What is the significance of franklin pierce

After Spanish authorities in Havana seized the U. The manifesto became public that fall, inspiring protest from the emerging Republicans. In another foreign policy development that year, Commodore Matthew C. Perry led the negotiation of a treaty that opened trade with Japan after years of Dutch monopoly. When antislavery settlers in Kansas formed a rival government and sought admission to the Union as a free state, violence broke out between these Free Staters and their proslavery opponents.

While Pierce resisted sending federal troops to Kansas, tensions reached new heights in Washington, with South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks assaulting Senator Charles Sumner , an abolitionist, on the Senate floor in May By the time he left office, the nation had moved closer to civil war, and the situation would only grow worse under Buchanan, another northerner with southern sympathies.

His wife died later in , and Pierce stayed largely out of the public eye from then on; he died in Concord in Start your free trial today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Franklin D. With the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and House of Representatives for the first time in He served four terms in Congress but left in to mount an unsuccessful run for the governorship of New During his tenure, seven Southern states seceded from the Union and the nation teetered on the brink of civil war.

A Pennsylvania native, Buchanan began his political career in his home One of the leading figures of early American history, Benjamin Franklin was a statesman, author, publisher, scientist, inventor and diplomat. Born into a Boston family of modest means, Franklin had little formal education.

He went on to start a successful printing Zachary Taylor served in the army for some four decades, commanding troops in the War of , the Black Hawk War and the second of the Seminole Wars He became a full-fledged war hero through his service in the Mexican War, which broke out in James Monroe , the fifth U.

Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Help inform the discussion Support the Miller Center. University of Virginia Miller Center. Franklin Pierce: Impact and Legacy. Breadcrumb U. Jean H. Baker Professor of History Goucher College.

Franklin Pierce Essays Life in Brief. Life Before the Presidency. Campaigns and Elections. Pierce was unable to effectively restore even the uneasy peace that existed before his election. The conflict over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the atrocities committed by both sides deepened the North-South divisions.

In a congressional report, Howard H. Four years later, the Southern states saw the election of Abraham Lincoln as the final Northern betrayal and began seceding from the Union. On April 12, , General P. When letters to his friend Jefferson Davis expressing this view and his lack of enthusiasm for the war effort were uncovered and published, his reputation was permanently damaged. While Franklin Pierce tried to keep the Union together, his policies laid the foundation for the very conflict he tried to avoid.

He was buried next to his wife and two of his three children in Old North Cemetery. Despite his long service to his state and his country, Franklin Pierce is judged harshly by some as a man on the wrong side of history. More recent scholarship accords Pierce credit as a good citizen and a moderate with, as described by historian Peter A. Foner, Eric. New York: Oxford University Press, The University of Virginia Miller Center.

American President Reference Center. Wallner, Peter A. Franklin Pierce: Martyr for the Union. Concord, NH: Plaidswede Publishing, Keating, Deborah.

The Kansas City Public Library. Skip to main content. The missouri-kansas conflict You are here Encyclopedia. Andrew H. Reeder becomes Kansas Territorial Governor.