Franklin Pierce enjoyed a meteoric rise in politics. The son of a governor, Pierce was elected to the New Hampshire state legislature at 25; at 28, he went to the U.S. House of Representatives; and at age 32, he became the youngest member of the U.S. Senate.

The only deterrent to his rising political career was his wife Jane. Unhappy in public life, she persuaded him to resign from the Senate. Pierce enlisted in the Army to fight the Mexican War. In 1852, the Democrats nominated him as a compromise candidate on the 49th ballot. Jane Pierce fainted on hearing the news.

Franklin Pierce entered his presidency cloaked in personal tragedy. Two months before Pierce’s inauguration, his last surviving child was killed in a train wreck. Pierce’s presidency was fraught with sectional conflict. Pierce, an anti-abolitionist, enforced the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, further inflaming the bitter debate over slavery. Its passage split the Democrats, destroyed the Whigs and gave rise to the Republican party.

Denied renomination in 1856, Pierce and his wife later retired to their estate in Concord, New Hampshire. During the Civil War, Pierce spoke out against Abraham Lincoln’s war policy and was called a traitor. Always a heavy drinker, he died of cirrhosis on October 8, 1869, at age 64.