Franklin Pierce

The American Presidents #14

by Michael F. Holt, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (Editor), Sean Wilentz (Editor)

The genial but troubled New Englander whose single-minded partisan loyalties inflamed the nation's simmering battle over slavery

Charming and handsome, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was drafted to break the deadlock of the 1852 Democratic convention. Though he seized the White House in a landslide against the imploding Whig Party, he proved a dismal failure in office.

Michael F. Holt, a leading historian of nineteenth-century partisan politics, argues that in the wake of the Whig collapse, Pierce was consumed by an obsessive drive to unify his splintering party rather than the roiling country. He soon began to overreach. Word leaked that Pierce wanted Spain to sell the slave-owning island of Cuba to the United States, rousing sectional divisions. Then he supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which limited the expansion of slavery in the west. Violence broke out, and "Bleeding Kansas" spurred the formation of the Republican Party. By the end of his term, Pierce's beloved party had ruptured, and he lost the nomination to James Buchanan.

In this incisive account, Holt shows how a flawed leader, so dedicated to his party and ill-suited for the presidency, hastened the approach of the Civil War.

Genres: Presidents, Biography, History, Nonfiction, American History, Us Presidents, Politics

154 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Michael F. Holt is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He earned his B.A. from Princeton in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1967.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

HAPPY PRESIDENT'S DAY!!

it's franklin pierce, y'all!!!



new hampshire's favorite son!

congress' hardest drinker!

a wonderful paradox of a man - he wasn't pro-slavery, he just hated abolitionists. how does that even work?? i'll tell you how: cuz frank loved rules. he fucking loved that constitution more than he loved his depressed, socially awkward, rich wife, and those filthy abolitionists were trying to destroy it, and therefore america.watch out abolitionists!

it's true, he is considered to be one of the worst. presidents. ever. but it's not his fault he was woefully unqualified. he was pretty, and pretty people are used to everybody paying attention to them and supporting everything they do whether it should be supported or not. it doesn't mean they are competent to serve. franklin was nominated, he batted his big eyes and said "sure, i'll do it. we going to the bar afterwards?? will there be any abolitionists there?? there had fucking well better not be"

the biggest criticism of pierce (besides being "responsible" "for" "the" "civil" "war")was that he tried to please too many people, and it all went horribly wrong. but i still maintain that he was a better president than zachary taylor. franklin pierce just wanted to make everyone happy, and to keep the democratic party together. he just didn't know quite how to do that.but he didn't actually seek candidacy, he was sort of shoehorned into it. here are some early signs that he might not have been the best candidate to lead our country:

priorities: "in the dormitory at night, when solitary study was the prescribed regimen, pierce was famous for bursting into other students' room to start furniture-smashing wrestling matches"

education: "as a result of pierce's carefree behavior, he ranked dead last academically in his class by the end of his sophomore year"

military finesse: "In his first serious battle, pierce sat astride a horse given to him by his concord townsmen and was ready to lead the brigade in a frontal assault on an enemy position. but a mexican artillery salvo frightened pierce's steed, causing it to buck and throwing pierce's groin violently against the saddle pommel. pierce briefly lost consciousness and began to fall from the saddle. his horse tripped and fell on pierce's knee, resulting in a serious and painful injury....in the brigade's next battle pierce, safely on foot - or so he thought - twisted the same knee injured in the previous fall and collapsed in acute pain. again his men marched by as their commander lay on the ground. this time pierce managed to hobble after his men, but by the time he reached them the serious fighting had ended. finally, pierce's brigade took part in the storming of chapultepec, the final battle of the entire campaign, but pierce did not accompany them, he lay instead in a sick tent plagued with acute diarrhea."

and ohhhhh god, the accolades that pour all over abraham lincoln... abraham schlincoln: there are a gazillion books devoted to that gangly bastard, while franklin pierce gets this tiny-ass book?? but what no one wants to remember is that the only reason that the republican party even formed, and therefore the only way that lincoln could have been elected, was because pierce made such a hash of the democrats, dividing them against themselves until there was nothing "swinging-dick" buchanan could fix in time. so, you're welcome, lincoln-lovers.

but isn't this america???
aren't we supposed to value and over-expose our most attractive members even if their accomplishments are negligible or morally questionable?? where are all my franklin pierce dolls and t-shirts and bedroom slippers?

and lord knows he had enough problems without people giving him a hard time about slavery issues. all his kids died, one of them in a train accident coming home FROM A FUNERAL!! i mean, really, cut frankie some slack.

and it's partly a case of wrong time, wrong place. if this had happened a little bit later in time, there would have been one of those wacky misadventure-type biopic movies where someone is mistakenly placed in a job because of mistaken identity but remarkably overcomes knowing nothing and succeeds and becomes the best at whatever it is they do. that should have been pierce's legacy.

instead, a lot of whiners about this civil war. let me just leave you with this: without the civil war, without BOOKS about the civil war, what on earth would i get my uncle for christmas??

i rest my case.

come to my blog!

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Franklin Pierce, only marginally a more successful president than his odious predecessor Milliard Fillmore, was certainly a good deal more likable. In fact, he was very likable. Perhaps that was part of the problem.

Certainly he was likable—and handsome too—by the time he reached Bowdoin college, a hail-fellow-well-met who enjoyed a quiet walk in the country followed by a noisy night in the tavern. Most of his fellow classmates liked him (including Nathaniel Hawthorne, who considered him a lifelong friend and wrote his campaign biography thirty years after college).

Pierce’s path into politics was virtually assured, for he became a lawyer in New Hampshire about the time his father Benjamin—general of the state militia, and state legislator—was elected as the Democratic governor of New Hampshire. The Democrats dominated the state, and General Pierce held sway over the state and the party.

Michael F. Holt—author of this short biography—argues that Pierce’s failed as a president because, having acquired his political experience in a Democratic state with an unusually unified party, he centered his presidential efforts on preserving party unity first, not the greater but more necessary goal of national compromise. Pierce’s efforts were amiable but short-sighted, and because of those efforts, he brought us even closer to Civil War.

Professor Holt is an authority on American political parties of the 1850’s, and he may very well be right. I can’t really say, however, for his discussion of party matters—even in this slim volume—left me deep in the weeds. (I still have no idea what it means to be a “Hard Shell Democrat” as opposed to a “Soft Shell Democrat,” but—frankly—I no longer give a damn.) Perhaps knowing a lot about political parties in the 1850’s is a handicap, not an advantage.

The only opinion I have left after reading this book is an unsophisticated one: nobody, not Pierce (or Fillmore, or Buchanan), can be blamed for drawing us closer to Civil War because the country itself had gone mad by the early 1850’s. If you have trouble understanding the logic of the compromisers’ Wimot Proviso, or how any moral person could ever defend or seek to enforce the Kansas Nebraska Act’s vile Fugitive Slave Law, just think of them as two crazy things crazy people do in a land where an abolitionist senator can be caned on the senate floor and five Kansas settlers can be massacred by abolitionist raiders—all in the name of freedom.

In some weird way, I think I have come to tolerate such craziness—at least better than I could have two years ago. For in this age of Trump— when the Supreme Court decrees limits on the purchasing of wedding cakes, when asylum-seeking children may be snatched from their mothers’ arms, when the president declares he can legally pardon himself—I believe I know what it is like to live awash in craziness too.

