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Autograph Letter Signed
4 pages
SMC 964
Franklin Pierce, who signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act while president, thus enabling the spread of slavery, and pitting the North against the South, doubles down on his decision six years later, on the eve of the Civil War.
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Pierce Defends the Democratic Party as Non-Sectional, Wonders About the Outcome of the 1860 Election
April 18, 1860
Autograph Letter Signed
4 pages
SMC 1809
Pierce insists that the Democratic party is united over the issue of slavery months before the presidential election of 1860 causes the party to split into Northern and Southern Democrats, respectively.
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President Franklin Pierce Sets in Motion the Recall of the American Minister Resident in Turkey
September 7, 1853
Document Signed
1 page
SMC 238
President Franklin Pierce recalls the American minister resident in Turkey, George Marsh, in order to dispatch him to Greece. Pierce needed Marsh to negotiate with the Greek authorities in order to free an American Consul stationed there who had been arrested and his property seized.
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Former President Franklin Pierce Defends Himself Against Treason Charges Brought by William H. Seward
March 24, 1862
Autograph Letter Signed
4 pages
SMC 422
Franklin Pierce, a public detractor of President Lincoln and of the Union, is charged with being a member of a secret league, intending to overthrow the government. Incensed by the publication of the allegations, Pierce arranges for his old friend, Senator Latham of California, to introduce a resolution demanding that all the correspondence in the matter be submitted to Congress for inquiry.
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Calling Card
1 page
SMC 544
This rare autographed calling card of Franklin Pierce was written in haste and left at the occupant's vacant lodgings. Pierce is sorry to have missed the person but asks that they call on him later that evening at his hotel.
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Franklin Pierce Describes Nathaniel Hawthorne's Last Night Alive on Their Trip to New England
May 19, 1864
Autograph Letter Signed
4 pages
SMC 583
Former President Pierce tells the story of his friend, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne's demise, detailing their last trip and the epic moment of Pierce’s discovery of his death.
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Autograph Letter Signed
4 pages
SMC 961
President Pierce fears that if the Kansas-Nebraska Bill-which granted the States the right to decide on slavery-would not pass, Civil War would ensue.
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Pierce on His Favorite Portrait of Himself, That of His Dead Son, and Those of the First Five Presidents
June 7, 1854
Autograph Letter Signed
4 pages
SMC 962
Franklin Pierce writes to Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a renowned painter who would go on to achieve even greater fame with his paintings of Lincoln, especially of Lincoln reading the Emancipation Proclamation. Here, Pierce expresses the great satisfaction he and Mrs. Pierce take in Carpenter’s portrait of his dead son – painted from a daguerreotype following the boy's tragic death in 1853.
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Autograph Letter Signed
2 pages
SMC 965
President Franklin Pierce invites the prominent Philadelphia cleric, Henry A. Boardman, to visit at the White House, "that we may make some time under this roof a period of enjoyment." The Pierces, who lost their last surviving child in a train crash two years earlier, were still in mourning, and Pierce hoped Boardman's visit might bring some comfort to them.
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President Franklin Pierce Warmly Endorses the Kansas-Nebraska Act as "Demonstrably Right and Patriotic"
March 9, 1854
Autograph Letter Signed
4 pages
SMC 966
Pierce endorses the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed citizens of those states to decide if they wanted to retain slaves or not. This decision reversed the Missouri compromise of 1820 and sharply divided the nation.
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Candidate Franklin Pierce Writes About Nathaniel Hawthorne's Campaign Biography of Him
September 27, 1852
Autograph Letter Signed
2 pages
SMC 967
An agitated candidate Pierce writes to the publisher of Nathaniel Hawthorne's campaign biography of him, demanding that the West and Southwest be "liberally supplied" with "Hawthorne's book" as "the sales which are to be made must be made promptly."
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Ephemera
1 page
SMC 976
The Copperheads were northern Democrats who blamed the abolitionists for the Civil War and wished to see Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power. This broadside is a Republican plea to voters to ponder-and ultimately reject-the traitorous nature of the Copperheads and their ringleader, Franklin Pierce. Shortly after this broadside appeared, Lincoln was victorious in his reelection campaign.
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Autograph Letter Signed
4 pages
SMC 979
Just seven months before this letter was penned, her beloved son and only surviving child, Bennie, was struck down before her eyes in a train wreck, in which he was the only fatality. Here she writes to her sister about family matters - but her tragic loss is never far from her thoughts.
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Very Rare Printed Presidential Check Signed by Franklin Pierce: He Purchases Coal for the White House
September 19, 1854
Check Signed
1 page
SMC 1074
With this, one of the rarest surviving presidential checks, Franklin Pierce purchased coal for the White House in September of 1854.
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President Franklin Pierce Appoints the First United States Consul to Serve in Jerusalem
October 20, 1856
Document Signed
1 page
SMC 1741
President Franklin Pierce appoints Boston physician John Warren Gorham as the first United States Consul at Jerusalem on October 20, 1856.
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