He opened a law practice there as well, and with his skill as a public speaker and his local fame, he was an immediate success as a trial lawyer. Courts of law were a prime form of entertainment, and Franklin Pierce was a star in this setting during the 1840s.
Key events in the life of Franklin Pierce.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Early life and career. The son of a governor of New Hampshire, Benjamin Pierce, and the former Anna Kendrick, Franklin Pierce attended Bowdoin College in Maine, studied law in Northampton, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the bar in 1827.
Despite never being a legal scholar, his memory for names and faces served him well, as did his personal charm and deep voice. In Hillsborough, his law partner was Albert Baker, who had studied law under Pierce and was the brother of Mary Baker Eddy.
Pierce, FranklinAn overview of Franklin Pierce.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Franklin Pierce, byname Young Hickory, (born November 23, 1804, Hillsboro, New Hampshire, U.S.—died October 8, 1869, Concord, New Hampshire), 14th president of the United States (1853–57).
LawyerStatespersonFranklin Pierce/Professions
He served as speaker of the state legislature before winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1833. After two terms in the House and one in the Senate, Pierce returned to practicing law, only to emerge in 1852 as the Democratic presidential candidate.
On May 30, 1854, President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was designed to solve the issue of expanding slavery into the territories. However, it failed miserably; the Kansas-Nebraska Act was one of the key political events that led to the American Civil War.
Born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, in 1804, Pierce attended Bowdoin College. After graduation he studied law, then entered politics. At 24 he was elected to the New Hampshire legislature; two years later he became its Speaker. During the 1830's he went to Washington, first as a Representative, then as a Senator.
Top 10 Facts About Franklin Pierceof 10. Son of a Politician. ... of 10. State and Federal Legislator. ... of 10. Fought in the Mexican-American War. ... of 10. Was an Alcoholic President. ... of 10. Defeated His Old Commander During the Election of 1852. ... of 10. Criticized for the Ostend Manifesto. ... of 10. ... of 10.More items...•
The youngest to become president by election was John F. Kennedy, who was inaugurated at age 43. The oldest person to assume the presidency was Joe Biden, who took the presidential oath of office 61 days after turning 78.
It became law on May 30, 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising known as “Bleeding Kansas,” as proslavery and antislavery activists flooded into the territories to sway the vote.
President Franklin PierceDespite fierce opposition from abolitionists and Free Soilers, as those who opposed extending slavery into new territories were known, the Senate passed the Nebraska bill. President Franklin Pierce signed it into law on May 30, 1854.
Senator Stephen Douglas of IllinoisIn January 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois introduced a bill that divided the land immediately west of Missouri into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska. He argued in favor of popular sovereignty, or the idea that the settlers of the new territories should decide if slavery would be legal there.
Ill with tuberculosis, King was in Spanish Cuba in an effort to recover in the warmer climate, and was not able to be in Washington to take his oath of office on March 4.
As a militia officer himself, he had experience mustering and drilling bodies of troops. When Congress declared war against Mexico in May 1846, Pierce immediately volunteered to join, although no New England regiment yet existed.
Dickinson CollegeJames Buchanan / College (1809)Dickinson College is a private liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1773 as Carlisle Grammar School, Dickinson was chartered on September 9, 1783, making it the first college to be founded after the formation of the United States. Wikipedia
Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), the son of a onetime governor of New Hampshire, entered politics at a young age. He served as speaker of the state legislature
Franklin Pierce (1968). “Franklin Pierce, 1804-1869: chronology, documents, bibliographical aids”
Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States, signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, prompting a bloody conflict over Kansas' slavery status.
It’s actually a remarkable document. It is vaguely simple, but extremely powerful. Its simplicity is often the cause of bitter debates. It is the Constitution of the United States.In Article II, Section 1 it defines the qualifications for President as: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be ...
The son of a governor of New Hampshire, Benjamin Pierce, and the former Anna Kendrick, Franklin Pierce attended Bow doin College in Maine, studied law in Northampton, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the bar in 1827. He married Jane Means Appleton, whose father was president of Bowdoin, in 1834.
Except for a brief stint as an officer in the Mexican-American War (1846–48), Pierce remained out of the public eye until the nominating convention of the Democratic Party in 1852.
