We’re starting to get the
feeling that the folks who work (or volunteer) at presidential sites are huge devotees
of the presidents they represent, no matter how inept or ineffective they were.
Which brings us to President
No. 14, Franklin Pierce, historians’ consensus pick for one of the worst presidents
– if not the worst -- ever.
Cathy and I flew to New
Hampshire on a crisp, sunny autumn weekend.
What’s not to like? Fall hues, reasonably
warm temperatures, and friendly people.
We flew into Manchester and drove to Concord, capital of New Hampshire,
about 30 minutes away.
We arrived at the tail end of
the vibrant farmer’s market on Capital Street, next to the granite state capitol
building. We strolled through the market
stands with the locals. Breakwind Farms
was selling their FARTOOTEMPTING baked beans.
A woman in a brown hoodie was hawking garlic. A small blackboard next to her stall asked: “What is a pirate’s favorite veggie?” The answer:
“GARRRLIC!” We snacked on a free
sample of an apple cider donut, enjoying the moist, tangy taste.
Near the hustle and bustle,
on the sidewalk bordering the Capitol grounds, stood a bronze statue of
Franklin Pierce, neglected and almost forgotten among the overgrown hedges
surrounding it. His left hand rested on a jauntily thrust hip, cloak swept back,
wavy hair high on his handsome head. Engraved into the base was simply:
“Franklin Pierce Fourteenth President of the United States.”
Nearer the Capitol – in a
place of prominence along a well-traveled path -- stood another bronze statue,
that of John P. Hale, the first anti-slavery senator in the U.S. Senate. The pedestal of his statue reads: “The measure of my ambition will be full if
when my wife and children shall repair to my grave to drop the tear of
affection to my memory they may read on my tombstone, he who lies beneath
surrendered office, place and power rather than bow down and worship slavery.”
Pierce and Hale were not
friends.
Who was Franklin Pierce?
Pierce was by all accounts, a
charming man, handsome, empathetic and eager to please. His father, Benjamin Pierce, had been a
self-made man who fought in the American Revolution and later ascended to the
governorship of New Hampshire. Franklin attended
Bowdoin College in Maine, but, according to our guide, no mention, much less,
commemoration, is made of him there.
He became active in politics and
was elected to the New Hampshire state legislature while still in his 20s. In 1833 he was elected to Congress as a
Democrat. He supported President Andrew Jackson’s
successful fight against rechartering the Second Bank. Like Jackson, Pierce opposed government funding
of internal improvements.
In 1837, while only 32, he
was elected to the Senate, the youngest senator in history at that point. He gained a reputation as a supporter of
slavery and fought against limiting the institution. When the Whigs gained control of the Senate
in 1842, he resigned and moved his family to Concord to practice law.
He, his wife, Jane, and their
two sons lived in a two-story house close to the capital. That was our next stop.
The Pierce Manse
The Pierce Manse was the home
of the Pierces between 1842 and 1848.
The white, two-story Greek revival house is not far from the state Capitol,
in the town’s historic district. The
house was named the “Pierce Manse” as part of a naming competition held in 1969,
the year the house was moved to its present location.
We began our visit by viewing
a highlights video/slide show. The show
was very sympathetic to Pierce, our first clue that our visit would be similar
to that of Fillmore -- the focus being on the few good things that each accomplished. There was mention of his defense of religious
freedom--Pierce defended the Shakers’ right to religious freedom. The show also touts his presidential
accomplishments including reducing the national debt, modernizing the military,
and establishing trade with Canada, now our biggest trading partner. In
fairness, achieving any of these goals would be considered monumental these
days, but in the shadow of slavery, they seem slight.
As with most other house
tours we have done, the focus is on the house, the objects inside the house,
the family and the social life inside the house – not on the politics or the
presidencies of the presidents.
The house is run by the Pierce
Brigade, a group of about 100 Pierce devotees who dedicate themselves to
preserving the home and memory of Pierce. The Brigade is named for Pierce’s rank
of Brigadier General attained during the Mexican War. (Pierce’s war record is undistinguished.) The Brigade includes a biographer, Peter
Wallner, who wrote two pro-Pierce biographies:
Franklin Pierce, New Hampshire’s
Favorite Son and Franklin Pierce,
Martyr for the Union. Wallner
teaches at Franklin Pierce University.
Pierce wasn’t the original
choice as candidate of the Democratic Party in 1850. His name was introduced late in the nomination
process as a compromise candidate who was a Northerner, but sympathetic to
slavery — they wanted a Doughface. He was nominated on the 49th
ballot.
