Franklin Pierce quotes

Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. His presidency is often remembered for the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act, which intensified national divisions over slavery. He struggled to unite the country during a period of growing sectional conflict. Here are 10 of his quotes:

A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties.

Franklin Pierce

You have summoned me in my weakness. You must sustain me by your strength.

Franklin Pierce

I never justify, sustain, or in any way or to any extent uphold this cruel, heartless, aimless unnecessary war.

Franklin Pierce

I speak of the war as fruitless; for it is clear that, prosecuted upon the basis of the proclamations of September 22d and September 24th, 1862, prosecuted, as I must understand these proclamations, to say nothing of the kindred blood which has followed, upon the theory of emancipation, devastation, subjugation, it cannot fail to be fruitless in every thing except the harvest of woe which it is ripening for what was once the peerless republic.

Franklin Pierce

Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.

Franklin Pierce

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

Franklin Pierce

There's nothing left . . . but to get drunk.

Franklin Pierce

I do not believe that our friends at the South have any just idea of the state of feeling, hurrying at this moment to a pitch of intense exasperation, between those who respect their political obligations, and those who apparently have no impelling power but that which a fanatical position on the subject of domestic Slavery imparts. Without discussing the question of right - of abstract power to secede - I have never believed that actual disruption of the Union can occur without blood; and if, through the madness of Northern Abolitionists, that dire calamity must come, the fighting will not be along Mason's and Dixon's line merely. It [will] be within our own borders, in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred.

Franklin Pierce

The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution.

Franklin Pierce