The Presidency of Franklin Pierce

by Larry Gara

Franklin Pierce was one of the least known, least liked, and least successful presidents in American history. In this study of his administration, historian Larry Gara makes no attempt to revive Pierce's reputation. Instead he provides a clear analysis of Pierce's shortcomings as well as his few successes.

Franklin Pierce's administration (1853-1857) spanned a turbulent period in the life of the nation: North-South polarization reached new extremes due, in part, to Pierce's failure to understand the depth of Free Soil sentiment in the North; the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its aftermath made civil war likely, if not inevitable; and Pierce's apology for southern actions served only to widen the rift. The term "Bleeding Kansas" came to symbolize the failures of Pierce's administration.

Pierce's few achievements were in the realm of foreign policy. In fact, Gara points out, the Pierce years were an important chapter in the history of American imperialism--a time when Japan was opened to the West, U.S. trade in Central America and Asia was expanded, and additional land was acquired from Mexico. Pierce also initiated discussions on acquiring Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Nicaragua, Formosa, the Dominican Republic, the guano islands of the Pacific, and Cuba.

In this twenty-fourth volume of the American Presidency Series, Gara provides a clear, tough-minded analysis of the Pierce administration and a fair, though generally negative, assessment of the man and the president.

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

232 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1991

About the author

Larry Garza was emeritus professor of history at Wilmington College, where he taught from 1962 through 1992.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book Thirty-Three of my Presidential Challenge.

Here's a conversation I had with my wife after finishing this book:

Me: You know what's interesting about Franklin Pierce?

Her: Nothing?

Me: Nothing.

That's not quite fair. He was somewhat interesting in a hot mess kind of way. I don't think I've read about too many Presidents with worse instincts though. (Only Buchanan comes to mind.)

I think most political historians would place Pierce in the bottom 5 if not bottom 3 Presidents. Why? He was a weak President at a time when America needed a very strong one if it was to survive.

"Highlights" of his administration:

- The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was the biggest disaster of his time in office. It effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It allowed white males to use popular sovereignty to decide if Slavery would be allowed in any new territories, North, South, or West, longitude and latitude be damned. This was a huge boost to Slavery's power and influence and set in motion the events which would lead to the Civil War. So yea, this was bad.
- Pierce's actions were all pro-Slavery, at least until it was too late. His policies, his appointments, they all stacked the deck in favor of slave power. He only changed his mind once he failed to secure his parties nomination for a 2nd term.
- He was weak willed and easily influenced by his cabinet and basically anyone who was smarter than him. He often agreed with the last person who spoke with him about an issue and, Spoiler Alert, spoke almost exclusively with pro-Slavery jerks.
- He was a drunk. I'm sure many were at that time but I'm sure this didn't help.
- His foreign policy was weak. He was aggressive until he got push back and then wussed out.
- Until his dying day, he blamed the North for all of the problems with Slavery and the Civil War. What an asshole.
- Nobody was more surprised than Pierce that he wasn't re-nominated for President. He was sure that he was doing a great job and that he was super popular. That's one of my favorite things about the political system. It is one of the few aspects of civilization that can put a stop to this sort of delusion. He should thank Buchanan for beating him. If he hadn't, Pierce would be remembered as the worst President of all time, instead of just forgotten as a joke.

It may seem like I'm being too hard on Pierce but I don't think so. A lot of folks died senseless deaths because of this clown. We had one of our worst Presidents at one of our most important times. Add that to his lack of self-awareness and unearned sense of righteousness just makes it real easy to hate this guy.

The book? It had lots of information but had two major problems.
1. The book needed a better editor. There were comma's missing all over the place and sentences that went nowhere.
2. The worst problem was how the information was organized. He organized everything chronologically by subject. For example, he would discuss the Kansas-Nebraska Act and all of its' repercussions throughout all of Pierce's time in office, start to finish. The next chapter would deal with Pierce's foreign policy and its' repercussions throughout Pierce's time in office, start to finish. The effect was disorienting and made it difficult to keep track of which events happened in relation to other events. There's a reason biographies aren't organized that way, Gara.

[Sean Chick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gara's narrative and analysis of Pierce is a bit jumbled. He cannot quite make it clear why Pierce acted as he did although Gara is better than Holt at explaining how the free soil movement gained traction after years of disappointment.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars seems a little harsh for a book that is actually rather thoughtful and well-written. But I learned little to nothing about Franklin Pierce from reading this, and the majority of the book has such a big-picture viewpoint that Pierce is nowhere to be found and much of the book ends up having little to do with Pierce at all.

Larry Gara follows the formula of the books in the American Presidency series, kicking off with a chapter describing the state of America at the time, followed by thematic chapters on the subject’s presidency. But while most of the books in the series are dryly academic, factual and even-handed, Gara’s introduction is much more casual - “Who was Franklin Pierce?” and “why in the world would anyone write about his presidency?” he asks, in a way that makes you wonder why you’re reading a book about his presidency by an author who feels the need to ask this.

