#15: James Buchanan Part 2

“To many he [James Buchanan] seemed half apparition, ready for the graveclothes that would swathe a past epoch.” Carl Sandburg

Cool Stuff about James Buchanan
1. He never had to shave. “Buchanan was a prize local catch with his handsome, whiskerless face (Buchanan never had to shave), blond hair, and six foot frame…” (p. 19).
2. Buchanan had odd-looking eyes. “To compensate for a defect in his eyes, Buchanan characteristically leaned his head forward and cocked it to one side. He did this not only because he suffered from wandering eyes—what ophthalmologists today call exodeviation—but because he was also nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other. Some observers thought he looked as if he had a stiff neck; others found it an attractive mannerism that made him appear intensely interested in every conversation” (p. 19).
3. Buchanan was a bachelor his entire life (the only president to do so) but he was engaged at one point to a lovely little thing, Ann Coleman. Ann eventually broke the engagement and though the reasons are not clear (apparently he worked too much and was also seeing another lady), she was upset enough for her mother to send her to Philadelphia to recuperate. Instead, the young girl ended up dying, some said of a broken heart. “Soon her mother had rushed her off to recover in Philadelphia, where, inexpicably, this previously healthy twenty-three-year-old died suddenly of what one doctor diagnosed as ‘hysterical convulsions’” (p. 20).
4. Due to a number of reasons, Buchanan was regularly labeled as a homosexual, contemporarily and historically. It did not help that he was a lifelong bachelor and preferred male company to female. He also had a femininity about him that caused tongues to wag. “Referring to his femininity, Andrew Jackson once called him an ‘Aunt Nancy’” (p. 25). “On the basis of slender evidence, mostly the circumstance of his bachelorhood and three asides by contemporaries about his effeminacy, Buchanan has been dubbed America’s first homosexual president” (p. 25).
5. Buchanan was the first to take the term “First Lady” and apply it to the current woman in the White House. Because Buchanan never married, he needed to go elsewhere to find a female hostess for all his parties and so he used his sister’s daughter, Harriet Lane. “When Buchanan moved to the White House in March 1857, Harriet Lane became his first lady, so designated in the first use of that term because she was not his wife, but rather his official lady and hostess” (p. 48).
6. I love that Buchanan’s followers named themselves the “Buchaneers.” Ha! “Politicians and civil servants who had long observed the abuses of American politics believed that Buchanan’s Buchaneers—the inner circle of friends and members of his administration—had reached unacceptable levels in terms of the use of public authority and funds for private and party profit” (p. 113).
7. Buchanan won the presidential election of 1856 but this was also the first election in which the Republican Party ran a candidate, John C. Fremont.
8. One of the domestic issues that Buchanan had to deal with during his presidency was the Mormon question in Utah. The Mormons at this time considered Utah as their own personal property, whereas Buchanan was trying to bring it into the Union as a state. Led by Brigham Young, the Mormons resorted to massive amounts of violence to keep the federal officials out of their territory, even so far as committing the worst civilian massacre in American history. “In September 1857 a group of emigrants from Arkansas—en route to California—discovered the danger when Young and his militia were responsible for the worst civilian atrocity in U.S. history. One hundred and twenty-five pioneers were murdered in Mountain Meadows, Utah, in an act that until recently was blamed on the Paiute Indians, but in which the Mormon militia participated and which Brigham Young covered up” (p. 91).
9. Due to the unprecedented evidence of blatant corruption in Buchanan’s administration, the Republicans in the House established a committee to investigate these abuses. “The focus was on the practices used by the president and his cabinet to pass the Lecompton constitution, but soon a wider net was cast. The administration’s use of patronage came under investigation, as did payroll taxes levied on patronage holders at election time, changes in post office personnel, bribing voters, and especially granting lucrative government printing contracts to supporters, who then returned a portion of their profits to the party” (p. 113). People were horrified at the indecent level of corruption in their government but instead of impeaching him, the Congress decided to wait just a little longer for Buchanan’s natural term to end.
10. John Updike, the famous author, did his part to avenge Buchanan’s life from his critics. “Another loyal Pennsylvanian, the novelist John Updike, wrote a three-act play, Buchanan Dying, with bit parts for everyone from Buchanan’s housekeeper, Hetty Parker, to Ann Coleman and Charles Sumner. Updike is sympathetic to his hero, who in the moments before death consoles himself with the thought that ‘once death has equalized all men, worth flies from their artifacts.’ But for Buchanan, who is possibly a better subject for novelists than for accusatory historians, the reverse—the disappearance of his flawed reputation—has not occurred” (p. 147).

