Franklin Pierce's life histry

Early life

Franklin Pierce was born in a log cabin in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, on November 23, 1804, as the first President of the United States born in the 19th 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 Democratic-Republican governor of New Hampshire. He was a direct descendant of Thomas Pierce , who was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Franklin Pierce's mother was Anna B. Kendrick. The fifth of eight children, he had four brothers and three sisters. Former First Lady of the United States Barbara Pierce Bush is a distant cousin.
at the age of 11; he transferred to Francestown Academy in the spring of 1820. Friends recalled that just after he entered the school, he became homesick and returned home barefoot. The boy trudged the remaining seven miles back to school. Later that year he transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy to prepare for college. In fall 1820, he entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he joined literary, political, and debating clubs.
There he met writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, with whom he formed a lasting friendship, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He also met Calvin E. Stowe, Seargent S. Prentiss, and his future political rival, John P. Hale, when he joined the Athenian Society, a group of students with progressive political leanings.In his second year of college his grades were the lowest of his class, but he worked to improve them and ranked third among his classmates when he graduated in 1824. In 1826 he entered Northampton Law School in Northampton, Massachusetts, and he later studied under Governor Levi Woodbury and Judge Edmund Parker in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was admitted to the bar and began a law practice in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1827.

Early political career

After graduating from college, Pierce entered politics and rose to a central position in the Democratic party of New Hampshire and became a member of the Concord Regency leadership group. In 1828 he was elected to the lower house of the New Hampshire General Court, the New Hampshire House of Representatives. He served in the State House from 1829 to 1833, and as Speaker from 1832 to 1833. Pierce served in the state legislature of New Hampshire while his father was governor.
In 1832, Pierce was elected as a Democrat to the 23rd and 24th Congresses (March 4, 1833 – March 4, 1837). He was only 27 years old, the youngest U.S. Representative at the time.
In 1836, he was elected by the New Hampshire General Court as a Democrat to the United States Senate, serving from March 4, 1837, to February 28, 1842, when he resigned. He was chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Pensions during the 26th Congress.
After his service in the Senate, Pierce resumed the practice of law in Concord with his partner Asa Fowler. He was the United States Attorney for the District of New Hampshire from 1845 to 1847. He refused the Democratic nomination for Governor of New Hampshire and declined the appointment as Attorney General of the United States tendered by President James K. Polk.

Family

November 19, 1834, Pierce married Jane Means Appleton , the daughter of a former president of Bowdoin College. Appleton was Pierce's opposite. Born into an aristocratic Whig family, she was shy, often ill, deeply religious, and pro-temperance. They had three children, all of whom died in childhood:Franklin Pierce, Jr. (February 2, 1836 – February 5, 1836)
Frank Robert Pierce (August 27, 1839 – November 14, 1843), died at the age of four from epidemic typhusBenjamin Pierce (April 13, 1841 – January 6, 1853), died at the age of 11.
None lived to see his father become President.
Pierce suffered a devastating tragedy just weeks after his election when he, his wife, and his last son Benjamin were in a terrible train accident in which Bennie was decapitated in front of his father. Pierce put a sheet over the boy hoping his wife would not see the body, but she did anyway. This sent Pierce and his wife into a plummeting despair, affecting his presidency until he left office in 1857. Jane was never happy with her husband's involvement in the political world. She took no pleasure from life in Washington, D.C., having encouraged Pierce to resign his Senate seat and return to New Hampshire, which he did in 1842. After the gruesome death of her last child, shortly before Pierce's inauguration, she was overcome with melancholia and distanced herself from her husband during his presidency. She became known as "the shadow of the White House." She was deeply religious and regarded the death of their last child as God's anger brought on by her husband's political life.

Mexican-American War

Pierce enlisted in the volunteer services during the Mexican-American War and rose to the rank of colonel. In March 1847, he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers and took command of a brigade of reinforcements for Winfield Scott's army marching on Mexico City. His brigade was designated the 1st Brigade in the newly created 3rd Division and joined Scott's army in time for the Battle of Contreras. During the battle he was seriously wounded in the leg when he fell from his horse.He returned to his command the following day, but during the Battle of Churubusco the pain in his leg became so great that he passed out and had to be carried from the field. His political opponents used this against him, claiming that he left the field because of cowardice instead of injury. He returned to command and led his brigade throughout the rest of the campaign, resulting in the capture of Mexico City. Although he was a political appointee, he proved to have some skill as a military commander. He returned home and served as president of the New Hampshire state constitutional convention in 1850.

