Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce served as the 14th president of the United States from 1853 to 1857. Pierce served during a time of heightened tension prior to the Civil War. He was a member of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.
Pierce died in 1869 in Concord, NH.
Resources
- Franklin Pierce: Miller HouseFranklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, came to office during a period of growing tension between the North and South. A politician of limited ability, Pierce was behind one of the most crucial pieces of legislation in American history. Although he did not author the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he did encourage its passage by Congress. And that piece of legislation set the nation on its path to civil war.
- Franklin Pierce: White HouseFranklin Pierce became 14th President of the United States at a time of apparent tranquility (1853-1857). By pursuing the recommendations of southern advisers, Pierce — a New Englander — hoped to ease the divisions that led eventually to Civil War.
Archives, Research & Reference
- Franklin Pierce: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on Franklin Pierce. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.
- Franklin Pierce Papers: Library of CongressThe papers of Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), army officer, representative and senator from New Hampshire, and fourteenth president of the United States, contain approximately 2,350 items dating from 1820 to 1869.
Perspectives
Franklin Pierce
The genial but troubled New Englander whose single-minded partisan loyalties inflamed the nation's simmering battle over slavery Charming and handsome, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was drafted to break the deadlock of the 1852 Democratic convention. Though he seized the White House in a landslide against the imploding Whig Party, he proved a dismal failure in office. Michael F. Holt, a leading historian of nineteenth-century partisan politics, argues that in the wake of the Whig collapse, Pierce was consumed by an obsessive drive to unify his splintering party rather than the roiling country. He soon began to overreach. Word leaked that Pierce wanted Spain to sell the slave-owning island of Cuba to the United States, rousing sectional divisions. Then he supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which limited the expansion of slavery in the west. Violence broke out, and "Bleeding Kansas" spurred the formation of the Republican Party. By the end of his term, Pierce's beloved party had ruptured, and he lost the nomination to James Buchanan. In this incisive account, Holt shows how a flawed leader, so dedicated to his party and ill-suited for the presidency, hastened the approach of the Civil War.
The Presidency of Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce was one of the least known, least liked, and least successful presidents in American history. In this new study of his administration, historian Larry Gara makes no attempt to revive Pierce's reputation. Instead he provides a clear analysis of Pierce's shortcomings as well as his few successes. Franklin Pierce's administration (1853-1857) spanned a turbulent period in the life of the nation: North-South polarization reached new extremes due, in part, to Pierce's failure to understand the depth of Free Soil sentiment in the North; the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its aftermath made civil war likely, if not inevitable; and Pierce's apology for southern actions served only to widen the rift. The term "Bleeding Kansas" came to symbolize the failures of Pierce's administration. Pierce's few achievements were in the realm of foreign policy. In fact, Gara points out, the Pierce years were an important chapter in the history of American imperialisma time when Japan was opened to the West, U.S. trade in Central America and Asia was expanded, and additional land was acquired from Mexico. Pierce also initiated discussions on acquiring Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Nicaragua, Formosa, the Dominican Republic, the guano islands of the Pacific, and Cuba. In this twenty-fourth volume of the American Presidency Series, Gara provides a clear, tough-minded analysis of the Pierce administration and a fair, though generally negative, assessment the man and the president.