Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Franklin Pierce

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer and podcaster Daniel O’Brien (Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Quick Question with Soren and Daniel) for a look at why Franklin Pierce is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Franklin Pierce, known for being a U.S. president, famous for being a factoid about presidents. Nobody thinks much about him, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Franklin Pierce is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guest this week is your pal and mine, the great Daniel O'Brien. The Emmy-winning Daniel O'Brien for another time just now, just recently. He and the staff at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver have just won another Emmy for their writing, so I'm extra gratefully made time,

you know, in between all of that stuff. That's big stuff. He's also the author of the book How to Fight Presidents, which matters a lot to this topic. We work together at the former workplace crack.com. And also Daniel is the co-host of the podcast Quick Question with Sorin and Daniel with the great Sorin Bui, who you may remember from the Venus episode or tons of other stuff. And I figure people, again, know about that podcast from Sorin and Daniel. If you didn't know about it, very excited to tell you right now. Quick question with Sorin and Daniel. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources

like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Daniel recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Daniel recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about Franklin Pierce, a name you memorize if you're a student who is memorizing all of the presidents. You also might memorize it if you are a student in the state of New Hampshire in the US. But if you're anybody else, especially if you are not an American, that name holds actual meaning to basically nobody. And I think it's worth getting

meaning from it because not only is he a fascinating guy, but he is fascinating in his badness and very specific and interesting in the ways he is a failure. And I can't wait for us to tell you about him. So please sit back or sit anywhere that is not the back of a horse, because if you don't know what you're doing, you could Franklin Pierce somebody, okay? And either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Daniel O'Brien. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Daniel O'Brien, as we were saying off mic, so good to see you.

And thanks for doing this. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Good. You have one of the better podcasts that exist in the world. Oh. Because you prepare and you think about it in advance.

Every other podcast that I know of is just like, let's get two people talking. Let's see if that's anything. But you're like, you're, you're prepared. You show up and you're ready to do something. And that's very exciting. Oh man.

I, I feel very seen by that. Thank you. And, well, and also, you know, I,

there are also podcasts where there's a magic to the spontaneity you know and and the way they get into it yeah uh i like to do this thing so that's how i feel about it try that try to make people feel uh you know good about their shows they're not this way yeah yeah that's kind of you that's kind of you specifically for sword in my show where we don't prepare anything. But the questions and stuff, there's, you know, it's not like you're just like bailing on any effort or something.

It's what makes it good. Sure. Okay. You're so sweet. And this episode is about Franklin Pierce. I always ask guests what their relationship is to the topic or opinion of the topic. People know a bit from the book, but how do you feel about President Franklin Pierce? I don't love him.

I don't. So when I first pitched the book, I went in there with a love of presidents first and foremost. But I went in there with like a love of the exciting presidents i was like i want to write a book about george washington and teddy roosevelt and kennedy and i assume that i will have something interesting to say about the other presidents and franklin pierce was one of those like I sold the book before I knew that I actually could deliver on that promise, and so once I sold the book, then I needed to have a chapter about Franklin Pierce.

I was like, oh, no, I hope he's interesting. Like, I want one thing that I can latch on to to make him interesting, and you are a better researcher and writer than I am, latch onto to make him interesting. And you're, you are a better researcher and writer than I am. So I imagine you found something better. I, the thing that I latched onto was like, Oh,

Franklin Pierce, he was a handsome drunk. Great. That's going to be the chapter. So it was 2000 words about a handsome drunk. That's what I contributed to the Franklin Pierce biography, I suppose. Yeah, my mind reached for canon as a word, but that feels too distinguished. No, no, that's right.

For Franklin Pierce's works. I imagine you found something better. You found something more interesting about him. Well, that handsome drunk plays into it. I mean, you have to, otherwise your entire if you if you haven't then your podcast falls apart what if i what if i brought you on to just read you your chapter and then presented it as my own to see if you would call me out or stop me or like i'm just, and then another thing, I think, Winston Roundtree illustration. And then like, see if you point it out.

I was like, I think I've heard this before somewhere. From here, let's get into things about Franklin Pierce, excitements about him. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics in a segment called When the Moon Hits Your Eye While You Find a Cosine Statsamore. Okay, so here's the thing that I want to say about this show. I love the show very much. I understand that you do a new version of this title every single episode. I want to make something clear to your listeners. No one has asked you to do this.

You don't have to sing a song every episode. You don't have to do that. Is that correct? Is that true? You don't have to sing a song? Yeah. But you do it song? Yeah. But it could be. I actually.

