American Minute with Bill Federer
A President, and a Poet: Nathaniel Hawthorne & Franklin Pierce
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Franklin Pierce
was born November 23, 1804. His father served in the
Revolutionary War
and was
Governor of New Hampshire.
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Franklin
attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, having one of the lowest grades in his class.
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Meeting other students on campus, the future best-selling authors,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
and
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pierce's
study habits changed and he graduated third in his class.
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At age 24,
Pierce
was elected to the
New Hampshire Legislature,
supporting the agenda of
7th U.S. President, Democrat Andrew Jackson.
He was chosen as
State Speaker of the House.
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In 1834, he married
Jane Means Appleton,
the
daughter of a Congregational minister
and former president of Bowdoin College.
Her family opposed Democrats,
being devoutly religious, pro-temperance, anti-slavery Whigs.
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At age 29, Pierce was elected as a
U.S. Congressman,
and at age 33, as a
U.S. Senator.
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Like Jackson,
Pierce
opposed a central back, the
Second Bank of the United States
- a precursor to the Federal Reserve Bank.
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He supported
Democrat Martin Van Buren,
the
8th President.
Van Buren
lost reelection to the war hero
William Henry Harrison,
the
9th President,
but he died 30 days in office, being succeeded by his Vice-President,
John Tyler,
the
10th U.S. President.
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Being in the minority party,
Pierce
resigned from the Senate in 1842 to practice law.
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Pierce
campaigned strongly for the
Democrat James K. Polk,
whose prominent issue was the annexation of Texas. Upon election as the
11th President
in 1844,
Polk
appointed
Pierce
as
United States Attorney for New Hampshire.
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Pierce
served in the state militia, and when the
Mexican-American War
started, he enlisted in the Army, eventually being promoted to brigadier general.
He served with distinction under
General Winfield Scott,
till his leg was crushed at the
Battle of Churubusco,
1847.
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Another war hero of the Mexican-American War was
Zachary Taylor,
who was elected the
12th President.
When he died in office, he was succeeded by
13th President Millard Fillmore.
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Franklin Pierce
ran as a Democrat for President against
his former commander, General Winfield Scott.
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Tragically, just weeks after winning the election,
Franklin and his wife Jane saw their only surviving child,
11-year-old son Bennie, killed when their train rolled off its tracks.
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On March 4, 1853, as the
14th U.S. President, Franklin Pierce
stated in his Inaugural Address:
"It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling Providence."
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He signed the
Gadsden Purchase
in 1854, in which
Mexico's debt-strapped leader Santa Anna,
sold 29,670 square miles to the United States for $10 million. It became part of southern
Arizona
and southwestern
New Mexico.
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President Pierce
installed the first central heating system in the White House, as well as the first bathroom with hot and cold water.
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He also placed the
first Christmas Tree
in the
White House
in 1856.
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First Lady Jane Pierce
convinced her husband to release an abolitionist from prison.
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Though he stated: "I consider slavery a social and political evil ... and most sincerely wish that it had no existence upon the face of the earth,"
Pierce
nevertheless
opposed the abolitionist movement.
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He tried to reconcile regional differences by enforcing the
Fugitive Slave Act.
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Pierce
made his worst decision by caving in to the pressure of
Democrat Senator Stephen A. Douglas,
who convinced him to allow slavery to expand into the new territories by supporting the
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act.
This put an end to
President James Monroe's 1820 Missouri Compromise.
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Opposition to
Stephen Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Act
launched a new political party -
the Republican Party,
and the career of the young Illinois politician,
Abraham Lincoln.
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Unfortunately, instead of peace, the
Kansas-Nebraska Act
accelerated tension, resulting in
"Bleeding Kansas"
battles
and eventually the
Civil War.
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The
Democrat Party
did not renominate
Pierce,
and
James Buchanan
was elected the
15th President
in 1857.
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Republican Abraham Lincoln
became the
16th President
in 1861.
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Pierce
opposed
Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus,
stating that even in time of war, citizens should not have their rights taken away or be imprisoned without a public trial by a jury of their peers.
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When
Lincoln
instituted the
draft
and
arrested
critics,
Pierce
told New Hampshire Democrats in July 1863, the government should not "dictate to any one of us ... when we may speak, or be silent upon any subject."