Gara goes on to cover Pierce’s presidency with a point of view - that Pierce was a failed president who was overwhelmed by the job - which is refreshing, when you consider that Pierce’s two major biographers were more sympathetic toward him. But if you’re looking for a strong counterargument to the revisionists, there is not one to be found here, because Gara doesn’t offer much evidence or analysis to support his point of view. He just seems to adopt the conventional perspective that Pierce was a Bad President, and sprinkles a lot of words like “weakness and ineptitude” throughout the text, but mostly he tells instead of shows - telling us that Pierce was not a good president without really showing us why.

The biggest blot on Pierce’s legacy - his support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act - is described, and criticized. But Gara doesn’t delve very deeply into why Pierce supported it, where he went wrong and what he might have done instead. It’s just used as another example of why Pierce was not a good or successful president.

Bleeding Kansas itself, and expansionism, and foreign policy, and mid-19th century social and cultural history are all well-described in the book, but Pierce himself is absent from most of the discussion. Occasionally he’ll pop up to do something inept, and then disappear again. Overall, the book has less to do with him, or his presidency, and is more of a 10,000-foot view history of the era - there’s even a chapter on the election of 1856 in which he was not even involved and is barely mentioned.

By the final few pages, Gara attempts somewhat weakly to put a bow on the story and render a final verdict on the Pierce presidency. But his conclusions come across as little more than platitudinous generalizations. "The ordinary demands of the office were often beyond his ability... instead of growing in his job, he was overwhelmed by it," he writes. "He failed to understand the forces at work in the country, and he tried to perpetuate policies of the past rather than confronting the problems of his own time," he goes on, without offering any thoughts about how Pierce might have better confronted those problems.

In his final analysis, such as it is, Gara ends up portraying Pierce as a victim of circumstances more than anything. The failure of his presidency "was as much a failure of the system as a failure of Pierce himself," he concludes. So is he saying that no one could have succeeded in the presidency at that time? So then Pierce wasn’t actually so bad? Or he was bad, but it didn’t matter because there was no way he could have been good anyway? It’s a disappointingly open-ended way to conclude the book - and, in failing to answer these questions about Pierce, Gara ultimately fails to answer his own: “Who was Franklin Pierce?” and “why in the world would anyone write about his presidency?”

[Fred Kohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently finished the book in this series on Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, so I thought that it would be appropriate to move on to the next president. Who knows anything about Franklin Pierce except that at some point he was a president of the United States? Well, I know more about him now. More importantly, I know more about this period, which was significant and important, even if Franklin Pierce was an unmemorable president.

The first chapter was entitled "The American Landscape." This set the stage nicely for what followed. Somewhat amazingly, and somewhat amusingly, this chapter mentioned John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community in its brief survey of the religious landscape (which plays not much role in the rest of the book). Later on the book mentions Dorothea Dix and her efforts to improve the lot of the insane (as they called the severely mentally ill in those days). There is an unlikely connection between Noyes and Dix in that the possible insanity of Charles Guiteau, assassin of James Garfield, received a lot of attention at the same time Dix was advocating for the insane. One reason I love reading history is to see how these little things connect.

Of course, Dix's advocacy for the insane was not a main feature of this book. I believe it was mentioned twice, briefly. Much more significant in this period was the struggle over slavery, and in particular whether Kansas would be free or slave. So a lot of attention was paid to the Kansas-Nebraska act. Generally the Kansas-Nebraska act was considered a bad idea and a blot on Pierce's record, in part because it led to Bleeding Kansas.

In addition to covering these domestic issues in detail, the book also included a detailed chapter on foreign policy. James Buchanan, minister to England, was frequently mentioned in this chapter. The guano islands also were frequently mentioned, an aspect of U.S. history that I don’t remember from my history classes.

My public library has the book on James Buchanan's presidency, so I may as well continue on with the series. In general, I find this series more detailed and academic than The American Presidents Series, edited by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. My impression is that The American Presidency Series has gaps, and that The American Presidents Series ends with George W. Bush.

