The Mysterious Lady Law by Robert Appleton

Just after the election, Benny, 11, was crushed to death in a freak train accident. Their remaining son Benny wrote a letter to her saying, “I hope he won’t be elected.”įranklin Pierce came to agree with that sentiment even before he took the oath of office. In 1852, the Democratic Party nominated Franklin Pierce for the presidency of the United States. Washington was no place to raise their children, she thought. She had given birth to two more sons, Frank Robert in 1839 and Benjamin in 1841. Pierce succumbed to Jane’s wishes and quit the Senate in 1842. When her husband was elected to the Senate for the term beginning in 1837, she seemed less than thrilled. Jane Pierce managed another season in Washington. Their son, Franklin Jr., was born in 1836, but he only lived a few days. She had a reason: she was pregnant with their first child. Jane put up with his first session of Congress, but returned home to her mother in New Hampshire for the second. She was shy, sickly, refined, a teetotaler and a proper daughter of New England’s theocracy. He was gregarious, vain, a drinker and a son of the frontier. They held their wedding in 1834 at her family home in Amherst, N.H., and then left immediately afterward for Washington, D.C. Their courtship lasted eight years and finally ended shortly after he won election to Congress. He married Jane Means Appleton, the daughter of the president of Bowdoin College, Pierce’s alma mater. Pierce first succeeded at law and then parlayed his charm, reputation and family connections into a political career.

His father, Benjamin, was a revolutionary war veteran who served as governor of New Hampshire. Handsome Frank Pierce was born in a log cabin on Nov. Two months before he took the oath of office, President-elect Pierce and his wife lost their 11-year-old son, the third and last of their children to die.

The Mysterious Lady Law by Robert Appleton