#14: Pierce, Franklin

Franklin Pierce

Our Fourteenth President (1853-1857)

November 23, 1804 (Hillsborough, NH) – October 8, 1869 (Concord, NH)

Jon Hamm as Franklin Pierce!

• "The personal good looks of Pierce and his brilliant speaking manner impressed all who met him." He was a lawyer who served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and later, at 33, was the youngest Senator in the U.S. Senate. When elected president at 48, Pierce was the youngest president up to that time (woohoo).
• However, Pierce supported the Compromise of 1850 and, as president, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which made slavery possible in a large part of the West (boo), and also led to armed clashes among slavery and anti-slavery people (the so-called "Bleeding Kansas" chapter in our nation's history).
• Pierce's home life was super depressing: his wife suffered from tuberculosis and "melancholy." The couple lost two of their three sons. Most notably, Pierce's 11-year old son was killed in a railroad accident two months before Pierce's inauguration--"Mrs. Pierce collapsed from grief, and did not attend her husband's inauguration."
• After Pierce lost the presidency (his political usefulness was destroyed by his handling of the slavery issue), he started drinking and became a big critic of Abraham Lincoln (double boo).