom he married in 1834, disliked Washington and the somewhat dissipated life led by Pierce; in 1842 Pierce resigned from the Senate and began a successful law practice in Concord, N.H. During the Mexican War, he was a brigadier general.
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Franklin Pierce assumed the presidency at a time of tranquility. By virtue of the Compromise of 1850, the United States seemed to have weathered the storm surrounding the slavery issue. When the problem suddenly reappeared during his administration he had little success in dealing with it and policies he established hastened the disruption of the Union. With roots and home in the northern, anti-slavery state of New Hampshire, Pierce sided with the South on the issue of slavery. Devoted to the Union of the States, his aim was to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to avoid civil war at all cost. His views made him unpopular in the North and he failed to win a second term.
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Franklin Pierce