The Campaign and Election of 1848:

Millard Fillmore remained loyal to Henry Clay heading into the Whig nominating convention, but the presidency would elude Clay yet again. Southern proslavery forces in the party mistrusted his compromise policies. Meanwhile, the recent Mexican War had made heroes of two generals, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Both were courted by the Whigs. Their nicknames spoke of the contrast in their styles: Taylor, an unsophisticated man of little education who had never voted, was called "Old Rough and Ready"; Scott, refined and pompous, "Old Fuss and Feathers."

Since Andrew Jackson's election to the presidency in 1828, military leaders with a rough-hewn public persona—whether genuine or not—had been popular with voters. Helped largely by the behind-the-scenes negotiations of Thurlow Weed, Taylor led on the first ballot and clinched the nomination on the fourth. The selection of the general, a slave owner from Louisiana, enraged antislavery Whigs from the North. For a few hours it looked like the party would split between its "cotton" and "conscience" wings. As a consolation prize to slavery opponents, the party searched for a vice presidential nominee who was more aligned with their views. Daniel Webster was offered the spot but refused, growling that Taylor was nothing but "an illiterate frontier colonel." A New York ally of Millard Fillmore's brought up his name, and the Whigs selected him as their candidate. As with so many other tickets, it was hoped that Fillmore's contrast in beliefs, style, and geographic origin with the presidential nominee would broaden the ticket's appeal.

Both major parties—the Whigs and the Democrats—avoided a platform statement on the contentious slavery-extension issue in order to preserve their national unity. But the issue hung over the campaign like a great, low cloud. The United States had made massive territorial gains in the wake of the Mexican War, and an argument raged over whether slavery should be allowed in these new territories. The Wilmot Proviso, which would have forbidden it, had been defeated in the Senate two years earlier. A third party added to the turbulence. A coalition of abolitionists, "Barn Burners," Conscience Whigs, and others had formed the Free-Soil Party led by former President Martin Van Buren.

It proved to be a close, bitter race between Zachary Taylor and Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, the Democratic candidate. Charges and countercharges flew on each man's stand on slavery. Both struggled to neutralize the hopelessly divisive issue. Van Buren siphoned off enough votes in his native New York to hand the critical state to Taylor. Farmers and other working-class voters saw in Old Rough and Ready much of what they had liked in Andrew Jackson. It proved to be just enough. Zachary Taylor won with a 5 percent margin in the popular vote and a four-to-three ratio in the Electoral College.

In retrospect, the Whigs of 1848 repeated the mistake they had made with William Henry Harrison eight years earlier. They had gained the White House by running a colorful but politically undistinguished war hero, distinctly showing his age by election day. Within a year and a half, the Whigs would see the same unfortunate result with Zachary Taylor.

An Odd Match: Taylor and Fillmore

The new vice president and President were an odd match. The tall, gentlemanly, well-dressed Millard Fillmore looked every bit the statesman. Zachary Taylor stood on unusually short legs—during the Mexican War, he needed help climbing onto his horse, which he rode sidesaddle into battle; Old Rough and Ready was craggy, unkempt, and unlearned. The two had not met until after the election, and they did not hit it off when they did. Once in Washington, Taylor wasted no time shutting Millard Fillmore out of his administration. Other Whig leaders such as Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward found favor with the new President and convinced him to deny Fillmore most patronage appointments in New York. The vice president's key ally, Henry Clay, was not offered a cabinet post. As vice president and thus president of the Senate, Fillmore held the tie-breaking vote in Senate sessions. In fulfilling these responsibilities, he was respected for his wisdom, humor, and ability to accommodate diverse views there. But he had virtually no role in Taylor's presidency.

Compromise of 1850

The critical issue of slavery continued to plague Taylor's administration. In particular, discussion focused on whether to adopt the Compromise of 1850. The election of 1848 had turned on the question of whether to allow slavery in the lands gained by the United States in the war with Mexico, and little had happened since Taylor's election to cool the debate on this matter. In his annual message of December 1849, he had dismayed fellow Southerners by announcing his support for admitting California and New Mexico into the Union as free states. In the Senate, Henry Clay bundled several provisions into a single omnibus bill that would attempt a compromise on the slavery issue. Clay's bill entailed the organization of Utah and New Mexico Territories on a popular sovereignty basis, California statehood, and the prohibition of public slave auctions in the District of Columbia. For slaveholders, it also offered a new fugitive slave law. This piece of legislation decreed that runaway slaves apprehended anywhere in the United States would be returned to their masters if new federally appointed commissioners decided that they were in fact fugitive slaves. It denied any due process to such slaves and allowed authorities to arrest African American suspects and return them to slave territory—whether the arrested person was an actual slave or not. Finally, it empowered federal marshals to enforce the law. The Fugitive Slave Law also cited severe penalties for noncompliance. The act horrified Americans openly opposed to slavery, and they vowed to fight its passage.

Clay urged Taylor to join the debate over the compromise, but the President wanted little part of it. Seeming to take a wait-and-see approach to the legislative fight, he simply contested some of the positions of the compromise and threatened a veto. Gradually, support in Congress for the compromise lost steam, and the omnibus bill was tied up in endless Senate debates by mid-1850. America was no closer to deciding the slavery issue than it had been before.

