Frank the Tank

“There’s nothing left to do but get drunk.”

Franklin Pierce’s response in 1857 when asked what he was going to do now that he was no longer President

You would think that a president leaving office with a quote like that would not be forgotten. I envision endless dorm rooms and frat houses plastered with posters of that quote and a caricature of Franklin Pierce taking down a two-story beer bong in the Rose Garden. Instead, the handsome lawyer/statesman/alcoholic from New Hampshire is remembered (is he though?) for being one of the three stooges immediately preceding Abraham Lincoln and the onset of the Civil War.

I turned to The American Presidents Series once again, mainly because I couldn’t commit to anything longer for a president often ranked in the bottom three or four all time. The biography was good in all the ways I’d come to expect from the series. It was concise, informative, solid on trivia and an easy read. The overarching question of this whole quest is truly this: Who gets to be President? In Franklin Pierce’s case, it was the same reason as many others before and after him. He was in the right place at the right time.

Franklin Pierce came from a family of fighters. His father, Benjamin Pierce, fought in the famous Revolutionary battles of Breed’s Hill and Ticonderoga and spent the winter at Valley Forge with George Washington. Franklin’s brother and brother-in-law fought in the War of 1812. This would inspire FP to carry on the family tradition, even when it meant turning down an offer from then-President James Polk to be Attorney General for a chance to serve in the Mexican-American War. Pierce’s own deeds on the battlefield were less than glorious. In summary, Brigadier General Pierce sprained his knee when his horse fell on him and then re-injured the knee after he had rested it and ingloriously hobbled to the rear of his men. Later, Pierce tried to lead a charge but passed out on the field from the pain in said knee and spent an extended period in the sick tent during the battle for Mexico City with an acute case of diarrhea. The men in his command called him a coward. The folks back home, none the wiser, welcomed back a war hero.

Pierce’s political bona fides appear on paper the makings of a strong candidate. Four terms in the New Hampshire state legislature; two terms in the US House; a turn as US Senator; veteran of a victorious war; and president of the convention to revise the New Hampshire state constitution. Befriending then-House Speaker James Polk while in Congress, Pierce was made US Attorney of New Hampshire for his efforts to win his home state for Polk in the 1844 presidential election. Even so, at the 1852 Democratic Convention, Pierce did not receive a single vote on the first, deadlocked ballot. Nor would he garner any votes on the next THIRTY-FOUR tallies. Back room politics at its best, Pierce’s supporters poached enough support from those seeking a compromise candidate that on the 49th ballot Pierce was declared the party’s nominee for president. Like running from a hungry bear, you don’t have to be the fastest, you just can’t be the slowest.

Despite his charisma, his pedigree and one of the most ethical and effective cabinets in the 19th century (and the only one in that century to remain intact the entire four-year term) Franklin Pierce was a terrible president. As Polk will be forever tied to war with Mexico and Fillmore with the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act would be the millstone around the neck of the 14th Commander in Chief.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the match that lit the ever-shrinking fuse leading to the powder keg of Civil War. Franklin Pierce struck the match when he signed it into law on May 30, 1854. Originally seeking to determine the route (Northern! Southern!) of the first transcontinental railroad, the “Nebraska bill” quickly devolved into a debate over the issue every president since the birth of the nation did their best to avoid: the future of slavery in America. The debate was so contentious that Massachusetts Republican Senator Charles Sumner spent two full days on the Senate floor giving a speech that crushed Southerners so badly that a Democratic Senator from South Carolina beat Sumner unconscious with a cane in the Senate chamber. The bill would pass regardless and by a wide margin. Two new territories destined for statehood were created, the Missouri Compromise line repealed and the ultimate federal cop out was employed: the new states would settle the slave question themselves.

The bill tore the Democratic Party apart and destroyed the loose coalition that remained of the Whigs. As politicians of every stripe chose sides, it was this law which helped the nascent Republican Party grow and unite behind limiting slavery. In the 1854 midterm elections the Democrats got destroyed in the North. Only seven of forty-four representatives in the North who voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Act won reelection and it unseated 4 governors. Ohio and Massachusetts shut out Democrats completely. Even Pierce’s New Hampshire hometown burned the president in effigy.

Meanwhile, “Bleeding Kansas” – left to its own fate on the slavery issue – became a literal battleground state. A stampede of settlers both for and against the cause rushed into the state in hopes of outnumbering the other side as the statehood vote approached. Voter fraud was rampant, lives were lost and the federal government….. did nothing. Well, they did side with the proven-to-be-fraudulent pro-slave government that shipped in scores of Missouri “border ruffians” to juice the ballot boxes. And they say politics today are divided.

Franklin Pierce learned in the courtroom that to be successful one had to play on the jury’s emotions, not just their logic. He seemed to have forgotten that lesson by the time the Kansas-Nebraska Act was placed on his desk. He may not have been the author, but his signature set off a firestorm. It completely realigned the platforms of every political party, made civil war inevitable and ensured he would never serve the public again. It’s impossible to say if someone else could have prevented the tides of war over slavery. But they couldn’t have done much worse. 

Trivia

• Pierce lost the Democratic Party nomination to run for re-election in 1856. This is the only time in U.S. history that an elected president who was an active candidate was not nominated by his party for a second term.
• Canadian Treaty – possibly the signal achievement of Pierce’s foreign policy. Got a trade agreement done concerning fishing, coal and other items.
• Unlike many predecessors, Pierce left the White House wealthy. He earned the equivalent annual salary of $500,000 as president and had no income tax. He invested well in land, railroads, stock and bonds, leaving office with a net worth over $1.5 million in adjusted dollars.
• Son died in a train accident on the way to Washington.
• Was close friends with celebrated author Nathaniel Hawthorne and was the one who discovered the writer dead when Hawthorne came to visit during a bout of very ill health in his old age. 
• Was such good friends with (President of the Confederacy) Jefferson Davis that he offered to be on Davis’ legal team to defend him against treason after the war! Even offered to let Davis and his wife stay at his house if they couldn’t get accommodation elsewhere. 
• Won the 1852 presidential election in a landslide against a falling apart Whig Party that said things like, “General Apathy is the strongest candidate out here” and that mobilizing Whig voters “was something like pissing against the wind, when blowing sixty miles to the hour.” 

Follow-up Reading

• Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire’s Favorite Son by Peter Wallner
• To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown by Stephen B. Oates
• Bleeding Kansas by Nicole Etcheson