Franklin Pierce Quotes
In expressing briefly my views upon an important subject which has recently agitated the nation..., I fervently hope that the question is at rest and that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excitement may again threaten the durability of our institutions.
Pierce, Franklin. "Inaugural Address." A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, edited by James D. Richardson, vol. 5, Government Printing Office, 1897, p. 202.
He was summarizing the determinations of the assembly. The great debate was whether to bring the former Khmer Rouge officials to trial for the extermination and genocide of almost 2 million Cambodians. Many of the accused war criminals were very wealthy and bribed current legislators to prevent trials. Also, many of the legislators who were alive and lived through the killings were complicit themselves. Meanwhile those whose relatives had been brutally killed in the killing fields and elsewhere constantly, demanded justice. Western countries generally urged through the UN that the perpetrators be brought to justice, but the Cambodian leadership feared splitting their country apart again and even more bloodshed which the forces of the accused threatened if the government attempted to hold them accountable. The writer, for example, was a leading Khmer Rouge official before he defected, and in any set of trials of others, he would likely be implicated.
Franklin Pierce was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. A northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation, he alienated anti-slavery groups by supporting and signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, yet these efforts failed to stem conflict between North and South. The South eventually seceded and the American Civil War began in 1861.
