Celebrity Graveland

November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869

The 14th President of the United States, Franklin Pierce was, by all accounts, an incredibly likable guy and certainly the most popular person in his native New Hampshire. But his single-term presidency during the eve of the American Civil War was riddled with unpopular missteps. After working his way through Congress, he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President in 1852. He won the election by a landslide. But, his decision to approve popular sovereignty in the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed for infighting in the new territories over slavery. He was widely regarded as an ineffective president whose sympathies for the ever-unsettled South did little to quell the approaching division of the country. His personal life was also full of tragedy. All of his children died young, including his youngest son who was killed in a train crash just months before Pierce’s inauguration. A vocal opponent of many of Abraham Lincoln’s decisions during the war, Pierce spent the last years of his life opposing the war and defending his friendship with Confederate President, Jefferson Davis. Pierce died of cirrhosis at the age of 64.

Burial

Old North Cemetery – Concord, NH

Specific Location

There’s a wrought-iron fenced section in the middle of this small cemetery, Pierce’s grave is in this section about 2/3 along the western fence.

This entry was posted on December 26, 2013 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Old North Cemetery (NH) with tags Bleeding Kansas, Old North Cemetery, U.S. Presidents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.