In addition to being a thoroughly wretched president, Franklin Pierce delivered the most inarguably depressing opening sentence in the history of American inaugural addresses. On 4 March 1853, the fourteenth President began his unremarkable 3,334-word speech by harshing even the mellowest of mellows. With snow plummeting from the sky, Pierce observed to his audience that
[i]t is a relief to feel that no heart but my own can know the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I have been borne to a position so suitable for others rather than desirable for myself.
Pierce’s audience would have understood immediately that the New Hampshire Democrat was referring to the unimaginable personal horror that befell his family eight weeks earlier, on January 6. Pierce and his wife, Jane, had already known a lifetime’s worth of hardship during their two decades of marriage. Their first son, Franklin Pierce, Jr., had died within days of his birth in 1836, midway through his father’s second term in the House of Representatives. Jane Pierce, a devout congregationalist who loathed the culture of Washington, D.C., became convinced that her husband’s political career had roiled an angry God against his family. Her theory was seemingly disproved in 1843, when Pierce’s retirement from the Senate — a decision Jane herself had urged — was rewarded with more death. Less than a year after resigning early from his only term in the upper house of Congress, Pierce’s second son, Franklin Robert, succumbed to typhus at the age of four. With fate having vanquished his two brothers, little Benjamin Pierce was now the sole heir to his father’s vast misfortune.
When the Democratic Party summoned him from retirement in 1852 and placed him at the top of the presidential ticket, Franklin Pierce knew that neither his wife nor his son wanted to leave Concord and return to the swampland of the Potomac River. This is why he told them — quite duplicitously — that he was an unwilling nominee, the servant to the “unsolicited expression of [the public] will,” as he claimed in his inaugural speech. Jane Pierce prayed daily for her husband’s defeat; Bennie, her precious son, commiserated with her. Two months after their petitions to the Lord were discarded, the unelected members of the Pierce family joined their husband and father on a journey by rail to Boston. During their return trip, a coupler on the train failed and threw several cars — the Pierces’ among them — down a snowy embankment. Benjamin Pierce’s head was crushed and partly severed, and he died instantly.
Jane Pierce initially believed that God had taken their son for the nation’s benefit, so that her worse half might focus on the affairs of state without the distractions that a son might introduce to the White House. When she learned shortly before the inauguration that her husband had not been the reluctant candidate he claimed to have been — that he had in fact encouraged friends to submit his name when the Democrats could not decide between four equally craptacular nominees — Mrs. Pierce withdrew into an impenetrable brume of grief and resentment. She neglected her minimal, ornamental duties as First Lady and refused to appear at the White House for several weeks after the inauguration. When she did, she draped the state rooms in black bunting and retired to her room, where she spent most of her days staring into space or writing letters of apology to her deceased son. (A devastating, pre-inaugural specimen of these letters can be found here).
The President, debilitated by his own grief and sapped of enthusiasm for the office, returned with great avidity to the only hobby that continued to interest him: palsying himself with drink, a purpose to which he could devote himself without hindrance, now that he was no longer living in the wastelands of New England temperance.
29 comments
January 5, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Linkmeister
You’ve just told me more about Pierce than I learned in the previous 58 years of my life.
You can be either proud or sorry about that.
January 6, 2009 at 12:59 am
Pete
This post almost could be grouped with Drew Faust’s Republic of Suffering.
It’s that depressing.
January 6, 2009 at 3:31 am
kid bitzer
losing your three eldest sons–how tragic!
i’m so thankful that didn’t happen to our forty-first president!
January 6, 2009 at 4:02 am
Maineiac
Winter-hardy New Englanders often fail to thrive if they dare depart the wastelands of New England temperance
January 6, 2009 at 4:50 am
rosmar
That was heartbreaking. Damn.
January 6, 2009 at 5:19 am
Mark Boggs
I’m not sure which is more depressing, the story and its seeming “just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse” aspect or the fact that Mrs. Pierce thought it reasonable that a God worthy of worship would punish her by killing three innocent children because of her husband’s decisions.
January 6, 2009 at 6:45 am
Anderson
Well, he had a good deal more excuse for being a wretched president than many other occupants of that office.
or the fact that Mrs. Pierce thought it reasonable that a God worthy of worship would punish her by killing three innocent children because of her husband’s decisions.
People took the Old Testament kind of seriously back then. Judging by their ongoing adventures in Gaza, the Israelis still do.
January 6, 2009 at 7:11 am
Adam Roberts
Excellent, sorrowful post. It inspired me to check out the wikipedia entry on Pierce, in which I found this passage: “Pierce has been ranked among the least effective Presidents. He was unable to steer a steady, prudent course that might have sustained a broad measure of support. Having publicly committed himself to an ill-considered position, he maintained it steadfastly, but at disastrous cost to his reputation.”
That last sentence in particular put me in mind of a more recent President.
