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. Continue reading
Celebrity Graveland 