Review of Franklin Pierce by Michael Holt

“Franklin Pierce was arguably the most handsome man ever to serve as president of the United States.  He was certainly one of the most amiable and congenial men to hold that office.”  So begins Michael Holt’s biography of Pierce, which is part of the “American Presidents” series.  Holt goes on to chronicle Pierce’s entry into politics and his rapid rise through the ranks of state legislator, U. S. Representative, U. S. Senator, Brigadier General in the Mexican-American War, and, ultimately, President of the United States.  During his life, Pierce overcame many struggles, including a proclivity toward excessive drinking, a difficult wife, and a series of embarrassing injuries during the war that disabled him and caused some to unfairly accuse him of cowardice.  Pierce’s charming character, together with his perseverance in the face of so many struggles, would seem be ingredients that would equip him to be a good president.  Regrettably, they did not, and today Pierce is generally ranked among one of our five or ten worst chief executives.

Why, despite his positive qualities, was Pierce such a failure as a president? In positing an answer to this question, Holt points out the complete dominance of the Democratic Party in Pierce’s home state of New Hampshire during the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s.  The lack of a viable opposition to the Democrats, as is often the case in politics, weakened Democratic unity and led to the threat of division.  Pierce, a loyal Democrat, desired above all else to keep the party unified.  As Holt argues, “For Pierce, the unity of the Democratic Party, both within the state and within the nation as a whole, was a fixation, a shibboleth, virtually a be-all and end-all.  His obsession with obtaining that unity would help wreck his presidency” (22-23).

Despite Pierce’s “making the bureaucratic administration of the executive branch more honest and efficient than it had been under his Whig predecessors” (52), Pierce’s obsessive desire to maintain the unity of the national Democratic Party, more than anything else, led to his adoption of an extremely pro-Southern domestic policy.  Pierce’s most significant pro-Southern act was signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which Holt calls “the biggest mistake of Franklin Pierce’s political career”), a law that wiped away the restrictions on the spread of slavery spelled out in the 1820 Missouri Compromise.  Pierce also did nothing to stop the actions of the pro-slavery “Border Ruffians”, residents of Missouri who crossed into Kansas to fight anti-slavery settlers and to vote for Kansas’ admission to the Union as a slave state.  Finally, Pierce attacked abolitionists, condemning them as fanatics and laying much of the blame for the civil strife of his time at their feet.  By the end of his term, Pierce was “damaged goods,” so much so that his own party refused to nominate him for a second term.

Franklin Pierce is an excellent brief biography of our fourteenth president.  Holt has succeeded admirably in presenting an account of Pierce’s life and career that is balanced and brief, yet surprisingly thorough.  Readers who are interested in an introduction to the sad story of Pierce could do no better than to read Holt’s biography.

Review of Millard Fillmore by Paul Finkelman

Good biographies are characterized by a compelling and engaging account of the subject’s life that is not hagiographic, but takes seriously the subject’s flaws.  At the same time, biographers should resist the urge to condemn their subjects, except in rare cases where the subject is an obviously evil person like a Stalin or a Hitler.  Finally, a good biography should provide just enough information about significant events of the day to place the subject’s actions in their proper context, but no more; the life and thought of the subject must remain the central focus. 

Paul Finkleman’s Millard Fillmore, part of the “American Presidents” series of brief presidential biographies, certainly steers clear of overly praising Fillmore, but it fails the other tests, for three main reasons  First, while the book is generally well-written, it is not particularly engaging.  Worse, it is highly repetitive.  Finkleman often repeats the same information two or even three times, without any qualifying verbiage like “as we have seen…”  For example Finkleman mentions three times that Fillmore was personally opposed to slavery but never took a public stand on the issue.  He mentions the Priggs v. Pennsylvania court case once and then later mentions it again as if the reader had never heard about it.  Other examples abound.  In a biography limited to 130 or 140 pages, such repetition is inexcusable.

A second major flaw of Finkleman’s work is that he devotes too much time to current events, so much so that Fillmore himself is often pushed to the side.  Finkleman seems virtually obsessed with the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, devoting approximately 30 of the book’s 137 pages to it.  Fillmore is absent during much of this discussion.  While there can be no doubt that the Fugitive Slave Act had an enormous impact on antebellum American history and on the presidency and legacy of Fillmore, it does not merit nearly 25% of a Fillmore biography.  While reading this biography, I sometimes felt I was reading a history of the Fugitive Slave Act, with a brief introduction and conclusion about Fillmore.

