Lincoln v. Pierce: Laws Higher than the Constitution

Probably not the best President to be looking up to

Franklin Pierce: the 14th President of the United States. I bet that’s all you know about him…if that. In case you didn’t know, Franklin Pierce is New Hampshire’s only President…he has a few things named after him here and there (my law school used to be for instance), and he has this nice statue (above) remembering his existence. But thats largely it. New Hampshire does not celebrate the life and Presidency of Franklin Pierce. Even to the New Hampshire-ites he is a footnote in history. I, myself, wasn’t too concerned with his historical neglect, that it is until History found me.

As it turned out, Franklin Pierce was not only the former name of my school (now University of New Hampshire School of Law), but he would have been my neighbor, give or take a hundred and fifty years or so. On a crisp fall day I went for a jog from my apartment (my first year in law school), I headed down the street and by an old cemetery. I decided to cut through it and noticed a particular tombstone, (larger than most but not too out of the ordinary) decorated with some decomposing flowers and an American Flag. I decided to check it out. It read, “Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States”, then listed the years of his life. No quote. No “in loving memory”. Just his name, and on the side the name of his wife and kids. Just a marker that he existed.

Franklin Pierce's Tombstone

I found this interesting. Here was a tombstone to an American President in a largely forgotten and dilapidated cemetery a few blocks from my house. No sign post directed towards it, just a slightly larger tombstone in the midst of several ordinary ones. As I said before, there is a statue of Franklin Pierce outside of the Capital Building, but even that is outside the court yard of the Capital Building, the center piece statue is a famous Senator named Daniel Webster. Franklin Pierce is an afterthought of historical figures here in New Hampshire.

So what gives? Probably the fact that Franklin Pierce was indecisive in a decisive time and came just two Presidential terms before another President, Abraham Lincoln (Pierce being the 14th President and Lincoln being the 16th). Franklin Pierce was elected to the Presidency in a landslide in 1853. He was well-liked at the time and even called “handsome Frank”. Unfortunately for Franklin Pierce, and the United States at the time, Franklin Pierce failed to lead. Pierce followed the letter of the Constitution and not its spirit. Generally, this needs to be the guiding principal of any Presidency, but there was one issue that alluded our founding document…slavery.

The major piece of legislation under Franklin Pierce was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It repealed the Missouri Compromise. Now in case your history is as rusty as mine was, the Missouri Compromise guaranteed that slavery would stay in the South and wouldn’t penetrate the North. The Kansas-Nebraska act, veiled in a guise of democracy and the Constitution, declared that new territories could choose for themselves whether they would be a Free State or a Slave state. Pierce bowed to the wishes of a then-popular Senator named Stephen A. Douglas (famous from the later Lincoln-Douglas debates). On the face of this issue, the Kansas-Nebraska Act seemed as American as Apple Pie, Americans choosing their freedoms as should be done in a Democracy. However, the results told a different story.

Because, the issue was left open the people, it caused hoards of Americans, both pro and anti-slavery to overflow the Nebraska and Kansas territories in order to ensure that their will was carried out in the states. Fights and riots ensued in the states, leading to the events of “Bleeding Kansas” and other pre-Civil War fights. Ultimately this stirred the hornets nest that became the Civil War. Pierce saw that the Constitution (prior to the 13th -15th amendments passed post-Civil War) ensured states sovereignty to make their own decisions, in his mind even to decide whether or not Slavery was allowed by law. Pierce believed this right so much that he even enforced the Fugitive Slave Act, sending escaped slaves in the free North back to their owners in the South. Pierce upheld State’s rights and individual property rights as stipulated by law at the time. While this seems absurd to us today, the irony is that Franklin Pierce was actually upholding the Constitution as it was written then.

Franklin Pierce's house, note the railroad that runs right through his property now...

Abraham Lincoln, elected four years later couldn’t be any more different than Pierce. Lincoln was ugly, unpopular, and held beliefs that would alienate half the country. Furthermore, Lincoln departed from the written law of the Constitution at the time. President Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and ended property rights of Slave holders in the South through the  Emancipation Proclamation. He even forced states to comply by rifle point (otherwise known as the Civil War, duh). Not surprisingly, Pierce even criticized Lincoln during the Civil War for suspending Habeas Corpus and further stated, “the true purpose of the war was to wipe out the states and destroy property.” Pierce was even right, property was taken away from the South and power shifted from the States to the Federal government (read about the 14th Amendment). In fact, one could very easily argue that under the Constitution at the time, Pierce upheld it far better than Lincoln did. (remember pre-13th -15th amendments)

So why do we regard Lincoln as the greatest President of all time (routinely ranked #1 or #2 in almost any Presidential Ranking), while Pierce is routinely ranked last or second to last. Why? Wasn’t Pierce better at upholding the Constitution? As the President swears by at the time of his inauguration? What Pierce missed is that, while the Constitution is the highest law in the land and should be respected and upheld at high costs, there are laws greater than even the Constitution. John Locke wrote that God gave man three unalienable rights, “Life, Liberty, and Property”, Thomas Jefferson later amended this famously in the Declaration of Independence as “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. In other words, these three rights no man can take away, not even by Constitution. Also, I personally believe the order in which they are listed is crucial to understanding the importance of when these rights clash. For example, slavery could not continue because Liberty trumped the right to Property. Martin Luther King Jr. nailed it 100 years later when he said,

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

With that said, I believe there are few laws and few rights to rise to this position, however Slavery was one of them. I believe there is one such right out there today, not honored by the Constitution, and it is not Health Care. I’ll let your deductive reasoning let you figure out which one that is. So in conclusion, Franklin Pierce, though he abided by democracy and the Constitution, missed this important caveat to the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln did not.

Sources:

Franklin Pierce video featurette on History.com

Wikipedia History of Franklin Pierce

John Locke