#14 FACTS:
--Generally regarded as one of the more worthless Presidents, Pierce is the only sitting President not to be renominated by his own party after his first term. Afterwards, he was quoted as telling a friend, “There is nothing left to do but get drunk.”
On the bright side, he might win if you were to rank Presidents by "best hair".
--And yes, he probably was something of an alcoholic. There was even a story told that a drunken Pierce ran over an elderly woman with his carriage, though there's no evidence of that actually happening. He died at 64 of cirrhosis.
--His reputation was destroyed during the American Civil War when he declared some support for the Confederacy, and personal correspondence between Pierce and Confederate President Jefferson Davis was leaked to the press (Davis had been Pierce's Secretary of War when he was in office, and the two remained friends).
--Pierce became President partly because of the success of a book written by his college roommate, Nathaniel Hawthorne, called "The Life of Franklin Pierce", which came out a few months before the election.
--Pierce's VP, William King, died just 45 days after Pierce took office. For the rest of Pierce's term he had no acting Vice-President.
--I swear to God this is true: The Democrats' slogan in the election of 1852 was "We Polked you in 1844; we shall Pierce you in 1852!"
4 comments:
Pierce is my least-admired President... or at least he was until I learned about his firm commitment to alcohol as the solution to all life's problems. Just goes to show you that everyone has something to teach us - even smelly ex-Presidential bums.
Here's a hint re: the next President I post--he's also widely regarded as being pretty damn worthless.
I have sixteen left to go, by the way. Whew.
Now wasn't Grant a bigger lush?
No, by all accounts Pierce was the worst. Grant was a whiskey man, but it's questionable whether he was alcoholic.
Buchanan and Van Buren drank a lot, but were apparently able to do so without much ill-effect.
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