Franklin Pierce

POLITICAL PARTY
Democrat

RELIGION
Congregationalist, then Episcopalian

EDUCATION
Bowdoin College B.A. 1824; Northampton Law School
Read law under Levi Woodbury & Judge Edmund Parker

VITALS
5 ft 10 in / 144 lbs

CAREER
1827-42 Practiced law in Hillsborough, New Hampshire
1829-33 Member, New Hampshire House of Representatives
1831-33 Speaker, New Hampshire House of Representatives
1833-37 U.S. Representative, New Hampshire
1837-42 U.S. Senator, New Hampshire
1842-53 Practiced law in Concord, New Hampshire
1842-47 U.S. Attorney for New Hampshire
1847-48 Brigadier general, U.S. Army, Mexican-American War

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
November 2, 1852
Popular: Pierce 1,607,510 (51%) Winfield Scott 1,386,942 (44%)
Electoral: Pierce 254 Scott 42

VICE PRESIDENT
William R. King (1853)

ADMINISTRATION
Gadsden Purchase (1853); Treaty of Kanagawa, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Ostend Manifesto (1854)

SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENT
John A. Campbell

FIRST LADY
Jane Means Appleton (1853-57)

“The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution.”
Third Annual Message to Congress, December 31, 1855

Portrait of Franklin Pierce by George P.A. Healy, 1858.