It’s interesting — perhaps ironic — that Franklin Pierce, a political semi-novice in the realm of national politics, was deemed the compromise presidential candidate who could bring together the North and South, and yet he accelerated the gathering clouds of war. Since Pierce was a Northerner who supported the institution of slavery, the Democrat Party believed that both sections of the nation would identify with him, ergo his election could soften the angry words that had become the hallmarks of congressional debate and newspaper stories.

Alas, Franklin Pierce was not a strong leader, and once he was inaugurated as president, his unwillingness to weigh in with a strong voice that could dominate the debate regarding slavery and states’ rights doomed the nation to eventually settle that issue with arms. And yet, students of history can feel a bit of sympathy for the man who was propelled into leadership in a decade that witnessed a rush toward war.

Why?

Let’s imagine that we were witnesses to Franklin Pierce’s inauguration. It’s March 4, 1852, and a blustery wind blew across the District of Columbia. The new president’s face was drawn and sorrow-lined, reflecting the anguish the Pierces had felt when they buried their infant son only two months earlier. Mrs. Pierce refused to leave her DC hotel room to attend the ceremony; instead, she remained in the room, writing letters to her dead child. Pierce, whose greatest attribute as a politician was his oratory skill, displayed a lack of emotion in delivering his short inaugural address that contained the statement, “You have summoned me in my weakness; you must sustain me by your strength.” There was no inaugural ball, and with that introductory day, the Pierce administration was off to a slow pace that would never gain much momentum.

So, what is Franklin Pierce’s legacy?

First, Pierce authorized Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (yes, that Jefferson Davis!) and James Gadsden, Southern railroad and transportation specialist, to negotiate a final boundary agreement with Mexico that resulted in the Gadsden Purchase. For a $15 million price tag, the Southern boundary was solidified, but Gadsden’s idea of a Southern route for a transcontinental railroad never came to fruition, much to his disappointment.

Pierce’s next major objective often surprises today’s history students and casual history lovers — the annexation of Cuba as a slave state. What? Really? Southern leaders had looked across that 90-mile distance from the tip of Florida and envisioned that lush, warm-climate island as a great addition to the agrarian South. Pierce authorized his minister to Spain to pay up to $130 million for Cuba, but even the minister’s subtle threats of military action did not persuade the Spanish crown to sell. Frustration led him to join with James Buchanan and James Mason, ambassadors to England and France, to draft the Ostend Manifesto. The document explained the U.S.‘s justification for adding Cuba, which was that a “slave revolt in Cuba” would threaten stability in the states. If that occurred, then the United States might be forced to invade Cuba and seize power. Subtlety had now disappeared from the conversation.

How did Spain receive the manifesto? There was such an uproar in Europe that Pierce’s Secretary of State William Marcy publicly disavowed the document with the president’s blessing. By failing to exercise power at the outbreak of the discussion, Pierce ended up angering both North and South.

And it just got worse. Pierce recognized Tennessean William Walker’s attempt to establish a dictatorship in Nicaragua and turn the Central American country into a part of the slave-holding South. When Commodore Vanderbilt, seeing Nicaragua as a possible site for a trans-isthmus railroad, pressured Pierce to withdraw his support for Walker, he did. Walker fled to Honduras, was arrested by the British, and was summarily executed by a Honduran firing squad.

Was Pierce’s domestic leadership his strong point? No. His lack of leadership allowed his rivals to push their own agendas. Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, with sights on the presidency, had been involved in the drafting of the Compromise of 1850, attempting to keep the Union united by making the balance of power in the Senate evenly divided between the North and South.

The one area that had not been totally resolved was the Kansas-Nebraska territory, even though the Missouri Compromise purported to settle the question decades earlier with a line between slavery and free territories. Douglas introduced legislation that would allow the question to be solved instead by “popular sovereignty” and then pressured Pierce to agree philosophically to a repeal of the prohibition of slavery in the territories that resulted in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Pierce signed the legislation; the rush of settlers was on, and ensuing armed conflicts would erupt.

Next week, we’ll visit “Bleeding Kansas.” Prepare yourself…