Owner Comments:
Fourteenth President
Lived: November 23, 1804 - October 8, 1869
Term: 1853-1857
Spouse: Jane Appleton Pierce
Quote: “The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.”
Historical Information:
- Lost his 11-year0old son, Benjamin, in a train derailment that he and his wife survived.
- Suffered severe depression as a result of this loss.
- Helped pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854, which would lead to the “Bleeding Kansas” Crisis.
- Managed the final phases of the Gadsden Purchase, which had been started by the Fillmore administration, and which set the modern borders between New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico.