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His wife Jane believed that the train accident was divine punishment for her husband's proud and vain pursuit of high office. In her grief, she wrote a lengthy letter of apology to her deceased son for her failings as a mother. She avoided social functions for most of her first two years as First Lady, and she did not appear as first lady until a public reception held at the White House on New Year's Day, 1855. She remained in New Hampshire for her husband's inauguration.
Franklin Pierce was the youngest man to be elected president to that point. He chose to affirm his oath of office on a law book rather than swear it on a Bible, something all of his predecessors except John Quincy Adams had done. He delivered his inaugural address from memory. In the address he spoke about the acquisition of new territories and said: "The policy of my Administration will not be deterred by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion." He called for the maintenance of a peaceful union. He referenced his own personal tragedy, telling the crowd, "You have summoned me in my weakness, you must sustain me by your strength."
Pierce has the distinction of being the only president to serve a full term in office without changing a single member of his cabinet. All of Pierce's cabinet nominations were confirmed unanimously and immediately by the Senate. That's not to suggest that his cabinet selections were uncontroversial. Northern newspapers accused Pierce of filling his government with pro-slavery secessionists, while southern newspapers accused him of including abolitionists. Pierce inherited a divided party, both over the issue of slavery and otherwise. Factionalism in New York caused a problem when he named William Marcy Secretary of State.
Pierce's Vice President William Rufus King died a little more than one month into his term, leaving a vacancy that could not be filled. King was very ill at the time of his inauguration. He took his oath of office on foreign soil, at the American Consulate in Havana, Cuba where he was seeking to improve his health. He was ill with tuberculosis and he died shortly after returning to his home in Alabama. Pierce and King never communicated once they had been selected as candidates in June 1852. The office of vice president remained vacant for the remainder of Pierce's term, as the Constitution had no provision for filling the vacancy. Senate President pro tempore David Atchison of Missouri next in line to the presidency.
Pierce planned on running a more efficient and accountable government than his predecessors. His Cabinet used a form of civil service examinations to hire on merit instead of patronage. The Interior Department was reformed by Secretary Robert McClelland, who improved records keeping and pursued fraud. Pierce expanded the role of the Attorney General in the appointment of federal judges and attorneys, which was an important step in the eventual development of the Justice Department. There was a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Pierce nominated John Archibald Campbell, who would be Pierce's only Supreme Court appointment.
Pierce's Treasury Secretary James Guthrie increased oversight of Treasury employees and tariff collectors. He instituted prosecutions against corrupt officials, with mixed success. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, at Pierce's request, had surveys performed of possible transcontinental railroad routes throughout the country. Although Democrats opposed federal appropriations for internal improvements, Davis felt that such a project could be justified as a national security objective. The expansion of the United States Capitol and building of the Washington Monument were continued on Pierce's watch.
On the international front, Secretary of State William L. Marcy instructed U.S. diplomats to wear "the simple dress of an American citizen" instead of the elaborate diplomatic uniforms worn in the courts of Europe, and that they only hire American citizens to work in consulates.
Davis persuaded Pierce to send railroad magnate James Gadsden to Mexico to buy land for a potential railroad. Gadsden was also given the duty of re-negotiating the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which required the U.S. to prevent Native American raids into Mexico from New Mexico Territory. Gadsden negotiated a treaty with Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna in December 1853, purchasing a large piece of land to America's southwest. Congress reduced land bought in the Gadsden Purchase to the region now comprising southern Arizona and part of southern New Mexico. The price was reduced from $15 million to $10 million. The acquisition brought the contiguous United States to its present-day boundaries.
Relations with the British were tense over the British navy's increasing enforcement of sovereignty in Canadian waters. Marcy completed a trade agreement with British minister to Washington, John Crampton and a favorable reciprocity treaty was ratified in August 1854. Pierce hoped that this would be the first step towards the American annexation of Canada.
Meanwhile, U.S. interests were also threatened in Central America, where the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty of 1850 had failed to keep Great Britain from expanding its influence there. British consuls in the United States sought to have the Americans join the British Army to fight in the Crimean War in 1854, in violation of neutrality laws. Pierce eventually expelled minister Crampton and three other consuls over the incident. He expected the British to expel his Minister (Ambassador) to Britain, James Buchanan, in retaliation, but they never did. In his December 1855 message to Congress Pierce made the case that Britain had violated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty.
