Franklin Pierce: The American Presidents Series: The 14th President, 1853-1857

This is like a drive thru biography, short,quick but at the same time satisfying. This is part of the President series that came out over the fist decade of the 21st century. All are short and concise and this is very much that way. Michael Holt is the author and his focus is mainly on Pierce's time in office. he does go over Pierce's younger days and what made him what he became. He had a quick rise in New Hampshire politics and was a compromise candidate fro the Democrats in 1852. With the Whig party is disarray he won an easy victory in 1852. Holt does an excellent job of explaining why his Presidency was a failure. Pierce supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act that brought the Civil War a little closer and his support of pro slavery in Kansas doomed his time in office. This split apart the Democrats which made a path for the new Republican party to make serious in roads into American politics. It's just too bad this book had to be so short. I'm sure much more background could have been explored with the issues of that time. But in this series conciseness is what the publishers had in mind. It's very hard to find good digital books with good detail on these more obscure Presidents of the 19th century. Maybe someday all book on President like this, such as Wallner's comprehensive biography of Pierce, will be made available in a digital format.

Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, is certainly is one of the most obscure presidents in American history and considered rather inconsequential to historians. This book is a rather brief overview of Pierce's life and times he dealt with. We start out with his younger life growing up in New Hampshire and studying law. He finds an interest in politics and gets elected to the New Hampshire State legislature. After serving there, he is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and then goes to the U.S. Senate. After Democrats ended up as a minority in the Senate, Pierce resigned. During his period away from politics, he enlisted in the Army and served an almost comical stint during the Mexican-American War. He returned to the U.S. after the war ended without serving with much distinction. When the Democrats looked for a candidate for the 1852 presidential election, they eventually turned to Pierce with his charming and kind personality. He won losing only four states. Tragedy would strike Pierce when he and his wife watched their only surviving son killed in a train accident months before being sworn-in. The book looks at major events of the Pierce Administration. One of his successes was the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico, giving the contiguous United States its current borders. But Pierce is more often noted for his failures. He seemed more interested in avoiding a split in the Democratic Party, although he ending up fumbling on patronage assignments. And then there was his most famous blunder, the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Pierce took the wrong side in the violence in Kansas that occurred at the time. The book attempts to explain why Pierce went along with such a flawed piece of legislation. By the end of his presidency, Northern Democrats no longer wanted him. He would not even be nominated for a second term, instead being replaced by James Buchanan. Pierce did some traveling after leaving office and eventually returned to New Hampshire. He became a heavy drinker which no doubt contributed to his death. The book does a decent job describing Pierce's life and presidency. It is really brief, though. Considering the length of the book, I was disappointed with how often the author goes delving into detail about events not directly related to Pierce. Yes, Pierce is hardly the most interesting president, but I still do not see why there seems to be padding in a book so short. In conclusion, this book is an okay look at the 14th president, even though this is not a very exhaustive biography.

I have read a handful of the books from this American Presidents Series, and three of the four have been exactly what I was looking for -- a clear, concise biography that covers the major aspects of the subject's life, particularly his presidency. None is better than this one, though. While I've read a fair amount about the antebellum period in general, I didn't know much about Franklin Pierce, other than that he signed into law the Kansas-Nebraska Act and that he's widely considered to be one of the worst presidents we've ever had. But I was interested to find out that along with his negative qualities -- a destructive loyalty to the Democratic Party being the most significant, according to Holt -- he was also a superb public speaker, a loyal and extremely well-liked individual, and a prominent and influential Democrat in one of the rare northern states that consistently voted Democrat. This book provides a broad overview of Pierce's early life and career, three strong chapters on his presidency, and a wrap-up chapter on his retirement, which, to my surprise, included several attempts by some Democrats to convince him to run for president again, even though he was very unpopular at the close of his term and wasn't even renominated by his party. When I was done reading, I retained my disapproval of Pierce's endorsement of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and his unwillingness to take a stand against slavery or the South's determination to compile slave states. However, I felt that Pierce was a likable person; he made some costly miscalculations, but he was inherently a decent and honest man. If there is a criticism of this book -- and the fact that it's too short is an unfair criticism since that's what was intended -- it's that Holt spends large chunks providing historical context in place of more details about Pierce himself, but I'd quickly counter that the context was necessary, in such a turbulent time, to explain what Pierce was dealing with. This book is a great addition to the series.

