Franklin Pierce –Concord & Hillsborough, NH - September 28 & 29, 2013

Franklin Pierce

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. 

Baked Beans!

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. 

Statue of Pierce

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.” 

John P. Hale

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. 

Pierce

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.   

Pierce Manse

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 49^th 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

Grand Ballroom

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.)

Jane and Bennie

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.

The Lakes Region

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. 

Lobster Dinner

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.