Representing the Eastern element of the Democratic Party, which was inclined for the sake of harmony and business prosperity to oppose antislavery agitation and generally to placate Southern opinion, Pierce tried to promote sectional unity by filling his cabinet with extremists from both sides of the slavery debate. He also attempted to sidestep the fierce sectional antagonisms of the domestic scene by ambitiously and aggressively promoting the extension of U.S. territorial and commercial interests abroad. In an effort to buy the island of Cuba from Spain, he ordered the U.S. minister to Spain, Pierre Soulé, to try to secure the influence of European financiers on the Spanish government. The resulting diplomatic statement, the Ostend Manifesto (October 1854), was interpreted by the American public as a call to wrest Cuba from Spain by force if necessary. The ensuing controversy forced the administration to disclaim responsibility for the document and to recall Soulé. In 1855 an American adventurer, William Walker, conducted a notorious expedition into Central America with the hope of establishing a proslavery government under the control of the United States. In Nicaragua he established himself as military dictator and then as president, and his dubious regime was recognized by the Pierce administration. A more lasting diplomatic achievement came from the expedition that Pres. Millard Fillmore had sent to Japan in 1853 under Commodore Matthew C. Perry. In 1854 Pierce received Perry’s report that his expedition had been successful and that U.S. ships would have limited access to Japanese ports. The Pierce administration also reorganized the diplomatic and consular service and created the United States Court of Claims.
In 1854 Pierce received Perry’s report that his expedition had been successful and that U.S. ships would have limited access to Japanese ports. The Pierce administration also reorganized the diplomatic and consular service and created the United States Court of Claims. Pierce, Franklin: inauguration.
Jefferson Davis: Early life and career. Franklin Pierce made him secretary of war in 1853. Davis enlarged the army, strengthened coastal defenses, and directed three surveys for railroads to the Pacific. He was also a forceful advocate for what became the Gadsden Purchase.….
As a result, Pierce, who was almost unknown nationally, unexpectedly won the November election, defeating the Whig candidate Winfield Scott by 254 votes to 42 in the electoral college.
Pierce entered political life in New Hampshire as a Democrat, serving in the state legislature (1829–33), the U.S. House of Representatives (1833–37), and the Senate (1837–42). Handsome, affable, charming, and possessed of a certain superficial brilliance, Pierce made many friends in Congress, but his career there was otherwise undistinguished.
Franklin Pierce’s Early Life and Career. Born on November 23, 1804, in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, Franklin Pierce was the son of Benjamin Pierce, a hero of the American Revolution who was twice elected governor of New Hampshire . The younger Pierce graduated from Bowdoin College in 1824 and began studying law; he was admitted to the bar in 1827.
Franklin Pierce’s Early Life and Career. Franklin Pierce’s Road to the White House. Franklin Pierce’s Presidency. “Bleeding Kansas”. Franklin Pierce’s Post-Presidential Years. Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), the son of a onetime governor of New Hampshire, entered politics at a young age. He served as speaker of the state legislature ...
In the end, Franklin Pierce’s belief in a limited role for the federal government, combined with his accommodation of and submission to powerful proslavery interests within the Democratic Party, had made him largely ineffective as a leader.
At the age of 24, he won election to the New Hampshire state legislature, and two years later he became its speaker. A member of the Democratic Party and a steadfast supporter of Andrew Jackson, Pierce began serving in Congress in 1833. In 1834, he married Jane Appleton, the daughter of a former Bowdoin president.
During his two terms in the House of Representatives (until 1837) and one term in the Senate (1837-1842), the young and handsome Pierce became a popular figure in Washington, though he had little influence compared to other prominent Democrats.
During Pierce’s administration (1853-1857), settlement was encouraged in the northwest region of the country, even as sectional tensions increased over the issue of slavery and its extension into new territories.
Though Pierce and his wife were barely injured, their 11-year-old son, Bennie, was killed.
Franklin Pierce went back to his hometown to practice his legal career and at the same time, fulfill his duties in the Democratic Party. He was elected in the lower house and state legislature of his state, while assisting his governor-father around the years 1828 to 1833.
Franklin Pierce was inaugurated as president on March 4 , 1853 despite the tragedy that his family had encountered a few months prior. It was a derailed train accident that occurred in January of the same year which resulted in the death of their son, Benjamin, and the seclusion of his wife, Jane Pierce, from any political involvement.
Franklin Pierce was an example of a man with skill, intelligence and even the charisma to make a difference with his administration, but it was his loyalty to his party and his inability to recognize the limits of obeying one’s supporters that cost him the respect of his countrymen.
The inclusion of Franklin Pierce in the list of nominees which was intended to break the ties between the other candidates that made him become the representative of the party for the national elections in 1852.
End of Presidency. Franklin Pierce was not nominated again to run for presidency by the Democratic Party thus ending his term by 1857. He left the White House with a lot of criticism and was even regarded by some people as one of the least effective presidents in the history of the United States government.
Pierce promised to maintain economic prosperity, peaceful living, and attempt to expand the international relations of the United States during his term of office .
