I turned to Roy Nichols' work because truthfully there isn't much of a Franklin Pierce bibliography. Nichols' work dates back to 1931, an era of different writing styles and certainly different interpretations of American political life.

When I refer to this work as a "Plodder," I intend no disrespect. Nichols work is, for the most part, a straightforward biography of a New Hampshire politician who became an unlikely compromise candidate for the presidency in 1852. To borrow a sports analogy, one has to be in a position to win in order to win, and the author painstakingly traces the steps of this methodical politician that put him in lightning's way.

Nichols leaves the reader with ample evidence to believe that Franklin Pierce owed at least something of his steady rise through local offices to the reputation of his father, General Benjamin Pierce, a Revolutionary war hero and governor of New Hampshire in his own right. Franklin graduated from Bowdoin and began his lawn practice precisely at the heydey of his father's own success. A late twentieth century biographer most certainly would have delved into the psychodynamics between father and son.

In the style of the day, Nichols hints at, but does not detail, several critical factors in Pierce's life. His marriage to Jane Appleton smacks of Lincoln's trials with Mary Todd. His drinking was problematic. His absence of commitment to one of the proper religious denominations of the day was noted then by those who charted such things. He seemed to have been unduly shaken early in his congressional career when John Calhoun denounced him on the floor over a ludicruously insignificant matter. Later The reader is left to surmise the impact of a horrific family tragedy upon Pierce's state of mind as he prepared to take the presidential oath in 1853.

Nichols' Pierce was himself a plodder who for the most part achieved political offices the old fashioned way: he earned it, and particularly by his services within the Democratic Party. Pierce enforced party discipline with a ruthlessness that served him well early in his career, but his intractibility was a serious handicap in the 1850's as America saw multiple realignments of political families. Nichols recounts the presidential years in straightforward fashion, but he deftly questions the wisdom of trying to build national unity through a "representative" cabinet of such diverse characters as Jefferson Davis and William Marcy. The upshot of such a strategy was a not unexpected rearguard action from within the executive branch that stymied the few genuine executive initiatives from the presidential desk.

Much to his credit, Nichols reminds his readers that the Pierce Presidency was more than Bleeding Kansas. In fact, one is left with the impression that Pierce never had the full picture of the Kansas situation. The years 1853-1857 were times of Indian wars in the northwest, railroad dealings and wheelings north and south, filibustering in central America, the emergence of the Know-Nothings, and a variety of midrange diplomatic problems with England and Spain in particular. Some of Pierce's diplomats--Pierre Soule and Dan Sickles, for example--did not represent him well. There is surprisingly little information about reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law; Pierce never waivered in his belief that the growing vocal reaction against slavery was nothing more than the annoyance of a few malcontents, an impression formed in New Hampshire in the 1830's when Pierce was laboring to build party unity.

The absence of a psychological vocabulary hinders Nichols when he attempts to describe the dissolution of Pierce after his presidency. As the Civil War unfolds, Pierce's inability to either understand its forces or accept the new national order becomes eery. In the structured world of Franklin Pierce, the abolitionists are the villains, true anarchists, and their sin is disruption of the Democratic Party. The moral component of both "causes," north and south, totally escaped him...

I had always been somewhat intrigued by Franklin Pierce, perhaps our most obscure president. I would wonder why he was almost neglected by history while other presidents got much more press. As I eventually learned - and as this book reaffirms - there is a reason he is almost completely ignored. Pierce represented the nadir of the Presidency, a period that by historical circumstances and Pierce's own lack of ability made presidential power as weak as it ever would be.

Nichols's book describes the early life of Pierce. The son of a Revolutionary War veteran, Pierce used his family connections and his own gifts of intelligence and oratory to rise in the local political community, first on a state level and then eventually into both houses of Congress. While adept enough to get these positions, he never really sparkled at any of them; his period as a general in the Mexican War is similarly unimpressive.

The Democratic Party, desperate to find a nominee in 1852, eventually settled on Pierce, not because he was a great candidate, but - as a Northerner with distinctly pro-Southern views - he was the only candidate with wide geographical appeal. Attaining the Presidency, he did little to calm the growing North-South rift and, in fact, left things in a sadder state than when he left.

Nichols portrays Pierce sympathetically enough as a man beset by poor health, a hard-to-live-with wife and a series of family tragedies, culminating with seeing the death of his last child in an accident just prior to his inauguration. Pierce, however, was also a politician with little political awareness, oblivious to the growing conflict over slavery and with sympathies in complete contrast to that of his New Hampshire neighbors. Compared with most of his fellow Presidents, Pierce wound up dying in ignonimy.

This is a good book, very detailed and with a high level of objectivity, and can be considered probably the best book on Pierce. Originally written in the 1930s, Nichols occasionally uses language that may seem quaint to modern eyes, but this is still quite readable. If you want to learn about Franklin Pierce (and the era leading up to the Civil War), this is a good place to start.

625 pages, 76 chapters, 10 illustrations. Comprehensive, scholarly, thoroughly researched biography of an underrated President who was a victim of his times and of the tragedies of his own life. Many important American historical events, which the author puts in context, occurred during the Pierce administration. Events leading to, and immediately following, the Civil War were paramount. Preface to first edition was written in 1931. Second editon was published 27 years later and was "completely revised." Difficult but fascinating reading.