And the last thing I want to do is blame a guy like Franklin Pierce. At the very least, unlike my own president, Franklin Pierce was likable. A lover of long walks and good company. A real hail-fellow-well-met.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Franklin Pierce In The American Presidents Series

The American Presidents Series is a uniform series of short biographies of each American president edited by the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Sean Wilentz. Each biography is written by a different scholar to allow different perspectives on the American presidency. With their brevity, the series aims to be scholarly rather than superficial. The tumultuous 2016 presidential election moved me to read some of the volumes in the series I had missed, including this 2010 biography of the fourteenth president, Franklin Pierce (1804 -- 1869). Born in New Hampshire, Pierce served a single term as president from 1853 -- 1857. Michael Holt, the Langbourne Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and the author of several scholarly books on American history, wrote this biography of Pierce.

Historians have not regarded Pierce highly. During his presidency, the Democratic party fractured and the United States moved inexorably towards Civil War. Holt explores the reasons why Pierce's presidency came to grief. He argues that Pierce had an "obsession with preserving the unity of the Democratic Party .... derived from Pierce's understanding of the political situation in which he usually found himself, namely the lopsided dominance of his own Democratic Party vis-à-vis its partisan foes." (p.3) Again, Holt concludes that "My purpose in this intentionally brief life of Pierce has not been to ... defend Pierce's administration. Rather it has been to explain why Pierce did what he did. And rather than see personal weakness as the source of his missteps in the White House, I attribute Pierce's most fateful political decisions to his obsession with preserving the unity of the Democratic Party." (pp. 132 --33)

Pierce was handsome, affable, and of a conciliatory temperament. He served four terms in the New Hampshire legislature, three terms in the United States House of Representatives, and one incomplete term in the United States Senate. President Polk offered Pierce a position in his cabinet as Attorney General. Pierce served as a Brigadier General in the Mexican War. In 1852, Pierce secured the Democratic Party's nomination for President as a dark horse on the 49th ballot, showing a highly divided Democratic party, and won the election handily.

Holt's study describes Pierce's inconclusive efforts in foreign policy and his tendency, as a strict constructionist who viewed the Constitution as creating a Federal government of limited powers, to veto bills providing for internal improvements and infrastructure. But Holt focuses on two issues which doomed Pierce's administration. The first was his effort to encompass all aspects of the Democratic party, from the southern fire-eaters to the northern opponents of slavery. Pierce distributed patronage and political positions to ideologically diverse elements of the party in an attempt to create party and national unity. His efforts backfired. The second was Pierce's support for the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska act which repealed the 1820 Missouri Compromise and established the doctrine of popular sovereignty on the slavery issue in the new territories. The Kansas-Nebraska Act led to the rise of the Republican Party which opposed slavery in the territories and to the Civil War. Holt's study includes a great deal of detail about the various factions in the United States and in the Democratic Party. It discusses the factions in the Whig Party and in its demise. It discusses the many factions, including the Know-Nothings, which ultimately coalesced to form the Republican Party. Thus, the book offers a great deal of complicated history in a short compass.

I read Holt's book on Pierce immediately after reading Paul Finkelman's biography in the American President's series on Pierce's predecessor, the thirteenth president, the Whig Millard Fillmore. It is instructive to compare the approaches of the books. Finkelman and Holt cover much of the same ground, including the Compromise of 1850, The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the rise of the nativist party, the Know-Nothings. I found Finkelman's history substantially more polemical and judgmental in tone with its criticism of the 1850 Compromise in particular while Holt took a more cautious, measured approach. The books examined two failed but different administrations. Finkelman was harsh in its treatment of the Fillmore Administration while Holt focused on causation and was more reluctant to condemn the failings of Pierce. Both Finkelman and Holt show knowledge of their subjects and of the Era. I prefer Holt's way of studying and approaching history.

The final chapter of Holt's book examines Pierce's life during the Civil War and its aftermath, when he descended into alcoholism. Pierce remained loyal to the Union while he opposed the attempt to subdue the Confederacy by force. He was a lifelong friend of Jefferson Davis who had served in his cabinet.

There is a strong sense of poignancy and tragedy in Holt's biography of Pierce. This is a good, short book for readers interested in the American presidency, American history, and in the practice of history.

Robin Friedman

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://bestpresidentialbios.com/2014/...

“Franklin Pierce” by Michael Holt was published in 2010 and is one of the newest members of The American Presidents Series. Holt is a professor of American History at the University of Virginia and the author of a half-dozen books. Among these are “By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876″ and “The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party.”

The American Presidents Series has been criticized for advancing the political views of its long-time editor, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., at the expense of a consistently objective view of history. Holt’s biography of Franklin Pierce, however, cannot be tarnished with that stain. And rather than embracing history’s dismal view of Pierce with no further effort to diagnose his failure, Holt’s biography is more intellectually substantive than its size would suggest.

Consistent with other books in the series, this biography is concise and punchy, containing just 133 pages of text. Despite this brevity, it captures the essence of Pierce’s genial personality and well-describes his almost effortless political rise from state legislator to president of the United States.

Holt’s biography provides excellent, though summary, background describing the political chessboard which confronted Pierce as he entered office. The reader is also granted a clear view of Pierce’s conduct as president as well as the rationale behind his controversial actions. The result is a surprisingly comprehensive account of Pierce’s presidency and the implications of his choices.

Holt is at his best when diagnosing the miserable failure of Pierce’s presidency while simultaneously demonstrating the man’s honesty and decency. Holt argues that Pierce’s decision to chart a “middle course” on the subject of slavery and his effort to preserve the unity of the Democratic party led to his disastrous policy decisions (notably the Kansas-Nebraska Act). Instead of pacifying a broad swath of the country he dangerously inflamed sectional tensions and may have set the country on a more direct path to Civil War.

One of the strengths of the book is also one of its weaknesses. Because it is so concise, the author is unable to fully explore all of the themes useful in fully understanding the political environment in the 1850s. Occasionally the author does choose to dive deeply into a topic – such as the evolution of the various political factions and the eventual destruction of the Whig Party. In these instances the pace slows considerably, and the biography begins to feel weighty and complex.

Overall, however, Holt has successfully shouldered the burden of describing a likable but unexceptional politician and analyzing his historically ineffective presidency in a balanced and thoughtful way. While not the deepest or most scholarly of presidential portraits, Holt’s biography of Franklin Pierce is exactly the type of book many will appreciate for this president: it is engaging, descriptive and delightfully efficient.

Overall rating: 4 stars

[Kierstin · Rating 3 out of 5]

OMG people, Franklin Pierce is a train wreck to locate, digest, and analyze. Our 14th President and a Democrat, he was elected in 1852 and served one term. He was a lawyer and local politician in his home state of New Hampshire, and was considered a good looking and charming guy who made friends easily.

He was elected in a landslide following the dismal service of VP-turned-POTUS Millard Fillmore, and largely considered a consensus candidate in the era of sectional rigidity (which ultimately also became his greatest flaw in the eyes of voters). A northerner with southern sympathies, Pierce campaigned on a platform of state's rights, constitutionalism, and bridge building (relational, not actual).

In Pierce's (and the author's) defense, US politics in the 1850s was a mess of factions within party umbrellas. You've got northern abolitionists, northern sympathizers, northern republicans, southern pro-compromisers, southern anti-pro-compromisers (totally what they were called), southern unionists, and the western front to name just a few. Then in 1854, the Know-Nothing party took advantage of the confusion and swept the midterm elections. (They earned their name by claiming to know absolutely nothing about the party line to avoid exposure and recrimination of their anti-immigrant/catholic sentiments.)

Pierce was a decent politician and decided to build his cabinet in an attempt to represent the feuding ideas within the Democratic party, as opposed to simply filling it with supporters from his own camp (northern sympathizers - which were actually men from the north with positive feelings for the southern predicament). Ultimately, this tactic was a mistake, fueling resentment that led to his failed renomination, but Pierce's cabinet is historically considered the most "honest" due to the complete lack of patronage and cooperation. His cabinet, against the odds, is also the only one ever to remain intact for an entire administration.

