Non-fiction: Farewell Address

Overview
Franklin Pierce’s 1857 Farewell Address frames his presidency against the mounting sectional crisis, asserting that fidelity to the Constitution and the equal rights of the states offer the Republic its only safe path. He presents his term as a sustained effort to maintain peace at home and abroad, to restrain the federal government within its enumerated powers, and to preserve the Union by removing slavery from the arena of national legislation. The speech balances self-justification with caution, urging the nation to replace agitation with adherence to law and to accept constitutional remedies rather than political passions.

Union and the Constitution
Pierce grounds his appeal in a compact theory of the Union: the states entered as equals, and the federal charter distributes limited powers to be exercised with impartiality. He warns that sectional parties threaten this equilibrium by converting moral and economic grievances into constitutional ruptures. The supremacy of law, he argues, is the free citizen’s safeguard; any resort to nullification, mob violence, or civil combinations against duly enacted statutes erodes the foundations of republican government. He presents national unity not as sentimental rhetoric but as a legal and practical necessity for prosperity, security, and liberty.

Slavery, the Territories, and Kansas
The core of his defense concerns slavery in the territories. Pierce upholds the Kansas-Nebraska framework as a restoration of constitutional equality and local self-government, contending that Congress must not legislate slavery up or down in the territories. Popular sovereignty, he claims, respects both the rights of migrants from all states and the principle that institutions should arise from local majorities when a territory forms a state. He attributes the violence in “Bleeding Kansas” to outside interference and partisan schemes, denouncing secret societies and extralegal incursions that sought to predetermine the territory’s fate. While condemning bloodshed and fraud, he insists that orderly legal processes, not federal coercion or sectional dictates, must settle the question. With a major judicial ruling impending, he urges citizens to accept constitutional adjudication as the proper arbiter of disputed powers.

Executive Duty and the Rule of Law
Pierce portrays his administration as a guardian of enforcement rather than a partisan engine. He defends the execution of all statutes, including those touching the most sensitive questions, as an inescapable executive duty. He argues that selective obedience invites anarchy and that officers must be shielded when they act under law. However unpopular particular measures might be, the remedy lies in constitutional change or repeal, not in resistance. This logic undergirds his broader insistence that national policy must be uniform and impartial or it ceases to be national.

Foreign Relations and National Development
Abroad, Pierce points to peace maintained with major powers, expanded commerce, and strengthened national standing. He highlights continental adjustments that clarified borders and facilitated western development, and he underscores commitments to lawful neutrality while safeguarding American lives, property, and transit across crucial isthmian routes. He links these policies to internal improvements of a national character, safer harbors, communication lines, and prospective transcontinental connections, arguing that such projects, prudently conceived and constitutionally grounded, bind distant regions into a common destiny.

Warnings and Hopes
Pierce closes by warning that fanaticism, whether sectional, partisan, or personal, can dissolve the careful balances that sustain liberty. The Republic’s future, he suggests, depends on citizens who will subordinate immediate passions to constitutional process, respect the equality of the states, and allow local communities to shape their institutions within the Union’s framework. He departs with confidence that if these principles prevail, the United States will continue to grow in strength and freedom; if they are discarded, prosperity and honor will be the first casualties, and the Union itself may follow.