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After the war,
Pierce
expressed optimism for the
18th U.S. President, Republican Ulysses S. Grant.
Years after
Pierce's
death,
Ulysses S. Grant
described in his memoirs his courage and character during the
Mexican-American War:
"Whatever
General Pierce's
qualifications may have been for the Presidency, he was a gentleman and a man of courage. I was not a supporter of him politically, but I knew him more intimately than I did any other of the volunteer generals."
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Franklin Pierce's
wife,
Jane,
died in 1863.
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The next year, he accompanied his ill college friend,
Nathaniel Hawthorne
on a trip to the New Hampshire mountains in hopes it would benefit his health.
On the trip,
Nathaniel Hawthorne
died, May 19, 1864.
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Franklin Pierce
gave financial help to
Hawthorne's
son, Julian.
On the second anniversary of his wife's death,
Franklin Pierce
was
baptized
into the church she had been a member of,
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
in Concord, New Hampshire.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
had written a campaign biography of
Franklin Pierce
, 1852, in which he stated:
"Whether in sorrow or success he has learned ... that religious faith is the most valuable ... of human possessions ...
With this sense, there has come ... a wide sympathy for the modes of Christian worship and a reverence for religious belief as a matter between the Deity and man's soul."
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
was born July 4, 1804. He was an American author and poet, most famous for his novel,
The Scarlet Letter,
published in 1850.
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Hawthorne's
most notable literary contemporaries included:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Alan Poe,
and
Herman Melville.
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Melville
read
Hawthorne's
short story collection
Mosses from an Old Manse,
and praised it in a famous review,
"Hawthorne and His Mosses."
Melville
dedicated his book,
Moby-Dick,
to
Hawthorne
"in appreciation for his genius."
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
and his wife
Sophia
had three children: Una, Julian and Rose.
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Rose,
after her husband's death, became a nun, and founded the religious order,
Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne,
to care for victims of incurable cancer.
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Hawthorne's
short tales were published as collections in
Twice-Told Tales
(1837), and
Mosses from an Old Manse
(1850), with some of the more popular ones being:
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832);
"The Maypole of Merrymount" (1832);
"Young Goodman Brown" (1835);
"The Minister's Black Veil" (1836);
"The Birth-Mark" (1843);
"Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844);
"Ethan Brand" (1850);
"Tanglewood Tales" (1853).
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Hawthorne's
major romance works were:
-
The Scarlet Letter
(1950);
-
The House of Seven Gables
(1851);
-
Blithedale Romance
(1852); and
-
The Marble Faun
(1860).
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The pallbearers at
Hawthorne's
funeral were
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier,
Swiss-American biologist
Louis Agassiz,
and
Louisa May Alcott.
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Louisa May Alcott
wrote
"A Song for a Christmas Tree"
(Morning-Glories And Other Stories,
NY: G.W. Carleton & Co., 1871, pp. 5-6):
"... Come and gather as they fall,
Shining gifts for great and small;
Santa Claus remembers all
When he comes with goodies piled.
Corn and candy, apples red,
Sugar horses, gingerbread,
Babies who are never fed,
Are handing here for every child ...
Gathered in a smiling ring,
Lightly dance and gayly sing,
Still at heart remembering
The sweet story all should know,
Of the little Child whose birth
Has made this day throughout the earth
A festival for childish mirth,
Since the first Christmas long ago."
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In
Ethan Brand,
written in 1850,
Nathaniel Hawthorne
wrote:
"'What is the Unpardonable Sin?' asked the lime-burner ... 'It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand ... 'The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God.'"
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In his poem,
"The Star of Calvary,"
Hawthorne
wrote:
"It is the same infrequent star,
The all mysterious light,
That, like a watcher gazing on
The changes of the night,
Toward the hill of Bethlehem, took
Its solitary flight.
It is the same infrequent star;
Its sameness startleth me;
Although the disk is red a-blood
And downward silently
It looketh on another hill,
The hill of Calvary.
Behold, O Israel! behold!
It is no human One
That ye have dared to crucify.
What evil hath he done?
It is your King, O Israel,
The God-begotten Son!"
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
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