In that environment, Pierce's Administration embarked on a few adventures of impact:

1)He very much wanted to acquire Cuba, which caused significant concern/elation about its inevitable admission as a slave state. The purchase from Spain was not accomplished, and instead the feelers caused unease in European allies who were abiding by Manifest Destiny expansion prohibitions.

2) Secretary of War Jefferson Davis convinced Pierce to coordinate the purchase from Mexico the land in what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico for a railway line (it was the only passable land for the technology of that time). The only point of interest here is that with this purchase the continental US became what we know it as today.

3) The Kansas/Nebraska Act of 1854. Whoa Doggies. This piece of legislation was a nice bit of kindling placed just a couple of years before the 1861 start of the Civil War. Essentially, for railroad expansion to occur, the western territory needed to be speculated and organized into a state-in-waiting. For the slave/non-slave state count to remain balanced, Nebraska would enter free and Kansas would enter slave. The expansion of slavery was considered anathema to abolitionist northerners, and the idea of popular sovereignty was agreed to, meaning citizens of the states would vote to decide the outcome for themselves. The "solution" caused a run of Missouri slave holders to cross the border on vote day, resulting in an official "slave government" that enacted unusually cruel and harsh pro-slavery laws in the territory. A shadow "free government" was stood up in protest, which Pierce did not recognize, leading to regular violence on the prairie.

At this point in history, Democrats were so divided they could barely scrape a win in the 1856 election, and only by dumping Franklin Pierce from the ticket. The pro-southern, pro-compromise-at-any-cost stance of the Democratic party helped birth the pro-North, abolitionist-sympathizing Republicans who won their first election just four years later.

(For anyone who cares about his personal life like I do, Pierce was married to a religious conservative and had three sons. One son died in infancy, another at 4 years old from illness, and the last one was decapitated in front of his parents in a train accident on the way to Pierce's inauguration. His best friend was author Nathaniel Hawthorn, with whom Pierce would travel frequently. After the death of his wife, and Hawthorn a few years later, Pierce returned to the heavy drinking his wife prohibited and died of cirrhosis in a cabin on the New England shore.)

This bit of American history is mired in the details of the day and offers little besides a further explanation of why we went to civil war. The author premised his book on a silly and unnecessary thesis but I am grateful to him for providing me with the one and only Franklin Pierce biography in easy circulation.

[Donald Powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an attempt to explain Pierce’s motivations, downplaying his racism and opining a desire of Democratic Party unity as his principal goal. He also soft served the alcoholism without ignoring it. The book delved deeply into then extant factions and loyalties. This is valuable history but could have been explained a bit more clearly; however, perhaps it was never truly “clear”.
This is my second Pierce biography as his name was the source, in 1852, for the Oregon Territorial Legislature to name the County of my domicile in Washington State. I have an urge to seek renaming of my County.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Franklin Pierce, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 1852, won his election, it was by totals unseen in years. His nearly seven-point victory over his Whig opponent, Winfield Scott, was the greatest margin in the popular vote in nearly two decades. This was magnified by the electoral college into a lopsided 254-42 count, giving Piece a triumph on a scale last enjoyed by Andrew Jackson. Nor was Pierce’s achievement merely a personal one, as Democrats increased their numbers in the House of Representatives, maintained their majority in the Senate, and took two governorships. By any meaningful measure, the incoming president and his party had routed their opponents on every level and established an unquestionable dominance in American national politics.

Four years later, the nation was grappling with an ongoing crisis in Kansas Territory that was tearing apart the national political system. Though Democrats were notionally still in charge of Congress, their ranks were split along sectional lines. Democratic voters in the north, who were increasingly disaffected with the dominance of southern interests within their party, were abandoning it at the ballot box in favor of the newly-formed Republican Party. As the northern electorate swung against them, many Democrats singled out the president’s failed leadership as the source of their woes. Their dissatisfaction received the ultimate expression at the party’s national convention in June, when it denied Pierce their nomination for a second term in office, making him the first elected president in American history to suffer such a humiliation.

In the decades since his departure from the White House Pierce’s public standing has not improved, as his failed presidency is seen today as a contributing factor to the political crisis of the 1850s that climaxed in secession and civil war. While others have attributed this failure to personal weaknesses, Michael Holt sees its origins in his fixation as president with preserving his party’s unity. Faced as he was with the absence of a robust political opposition against which Democrats could unite, Pierce struggled throughout his time in the nation’s highest office to use his position to keep the party together in the face of the emerging sectional divide. As Holt demonstrates, however, his efforts to do so only exacerbated it, with his party’s hold on power maintained only thanks to the disarray of their opponents.

This failure was all the more striking given the political skills that Holt describes. From an early age, Pierce demonstrated an affability and personal charm that won him numerous friends. While he enjoyed the benefits of a college education available to few at that time, “Frank” preferred spending time outdoors and carousing with friends to his studies. Though he read law after graduating from college, Pierce pivoted quickly to politics, where his personal gifts and his father’s stature as a Revolutionary War veteran and prominent Democratic-Republican Party politician ensured a rapid ascent. Holt notes that Piece’s entry into New Hampshire politics coincided with the beginning of the state’s shift from a competitive two-party system into one dominated by emerging Democratic Party. With party selection increasingly tantamount to election in the state, Pierce’s position within the party ensured his easy election first to the state legislature, then to the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, all at a strikingly young age.

A combination of personal and political circumstances led Pierce to resign from the Senate in 1842. Far from abandoning politics, however, Pierce now served as the effective leader of the Democratic Party in his state. In that role it fell to him to resolve internecine squabbles, which usually he did so successfully. Holt sees Pierce’s fetishization of party unity on full display during this period, which manifested itself most dramatically in efforts to stifle any hint of antislavery sentiments from its candidates. This won for him the respect of his counterparts in the South, several of whom came to know Pierce personally during their mutual service in the war with Mexico. Because of this, when the party deadlocked between three prominent Democrats at the 1852 presidential nominating convention, Pierce was regarded by Southerners as a suitable compromise candidate.

Holt views the results of that election as an endorsement of the recently-passed Compromise of 1850 and a desire by Americans to be done with the slavery issue. Yet as president Pierce struggled to mend the lingering intraparty wounds created by the crisis three years previously. His attempts to parcel out patronage jobs fairly across all factions, rather than just the supporters of the compromise, infuriated those Democrats who had remained committed to party direction while Free Soilers and “Southern Rights” rivals were rewarded despite going against it. When Stephen Douglas reopened these wounds with his bill to open up Kansas territory to slavery, Pierce was persuaded by eager southern Democrats to make support for the legislation a test of party loyalty, a decision that Holt regards as the biggest mistake of his political career. In the aftermath of its passage Northern Democrats tried vainly to distance themselves from a measure that was enormously unpopular with their constituents, who delivered victories for their opponents throughout the region in the 1854 and 1855 elections. In the end, southerners’ delight with Pierce’s action proved insufficient to win another term, as the Democrats in his own region now regarded him as too toxic politically to win their states.

If there is evidence that Pierce felt in any way responsible for the damage inflicted on the Democratic Party in the northern states, Holt was unable to find it. Yet it is difficult to imagine that, in his retirement, the irony was entirely lost on him of an administration focused above all on party unity presiding instead over a growing fragmentation within it that would reach its climax at the party’s national convention in Charleston in 1860. If Holt’s contention that Pierce’s foremost goal as president was party unity is correct, then by his own standards his presidency was a failure. And while the author refrains from making any explicit judgment about his subject, the evidence he presents in this succinct and knowledgeable overview of Pierce’s political career more than speaks for itself.

