Franklin Pierce

• Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was

the 14th President of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857,
an American politician andlawyer.
• To date, he is the only President from New Hampshire.
• Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" (a Northerner with Southern
sympathies) who served in the U.S. House of
Representatives and Senate.
• Later, Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became
a brigadier general.
• His private law practice in his home state, New Hampshire, was so
successful that he was offered several important positions, which he
turned down.
• Later, he was nominated for president as a dark horse candidate on
the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention.
• In the presidential election, Pierce and his running mate William R.
King won by a landslide in the Electoral College, defeating the Whig
Party ticket ofWinfield Scott and William A. Graham by a 50% to 44%
margin in the popular vote and 254 to 42 in the electoral vote.
• According to historian David Potter, Pierce was sometimes referred to
as "Baby" Pierce, apparently referring to both his youthful appearance
and his being the youngest president to take office to that point
(although he was, in reality, only a year younger than James K.
Polk when he took office).
• His inoffensive personality caused him to make many friends, but he
suffered tragedy in his personal life and as president subsequently
made decisions which were widely criticized and divisive in their
effects, thus giving him the reputation as one of the worst presidents
in U.S. history.
• Pierce's popularity in the North declined sharply after he came out in
favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing the Missouri
Compromise and reopening the question of the expansion of slavery in
the West.
• Pierce's credibility was further damaged when several of his diplomats
issued the Ostend Manifesto.
• Historian David Potter concludes that the Ostend Manifesto and the
Kansas-Nebraska Act were "the two great calamities of the Franklin
Pierce administration.... Both brought down an avalanche of public
criticism."
• More importantly, says Potter, they permanently discredited Manifest
Destiny and "popular sovereignty" as a political doctrine and slogan of
 that time that purported to delegate the decision whether slavery
should be allowed in a particular territory to the voters therein, instead
of being determined by a national scheme such as that embodied in
the Missouri Compromise and similar agreements between the free
and slave interests.
• Abandoned by his party, Pierce was not renominated to run in the 1856
presidential election and was replaced by James Buchanan as the
Democratic candidate. After losing the Democratic nomination, Pierce
continued his lifelong struggle with alcoholism as his marriage to Jane
Means Appleton Pierce fell apart.
• His reputation was destroyed during the American Civil War when he
declared support for the Confederacy, and personal correspondence
between Pierce and Confederate President Jefferson Davis was leaked
to the press.
• He died in 1869 from cirrhosis.
• Philip B. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt reflected the views of many
historians when they wrote in The American President that Pierce was
"a good man who didn't understand his own shortcomings.
• He was genuinely religious, loved his wife and reshaped himself so that
he could adapt to her ways and show her true affection.
• He was one of the most popular men in New Hampshire, polite and
thoughtful, easy and good at the political game, charming and fine and
handsome
• However, he has been criticized as timid and unable to cope with a
changing America."
• Franklin Pierce was born in a log cabin in Hillsborough, New
Hampshire, on November 23, 1804, 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 Democratic-Republican governor of New Hampshire.
• He was a direct descendant of Thomas Pierce (1623-1683), who was
born in Norwich, Norfolk, England and settled in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony.
• Franklin Pierce's mother was Anna B. Kendrick.
• He was the fifth of eight children; he had four brothers and three
sisters.
• Former First Lady of the United States Barbara Bush is a distant cousin.