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.

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.

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.

Along with many others, I am reading biographies of former presidents in chronological order. It's difficult to find a decent biography of some of the lesser known presidents. I'm glad I discovered the Presidents Series of which this book is a part. It's a concise and well-written bio of Pierce (and others) that gets the job done.