There is definitely additional detail I would have liked to read concerning certain portions of Pierce's personal life and career. Nonetheless, this a good, concise biography of Franklin Pierce. The author attempts to explain why Pierce had an unsuccessful term as president, while still clarifying that Pierce was a charming person with impressive social skills. The book paints Pierce's obsessive desire to maintain unity in the Democrat party, in addition to Pierce's poorly concealed pro-southern proclivities, as the reason he had such a disappointing presidency.

This is one more addition to the series of brief presidential biographies, "The American Presidents." Original series editor, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. said of the purpose of this series (Page xviii): "It is the aim of the American Presidents series to present the grand panorama of our chief executives in volumes compact enough for the busy reader, lucid enough for the student, authoritative enough for the scholar." These are ambitious standards, but these books, overall, do pretty well in meeting them. As does the work on Franklin Pierce. 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.

It’s tempting to say Franklin Pierce was the second coming of John Tyler (Tyler II) but that would be unfair to John Tyler. Both considered themselves as men of principle who would not compromise an inch—pragmatism be damned. As presidents, both became so unpopular their parties disowned them and they were not reelected. In Tyler’s case, he tried to walk a middle line between Northern and Southern interests, and might have fared better had he supported the policies of the party that elected him—the Whigs. Pierce, on the other, was a “doughface,” a northerner with southern sympathies, and spent his presidency trying to appease the South. In doing so, he lost the support of the North. As far as the South, there was little chance he was going to satisfy their voracious appetite for more territory in which to spread slavery, or to keep from insulting their hypersensitive pride and honor. Tyler couldn’t do it, and he was a Virginian. Pierce, from New Hampshire, made every effort to support Southern interests and made himself look foolish in trying. Worse, he brought the nation a step closer to civil war. I like the author Michael F. Holt. He’s a fine writer but his subject is hopeless. Writing a book about Franklin Pierce surely must have been tantamount to putting lipstick on a pig. As president, Pierce made one mistake after another, and as things grew worse he blamed everything on the abolitionists. Pierce’s biggest blunder was supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which violated the Missouri Compromise of 1820. To justify his action, Pierce went so far as to say the Missouri Compromise was of “doubtful constitutionality.” The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed settlers in those territories to decide whether or not to allow slavery. To influence the decision, Pierce appointed a pro-slavery governor. A fraudulently-elected proslavery territorial legislature resulted which brazenly deprived northern settlers of Kansas of fundamental civil rights, and so angered the abolitionists that a local civil war broke out. Kansas became “Bloody Kansas.” What’s ironic is Pierce was a firm believer in states’ rights, except when it came to slavery. Had he held to his principles, it’s doubtful there would have a been a “bloody Kansas,” as most settlers in the territory opposed slavery. The result of Pierce’s meddling in Kansas’s affairs hastened the coming of the Civil War. Pierce was, by all accounts, handsome and charming. But he was also weak and indecisive, what today we would call an “empty suit.” The author says his purpose in writing the book “has been to try to explain why Pierce did what he did. And rather than see personal weaknesses as the source of his missteps in the White House, I attribute Pierces’s most fateful political decisions to his obsession with preserving the unity of the Democratic Party.” What Pierce failed to realize was that as president he was the leader of all people regardless of party, of Northerners and Southerners alike. His appeasement of the South was a failure of leadership.

This is a concise biography of Franklin Pierce. Not a lot of insight or depth in describing Pierce, the man. He has been ranked as one of the least effective presidents and this was the theme of the book from beginning to end. It is interesting that history repeats itself. Pierce was in a range of short-lived or ineffective, weak presidents (Van Buren to Buchanan) who struggled with the issue of race. Able to see the similarities to today. We seem to be living through a similar range of presidents who also struggle with that issue and will probably not be ranked among the greats.

This was a deeply unsatisfying read, a recitation of facts with little to no context or explanation. Pierce was virulently against abolition from an early age to the point that when he was head of the Democratic Party in NH he took power away from officials who leaned against slavery. Why? Did his family own slaves? Where did his attitude come from? We are never told. As president he pronounced several acts unconstitutional that seemingly made no sense. Why? Another mystery. His southern sympathies accelerated the march toward war. I could look up the facts in an encyclopaedia. From an historian, I wanted to understand. There is no help from this book.