Franklin Pierce

V

President of the United States

On March 4, 1853, Pierce took office as president and moved into the executive mansion, the White House, where he presided alone. Mrs. Pierce, wholly preoccupied with her grief and her ill health, lived there as a recluse, rarely appeared at official dinners, and declined to assume any of the duties of a First Lady.

A

Cabinet

To reunite the factions of his party and his country, Pierce chose a Northerner, William L. Marcy of New York, as secretary of state, and a Southerner, Jefferson Davis, as secretary of war. These were the Cabinet's most important posts.

B

Manifest Destiny

The Mexican War had ushered in the era of manifest destiny, a belief that territorial expansion of the United States was inevitable. Pierce shared in this American expansionist fever. He was eager to annex Hawaii and to acquire Alaska. However, he meant first to purchase Cuba from Spain and to acquire additional territory from Mexico. Cuba had long been regarded by the Southern states as a natural addition to their territory, and Mexican land was needed to make possible a planned transcontinental southern railway. Both projects would aid the slave states and were thus bound to bring about a resumption of the slavery controversy.

C

Gadsden Purchase

In May 1853 Pierce instructed James Gadsden, U.S. diplomatic representative to Mexico, to make a treaty settling boundary disputes and securing additional territory. The treaty that Gadsden presented to the Senate provided for the purchase of what is now southern Arizona and part of southern New Mexico (see Gadsden Purchase). The purchase aroused bitter opposition from Northern congressmen, who feared that the area would become slave territory. However, Pierce managed to bring his party leaders into line, and in the spring of 1854 the treaty was proclaimed.

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D

Ostend Manifesto

In the same year, Pierre Soulé, Pierce's diplomatic representative to Spain, tried unsuccessfully to purchase Cuba from Spain. This purchase had become desperately important to the South, because Cuba had slaves and uprisings had taken place there. The South feared that to avoid a successful slave revolution, such as the one François Dominique Toussaint Louverture had led in Haiti, Spain might free the Cuban slaves. Whether or not Soulé shared this fear, he made a high-handed move that turned out to be an appalling blunder. He met at Ostend (Oostende), Belgium, with James Buchanan, who was diplomatic representative to Britain, and John Y. Mason, the diplomatic representative to France. They drafted a document known as the Ostend Manifesto, which declared that if Spain refused to sell Cuba to the United States, the United States would seize the island as its only defense against the threat of slave revolution or slave emancipation in Cuba. The document caused an uproar both at home and abroad, and Pierce was forced to disclaim it. However, the bungled diplomacy put an end to all hope of acquiring Cuba.

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