Fillmore watched much of the debate from the sidelines, isolated from the President's administration. Events, however, took a rapid turn. At a Fourth of July celebration in 1850 on the White House lawn, the President sought relief from the oppressive heat and humidity by gulping iced beverages and a large bowl of cherries. He suddenly began to experience intestinal cramps. It is likely that either the ice or the fruit was contaminated with cholera, a stomach ailment caused by unsanitary conditions that could—and frequently did—kill a person in scant hours in those times. Physicians, resorting to the medical practices of the day, prescribed bleedings and opiates that only made matters worse. Within five days, Zachary Taylor was dead. He had been President for just sixteen months. The presidency had suddenly fallen upon a forgotten man. Millard Fillmore, who had been all but banished from the Taylor administration and held opinions very different from the late chief executive, was suddenly the President of the United States. He immediately replaced Taylor's cabinet with proponents of the compromise and threw the full weight of his new administration behind its passage.

The Campaign and Election of 1852

Weary from the epic compromise fight and the criticism that it had drawn toward him, Millard Fillmore showed little enthusiasm for serving another term. He did no campaigning and did not even disclose his intentions on running again. In March of 1851, using an editor allied to him, Fillmore planted a report in a newspaper that he was retiring from office. Then Daniel Webster announced his candidacy. The candidacy of his own secretary of state did not greatly trouble the President; indeed, he was honestly sympathetic towards Webster's longtime ambition for the office. Webster's announcement, however, comprised the last straw for Fillmore, and the President tried to formally withdraw from consideration until others in the cabinet talked him out of it.

The Whig Party was fragmenting over slavery disputes. None of the leading candidates—Fillmore, Webster, and General Winfield Scott—greatly appealed to a majority of the Whig Party members. Fillmore was disliked by abolitionists for enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law. Webster was aged and unwell. Southern Whigs disliked Scott, who had served as President Jackson's personal emissary in 1832 when Jackson threatened to use federal troops in South Carolina in a tariff and secession dispute.

The Whigs opened their convention in Baltimore in mid-June of 1852. Fillmore led in the early balloting. Webster's cause was quickly seen as hopeless, and if he had given the President his delegates, Fillmore would have ended the argument quickly. Webster, however, stubbornly clung to his delegates, and they slowly began to defect to Winfield Scott. On the fifty-third ballot, Scott wrapped up the nomination.

The convention was the end of the Whig Party as a national force. With Southern opposition to Scott so strong, he was unelectable. Many Southern Whigs abstained and a few threw their support behind the Democratic candidate, Franklin Pierce, and the slim, moody New Englander won the election with ease.

When Zachary Taylor became ill on July 4, 1850, Millard Fillmore knew that the President was dying. When the President finally passed away, Fillmore passed a sleepless night, brooding over what lay ahead. The nation was embroiled in a sectional crisis of the first order, and all eyes would be on the new President. At noon the next day, he took the oath of office in the Capitol and left without giving a speech.

Compromise Choices

Fillmore's views on the all-encompassing slavery issue were markedly different from his predecessor's, and everyone in Taylor's cabinet knew it. Days before the President's death, Fillmore had bluntly told Taylor that if the Compromise of 1850 came to a vote in the Senate, he would cast his vice presidential tie-breaking vote to pass it if necessary. The cabinet, who had barely spoken to Fillmore up to this point, saw the writing on the wall and unanimously resigned; the new President curtly accepted them all. In days, America was governed by an entirely new order. Fillmore appointed to his cabinet Whigs who shared his pro-Union, pro-compromise views.

His longtime ally Henry Clay, aged and exhausted, readied himself for a final battle in Congress. At the end of July, not one month since Taylor had helped stall the compromise, Senator Clay introduced a modified omnibus combination of bills that comprised it. Fillmore pressured Congress to consider the original bill rather than the watered-down version. The angry tone of the national debate increased. In Congress, forces for and against slavery fought over every word of the bill. Both sides chipped away at the bill's provisions, and support for it collapsed, much to Fillmore's deep disappointment. Clay, wasted by the struggle, left Washington, D.C. A new player, from the opposing party, entered the fray. Stephen Douglas, age thirty-seven, had headed the committee charged with partitioning new American territories while serving in the House. Elected to the Senate in 1847, he now headed its Committee on Territories.

Instead of fighting one great battle, Douglas would fight five smaller ones. The compromise was reworked into a quintet of bills, with each having just enough support from one section of the country or another to assure passage. One by one, the bills squeaked through Congress. As a result, Texas settled its border dispute with New Mexico and received $10 million from the United States as compensation for conceding territories. California gained statehood as a free state. New Mexico and Utah were granted territorial status, without specifying any policy on slavery for either, affirming the principle of popular sovereignty in deciding the issue (i.e., local determination). The Fugitive Slave Law, which would later provoke rancorous debate, occasioned almost no debate in the Senate or the House and passed with surprising ease. The final bill involved the nation's capital itself. Slave trading, but not slavery itself, became illegal in the District of Columbia. Congress worked well into the fall, in its longest session to date. Fillmore signed the bills, considering their passage a triumph of interparty cooperation that had kept the Union intact.

Public Reaction

Many Americans, however, did not see it that way. For those with strong feelings about slavery, the compromise seemed to offer something for everyone to dislike. Northern abolitionists were enraged by the Fugitive Slave Law, and several states subsequently passed laws prohibiting its enforcement. Southern proslavery forces, meanwhile, were dismayed by the restrictions on the practice in California and the District of Columbia. They also doubted the government's commitment to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law.