Well, I can safely say that Jean Baker is most certainly not a fan of James Buchanan. I feel that she does truly try to remain unbiased but Buchanan’s penchant for bad decisions doesn’t help his case at all and ties her hands somewhat. However, on page 5 she gives us her intentions upon writing this biography and it reads along as if she was against Buchanan from the start. “The book seeks to suggest some of the reasons for Buchanan’s failure and specifically to explain the gap between Buchanan’s experience and training before his presidency and his lamentable performance in office, during which, tone-deaf to the kind of compromises that might have fulfilled his intentions, he blundered on with policies that undermined his goals” (p. 5).

I also found Buchanan a very sad case. After reading 15 presidential biographies, I’ve come to realize that it almost makes no difference who the man was before his election—it only matters what he does with the power once he has it. Buchanan is a prime example of this—he is a relatively savvy lawyer and politician before becoming president and then he turns right around and makes every conceivable mistake once he is president. It’s amazing! I have to admit that reading about Buchanan’s presidency made my heart hurt. It was just like a train wreck in that it was too hard to stop reading but in hindsight it is quite easy to see all the various places he could have made better decisions. And it’s not like Buchanan made one, gigantic error—what is so painful about his story are all the little moments, two paths diverged in a wood if you will, in which he took the road less traveled by. And that has made all the difference…and not in a good way.

I also feel that there is a reason the Civil War began just as he was sliding out the door. Although Abe’s election was the spark that started the Southern stampede to secede (it rhymes!), I really believe that if Buchanan had pulled an Andrew Jackson and nipped that shit in the bud then Lincoln wouldn’t have been stuck with such a mess. “To study Buchanan is to consider why the American Civil War, unthinkable a decade before, became inevitable, why northern Democrats behaved the way they did during the war; and why secessionist southerners, at first a minority in the Confederacy, carried the day” (p. 6-7).

Buchanan also seemed remarkably obtuse when it came to gauging his own northern constituency. Baker has already made it quite clear that Buchanan was very, very pro-southern in his political leanings—“Both physically and politically, he had only one farsighted eye, and it looked southward” (p. 73)—but he was also vehemently anti-Republican, anti-abolitionist. Buchanan, it appears, had a truly myopic approach to political labels and failed to read the times. He believed that abolitionists were complete fanatics, ready to tear the Union apart, and that Republicans were worse even than that. “In his years as president, Buchanan did a great deal to popularize the view that the Republicans were a threat to the South, thereby encouraging its secession from the Union when Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860” (p. 73). This is a hard truth indeed—it seems that on every possible level Buchanan lead the country closer to the brink of war.

I just want to say that on my part I was merely sad when I read this book. Whatever his failings as president, Buchanan, like all US Presidents, was given unlimited possibilities to use his power for the good of his people and to uphold the Constitution, which he vowed to do. And what is so sad to me is that he did neither.

#15 James Buchanan (1791-1868)

Oddly enough, my first real impression of James Buchanan came from the book on Andrew Jackson. In that book, the author mentions that Buchanan had a high, nasally voice which Henry Clay, famous compromiser and eminent politician, loved to mimic behind his back. Classic! I love hearing little tidbits like that because it makes history so current, don’t you think? I mean what’s more universal than making fun of other people?

Obviously since Jackson, I’ve run across Buchanan quite a bit and can see his influence as a senator from Pennsylvania, the Secretary of State under Polk and even the Ambassador to Great Britain (which I will cover later) pervade numerous presidential biographies. What interests me the most is the fact that Buchanan is regularly listed in the Top Five Most Hated Presidents. Whoa—I already know that Buchanan was the president right before the Civil War but what on earth did he do to fall so low? The author, Jean Baker of James Buchanan: American Presidents Series (Times Books: New York, 2004), weighs in on this circumstance as well. “Four years later Buchanan left the presidency in disgrace, condemned by Republicans, vilified by northern Democrats and dismissed even by the southerners whom he had tried so hard to please and whose personal affection he craved” (p. 2). She then follows that up with “By ever measure except his own—whether that of his contemporaries or historians—Buchanan was an abysmal failure as chief executive” (p.3).

I have a couple of good friends from Pennsylvania that keep asking me about Buchanan and what kind of president he was. I am sad to say that it does not look too hopeful but let’s find out if the critics are correct about James Buchanan.

