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As pictured and described in Colt Engraving & Fine Colts:
The Dr. Joseph A. Murphy Collection both by Wilson
Northerners and southerners were included in his
cabinet, including Jefferson Davis as Secretary of
War. He hoped to lead during a period of peace,
but Pierce’s presidency is by and large considered
a disaster and to have hastened the arrival of the
Civil War. Even before he took office, he was faced
with serious hardship. On January 6, 1854, prior
to being inaugurated, he and his wife survived a
train derailment during which their 11 year old
son was killed. Both his wife and son had not
wanted him to run for the presidency, and now
his son was dead. He and Jane had already lost
their first son in infancy and their third son from
typhus. Adding to the losses, his vice president,
William R. D. King, also died just over one month
into their term. Tensions over the issue of slavery
became inflamed but the addition of new
territory in the West and Stephen A. Douglas’s
proposals for the issue of slavery in the territories
to be decided by the territories’ residents thus
up-ending the Compromise of 1850. Instead of
peace, there would be a miniature civil war as
tensions from the Kansas-Nebraska act escalated
into the famous Bleeding Kansas fiasco. He was
not renominated as the Democratic candidate.
The issue also split the Whig Party, ultimately
destroying it as a national force and leading to
the rise of the Republican Party.
After leaving office, Pierce and his wife Jane
spent three years in Madeira, Europe, and the
Bahamas in an attempt to improve her health
before returning home. On August 27, 1859, “The
Springfield Daily Republican” of Massachusetts
reported on “the steamship America, which
passed Halifax on Thursday and was expected to
arrive at Boston on Friday night, are ex-president
Pierce of New Hampshire, and ex-governor
Seymour of Connecticut. A committee of
gentlemen from Hartford were in waiting at
Boston on Friday for the arrival of the steamer,
intending to escort Gov Seymour to his home
where public ovation awaits him.” Pierce and
his wife were soon to head to the Bahamas in
attempts to improve her health as she had long
suffered from tuberculosis. The paper’s reported
he would first visit his friend Governor Seymour
in Hartford before heading south. Once stateside,
Pierce attempted to use his influence to hold the
Union together to no avail and then opposed
the northern war effort. During the war, he lost
both his wife and his long time friend Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
His long time friend Thomas Jefferson Whipple
felt differently about the war and quickly rose to
President Lincoln’s call to arms. In a speech raising
troops for the Union cause he is said to have
stated: “I ask no higher glory than the privilege
to add my name to the long list of heroes who
shall give their lives for their country in this great
struggle for the Union and the Constitution,”
and, “As for one, I now offer my life, my property,
my all, to the support and preservation of our
common country.” During the beginning of the
Civil War, Whipple was the lieutenant colonel
of the 1st Regiment New Hampshire Volunteer
Infantry and colonel of the 4th Regiment New
Hampshire Volunteers. His men were the first
Union soldiers to land on South Carolina soil.
He resigned on March 18, 1862, and then
helped raise the 12th Regiment New Hampshire
Volunteers and was elected their colonel but was
prevented from taking command. Afterwards,
he returned to his law career in Laconia, New
Hampshire. “Col. Thomas J. Whipple” by E. P. Jewell
in “Proceedings of the Southern New Hampshire
Bar Association in 1892” stated “It would take an
octavo volume to present Colonel Whipple as he
was, for certainly, gentlemen, he was one of the
most brilliant lawyers and able men that the state
of New Hampshire has ever produced.”