1.

2. Franklin Pierce
1853 - 1857
3. Birthplace
1804 Hillsborough, New Hampshire
4. Education
Bowdoin College in Maine
After graduation, studied law
5. 6. Politics
At 24 elected to New Hampshire legislature
Two years later New Hampshire Speaker
1830s went to Washington as a Representative, then as a Senator
7. Mexican War
8. 1852 New Hampshire friends proposed him for the Presidential nomination
9. Platform
Supported the Compromise of 1850
Hostility towards any efforts to agitate slavery question
10. Dark horse
Delegates at the Democratic Convention balloted 48 times and eliminated all the well-known candidates before nominating Pierce
11. 12. President Pierce
Because Democrats stood more firmly for the Compromise than Whigs
and because Whig candidate Gen. Winfield Scott was suspect in the South,
Pierce won with a narrow margin of popular votes
13. Tragic
Two months before he took office, he and his wife saw their 11-year old son killed when their train was wrecked.
14. Inaugural Address
Proclaimed era of peace and prosperity at home and vigor in relations with other nations
US might have to acquire additional possessions for the sake of its own security and would not be deterred by any timid forebodings of evil
Fact: Pierce gave his 3,319-word inaugural address from memory, without the aid of notes
15. Criticism
Northerners accused him of acting as a cats-paw of Southerners eager to extend slavery
Aroused apprehension when he pressured Great Britain to relinquish its special interests along part of the Central American coast
and even more when he tried to persuade Spain to sell Cuba (the Ostend Manifesto document)
16. Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854
Stephen Douglas wanted a railroad from Chicago to California through Nebraska.
He created the Kansas-Nebraska Act which repealed the Missouri Compromise.
17. Gadsden Purchase
Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, advocate of a southern transcontinental route, persuaded Pierce to send James Gadsden to Mexico to buy land for a southern railroad.
Purchased the area making up southern Arizona and part of southern New Mexico for ten million dollars.
18. Returned to New Hampshire
1869 Died of cirrhosis of the liver as a result of years of heavy drinking
19. 20. Franklin Pierce was the first President to have a Christmas tree in the White House