IV.

Election of 1852

A.

Presidential Nomination

Pierce's views were known to Democratic leaders by 1852, when the party was hopelessly split into factions. A deadlock was expected at the Democratic national presidential convention. The leading contenders for the Democratic nomination were Lewis Cass, former Secretary of State James Buchanan, and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. None of them was expected to win sufficient strength from the hodgepodge of Southern Union Democrats, States-Rights Democrats, Free-Soil Democrats, and Compromise-of-1850 Democrats. Pierce belonged to the compromise group because the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California into the Union as a free state, also included a strong fugitive slave law. A letter from Pierce, which praised the compromise and defended the constitutional rights of the slave states, was passed around at the convention, held in Baltimore, Maryland.

Cass, Buchanan, and Douglas vied for the lead for the first 35 ballots. Former Secretary of War William L. Marcy of New York made his bid for lead on the next 10 ballots. On the 49th ballot the convention nominated Pierce as a Northern politician who was acceptable to the South. The convention chose William R. King of Alabama to be Pierce's running mate and drafted a platform pledging support of the Compromise of 1850 and an end to all further debate on the slavery issue. It was a promise that no president in the 1850s could have kept.

A.1.

Campaign

Because the Whigs had nominated General Winfield Scott, a popular war hero, the Democrats presented Pierce as the heir to Andrew Jackson. The Whigs countered by starting a whispering campaign branding Pierce a coward, a charge easy to disprove but impossible to silence.

Nevertheless, in November 1852, Pierce won a narrow popular victory over Scott and was elected the 14th president of the United States.

At this supreme moment of Pierce's political life, another tragedy occurred in his personal life. In January 1853, two months before his inauguration, Pierce and his family were riding in a train. Their car was derailed and toppled over an embankment. Pierce and his wife were uninjured, but their young son, Bennie, was killed before their eyes. Neither parent ever recovered from the blow.