Anglais," and many memoirs on the administra- tion and commerce of the French colonies in both North and South America.
PIEPER, Franz Angust Otto, clergyman, b.
in Carrvitz, Pommerania, Germany, 27 June, 1852.
He received his preliminary training at the Dora-
Gymnasium, at Colberg, Pomerania. After his
settlement in this country he was graduated at
Northwestern university. Wain-town, Wis.. in is;-j,
and at Concordia Lutheran theological seminary.
St. Lnuis, Mo., in 1875. In the same year he was
ordained to the ministry at Centreville, Vis., where
he remained until 1878. In that year he berame
professor of theology in Concordia seminar). St.
Louis, Mo. This post he held until June, "1887,
when he was elected president of the institution.
He is a frequent contributor to denominational
periodical*, and has published " Das Grundbekennt-
niss der ev.-Lutherischen Kirche. mit einer ge-
schichtlichen Einleitung und kurzen erklarenden
Anmerkungen versehen " (St. Louis. 1880).
PIERCE, Byron Root, soldier, b. in East Bloomfield, Ontario co., N. Y.. 20 Sept., 1829. He received an academical education at Rochester, N. Y., and, removing to Michigan, early became interested in military matters. At the beginning of the civil war he enlisted in the 3d Michigan volunteers, and was commissioned successively captain, major, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel of that regiment, which served throughout the war with the
Army of the Potomac. He was made brigadier-general of volunteers, 7 June, 1864, brevetted major-general, 6 April, 1865, and mustered out of tin-service en 'J4 Aug. Later (1888) he became commandant of the Soldiers' home at Grand Rapids, Mich.
PIERCE, Franklin, fourteenth president of
the United States, b. in Hillsborough, N. II.. ,.':!
Nov., 1804 ; d. in Concord, N. H., 8 Oct., 1869.
His father. Benjamin Pierce (b. in Chelmsford,
Mass., 25 Dec., 1757; d. in Hillsborough, N. H.,
1 April, 1839), on the day of the battle of Lexing-
ton enlisted in the patriot army and served until
its disbandment in 1784, attaining the rank of cap-
tain and brevet major. He had intense political
convictions, was a Republican of the school of
Jefferson, an ardent admirer of Jackson, and the
leader of his party in New Hampshire, of which he
was elected governor in 1827 and 1829. He was a
farmer, and trained his children in his own simple
and laborious habits. Discerning signs of future
distinction in his son Franklin, he gave him an
arademiral i>dm-at mn in vll-knnvii nisi it iitiuiis .-it
Hancock. Francestown. and Exeter, and in 1,820
sent him to Bowdoin college, Brunswick, Me. His
college-mates there were John P. Hale, his future
political rival. Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, Sergeant S.
Prentiss. the distinguished orator, Henry W. Long-
fellow, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, his future biog-
rapher and life-long personal friend. His ambition
was then of a martial cast, and as an officer in a
company of college students he enthusiastically de-
voted himself to the study of military tactics.
This was one reason why he found himself at the
foot of his class at the end of two years in college.
Stung by a sense of disgrace, he devoted the two
remaining years to hard study, and when he was
graduated in 1824 he was third" in his class. While
in college, like many other eminent Americans, he
taught in winter. After taking his degree he be-
gan the study of law at Portsmouth, in the office
of Levi Woodbury, where he remained about a
year. He afterward spent two years in the law-
school at Northampton, Mass., and in the office
of Judge Edmund Parker at Amherst, N. H.
In 1827 he was admitted to the bar and began
practice in his native town. Soon afterward he
argued his first jury cause in the court-house at
Amherst. This effort (as is often the case with emi-
nent orators) was a failure. But lie was not de-
spondent. He replied to the sympathetic expres-
sions of a friend: "I will try nine hundred and
ninety-nine cases, if clients continue to trust DM,
and if I fail just as I have to-day, I will try the
thousandth. I shall live to argue cases in this
court-house in a manner that will mortify neither
myself nor my friends."
With his popular qualities it was inevitable that he should take a prominent part in the sharp political contests of his native state. He espoused the cause of Gen. Jackson with ardor, and in 1829 was elected to represent his native town in the legislature, where, by three subsequent elections, he served four years, the last two as speaker, for which office he received three fourths of all the votes of the house. In 1833 he was elected to represent his native district in the lower house of congress, where he remained four years. He served on the judiciary and other important committees, but did not participate largely in the debates. That could not be expected of so young a man in a body containing so many veteran politicians and statesmen who had already acquired a national reputation. But in February, 1834, he made a vigorous and sensible speech against the Revolutionary claims bill, condemning it as opening the door to fraud. In December, 1835, he spoke and voted against receiving petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, In June, 1836, he spoke against a bill making appropriations for the military academy at West Point. He contended that that institution was aristocratic in its tendencies, that a professional soldiery and standing armies are always dangerous tb the liberties of the people, and that in war the republic must rely upon her citizen militia. His experience in the Mexican war afterward convinced him that such an institution is necessary, and he frankly acknowledged his error. It is hardly necessary to add that while in congress Mr. Pierce sustained President Jackson in opposing the so-called internal improvement policy. In 1837 he was elected to the U. S. senate. He was the youngest member of that body, and had barely arrived at the legal age for that office when he took his seat. In January, 1840, he spoke upon the Indian war in Florida, defending the secretary of war from the attacks of his political opponents! In December of the same year he advocated and carried through the senate a bill granting a pension to an aged woman whose husband, Isaac Davis, had been among the first to fall at Concord bridge on 19 April, 1775. In July, 1841, he spoke against the fiscal bank bill, and in favor of an amendment prohibiting members of congress from borrowing money of the bank. At the same session he made a strong speech against the removal of government officials for their political opinions, in violation of the pledges to the contrary which the Whig leaders had given to the country in the canvass of 1840. During the five years that he remained in the senate it numbered among its members Benton, Buchanan, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Woodbury, and Silas Wright, an array of veteran statesmen and intellectual giants who had long been party leaders, and who occupied the whole field of debate. Among such men the young, modest, and comparatively obscure member from New Hampshire could not, with what his biographer calls " his exquisite sense of propriety," force himself into a conspicuous position. There is abundant proof, however, that he won the friendship of his eminent associates.