He was born in 1790 to a family who owned a local trading post in southern Pennsylvania. James was the oldest son of eleven and had an undisputed position of power within the family. There is not much information about James’ upbringing and childhood but in 1807, he was sent to Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. He was known for being a follower rather than a leader and was even expelled from school because he was a part of a gang of unruly, drunken boys. “It was not the expulsion that is surprising, but rather Buchanan’s insistence in his unfinished autobiography that he was not ‘dissipated’ himself, but had drunk, roistered, and disturbed in order to be considered ‘a clever and spirited youth.’” (p. 13). Through his family connections, he was eventually reinstated but he harbored a hatred for Dickinson ever afterward.

After graduation, he promptly moved to Lancaster, PA and took up law. “Even as a neophyte, James Buchanan sought high-profile cases that brought prominence, more clients, and larger fees in a circular process that made him, before he was thirty-five, one of the best-known lawyers in southern Pennsylvania” (p. 16). Even though his law career was blossoming, Buchanan was drawn to politics and in 1814 was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly as a Federalist.

Then in 1820 his political career began in full with the first of five consecutive terms in the United States Congress (he was elected right after the Missouri Compromise was passed). During this time, his political leanings began to favor the ascendant Democratic Party under Andrew Jackson while his political friendships veered toward the South. His pro-southern leanings would eventually color his entire presidency and would become an issue in the incipient Civil War. He would remain a politician who fervently believed in states’ rights and a strict construction of the Constitution.

In 1831, he retired to private life. He was not married or financially in need but he proposed to work for the Democrats on the sidelines and to resurrect his successful law practice. “Yet he remained politically ambitious and hoped to be on the rise again after his ten years in Congress” (p. 30). His retirement was not of long duration for in 1832, Jackson nominated him as Ambassador to Russia. After much hesitation, he accepted the position but was only in St. Petersburg for about a year and half.

Upon his return, he began another long stint, intermittently from 1834 to 1852, in Congress but this time in the upper house, the Senate. Slavery was slowly becoming a more pressing issue and James Buchanan had his own ideas on it. “Quietly opposed to the institution in theory for reasons he never explained, he believed it the nations’ weak link, not because it was inhumane, but rather for its potential to destroy the Union” (p. 33). In a rather brilliant political move, he turned down Martin Van Buren’s offer of the Attorney General position and remained in the Senate to propound his views. “Throughout his years in the Senate he held fast to two popular principles: manifest destiny and states’ rights” (p. 34).

“Through hard work, party loyalty, and residence in the second most populous state in the Union, Buchanan advanced in stature and position, moving up the committee ladder to ever more important positions and even more national notoriety. He was appointed to the Judicial Committee, the Committee on the District of Columbia, and eventually the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was as a member of the latter that he became best known and made his most significant contributions to the future of the nation” (p. 34).


Under Polk’s administration, Buchanan was made Secretary of State. Although this is a very prestigious position, Buchanan, very clearly, played second fiddle to Polk on the foreign affairs front. Polk conducted the war and while he pulled Buchanan’s strings, the United States added more territory from Mexico, including Texas, California and pretty much all the areas in between.

Since Polk did not run for reelection, Buchanan was essentially out of a job in 1849 and he returned to his house, Wheatland, in Lancaster, PA. He was offered a Supreme Court position at one point and vacillated terribly until he finally came to the conclusion that it would damage his chances of being President of the US. No one had gone from the judicial to the executive branches in the history of the country before. He was getting older and so he became more open about his dreams of the presidency. “Fifty-eight years old in 1849, Buchanan had spent the best years of his life in public office. During that time he changed from energetic party enthusiast into an overweight, ambivalently ambitious politician…With his tilted head, protruding stomach, proportionally diminutive lower body, and heavily lidded eyes, one sometimes shut, he resembled an erect, two-footed tyrannosaur” (p. 46-7).

In 1852, his named was bandied about as president at the Democratic National Convention but he eventually lost to the dark horse candidate, Franklin Pierce. Pierce, as President, generously offered Buchanan the Ambassadorship to Great Britain. Another series of vacillations ensued but in the end, Buchanan decided in favor of this esteemed station and made his way to London during an extremely volatile period in US history.

Even though he was abroad, Buchanan did manage to stir up a little trouble there as well. Along with the US Ambassadors to Spain and France, Buchanan signed the Ostend Manifesto which stated that the US had the right to take Cuba, over every objection. It was so incendiary that Pierce quietly acted as if he never received it but it was unearthed by the media years later and people howled in protest.

