FRANKUN_P!ERE
Franklin Pierce, the nation’s youngest President at the time (age 48), had won the Democratic
nomination after a stalemate had not allowed any of the four strongest candidates to win
after thirty-four ballots. At that point, the name of Franklin Pierce was entered into the race,
and he eventually won the nomination on the forty-ninth ballot, mainly because of his New
England roots (to satisfy the North) and his support of the Compromise of 1850 (to appease
the South-and win its Democratic support). The election itself was much easier as his oppo
nent Winfield Scott, the choice of the fading Whig Party, was outpolled in the Electoral Col
lege 254-42! Pierce entered the White House at a time of apparent calm with the sectionalism
between the North and the South put to rest with the Compromise of 1850. The nation was
experiencing prosperity with gold in California and new railroads extending the population
farther west. But the politics of Pierce created a severe breakdown from within the Union
itself and divided the North and South further yet. History has somewhat vindicated him,
however, as it is doubtful that any man could have stopped the growing unrest.
Pierce was born in 1804 at Hillsboro, New Hampshire, the son of a brigadier general in the
state militia, who also served two terms as Governor of New Hampshire. Education was im
portant to the Pierce family, and Franklin was placed in a nearby academy at the age of
eleven. He entered Bowdoin College in 1820, where he ranked third in his class upon gradua
tion in 1824. He then studied law under several attorneys before opening his own office in
1827. After being elected twice to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Pierce won
a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1833. Two terms later he was elected
to the United States Senate at the young age of 33! His wife Jane’s illness no doubt con
tributed much to her dislike of Washington, eventually causing the handsome Pierce to resign
from the Senate. Pierce had been elected President, but two months before he took office,
Pierce, his wife and their 11-year-old son were riding a train that was in a wreck, killing their
son. Pierce thus entered the White House grief stricken over this incident. His wife Jane went
into a state of deep depression and spent her early days as First Lady in total seclusion. The
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act signed by Pierce created such a violent realignment of
loyalties as well as ill will between the North and South that his political career was for all
practical purposes over. He failed to win the Democratic Party nomination. He returned to
obscurity in New Hampshire and died in 1869.
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Name
Presidential Trivia
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1. Pierce’s Vice President, who died while in office, was
2. Franklin Pierce tragically witnessed the death of his 11-year-old son
just two months before he entered the White House.
3. The phrase Washington’s “gossip society” coined for Jane Pierce because of her total
seclusion during her early months as First Lady
4. On which ballot during the 1852 Democratic Convention was the “dark horse” Franklin
Pierce nominated as its candidate for President?
5. The most famous of Franklin Pierce’s close friends at Bowdoin College was a man who
would become his biographer years later.
6. The Know-Nothing Party, created out of opposition to immigrants being allowed in
America, was also called the
Party.
7. The book that did more to arouse the abolitionist movement than any other
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8. Jane Pierce was burdened for years with poor health—her condition was the incurable
9. Land purchased during the Pierce administration along the Gila River was referred to as
the__________________________________
10. The violence that resulted from the Kansas-Nebraska Act, where both slaveholders and
free men were in competition to inhabit the land, was called
Kansas.
11. The term coined by Stephen A. Douglas, which would allow the people who lived there
to decide whether or not there would be slavery (Kansas-Nebraska Act), was
12. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had the effect of repealing the
Act, which had established a north-south parallel boundary for ex
tending slavery in the new territories.
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Name
For Thinking and Discussing
1.
When Franklin Pierce took office as President of the United States, he found two major
problems facing him.
2.
When Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he sealed his own doom in
politics with the North. Why were they so upset with this piece of legislation?
3.
Explain the rather unusual circumstances in which Franklin Pierce was nominated as the
1852 Democratic candidate for President.
4.
How did the Franklin Pierce administration do in foreign affairs?
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