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Franklin Pierce - Young Hickory of the Granite Hills (1958)
Front Cover Book Details
Genre Biography; Non-Fiction
Subject Pierce, Franklin, 1804-1869; Presidents - United States - Biography
Publication Date 1958
Format Hardcover
Extras Dust Jacket; Dust Jacket Cover
Personal Details
Store AbeBooks
Purchase Price $25.00
Condition Very Good/Good
Rating 0
Links Library of Congress
Product Details
Edition 2nd ed.
Cover Price $8.50
No. of Pages 625
First Edition No
Rare No
Notes/Review
Pierce is viewed as a failure, but given the times I doubt anybody would have fared much better. The nation was going in different directions - massive migration westward and into the industrializing cities of the northeast while the South wasn't really moving at all. Pierce was what we'd today call a strict constitutionalist. Slavery was a right of the states and the federal government couldn't take it away. In this light, Pierce viewed the abolitionists as evil: it was their fault the nation was coming apart at the seams.

From political and policy standpoints, Pierce was ineffective. He wasn't the leader of his party and personal tragedy led him to govern with his cabinet as a team rather than as a strong executive. But his team was made of diverse elements, unable to agree on positive measures; only able to agree what they wouldn't do. Primarily, what they wouldn't do was innovate. Nichols spends more time than other presidential biographers on the works of the cabinet members. This leads me to the conclusion that Pierce and his cabinet were, for the most part, able administrators and thus not complete failures.

I understand the tendency of biographers to be sympathetic to their subjects, but I feel Nichols presents the story evenhandedly, waiting until a final summary chapter before giving us his verdict.

I believe the first edition was published in 1939. I find it interesting how language changes - our vocabularies today are noticeably smaller today than a century ago, and many words have different meanings. For example, Nichols uses "filibuster" in a completely different way than I'd ever encountered before. Not only are there differences in language between the author's time and mine, there are the differences between Pierce's and the author's.