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Franklin Pierce for President...
Franklin Pierce for President...
Item # 565531
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August 13, 1852
NEW HAMPSHIRE PATRIOT AND STATE GAZETTE, Concord, New Hampshire, October 13, 1852
* Franklin Pierce for President endorsement from New Hampshire
The photo shows the page 2 endorsement for the Pierce-King ticket in the presidential contest of 1852. Includes the title and date, plus the names of the electors. Nice to have in a title from Pierces native state. There are many articles and news from the day. Many interesting advertisements as well. 4 pages in nice condition.
Historical Background: Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804October 8, 1869) was an American politician and the 14th President of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857.
Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" (a Northerner with Southern sympathies) who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Later, Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general. His private law practice in his home state, New Hampshire, was so successful that he was offered several important positions, which he turned down. Later, he was nominated for president as a dark horse candidate on the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. In the presidential election, Pierce and his running mate William R. King won in a landslide, defeating Winfield Scott by a 50 to 44% margin in the popular vote and 254 to 42 in the electoral vote. He became the youngest president up until that time.
His good looks and inoffensive personality caused him to make many friends, but he suffered tragedy in his personal life and as president subsequently made decisions which were widely criticized and divisive in their effects, thus giving him the reputation as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Pierce's popularity in the North went down sharply after he came out in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing the Missouri Compromise and reopening the question of the expansion of slavery in the West. Pierce's credibility was further damaged when several of his diplomats issued the Ostend Manifesto. Historian David Potter concludes that the Ostend Manifesto and the Kansas-Nebraska Act were "the two great calamities of the Franklin Pierce administration.... Both brought down an avalanche of public criticism." More important says Potter, they permanently discredited Manifest Destiny and popular sovereignty. [Potter 1976 p 193]
Abandoned by his party, Pierce was not renominated at the 1856 presidential election and was replaced by James Buchanan. After losing the Democratic nomination, Pierce continued his lifelong struggle with alcoholism as his marriage to Jane Means Appleton Pierce fell apart. His reputation was further damaged when he declared support for the Confederacy and died in 1869 from cirrhosis.
Philip B. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt reflected the views of many historians when they wrote in The American President that Pierce was "a good man who didn't understand his own shortcomings. He was genuinely religious, loved his wife and reshaped himself so that he could adapt to her ways and show her true affection. He was one of the most popular men in New Hampshire, polite and thoughtful, easy and good at the political game, charming and fine and handsome. However, he has been criticized as timid and unable to cope with a changing America.
Category: Pre-Civil War
No Longer Available