Fillmore struggled to keep these disparate factions appeased. Responding to Southern pressure and secession threats, he decided to vigorously enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1851, a Maryland man combed Pennsylvania, hunting down runaway slaves that he owned. One of these slaves killed his master when found by him. The incident led Fillmore to support treason charges against over forty persons—both black and white—supposedly connected with the killing. A Supreme Court judge, however, ruled that opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law did not qualify as a treasonous act. Later in his administration, Fillmore sought to enforce the law in his native New York, ordering the apprehension of an escaped slave hiding there. A band of armed abolitionists rescued the slave from authorities, however, and attempts to prosecute any of them failed.

Incidents like these convinced many Northerners that Fillmore was appeasing the South. Antislavery politicians made considerable inroads to power at the state and local levels. To counteract Northern uneasiness, Fillmore ordered General Winfield Scott to strengthen forts in South Carolina to give Southerners second thoughts about possible secession schemes. Meanwhile, legislatures in Northern states passed "personal liberty" laws which forbade state judges to assist slaveholders and extended to blacks the right to trial by jury in these disputes. Unfortunately, by trying to please everyone, Millard Fillmore, it seemed, could please no one. The Whig Party began to fall apart from the strain of all the conflicting points of view on slavery.

Despite the congressional debates that raged on over the issue of slavery during Millard Fillmore's term in office, the President had a foreign policy agenda that emphasized expanding trade while limiting American commitments outside the Western Hemisphere.

Asia Pacific: Japan and Hawaii

For nearly three centuries, Japan had been a completely isolated nation. American shipping interests, however, identified the nation as a prime location to stop and resupply their ships on the way into China and Southeast Asia. Great Britain's opening of China some years earlier had illustrated the benefits of new trade markets. Assisted by Secretary of State Daniel Webster, Fillmore ordered a trade mission to Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry. Although the mission was not fully completed until the succeeding administration of Franklin Pierce, the policy did open Japan for trade with the rest of the world. The consequences of this mission, both positive and negative, were the work of Fillmore.

Elsewhere in the Pacific, Fillmore showed strong resolve in preventing the Hawaiian Islands from falling into either French or English hands. When the French government tried to force an annexation agreement on Hawaii's king, Fillmore warned Napoleon III in no uncertain terms that the United States would not stand for any such action.

Central America and the Caribbean

Taylor had signed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 with England. This agreement prevented both the U.S. and Great Britain from claiming further territories in Central America. Both nations, however, continued to angle for influence in the region and to control the construction of a future canal project joining the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans there. Fillmore dispatched warships to protect American merchant vessels from British interference. He also took a hard stand against private American interests sending mercenaries of their own into the region to gain influence.

Agricultural interests in the American South, growing weary of defending their slave-reliant economy to the rest of the nation, had been interested in expanding their slave-based economy into the Caribbean nation of Cuba for years. Taylor's predecessor, James Polk, had tried in vain to purchase the great island from the Spanish. Early in the Taylor administration, a Venezuelan named Narciso Lopez had raised an army of several hundred Americans, mostly adventurous and speculative Southerners, with the intention of invading Cuba. Federal authorities attempted to prevent Lopez from leaving American shores with this force, but he managed to sail out of New Orleans. What followed was remarkably like the Bay of Pigs invasion a century later and equally ill-fated. This "filibustering" expedition managed to land in Cuba, but it failed to generate a rebellion. A second invasion during the summer of 1851 eluded Fillmore's attempts to stop it. This time, the invader's luck ran out completely. Routed on the beaches by the Spanish, the insurgents were either executed—their leader, Lopez, among them—or enslaved.

The incident, rightly or not, was blamed largely on Fillmore. Southerners condemned the President for not supporting the invasion; Northern Democrats criticized Fillmore for his subsequent apology to the Spanish. Meanwhile, the British and French sent warships to guarantee Spanish sovereignty over Cuba. Fillmore had his Secretary of State Edward Everett, who replaced Webster in 1852, warn the Europeans that under certain circumstances control of the island "might be almost essential to our [America's] safety." This tough talk against the European powers managed to win Fillmore a respite from his critics.

Eastern Europe

Fillmore did little to align the United States against repressive imperial governments in Europe. When Austria protested that the United States was siding with Hungarians in their attempts to free themselves from the Hapsburg empire, Fillmore enunciated the doctrine from his annual message of 1850 that the United States believed in the inalienable right of each people to establish "that form of government which it may deem most conducive to the happiness and prosperity of its citizens. . . ." Unfortunately, he did not back these words up with concrete actions. In 1851, Congress invited the Hungarian patriot Kossuth to visit the United States. Fillmore and Secretary of State Webster, worried that the American people might want the U.S. to back Kossuth openly, warned him at a state dinner that although they supported his efforts at national liberation, the effort would have to be carried out solely by the Hungarians. Democrats, in turn, created a "Young America" movement to support Eastern European liberation, but it too was designed more to exploit domestic politics than to influence events in Europe.

Millard Fillmore and his family welcomed the escape from Washington after Pierce's election; they had never liked the city. Abigail Fillmore had been so unwell during most of the administration that her daughter, Mary, had been pressed into hostess duty for White House functions. The city, however, took a final, terrible swipe at the family. Abigail Fillmore, compelled to sit outside for hours on Pierce's cold, wet inauguration day, caught pneumonia and died less than a month later. Not long afterward, Fillmore's daughter, Mary, only twenty-two-years-old, died of cholera. The former President was devastated by the twin calamities, and he searched for something to take his mind off them.

