country united states presidential election
Franklin Pierce ( November 23 , 1804October 8 , 1869 ) was the 14th President of the ___MASK83___ ( 1853  57 ). Pierce was a northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation . His polarizing actions in championing and signing the Kansas  Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act alienated anti - slavery groups while failing to stem intersectional conflict , setting the stage for Southern secession and the US Civil War . Historians and other scholars generally rank Pierce as among the worst of US Presidents . The ___MASK83___ presidential election of 1856 was the 18th quadrennial presidential election , held on Tuesday , November 4 , 1856 . Incumbent president Franklin Pierce was defeated in his effort to be re - nominated by the Democratic Party . James Buchanan , an experienced politician who had held a variety of political offices , was serving as the ___MASK83___ Ambassador to the United Kingdom and won the nomination instead . Slavery was the omnipresent issue , and the Whig Party , which had since the 1830s been one of the two major parties in the U . S . , had disintegrated . New parties such as the Republican Party ( strongly against slavery ' s expansion ) and American , or `` Know - Nothing , '' Party ( which ignored slavery and instead emphasized anti - immigration and anti - Catholic policies ) , competed to replace it as the principal opposition to the Democratic Party . The Republican Party nominated John C . Frémont of California as its first presidential candidate . The Know - Nothing Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore , of New York . Frémont condemned the Kansas -- Nebraska Act , and decried the expansion of slavery . Buchanan warned that the Republicans were extremists whose victory would lead to civil war . The Democrats endorsed popular sovereignty as the method to determine slavery ' s legality for newly admitted states . Buchanan won a plurality of the popular vote , but a majority of the electoral , and defeated Fillmore and Frémont , with the latter receiving fewer than 1200 popular votes in the slave states , with all of these coming from upper ones . The results in the Electoral College indicated that the Republican Party could possibly win the next presidential election by capturing only two more states . The American Civil War was a civil war in the ___MASK83___ fought from 1861 to 1865 . The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the ___MASK73___ . The Union won the war , which remains the bloodiest in U . S . history . The ___MASK83___ Ambassador to the United Kingdom ( known formally in the United Kingdom as Ambassador of the ___MASK83___ to the Court of St James ' s ) is the official representative of the President and the Government of the ___MASK1___ to the Queen and Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . The ___MASK83___ House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the ___MASK83___ Congress which , along with the Senate , composes the legislature of the ___MASK83___ . Her Majesty ' s Government ( HMG ), commonly referred to as the UK government or British government , is the central government of the United ___MASK67___ and Northern Ireland . Andrew Jackson ( March 15 , 1767  June 8 , 1845 ) was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh President of the ___MASK83___ from 1829 to 1837 and was the founder of the Democratic Party . He was born somewhere near the then - unmarked border between North and South Carolina , into a recently immigrated Scots - Irish farming family of relatively modest means . During the American Revolutionary War , Jackson , whose family supported the revolutionary cause , acted as a courier . At age 13 , he was captured and mistreated by the British army . He moved to new lands in Tennessee becoming a lawyer , planter and militia commander . He served in the U . S . House of Representatives and the U . S . Senate but was not prominent there . The Ostend Manifesto , aka Ostend Circular , was a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the ___MASK83___ to purchase ___MASK43___ from Spain while implying that the U . S . should declare war if Spain refused . ___MASK43___ ' s annexation had long been a goal of U . S . slaveholding expansionists , and was supported by a faction in ___MASK43___ itself . At the national level , American leaders had been satisfied to have the island remain in weak Spanish hands so long as it did not pass to a stronger power such as Britain or France . The Ostend Manifesto proposed a shift in foreign policy , justifying the use of force to seize ___MASK43___ in the name of national security . It resulted from debates over slavery in the ___MASK83___ , Manifest Destiny , and the Monroe Doctrine , as slaveholders sought new territory for slavery ' s expansion . James Knox Polk ( November 2 , 1795  June 15 , 1849 ) was the 11th President of the ___MASK83___ ( 1845  49 ). Polk was born in Mecklenburg County , ___MASK91___ . He later lived in and represented Tennessee . A Democrat , Polk served as the 13th Speaker of the House of Representatives ( 1835  39 ) the only president to have served as House Speaker  and the first of two ( the other being Andrew Johnson ) to serve as Governor of Tennessee ( 1839  41 ). Polk was the surprise ( dark horse ) candidate for president in 1844 , defeating Henry Clay of the rival Whig Party by promising to annex the Republic of Texas . Polk was a leader of Jacksonian Democracy during the Second Party System . The President of the ___MASK83___ ( POTUS ) is the elected head of state and head of government of the ___MASK83___ . The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander - in - chief of the ___MASK83___ Armed Forces . Pennsylvania ( Pennsylvania German : " Pennsylvaani "), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , is a state located in the northeastern and Mid - Atlantic regions of the ___MASK83___ . The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle . The commonwealth borders Delaware to the southeast , Maryland to the south , West Virginia to the southwest , Ohio to the west , Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest , New York to the north , and New ___MASK88___ to the east . James Buchanan , Jr . ( April 23 , 1791June 1 , 1868 ) was the 15th President of the ___MASK83___ ( 1857  61 ), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War . He represented Pennsylvania in the ___MASK83___ House of Representatives and later the Senate , then served as Minister to Russia under President Andrew Jackson . He was named Secretary of State under President James K . Polk , and is the last former Secretary of State to serve as President of the ___MASK83___ . After Buchanan turned down an offer to sit on the Supreme Court , President Franklin Pierce appointed him Ambassador to the United Kingdom , in which capacity he helped draft the Ostend Manifesto .