[Frank Theising · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my journey through reading one bio on each president, I am at perhaps the dullest handful of presidents…that stretch after Jackson but before Lincoln (although the Gilded Age could give this era a run for its money). Nevertheless, I think there are several parallels to our modern situation that are interesting to study and compare. Despite being perhaps the most congenial President to ever serve in the White House with a track record of success (4 years in state House, 2 terms in the US House, US Senator, Brig General in Mexican-American War, and President in 1852), Pierce is not judged highly by historians for his role in fracturing the Democratic Party and taking actions that helped precipitate the Civil War.

The author’s central thesis is that Pierce failed because he was consumed with maintaining party unity in the absence of any cohesive opposition party, both during his rise in NH and his term as President. It seems like there are valuable lessons to learn from his example as many states today face identical situations (think California where the GOP is all but dead except in small pockets and state-wide contest are normally between two Democrats). Pierce obviously handled that scenario poorly, fracturing his party and triggering a massive political realignment across the country. Could leaders today be repeating his mistakes and helping to spur a repeat of the massive political realignment of his day? I thinks it’s still a long shot but not wholly inconceivable given how many people feel alienated from both major political parties at the moment.

For this very reason, I think it an interesting period to study, even though the presidents of that era lacked the accomplishments or personal narrative that makes for exciting reading. Obviously, the story will not be repeated exactly the same today; we don’t have that one overriding issue (slavery) that generated so much passion and turmoil between and within the parties. But the divisions we face today (between and within both parties) are more contentious than at any time in living memory. So its possible there is a great deal to learn from an era that shared similar discontent between the people and their established political parties. 3 Stars.

What follows are my notes on the book:

Born in 1804 in Hillsborough, NH. The 6th child of Anna and Revolutionary War General Benjamin Pierce. His father was stern and influential, and Franklin desired to emulate his military service. He was outdoorsy as a youth, and displayed an unusual personal charm. His father insisted he receive an education and sent him to Bowdoin College in Maine (he refused to send him to Federalist-controlled Dartmouth in NH). He played more than he studied, and suffered from alcoholism early on. Embarrassed by finishing dead last in his class after sophomore year, he developed a new self-discipline his last couple years and finished 5th in his class (5-8).

After college, he returned home to read law under a local attorney. He was admitted to the bar in 1827 at age 22. He lacked an incisive legal mind, but his prodigious memory for names and faces and personal charm helped him win cases. His father was elected governor in 1827. Franklin campaigned for his re-election and was himself elected the state legislature in 1829 at age 24. He was reelected 3 years running, elected Speaker the last two years.

The division between parties revolved around the government’s role in economics and internal improvements. This had a regional dimension in NH. Coastal towns were Federalist strongholds linked to Boston business. The north and west parts of the state, viewed them as imperial monopolists who gutted rural areas. Pierce developed a devotion to Jeffersonian principles (opposition to government subsidization and paper money) and commitment to Jackson’s Party that would endure throughout his life. His father’s reelection in 1829 turned NH into a Democratic stronghold. A political anomaly in New England where Whigs were dominant in neighboring states (12).

Pierce would benefit from NH’s unique political trajectory as he was elected to the US House in 1832. The issue of the day was Jackson’s removal of Federal deposits from the Bank of the US. The Whig Senate passed bills demanding he return the funds, but the Democrats in the House, Pierce among them, defeated them easily. He was engaged to Jane Appleton of Amherst in 1833. They were an unlikely pair: she was from a wealthy Federalist home, she was not handsome like Pierce, and she was shy and morose to Pierce’s gregarious personality.

Pierce was not pro-slavery but detested the abolitionist movement. He thought them holier-than-thou and their aspersions that anyone who didn’t agree were sinners as offensive. He was committed to preservation of the Union and abolitionists threatened its perpetuity (17). His solution to abolitionist petitions in the House was to receive them but table them without further consideration. His first child died 3 days after birth. When a Southern Senator read a newspaper article on the floor that labeled Pierce a Doughface (northerner with southern sympathies), he was furious at the insult. In 1837, at age 32, he became the youngest man yet elected to the Senate. In 1839, Jane gave birth to a healthy son giving her an excuse never to return to Washington (21).

In 1840, W.H. Harrison and the Whigs swept the House and state legislatures (and thru them the Senate). Now in the minority and unable to stop Henry Clay’s package of economic legislation, he resigned his Senate seat with a year left to go. Nevertheless, he continued to serve as the de facto boss of NH Democratic politics for the next 10 years (1842-52).

The unity of the Democratic Party became a fixation, leading him to drive all antislavery sentiment from NH Democratic Party…going so far as to call special sessions to oust previously nominated men who announced anti-slavery beliefs (23). After a Whig was elected governor with only 37% of the vote, he mobilized a huge increase in turnout to crush them in the next election. The atypical majorities in NH probably deepened his commitment to internal party unity. Where external competition was weak, internal fragmentation was a constant danger. This blinded him to the needs of Democrats in more competitive states.

He always wanted to relive the military exploits of his father. With the Mexican American War, Polk appointed Pierce a colonel, later Brig Gen. He served under Gen Winfield Scott. By the time he joined the fight in Mexico, Scott had already moved inland. Pierce’s job was to transport supplies and artillery 150 miles inland which he did with great skill. The remainder of his military career is unremarkable, with several injuries during critical moments that led some to speculate he was a coward (29). “Mr. Polk’s War” permanently altered American political life. Parties split along sectional lines in the fight over the expansion of slavery into new territories. The Democrats found it hard to agree on a position (1820 MO Compromise line or “popular sovereignty”). How to deal with this was the central issue of 1848 election. Taylor won and tried to finesse the issue. Congress eventually passed a package of compromise legislation in 1850: CA enters as Free State, UT and NM under popular sovereignty, and passage of a rigorous Fugitive Slave Act. These only succeed because Taylor died and Fillmore pushed them through by pressuring northern Whigs. Dems promoted the Compromise to save the Union while Whigs attacked it.

Both Northern and Southern Democrats believed it was critical to run a Northerner for President in 1852. When the convention deadlocked, Pierce emerged as the compromise candidate as won on the 49th ballot. His election as President eerily echoed his rise in NH. He won in a landslide, defeating Gen Winfield Scott, as the Whigs were so divided nationally over the Compromise of 1850. As President he would face the problem of holding the Party together in the absence of an effective opposition party. The 1853 election gave the Democrats overwhelming dominance, akin to NH. He saw the threat and sought to build a party-unifying Cabinet.

They were aboard a train that derailed in a freak accident, killing their son in front of them.

Perfectly balanced by region, Pierce’s Cabinet would be one of the most ethical and effective in the 19th century, and the only where all members served a full 4 year term (52). Unfortunately, against his original intent, it also only contained 1 staunch defender of the Compromise of 1850. His time in office would follow his inaugural pledge: limited Central government, enforcement of neutrality laws, and adherence to the Monroe Doctrine. His repeated vetoes of internal improvement bills frustrated many in his party.

He dispatched James Gadsden to purchase portions of Northern Mexico and Lower California. He ultimately only purchased a small swatch of modern day Arizona for $15M (55). He appointed James Buchanan minister to Great Britain (that fatefully removed him from party infighting and contributed to his later election as President). A trade reciprocity treaty with Canada was touted as a success of his administration. The Crimean War proved a boon to American farmers. He appointed an unfortunate choice for ambassador to Spain. The Ostend Manifesto, an internal State Department document leaked, and many accused Pierce of attempting to seize Cuba by force (64-65).