Unsurprisingly, Fillmore found solace in politics. Countless former Whigs were now without a party, and some had organized a new one. It had the strange name of the Know-Nothing Party, and its aims were less than savory. Targeting native-born Americans made uneasy by the hordes of immigrants now flocking to the United States, the Know-Nothings advocated immigration restrictions and a waiting period for new citizens to vote. Irish Catholic immigrants, perceived as a threat to the existing labor force, were a prime target. Fillmore refused to be part of the anti-immigrant message dispensed by the party, but the Know-Nothings made him their presidential candidate in 1856, as did the remnants of the Whig Party. The former President received only 21 percent of the vote, but it prevented another candidate he deeply opposed—John C. Frémont of the new Republican Party—from winning against Democrat James Buchanan.

Fillmore would make no more attempts at political office. He retired in Buffalo and married Caroline McIntosh, a wealthy Albany widow, in early 1858. Fillmore was thereafter active in many causes and charities. When the Civil War erupted three years later, Fillmore became a staunch Unionist, helping to organize enlistment and war-financing drives. The last Whig President died of a stroke in March 1874, firmly established as Buffalo's leading citizen. Some, however, never forgot—or forgave—Millard Fillmore's support of the Fugitive Slave Law. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, a mob descended on Fillmore's opulent home and smudged black paint on the building.

Millard Fillmore did not smoke, drink, or gamble in an era when almost every American man partook in at least one of these vices. With the recent death of President Taylor and a wife who was often unwell, social occasions at the Fillmore White House were few and far between. The family preferred to take quiet refuge upstairs, where their daughter, Mary, would play the piano while others read or worked.

Washington in the mid-nineteenth century was a far from hospitable place. Nearby swamps teemed with mosquitoes bearing malaria and other diseases. Sanitation was poor, and in the summer, the city became nearly unbearable with humidity. The White House itself was in poor condition and uncomfortable to live in. The mansion had fallen into grave disrepair during the 1840s—there were annoyed accounts of springs in battered furniture stabbing guests who tried to sit down in the White House. Not surprisingly, the Fillmores treasured escaping to the countryside, and they retreated there as often as possible.

The United States in the 1850s was rapidly becoming an industrial power. Clipper ships had mastered the dangerous voyage around Cape Horn, which opened up the West and the Pacific to trade from the East. Whaling vessels brought the oil needed for industry and households from eastern coastal waters. Wages were increasing, but unions were organizing the printers, hatmakers, and ironworkers to press for better working conditions. While craftsmen were being organized, most factory workers were not. The price of wheat and other crops was rising, luring farmers from the East and Northern Europe to the Midwest and prairie states.

Immigration and Migration

Immigration ran at a high level during the Taylor-Fillmore era, with more than 50,000 people a year entering the country. Most new arrivals were from Germany, England, and Ireland. Legal restrictions on immigration would not come until the Civil War. Some eastern states began levying taxes on the new arrivals, but these were disallowed by the Supreme Court in 1849. Between the mid-1840s and mid-1850s, nearly three million people from other lands emigrated to America.

By the time Fillmore was President, the discovery of gold in California had led nearly 100,000 Americans to try their luck there. Although few found riches, many stayed, and, aided by rapidly developing communication and transportation technologies, America became a truly bicoastal nation. Economic opportunity drove the rapid development of San Francisco, a small village that was transformed into a city of more than 25,000 people during Fillmore's administration.

Deseret, the home of the Mormons, was organized as Utah Territory in 1850, and Fillmore appointed the Mormon leader Brigham Young as the territorial governor. Under Young, federal authority remained nonexistent, and Mormons ignored the decisions of federal judges.

Status of Women and African Americans

The same year Millard Fillmore was nominated as vice president, a lawyer's daughter named Elizabeth Cady Stanton assembled a convention of her own. At the Seneca Falls Convention in New York, she worked with Lucretia Mott and other activists on a statement of principles that began the modern women's suffrage and civil rights movement.

During Millard Fillmore's administration, Uncle Tom's Cabin, the definitive abolitionist literary work by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was published; it shed new light on "the peculiar institution" of slavery and fueled antislavery sentiment throughout the North. In addition, the 1850s saw the peak of the Underground Railroad, which assisted African Americans fleeing enslavement. Although Congress reached a compromise over slavery in 1850, substantial minorities of the population in both North and South condemned it.

It is often said that the best compromise is the type that pleases none of the compromisers. By the end of his presidency, Millard Fillmore knew this all too well. By championing the Compromise of 1850, he can be credited for keeping America from civil war for more than a decade. The political cost to himself, however, was total. Slavery was, like abortion today, the type of moral issue that terrifies politicians because it offers no easy middle ground. Debate in Congress over the issue during the Taylor-Fillmore term was so intense that fistfights were common in Congress, and many of its members carried pistols into the House and Senate chambers. With this in mind, it is far from surprising that there were no Presidents elected to a second term between those of Jackson and Lincoln. In fairness to men like Fillmore, they were simply prey for the most heated American social debate of the nineteenth century.

From the modern perspective, Fillmore seems almost an invisible man among Presidents. Books on him are all but nonexistent. But his accomplishments, while not great, were nonetheless substantial. In addition to the fine legislative engineering that passed the compromise, Fillmore also conducted a disciplined, principled foreign policy. He handled flash points in Cuba, Hawaii, Eastern Europe, and Central America very well.

