#pierce administration

[deadpresidents]

Hey @postcards-from-richard-nixon: I saw your tags about Franklin Pierce on the reblog from earlier:

Just FYI for you and any other Piercers (yes, I just made that term up), the Library of Congress has a lot of Franklin Pierce's correspondence digitized and available online. A lot of the correspondence available so far are letters that were written TO Pierce, but there's a lot to explore. Unfortunately, some of the digitized documents aren't in great shape, and some of Pierce's handwriting can be really difficult to decipher, even by the already-difficult-to-decipher standards of the time period. (Also, the Library of Congress website doesn't have the most user-friendly interface, so it takes a bit to get used to and, even then, it is frustrating.) But there is stuff on there to dig through for Pierce researchers!

[deadpresidents]

Persistent Patriot: The New Hampshire Life and Letters of Franklin Pierce: The Pre-Presidential Years by Irving Bell and published in 2005 by the New Hampshire Political Library with the assistance of the volunteers of the Pierce Brigade who help preserve the history of the 14th President.

When it comes to Franklin Pierce, I will seek out even the most obscure books about our most obscure President!

(Thanks to the folks at the Hillsborough Historical Society in President Pierce's birthplace of Hillsborough, New Hampshire.)

[deadpresidents]

I added another new book to my Franklin Pierce library!

They Knew Franklin Pierce (And Others Thought They Did) is a small book that was published in Vermont in 1980 and probably had a limited number of prints available because it was pretty difficult to track down a copy. The author, Carl Irving Bell, is the same person who published the collection of some of Pierce's pre-Presidential letters, Persistent Patriot, that I told you about last month.

As an added bonus, this little bookmark was in my new book:

[deadpresidents]

For that (surprisingly large and active) group of Franklin Pierce fans (AKA "Piercers") who follow me, I've added a new Pierce book to my library: Henry H. Metcalf's Franklin Pierce and Edmund Burke: A President and a President-Maker.

This is a small book (just over 60 pages) that was published in 1930 in Pierce's hometown of Concord, New Hampshire by Metcalf, a journalist and historian from New Hampshire. There's nothing earth-shattering in the book, but it's a cool little addition to the library. It's not about the famous philosopher Edmund Burke, but about the New Hampshire politician and contemporary of Pierce with the same name who held the U.S. House seat that Pierce had previously held throughout most of Pierce's time serving in the U.S. Senate. The book looks at their relationship while serving in Congress together and Burke's efforts at putting Pierce's name forward for the Presidency.

[deadpresidents]

WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington, May 27, 1856. SIR: I have received your letter of the 21st instant. The delay for which you make a hypocritical apology has strengthened you to resume the labor of vituperation; but, having early in this correspondence stamped you with falsehood, and whenever you presented a tangible point convicted you, by conclusive proof, I have ceased to regard your abuse; and as you present nothing in this letter which requires remark, I am gratified to be relieved from the necessity of further exposing your malignity and depravity. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War

-- Final letter from Secretary of War (and future Confederate President) Jefferson Davis to General Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the U.S. Army, in a vicious, petty, disrespectful back-and-forth correspondence full of insults and accusations as they openly feuded throughout the Administration of President Franklin Pierce.

I'm trying to find the best way to break down this entire correspondence between Davis and Scott because it's incredibly entertaining as the two (insufferable) men spent the better part of two years of President Pierce's term trading a voluminous amount of hate mail that got extraordinarily personal and probably would have led to a duel had General Scott been younger and healthier. And, of course, one of the best parts of the feud is that, since this was the 19th Century, they write these pages and pages full of thousands of words of nasty attacks on one another and then dutifully sign each letter with "Very respectfully..."

[deadpresidents]

i love your blog and love seeing the weird franklin pierce fandom on tumblr. since you've been around and writing about him for so long does that make you the godfather of the tumblr franklin pierce fandom?

Thank you, I appreciate the comments.