Born on November 23, 1804, Franklin Pierce, though by no means wealthy, had more advantages than most young boys in rural New Hampshire. His father, Benjamin Pierce, had led the local militia to victories in the American Revolution, and as a result, he enjoyed a status in the area of Hillsborough that gave him influence in local politics.
Using his connections, he appealed to President James Polk for a commission. The President repaid Pierce's old campaign favors. By the time the force sailed for the Mexican shores of Veracruz in mid-1847, Pierce was a brigadier general commanding over two thousand men, though he had no military experience whatsoever.
Franklin and Jane Pierce seemingly had little in common, and the marriage would sometimes be a troubled one. The bride's family members were staunch Whigs, a party largely formed to oppose Andrew Jackson, whom Pierce revered. Socially, Jane Pierce was reserved and shy, the polar opposite of her new husband.
Mexican War Military Service. Aware of the positive effect of military service on his father's political success, Franklin Pierce saw an opportunity in the Mexican-American War. He helped enlist men into the New Hampshire Volunteers and was himself a private.
At the Battle of Contreras on August 19, his horse stumbled. Pierce was thrown onto the pommel of his saddle and fell off his horse, crushing his leg.
At first, young Franklin enjoyed the social life at Bowdoin so much that his schoolwork took second priority. Soon he was last in his class. He gradually began to apply himself to his studies and by graduation in 1824, he ranked fifth in his class.
Rapid Rise to National Politics. While at Bowdoin, Pierce had honed his public speaking, which made him a natural for the legal profession. In 1829 , he was elected to the state legislature, two years after his father won election to the governorship.
Early Life and Political Career. Franklin Pierce, the 14th U.S. President, was born on November 23, 1804, in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. His father, Benjamin, was an American Revolutionary War hero who held some political prowess in the family's rural town. His mother, Anna Kendrick Pierce, had eight children, whose education she made her top ...
In the 1830s, Pierce was sent to Washington, D.C. as a state representative. Despite his rapid ascent in the world of politics, Pierce soon found his life in Washington both tedious and lonesome. After developing a dependency on alcohol, he decided it was time to settle down.
After resigning in 1842, Pierce joined the temperance movement and worked as an attorney, before going off to fight under General Winfield Scott in the Mexican-American War. In 1852, Pierce was elected president for one term. As president, he signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, prompting a bloody conflict over Kansas' slavery status.
While still recovering, he missed the Army's final victory at the Battle of Chapultepec, in 1847. After the war, Pierce went home to his family in New Hampshire.
Nevertheless, a year after the couple's first of three sons were born, Pierce accepted his election to the U.S. Senate. In 1841, under his wife's persistent urging, Pierce finally agreed to resign from the Senate. Afterward, he joined the temperance movement and started working as an attorney.
Nearing the end of his life and fading quickly into obscurity, Pierce took up drinking again. He died on October 8, 1869, in Concord, New Hampshire.
When he agreed to sign the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, it turned Kansas into a battleground for the country's conflict over slavery. Pierce's handling of the affair caused his democratic supporters to abandon him during the 1856 presidential election, in favor of his successor, James Buchanan.
Pierce read law briefly with former New Hampshire Governor Levi Woodbury, a family friend in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He then spent a semester at Northampton Law School in Northampton, Massachusetts, followed by a period of study in 1826 and 1827 under Judge Edmund Parker in Amherst, New Hampshire.
The Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire, was chartered in 1962. The University of New Hampshire School of Law was founded in 1973 as the Franklin Pierce Law Center. When the school was renamed in 2010, a Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property was established.
In his Cabinet appointments, Pierce sought to unite a party that was squabbling over the fruits of victory. Most in the party had not originally supported him for the nomination, and some had allied with the Free Soil party to gain victory in local elections. Pierce decided to allow each of the party's factions some appointments, even those that had not supported the Compromise of 1850.
By the 1850s, Pierce had become a de facto leader of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. Returning to Concord, Pierce resumed his law practice ; in one notable case he defended the religious liberty of the Shakers, the insular sect threatened with legal action over accusations of abuse.
As he would as president, Pierce valued Democratic Party unity highly, and saw the oppposition to slavery as a threat to that. Democratic James K. Polk 's dark horse victory in the 1844 presidential election was welcome news to Pierce, who had befriended the former Speaker of the House while both served in Congress.
Their last surviving son was killed in a train accident while the family was traveling, shortly before Pierce's inauguration. A heavy drinker for much of his life, Pierce died in 1869 of cirrhosis of the liver. Historians and scholars generally rank Pierce as one of the worst and least memorable U.S. presidents .
Brigadier General (Army) Battles/wars. Mexican–American War. Battle of Contreras. Battle of Churubusco. Battle of Molino del Rey. Battle of Chapultepec. Battle for Mexico City. Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857.