On the other hand, it should be noted that for his entire political career, Millard Fillmore was vulnerable to fringe causes. Falling for the old American fear of secret organizations, his first party was the distrustful Anti-Masonic movement, and he blamed his loss in the New York governor's race on "foreign Catholics." Moreover, Fillmore ended his career heading the Know-Nothings, a party formed to oppose immigration. These are not, it may be argued, the choices of an exemplary mind. When he died, he had been utterly forgotten by the American people: President Grant issued only a perfunctory statement on his death, and there was no mourning by the American people.

Any assessment of a President who served a century and a half ago must be refracted through a consideration of the interesting times in which he lived. Fillmore's political career encompassed the tortuous course toward the two-party system that we know today. The Whigs were not cohesive enough to survive the slavery imbroglio, while parties like the Anti-Masonics and Know-Nothings were too extremist. When, as President, Fillmore sided with proslavery elements in ordering enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, he all but guaranteed that he would be the last Whig President. The first modern two-party system of Whigs and Democrats had succeeded only in dividing the nation in two by the 1850s, and seven years later, the election of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, would guarantee civil war.

Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, came to office during a period of growing tension between the North and South. A politician of limited ability, Pierce was behind one of the most crucial pieces of legislation in American history. Although he did not author the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he did encourage its passage by Congress. And that piece of legislation set the nation on its path to civil war.

Like many American politicians, Franklin Pierce's career was aided by his father, a two-term governor of New Hampshire. Before he was thirty, Franklin Pierce had served in the New Hampshire legislature and had been elected to the U.S. Congress where he served as both a congressman and senator. Bored and lonely in Washington, the young congressman developed a drinking problem and a reputation as a gossipy Washington insider. In an attempt to settle down, the handsome, socially gregarious Pierce married Jane Means Appleton. Jane Pierce was her husband's opposite; she was painfully shy, deeply religious, often in bad health, and a strong advocate of the temperance movement. She detested Washington and refused to live there, even after Pierce became a U.S. senator in 1837. Indeed, Jane's disgust with the political life in Washington must have been behind Pierce's decision to resign from the Senate in 1841. Subsequently, Franklin Pierce served in the Mexican-American War, and in something of a surprise was elected President in 1852. After his presidency he retired to Concord, New Hampshire, where he died in 1869.

Born on November 23, 1804, Franklin Pierce, though by no means wealthy, had more advantages than most young boys in rural New Hampshire. His father, Benjamin Pierce, had led the local militia to victories in the American Revolution, and as a result, he enjoyed a status in the area of Hillsborough that gave him influence in local politics. Both he and his wife Anna Kendrick's families had been in America since the early Puritan settlements of the 1620s. Like other ambitious parents, Benjamin and Anna wanted their eight children to have a better education than their own.

Franklin attended local schools until age twelve when he was sent to private academies. At fifteen, he entered Bowdoin College in Maine where he made many friends, including a budding young writer named Nathaniel Hawthorne. At first, young Franklin enjoyed the social life at Bowdoin so much that his schoolwork took second priority. Soon he was last in his class. He gradually began to apply himself to his studies and by graduation in 1824, he ranked fifth in his class.

Rapid Rise to National Politics

While at Bowdoin, Pierce had honed his public speaking, which made him a natural for the legal profession. In 1829, he was elected to the state legislature, two years after his father won election to the governorship. Attractive and well-connected, the popular Pierce was chosen Speaker of the House in 1831. Both Franklin Pierce and his father were fervent supporters of Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, whose modest origins and country manners inspired great affection from farmers and the working class. Both men rejoiced when "Old Hickory" was elected President in 1828. Jacksonian Democrats were the rising party and in 1832, in the same election that gave Old Hickory his second term, Franklin Pierce—still not thirty years old—was elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he voted the Democratic Party line on nearly all issues.

Life in Washington took its toll on Pierce. The city in the 1830s was an unpleasant place with ill-smelling swamps and political intrigue. Politicians serving there lived mostly in shabby boardinghouses. Bored and homesick, many found comfort in alcohol. Drinking quickly became a problem for Pierce. Before long, stories of his partying and drunken escapades were a staple of the capital's grapevine.

In 1834, the congressman married Jane Means Appleton, the daughter of Jesse Appleton, who had been president of Bowdoin College, Pierce's alma mater. Franklin and Jane Pierce seemingly had little in common, and the marriage would sometimes be a troubled one. The bride's family members were staunch Whigs, a party largely formed to oppose Andrew Jackson, whom Pierce revered. Socially, Jane Pierce was reserved and shy, the polar opposite of her new husband. Above all, she was a committed devotee of the temperance movement. She detested Washington and usually refused to live there, even after Franklin Pierce became a U.S. senator in 1837. Jane Appleton and Franklin Pierce had three children, only one of whom survived early childhood.

As a senator, Pierce's legislative record was no more distinguished than it had been when he was a U.S. representative. No important bills bore his name, and his personal convictions followed the Jacksonian positions—the use of hard money, opposition to the United States Bank, and suspicion of internal improvements. Only one cause seemed to inspire any real passion in him: opposition to the abolitionist movement. Many of Pierce's best friends on the Washington party circuit were southerners, and he came to sympathize with their proslavery views. One of these, future Confederate president Jefferson Davis, became his closest political ally. By 1841, Pierce and his wife had had enough of Washington, and he resigned from the Senate, moving his family back to New Hampshire.

