PIERCE
PIERCE
his work. He was collector of internal revenue
of Boston, 1863-6(5; district attorney of Norfolk
and Plymouth counties, 1866-70; lecturer at the
Massachusetts University Law school for ten
years, and secretary of the board of state charities,
1869-74, for which he made reports of the work
in Europe and the United States. He was
member of the state legislature, 1875-76, 1895
and 1896. chairman of the house committee on
the judiciary, 1876, and while serving in that
capacity devised and carried a comprehensive
act limiting municipal indebtedness. He de-
clined the office of assistant treasurer of the
United States at Boston in 1878, and was the
unsuccessful Republican candidate from the 3d
Massachusetts district for representative in the
5'Jnd congress in 1890. He was a member of the
Massachusetts Historical society, and a personal
friend of Cliarles Sumner and Jolni Bright. He
founded the free public library at Milton, Mass.,
and between 1869 and 1897 traveled extensively in
Europe and the East. He was married jQrst, April
19. 1865, to Elizabeth Helen, daugliterof the Hon.
John Kingsbury of Providence, R.L.and secondly,
Marcli 8, 1883. to Maria Louisa Woodhead of Hud-
derstield, England. He received the degree LL.D.
from Brown in 1882, and from Claflin in 1894. He
was an advocate of ballot reform and an authority
on railroad law, and his articles on these subjects
together with his lecture on John Bright, col-
lege exercises and political addresses are included
in "Enfranchisement and Citizenship"' (1896).
He compiled a " Genealogy of the Pierce Family "
and an " Index of the Special Railroad Laws of
Massachusetts" (1874); published a "Sketch of
Major Jolin Lillie " a maternal ancestor; edited
" Walter's American Law," and is the author of:
Effect of Prospective or Extreme Legislation, etc.
(1857); Personal Liberty Laws (1861); Negroes at
Port Royal (1862); Freedmen of Port Royal, S.C.
(Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 1863); Two Systems of
Government Proposed for the Rebel States (1867);
Laics of Railroads (1881), and Memoirs and
Letters of Charles Sumner (4 vols., 1877-93). He
died in Paris, France, Sept. 5, 1897.
PIERCE, Franklin, fourteenth president of the United States, was born in Hillsborough, N.H., Nov. 23, 1804; son of Governor Benjamin and Anna (Kendrick) Pierce. He attended the academies at Hancock, Francestown and Exeter, and was graduated at Bowdoin in 1824, standing third in his class. He was an officer in the college batallion, and during his college course taught district schools in the winter to pay his tuition. He studied law under Levi Woodbury at Portsmouth, 1825; at the law school, Northampton, Mass., 1825-26, and in the office of Judge Edmund Parker, Amherst, N.H., 1827. He was admitted to the bar in 1827, and practised first at Hillsborough
and subsequently at Concord. He was a represen-
tative from Hillsborough in the state legislature,
1829-32; speaker of the house, 1831 and 1832, and
a Democratic representative in the 23d and 24th
congresses, 1833-37. He served on the judiciary
^A4
committee, and spoke against receiving petitions
for the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia, and against appropriations for the
U.S. Military academy on the ground that the
institution was aristocratic and that the profes-
sion of arms was dangerous to the liberties of the
country, which should depend on the yeomen
militia for defence. He sustained President
Jackson in opposing the growing demand for
appropriations for internal improvements, and
his course as a representative determined his
party to make him a senator in congress, March
3, 1837, as successorto John Page, who completed
the term of Isaac Hill. He took his seat Sept.
24, 1837, the youngest senator in the chamber,
and not till his birthday, Nov. 23, 1837, thirty-
three years of age. He supported the recommenda-
tion of Joel Roberts Poinsett, secretary of war,
to give government aid to the states in order to
make more effective their militia, and when the
motives of the secretary were questioned Senator
Pierce ably defended him. He opposed the
removal of government employees for political
opinions. He resigned his seat in the senate at
the close of the second session, Aug. 31, 1842, in
order to resume the practice of law, and joining
his family who had removed to Concord in 1838,
he practised in that city, Leonard Wilcox (q.v.)
completing his term in the senate. When Senator
Levi Woodbury resigned, Nov. 20, 1845, to take
his seat on the bench of the U.S. supreme court,
Governor Steele urged Mr. Pierce to accept the
appointment as his successor, which he declined,
as he did the Democratic nomination for governor
and the cabinet position of attorney-general from
President Polk the same year. In 1846 he made
a determined but hojjeless battle for the Demo-
cratic party against the united Whig and Free Soil
parties with John P. Hale as his chief opponent,
with the result that Hale was elected U.S.
senator, and the state gave to the coalition two
representatives in congress. When the war with
Mexico was declared he enrolled as a private in a