A third flaw of the biography, and by far the most significant one, is the lack of balance.  Finkleman has very little good to say about Fillmore and much bad.  When narrating Fillmore’s actions and statements, Finkleman often uses highly pejorative language, verbiage that one would expect from an internet discussion thread rather than a scholarly biography.  Fillmore did not simply “state” things or “speak”; rather, Finkleman would have us believe, he “blustered” or “grandly declared.”  In another instance, Finkleman compares Fillmore to a “petulant teenager.”  Finkleman’s biography is more of a hit piece than an objective, scholarly biography.

In Finkleman's defense, the book is not completely without merit.  For example, his explanation of the controversy about slavery in the territories (THE most important issue in American politics from 1846-1861) is insightful and concise; in fact, it may be the best I have ever read.  Still, this and the few other positives are greatly outweighed by the negatives.

There is little doubt that Millard Fillmore, our second “accidental” president and the first of three “doughfaces” (northern men with pro-Southern principles), hardly ranks among our top presidents and probably deserves to be counted among the 10 worst.  Still, he deserves a better biography than this.  Readers wanting a more objective narration of Fillmore’s life will need to read Robert Rayback’ 1959 biography, dated and difficult to read as it is.  Or better yet, perhaps someone will write a new one.   How about you?

Review of Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old West by K. Jack Bauer

“He was and remains an enigma.”  So writes the late historian K. Jack Bauer of Zachary Taylor, the twelfth president of the United States.  Taylor, Bauer elaborates, “was a man of limited emotional and intellectual capacity who appears to have developed a nearly impenetrable mask.”  Despite this, Bauer in the mid-1980s decided to attempt to peel back the mask of this little-known and often forgotten president.  The result is Zachary Taylor:  Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old West, a now-classic biography of “Old Rough and Ready.”

Given that Taylor was the first president to have been a solider for nearly all of his adult life, it is not surprising that Bauer devotes 210 of 327 pages (64%) of the book to Taylor’s long military career.  Prior to the Mexican War, Taylor spent much of his time helping protect America’s western frontier, and like most such soldiers, his service was characterized mostly by tedium punctuated by occasional fighting, including action in the Black Hawk and Seminole Wars.  Taylor’s competent service as a junior officer led to him reaching the rank of brigadier general in 1838 and being placed in command of the Army’s Western Division three years later.

When the United States annexed Texas in 1845, Taylor and his army were ordered to the Nueces River and then to the Rio Grande, which the Mexican government believed to be solidly within Mexico’s boundaries.  This led to the outbreak of hostilities in May of 1846.  Over the next nine months, Taylor won four straight battles against Mexican forces, although Bauer argues that none of these battles were a result of Taylor’s great prowess as a military commander. For Bauer, Taylor was a generally competent, but not outstanding, commander whose success was the result of able subordinates, terrible decisions by Mexican commanders, and just plain luck.  After his victory at Buena Vista in February, 1847, Taylor’s force was essentially put on hold for the rest of the war, even as a large portion of it was stripped away to augment General Winfield Scott’s attack on Veracruz and his subsequent march toward Mexico City.

Taylor’s military success led to him being touted as a potential presidential candidate for the 1848 election, although it was not sure which party’s ticket he would lead.  Taylor, perhaps the least politically-minded candidate to that time, had never voted in any election.  Ultimately, he was persuaded to run as a Whig, due to his having a nationalist viewpoint at a time when the Democratic Party was increasingly under the domination of pro-slavery elements.  Prior to the election, the Democrats split, leading to a Taylor victory.

Despite being a slaveholding southerner, President Taylor pursued a nationalist agenda, strongly opposing the spread of slavery into the territories won from Mexico.  He also worked to improve relations with Great Britain, including acknowledging Britain’s right to establish a colony (modern-day Belize) in Central America while relinquishing any American claims to Latin American territory.  In this, he surprised many, for as Bauer writes,

few presidents have proven in practice to be as different from their expected roles as Zachary Taylor…it is doubtful that many Americans in 1848 would have predicted that the slaveholding planter from Louisiana would emerge as the champion of exclusion of slavery from the territories or that the victorious solider of the Mexican War would have presided over the renunciation of Manifest Destiny and the curtailing of the Monroe Doctrine. (320)

What further contributions President Taylor may have made will, of course, be forever a mystery, since only 16 months after becoming president, Taylor died of a stomach ailment, the cause of which is still not completely understood.

Zachary Taylor:  Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old West is a serviceable and generally readable story of the life of Zachary Taylor.  Bauer’s descriptions of Taylor’s Mexican War battles, along with the brief narrative of his presidency are the book’s greatest strengths, while the parts that deal with Taylor’s pre-Mexican War military career and the 1848 election are a bit tedious.  Bauer presents a balanced portrait of Taylor, being neither too complimentary nor too critical.  For someone who wants to learn in some depth about Taylor and his times, Bauer’s biography is an excellent choice.