Ok, we’ve made it to 1856. Buchanan won the Democratic nomination for president over Stephen Douglas, Senator of Illinois, mainly because he was abroad during Pierce’s presidential debacles. On the flip side, the Whigs had slowly winked out of existence since Fillmore’s presidency and in 1856, they were split into several different factions, including the Know-Nothing (American) Party, the Republicans, and a very, watered-down version of the Whigs. The Know-Nothings nominated former President Millard Fillmore while the newly-organized Republican Party nominated John C. Fremont, governor of California and adventurer. Buchanan won but not in a landslide. The American people should have taken notice of all the votes that Fremont and the Republicans received.

How do I begin to tell of the problems with the Buchanan presidency? Since there are so many I’ve decided just to list them out.
1. Dred Scott vs Sandford: After his election but before his inauguration, Buchanan used his influence to shape the outcome of the Dred Scott case by pressuring a Pennsylvania justice to change his vote. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Dred Scott, a free black man, could be sold into slavery were he to venture into the South. In fact, they stated that blacks had no rights whatsoever, thereby sounding the death knell of the Missouri Compromise. “Without Buchanan’s encouragement, Grier, the only northerner to join in Taney’s [the Chief Justice] decision, might not have joined the others” (p. 86).
2. Patronage: As stated in other blogs, patronage was a Big Deal for any president. If used properly, it was a great way to reward loyalty and gain votes and successful patronage appointments would almost guarantee an easy time for any president. However (and you knew there would be an ‘however’), Buchanan did not successfully use his patronage to endear himself to his followers. Not only did a disproportionately-large number of northern Democrats find themselves out of a job and other southern Democrats stepping into them, but Buchanan fired any Democrat that had ties to Pierce or to Stephen Douglas. Buchanan’s heavy-handed handling of his patronage opportunities would deal a severe blow to the Democratic Party.
3. The Cabinet: Sigh. Buchanan’s sheer inability to find a workable cabinet is startling, even after he had spent decades of his life in political circles. “In the end Buchanan’s cabinet selections proved a disaster. To choose, as he did, four members from the future Confederacy and three northern Democrats who, like Buchanan, were doughfaces was an insult to the North” (p. 79). It didn’t help that his vice president, Lewis Cass, was practically too old to function and the others all shared the same southern ideas and values. It wouldn’t help either that most of his cabinet would be involved in major governmental corruption scandals on a huge scale. “Certainly his cabinet officers were among the most corrupt in American history” (p. 114).
4. The Panic of 1857: After Buchanan’s inauguration, banks began to fold in an effort to call in unrecoverable loans, while land values and jobs disappeared. This Panic would hit the North hardest of all since the South, at that time, was agriculturally self-sufficient.
5. The Deficit: “Despite his plans for a balanced budge, Buchanan left Lincoln a deficit of over $17 million” (p. 90).
6. Kansas: Ooohhh, this political issue was a whopper. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, during Pierce’s presidency, gave Kansas and Nebraska the option, as new states, to choose whether they wanted to have slavery or not (even though both were above the Missouri Compromise line.) Nebraska was immediately seen as a free state but Kansas was desired by the South even though Kansans themselves wished to be free. Bloody chaos ensued along with rigged elections, phony government, and an unfair constitution touting pro-slavery restrictions over the popular majority. Buchanan did help matters when he stubbornly refused to throw out the Lecompton (proslavery) government and he feverishly worked to have Kansas’s “constitution” slammed through Congress. Even though Buchanan and his sketchy cabinet used immense amounts of lobbying and even bribery to secure the vote, it was dismissed in the House of Representatives. Another vote was held in Kansas, a fair vote this time, and the overwhelming majority of Kansans stated that they wished to be free state. In an effort to look on the bright side, Buchanan merely claimed that the violence in Kansas was now over, thanks to him. “With the insouciance that often marked his failures, he noted his pleasure that the excitement over slavery in Kansas had been resolved” (p. 105).
7. The Democratic Party Split: The split in the Democratic Party would not be noticeable until the presidential convention in 1860 but already Buchanan was sowing the seeds of discord within his own party. With his obvious reliance on southern Democrats, his contempt of northern Democrats became every day more apparent. Not only did he find most Northerners too radical but he did not like to reward loyal Democrats because they were followers of Douglas and Pierce. Pierce was a political has-been at this juncture but Stephen Douglas was at the top of his game and the treatment that he would receive from Buchanan, a fellow Democrat, aided the final split.
8. Use of Imperial Powers: Buchanan, during his presidency, used his presidential powers almost indiscriminately. At one point, he wanted Cuba so much (as another slave state) that he nearly forced Congress to vote him the funds to buy it. He also wanted more of Mexico and even sent a squadron of the US Navy down to Paraguay on a supposed insult.
9. Ignorance of Secession: Throughout his presidency, Buchanan simply ignored the idea that the South, his friends, might actually stick to their word and secede from the Union. When secession became a very real issue in 1860, Buchanan famously vacillated some more and finally issued a statement saying that he could not force anyone to stay in the Union. “While northern Republican newspapers complained that he brought dishonor to the nation and should be impeached, the New York Senator William Seward, soon to be Lincoln’s secretary of state, observed that what Buchanan espoused was that no state had a right to secede unless it wanted to and that the government must save the Union unless someone opposed it” (p. 128). In the months before Lincoln was inaugurated, Buchanan did absolutely nothing to halt the flow of various states that seceding right before his eyes. “In fact Buchanan’s failing during the crisis over the Union was not inactivity but rather his partiality for the South, a favoritism that bordered on disloyalty in a officer pledged to defend all the United States…In his betrayal of the national trust, Buchanan came closer to committing treason than any other president in American history” (p. 142).