In his effort to hold the party together, he showed partiality for the extreme wings of the party and not the Unionist center. Senators attempted to enforce pro-southern views, by only confirming appointments who held to their views (67). This in turn incensed Northerners and pro-Compromise Southerners. So much so that they considered breaking off to form a new pro-Union party. Dividing Federal jobs amongst competing factions within states (like NY) only furthered the party’s disintegration.

This created an opening for Stephen Douglas to frame a unifying Democratic policy (71). Douglas hoped territorial organization of Nebraska would re-ignite interparty conflict between Dems and Whigs and stem the fractures from Pierce’s misguided patronage policies. Instead, the issue would wreck Pierce and trigger a major party realignment in the North. To add a new slave state would require repeal of the MO Compromise. Douglas promoted popular sovereignty (it had a precedent with UT and NM). Knowing this would be offensive to many in the North, Douglas appealed to Pierce to support his bill. Pierce went along and his role in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (and assuming all loyal Dems would support it) would re-ignite sectional conflict and set the nation on the course toward Civil War (76). The Democrats were destroyed in the 1854 election across the North. The new Republican Party emerged as the new challenger to the Democrats, as the Whigs and Know-Nothing Movement faded away.

If popular sovereignty was to decide the fate of Kansas, both sides viewed new settlers as either an invasion of slaveholders or abolitionists in a winner take all contest. Ruffians poured over the border to influence the election. Competing slave and free governments emerged in KS, with Pierce denouncing the “outlaw” Free Government in Topeka. He threw the full weight of the federal government behind the illegally elected proslavery legislature in KS.

The focus on “Bleeding Kansas” fueled the growth of the Republican Party, leading Democrats to believe it would be suicidal to re-nominate Pierce. Buchanan, above the fray in England, emerged as the safe candidate. The last 9 months of Pierce’s term he was a lame duck. Buchanan carried every slave state and was elected President. But the Republican dominance in the North showed what Pierce had done to his party. Pierce never conceded his culpability, instead blaming antislavery fanatics for his party’s woes (110).

In retirement, he and Jane toured Europe. When Buchanan’s corrupt administration proved a disaster with the botched handling of Kansas, the party made repeated attempts to draw Pierce out of retirement. He declined repeatedly, retiring to a farm in NH. The Dems split their ticket between Douglas and Breckinridge, opening the door for Lincoln to win. Pierce recognized what Lincoln did not, that Southern threats to secede were no bluff. He believed Buchanan’s resupply of Fort Sumter was coercive and understood how Southerners would react.

He blamed Republicans for causing the war and was infuriated with Lincoln’s assault on individual rights (suspension of Habeas Corpus). He was equally dismayed with the Emancipation Proclamation, thinking it converted an unnecessary war to save the Union into an abolitionist crusade (124). After prosecution of an Ohio Peace Democrat, Pierce spoke out against the “failed” war effort…right before news of Vicksburg and Gettysburg broke. In 1863, he suffered the death of his wife and close friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. After Jane’s death, he bought a sea-side farm that he tended himself.

He instinctively sided with Andrew Johnson and was outraged with his impeachment (129). He traveled to Richmond to offer his legal assistance to his former Cabinet member Jefferson Davis. He drank heavily in his last years and died in 1869.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid biography of Franklin Pierce, often rated as in the bottom tier of American presidents. The book does a nice job of describing Pierce's ascent to political power, from his base in New Hampshire. His father had been a political figure and James followed in his footsteps.

He became president because of a deadlock in the 1852 convention. He emerged as an acceptable candidate to other factions and won. However, his presidency was not successful. In his zeal to hold the fractious Democratic party together, he ended up presiding over a slow disintegration as the country moved toward the 1856 election. He was denied renomination and led his life out fairly quietly.

A good, solid, brief biography for those who don't want to delve deeply into the subject matter. That brevity is both a strength and a weakness, since various themes cannot be fully developed.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The life of Franklin Pierce, from his education to his death, including his presidency.

Maybe 2.5. Here's the thing about these short biographies about presidents -- the authors really assume you know a lot about the players and what's happening. In this case, there was a lot of confusing stuff about southern states versus northern states and the factions in between that was hard for me to follow. But on the other hand, since it took me about 20 days to read this 200 page book, I really don't want to invest the time to read a 400+ page book about something I'm only mildly interested in. So these authors who really try to pack it into 200 pages have a really hard job. But overall I got the gist that Franklin Pierce was good looking and people (on both sides) I think genuinely liked him as a person. I also am adding him to my list of presidents who skinny dipped, which now numbers three (J.Q. Adams, Pierce & T. Roosevelt...I am looking forward to adding to that list as I have occasion). The problem of why Pierce rates as one of the top five worst presidents in our US History, though, seems to be that he really tried to accommodate everyone, to the detriment of his own party and the people who elected him. He was really trying to mend fences and save the republic that he was short-sighted on key issues such as slavery. In order to accommodate the Southerners who really were ready to secede from the Union, Pierce bent over backwards to try to accommodate those factions. He included them in his cabinet, he adjusted laws for them -- he really was trying to keep them in tow and, at the same time, angering those Northerners who voted for Pierce, who were very much appalled with what he was doing and that created a rift in the party that Pierce seemed to ignore. So I guess the takeaway

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my sequential read-through of presidential biographies, we're almost to the Civil War. Most of the presidents leading up to Lincoln are blamed, to various degrees, for causing the Civil War, even though I am increasingly convinced that none of them could have actually prevented it. This applies to the fourteenth president, Franklin Pierce, an anti-abolitionist Northerner whose Southern sympathies contributed in large part to the creation of the Republican Party, the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the inevitable secession.

This short biography by Michael Holt seemed to have been mostly a workmanlike summary of longer biographies. Schlesinger writes clearly and concisely and only occasionally editorializes or interjects his own observations.

Pierce was a favorite son of New Hampshire. His father was the Governor of New Hampshire, a Jeffersonian Republican (or a Jeffersonian Democrat - in Jefferson's time, they were the "Democratic-Republicans"), and a Revolutionary War hero. Franklin Pierce wanted the glory and respect his father had. In school, he was known for being athletic, handsome, charming, and not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. He was best friends with novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote a campaign biography for Pierce when he ran for president.

Doughface

Pierce served as a lawyer, then a state attorney general, and then went to Congress to represent New Hampshire, first as Congressman and then as a Senator. This is where he gained a reputation for being a Southern sympathizer; while Pierce never owned slaves himself, he considered slavery to be a states rights issue, and he despised abolitionists as self-righteous nags. He supported the Fugitive Slave Act (though there is some evidence he personally thought it was inhumane), and while he did not support the South's attempts to make a rule that Congress would categorically reject all abolitionist petitions, he did endorse the "Gag Rule" which basically tabled them without discussion.

This attitude got him called a "doughface," a term used for Northerners with Southern, pro-slavery sympathies, but which also implied cowardice. Pierce once clashed with John C. Calhoun on the Senate floor because Calhoun attacked New Hampshire by reading an abolitionist article from a New Hampshire newspaper that called Pierce a doughface.

Pierce was an unremarkable politician who largely got by on charm. He was only successful when he had no real opposition, and he quit his Senate term when his party became a minority.

His wife, Jane, never liked politics or Washington. Constantly sickly and anxious, the Pierces lost all three of their children young.

