Franklin Pierce was born on this day in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. He trained as a lawyer and was elected to serve in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.
Portrait of Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) by Mathew Brady
In To The Best of My Ability, a book on American presidents edited by James M. McPherson, James A. Rawley, a widely respected historian of the Civil War era and American race relations and a biographer of Abraham Lincoln (he died in 2005), wrote the chapter on Franklin Pierce. Rawley explained how Pierce got nominated for the presidency:
His service in the Mexican War, during which he rose from private to brigadier general, may not have been heroic, but it enhanced his availability for high office. [Democratic] Party loyalty, his support for prosouthern measures, his northern residence, his bland spirit, and divisive factionalism combined to bring Pierce, on the forty-ninth convention ballot, the Democratic nomination for president in 1852.”
He owed his office, Rawley avers, largely to southern Democrats. And seeking to assure them, he said in his inaugural address that slavery (“involuntary servitude”) was recognized by the Constitution and “stands like any other admitted right . . . I fervently hope that the question [of slavery] is at rest.”
He began his speech by talking about how great the American Revolution was with respect to liberating the oppressed and shwoing the world what “liberty” meant:
. . . the oppressed throughout the world from that day to the present have turned their eyes hitherward, not to find those lights extinguished or to fear lest they should wane, but to be constantly cheered by their steady and increasing radiance. . . . In this our country has, in my judgment, thus far fulfilled its highest duty to suffering humanity. It has spoken and will continue to speak, not only by its words, but by its acts, the language of sympathy, encouragement, and hope to those who earnestly listen to tones which pronounce for the largest rational liberty.”
Obviously he missed the irony of his words. Or, more probably, he did not think these words applied to blacks. I wonder too how the press at the time responded to his calling slavery “involuntary” servitude, given that slaveholders contended slaves were happy and didn’t want to leave their masters.
By 1855 he was getting the idea that factionalism wasn’t going away. But he was confident the Union was strong enough to get over it. In his third annual message to Congress on December 31, 1855, he said:
The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution. I shall never doubt it. I know that the Union is stronger a thousand times than all the wild and chimerical schemes of social change which are generated one after another in the unstable minds of visionary sophists and interested agitators. I rely confidently on the patriotism of the people, on the dignity and self-respect of the States, on the wisdom of Congress, and, above all, on the continued gracious favor of Almighty God to maintain against all enemies, whether at home or abroad, the sanctity of the Constitution and the integrity of the Union.”
Rawley’s assessment was less than complimentary:
Pierce’s ideology of limited government together with his personal traits of accommodation and deference to the powerful southern wing of his party made for an inept president who piloted the ship of state to the shoals of secession and civil war. His remaining years Pierce passed in relative obscurity – traveling, taking time to denounce Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and drinking.”
Pierce’s wife Jane died of tuberculosis in Andover, Massachusetts in December 1863, and Pierce was further grieved by the death of his close friend Nathaniel Hawthorne in May 1864. Depressed, he turned both the spirituality and to alcohol. Pierce’s drinking impaired his health in his last years, and he suffered from severe cirrhosis of the liver. He died on October 8, 1869, “virtually unmourned,” as Rawley contended.
Picture of Pierce from the “Uncyclopedia” reflecting Pierce’s bad reputation as a president
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