The Democratic National Convention of 1860 split into three separate groups, none of them nominating Buchanan. After Lincoln’s inauguration and the dissolution of the Union, he retired to his home at Wheatlands but maintained a strictly pro-Union stance. Buchanan spent his last days trying to vindicate his presidency with an interesting and biased, yet unfinished autobiography. He died of pneumonia at the age of 77.

#14 Franklin Pierce Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Franklin Pierce
1. Franklin Pierce went to Bowdoin College in Maine where he would become life-long friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nathaniel wrote Pierce’s campaign biography in 1852 and then dedicated his last book Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches to Franklin Pierce. In fact, Hawhorne died while vacationing with Pierce in New Hampshire.
2. Franklin Pierce was considered a heavy drinker pretty much his entire life. “Heavy drinking and Pierce’s name go together like a horse and carriage, and years later his political opponents would label him a drunkard” (p. 7). Pierce would eventually die of liver damage.
3. Pierce was exceedingly prosouthern in his political viewpoint, causing him to espouse southern causes even over the voices of his own northern constituency. In fact, Pierce was the author of the infamous Gag Rule that kept all talk of slavery out of Congress during the 1830s and 1840s. “The proper course, Pierce told the House in a speech on December 18, was to receive but then automatically table such [abolitionist] petitions without any further consideration, the solution that the House would ultimately adopt in May 1836 in what became known as the Gag Rule” (p. 18).
4. Accusations of cowardice would follow him his entire life. In the North he was known as a “doughface.” “Significantly this article also labeled Pierce a doughface, a term that subsequently connoted a northern with southern sympathies, but in the North at the time it was an allegation of personal cowardice” (p. 19). And of course, there was his Mexican War record. “That Pierce had seemingly fainted in response to enemy fire inspired someone to shout, ‘Take command of the brigade. General Pierce is a damned coward’” (p. 29).
5. Pierce really did have a remarkable memory. Not only did he remember just about every name and face he met, but he would use them in his legal and political career. When he was arguing a case, he would call the jurors by name. Even as president, he stunned people with his method of recall. “At his inauguration on March 4, 1853, he astonished the crowd by delivering his carefully prepared address without once glancing at the notes that he held next to his thigh” (p. 52).
6. It was during Pierce’s administration that the continental United States filled out its present day size through the Gadsden Purchase. “When Pierce announced that he had no fear of territorial acquisition, one of the targets he had in mind was the area of northern Mexico south of New Mexico Territory, an area that seemed necessary for the completion of any transcontinental railroad to the Pacific coast along a southern route” (p.55).
7. It is a dubious distinction for Pierce that his presidential policies were credited for the rise of the nascent Republican Party. “One of the new parties that emerged in reaction to the organization of Nebraska, which Pierce endorsed, was the Republican Party, and it was the victory of that party in the presidential election of 1860 that provoked secession and the Civil War” (p. 73).
8. Franklin Pierce was good friends with Jefferson Davis and even tried to become his lawyer in 1867 when his trial for treason was scheduled. “In a long conversation that lasted well into the evening, Davis made it clear that he did not need Pierce’s legal help at the trial...Still Davis was deeply touched by Pierce’s effort. Before Pierce left, Davis jotted a brief note of thanks: ‘Given this day made bright by a visit of my beloved friend and ever honored chief’” (p. 130).