After the Mexican-American War, generals run for president

Franklin Pierce's father fought in the Revolutionary War and was a member of the Cincinnati Society. Franklin's brothers had fought in the War of 1812. So when the Mexican-American War broke out, he seized the chance to earn a few medals himself.

While Pierce was a competent commander, his performance at the time was not exactly inspiring. During a charge outside Mexico City, his horse spooked and slammed his groin against the saddle pommel so hard that he blacked out. He fell off the horse, and the horse then fell on his knee. To everyone else, it looked as if Pierce had fainted under enemy fire. One of his officers yelled, "Take command of the brigade. General Pierce is a damned coward!"

As they marched into the next battle, Pierce's injured knee gave out and he collapsed while his men marched past him. The battle after that, Pierce was laid up in the hospital tent with severe diarrhea.

As humiliating as this was, Pierce somehow emerged as a hero of the Mexican War. The Whig General Zachary Taylor was elected President in 1848, but after he died in office, the Whig party began to fall apart. Never a particularly stable alliance, the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act splintered Northern and Southern Whigs. Franklin Pierce's former commanding officer, General Winfield Scott, ran on the Whig ticket in 1850. Pierce was a dark horse candidate during the Democratic primary, and eventually won the party's nomination after 39 ballots. His wife Jane was not pleased; she didn't want to go back to Washington.

The election of 1852 was nasty but not exciting. Rumors of Pierce's cowardice during the war, as well as claims that he was "Hero of many a well-fought bottle" made for spicy attack ads, but Pierce still trounced the disorganized Whigs.

Following the election, but before Pierce's inauguration, he and his wife and their surviving son, 11-year-old Benjamin "Bennie" Pierce, were riding a train back from Boston when it derailed. Bennie was crushed and decapitated before his parents' eyes.

Pierce carried on, but he and his wife were obviously dramatically affected by this, and many historians believe that Pierce's poor performance as president, and subsequent alcoholism, were at least partly a result of this trauma.

One-Term President

Pierce was, all things considered, not a terrible president, he just wasn't a very good one at a critical time when the country really needed someone brilliant. The rift between North and South was growing, slavery was becoming an irreconcilable divide, and while Pierce was consistently on the side of slave-owning Southerners, he wanted to hold his party together first, and the country second.

His greatest blunder was supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened up Kansas and Nebraska to the slavery question, and effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise. The result of this was a series of armed conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas," and Pierce's growing unpopularity in the North.

In the 1852 gubernatorial and congressional elections, the Democrats got slaughtered, largely because of Pierce's unpopularity. The disintegrating Whigs and Northern Democrats were splitting away and allying with former Know-Nothings to form the Republican Party. Nonetheless, Pierce wanted to run for reelection in 1856.

At this point, the author of this biography offers some of his rare editorial comments, where he points out that Pierce was delusional to think he had a chance. He had no hope of winning, as Southern Democrats were peeling away from the North in droves, and Pierce couldn't even get renominated by his own party. To this day, Franklin Pierce is the only incumbent President ever to be denied renomination by his own party. Instead, his former minister to the UK, James Buchanan, won the Democratic nomination and went on to become his successor and possibly the worst president ever.

Retirement and Death by Cirrhosis

Pierce and his wife did the usual ex-President thing, and went traveling, staying with some of their rich friends, and then took a tour of Europe. Jane's health continued to deteriorate, though she clearly did better in warm climates.

Pierce mostly stayed out of politics, though some of his allies floated his name for a possible presidential run again in 1860 and 1864. Pierce firmly rejected any such suggestions. During the Civil War, Pierce fell under some criticism for his Southern sympathies. A letter he had written to his former cabinet member and good friend Jefferson Davis was publicized, he openly criticized President Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, and he was at one point accused of being part of a Copperhead (pro-Confederacy) conspiracy. Pierce vehemently denied this and there is no evidence that it was true. Pierce supported the Union, albeit tepidly, and when Lincoln's own son died in the White House, Pierce sent the President a consoling letter. He later talked down a mob who was angry at him for not flying a flag in solidarity after Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

His wife Jane died in 1863. Pierce began hanging out with his old friend Nathaniel Hawthorne again, and Hawthorne died in 1864, literally in the next room, while the two of them were traveling together. Pierce began drinking more heavily (he had always been a hard drinker, though his wife had apparently gotten him to control it while she was alive). He donated money to Hawthorne's children and tried to help his old friend Jefferson Davis (who had been imprisoned after the war while the government decided whether or not to try him for treason). He bought some land.

In 1869, he died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was buried next to his wife and sons.

Franklin Pierce was not a terribly interesting president, though his administration was relatively scandal-free. His main failures were political; he tried to hard to keep the Democrats together and didn't do enough to keep the country together. He made the same mistakes many of his predecessors did, in thinking he could somehow take slavery off the table as a political issue. He was apparently an honest if not brilliant politician.

This biography was short, which was mostly what I was looking for since frankly I didn't have the heart to read another 500-page biography of a forgotten POTUS whose impact on American history was pretty minimal.

[Sean Chick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holt, rightly or wrongly, was long accused of being a great historian but a bad writer. This in part led to his interpretation of the politics of the 1850s losing out to Foner. I would argue Foner's race-centered narrative and New Left credentials were more decisive, but The Political Crisis of the 1850s was certainly not as good a read as Foner's best work.

By the time Holt put out this short work, he had shown growth as a writer and even as a historian. What one gets here is a portrayal that is sympathetic to Pierce as a man, but not as a politician. Pierce entered treacherous waters. Few could have navigated them, but he certainly was the wrong man with his obsession with party unity, foreign affairs, and a strict reading of the Constitution. On the latter point, I disagree with Pierce's stance but concede that Pierce meant it, rather than it being discarded at convenience, as it was by Jackson and Jefferson before him.

Pierce was not strong enough or smart enough and consistently misread the mood. Holt argues persuasively this was because he was reared in New Hampshire. His ascent to power was easy, paved by a powerful father and a unified and competent state Democratic Party. If he were president in the 1830s or 1840s, his easy charm and expansionist goals might have been enough to at least be a Martin Van Buren, one of his political heroes. Whatever his faults, Van Buren has held up better than Pierce. Holt makes it clear why that is without engaging in needless and dull slurs of a fundamentally decent man mismatched to his times. If I offer any criticism, it is that less savory personal aspects of Pierce are not discussed and Holt does not speculate how exactly he could have held the Democrats together. It is a counterfactual, but one Holt should have considered, as the problem of party unity after 1852 perplexed even men of greater talent than Pierce.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Operation Read Every President's Biography #14

Topping many lists of "hottest" Presidents, Pierce had little else to commend as leader of the United States actually. In fact, he makes just as many lists of "worst" Presidents as he does "hottest". It's no mean feat to place so low when you're bookended by Fillmore (who meant well) and Buchanan (who WAS the worst President), but Pierce deserves the title for his constant dumbass political mistakes. he also muddies the usual view of Northern politicians at this point since he was a partisan Democrat who only decided crucial things out of partisan interest and almost always, get this, pro-South. You read that right. Holt's main thesis in fact is that Pierce flubbed his single term because of his obsession with party matters. His patronage favors doled out to rival factions in his party did a lot of damage to his credibility even if he meant well. But it was really the Nebraska issue that revealed his stupidity and led to the rise of Lincoln's Republican party, all because Pierce always went in the South (and slavery's favor) when it came down to it.
Anyhow, I can go on about that for hours. This is a commendable and educational book, some of whose peculiarities will seem oddly familiar (party over principle, etc), and Holt does a fine, if brief job of outlining Pierce's crappy career and sad family life. Oh, and his alcoholism. There was that, too.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Franklin Pierce wasn’t high on my interest list of presidents to read about for this America @ 250 project until I learned that he was intimate friends with Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina. Pierce and Davis served together in the Army, then in high office, and shared the awful burden of having lost children. In Pierce’s case, he lost three, and then he effectively lost his country: because he would not denounce his friend Jeff Davis during the War, he himself was treated as a pariah and spent his last years a recluse, abused socially whenever he ventured out. I found this premise completely captivating, almost like a tragic novel, and wanted to learn more about the man. Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt offers a little insight, but it is not for the faint of heart, digging deeply into party politics. That is not an accident, because Pierce’s compromises to keep the Democratic party intact would backfire mightily, leading to a split ticket that allowed for the triumph of the Republicans at the polls — and the death of the early Republic as it splintered into civil war and emerged a new, bloody creature. If, however, your interest is in the crackup of the Democratic party and the road to Civil War, this will prove a short but detailed read.

