Why Every President Sucked

No. 14 · The Presidents

Franklin Pierce’s Biggest Failures

1853–1857

He won by a landslide, backed the law that set Kansas on fire, and tried to buy Cuba at gunpoint.

Who was Franklin Pierce?

Franklin Pierce was the 14th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1853 to March 4, 1857. A New Hampshire Democrat, he had served in the state legislature, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, and as a brigadier general in the Mexican-American War. He won the 1852 nomination as a compromise candidate, then beat Whig nominee Winfield Scott, 254 electoral votes to 42.

On January 6, 1853, two months before his inauguration, a train derailment near Andover, Massachusetts killed the Pierces’ only surviving son, Benjamin, who was eleven. Both parents witnessed it. Jane Pierce never recovered, and Pierce opened his inaugural address by saying, “You have summoned me in my weakness; you must sustain me by your strength.” His vice president, William R. King, died on April 18, 1853, and the office stayed vacant for the rest of the term.

Why is Franklin Pierce considered one of the worst presidents?

C-SPAN’s 2021 survey of historians ranked Pierce 42nd out of 44 presidents, and Siena’s 2022 survey of presidential scholars put him 41st of 45. Siena also noted that Pierce, Johnson, Buchanan and Harding have been in the bottom five in every one of its seven surveys. Historian Jean Baker writes in the Miller Center’s essay that most historians see Pierce as an “inept chief executive” and that he “had little business being President.” Michael Holt’s biography concludes that Pierce was consumed by a drive to unify his splintering party rather than the roiling country, and hastened the approach of the Civil War.

In short: he backed the law that reopened the fight over slavery in the territories, used federal troops to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in Boston, and signed off on a diplomatic scheme to take Cuba that blew up in his face. In my book, Pierce’s entry is about that last one, the Ostend Manifesto. What follows is the record around it, with the song I wrote for him threaded through.

Chords: Capo 6 · C, G, D/F♯

You're so close
And Spain's so far away
Plus, we'll make you
a new-found southern state

1. He promised to enforce the 1850 compromise

Pierce used his inaugural address to bind himself to the Compromise of 1850. He declared its laws “strictly constitutional and to be unhesitatingly carried into effect,” and said he believed that involuntary servitude, as it existed in the states, was recognized by the Constitution. That promise included the Fugitive Slave Act, and it set the course for the rest of his term.

2. He made Kansas-Nebraska an administration bill

Stephen Douglas wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but Pierce made it his own. After a Sunday meeting at the White House in January 1854 with Douglas and Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, he committed his patronage to passing it. He signed it on May 30, 1854. It effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by letting settlers decide for themselves whether to allow slavery, and the result was a rush of settlers from both sides and violence that became known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Baker puts it this way: a politician of limited ability was behind one of the most crucial pieces of legislation in American history.

I'll make friends with the south
And pretend the north will still like me anyway

Then he took sides. Thousands of Missourians crossed into Kansas to vote in the March 1855 territorial election, and a congressional committee later documented the fraud. Pierce recognized the resulting proslavery legislature anyway, removed free-soil-leaning Governor Andrew Reeder, and in early 1856 denounced the free-state Topeka government as revolutionary. In May 1856, proslavery forces sacked Lawrence, and John Brown’s men killed five settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. Pierce did not replace Governor Wilson Shannon until September.

3. Two thousand soldiers for one man

In May 1854, a Virginia fugitive named Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston. Crowds gathered, and an attempt to free him ended with a deputy marshal killed. Pierce ordered the marshal to “incur any expense deemed necessary” to ensure the law was executed. About 2,000 soldiers and Marines escorted Burns to a ship, at a cost of roughly $40,000 (some estimates run higher). Abolitionists draped Boston in black, and Burns’s supporters later bought his freedom. The episode radicalized many New Englanders who had never been abolitionists.

What you mean Spain? Yes, we made you an offer.
But not accepting is not an option.

4. The Ostend Manifesto

In February 1854, Spanish authorities in Havana seized the American steamer Black Warrior over a cargo-manifest violation and fined it $6,000. Pierre Soulé, the U.S. minister to Spain, answered with a belligerent ultimatum. Secretary of State William Marcy then suggested that Soulé, James Buchanan (minister to Britain) and John Y. Mason (minister to France) meet to discuss acquiring Cuba.

They met in Ostend, Belgium from October 9 to 11, 1854, then moved to Aachen, where their dispatch to Marcy is dated October 18. It recommended buying Cuba “at any price for which it can be obtained, not exceeding the sum of one hundred and twenty millions of dollars.” Marcy’s instructions had authorized as much as $130 million. The document went further: if Spain refused, “we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power.” It also warned against letting Cuba “be Africanized and become a second St. Domingo.” Soulé was the driving force, and Buchanan is generally credited with writing the draft. Buchanan would become Pierce’s successor, and you can read his record in the full Buchanan article.

Either take the money, honey
or Spain will feel the pain of lady liberty

Soulé was indiscreet about the meetings, and the press, notably the New York Herald, ran close-to-accurate leaks. Pierce avoided the subject in his December 1854 annual message. The House demanded the document, and it was published in March 1855. Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune called the diplomats the “Buccaneering Embassy” and the dispatch “the Manifesto of the Brigands.” Marcy was forced to repudiate it, and Soulé resigned in protest.

The new Republican Party then made it a campaign issue. Its 1856 platform called the Ostend Circular “the highwayman’s plea, that ‘might makes right,’” and said it was “unworthy of American diplomacy.” Northerners read it as an attempt to expand slavery. Pierce gave up his designs on Cuba.

Oh Cuba, oh Cuba – ah ah ah
Mr. Pierce, you pierced our hearts

5. His own party dropped him

At the Democratic convention in Cincinnati in June 1856, the first ballot went Buchanan 135½, Pierce 122½, Douglas 33. Pierce withdrew after the fourteenth ballot, and Buchanan won on the seventeenth. Pierce became the first elected president denied renomination while actively seeking it. The party passed over him for the man who had helped write the Ostend Manifesto.

His reputation for drinking, which Whigs had mocked since the Mexican War, followed him out of office. One line widely attributed to him after the loss, that there was nothing left to do but get drunk, is unverified, so I’m not putting it in his mouth.

After the White House

Pierce spent the Civil War as a prominent critic of Lincoln. On July 4, 1863, with news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg arriving, he attacked the war at a Democratic rally in Concord. Weeks later, Union troops seized Jefferson Davis’s papers in Mississippi and found a January 1860 letter from Pierce warning that if disunion came, the fighting would not be along the Mason-Dixon line alone. It was published that September, and Harriet Beecher Stowe called him an “arch-traitor.” His old friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote his 1852 campaign biography, dedicated a book to him anyway, and died in 1864 while traveling with him. Pierce died in 1869.

In fairness, Peter Wallner’s two-volume biography makes a sympathetic case that Pierce was a loyal party man who believed he was preserving the Union. His administration did sign the Gadsden Purchase, adding what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico, and the Treaty of Kanagawa opened Japan during his term. Baker’s conclusion is that a turbulent time called for strong leadership and got a weak one.

No, I can not see the hypocrisy
All I see is a new state they'll credit to me

Hear the song

Read the full lyrics, browse all 43 songs, read more articles, or head to the book.

Sources

By Eric Olsen · Published