During Pierce's childhood, his father was deeply involved in state politics, while two of his older brothers fought in the War of 1812; public affairs and the military were thus a major influence in his early life.

[21][22] Interested in revitalizing and reforming the state militias, which had become increasingly dormant during the years of peace following the War of 1812, Pierce worked with Alden Partridge, president of Norwich University, a military college in Vermont, and Truman B.

As senator, he was able to help his old friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, who often struggled financially, procuring for him a sinecure as measurer of coal and salt at the Boston Customs House that allowed the author time to continue writing.

Governor Hill, who represented the commercial, urban wing of the party, advocated the use of government charters to support corporations, granting them privileges such as limited liability and eminent domain for building railroads.

The radical "locofoco" wing of his party represented farmers and other rural voters, who sought an expansion of social programs and labor regulations and a restriction on corporate privilege.

The party remained divided on several issues, including railroad development and the temperance movement, and Pierce took a leading role in helping the state legislature settle their differences.

Needing time to assemble his brigade, Pierce reached the already seized port of Vera Cruz in late June, where he prepared a march of 2,500 men accompanying supplies for Scott.

"[67] Returning to Concord, Pierce resumed his law practice; in one notable case he defended the religious liberty of the Shakers, the insular sect threatened with legal action over accusations of abuse.

Other possible standard-bearers included Douglas, Cass, William Marcy of New York, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, Sam Houston of Texas, and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri.

He publicly declared that such a nomination would be "utterly repugnant to my tastes and wishes", but given New Hampshire Democrats' desire to see one of their own elected, he knew his future influence depended on his availability to run.

[101] His Cabinet members implemented an early system of civil service examinations, a forerunner to the Pendleton Act passed three decades later, which mandated that most U.S. government positions be awarded on the basis of merit, not patronage.

Davis also deployed the Army Corps of Engineers to supervise construction projects in the District of Columbia, including the expansion of the United States Capitol and building of the Washington Monument.

[110][111] An advocate of a southern transcontinental route, Davis persuaded Pierce to send rail magnate James Gadsden to Mexico to buy land for a potential railroad.

The publication of the Ostend Manifesto, which had been drawn up at Secretary of State Marcy's insistence, provoked the scorn of northerners, who viewed it as an attempt to annex a slave-holding possession to bolster Southern interests.

Organizing the largely unsettled Nebraska Territory, which stretched from Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, and from Texas north to what is now the Canada–United States border, was a crucial part of Douglas's plans for western expansion.

Northerners had been suspicious of the Gadsden Purchase, moves towards Cuba annexation, and the influence of slaveholding Cabinet members such as Davis, and saw the Nebraska bill as part of a pattern of southern aggression.

To soften the blow to Pierce, the convention issued a resolution of "unqualified approbation" in praise of his administration and selected his ally, former Kentucky Representative John C. Breckinridge, as the vice-presidential nominee.

[146][147] In the final days of the Pierce administration, Congress passed bills to increase the pay of army officers and to build new naval vessels, also expanding the number of seamen enlisted.

Due to illness he declined, but sent a letter appealing to the people of Alabama to remain in the Union, and give the North time to repeal laws against southern interests and to find common ground.

[154] After efforts to prevent the Civil War ended with the firing on Fort Sumter, Northern Democrats, including Douglas, endorsed Lincoln's plan to bring the Southern states back into the fold by force.

[154] Pierce publicly opposed President Lincoln's order suspending the writ of habeas corpus, arguing that even in a time of war, the country should not abandon its protection of civil liberties.

Later that month, the pro-administration Detroit Tribune printed an item calling Pierce "a prowling traitor spy", and intimating that he was a member of the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle.

No such conspiracy existed, but a Pierce supporter, Guy S. Hopkins, sent to the Tribune a letter purporting to be from a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, indicating that "President P." was part of a plot against the Union.

When news spread of Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, a mob gathered outside Pierce's home in Concord, demanding to know why he had not raised a flag as a public mourning gesture.

[181] The failure of Pierce, as president, to secure sectional conciliation helped bring an end to the dominance of the Democratic Party that had started with Jackson, and led to a period of over seventy years when the Republicans mostly controlled national politics.

His inability to cope with the difficult problems that arose early in his administration caused him to lose the respect of great numbers, especially in the North, and his few successes failed to restore public confidence.

[186] To Pierce, who saw slavery as a question of property rather than morality,[182] the Union was sacred; because of this, he saw the actions of abolitionists, and the more moderate Free Soilers, as divisive and as a threat to the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of southerners.

[189] Historian Kenneth Nivison, writing in 2010, takes a more favorable view of Pierce's foreign policy, stating that his expansionism prefaced those of later presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, who served at a time when America had the military might to make her desires stick.

"American foreign and commercial policy beginning in the 1890s, which eventually supplanted European colonialism by the middle of the twentieth century, owed much to the paternalism of Jacksonian Democracy cultivated in the international arena by the Presidency of Franklin Pierce.

"[190] Historian and biographer Peter A. Wallner notes that:[191] History has accorded to the Pierce administration a share of the blame for policies that incited the slavery issue, hastened the collapse of the second party system, and brought on the Civil War.