There are surely fewer figures in American history who have experienced the kind of rise and fall exhibited by Franklin Pierce. The son of a prominent figure, young Frank rose swiftly in New Hampshire politics within a new and cohesive Democratic party: he was ensconced within the state legislature in his twenties, and continued to rise through the ranks, stopping only to fight in the Mexican war where he did not especially distinguish himself, being roughly treated by his own horse. While he earned no soldiers’ kudos, he was seen as a safe bet in the Democratic party of the late ’40s and early ’50s — everyone liked Frank. He looked dashing, he was hard working and well spoken, and despite being almost as far North as you can get, he had a steady affection for the South and a good base of support there. What could go wrong?

Well…Kansas. And Nebraska. The Kansas-Nebraska act, to be specific. The question of slavery had plagued the American union from its birth: the Founding generation resolved to table it for a few decades, knowing they needed to come together to throw off the yoke of Parliament and its taxes, but bad policies do not improve with age any more than bad news does. The Founding generation had the luxury of believing slavery was dying out on its own: they did not anticipate that the cotton gin would give it new life, nor that succeeding generations of Southerners, constantly attacked for how prominent slavery was within their society, would make its defense an article of faith rather than a necessary evil. As the borders of the Union continued to drift further west — hastened by purchases of land and that little Mexican dustup — sectional strife increased. Southerners were adamant that the possibility of slavery exist out west, even if the land was too barren to permit heavy agriculture, or if the locals — in the case of the upper west — didn’t want to allow blacks at all. Some peace was achieved by the Missouri compromise, but then the Kansas-Nebraska act stirred the kettle all over again by insisting that whether states be slave or free depended entirely on the people who lived there. While this sounded ‘democratic’, it was a compromise in the truest sense: it forced everyone to live by lies, to an extent. There was no sense at all in a man’s state in life depending on where he happened to live: if a man was a man and not some ‘pygmy’ as the most ardent slavers held, that could not possibly vary on invisible lines drawn on a map. Pierce, however, insisted in good limited-government fashion that it made perfect sense for the people of each State to decide on this matter, and he shifted his appointments within the spoils system to force recalcitrant Democrats on either side to step in line. While they did at first, they did not do so for long — and the result was an implosion for the Democratic party, one that was delayed enough to allow for the election of President Buchanan but then happened with such thoroughness that Democrats did not achieve the high office again until Grover Cleveland two decades later. With Kansas dissolving into a miniature civil war — complete with rival legislatures and John Brown murdering people simply for acknowledging one or the other — Pierce’s lack of active leadership, his retiring in the field of combat, led to punishing results at the polls.

This was…a difficult book to summarize. I was interested in Pierce’s role in the road to secession, of course, and that I got in spades — but little else. Pierce’s intimate relationship with the Davises is never mentioned at all: instead, we get a notion of a man who let the perfect become the enemy of the good, and made wide the road to secession and war by maintaining that it was not his place to interfere. Perhaps it was not, from his view of someone who had a constrained vision of the executive we lost only when Lincoln and others turned the presidency into an elective monarchy. Still, with the hindsight of history it is hard to wish he and his successor Buchanan did not do more. I will read more of Mr. Pierce, either directly (The Expatriation of Franklin Pierce) or through his presence in other volumes. And I suspect I will read more of Mr. Holt, given that he has an entire book on the rise and fall of the Whigs.

[Hannah Hancock]

See my review here. https://oldoriginalthoughts.blogspot....

[William Kerrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This well written, engaging biography is part of the American President's Series, published by Times books. The books in the series are brief and focus primarily but not exclusively on each man's Presidency. Most are penned by very highly regarded historians of the era, and that is certainly the case here. I find the books in this series appealing in part because, while I am very interested in life stories, I rarely have the attention span devote to standard biographies which can run 800 pages in length or more. I certainly could not imagine wading through a biography of that length for someone like Franklin Pierce.

Michael Holt, one of the most highly regarded political historians of antebellum America, does a nice job recounting the life story of a President who consistently (and deservedly) ranks near the bottom of Presidential rankings lists. Holt strives to present a balanced view, and acknowledges Pierce's gifts, as well as his shortcomings. The portrait is sympathetic, but it is also honest. Holt's portrait of Pierce's character and personal qualities increased my sympathy for the man, and even caused me to consider whether the epithet frequently placed upon him for his seemingly endless desire to appease southern slaveholders-"dough face"--was entirely fair. But ultimately, Holt makes no attempt to raise Pierce's stature among Presidents, or claim that historians have judged his Presidency too harshly. Instead he concludes that "rather than see personal weakness as the source of his missteps in the White House, I attribute Pierce's most fateful political decisions to his obsession with preserving the unity of the Democratic Party."

I appreciated the volume not simply for Holt's clear explanations of the politics of the era, but also for the small insights it provided into the character of the man. I was nonetheless still grasping to understand the deep, mutual life-long friendship between Pierce, one of the nation's worst political leaders, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of its most gifted writers. I suppose it is a good reminder to us that Presidents are actually humans, after all, and they are more than simply their collective executive records.

[Arminius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Known as one of the handsomest presidents Franklin Pierce also became known as one of America’s worst presidents. He was rugged and athletically built. He preferred hiking and hunting to studying. He was born in New Hampshire. He attended Bowdoin College in Maine and studied law under Levi Woodbury. Woodbury was the Treasury Secretary under President Andrew Jackson. Pierce became an admirer of President Jackson and his politics ran in sync with Jackson. He became a successful lawyer then transferred to politics which he loved. He was elected to four consecutive terms in New Hampshire’s House of Representatives. He was so well liked at the State House that first they elected him Speaker and later elected him to the Senate.

When the Mexican American war broke out he enlisted and had a successful tour of duty under Winfield Scott. In 1852 a deadlock at the Democratic National Convention led to his nomination as the democratic candidate. He followed his nomination with a close victory over his former supervisor and Whig Party Candidate, Winfield Scott, to become America’s 14th President.
His personal life was very tragic. His devoted wife was often morose. She also despised politics. Two of their sons died before their fifth birthday. His last son was killed in a train wreck.
He governed under a strict Jacksonian philosophy. He was a northerner who supported the fugitive slave law while many northern democrats opposed it. His huge mistake was signing the Kansas Nebraska Act. The Act repealed the Compromise of 1850 and allowed States to determine for themselves whether or not to allow slavery in their respective states. This was very unpopular in the North. It also produced much violence in the new territory. It is often cited as the forbearer to the Civil War.

His policies deeply divided his party. So when his term ended he was not nominated for a second term.

While President he invested wisely in Rail Roads and Banks which left him a wealthy man in retirement. He traveled to Europe with his wife and bought a large farm in New Hampshire to retire to.

