historical association site summit with panel discussion ton presidents and ts press. featuring former presidential press secretaries and white house correspondent. tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. if you miss any of this week's american history tv programs, you can find them any time online at c-span video library at c-span.org. weekdays continues until labor day. on thursday we turn to our oral history series and conversations with women who were members of congress. and then on friday we'll show you discussions on world war i known as the great war, including a look at soldiers on the western front, and how the u.s. dealt with shell shock. up next, we travel to concord, new hampshire to visit 14th president pierce only home he lived in. >> franklin pierce is 14th

president of the united states. and only president from new hampshire. he was a lawyer. and very charismatic politician. and he lived in the house here from 1842 to 1848 with his wife jane, two sons, frankie and bennie. he had resigned a senate seat to come back to concord and be with his family and to work on his law practice. he was born in hills borough on november 23rd, 1804, in a log cabin. before he was a year old, his father moved him into the big georgian mansion in hills borough where he ran a tavern. so he grew up in social circumstances with lots of people coming and going and lots of political discussions. he was educated at some of the academies around hills borough. when he was 16, his father took

him up to maine to go to bod encollege and he made some good friends up there, one of them was nathanael hawthorne and graduated third in his class from the college. pierce interest in politics came about when he was very young. his father had the tavern, lots of political discussions going on. his father was always involved in politics. he was represented hills borough with the state leg tour, was sheriff of the county, went on to be governor twice of new hampshire. so when he was 23, pierce ran for the legislature, was elected, and then when he was 26 he was the youngest speaker of the house that we have ever had in new hampshire. at that time, there were 200 members in our house of representatives. today there are 435.

so it's a pretty large legislative body. he went on to run for congress. franklin pierce was in the house from 1833 to 1837. and then he went on to run for the senate. and he resigned his senate seat. served in that maybe four to five years. his wife jane pierce did not like washington and did not like politics. she was a shy retiring person. she prefrds to be preferred to the boost um of her family. he was the opposite. and then he came back here and was going to work on his law practice to support his family. this house is known as a greek rearrival house. it was built in 1838. and you see them all throughout concord. it's quite a common

architectural style for this area. we are here in the parlor of the franklin pierce house. and behind me is one of three portraits done of franklin pierce of 1852 when he was running for president. you can see that he's quite a handsome gentleman. he had a couple of nicknames. one was handsome frank. and the other was young hillary clintonry of the granite hills since he had the same politics as andrew jackson. over here on the wall is a copy of a letter that's owned by bod incollege. this is franklin pierce writing to a friends. and in the letter they are trying to find a job for nathanael hawthorne. he was an author and liked to write books. but he also had a family that he needed to support. so this is it an ongoing theme

throughout the lives of the two men. they were always trying to find work for nathanael hawthorne so that he could support his family. over here on the wall is an order of cincinnati certificate. and franklin pierce is unwith of three presidents that belongs to this organization. this is the first veterans organization in our countryry. and it was formed by the offices of the line under george washington. the organization is hereditary and pierce's, as i said, one of three presidents, that belonged to the order of cincinnati. george washington, monroe, and pierce, are the three presidents. there are several pieces of furniture in the house that franklin and jane took to the white house to furnish the eight rooms that were to be used for their personal life.

one is the sofa over here under the portrait. the table in the center of the room was known as the white house table in his sister's family. so evidently they were bothering furniture from friends and relatives to help furnish these eight rooms. over against the wall is it a little writing desk and chair that belonged to franklin pierce. and he would be up until 3:00 in the morning sometimes answering correspondence and writing speeches sitting in the little chair here. and this room, this is the dining room of the frank link pierce house, and in this room we have the secretary from pierces war office. when he was through with it, he gave it to his law partner, josiah, and it was in that family when the house opened, so they very generously gave it to the brigade to demonstrate his law practice.

this is how it opened. he would sit and write on the desk here, then have his law books in the case up above there. and the books in this case are all owned by either jay pierce or franklin pierce and have inscriptions in the front of them. it has two bedrooms upstairs. there is a back part of the house that has smaller rooms in it that probably were used for the irish girls and the children when they lived here. one of the bedrooms would have been used as a guest room. when the guests came they would stay for extended periods of time. they lived in the house from 1842 to 1848. when pierce came back from the mexican war, the house was sold. during the time they lived here, frankie, the four-year-old died of typhoid upstairs.