But you do it anyway. Yeah, that's true. That's valid. It's so fun to hear you sing every week. Oh, thank you. But to watch you sing feels worse. Is that right? Have you heard that before? Yeah, this is,

I believe this will be the second week in a row someone said that. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I think I might dedicate my life to trolling you with horrible things to force you to sing

for this show going forward. This is the path I've chosen. This is what it is. All right, get into the stats. What are the numbers about now that I've derailed your show? And right before them, I gotta credit,

that name was submitted by David Straughan. And as Daniel alluded to, there's a new one of these every week. Submit them to SifPod at gmail.com or at SifPod on Twitter. The worse they are, the better. But the first number is 14 because Pierce was the 14th president.

He served from 1853 to 1857. That was when he was the president. Yeah, that's true. And like... Yeah, it's just a thing. What would you like me to say? And Buchanan was number 15 and Lincoln was number 16. So I think if anybody knows anything about Pierce,

it's often that he and Buchanan were in the run-up to just a much, much better president and more important all around. Yeah, Pierce and Buchanan are the bad presidents. And Johnson, right after Lincoln. He was surrounded by just rogues and fools. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rogues and fools. Next number is 41st out of 43, because that's Pierce's ranking in the C-SPAN 2017 survey of presidential historians. They consider Pierce to be the 41st best out of 43 people to be the president. I guess I don't know where I would put him, but I didn't think he would be that low. Yeah, that really caught you off guard. Yeah, you can see the people can't because it's an audio medium, but I'm very shocked by this.

Yeah. I mean, he's not a great president, but 41, you said? He's 41. And then, guys, we just talked about number 42 is Andrew Johnson. Number 43 is Buchanan, according to this list. So he's below Nixon. He's below William Henry harrison who died real fast you know it's a real rough uh ranking shoot all right well also i feel like pierce is the kind

of guy where like you can hear him have that bad of a ranking and immediately be like come on he can't be that bad but also it's hard to conjure like uh he shouldn't be that low because of x right like franklin pierce accomplished like that stuff what's what is the worst thing in your mind that pierce has done oh uh we'll talk about it but kansas nebraska yeah okay well good answer but he also didn't i know what you mean like he didn't do Watergate or Iraq or all of the Trump things or Trail of Tears. There's so many presidential crimes we could talk about. Yeah. And we will, I hope.

Yeah. Yeah, he's also rated lower than Andrew Jackson. Oh boy. You know, there were some things he did, but. Yeah, crazy. Andrew Jackson. Oh, boy. You know, there were some things he did, but unreal. Yeah, crazy. The next number here is 48. Because that was Pierce's age when elected president at the time he was the youngest president in US history. Several people have been younger since but he was our all time youngest president when he came in. What do you think? I don't have an answer for

this. But I'm just curious. What do you think is a good age for a person to be to be president? I was actually thinking about that, looking at the list especially, because a lot of the young ones are ones I'm pretty excited about. Like people who have been younger than him when elected were Obama was 47, Grant was 46, Kennedy 43, Roosevelt ended up there at 42. Yeah. Like a lot of the young ones have been pretty strong. And the oldest one is Trump when he was elected at 70. So I think like, like 50s, 40s is probably a pretty good age. Like you've lived, you're energetic, you know, something like that.

I agree with that. So you don't think that, that Trump's age, President Trump's age has afforded him wisdom. You don't think that think you're saying that yeah he you alex smith you're saying you're saying out loud that you don't believe that you don't believe that his age has given him any wisdom and you think in fact you said this this is these are your words you said that it's bad that he's old sir i said it's bad that anyone is old. Sir, I said it's bad that anyone is old, okay?

Oh, that's right. Don't mischaracterize. Yeah, it is going into our oldest presidents as candidates ever. It is sort of, you know, they're allowed to be older, but, you know, maybe in the future we have someone in the younger range. Yeah. And it also did not help Pierce to be young. He didn't do a good job.

He was also another youth thing in his career. He was 32 when he was elected to the Senate for the first time. And he was the youngest senator in the Senate when he was there in 1837. So Pierce always wanted to be a politician. He always wanted to be involved in politics. It seems like it yeah that actually our our next data number here is the number two uh so everybody think of the number two because as the number of times franklin's father benjamin pierce was elected governor of new hampshire oh

yeah so franklin also comes from political uh prestige and power his father was also a revolutionary war hero and he you know he was kind of born into it. I don't love that. Can I say... Well, this is a pro-nepotism show, but if you want to buck the trend, I guess you can do that if you want to. I don't love a politician that

was born in politics and continued politics. I don't love that. I do. Do you feel like you saw that a lot writing a book about all of the presidents especially the the past ones because you left off when you wrote the book you had to leave off anyone living because because obviously uh the the feds don't like talking about fighting them but uh but you you talk about a lot of people it's a very strange thing because we like the the the grand american american experiment starts with like revolution

and we're gonna we're gonna start from scratch and we're gonna run things um but the reality of it is that there were so many elitist people mostly from Virginia, who still wanted to replicate kings in America. It was a miracle that George Washington stepped down and allowed someone else to be president. for the start of things, it really felt like we were just going to have a new version of royalty in America. Yeah, that should be a holiday or something. Whatever day Washington was like, I'm good. Like, there should be parades and stuff. It's great.