When three U.S. diplomats in Europe drafted a proposal to the president to purchase Cuba from Spain for $120 million and justify taking it from Spain by force if the offer were refused, word of the plan became public. This document, known as the Ostend Manifesto, drew outrage from northerners who saw this as an attempt to annex a slave-holding possession to bolster Southern interests in increasing the territory where slavery was permitted.
Secretary of War Davis and Navy Secretary James C. Dobbin found the Army and Navy in poor condition, with insufficient forces and obsolete technology. Under the Pierce administration, Commodore Matthew C. Perry visited Japan in an effort to expand trade to the East. Perry wanted to use force to gain entry to Asia, but Pierce ordered him to use only diplomatic means. Perry signed a modest trade treaty with the Japanese which was successfully ratified.
The greatest challenge faced by the Pierce administration was the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Organizing the largely unsettled Nebraska Territory, which stretched from Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, and from Texas north to what is now the Canadian border, was a crucial part of Senator Stephen Douglas's plans for western expansion. He wanted a transcontinental railroad with a link from Chicago to California. Organizing the territory was necessary for settlement. The slave states wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. Douglas wanted to let local settlers decide whether to allow slavery. Under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, most of the territory was north of the 36°30′ N line the Compromise deemed "free" (i.e. slavery was not permitted there). The territory was to be split into a northern part, Nebraska, and a southern part, Kansas.
Pierce had wanted to organize the Nebraska Territory without addressing the issue of slavery, but Douglas could not get enough southern support for this. Pierce was skeptical about the Kansas-Nebraska bill, but Douglas and Davis convinced him to support it. The bill was fiercely opposed by northerners such as Ohio Senator Salmon P. Chase and Massachusetts' Charles Sumner. Northerners saw the Nebraska bill as part of a pattern of southern aggression for the expansion of slavery.
Pierce and his administration pressured Democrats to vote in favor of the bill. The Whigs split along sectional lines, but the Kansas–Nebraska Act was passed in May 1854. Political turmoil followed. Even as the act was being debated, settlers on both sides of the slavery issue poured into the territories. The passage of the act resulted in intense violence between groups, and the territory became known as Bleeding Kansas. Thousands of pro-slavery Border Ruffians came across from Missouri to vote in the territorial elections although they were not resident in Kansas. When the pro-slavery element won the vote, Pierce supported the outcome, even though the prevailing opinion was that the result was the product of massive voter fraud and irregularities. When Free-Staters set up a shadow government, and drafted the Topeka Constitution, Pierce viewed this as 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. Pierce dispatched federal troops to break up a meeting of the Topeka government.
As all of this was happening, an escaped slave named Anthony Burns had been arrested in Boston. Northerners rallied in support of Burns' release, but Pierce was determined to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and he dispatched federal troops to enforce the return of Burns to his Virginia owner despite the intense local opposition.
In the midterm congressional elections of 1854 and 1855, the Democrats lost almost every state outside the South. In Pierce's home state New Hampshire, the "Know-Nothing Party" elected the governor, all three representatives, dominated the legislature. Some northerners were elected under the newly formed Republican Party.
Partisan violence spilled into Congress in May 1856 when Free Soil Senator Charles Sumner was assaulted by Democratic Rep. Preston Brooks in the Senate chamber. Brooks repeatedly struck Sumner with a heavy wooden cane.
Pierce expected to be renominated by the Democrats, but his administration was widely disliked in the North because of its position on the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Democratic leaders were aware of Pierce's electoral vulnerability. They looked to James Buchanan, who had been overseas through most of Pierce's term, leaving him untainted by the Kansas issue. When balloting began on June 5 at the convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, Pierce received only 122 votes on the first ballot, many of them from the South. Buchanan led with 135 votes. By the following morning fourteen ballots had been completed, but none of the three main candidates were able to get two-thirds of the vote. Pierce's support had been slowly declining as the ballots passed, and he withdrew his name. Douglas also withdrew his name, supporting Buchanan, who won the nomination. Kentucky Representative John C. Breckinridge was selected as the vice-presidential nominee.
Pierce endorsed Buchanan and he tried to resolve the Kansas situation by November to improve the Democrats' chances in the general election. He installed John W. Geary as territorial governor and Geary was able to restore order in Kansas. The Buchanan/Breckinridge ticket was elected.
In his final message to Congress, delivered in December 1856, Pierce vigorously attacked Republicans and abolitionists. Pierce left office on March 4, 1857, the only time in U.S. history that the original cabinet members all remained for a full four-year term.
Tomorrow: Part 3-Post Presidency