Holy cow! History — Why the president drank

J. Mark Powell

Submitted photo

The rising politician and the pious minister’s daughter should have recognized red flags from the get-go. He was outgoing, the life of the party. She was shy, a homebody. He was physically robust, while she was almost gaunt from frequent illness. He was a Democrat and thoroughly loved politics; she was a Whig, despised politics and loathed Washington.”

Historians love ranking presidents. You’ve seen the lists. There are the Greats, the Near Greats and the Mediocre.

Then there are the Failures: Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and the all-time worst president, James Buchanan. (When it comes to being lousy at the job, you can’t beat allowing the country to split in two.)

Another name always makes the failure list. After you’ve learned about the pain that haunted him throughout his White House years, you may see him in a new light.

Born into a prosperous New Hampshire family, Franklin Pierce was sent away to school when he was 12. Homesick, one Sunday, he walked 12 miles to see his family. His father, a tough Revolutionary War veteran, returned the boy in his buggy. Stopping a few miles from town, he made his son walk the final way in a driving thunderstorm. Pierce called it the turning point of his life.

As a lawyer, Pierce lost his first case, but that did not derail his career. Strikingly handsome with wavy hair and deep, dark eyes, he was going places.

Success followed success. State legislator at 24, congressman at 28, U.S. senator at 32. But what he didn’t have, and what he really wanted, was a wife and family. Cupid can be careless when shooting his arrow. It sometimes produces love that, while genuine, is also doomed to fail. So it was with Franklin Pierce and Jane Appleton.

The rising politician and the pious minister’s daughter should have recognized red flags from the get-go. He was outgoing, the life of the party. She was shy, a homebody. He was physically robust, while she was almost gaunt from frequent illness. He was a Democrat and thoroughly loved politics; she was a Whig, despised politics and loathed Washington.

One difference was the biggest of all. She was strictly anti-alcohol. He liked to drink. A lot.

But love is blind, they say. The couple wed in 1834. In 1841, after the childhood deaths of their first two sons, Benjamin was born.

Bright, bubbly Bennie became the center of their world. They showered all their love on their surviving child.

Love was not in the air when Democrats met in 1852 to pick a presidential nominee. The party was bitterly divided over slavery and, after squabbling through 49 ballots in a brawling convention, selected Pierce as its dark-horse compromise.

The choice of a “strange bedfellows” coalition of New England and southern states, Pierce won a massive 254 to 42 Electoral College landslide over military hero Winfield Scott. Three weeks shy of 44, he was the youngest president till then. His future glittered.

Then Fate stepped in.

Early in the new year, the Pierces travelled to Boston. On Jan. 16, 1853, two months before the inauguration, as the noon express was racing along at 40 miles per hour, an axle broke. One passenger car, the one the Pierces were in, spilled down an embankment and split in half.

It was mayhem inside the tumbling car. Broken metal and wood smashed a young boy’s skull. When the car finally stopped, the Pierces called for their son. Franklin tried to turn Jane away, but it was too late. She saw Bennie’s mangled, lifeless form before Franklin forcibly led her away. That single glimpse haunted her the rest of her life.

Bennie Pierce, age 11, was the accident’s only fatality.

When the time came to leave for Washington, Jane refused to go. She had never been crazy about Franklin’s candidacy, and she fainted when she learned of his nomination. She had no desire to be first lady.

In her eyes, the accident’s meaning was obvious. God was displeased with Pierce’s political ambition and took their son as punishment.

Pierce stood alone on the U.S. Capitol steps on March 4 and became president. The new administration began with high hopes. His was one of the best Cabinets in history. In fact, it remains the only Cabinet whose entire original members served all four years of a presidential term.

But Bennie’s death hung over both parents like a dark cloud.

Jane eventually moved into the White House, but she was little more than an upstairs ghost.

And Franklin, unable to rescue her from her despair, retreated into his bedroom and drank. And drank. And drank some more. However, no distillery could produce a drink strong enough to numb his pain.

He tended to the daily duties, but that was all. His exceptionally strong Cabinet kept the government running. As the nation was being pulled apart over slavery, it lacked the leadership only a determined president could provide. Pierce couldn’t pull himself out of his alcohol-induced sorrow to save himself and his wife, much less his country.

Franklin and Jane toured Europe after the presidency, then returned to New Hampshire. His alcoholism and health worsened. Tuberculosis finally claimed Jane in 1863.

When Pierce died of severe cirrhosis of the liver in 1869, only a hired caretaker was at his side. The life that had been filled with such promise ended in near obscurity.

More than an 11-year-old boy died the day that railroad car tumbled down the embankment. A lot more.

Editor’s note: J. Mark Powell is a novelist, former TV journalist and diehard history buff. Have a historical mystery that needs solving? A forgotten moment worth remembering? Send it to him at HolyCow@insidesources.com. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.