Election of 1852

At the Democratic National Convention of 1852, Pierce was not a serious candidate for the presidential nomination. He had no credentials as a major political figure or leader, and had not held elective office for the last ten years. The convention assembled on June 1 in Baltimore, Maryland, with four major contenders—Stephen A. Douglas, William L. Marcy, James Buchanan and Lewis Cass – for the nomination. Most of those who had left the party with Martin Van Buren to form the Free Soil Party had returned. To unite the various Democratic Party factions before voting on a nominee, delegates adopted a party platform that rejected further "agitation" over the slavery issue and supported the Compromise of 1850.
When the balloting for president began, the four candidates deadlocked, with no candidate reaching even a simple majority, much less the required supermajority of two-thirds. On the thirty-fifth ballot, Pierce was put forth to break the deadlock as a compromise candidate. Pierce's long career as a party activist and consistent supporter of Democratic positions made him popular among delegates. He had never fully explained his views on slavery, allowing all factions to view him as reasonably acceptable. His service in the Mexican-American War would allow the party to portray him as a war hero. On June 5, delegates unanimously nominated Pierce on the 49th ballot. Alabama Senator William R. King was chosen as the nominee for Vice President.The United States Whig Party's candidate was General Winfield Scott of Virginia, under whom Pierce had served in the Mexican-American War; his running mate was Secretary of the Navy William A. Graham. Scott – nicknamed "Old Fuss and Feathers" – ran a blundering campaign.

The Whigs' platform was almost indistinguishable from that of the Democrats, reducing the campaign to a contest between the personalities of the two candidates and helping to drive voter turnout in the election to its lowest level since 1836. Pierce's affable personality and lack of strongly held positions helped him prevail over Scott, whose antislavery views hurt him in the South. Pierce's military service effectively neutralized Scott's reputation as a celebrated war hero. Irish Catholic support of the Democratic Party and disdain for the Whig Party also helped Pierce.
The Democrats' slogan was "We Polked you in 1844; we shall Pierce you in 1852!". This proved to be true, as Scott won only the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Vermont. The total popular vote was 1,601,274 to 1,386,580, or 50.9% to 44.1%. Pierce won 27 of the 31 states, including Scott's home state of Virginia. John P. Hale, who like Pierce was from New Hampshire, was the nominee of the remnants of the Free Soil Party, garnering 155,825 votes .
The 1852 election was the last presidential contest in which the Whigs fielded a candidate. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed in 1854, divided the Whigs. The Whig Party splintered and most of its adherents migrated to the nativist American Party Know Nothings, the Constitutional Union Party, and the newly formed Republican Party.At his inauguration, Pierce, at age 48, was the youngest President to have taken office, a record he would keep until Ulysses S. Grant took office in 1869 at 46 years old.
  
Presidency 1853–1857

Pierce served as President from March 4, 1853, to March 4, 1857. He began his presidency exhausted and in mourning. Two months before, on January 6, 1853, the President-elect's family had boarded a train in Boston, and were trapped in their derailed car when it rolled down an embankment near Andover, Massachusetts. Pierce and his wife survived, merely shaken up, but saw their 11-year-old son Benjamin crushed to death.Jane Pierce viewed the train accident as a divine punishment for her husband's pursuit and acceptance of high office.
Pierce chose to "affirm" his oath of office rather than swear it, becoming the first president to do so; he placed his hand on a law book rather than on a Bible while doing so. He was also the first president to recite his inaugural address from memory. In it Pierce hailed an era of peace and prosperity at home and urged a vigorous assertion of US interests in its foreign relations. "The policy of my Administration," said the new president,
"will not be deterred by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion. Indeed, it is not to be disguised that our attitude as a nation and our position on the globe render the acquisition of certain possessions not within our jurisdiction eminently important for our protection".
The nation was enjoying economic growth and relative tranquillity, and the Compromise of 1850 calmed the debate over slavery. When the issue flamed up early in his administration, though, Pierce did little to cool the passions it aroused, and sectional conflicts reignited.
Pierce selected men of differing opinions for his Cabinet, including colleagues he knew personally and Democratic politicians. Many anticipated the diverse group would soon break up, but it remained unchanged during Pierce's four-year term (as of 2012, the only presidential cabinet to do so). In foreign policy, Pierce sought to display a traditional Democratic assertiveness. Various interests nursed ambitions to detach nearby Cuba from a weak and distant Spain, open trade with a reclusive Japan, and gain the advantage over Britain in Central America. Although the Perry Expedition to Japan was a success, Pierce's leadership increasingly came into question when poorly anticipated developments exposed failures of Administration planning and consultation.
Pierce's administration aroused sectional apprehensions when it pressured the United Kingdom to relinquish its interests along part of the Central American coast. Three US diplomats in Europe drafted a proposal to the president to purchase Cuba from Spain for $120 million (USD), and justify the "wresting" of it from Spain if the offer were refused. The publication of the Ostend Manifesto, which had been drawn up on the insistence of Pierce's Secretary of State, provoked the scorn of Northerners who viewed it as an attempt to annex a slave-holding possession to bolster Southern interests. It helped discredit the expansionist policies the Democratic Party had supported in the 1844 election. The Gadsden Purchase from Mexico similarly exposed the seething unresolved sectional conflicts inherent in national expansion.The greatest challenge to the country's equilibrium during the Pierce administration, though, was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. It repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of slavery in the West. This measure, sponsored by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, originated in a drive to promote a transcontinental railroad with a link from Chicago, Illinois, to California through Nebraska.