The Democrats asked Pierce’s
Bowdoin College friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, to write a biography of Pierce,
which he did. During the general election, Pierce won 27 of 31 states over
Winfield Scott, the Whig candidate.
The house and small museum
located in one of the downstairs rooms glosses over Pierce’s role in the Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854. His signature on the bill
nullified the Missouri Compromise and kicked the United States closer to an
internal war. The legislation held that
the Compromises of 1820 and 1850 were “hereby declared inoperative and void”
and that the “true intent and meaning of this act (is) not to legislate slavery
into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate
their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution
of the United States: Provided, that
nothing herein contained shall be construed to revive or put in force any law
or regulation which may have existed prior to the act of 6 March, eighteen
hundred and twenty, either protecting, establishing, prohibiting, or abolishing
slavery.”
In other words, if the
inhabitants of any territory wanted to have slavery, they merely had to vote
for it. The Missouri Compromise of 1820,
which restricted slavery in states that were located above latitude 36°30′
north, was history. It was replaced by
popular sovereignty — that is, a mere 50.1% of the white men in the territory had
merely to vote for slavery for it to become law. Abraham Lincoln, in an Oct. 16, 1854, debate against
Stephen Douglas, the bill’s champion, pointed out that, “Near eighty years ago
we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from the beginning we have run down
to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a ‘sacred
right of self-government.’”
Not surprisingly, the
Kansas-Nebraska Act led to supporters on both sides of the issue rushing into
the territory – and to violence.
Pro-slavery residents aided by outsiders from Missouri (known as “Border
Ruffians”) voted in a proslavery legislature that quickly established proslavery
laws. Kansas residents opposed to
slavery -- known as “Jay Hawkers” -- aided by outside abolitionists, took the
radical step of setting up a separate government in Topeka and adopting an
anti-slavery constitution. Pierce called
them traitors and threw his administration’s weight behind the proslavery
legislature. Fights broke out, including
an infamous incursion by abolitionist fanatic John Brown, who with his
followers murdered five proslavery settlers in an act that became known as the
Pottawatomie Massacre.
The violence was not confined
to Kansas. In Congress, anti-slavery Senator
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was almost murdered by the nephew of pro-slavery
Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina after Sumner launched a personal attack
on Butler. The nephew, Representative Preston
Brooks, attacked Sumner in the congressional chambers, beating him so badly
with a cane that Sumner couldn’t attend the Senate for four years.
Little of this is discussed
in the house tour.
When we questioned our Pierce
Brigade guide about Franklin’s reputation as a poor president, he replied that
“You got to judge the whole man” and that Pierce was a “smart fellow,” “honest
and straightforward” and “good to his wife.”
Another Pierce Home
The following day, we
traveled to Pierce’s boyhood home in Hillsborough, N.H., a much more
interesting visit than the Pierce Manse.
The two-story house, built in 1804, was full of social activity and was used
by Pierce’s father partially as a tavern and included an upstairs grand
ballroom that stretches the length of the house. The ballroom floor was not connected to the
joists below to allow large groups to dance about without causing plaster to
rain from the ceiling below. Although
the house was built in 1804, it is set up for how it might have appeared
between 1824-1834.
There is a rivalry between
the two houses of Pierce. On the one side is the Pierce Brigade and on the
other, the Hillsborough Historical Society.
In general, both houses are Pierce fans but the love for his wife, Jane,
is not shared.
The young woman who was our
guide said the Pierce Brigade folks like Jane, but “here we are not fond of
her.” Jane came from a strictly
religious family. Since her father died
when she was 13, her humorless mother raised her. Apparently, Jane did not know how to take
care of a house. She depended on her
mother’s help even after she was married.
Jane was also markedly anti-social and did her utmost to avoid the
social engagements necessary for a political wife.
She was also sickly but our
guide gave her no slack: “I think she
played sick a lot of the time.” The guide said one particular letter
demonstrates Jane’s poor behavior. In
the letter, Jane admonishes Pierce for attending to his father on his deathbed. She asked him why are you with that “rotten
old man instead of taking care of me?’ (We
haven’t seen the letter.)
But Jane had a hard life. She lost all of her children. The first, Frank Jr., died just after birth
in 1836. The second, Franky, died of typhus
at age 4 in 1843. The last, Bennie, was
killed in a train wreck at the age of 11in 1853, after Pierce was elected but
before his inauguration.
Right before his mother’s eyes.
