Franklin Pierce

Born: 11/23/1804
Birthplace: Hillsboro, N.H.
Franklin Pierce was born at Hillsboro, N.H., on Nov. 23, 1804. A Bowdoin
graduate, lawyer, and Jacksonian Democrat, he won rapid political advancement
in the party, in part because of the prestige of his father, Gov. Benjamin Pierce.
By 1831 he was Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives; from
1833 to 1837, he served in the federal House and from 1837 to 1842 in the Senate.
His wife, Jane Means Appleton, whom he married in 1834, disliked Washington
and the somewhat dissipated life led by Pierce; in 1842 Pierce resigned from the
Senate and began a successful law practice in Concord, N.H. During the Mexican
War, he was a brigadier general.
Thereafter Pierce continued to oppose antislavery tendencies within the
Democratic Party. As a result, he was the Southern choice to break the deadlock
at the Democratic convention of 1852 and was nominated on the 49th ballot. In
the election, Pierce overwhelmed Gen. Winfield Scott, the Whig candidate.
As president, Pierce followed a course of appeasing the South at home and of
playing with schemes of territorial expansion abroad. The failure of his foreign
and domestic policies prevented his renomination. He died in Concord on Oct. 8,
1869, in relative obscurity.