I felt that Michael Holt did a good job of bringing Franklin Pierce to life and to bring us newbies into the heated, suffocatingly-sectional world of mid-nineteenth century America. Just reading about this time period has me on the edge of my seat with all the anticipation and foreshadowing of the Civil War. Holt also gives us some good information about balloting and elections at this time and reasons why political parties came and went like water. “In the nineteenth century, however, governments did not print and distribute ballots. That was the job of the political parties themselves. In effect, this system meant that all that was needed to launch a new party was access to printing presses and enough volunteer manpower to distribute the ballot at the polls” (p. 84).

I was not a fan of the author’s redundant use of the word “precocious.” To Holt, it appeared that everything Frank did was precocious. It just got on my nerves. A fully grown man can no longer be labeled precocious, Mr. Holt.

With all the deliciously bad things I had heard about Franklin Pierce, I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed. Now he wasn’t a great president, mind you, but he wasn’t the evil, Union-destroying sadist that I was led to expect. In fact, I believe that he is more of a lovable doofus rather than an outright evil mastermind. Let’s put it this way, Franklin Pierce made some Very Bad Decisions, probably without knowing the full ramifications, and history has judged him very harshly thereby. “Historians almost uniformly rank Pierce among the nation’s worst presidents, indeed, because of his role in securing organization of Nebraska and thus bringing on the Civil War” (p. 73). But, goodness, how was he to know?

Holt gives us his reasons for Pierce’s continuously low rating as president. “Historians, indeed, usually rank Pierce among the six or eight worst presidents the country has ever had. Two things primarily account for that negative judgment. A passionately committed Democratic Party loyalist, Pierce during his presidency managed to divide his party into fiercely warring factional camps. More important, he helped propel the nation down the road to the Civil War…Also as a result, Pierce was the only president in the nineteenth century who sought, but was denied, renomination by his beloved party” (p. 2).

Yes, Franklin Pierce could have used sounder judgment and a more farsighted approach to his political decisions. Also he allowed the love of party and a general insecurity to overwhelm his political wisdom in certain vital matters. But I still maintain that he is painted blacker than he should be. After all, weren’t the sectional issues already very pronounced by Pierce’s presidency? And couldn’t we indict many people, presidents and otherwise, who helped propel the country toward war, possibly including Lincoln himself? Franklin Pierce probably would have been a decent president if nothing untoward had gone down during his administration. He was a perfect peacetime candidate. Unfortunately, this looks like a scenario of “wrong place, wrong time” and I heartily feel sorry for him.

#14: Franklin Pierce (1804-1869)

I just love when a PBG (Presidential BioGraphy) starts this way! “Franklin Pierce was arguably the most handsome man ever to serve as president of the United States. He was certainly one of the most amiable and congenial men to hold that office. Because of his popularity, personal charm, and family lineage, he enjoyed a meteoric political career in New Hampshire” (p. 1). And just like that, the author, Michael Holt, describes the keys to a successful political career that have been around since the beginning of time.

Interestingly, there are not very many PBGs of Franklin Pierce and so, since I was quite limited, I found myself falling back on the old standby—the American Presidents Series. Thus, I read Franklin Pierce: American Presidents Series by Michael F Holt (Times Books: New York, 2010). As I’ve mentioned before, I was looking forward to this biography with some anticipation. Other authors have stated that Pierce was a pretty total loss as a president and of course, this has got to mean some eye-opening material. And after all, he’s soooo cute!

Frank was born on November 23, 1804 to a very prestigious family in New Hampshire. His father was not only a general in the Revolutionary War but also a sheriff and a governor of the state. It was a relatively happy household and Frank thrived, growing tall and brawny.

The Pierces were always staunch Democratic-Republicans, in the vein of Jefferson and Madison, and so Pa Pierce decided that his son, on his way to college, must not be sent to Harvard, bastion for Federalism. Instead Frank attended Bowdoin College in Maine where he mainly drank, partied, and generally did pretty poorly at school. He graduated however and went on to read law, in which he excelled. Correction: his personal appeal and not his logic was a prime factor in the success of his cases. “He displayed a prodigious memory for names and faces, a trait that obviously benefited him in his political career as well…he had a deep, rich voice, again a trait that helped his political career because his audience could actually hear his unamplified voice at political rallies. Most important, he exuded a personal charm, an amiable temperament, and an instinctive human empathy. Pierce directed his arguments to the emotions of the jurors, not to the collective logic, and he usually won” (p. 10). He was admitted to the bar in 1827 and then as he slowly joined political movements, was elected to the state legislature in 1829 when he was only 25 years old.

