Pierce, Franklin

Pierce, Franklin (1804–69) 14th president of the United States. Born in New Hampshire, he trained as a lawyer and entered politics as a Democrat, reaching the House of Representatives in 1833 and the U.S. Senate in 1836. Resigning from the Senate, he joined the army and served in the Mexican War (1846–48). He returned to New Hampshire and supported the Fugitive Slave Law that formed part of the Compromise of 1850. The Democratic nominating convention of 1854, deadlocked, finally nominated a reluctant Pierce on the forty-eighth ballot to run again the Whig nominee, Winfield Scott. Pierce won by 242 electoral votes to Scott's 42 (the popular vote was closer), promising limited federal government and recognition of states' rights. Pierce ran a conservative administration, attempting few internal improvements and vetoing bipartisan legislation that would have funded institutions for the indigent mentally ill, arguing that it violated states' rights. His foreign policy was expansionist; he concluded the Gadsden Purchase (1853), acquiring a strip of land from Mexico, and signed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1853), aimed at ensuring U.S.-British cooperation in building a Central American canal. Plans to acquire Cuba by purchase if possible and by force if necessary caused a domestic uproar. Controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) reopened the slavery issue and further inflamed tensions between Free Soilers and proslavery southerners, paving the way for the Civil War. Pierce was extremely unpopular and his policies were perceived as favoring the South. He was denied renomination in 1856. After leaving office, he continued to speak out in favor of states' rights and opposed Abraham Lincoln's election and, eventually, the Emancipation Proclamation.

Pierce remains the only elected president to be denied renomination by his party.