He and running mate William R. King easily defeated the Whig Party ticket of Winfield Scott and William A. Graham in the 1852 presidential election. The incumbent carried New Hampshire but lost the national vote to William Henry Harrison, the military hero, whose Whigs took a majority of seats in the Twenty-seventh Congress. Harrison died after a month in office, and Vice President John Tyler succeeded him. Pierce never lost sight of politics during his travels, commenting regularly on the nation's growing sectional conflict.
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