Skilled Attorney and Politico

In his thirties, Pierce stopped drinking and joined the temperance movement. He then led a successful drive to outlaw liquor in his new hometown of Concord. He opened a law practice there as well, and with his skill as a public speaker and his local fame, he was an immediate success as a trial lawyer. Courts of law were a prime form of entertainment, and Franklin Pierce was a star in this setting during the 1840s. Citizens from all over New Hampshire fought for a place in his courtrooms, and he seldom disappointed them. Pierce had little interest in the drab bookwork of the law, but he was a master at assessing a jury and then appealing to its emotions. He took high-profile cases and consequently his fame spread. He also remained involved with politics, managing Democrat James K. Polk's successful bid for the White House in New Hampshire. The grateful new President offered several patronage positions that Pierce refused.

Mexican War Military Service

Aware of the positive effect of military service on his father's political success, Franklin Pierce saw an opportunity in the Mexican-American War. He helped enlist men into the New Hampshire Volunteers and was himself a private. Using his connections, he appealed to President James Polk for a commission. The President repaid Pierce's old campaign favors. By the time the force sailed for the Mexican shores of Veracruz in mid-1847, Pierce was a brigadier general commanding over two thousand men, though he had no military experience whatsoever.

The American commander for this invasion force was General Winfield Scott, seemingly larger than life (six and a half feet tall and three hundred pounds), who insisted on by-the-book discipline and protocol that inspired the nickname "Old Fuss and Feathers." Despite decisive victories in northern Mexico by General Zachary Taylor, the Mexican government refused to agree to American demands, and as a result, Pierce's forces joined with Scott's at the city of Puebla in May 1847, after a 150-mile march from Veracruz during which they were frequently harassed by Mexican guerrillas. The combined force then set out for Mexico City.

In August, the army won two battles against Mexican forces southwest of Mexico City. Unfortunately, the war soon proved less than kind to the inexperienced Brigadier General Pierce. At the Battle of Contreras on August 19, his horse stumbled. Pierce was thrown onto the pommel of his saddle and fell off his horse, crushing his leg. He passed out from the pain and some of the men under his command began to break ranks and flee. The injured Pierce was able to ride again within a month but he arrived too late to participate in decisive victory at the Battle of Chapultepec in September 1847. Some soldiers, perhaps resentful of a political general like Pierce, began referring to him behind his back as "Fainting Frank." The unfair allegations later followed him into presidential politics. Pierce returned home to New Hampshire at war's end. His résumé now included a war record and the title "Brigadier General Franklin Pierce."

Building a Political Career

After his return, Pierce, already a well-known lawyer, was active in New Hampshire's Democratic Party and became its undisputed leader.

By the election year of 1852, the issue of slavery in the territories divided the nation, with Southerners insisting that they should be allowed to take their slaves into any new territories, and a growing group of Northerners committed to free soil without the competition of slaves. Both Democrats and Whigs found it more and more difficult to appeal across the sectional divide. In order to protect the South, the Democratic Nominating Convention required a two-thirds majority of votes for President. But a proslavery Northerner might attract both sides.

Franklin Pierce was that man. Nominated in 1852, after the convention deadlocked for 48 ballots, Pierce ran againt the Whig General Winfield Scott, his commander in the Mexican War. Historians agree that "Fainting Frank" did not so much win the election; rather, "Old Fuss and Feathers" bungled the campaign with long, uninspiring speeches. More importantly, the Whig party was losing popularity, and Scott was its last presidential candidate.

Like most Americans, Pierce remained firmly opposed to the abolition of slavery in the states where it already existed. He also upheld the right of Americans to own property, even human property. And he took Southern positions on the right of Southerners to take slaves into new territories, particularly Kansas. He firmly supported the Compromise of 1850, which included the Fugitive Slave Act, the end of the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and the admission of California as a free state.

The Campaign and Election of 1852:

In preparing for the 1852 presidential election, the Democratic Party confronted a dilemma. Every leading Democratic presidential candidate—James Buchanan, Lewis Cass, William Marcy, and Stephen A. Douglas—faced strong opposition from one faction of the party or another. At their convention, held in Baltimore in early June, none of these men could secure the two-thirds majority of delegates needed for the nomination. Ballot after ballot produced only more hostility within the divided party, and a deadlock ensued.

After thirty-four ballots, it became obvious that a new candidate was needed. Clearly, a political figure who was not so well-known was needed—a dark-horse, as James K. Polk had been in 1844. The nominee would have to be pleasant and accommodating to all the party's factions. Above all, his beliefs would have to run against the grain of his home region. A proslavery Southerner or an antislavery Northerner would never get two-thirds of the delegates to vote for him. A proslavery Northerner, however, might appease both sides. Pierce's political machine in New Hampshire had sensed this, and had begun quietly working the convention floor, among Southerners in particular. On the thirty-fifth ballot, Franklin Pierce's name was placed in nomination. Virginia gave him his first support, with all fifteen of its votes.

The fact that many of the delegates had never even heard of Pierce helped. Having few enemies, nor indeed any reputation, Pierce could be molded by his supporters into whatever the delegates were looking for in a candidate. Handsome, sociable, a fine speaker, a Mexican-American War veteran—above all a man not forceful enough to ruffle anyone's feathers—Franklin Pierce was the ideal candidate. Weary of fighting, the Democrats handed Pierce the nomination on the forty-eighth ballot. A senator from Alabama, William Rufus King, was suggested for vice president.

Two weeks later, the Whigs met in Baltimore as well. The incumbent President Millard Fillmore ruined his chances for another term with his support of the controversial Compromise of 1850. Finally, on the fifty-third ballot, the Whigs nominated General Winfield Scott, Pierce's commander during the Mexican-American War.

