Franklin Pierce

E

Kansas-Nebraska Act

If the Ostend Manifesto severely damaged Pierce's popularity, the Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed it. Senator Douglas introduced the bill, proposing the creation of the Kansas and Nebraska territories between the Missouri River and the Continental Divide. In each territory the slavery issue was to be decided by vote of the residents. Because both territories lay north of parallel 36° 30', this was an exception to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which barred the creation of new slavery states north of that line. Douglas told Congress that the organization of these territories was essential to a major national objective, the construction of a transcontinental railroad.

Southerners in Congress began maneuvering when the bill was introduced. If they supported Douglas, they would be giving up their long-held dream of a southern route for the transcontinental railroad. In return they demanded that the bill include an outright repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Since the Southerners belonged to the Democratic Party and Douglas was also a Democrat, it was up to the Democratic president to provide leadership. Democratic President Pierce was no friend of the compromise because of his belief that any federal restriction on slavery was unconstitutional. He not only yielded to Southern demands, he wrote the repeal clause himself, declaring that the Missouri Compromise was “inoperative and void.”

The repeal clause brought a storm of protest from Northerners in Congress, but once more Pierce helped bring his party into line. In May 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska bill became law. To make certain that Kansas would vote for slavery, people from Missouri, a slavery state, streamed into Kansas to pack the ballot boxes in favor of a proslavery legislature. The proslavery forces won, but the North countered with the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which sent Northern settlers into Kansas to help organize a rival free-soil (antislavery) government. The two Kansas governments occupied separate capitals, those favoring slavery at Lecompton and the free-soilers at Topeka, and both appealed to Washington for recognition. Pierce recognized the Lecompton group, over the bitter opposition of many congressmen who charged that it was elected through fraud, and condemned the Topeka group as rebels. Meanwhile, bands from both sides made armed raids on each other in a virtual civil war that was known as the Border War, or Bleeding Kansas. The conflict was a recurring nightmare throughout Pierce's administration.

F

Other Actions

Pierce also became unpopular in the West by failing to support a Western homestead bill that would grant free land to settlers. He also withheld aid from a proposed Western railroad line. Before his term ended, embittered Western Democrats abandoned Pierce and his party to form the new Republican Party.

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Pierce's efforts to annex Hawaii failed, as did his attempts to purchase Alaska. However, his last year in office saw an end to a long quarrel with Britain over its interference in the internal affairs of Central America. The interference had continued despite the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty that the United States and Britain signed in 1850, by which both powers were to respect the neutrality of Central America. On the American side, the dispute had been aggravated by the political adventuring of a Tennessean, William Walker, who briefly made himself dictator of Nicaragua and whom Pierce tacitly encouraged. In 1856 the two powers came to an understanding whereby Britain would withdraw from disputed parts of Central America. Walker was ousted by Nicaragua in 1857, and in 1859 and 1860 Britain quit the disputed areas, the Bay Islands (Islas de la Bahía) of Honduras and the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua.

VI

Later Years

By 1856 it was obvious that Pierce could not hope to be renominated. The Democrats instead nominated James Buchanan, and with his election the Pierces returned to New Hampshire. However, Pierce's outspoken condemnation of the New England Emigrant Aid Company and his bitter diatribes against abolitionists, especially abolitionist clergymen, had so outraged his home state that Concord refused him a public reception on his return.

In the winter of 1857 the Pierces left for Madeira and then continued on to Europe, where they remained for almost two years. Before he left, however, Pierce declared that the best man to run for president in the election of 1860 was Jefferson Davis.

With the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president in 1860 and the outbreak of the Civil War shortly thereafter, Pierce became a bitter and outspoken opponent of both the Lincoln administration and the war. He spoke of the war as the “butchery of white men” for the sake of “inflicting” emancipation on slaves who did not want it. His last public speech was a diatribe against Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in Confederate-controlled regions. Pierce spoke on the day in July 1863 when his audience was being swept by news of a great Union victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. With that speech, Pierce lost the last vestige of public esteem and his last friend but Nathaniel Hawthorne.

In December 1863 Mrs. Pierce died, and only Hawthorne came to be with Pierce in his bereavement. In the spring of 1864 Hawthorne died and Pierce was completely alone. For a time he succumbed to alcoholism, but he reformed during the last three years of his life. He died on October 8, 1869, at his home in Concord. President Ulysses S. Grant declared a period of national mourning, as if in death, Pierce had finally won a pardon from the Union he had worked zealously, if misguidedly, to preserve.

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