Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 08.djvu/340

 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