Scott did not run an effective campaign. Ignoring orders from his Whig handlers to remain silent on the slavery issue, his acceptance of the nomination voiced agreement with the party's pro-Compromise platform. Support for him, always lukewarm at best in the South, cooled even further as Southerners defected to the Democratic party and voted for Pierce.

Personal Political Contest

With neither side eager to discuss issues relating to either their party's platforms or slavery, the contest turned personal. Reviving the old "Fainting Frank" stories, Whigs accused Pierce of cowardice during the Mexican-American War, and of drunkenness as well. Democrats fired back, dredging up a decades-old story of Scott refusing a dueling challenge from war hero and former President Andrew Jackson. They also tried to paint Scott as a would-be military dictator.

Unlike his rival, Pierce did no campaigning whatsoever, which probably helped his cause. It is probable that his wife's feelings about his return to politics had something to do with his low profile, although few candidates for the presidency in this period in American history did any campaigning. Jane Pierce had been disgusted by her husband's candidacy and did not welcome the prospect of returning to Washington. Before the convention, Pierce had assured her that he was not seeking the nomination; when she received the news that he had accepted it, she fainted. Afterwards, she accused her husband of lying to her about his political aspirations.

Pierce left electioneering to others, including his old college classmate Nathaniel Hawthorne. The author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables agreed to write the traditional flattering biography of Pierce.

Modern historians consider 1852 less a campaign that Pierce won than one that Scott lost. One newspaper of the day called it the most "ludicrous, ridiculous, and uninteresting presidential campaign" ever. Whatever the truth of these speculations, Pierce won the election easily in a contest in which nearly 70 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots. Scott carried only four states in the electoral college, losing even in his native Virginia. Pierce had majorities in both houses of Congress, and hopes grew for a cooling of the sectional disagreements dividing Americans. Pierce was the youngest President to date.

A Sad Presidency

Two months before he was inaugurated, Pierce lost his only surviving child (two others had already died) in a train accident witnessed by both parents. Jane Pierce never recovered. She lived in the White House as a recluse, while the President remained distracted from his duties. Jane Pierce was the most tragic and unhappy First Lady in American history. To White House visitors she seemed like a sad ghost. Social functions were almost unheard of during the first half of the Pierce administration, and one official noted in his diary that "everything in that mansion seems cold and cheerless." There were other reasons for sadness in the White House when two of Pierce's closest political allies died.

The bitter, windy March cold that settled over Washington, D.C., on inauguration day seemed fitting for Franklin Pierce, who mourned the tragic loss of his son two months earlier. Using his renowned oratorical skills, the new President delivered his twenty-minute speech without notes. "It is a relief to feel that no heart but my own can know the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I have been borne to a position so suitable for others rather than desirable for myself," he told the sparse, somber crowd. "You have summoned me in my weakness; you must sustain me by your strength." While Franklin Pierce took the inaugural oath, his wife huddled in a hotel room, writing apologetic letters to her dead son. In a portent of the future, no inaugural ball was held.

With such personal tragedies to deal with, it is not surprising that Pierce was distracted from his work. His cabinet appointments pleased almost no one. The choice of Mississippi's Jefferson Davis as secretary of war drew particular criticism from many antislavery supporters. By handing patronage to politicians with extreme political viewpoints, Pierce quickly alienated his party's moderates. Then, his vice president, William Rufus King, died of tuberculosis.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

It would be the President's old rival, Democrat Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who damaged the Pierce administration beyond repair. For decades, America's most hotly debated issue was slavery in the territories. As the country expanded, especially as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and land taken from Mexico after the war in 1848, a debate ensued over whether each new territory or state should permit the practice. The South insisted on an equal number of slave and free states, because this would provide protection in the U.S. Senate. Pierce's predecessor, Millard Fillmore, had worked with Douglas to push the Compromise of 1850 through Congress. Their efforts had been directed toward appeasing both sides on the issue of slavery and keeping the Union intact.

The area comprising Kansas and Nebraska had been largely unsettled when Pierce took office, but there were plenty of settlers, entrepreneurs, and supporters of slavery and free soil poised to move in. The problem lay in the new territory's slavery status. Earlier legislation—the Missouri Compromise of 1820—banned slavery in the region, but Southerners wanted this overturned. In January 1854, Stephen Douglas, chairing a Senate committee that oversaw new states and territories, introduced legislation that established popular sovereignty—that is, letting local white citizens decide the slavery issue themselves. Douglas had personal reasons to settle the issue of slavery in the territories: he hoped that the newly proposed transcontinental railroad would adopt a northerly route through the West, and would originate in Douglas's hometown of Chicago, thus ensuring his political clout and wealth.

Pierce at first urged Douglas to leave the decision to the Supreme Court, which he believed would declare the various compromises that had banned slavery from territories unconstitutional. In this manner, the courts, and not the Congress or President, would be blamed by Northerners. Douglas refused, claiming that only a congressional repeal of the Missouri Compromise would keep the South in the Union. In a meeting with leading senators, including Jefferson Davis and Douglas, Pierce agreed under pressure to this explicit repeal of the prohibition against slavery in the territories, north of the latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes. After bitter debate, Congress passed Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854, and Pierce signed it.

The act was one of the most influential pieces of legislation in American history. In its wake, one party, the Whigs, was destroyed, while a new and strictly Northern party, the Republicans, came into being, soon to be led by a lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. On the other hand, the Democrats were gravely weakened, especially Douglas and Pierce, as Northern Democrats split over the measure. Intended to lessen controversy, the act did the opposite, increasing national debates and tensions over slavery between North and South.

