The Divisive Pierce Administration
President Franklin Pierce’s support for southern expansion in the 1850s alienated northerners and pushed America further down the path toward civil war.
The Pierce Presidency
Franklin Pierce, 14th U.S. President
In 1852, America was splitting between North and South. To minimize the split, the Democratic Party nominated Franklin Pierce of Vermont for president. Pierce was a “doughface,” or a northerner who was sympathetic to southern views. Pierce joined southerners in favoring “manifest destiny,” or the notion that the U.S. should control North America. This was a highly popular sentiment at the time, considering the U.S. had just acquired vast new land as a result of the Mexican-American War.
With legendary author and fellow New Englander Nathaniel Hawthorne writing his campaign biography, and having served as a brigadier general in the recent war, Pierce enjoyed mass appeal in both North and South. The election was a resounding Pierce victory that virtually ended the Whig Party as a national organization. In his inaugural address, Pierce stated, “The policy of my Administration will not be controlled by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion.”
Pierce’s popularity, combined with the recent Compromise of 1850 that promised a tentative peace between North and South, should have set the stage for a successful presidency. But by the time Pierce left office four years later, his policies had only further divided the country between North and South.
The Gadsden Purchase
Pierce tried balancing his cabinet by appointing northerners and southerners, including Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts and future Confederate President Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. But they all shared Pierce’s expansionist views.
As secretary of war, Jefferson Davis sought to build a southern transcontinental railroad, both to enhance southern trade and to defend against future potential conflict with Mexico. However, the route through present-day Arizona was too mountainous. To fix this, Davis convinced Pierce to send Democratic Senator James Gadsden of South Carolina to Mexico to negotiate buying more land.
By this time, Mexican President Santa Anna had already spent most of the reparations the U.S. paid to Mexico after the Mexican-American War. Now he needed more revenue to finance his military, which made him receptive to Gadsden’s offer. Santa Anna agreed to sell a strip of land to the U.S. for $15 million. Called the Gadsden Purchase, this land consisted of present-day Arizona south of the Gila River and a portion of southern New Mexico.
Many northerners opposed the purchase because of its potential to create more slave territory. When Pierce submitted the purchase treaty to the Senate, it fell three votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for ratification. Pierce decreased the size of the acquired land and lowered the price from $15 to $10 million, and the treaty was approved. Northern senators split their vote, but unanimous southern support ensured ratification.
Santa Anna agreed to the changes, despite widespread Mexican protest that continues today. The purchase also caused sectional tension in the U.S. that ultimately doomed plans to build a southern transcontinental railroad.
The Ostend Manifesto
Before becoming president, a southern plot had begun to acquire Cuba from Spain. As a U.S. senator, Jefferson Davis had declared, “Cuba must be ours.” Southern politicians argued that the Spanish Empire was declining, and it was necessary to annex Cuba to prevent the island from falling into the hands of Britain or France.
Northerners argued that this was merely another attempt to expand southern influence in the federal government, including slavery, since the Cuban climate was conducive to a slave economy. Southerners contended that acquiring southern land was needed to offset the growing population of the North, which was resulting in northerners dominating the House of Representatives.
U.S. representatives had previously offered to buy Cuba for $100 million, but Spain had refused. When he became president, Pierce sided with the southerners on this issue. In 1854, Pierce sent ministers to Ostend, Belgium to negotiate with Spain, Britain, and France on Cuba’s future. At Ostend, the ministers were informed that a slave revolt in Cuba was imminent. They responded by sending a secret memorandum to Pierce stating that if Spain did not agree to sell Cuba to the U.S., then the U.S. should take Cuba by force in the interest of national security. When the memorandum was made public, many Americans were outraged.
Northerners vehemently protested the idea of annexing Cuba, mainly because it would give southerners more slave territory and more representation in Congress. Europeans also denounced what became known as the “Ostend Manifesto.” This incident discredited expansionism, split the Democratic Party, and so greatly damaged Pierce’s reputation in the North that he was forced to repudiate the memorandum.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Pierce’s favorability in the North was further damaged when he endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had banned slavery in the northern territories west of the Mississippi River, by potentially allowing slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska through “popular sovereignty” (i.e., allowing the people in the territories to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery).
This law led to civil unrest in Kansas, which became a precursor to the Civil War. In endorsing this law, Pierce was roundly criticized for appeasing the South rather than trying to mend sectional disputes. As a result, the Democrats lost many seats in the 1854 mid-term elections.
No Second Term
During Pierce’s term, the Gadsden Purchase and Ostend Manifesto discredited “manifest destiny,” and the Kansas-Nebraska Act discredited “popular sovereignty.” Pierce’s ineffectiveness in handling the growing sectional crisis prompted the Democrats to decide against nominating him for a second term as president in 1856.
While Franklin Pierce had hoped to unite North and South through expansionism and appeasement, he only made sectional hostility worse by failing to recognize that America was changing. These changes ultimately led to the Civil War.
