Franklin Pierce was a statesman, military commander, and the 14th president of the United States.

Franklin Pierce was born on November 23, 1804, in a log cabin in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. He was a sixth-generation descendant of Thomas Pierce, who had moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from Norwich, Norfolk, England in about 1634.

After entering Bowdoin College in the the fall of 1820, Pierce joined the Athenian Society, a progressive literary society, alongside Jonathan Cilley (later elected to Congress) and Nathaniel Hawthorne, with whom he formed lasting friendships. In his will, he even left part of his estate to Hawthorne's children.

His desire to fight in the Mexican-American War was one reason Pierce refused an offer to become James K. Polk's Attorney General. He attained the rank of Brigadier General, even though he had never served in the military before, and led a group of volunteers at the Battle of Contreras, where he was injured when his horse tripped and fell. He later helped capture Mexico City, though his short tenure and his injury left little for historians to judge his ability as a military commander.

A northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation, he alienated anti-slavery groups by supporting and signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, yet he failed to stem conflict between North and South, setting the stage for Southern secession and the American Civil War.

Pierce easily defeated Whig Party candidate Winfield Scott who won only Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Vermont, finishing with 42 electoral votes to Pierce's 254.

On November 19, 1834, Pierce married Jane Means Appleton. She abhorred politics and especially disliked Washington, DC, creating a tension that would continue throughout Pierce's political ascent.

On January 6, 1853, Pierce, his wife, and his 11-year-old son, Benny, traveled by train from Andover back home to Concord, New Hampshire. But minutes after settling into their seats, one of the train's axles fractured, and the Pierces' car tumbled off the tracks and down a 20-foot embankment. The train car, according to a New York Times account of the wreck, "broke in pieces like a cigar box." 11-year-old Benny Pierce, who was nearly decapitated, died instantly.

Pierce, then the youngest man to be elected president, chose to affirm his oath of office on a law book rather than swear it on a Bible, as all his predecessors except John Quincy Adams had done.

In his inaugural address, which he delivered from memory, Pierce hailed an era of peace and prosperity at home and urged a vigorous assertion of U.S. interests in its foreign relations, including the "eminently important" acquisition of new territories. "The policy of my Administration", said the new president, "will not be deterred by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion." Avoiding the word "slavery", he emphasized his desire to put the "important subject" to rest and maintain a peaceful union. He alluded to his own personal tragedy, telling the crowd, "You have summoned me in my weakness, you must sustain me by your strength."