RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) –
Leading up to America’s 250th birthday, we are highlighting things you may not know about our presidents.
Today, we feature the 14th President of the United States.
Franklin Pierce was born on November 23, 1804, in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. His father, Benjamin Pierce, was a two-time governor of the Granite State and a hero of the Revolutionary War. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1824, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1827.
Pierce served two terms in the U.S. Congress and one term in the U.S. Senate in the 1830s.
After leaving Washington, he stayed out of the public eye for a decade before becoming a Democratic dark-horse candidate for president in 1852. He was elected, and at 47, was the youngest man at the time to win the White House.
Two months before his inauguration, his family was involved in a train wreck in Massachusetts. Pierce and his wife were not hurt, but his 11-year-old son Bennie, was killed. All three of the couple’s sons died young.
His greatest challenge as president was his stance on the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Pierce supported the bill that repealed the ban on slavery in those states. He was a northerner but was sympathetic to slavery. That eventually led to him not getting the Democratic nomination in the 1856 election, thus ending his political career.
Franklin Pierce, a one-term president, died in 1869. He was 64 years old.
President Pierce is credited with bringing the first Christmas tree to the White House and a permanent bathtub to the second floor of the White House.
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