by David Holzel
Here are five merriment and mayhap awing fact about the man they call " Young Hickory of the Granite Hills . “
1. He is America’s most obscure president.
One in a series of forgettable mid-19th - century president , Pierce , who served from 1853 - 1857 , is arguably the most forgettable . Thirteenth president Millard Fillmore is in the main see as America ’s least - known United States President . That is a distinction Franklin Pierce lack , making him even more unsung than Fillmore .
2. He may not have hit that woman with his carriage.
Pierce was denied renomination by the Democratic Party in 1856 ( the only elected President of the United States to have been rejected so out of hand ) . After being kick in the heave - ho , he has widely been quote as evidence a friend , " There is nothing leave to do but get drunk . “
While many of us in the same military position would stop at the nearest tavern for a academic term of Beer Pong , the story voice apocryphal . Presidential historian Paul Boller echo the quote in his book , Presidential Diversions(Harcourt , 2007 ) . When I asked him about it , he say Pierce must have been joking .
Pierce unquestionably drink heavily during sealed periods of his life , and alcoholism contribute to or caused his demise . But he did n’t make a habit of denote it .
Another story — that Pierce run over an elderly woman with his posture — is almost certainly fictitious , according to historian Peter Wallner , writer ofFranklin Pierce : Martyr for the Union .
" The fact that there are no paper stories about the accident and it was n’t mentioned in any proportionateness convinced me that it in all probability did n’t happen,“ Wallner told me .
3. He took on the mob. Or at leastamob.
As a staunch Democrat and truster in pursue the strict signification of the Constitution , Pierce was an free-spoken critic of the Civil War as prosecute by Republican Abraham Lincoln , whose overture to constitutive freedoms was more free - form . After Lincoln was assassinate , a group of citizen in Pierce ’s hometown of Concord , N.H. , gathered on the street to express their grief and to face neighbor who were not displaying the flagstone in that moment of interior 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 president was continue his pin .
" It is not necessary for me to show my devotion for the stars and stripes,“ Pierce replied testily , and then iterate his patriotic bona fides by recall his ancestors ' participation in the Revolution and the War of 1812 , and his own 35 - year service to New Hampshire and the land .
Whether he swayed the gang with his oratory , or just fag them down , the rabble pass Pierce three cheers and scatter without burning his house down .
4. He was a better ex-president.
Like Jimmy Carter , Pierce was a dependable X - president than chairwoman , if for no other reason than he no longer was in government agency . He spent much of his time tending to his wife , Jane , who was conk out slowly of TB . The pair expend the winter of 1857 - 58 in the Portuguese islands of Madeira , where they study French in anticipation of a hitch of the continent .
He also kept up a stiff flow of political correspondence and , before he and Jane left to expend the winter of 1859 - 60 in the Bahamas , Pierce drop a line to his former repository of war , Jefferson Davis , barrack him to be the Democratic Party ’s " standard bearer in 1860,“ harmonise to Wallner . Jane Pierce died on Dec. 2 , 1863 , at age 57 .
5. He perfected the comb-over.
Pierce had some of the fine hair of any U.S. prexy . One witness described it approvingly as a " mickle of curly smutty hair combed on a abstruse pitch over his wide forehead . “ And that was after viewing Pierce ’s body in State Department after his death in 1869 .
Yet that mountain of whorl may have been an act of misdirection away from the truth that deep rake hinted at . In an 1862 photograph , Pierce ’s hair in profile appears to exist on two levels " above , the hair combed on a cryptic slant , and below , a little patch at the front and center of his wide forehead . "
Pierce ’s whisker unquestionably is a subject area for succeeding historiographer to squirm with .