[Regina Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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 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." (pg 2)

In only 133 pages, Holt sets about supporting his thesis by laying out the theory that Pierce's achilles heel is his narrowly focused attention on preserving the Democratic Party. While I'm not sure he completely made that case, what Holt does superbly, in short order, is give one of the best unbiases analysis of his administration, portraying Pierce as a genuine, yet incredibly flawed, individual.

On a personal level, even when you completely disagree with his policies, you can't help but like Pierce. According to Holt, Pierce was gracious particularly to his successors, a loyal friend, capable of great empathy towards others, and a caring husband. However, reneging on his promise to uphold the Compromise of 1850, his handling of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and the unrest that ensued, and his attempts to coalesce the Party around these issues overshadows some of the foreign policy accomplishment of his term. Other interesting highlights of the work include the political party's role in the primary process, the emergence of the Republican Party, the role the Know Nothings played on events of this time period, and an introduction of Stephen Douglas.

I have always felt like the Civil War was inevitable since early leaders continued to kick the slavery issue down the road. Maybe it was, but after reading Holt's work you certainly understand how Pierce hastened the march towards it.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holt does an admirable job of exploring the failures (I'm not sure if there were any successes - I certainly don't remember any from the book) of the Pierce presidency. There's actually not a whole lot to say about what Pierce did do during his one term in office, but it sounds like he basically sat back and did mostly nothing. At least some presidents dither and worry - Pierce seemed to just sit. He makes Calvin Coolidge seem like a mover and shaker, that's for sure. Nero at least fiddled while Rome burned. Pierce did a whole lot of nothing. He was a mostly forgettable legislator. If only he were as forgettable a president - he is memorable, but for his proclivity to do nothing. His post presidency, when he could have built a legacy (Carter, anyone?) he spent drinking like a fish. Franklin Pierce will (hopefully always) be the example of what NOT to do as president. Holt made his material as interesting as he could. As Julie Andrews sang: "Nothing comes from nothing." Actually, something did come from nothing: the Civil War. The 1860s say "thanks."

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid, brief biography of the 14th President. I suppose in the overall scheme of things that it really is a 3 star but I'm going with 4 because: honestly, the goal was a brief bio and considering the complexity of politics at this time, this is probably the most lucid account of Pierce's Presidency available. Based on the purpose of the series, quite well done.

[Doreen Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Franklin Pierce could undoubtedly be considered as one of the worst US presidents. His personal life was in shambles and his constant drinking eventually led to his death.

[Campbell Stites · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book read from “The American Presidents” series so that is why I finished this book so fast (two days). This is going to be a brief review because there is not much to say about Pierce. This book was very well written and I really enjoyed reading it. The pages flowed and it had good brief descriptions of Pierce and his times. For readability I’ll give it an 8/10. For depth, this book was 135 pages so obviously it doesn’t go super into depth on Pierce’s life, but it did enough to give me a good idea of all the parts of his life, but just barley touching on them, so 5/10. For engagement, again I was really invested in this book and thought Holt did a good job being non-biased and rally digging into why Pierce’s administration was so bad, so for engagement I’ll give this a 7/10. Overall, this was a short but good book, but definitely not anything special, I did enjoy it, and thought Holt did a good job explaining the times and relating them to Pierce. Overall Rating 6.5/10.
Pierce was a drunk, a pro-slavery president, a nice guy, and very handsome. Not really much else to say. He really didn’t do anything special before his presidency, just served in congress, but somehow had a cake-walk to win the election. His administration got absolutely nothing done, and he spurred on the civil war by signing the Kansas-Nebraska act. All he did was try to hold the democratic party together and he ended up dividing it more, for accomplishments, 1/10. For the “Great” scale, I mean what can I say he did “Great”? I guess he was a brigadier general in the M-A war for like a year, and he had some close friends that liked him, but I can’t give him really anything, 1/10. Overall, Pierce was a man who did not take responsibility for the failure of his presidency and he drank himself to death, and there is not much more to say.

[Brian Pate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concise biography of president #14. Holt makes the case that Pierce's failure (he is widely considered one of the worst presidents) resulted from his obsession with preserving his party's unity. With the Whig party all but in shambles, it seemed like the right time to strengthen Democratic unity. But, as Martin Van Buren wrote, a party is "most in jeopardy when an opposition is not sufficiently defined" (p. 3).

Pierce's intelligence, people skills, good looks, and personal character could not overcome the rival factions within the Democratic party. Not to mention that Pierce was the quintessential "doughface" (northerner with southern sympathies). His bungling of the Nebraska issue "was the biggest mistake of Franklin Pierce's political career" (p. 78), gave a reason for the creation of the Republican party, and eventually led to the Civil War.

Achievements:
- NH state house (1829-33)
- US House (1833-37)
- US Senate (1837-42)
- Fought in Mexican-American war (1847)
- President (1853-57)
- Lost his bid for renomination for president in his own party (1856)

[Rachel N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Franklin Pierce is usually ranked among one of the worst U.S. presidents and his actions with Kansas are credited in helping leading the U.S. to the civil war. The presidents right before Lincoln all seem to be pretty bad. The author depicts Pierce as a nice guy who made a lot of bad chocies as president, specifically in overthrowing the Missouri compromise and allowing Kansas to possibly be admitted as a slave state. The only good accomplishment the author lists is a fishing treaty with England over fishing right off of Nova Scotia, not exactly a major political treaty. The author tries to make the point that Pierce made all his bad decisions in order to hold the Democratic Party together. He was more succesful in using this theory to show why Pierce made some bad political appointees than over his actions in Kansas.

[Houston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed both the man and this book. Pierce was a really likable fellow rising the political ranks real quick due to his amiable personality & ability to remember people's names & faces. He was not a good President. According to most respected American Historians he's one of the worst for 2 glaring reasons: 1) his endorsement of the Kansas-Nebraska Act fueled sectional tensions which significantly contributed to the Civil War 2) he did a lot to dissolve his beloved Democratic Party.

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[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is held back by the authors antiseptic presentation of facts. He refuses to analyze the events, interpret motives, or draw conclusions from any of the events of the period or writings of Pierce. On one hand, this is a well researched retelling of events that allows the reader to form their own judgements. However, it neglects the impact of events that HAD to have influenced Pierce. Take for instance that Pierce's young son died in front of him in a train accident months before the inauguration. Surely the despair and possibly PTSD from such an event affected his judgement during his time in office? Yet, life-altering moments like these are barely touched on with no reflection. The book is adequate but will likely leave readers without a grasp of the spirit of the time or the man it is based on.

[Jim Rickard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good concise biography

I enjoyed reading this book.
I didn't know anything about Franklin Pierce. If was interesting to see what he did and why he did these things. I am working my way through the Presidents

[Matt Davenport · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very accessible biography of Franklin Pierce, the doughface 14th President who's charisma and southern sympathies saw him rise to the nation's highest office, only to exacerbate the pre-Civil War tensions by overseeing the outbreak of Bloody Kansas. Holt does a good job exploring what he sees as Pierce's driving motivation, to preserve the Democratic Party in spite of sectionalism, while also giving credit to other historians views on Pierce's failing attributes: his weak will, lack of sharp understanding and political foresight, and moral failures.

Holt writes an intriguing biography that gave a lot of good insight into what Pierce was like as a person, as well as his role in the greater U.S. historical picture. Would recommend as a character study to anyone reading their way through Presidential history like I am.

[Alissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concise overview of this one term president as we get closer to the civil war. Tried to cater to southerners. Wanted to keep the party together. Was blamed for "bleeding Kansas"

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick and to the point.