January 6, 2009 at 7:35 am
Levi Stahl
Wow, talk about starting the day with a downer. I never knew that Pierce had such a good excuse for being such a terrible president.
All of which forces me to attempt to lighten the mood by going ridiculously off-topic: Sunday night I dreamed that I was reading a New Yorker story which featured a lot of anonymous leaks from Obama transition team members who were gravely concerned about Obama’s recent behavior. He was canceling appointments, skipping meetings, and refusing to take phone calls. When his aides were able to get him to attend a meeting or participate in a discussion, he was barely there mentally, unable to focus or pay any real attention to the topic. With two weeks until the inauguration, the staff really was desperate for someone to intervene.
What had caused this change? Obama had developed an obsession with Eugen Sandow, the father of modern bodybuilding. His office was crammed top to bottom with books and materials relating to Sandow the Magnificent, and he was spending every waking hour (and many when he should have been sleeping) studying him.
Seriously, that was my dream. Interpretations are welcome, I suppose?
January 6, 2009 at 7:42 am
Russell Belding
Barbara Bush is a direct descendant of a fourth cousin of Franklin Pierce…so it’s possible that the raging incompetence is kind of like color-blindness, passed through the women and manifested in the men.
January 6, 2009 at 8:21 am
ari
My interpretation is that you should lay off the spicy food before bed, Levi — and probably try to ween yourself from that diet of stanzobol the buy at the gym put you on.
January 6, 2009 at 9:15 am
Levi Stahl
I’m just looking forward to Obama hulking out his first month in office, having to start wearing zubaz because he can’t fit his monster thighs in regular pants, etc.
January 6, 2009 at 9:19 am
Vance
Nicely written (“brume” nails it). Makes one think of Coolidge, though I don’t think he took to drink.
January 6, 2009 at 9:23 am
Mauigirl
How sad – I never knew anything about Pierce before. He really did have terrible bad fortune.
January 6, 2009 at 9:54 am
ekogan
Excellent writing
January 6, 2009 at 10:11 am
Sir Charles
I concur on the excleent writing. I am glad that my lunch today did not require a sharp knife.
January 6, 2009 at 10:29 am
Levi Stahl
This post prompted me to visit Pierce’s Wikipedia page to learn a bit more about his pre-Presidential years. Anyone know why he declined the nomination for the governorship of New Hampshire in 8148 (7?) and the offer of the office of U.S. Attorney General under Polk?
January 6, 2009 at 10:50 am
Russell Belding
One of Pierce’s enablers was none other than Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote his campaign biography.
January 6, 2009 at 12:28 pm
bitchphd
Mark’s got a point about Mrs. Pierce, but you kind of can’t exactly blame her for hating her husband’s political ambitions.
January 6, 2009 at 2:27 pm
urbino
Nicely written (”brume” nails it).
Vance beat me to it, naturally. I was going to say thanks for using “brume” in a sentence. And “palsy” as a verb — transitive, no less!
January 6, 2009 at 3:01 pm
davenoon
See? This is why I blog. In my supposedly “real” work, I never get to use these words.
January 6, 2009 at 3:05 pm
urbino
Yeah, you’re probably stuck with words like “modalities,” in your work. To paraphrase Twain, whenever a person says “modalities” to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.
January 6, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Jay C
When she did, she draped the state rooms in black bunting and retired to her room, where she spent most of her days staring into space or writing letters of apology to her deceased son.
Wow – White House parties with Frank & Janie* must have been a blast! Even for the Nineteenth Century, this was a rough load to deal with….
And Levi: I think dave touched on the reason for Pierce’s mid-career reluctance to seek other offices: Mrs. P. was, I recall, pretty firm in her belief that her husband should stick to life of a country lawyer, and leave politics behind. Tragically, she was probably right.
*According to Wikipedia, Jane Pierce didn’t make a public appearance until New Year’s of 1855 – 21 months after her husband’s inauguration. One wonders if anyone recognized her….
January 6, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Vance
The fun words are only fun because they’re at the climax of a strong passage. Most of what’s working here ought (in principle) to carry over to the language of “modalities”. (Ineluctable modality of the legible.)
January 6, 2009 at 4:48 pm
urbino
Maybe. I’m pretty sure, though, that I wouldn’t have experienced the same delight at encountering “modalities” in those positions.
January 6, 2009 at 6:19 pm
fromlaurelstreet
mother’s letter is a heartbreak.
thanks for another excellent post.
January 6, 2009 at 9:20 pm
davenoon
yeah, i tried reading that in class once. won’t be repeating that experiment. it would have worked before i had kids, but now . . . not.
January 7, 2009 at 9:54 am
JRoth
This is obviously dave’s written submission for the most suitable drunk history blogging ever.
January 7, 2009 at 9:57 am
davenoon
Yes! Drunk History people — call me! I’ll bring my own booze!