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Pierce was born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, the son of a former revolutionary war soldier, later a general and governor of the state. He attended Bowdoin College in Maine where he began his lifelong friendship with the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. He became a lawyer and at age 27 was the youngest member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He later served as a member of the US Senate. In 1834 he married Jane Appleton, who had many opposite character traits to her husband.
Pierce served in the Mexican-American War as a brigadier general in the Army. He was later accused by his political enemies of cowardice during the war, but in his memoirs, Ulysses Grant, who was present, disputed this allegation and said that Pierce was a gallant soldier.
When Pierce returned home from the war, his private law practice was so successful that he was offered several important positions, which he turned down. He was nominated as the party's candidate for president on the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. Pierce won by a large majority in the Electoral College, defeating his old commander Winfield Scott.
The Pierces has three sons, all of whom died in infancy. His last born son Benny was killed tragically when the train taking Pierce to his inauguration derailed and eleven year old Benny was decapitated. Jane Pierce saw this as a punishment from God and resented her husband's political ambitions.
As president, Pierce made many divisive decisions which were widely criticized and his popularity in the Northern states declined sharply after he supported the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which replaced the Missouri Compromise and renewed debate over the expansion of slavery in the American West.
Abandoned by his party, Pierce was not renominated to run in the 1856 presidential election. After losing the Democratic nomination, Pierce is quoted as saying "after the presidency, what is there to do but drink?" He struggled with alcoholism and his marriage to Jane Means Appleton Pierce was strained. His reputation was hurt more during the Civil War when his personal correspondence with Confederate President Jefferson Davis was leaked to the press. Pierce died in 1869 from cirrhosis of the liver.
Pierce was one of those northerners (called "doughfaces") who believed that since slavery was condoned in the constitution, southerners were justified for clinging to the institution, even as the rest of the world was rejecting it for its immorality. Pierce believed that it would die through attrition, an opinion which was out of step with contemporary northern beliefs.