Franklin Pierce became the fourteenth President of the United States on March 4, 1853. In his inaugural address, Franklin Pierce declared that slavery was Constitutionally legal. He promised to uphold the Compromise of 1850, and declared that every state had the right to decide for itself whether it wanted
to be slave or free.
Senator Charles Sumner Attacked in Congress
On May 19 and 20 of 1856 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered a series of speeches in which he attacked Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina. Though Sumner centered his attack around Butler's support of slavery, the attack included a number large number of graphic personal insults. On May 21 Senator Sumner was sitting in the Senate chamber when he was attacked by Butler's nephew, Senator Preston Brooks of South Carolina, who beat several times about the head with a cane. Brooks was censured by Congress and resigned his seat. He was reelected the following term.
Bleeding Kansas
The Kansas-Nebraska act nullified the Missouri Compromise and declared open season on
the largely unsettled states of Kansas and Nebraska. Northern abolitionists rushed into Kansas and began to organize an anti-slavery state government. Not to be outdone, pro-slavery southerners rushed into Kansas and began to organize their own state government. By New Years Day 1856, there were
two governments claiming jurisdiction over Kansas. President Pierce promptly recognized the one that was pro-slavery. Believing that they were in their rights as the official governing power of the state, pro-slavery forces attacked the abolitionist town of Lawrence. One night in May 1856, a radical abolitionist named John Brown lead a small group of followers into the pro-slavery settlement of Pottawatomie Creek to take revenge for the Lawrence attack. Brown's followers pulled five men from their beds and murdered them. The period of violence proceeding Brown's raid was doubed "Bleeding Kansas" by the nation's newspapers.
Legislation
Gadsden Purchase
In 1853 President Pierce instructed his minister to Mexico James Gadsden to purchase as much Mexican territory as possible. Gadsden purchased the land south of the Gila River for the United States (this land would later become part of the states of Arizona and New Mexico). The Gadsden Purchase settled the border dispute between the United States and Mexico once and for all.
Treaty of Kanagwa
In March of 1854 Commodore Matthew Perry signed a treaty with Japan that opened up two ports to U.S. trade.
Ostend Manifesto
In 1854 President Pierce instructed his minister to Spain to offer $130 million for Cuba. Spain refused to sell. Later that year, three U.S. diplomatic ministers met in Ostend, Belgium, and wrote a declaration of the United States' intention to use force in obtaining Cuba from Spain if Spain did not agree to sell. Though ratified by Congress, the Ostend Manifest was never enforced.
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was introduced to Congress by Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Douglas wanted to organize the Nebraska Territory and free it of Native Americans so that a transcontinental railroad, connecting Chicago with the South, could be built. Southerners rejected the bill on the grounds that Nebraska would have to enter the Union as a free state because of the Missouri
Compromise which prohibited slavery north of 36 330'. In order to get his bill ratified, Douglas included in his proposal a statement declaring that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and should be nullified. Douglas held that the two new states which his bill created, Nebraska and Kansas, had a right to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be slave or free. President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law in May of 1854, and in doing so nullified the Missouri Compromise.
