1854 Franklin Pierce - Strict Constitutionalism

Franklin Pierce was a strict constitutionalist, he believed that the Federal government should confine itself only to those powers granted to it by the sates. He believed in both states rights, and the rights of slave holders. In his first annual address to congress, he referred to the constitution directly 19 times. In his strict construction of the constitution, funding of internal improvements was beyond the power of congress. In his first two annual addresses, Franklin Pierce discussed a transcontinental railroad connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The value of such a railroad was immense for both commercial and defense purposes. But, was it constitutional? In his first address, Franklin Pierce mused: "We can afford to wait, but we can not afford to overlook the ark of our security [constitution]." In his second address, to congress, Pierce warned us about danger of allowing congress to appropriate funds for large internal projects such as an transcontinental railway.

"Is it wise to augment this excess by encouraging hopes of sudden wealth expected to flow from magnificent schemes dependent upon the action of Congress? Does the spirit which has produced such results need to be stimulated or checked? Is it not the better rule to leave all these works to private enterprise, regulated and, when expedient, aided by the cooperation of States? If constructed by private capital the stimulant and the check go together and furnish a salutary restraint against speculative schemes and extravagance. But it is manifest that with the most effective guards there is danger of going too fast and too far. We may well pause before a proposition contemplating a simultaneous movement for the construction of railroads which in extent will equal, exclusive of the great Pacific road and all its branches, nearly one-third of the entire length of such works now completed in the United States, and which can not cost with equipments less than $150,000,000. The dangers likely to result from combinations of interests of this character can hardly be overestimated."

In that same year, President Pierce vetoed a bill that would have set aside land as resources for the mentally I'll. One that Dorothea Dix had fought so hard for. Pierce sited constitutional concerns. 

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29494
The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, By Michael J. Gerhardt, Oxford University Press (2013)   pg 97
http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/edu/essay.html?id=36