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Franklin Pierce Presidential $1 Coin — 14th President, 1853 - 1857
• Born: 23 November 1804
• Birthplace: Hillsborough, New Hampshire
• Died: 8 October 1869
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1853-1857
Franklin Pierce was a New Hampshire Democrat who became the 14th president of the United States. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1832, and later moved to the U.S. Senate in 1837. Not so fond of Washington politics, he resigned from the Senate in 1842 and returned to New Hampshire to practice law.
He turned down political offers and served in the Mexican War, and was eventually made a Brigadier General. In 1852 he attended the Democratic national convention and, much to his surprise, won the nomination and the election over incumbent president Millard Fillmore.
Pierce tried unsuccessfully to promote conciliation between the North and the South over slavery, an issue (the "Kansas Question") that dominated his presidency. and he served only one term. He was succeeded by James Buchanan.
Pierce married Jane Appleton in 1834 and they had three sons, none of whom made it to adulthood. They witnessed the death of their last surving son, Benjamin, in a railroad accident, just two months before his inauguration.
Franklin Pierce, the 14th U.S. President, was born on November 23, 1804, in Hillsboro, N.H. He was elected to the New Hampshire legislature, and later served in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. In 1847 he served briefly as a brigadier general in the Mexican-American War. Largely unknown to the public, Pierce was nominated for President in 1852 by the Democratic Party as a compromise candidate. Partly because of his strong support for the Compromise of 1850, which attempted to mitigate the slavery issue and preserve the Union, Pierce was elected President and served from 1853-1857.
While he was President, the U.S. negotiated the Gadsden Purchase with Mexico, which gave the U.S. land in present-day southern Arizona and New Mexico for a southern transcontinental railroad. Congress also passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, thus reopening the possibility of slavery in the West under the principle of "popular sovereignty." This was the belief that the people who settled a territory could determine whether to permit or prohibit slavery.
Denied re-nomination by his party for President in 1856, he retired from politics at the end of his term. He died on October 8, 1869, in Concord, N.H.