We ’ve been hear a fate about the more democratic Presidents this vacation weekend . But for some reason , nobody ’s mention Franklin Pierce . Let ’s change that by revisiting David Holzel ’s while on the man they called Young Hickory of the Granite Hills , which originally ran last twelvemonth .
1 . He is America ’s most obscure presidentOne in a serial of forgettable mid-19th - century presidents , Pierce , who served from 1853 - 1857 , is arguably the most forgettable . Thirteenth president Millard Fillmore is in the main regarded as America ’s least - known Chief Executive . That is a distinction Franklin Pierce lacks , making him even more hidden than Fillmore .
2 . He may not have impinge on that woman with his carriagePierce was denied renomination by the Democratic Party in 1856 ( the only elected president to have been rejected so out of hand ) . After being given the heave - atomic number 67 , he has widely been quoted as differentiate a booster , " There is nothing left to do but get drunk . “
While many of us in the same position would break at the nearest tap house for a school term of Beer Pong , the level sounds apocryphal . Presidential historiographer Paul Boller repeats the quotation in his late book , Presidential Diversions(Harcourt , 2007 ) . When I asked him about it , he sound out Pierce must have been joking .
Pierce decidedly fuddle heavily during sure stop of his life , and inebriation contributed to or make his death . But he did n’t make a habit of announcing it .
Another history – that Pierce ran over an senior womanhood with his bearing – is almost certainly false , harmonise to historian Peter Wallner , whoseFranklin Pierce : Martyr for the Union(Plaidswede ) was published this class .
" The fact that there are no newspaper tale about the accident and it was n’t mentioned in any correspondence convinced me that it probably did n’t happen,“ Wallner told me .
3 . He took on the pack . Or at leastamob . As a staunch Democrat and believer in following the strict import of the Constitution , Pierce was an outspoken critic of the Civil War as prosecuted by Republican Abraham Lincoln , whose glide path to constitutional freedom was more free form . After Lincoln was assassinated , a group of citizen in Pierce ’s hometown of Concord , N.H. , assemble on the street to utter their grief and to confront neighbors who were not displaying the flag in that mo of home tragedy .
Eventually some 200 - 400 Concordians reached Pierce ’s house and , as Wallner recounts inFranklin Pierce : Martyr for the Union , demanded to know where the former prexy was keeping his iris .
" It is not necessary for me to show my veneration for the lead and stripes” ¦ “ Pierce replied testily , and then ingeminate his patriotic bona fides by recalling his antecedent ' participation in the Revolution and the War of 1812 , and his own 35 - twelvemonth service of process to New Hampshire and the res publica .
Whether he swayed the crew with his oratory , or just put on them down , the mob gave Pierce three cheers and dot without burning his house down .
Their European travels during 1858 - 59 took them to Switzerland and Italy , Paris and London . Once back in the USA , Pierce busied himself by purchase various bit of property in his domicile DoS of New Hampshire .
He also kept up a steady stream of political correspondence and , before he and Jane left to spend the wintertime of 1859 - 60 in the Bahamas , Pierce wrote to his former secretary of war , Jefferson Davis , urging him to be the Democratic Party ’s " standard bearer in 1860,“ according to Wallner . Jane Pierce died on Dec. 2 , 1863 , at age 57 .
5 . He perfected the combing - over ( ! ? ) Pierce had some of the finest whisker of any U.S. president . One witness describe it approvingly as a " good deal of curly black pilus " ¦ comb on a mysterious slant over his panoptic frontal bone . “ And that was after viewing Pierce ’s consistency in land after his death in 1869 .
Yet that bulk of curls may have been an act of misdirection away from the truth that mystifying slant hinted at . In an 1862 photograph , Pierce ’s pilus in visibility appears to exist on two levels " “ above , the hair combed on a deep slant , and below , a small patch at the front and center of his encompassing frontal bone .
Pierce ’s hair definitely is a study for succeeding historians to wrestle with .
WriterDavid Holzelis largely to blame forThe Franklin Pierce PagesandThe Jewish Angle . He experience outside Washington , D.C.
