Franklin Pierce — 14th President of the United States
14th President of the United States, Democratic
Franklin Pierce
Term: Mar 4, 1853 – Mar 4, 1857
Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) was the fourteenth president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. His presidency was dominated by the deepening national crisis over slavery: he signed the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed settlers in new territories to decide the slavery question themselves, triggering violent conflict in "Bleeding Kansas" and accelerating the collapse of the Whig Party and the rise of the Republican Party. Pierce supported the Compromise of 1850 and its Fugitive Slave Act and was broadly aligned with pro-slavery Southern Democrats, which effectively ended his political career after leaving office.
“With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined. Without it what are we individually or collectively? What becomes of the noblest field ever opened for the advancement of our race in religion, in government, in the arts, and in all that dignifies and adorns mankind?”