FRANKLIN PIERCE (D) - 1853-1857
I've always felt sorry for the 14th president. Here was a man who probably should have recused himself before his first day in office. After he was elected but before he could take office, he saw his last living son die in a railroad accident. Alcoholism and depression marked his entire term.
But even without his personal tragedy, he still wouldn't have been very good. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was keeping slavery in check. A showdown would have eventually come, but he stocked his cabinet with pro-slavery Southerners and made the "Kansas Question" worse. The Ostend Manifesto, where the US asserted they had the right to seize Cuba from Spain in the name of security if Spain wouldn't sell it to them, was laughable.
After his presidency, he condemned Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and sided with the Confederate States of America.
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