Franklin Pierce (#14)

Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) was the 14th President of the United States and is consistently ranked among the worst presidents in American history. A New Hampshire Democrat and Mexican-American War veteran, he entered office under a personal cloud — his 11-year-old son Bennie was killed in a train accident just weeks before his inauguration, an event that devastated Pierce and his wife Jane throughout his presidency. Pierce came to believe he had been spared in the crash to serve as president, a conviction that added a fatalistic quality to his leadership.

Pierce's defining — and most destructive — act was signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and opened formerly free territories to the possibility of slavery through 'popular sovereignty.' The result was 'Bleeding Kansas' — a violent guerrilla conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers that served as a preview of the Civil War. The Act destroyed the Whig Party, gave birth to the Republican Party, and pushed the nation irreversibly toward war. Pierce was denied renomination by his own party in 1856. He spent his later years as an increasingly bitter, pro-Southern critic of Lincoln and the Union war effort.