Franklin Pierce (1804 - 1869)
Born at Hillsborough (NH); died at Concord (NH).
Lawyer, state and national legislator, President of the United States.
Portrait by U.D. Tenney, 1874.
Presented to the State, 1874.

It is not often remembered that Pierce was a hero of the War with Mexico (1846/8), but it was his rise from a private to a brigadier general in the Mexican War which brought Pierce to the notice of his Democratic Party, which was badly split between its southern, pro-slavery wing and its northern, anti-slavery wing at the 1852 convention. Pierce was the son of a Revolutionary War general who had been a governor of New Hampshire; like his father he was a Jacksonian Democrat and a strong believer in states' rights. A graduate of Bowdoin College (1824), Pierce had been a Concord (NH) lawyer since 1827. He had served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives (1829 - 1833), and had been Speaker of the House (1831/2). Pierce had served one term as a United States Senator in the nation's capitol (1837/42). It was his status as a war hero that made him a dark horse candidate for the presidency in 1852; however, he won the nomination, and then the election of 1852 because he favored the Compromise of 1850 which argued that individual states could keep their systems of "slave" or "free" societies in the interests of national unity.

As president, Pierce was committed to expanding American territory. As the nation moved west, however, the question of whether new territories and states should be "slave" or "free" increased the hostilities between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Events outran Pierce's natural urge to compromise; even his cabinet was split down the middle on the question of "free" or "slave". Pierce was not renominated for a second term in 1857;he returned to Concord (NH) and the practice of law as the Civil War loomed.

Location: Second Floor, State House, Reprsentatives' Hall