In 1832, he was elected to the US Congress and by 1834 had married Jane Means Appleton, a girl he met while studying law in Amherst. If opposites attract, then it is understandable how they got together. Jane’s family was staunch Federalists, while Jane herself was very plain, shy and sickly. And on top of all that, she hated Frank’s political career and urged him to retire all the time.

He was elected to the US Senate in 1837 and served steadily until 1841 when he resigned before his requisite six-year term could expire. He stated that it was important to be home with his wife and to supplement their income by a return to his law practice but there may have been other reasons. “That Pierce resigned his Senate seat after spending only four months in the minority [as a Democrat] is telling. He liked to compete only when he held a winning hand. Political defeat was a new and intolerable experience” (p. 25).

Under the Polk administration, Pierce was appointed the US Attorney General of the state of New Hampshire. When the Mexican War began, however, Pierce was ready. In 1847, he was commissioned a brigadier general and was told to recruit regiments for the war which he would then lead to Mexico. He and his regiment joined the Winfield Scott expedition that would take them to Veracruz and ultimately Mexico City.

Frank, though capable of getting his men to General Scott across some hostile Mexican land, proved less than able when actually confronted with a battle. In Pierce’s first military engagement, during the initial charge, the gunfire from the Mexican artillery startled his horse, causing it to buck, pushing Pierce’s groin across the saddle pommel. He briefly lost consciousness. When he fell to the ground, the horse stepped on his knee, leaving him too wounded to continue. He was accused by his men of fainting at the imminent sign of fighting. In the next battle, Pierce twisted the same knee that had just healed. “Again his men marched by as their commander lay on the ground” (p. 29). In his regiment’s final battle, “He lay instead in a sick tent plagued with acute diarrhea” (p. 29). By December of 1847, Frank had had enough and requested a leave of absence. A few months later he resigned his commission and returned to his private life of law and politics.

At his years at home in New Hampshire, Frank played an increasingly large role in the local Democratic machinery so it was no surprise that his name would continue to make the political rounds. As the 1852 election neared, the Democrats met for their presidential convention with Lewis Cass, James Buchanan, and Stephen Douglas garnering most of the votes. However, neither of them could win with a clear majority and so people began bantering Pierce’s name around as a true dark horse candidate. By the forty-ninth ballot, Pierce became the Democratic candidate for president of the United States. “On their [Frank and Jane’s] return trip they were met by a horseback rider with the news the Pierce had been nominated. Pierce seemed stunned. Jane fainted dead away” (p. 43).

With the Whigs in freefall, splitting over their nominee, General Winfield Scott, it was probably not a surprise that Franklin Pierce was elected the 14th President. Democrats around the country unified under his name—a northern man with prosouthern leanings.

Although Frank had won a great victory, the months before the inauguration were not happy ones for him and his family. In January 1853, Frank, Jane and their only child, eleven-year-old Benjamin, were heading back to Concord on a tiny one-car train when the train derailed, slid down an embankment, and landed on its roof. Frank and Jane, who had been sitting together, were bruised and shaken but alive, whereas their son was killed instantly. Benny had been sitting behind them and during the accident, had the back of his head sheared off. “Father and mother had to view this ghastly sight and both were badly shaken” (p. 50). Under these circumstances, Franklin Pierce returned to Washington in an effort to finish his cabinet selections before his inauguration. “Carefully balanced by region, Pierce’s cabinet would prove to be one of the most ethical and effective group of advisers to serve the nation in the nineteenth century” (p. 52).

Things did not look up for Frank Pierce however. One month after his inauguration, William King, the Vice President, died, leaving Pierce vulnerable. “His death [King’s], however, meant that the president pro tempore of the Senate, David R Atchison, stood next in line for the succession, a fateful change in leadership as time would show” (p. 54). Not to mention, Pierce made a dreadful hash of his patronage opportunities. In the mid-1800’s patronage appointments were used to swing votes toward one candidate or another and to reward the party faithful that had worked hard during the election. Instead of rewarding the men that voted for him, Pierce used his patronage to promote both extremes of the Democratic Party into federal jobs. “Rather than relying on the solid men in the center of the party who had stood by the compromise [Compromise of 1850] from the start, the paper’s editors carped, Pierce had favored former Free Soilers from the North and disunionist Southern Rights Democrats with the juiciest plums” (p. 66). This mistake would ultimately aid in ruining Pierce’s presidency. “In hindsight, it is clear that Pierce’s attempts to distribute the loaves and fishes among all elements of the party proved an unmitigated disaster” (p. 67).