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 million (USD), commonly known as the Gadsden Purchase.[13] This became known as the greatest success of the Pierce presidency. Under Pierce's watch, Commodore (Matthew) Perry concluded a treaty with Japan allowing American trade with that country.Pierce fulfilled the expectations of Southerners who had supported him by vigilantly enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act when Anthony Burns was seized in Boston in 1854 and returned to his owner.To win Southern support for organizing Nebraska, Douglas added a provision declaring the Missouri Compromise to be invalid. The bill provided that the residents of the new territories could decide the slavery question for themselves. Although his cabinet had made other proposals, Douglas and several southern Senators successfully persuaded Pierce to support Douglas' plan.The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act triggered a series of events that became known as Bleeding Kansas. Pro-slavery Border Ruffians, mostly from Missouri, illegally voted in a government that Pierce recognized, and Pierce called the Topeka Constitution, a shadow government set up by Free-Staters, an act of "rebellion." Pierce continued to recognize the pro-slavery legislature even after a congressional investigative committee found its election illegitimate, and dispatched federal troops to break up a meeting of the shadow government in Topeka.
The Act provoked outrage among northerners who already viewed Pierce as kowtowing to slave-holding interests. It provided the impetus for the formation of the Republican Party and contributed to critical estimates of Pierce as untrustworthy and easily manipulated. Having lost public confidence, Pierce failed to receive the nomination of his party for a second term. Pierce's hiring of a full-time bodyguard - the first president to do so - is testament to his ruined reputation.
Pierce has been ranked among the least effective Presidents. He was unable to steer a steady, prudent course that might have sustained a broad measure of support. Having publicly committed himself to an ill-considered position, he maintained it steadfastly, but at disastrous cost to his reputation.

Later life

After losing the Democratic nomination for reelection in 1856, Pierce retired and traveled with his wife overseas. He returned to the U.S. in 1859 in time to comment on the growing sectional crisis between the South and the North, often criticizing Northern abolitionists for encouraging ugly feelings between the two sections. In 1860 many Democrats viewed Pierce as a solid compromise choice for the presidential nomination, uniting both Northern and Southern wings of the party, but Pierce declined to run.During the Civil War, Pierce attacked Lincoln for his order suspending habeas corpus. Pierce argued that even in a time of war, the country should not abandon its protection of civil liberties.Pierce's stand won him admirers with the emerging Northern Peace Democrats, but enraged certain members of the Lincoln administration: in 1862 Secretary of State William Seward sent Pierce a letter accusing him of being a member of the seditious Knights of the Golden Circle. Outraged, Pierce responded and demanded that Seward put his response in the official files of the State Department. When that didn't happen, a Pierce supporter in the US Senate, Milton Latham of California, had the entire Seward-Pierce correspondence read into the Congressional Globe. Nearly every Seward biographer has since considered the Pierce-Seward exchange as a blot on the Secretary's otherwise notable career.
In 1864, friends again put his name in play for the Democratic nomination, but by a letter read out loud to the delegates, Pierce said he would not run.The year before, Pierce's reputation was greatly damaged in the North during the aftermath of Vicksburg. Union soldiers serving under General Hugh Ewing's command captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis' Fleetwood Plantation, and Ewing turned over Davis' personal correspondence to his brother-in-law William T. Sherman. However, Ewing also sent copies of the letters to friends in Ohio.

Those letters revealed Pierce's deep friendship with Davis and ambivalence about the goals of the war. As early as 1860, Pierce had written to Davis about "the madness of northern abolitionism." Another letter stated that he would "never justify, sustain, or in any way or to any extent uphold this cruel, heartless, aimless unnecessary war," and that "the true purpose of the war was to wipe out the states and destroy property."Abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had long disliked Pierce, now referred to him as "the archtraitor."On April 16, 1865, when news had spread of the murder of President Lincoln, an angry mob of young teenagers gathered outside Pierce's home in Concord. Earlier that day a different mob had thrown black paint on the front porch of former President Millard Fillmore, who, like Pierce, was also regarded as a Lincoln detractor. The crowd in Concord wanted to know why Pierce's house was not dressed with black bunting and American flags, the visual proof of grief being used that day by millions of people across the country. Pierce came outside to confront the crowd and said he, too, was saddened by Lincoln's passing. When a voice in the crowd yelled out "Where is your flag?" Pierce became angry and recalled his family's long devotion to the country, including both his and his father's service in the military. He said he needed to display no flag to prove that he was a loyal American. The crowd soon quieted down and even cheered and applauded the former president as he went back into his home.Franklin Pierce died in Concord, New Hampshire, at 4:49 am on October 8, 1869, at 64 years old. President Ulysses S. Grant, who later defended Pierce's service in the Mexican War, declared a day of national mourning. Newspapers across the country carried lengthy front-page stories examining Pierce's colorful and controversial career. He was interred next to his wife and two of his sons, all of whom had predeceased him, in the Minot Enclosure in the Old North Cemetery of Concord.
In his last will, which he signed January 22, 1868, he left an unusually large number of specific bequests to friends, family and neighbors, including the children of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He left $1,000 in trust to the local library. The interest was used to purchase books. He left gifts of money, paintings, and other items to various people. The cane of General Lafayette was among the bequests. His nephew Frank Pierce received the residue.