biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1804–69)
|
| biography:
| US statesman and 14th president (1853–7), born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, USA. A lawyer, he steadily ascended the political ladder as a Democrat, moving from the state legislature (1829–33) to the US House of Representatives (1833–7) to the US Senate (1837–42), and then returned to private law practice in New Hampshire. Expansionist in sentiments, he served as an officer in the Mexican War (1846–7). A staunch Democrat and as a Northerner sympathetic to the South, he was nominated as a compromise presidential candidate (1852) and defeated the Whigs' General Winfield Scott. He then proved unable to mediate the issues boiling around slavery, signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854) (giving settlers the right to vote for slavery), and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. The successes of his administration included a treaty with Japan and the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico, which added 20 000 square miles to the USA, but these did not distract people from the turmoil he unleashed in Kansas. The Democrats ignored the unpopular Pierce at the 1856 convention, and he largely retired from politics, although he revived his unpopularity by attacking Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. |
|
|