But then the biggest bombshell of Pierce’s presidency occurred. We all know that slavery was the powder keg of this era and most political decisions at this time were made with it in mind. To understand the full implications of what happened next, we’ll have to travel back in time to James Monroe’s presidency and recall the temporary band-aid called the Missouri Compromise. When Jefferson had bought the Louisiana Purchase, people were excited but only until the slavery question came up. Where should slavery stop inside this new big piece of land? Monroe was the president that had to deal with the repercussions because by 1820, some of the Louisiana Purchase had reached the requisite population requirement and wished to become states. Now all of sudden, people were upset—Missouri wished to be a slave state but that would throw the balance off in Congress. The band-aid, otherwise known as the Missouri Compromise, said three things: 1. Missouri will enter the Union as a slave state, 2. Maine will enter the Union as a free state (thus keeping the balance), and 3. slavery will stay below the 36º30’ latitude line.

Fast forward to the 1850s. The Compromise of 1850, which had been pushed through Congress by Millard Fillmore, tentatively negated the Missouri Compromise by allowing New Mexico and California (clearly below the 36º30’ line) to enter the Union as free states without giving the slave states anything in return except a harsher Fugitive Slave Law. Thus, when people clamored for the states of Kansas and Nebraska to be settled and then worked into the Union, the shit literally hit the fan. Both Kansas and Nebraska were technically above the Missouri Compromise line and therefore were ineligible to become slave states. However, the slave states simply wanted more states. “What made the Nebraska question so explosive was slavery. All of the area in any proposed territory that would be carved out lay north of the latitude line thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, from which slavery had been ‘forever prohibited’ by the Missouri Compromise of 1820” (p. 73).

Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois, was chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories and it fell to him to draft a compromise measure that would successfully please all parties and allow Kansas and Nebraska into the Union. He advocated “popular sovereignty” in the territories in question which basically would allow the populations of both territories to vote on whether they wished to be pro- or anti-slavery. Douglas felt he could offer this because he claimed that the Compromise of 1850 had abrogated the Missouri Compromise and thus the 36º30’ line was immaterial. The Kansas-Nebraska bill was then pushed forward under the assumption that Kansas would become a slave state and Nebraska a free one, which Franklin Pierce ultimately approved. “Pierce signed the bill into law at the end of May 1854, the second biggest mistake of his political career” (p. 82).

The Kansas-Nebraska situation would simply not go away, though. The issues merely got worse and would remain a thorn in Pierce’s side throughout the rest of his tenure as president. Because the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a nebulous idea at best, it is not surprising that the situation soon deteriorated into violence. Kansas was assumed to be a slave state but the problem lay in the fact that no one asked the Kansans what they wanted—and they wanted to be a free state. Thus, when the first elections occurred there in 1855, some fishy business seemed inevitable. “Egged on by former Senator David R Atchison, whose Senate term had ended early that March, hundreds of heavily armed Missourians, aiming to exploit an ambiguity in the original act as to what constituted ‘residency’ in Kansas, poured across the border on election day. These ‘Border Ruffians’ took over polling places in sparsely populated hamlets and cast not only their own ballots but hundreds of additional, wholly fictitious, ballots for proslavery legislative candidates” (p. 91). Pierce had unwittingly sent a proslavery territorial governor who allowed the false election results to stand. The new proslavery legislature of Kansas immediately set up shop in Lecompton and proceeded to hammer out a constitution that made the state a slaveholding one, along with an extremely strict slave code. Conversely, the majority of Kansans had a free-state mentality so they then set up their own government and constitution at Topeka, which Pierce accused of being in opposition to the federally recognized government at Lecompton.

Due to his catastrophic decision-making, Franklin Pierce effectively split his party and basically assured his own retirement at the end of his first term. At the Democratic national convention, Pierce’s own party failed to re-nominate him and instead focused on James Buchanan, the politician from Pennsylvania. Frank, then still young, found himself and Jane back in New Hampshire. Jane, however, was never quite well and so Frank took care of her most of his time. They toured Europe together in an effort to alleviate her suffering but she died in 1863.

Pierce was unhappy with the Civil War, due to his prosouthern leanings, but he never made mention of that fact in public. In fact, he outwardly supported the war effort. After his wife’s death, he purchased a farm in New Hampshire but was increasingly alone and drank heavily. On October 8, 1869, Franklin Pierce died of liver failure.