[Donald Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent history book, packed with information and perspective about this brief, but important part of American History. He treated Franklin Pierce with objectivity and revealed a man who was not ready, and arguably not capable, of being president of the United States of America. I have great pity for Pierce's personal life, suffering the death of all three children. His wife was plagued with illness and the same tragedies. He had a serious illness too, the treatment for which was about eighty years before his time.
Slavery is just wrong. It has always been wrong. Pierce should have known better and he let his politics prevent him from even examining "right vs. wrong" when it came to policy and governance. We should know better when it comes to our racism.
I live in "Pierce County" Washington, named for him. I wish we could change the name of our County.
Some of the prose was cause for some reading stumble but it was only a small fraction of the time where I had to re-read a sentence. He tried so hard to make each sentence fresh and packed with information and this can cause a stumble for this reader. Plus, this type of concise history is always packed with lots of names and dates and that slows me down too.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The years before 1860 were a period of increasing cold war in the United States. From the perspective of over a century after the conclusion of the internal war, we tend to lose the knowledge that there was more to the separatism than the disagreement concerning slavery. While the North/South dispute over slavery was paramount, other regional differences such as the role of the frontier led to a political fragmentation that prevented any faction from being able to govern and solve the growing problems. Several new parties arose while the formerly powerful Whig party was dying. This fragmentation is the main theme of this book and Gara states it very well. With the modern emphasis on the slavery question, the other divisive forces in the nation are often overlooked, which leads to historical inaccuracy.
Gara explains in great detail how the political fragmentation prevented any real attempt to resolve the issues. One point in particular that is often ignored is the three-fifths representation. For census purposes a slave was considered to be three-fifths of a person, even though they were also property. This absurdity caused a great deal of resentment in free states, as it concentrated more political power in the slave states than the size of the free population should have allowed. This caused more representatives to be elected from the southern states, which altered the outcome of some of the votes in favor of the south. Deeply resented by many in the north, it points out the inherent absurdities of slavery and is well documented and explained.
The federal government was still largely a weak institution with most of the power held by the states. With all of these problems, it would have taken an extraordinary president to alter the course of history. Franklin Pierce was no such man, and the best that can be said is that he muddled through without any great catastrophes. More than anything else, it was his handsome, presidential appearance that earned him the white house. His rise to the presidency was largely an accident, as he was a compromise candidate after the better candidates were somehow disqualified. His administration also began on a tragic note, when one of the Pierce children was killed before the eyes of his father and mother. Being largely untested on the national political arena, Pierce also wore a colossal political tin ear, often making basic errors that made things worse.
Given all of these problems, it is surprising that the Pierce administration did as well as it did. As the author points out, his presidency is ranked somewhere above a failure, but nowhere near a success. In reading about all of the problems of the country at that time, it is hard to see where a great deal of improvements could have been made. The country was expanding rapidly and the industrial revolution with associated social changes was just beginning. Slavery was a historical anachronism, clearly in the process of being eliminated and had it not become the symbol of the rights and tradition of the southern states, it would have naturally ceased to exist. Even the ardent proponents of slavery referred to is as the "peculiar institution."
In retrospect, the forces that led to the regional split were so powerful that it is hard to envision any way that it could not have led to a civil war. Those forces were stronger than any man or political party and in this book you learn about the actions of a man who landed in a job beyond his talents and yet avoided being a total failure. Given the complexity of the circumstances, his time as president was close to the best that could have been done.

This review also appears on Amazon

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Franklin Pierce apparently was one of the worst presidents America has ever had. I won't argue with that, especially since I knew nothing about the man before I read this book.

In plain, workmanlike prose, Gara gives us the rundown: America is floundering her way through an identity crisis, less than a decade away from one of its bloodiest and most divisive events: the Civil War. The country seem to be unraveling at the Mason-Dixon Line and the man at its helm is a shadowy figure, obscure even in his own day.

With the Compromise of 1850 freshly on the books, and Pierce's Cabinet made up of a coalition of differing viewpoints, it seemed to me like the measure of equanimity that might have been exactly what the situation called for. Instead, as the bulk of Gara's text shows, the issues had run their course too far to be solved with one stroke.

Not that Pierce intended to make any such dramatic move. He believed that the rights of the South to hold slaves were enshrined in the Constitution and would not willingly interfere. Gara opines, and I tend to agree, that this sort of bland laissez-faire was both one of Pierce's chief characteristics and one of his great failings.

We see that, in this age of social and political upheaval, Pierce was the sort of man things happened around, rather than one who made them happen. He did administer several internal improvements, legislating government pay reforms and instituting qualifying exams for government officials, but these did nothing, of course, to address the looming issue. Pierce strikes me as a man with a small-scale imagination, suited better to the minutiae of bureaucracy rather than the grand sweep of history.

Which, of course, is one of history's sad ironies. On the eve of the nation's reformation in the Civil War, at the crossroads of the fiery trial that would destroy and rebuild it's very identity, it came under the leadership of a man rather vague about his own identity. Pierce, it can hardly be argued, was a decent man, even a good man. What America needed then was a great man.

A really decent book, authoritative and clear, if dry.

[Leslee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really is about Pierce's presidency and not Pierce. There are hardly any direct quotes from Pierce and most of the content refers to "the Pierce administration" so it's hard to see the man behind the office. I learned a lot about North/South relations and the development of the Republican party so it was still interesting.

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 3 out of 5]

An adequate summary of one of our worst and most ineffective presidents. Quite workaday, and only meant as a summary, but with some good basic information on the political issues and economic climate of the times.

[KC · Rating 2 out of 5]

He was a proslavery idiot and the bio a yawn.