Benjamin Jr. was a mature 11
year-old. While visiting his aunt in
June 1852, he wrote his mother “Edward brought the news from Boston that father
is a candidate for the presidency. I
hope he won’t be selected for I should not like to live at Washington and I
know you would not either.” But Pierce
won, and during a family train trip from Boston to Concord on Jan. 6, 1853, the
train derailed and Benjamin, sitting with his mother and father, was
killed. He was the only one killed.
Jane never recovered. She wrote letters to her dead son: “My precious child I must write to you,
altho’ you are never to see it or know it.”
Jane died of tuberculosis in
1863 at the age of 57.
At the end of the tour, we
got into a discussion about Pierce’s support of slavery. Our guide as well as another in the museum shop
said that Pierce was motivated by the desire to protect the Constitution. Cathy asked where exactly in the Constitution
did it say that slavery was a Constitutional right. Their responses were ambiguous. Although they never said it explicitly, the
best we could glean is that the tour guides were referring to Article IV
(Property Rights) that protects citizens from having “things to be
seized.” Since enslaved people were
considered property in the South, this made sense to some people.
They added that Pierce
actually detested the institution, although many thought he was pro-slavery
“for some reason.” They added that he thought the issue would be resolved with
time and through the court system and the Constitution, and pointed out that Pierce
did not approve of some of the methods employed by the Northern abolitionists.
Deeply unpopular by the end
of his term, even his own party rejected Pierce. The Democratic party choose not to renominate
him for the election of 1856—making him the only elected president not to be
renominated by his own party.
Pierce defended his actions —
including his appointment of Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War—until his last
days: “I do not believe I ever saw a day
when I would not have made any possible, personal sacrifice to maintain the
Constitution of my country and the Union based upon it.
The Lakes Region
We also had been looking
forward to our one night in New Hampshire. We had rented a cabin at The
Anchorage at the Lake, on the banks of Lake Winnisquam.
We were quite disappointed to
find that the cabins were run down, almost dilapidated. We are not four-star
hotel types, preferring simple and inexpensive, not really caring if a hotel is
up with the latest fashions and amenities. But these cabins were bad, even by
our standards.
Still, we enjoyed the
grounds. We dragged a canoe down the steep bank and paddled around the clear
waters of the lake. We also hiked on
the trails that cut through fields and forests and enjoyed the cooling evening
air.
That night we drove to Weirs
Beach in nearby Lake Winnipesaukee in search of a lobster meal. We discovered the Lobster Pound, where we
feasted on tasty lobster. After our meal
we ambled along the largely abandoned boardwalk. Cathy clung to an Addams Family pinball
machine – her favorite from her youth -- she encountered at one of the few
arcades that was open, pouring in quarter after quarter while the machine sang
to her.
A Final Word
We flew back from New
Hampshire with an understanding of the events of Pierce’s life but little appreciation
for his motivations. In addition to the accomplishments
we learned about during the video, he also:
- Authorized the Gladsden Purchase, a strip of land on the border of
New Mexico and Arizona. This would
be the last purchase of land in the continental U.S.
- Completed the opening of Japan that was initiated by Zachary
Taylor. Commander Mathew Perry led
an expedition to Japan and the countries exchanged gifts.
But Pierce does not deserve
the acclamation of this sign in the Pierce Manse museum: “After
his death, many people disparaged his life and accomplishments until new
research revealed Franklin Pierce as a complex man with passionate political
beliefs about the Constitution and the Union of the States. His life as a honest political servant
committed to the ideals of democracy deserves to be held up as a model of civic
engagement for generations of future Americans.”
Whatever his motivations,
Pierce brought the United States much closer to being the “un-united
states.”
How to Get There
The Pierce Manse is located on 14 Horseshoe Pond Lane
in Concord, NH. The admission is $7 for
adults, $6 for seniors, and $3 for children.
Visit the website for more details:
www.piercemanse.org
The Franklin
Pierce Homestead, run by the National Park Service, is located on Route 31
about 100 yards north of its intersection with Route 9 near Hillsborough,
NH. It is open Memorial Day
through Columbus Day. The admission is
$5 for adults. Visit the website for
more details: hillsboroughhistory.org
REFERENCES
Current, R., Williams, T.H.,
Freidel, F. 1975. American
History: A Survey, Fourth Edition,
Volume I: To 1877. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Donald, D.H. 1995. Lincoln.
Simon & Schuster. New York,
New York.
Holt, M.F. 2010. Franklin Pierce. Times Books.
New York, New York.
Lincoln, A. 1854.
Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
October 16, 1854.
Moore, K. 2007. The American President. Fall River Press. New York, New York.
Portteus, Kevin. 2012. The U.S. Constitution: A Reader.
2012. Hillsdale College
Press. Hillsdale, Michigan.
