According to the White House's bio site, President Pierce (1804-1869) was Prez from 1853-1857. He was a Democrat, which today would mean he was a Republican, or something like that. A veteran of the Mexican War, he became a small time New Hampshire politician. He was truly an unknown who got nominated for the presidency because he survived all the elimination rounds. He did win the election, but not by much.

Slavery was a big issue at the time, an issue that Pierce would probably have been content to ignore. Pierce, though, did work to expand the United States (as he said, for our own security). Of course, that brought up the whole question of whether those new states would be slave states or free states. This even led to the purchase of what is now pretty much southern Arizona for a southern transcontinental train route (the one that was supposed to go through Rock Ridge). Of course, if the train goes south, then that land would be settled quicker, and would more than likely be slave states. Ya gotta love Pierce for that. If you can't tell, he was pretty much a tool for the southerners.

Unfortunately (for Pierce and Kansas) a bill was passed (thanks to the untiring work of the socially conscious Stephen Douglas) that allowed residents in new territories to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted slavery (and who better to decide what is sinful than the sinners?). When that fails (or the vote doesn't go your way), you can start shooting, which is exactly what happened in Kansas. Even though Pierce's term ended on a peaceful note, more or less, he wasn't nominated to run again. Buchanan won the Democratic nomination and the presidency, and, of course, after Buchanan was the little known president, Abraham Lincoln.

After his presidency, Pierce changed his first name to Hawkeye went on to star on the sitcom M*A*S*H. After the show ended, following the Compromise of 1981, he put forth legislation that all Internet sites that might be used for research be required to include at least one paragraph of complete nonsense, thereby marking those students who plagiarize the Internet as the complete losers that they are. Unfortunately, Pierce's Bill was turned down in committee, mostly because Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet yet.

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