alternatehistory.com

The Grim Reaper found three more souls to take to the afterlife as the president-elect Franklin Pierce and his family died[1] after a tragic train crash in the first week of 1853. Pierce had won an overwhelming victory for the Democratic Party in the 1852 Presidential election, capturing 254 Electoral College votes against his opponent Winfield Scott of the Whig Party 42 votes. The Vice President elect William R. King located in Cuba due to tuberculosis would be sworn in on March 24, 1853, the only US president to do so on foreign soil. The new president return to the United States would see his death on April 18th, now leaving the United States with another President and a new election for the fall.

As per the line of succession established in 1792, the presidency for the intern period went to the President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate and fellow democrat, David Rice Atchison. Despite the short amount of time in office, Atchison saw increasing division within both the democratic party and the nation as a whole over the issue of slavery. Atchison, a slave-owner and prominent proponent of the expansion of slavery, filled the lower level federal positions and his cabinet with the pro-slavery factions of the democratic party. Among other things done in this short period, Atchison oversaw the start of planning for a continental railroad which would link the Eastern and Western halves of the United States with a selection of Southern Route. In addition, a vacancy on Supreme court was filled by John Archibald Campbell.

[1] Only his son died in otl