that was assad time for the family. when periods went off to the mexican war in 1847, he raised a 1,000 troopsz, made him a general. they all went down to now port rhode island and bordered sailing vessels to go out to mexico. they spent about a month on the ocean. the winds died down and they were calm. they finally made it to veracruz where he fought in a couple of the battles there. and then they returned back to concord after that. when pierce came back, he sold the house and they never owned anything after that. they either rented property or they stayed in boarding houses from that point on. in 1852, the democrats were meeting down in baltimore, there were three men that were vying for the nomination, and they couldn't seem to make a decision.

virginia on the 35th ballot, nominated franklin pierce, and then on the 49th ballot they actually selected had imto be the nominee for the democratic party. jane and franklin pierce were riding in a carriage south of boston, when the messenger caught up with them to give them the news and jane promptedly fainted. that was ts last thing she wanted. she was very upset to think that they might need to go back down to washington. she was happy just in her life as it was and didn't really want to change. but she realized that pierce would always answer the call if the country asked, and so she agreed that he should go ahead and run as the democratic candidate. pierce went home, it was ungentlemanly fort candida ungentlemanly for the candidate to campaign at that time.

and his vice president rufus cane went out and campaigned with a lot of his friends. they won the election in 1852. and king was ill, so he went off to cuba. and when it came time for the inauguration, congress had to pass an act for him to take the oath of office on foreign soil, which he did. he returned to washington two months later and died two or three days after that. so pierce never had a vice president. and there was nothing in place to put someone into office at that time. so that was kind of a loanly ti lonely time for him. pierce had an accident in 1853 in. january they were returning from a funeral in massachusetts and the car they were riding in turned around on the track, an axle broke, and tumbled down the

embankment and benny was the only fatality, and he was killed. in front of both his parents right before they were due to go down to washington. so this was devastating to both of them. and particularly to jane. she never really recovered from that. so pierce was left with trying to handle his own grief and trying to shore his wife up and going down to washington to run the country. so it was a very stressful time in their licves. pierce's presidency had quite a few successes. he reduced national debt to stg like 60%. he had grade agreements with n canada on fishing treaties and things tliek that. actually, the trade with japan opened up, admiral perry came

back, so we begin our trade agreements with japan at that point. the southern border of the united states was defined by the gas den purchase that happened during pierce's time. the army and the navy was modernized under the secretary of war, jefferson davis, who of course went on to be the president of confederacy during the civil war. pierce was a lawyer and he felt that slavery should be handled with an act of congress. there should be legislation that would prohibit it. he wasn't in favor of it. but he was very afraid that the country would split over that. and so his whole focus when he was president was just to try to keep the country together. he understood what the hardships of the men fighting in the rev logs were, to create country, so

he was trying very hard to keep the country together. and of course it did split after lincoln was elected. franklin pierce had one term in office in the democratic party did not want him to run again. he had quite a few good accomplishments. we don't hear too much about those because the kansas nebraska act which occurred at the end of his presidency was turned into bloody kansas and was a disaster as far as trying to achieve what it had hoped to achieve. and so they nominated buchanan to be the candidate in the next election cycle. franklin pierce left the presidency. they came back up to new hampshire for a short time. and then jane was not very healthy. she was still suffering over the death of benny. and she probably suffered from

depression anyways. jane passed away in 1863. and then pierce passed away in 1869. franklin pierce unfortunate was not well-liked in new hampshire after at the left the presidency over the kansas nebraska act. and it took the state a long time before they finally erected a statue on the state house grounds. it was in the early 1900s that they finally did put up a statue to franklin pierce. so his mark, i don't think, is that much in the state, actually, because of the way his presidency ended. we hope that people when they vi visits the house will have a better understanding of franklin pierce. we would like them to see some of the accomplishments of the administration in washington and understand what he was like as a

person. and i think deserves a lot of credit for the things that he did accomplish while he was president. >> this labor day weekend, american history tv on c-span 3 has three days of featured programming. starting saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern with lectures in history as colorado state university pueblo professor matt harris discusses the ant slavery movement before the civil war. sunday at 10:00 a.m. on oral histories, our women in congress series with barbara canally. then on 8:00 p.m. on the presidency, look at the relationship between george washington and alexander hamilton and the historical accuracy of hamilton the musical. then monday 8:00 p.m. white house historical presidential site summit. watch american history tv this labor day weekend on c-span3. whose stories are