Reply #11: Franklin Pierce. Not only challenged but booted off the ticket (1856) [View All]

[Lancer]

Pierce was a dark horse Democrat who won the WH in 1852. He was an utter catastrophe as President -- Ostend Manifesto, Kansas-Nebraska Act, etc. -- and while there weren't primaries as we know them in those days, Pierce could not get his party's renomination in 1856. (They went with Buchanan, who replaced Pierce as the worst president up to that time.)

Pierce's life story is actually extremely sad. Because he seems to have been a genuinely good man, the failure of his presidency is all the more disappointing. The country was simmering, brewing and festering in the decade leading up to the Civil War. Pierce was totally unable to preside over it, and neither was Buchanan. Pierce was also an alcoholic whose wife left him, and who died of cirrhosis at 66.