I just find it to be really cool that there's a community here that is not only interested in Presidential history in general, but that there's a specific group that's interested in Franklin Pierce. For some reason, as I was growing up and getting into Presidential history, I always found Pierce fascinating because of his obscurity and because his personal story is so tragic. People often use the term "Shakespearean" when referring to tragic or star-crossed lives, but Pierce's life really does fit that description. There's also a Faustian aspect to him in regards to the personal tragedies he experienced in contrast to his ambitions and professional accomplishments.

I would never claim to be the "godfather" of anything just because I've written about Pierce a lot over the years. If anybody thinks of me in that way, I'm honored but it's probably just because I'm old. I mean, a lot of the Tumblr users or followers of mine that post about Pierce are young and energetic members of the fandom/Presidential history community. I've probably been writing about Pierce for as long as many of them have been alive! I know for a fact that my Tumblr is older than many of my followers are because they've been mean enough to let me know that through the years.

The first thing I ever wrote about Pierce -- and the first piece I ever wrote about Presidential history that actually got published somewhere -- was an essay for the New Hampshire Historical Society's Franklin Pierce Bicentennial Commission commemorating the 200th anniversary of Pierce's birth in November 2004. So I've been writing about him for nearly 22 years now!

When I first started this Tumblr way back in March 2008, it was just to have a spot to mess around and post some thoughts about Presidential history. I never expected to have a following -- and there was not much of a history community at all on Tumblr during that time. It was a very different website at the time (ask one of my fellow Tumblr old-timer's about "Tumblarity" someday!) and my fanbase didn't really grow until I started answering Questions. And, really, I didn't start seeing tens of thousands of followers until Questions & Answers became rebloggable, which I think happened around 2012 or 2013. So, I think it's just really cool after all these years to see how big and active (and creative!) the Presidential history community has become on Tumblr. Like I said a few weeks ago, there's history drought in American schools, so I love to see people -- especially young people -- seek knowledge in history through other means and help expand history literacy through the creative communities here on Tumblr.

[deadpresidents]

"I have come seriously to the conclusion that he has in him many of the elements of a great ruler, and that if he wins the election, he may run a great career. His talents are administrative; he has a subtle factory of making affairs roll onward according to his will, and of influencing their course without showing any trace of his action...He is deep, deep, deep...Nothing can ruin him."

--Nathaniel Hawthorne, on his longtime friend Franklin Pierce, the Democratic Presidential nominee who was on the verge of winning his race for the White House, in a letter to Hawthorne's former Bowdoin College classmate Horatio Bridge, October 13, 1852. Hawthorne, who was already a well-known author at the time, had also first met Pierce when they were students at Bowdoin, and wrote Pierce's campaign biography during the 1852 Presidential campaign. Because of Pierce's hands-off position on the slavery question and alleged Southern sympathies, many of Hawthorne's friends, including a significant number of the country's most highly-respected writers were outraged by Hawthorne's loyalty to and continued friendship with Pierce. However, Hawthorne's loyal friendship with Pierce never wavered and Hawthorne even controversially dedicated his 1863 book Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches to the former President despite opposition from his friends, colleagues, and publisher.

Pierce and Hawthorne remained so close that they were vacationing together in the White Mountains of New Hampshire when Hawthorne died in 1864. But without Hawthorne to stand by his side, Pierce was shunned at the legendary author's funeral and denied the honor of serving as a pallbearer in favor of friends and colleagues of Hawthorne including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Louisa May Alcott, and Louis Agassiz. While not the only cause, the death of former President Pierce's closest friend and steadfast supporter -- less than six months after the death of Pierce's wife, Jane -- were contributing factors to the alcoholism and deteriorating health that helped kill Pierce in 1869.

[For more on the long relationship between President Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne, check out my 2014 essay, "In Concord: The Friendship of Pierce and Hawthorne".]

[deadpresidents]

As a follow-up to the previous post, here is Nathaniel Hawthorne's dedication of his 1863 book Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches to his former classmate, longtime friend, and former President Franklin Pierce, which Hawthorne insisted upon including in the book against the wishes of his publisher and adamant opposition from Hawthorne's friends and colleagues.