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In 1850, Pierce strongly supported the Missouri Compromise. He said in a speech that he detested slavery as much as any abolitionist, but he saw dissolution of the Union as an even greater evil. He sided with northern Whig Daniel Webster, who many New Englanders regarded as a sellout to southern interests. Pierce tried to convince his brother Henry, a state legislator who was planning to vote for resolutions condemning the compromise, not to do so, saying "if you vote for those resolutions, you are no brother of mine. I will never speak to you again." Henry changed his mind and supported the compromise.
Pierce was elected President in 1852 after winning his party's nomination on the 49th ballot. As President, one of the most controversial issues he faced was whether the newly acquired territories of Kansas and Nebraska would permit slavery. To keep southern support, Senator Stephen Douglas introduced legislation declaring the Missouri Compromise to be invalid. The Douglas bill provided that the residents of the new territories could vote to determine whether they could allow slavery. Douglas and several southern Senators successfully persuaded Pierce to support Douglas' plan.
Settlers on both sides of the slavery issue rushed into the state to be present for the voting. The passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act resulted in so much violence between these two opposing groups that the territory became known as Bleeding Kansas. Pro-slavery forces, many from neighboring Missouri, illegally voted in the elections to set up a pro-slavery government, but Pierce recognized it anyway. When Free-Staters set up a shadow government, called the Topeka Constitution, Pierce termed this an act of "rebellion". He continued to recognize the pro-slavery legislature, which was dominated by Democrats, even after a Congressional investigative committee found its election to have been illegitimate. He dispatched federal troops to break up a meeting of the shadow government in Topeka.
The Kansas–Nebraska Act provoked outrage among northerners, who already viewed Pierce as being in the pocket of slave-holding interests. This contributed to the formation of the Republican Party. Having lost public confidence, Pierce was not nominated by his party for a second term. The issue became so volatile that Pierce hired a full-time bodyguard, becoming the first president to do so.
Pierce completed his term in 1857, and then traveled to Europe with his wife, returning home in 1859 in time to witness the growing sectional crisis between the south and the north. He was critical of northern abolitionists, who he saw at fault for the hard feelings between the two sections. In 1860, many Democrats viewed Pierce as a compromise choice for the presidential nomination as someone who could unite the Northern and Southern wings of the party, but Pierce declined to run.
During the Civil War, Pierce opposed President Abraham Lincoln's order suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Pierce argued that even in a time of war, the country should not abandon its protection of civil liberties. This stand won him admirers with the emerging Northern Peace Democrats, but it it enraged members of the Lincoln administration and supporters of the Union war effort. In 1862 Secretary of State William Seward sent Pierce a letter accusing Pierce of being a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a seditious organization. Seward asked Pierce whether it was true. Outraged, Pierce denied the allegation and demanded that Seward put his response in the official files of the State Department. When that didn't happen, Pierce requested the assistance of a supporter in the Senate, Milton Latham of California, who requested copies of Seward–Pierce correspondence and read it into the Congressional Record.
Pierce had been a close friend of Jefferson Davis. The two men had served in the senate together and Davis had been Secretary of War in Pierce's cabinet. Pierce's wife Jane was too distraught to perform many of her duties as first lady following the death of their son Benny, so Jefferson Davis's wife Varina performed many of the ceremonial duties of the first lady during Pierce's term. In 1863 Pierce's reputation was greatly damaged in the North during the aftermath of Vicksburg. Union soldiers serving under General Hugh Ewing captured Jefferson Davis's Fleetwood Plantation and seized his personal correspondence. Among the letters fournd were letters to and from Pierce. Ewing turned over Davis' correspondence to General William Tecumseh Sherman, Ewing's brother-in-law, and Ewing also sent copies of the letters to friends in Ohio.
Those letters revealed Pierce's deep friendship with Davis and his ambivalence about the goals of the war. As early as 1860, Pierce had written to Davis about what Pierce termed "the madness of northern abolitionism". In another letter, Pierce said that he would "never justify, sustain, or in any way or to any extent uphold this cruel, heartless, aimless unnecessary war", and that "the true purpose of the war was to wipe out the states and destroy property".
Pierce's defenders pointed to Pierce's support for Union Army soldiers, including cash donations to assist the sick and wounded, but the public's perception was mostly of Pierce being seen as a Confederate sympathizer. In 1864, supporters of Pierce suggested him as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, but Pierce declined to run.
On April 16, 1865, when news had spread about the assassination of President Lincoln, an angry mob gathered outside Pierce's home in Concord. The crowd wanted to know why Pierce's house was not dressed with black bunting and American flags as visual proof of his grief. Pierce bravely came outside to confront the crowd. He told them that he too was saddened by Lincoln's death. When a voice in the crowd yelled out, "Where is your flag?" Pierce became angry and spoke about his family's long devotion to the country, including both his and his father's service in the military. He told the crowd that he did not need to display the flag to prove that he was a loyal American. He said "if the period during which I have served our state and country in various situations, commencing more than thirty-five years ago, have left the question of my devotion to the flag, the Constitution and the Union in doubt, it is too late now to remove it, by any such exhibition as the enquiry suggests." The crowd soon calmed down and even cheered and applauded Pierce as he went back into his home.
Franklin Pierce died in Concord, New Hampshire, at 4:49 am on October 8, 1869, at 64 years of age, from cirrhosis of the liver. He had been a heavy drinker since his wife's death in 1863. President Ulysses S. Grant declared a day of national mourning. Newspapers across the country carried lengthy front-page stories examining Pierce's colorful and controversial career. He was interred next to his wife and two of his sons, all of whom had predeceased him, in the Minot Enclosure in the Old North Cemetery of Concord, New Hampshire.