Bloodshed in Kansas

The new territory of Kansas quickly became the nation's battleground over slavery. Since the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed popular sovereignty—in this case, white male voters deciding the issue of slavery in the new territories—proslavery agitators streamed into Kansas, determined to influence any election. Abolitionists quickly tried to do the same. With tensions mounting, the proslavery factions installed their own government in the region and demanded federal support. Their antislavery opponents urged the territorial governor appointed by Pierce not to do so, and the governor, Andrew Reeder, seemed sympathetic to the antislavery majority. Proslavery leaders then demanded that Pierce fire Reeder. The President's longtime disdain for abolitionists carried the day, and he adhered to the proslavery faction's wishes, appointing Wilson Shannon, an Ohioan with proslavery sympathies. Enraged free-soil residents then tried to install their own government, and by the end of Pierce's term, the Kansas territory was the scene of violence and bloodshed, hence its nickname, "Bleeding Kansas." Violence occurred in May 1856 when the town of Lawrence was looted and burned by proslavery "border ruffians" from Missouri. A few days later, militant abolitionists under John Brown murdered five proslavery men at Pottawatomie in retaliation for attacks on free-soil communities. Pierce initially resisted sending federal troops to restore order.

The situation in Kansas and the ongoing debate over slavery prevented Pierce from attending to other matters, although nineteenth-century Presidents considered themselves mere administrators. Still, for his failure to solve the slavery issue, the American public increasingly saw him as indecisive and ineffective.

Pierce considered his presidency a work in progress, and he desperately wanted a second term to make amends for his earlier shortcomings. His party, however, would have none of it. His poor handling of domestic and foreign affairs did little to secure him support in the Democratic Party. Consequently, his party abandoned him as a presidential candidate in 1856 and chose James Buchanan.

Like several of his predecessors, Franklin Pierce found foreign policy a welcome change from the domestic conflicts over slavery. Unfortunately, his lack of leadership and his tendency to give in to pressure groups hampered his effectiveness in the foreign arena.

Even though the Mexican War had ended, there were border disputes that had to be settled. Land that now comprises lower Arizona and New Mexico was part of a proposed southern route for a transcontinental railroad. Pierce was convinced by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to send Senator James Gadsden (who had personal interests in the rail route) to negotiate the Gadsden Purchase with Mexico. Under the agreement, the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million to secure the land. The Treaty included a provision allowing the U.S. to build a transoceanic canal across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but this option was never exercised. The acquisition of land in this purchase secured the final boundaries of the continental United States.

Attempt to Acquire Cuba

Far less successful was Pierce's pet cause—the annexation of Cuba. For years, Southerners had coveted the great island as a place to expand their slavery-driven agricultural economy. Failed filibustering expeditions during the Taylor and Fillmore presidencies were evidence of the South's attempts to obtain this slaveholding Caribbean possession of Spain.

Southern interests in Cuba were understandable. After all, that nation allowed slavery and was developing a plantation form of agriculture, and would continue to do so until two decades after the Civil War.

During Pierce's administration, many Americans reasoned that if Cuba were to be purchased from Spain, they would in effect have another slave state. The wrong man was charged with the delicate task of negotiating with Spain's poor but proud king. Pierre Soulé, an overbearing Southerner, had been named Pierce's minister to Spain, with instructions to go as high as $130 million, but Soulé had little patience for the slow ways of the Spanish court. The more he tried to bully Spain into selling Cuba, the more that nation resisted the idea. Soulé even rewrote the treaty to include threats of American military action if Spain did not comply, which only stiffened Spanish resolve. Soulé met with James Buchanan, Pierce's ambassador to England and future President of the United States, and John Mason, the minister to France. Together, they drafted the Ostend Manifesto, a document that set the justifications for American possession. The Manifesto also warned that if Cuba refused America's proposal, "internal peace" in the United States might be threatened by continued Spanish control, since slaves might revolt on the island, threatening the institution of slavery in the U.S. Under such circumstances, America might be required to take control of Cuba. After the document was published, Pierce's secretary of state, William Marcy, was forced to repudiate the Manifesto because of the diplomatic uproar in Europe and in the north that ensued.

England, Central America, and Asia Pacific

While a tariff agreement with Great Britain was reached, Pierce expelled the British ambassador to the U.S. for his recruitment of former British immigrants as soldiers to fight in the Crimean War against Russia. Additionally, the President opposed British settlement in Central America, and he supported American military action to keep that imperialist nation out of a region considered by Americans to be under their control.

In 1856, Pierce recognized a dictatorship in Nicaragua established by William Walker, an American freebooter who had conquered that nation and had begun to introduce slavery. Walker hoped to gain Nicaragua's entry into the Union as a slave state. Walker's control soon angered railroad titan Cornelius Vanderbilt, who intended to build rail lines and a canal in that nation. Vanderbilt pressured Pierce to use the U.S. Navy to force Walker to "surrender" the country. Walker then took his forces to Honduras, where the British navy captured him. He was executed by a Honduran firing squad.

President Millard Fillmore had commissioned Commodore Matthew Perry's exploratory mission to Japan, a nation that had been closed to Europeans for centuries. Jane Pierce, meanwhile, was slowly wasting away from tuberculosis, and Franklin traveled with her to the West Indies in hopes that the warmer climate would benefit her. It did not, and she died in late 1863.