On a snowy day in January of 1853, two months after his election to the presidency, and two months before his inauguration, Franklin Pierce rode the train back from Annover, Massachusetts, which is near Boston, to his home and new Hampshire.

Trains were such a new innovation at the time. Just imagine what it's like to be going at these speeds that seem incredible and impossible to people who are used to writing horses and carriages from place to place.

He was with his wife and their 11 year old son Benny, and they're all on their way back from the funeral of a family friend.

So just as their train picks up speed past the wintery barren landscape around Annover, a coupler on the train broke, and the car, the train car that the piercés were in, fell off the tracks, it rolled straight down in embankment, and there was one death from the accident, only one death on the train.

It was their son Benny, whose head was crushed and partially decapitated right in front of their eyes.

This was the image that Franklin Pierce was still seeing over and over and over when he entered the White House.

At his inauguration, he wouldn't swear on the Bible. He was so sure that God was angry at him and that his son's horrible death was punishment for his sins.

Emilian cunning him with the Washington Post, and this is the 14th episode of Presidential.

This is what your husband can do for you. They date which you will live in increment.

Little baby Franklin Pierce was born in rural New Hampshire in 1804. He had gray eyes.

He was one of eight children, and his father had fought in the American Revolution and was active in local New Hampshire politics.

Franklin Pierce ended up going to Bowdoin College in Maine, where he was quite popular and handsome, and he became good friends with his classmate Nathaniel Hawthorne, who then goes on to write the Scarlett Letter.

Hawthorne would also eventually write Pierce's own campaign biography when he's running for president.

Right after college, when Pierce is in his early 20s, his father was elected governor of New Hampshire.

And soon after that, Pierce got into politics himself. He was only 24 years old when he was elected to the state legislature.

And then in 1832, when he's only about 28 years old, he ends up elected to the U.S. Congress.

He's a skilled orator, and of course it's also important to know that Franklin Pierce is a Democrat.

So it's an exciting time for him to head to Washington because this is right as Andrew Jackson is starting his second term as president.

Jackson of course is the father of the Democratic Party that Franklin Pierce is a part of.

He had a reputation as what was called at the time, a dull face that is a northern man with southern principles, even though he was from New Hampshire.

He was sometimes known as the young Hickory, a follower of Old Hickory Andrew Jackson.

That's historian James McPherson, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the Civil War called Battle Cry of Freedom.

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