Yeah. I'm just feeling, it's great. I'm just feeling patriotic now. I'm very excited. I just had a tiny eagle soar in my heart. That was why I paused. It felt, felt really good. But yeah, you're right.

Cause it, especially it feels like they at minimum wanted to have a oligarchy of wealthy people, if not actual, you know, titles and stuff. Yeah. And that's, that's not all that democratic. Yeah. Got, oh, there's not all that democratic. Yeah. Oh, there's two more numbers and stats here. Okay. The next number, they've been pretty simple numbers.

The next number is one, because that is the number of real presidents from New Hampshire. Pierce is the only president from New Hampshire. One is also the number of important fictional presidents from New Hampshire, because Jed Bartlett on the West Wing is a New Hampshire guy, and probably way more popular than the real president. Yeah, so he was the only president from New Hampshire, and then Jed Bartlett was the fictional president from New Hampshire.

Yeah, so those are their two points of pride presidentially up in the state there. In your research, do you know how New Hampshire feels? Oh. Like who are they more proud of? Pierce or Bartlett, honestly. Do you know that? I don't really. I know like anecdotally, I went to Syracuse for college and that was my first exposure to New England people really. And I met a lot of New Hampshire people. And they would I one of one friend of mine, I remember them specifically saying, like, yeah, the only president from there is Pierce. And they weren't excited about it. They weren't like super stoked. Because I'm coming from, you know, the land of Lincoln, even though he wasn't born there. And

so we're all like, we all have our chest puffed out, and he's on the license plates and stuff. You know, we have a lot of, a lot of pride and privilege. Right. Yeah. So, so Lincoln is your main guy? Uh, like from my upbringing for sure. Yeah. And probably my favorite president.

Yeah. I think he was very good. Okay. You think he was very good? Yeah. I'm taking a lot of bold stances and hot takes on this one. Nixon, somewhat not following the rules, I feel. on this one. Nixon somewhat not following

the rules, I feel. That kind of thing. Because, like, Jersey does not have a lot of presidents to claim. We take Woodrow Wilson, but, like, he was, like, f***ing half dead

for most of his presidency. So I'm trying to think about the people in new hampshire if they'd rather take franklin pierce or jed bartlett oh yeah i feel like my my guess is they like it better than zero right i feel like having just a fictional one would feel kind of lame uh and having just a random real one is better than nothing yeah that's how i would feel if i was from uh i think it's the granite state new hampshire is the granite state yeah the granite state that sucks sorry there's nothing that i said right now that you can put on your podcast. I'm so sorry. Look, granite is at fault here.

We are the victims of it being a boring rock and nothing we can do. There's also, there's one other weird Hollywood fact about Pierce, which is that his mother, the wife of Benjamin Pierce and her name was Anna Kendrick, just randomly. And her name was Anna Kendrick in the same way that like Shakespeare's wife was named Anne Hathaway. Yeah. It's just a coincidence. Yeah, it's that kind of thing. Yeah. Just ended up being a famous actor now. Yeah. So that's fun. Last number here is 144 pages. And that is the length of a book entitled The life of franklin pierce

and it was written by nathaniel hawthorne really uh during pierce's life and nathaniel hawthorne wrote the scarlet letter and a bunch of he was a very famous writer in his time uh he wrote a biography he's like a big deal of franklin pierce was it good did you read it it i read people who read it because uh and and that'll that'll bring us into this first thing here but it was a campaign biography uh like written as a favor and kind of as like a piece of political hack work like it was not a cool thing to do uh on the whole was hawthorne like a scoundrel he was a little bit of a scoundrel and a little bit of a great friend okay and that takes us into uh first takeaway of the show, takeaway number one.

Franklin Pierce's entire career depended on hand-waving his horse accidents. And the phrase horse accident comes from your funny great book. Because that's how you describe some things he got up to. Yeah, things he got up to. Yeah. Things he got up to is a very kind way of describing that. I think, and again, you're a better researcher than I am, so this might be wrong, but I believe Pierce accidentally murdered a woman in a horse accident?

Yeah. What did your research say? There are two key horse accidents in his life and one was in the mexican war uh but the other key horse accident was while he was the president he was arrested for running down a lady uh with his horse yeah so you know he was riding a horse in dc and a lady was in the street and he uh did some arrest worthy things. It's unclear whether the lady died or not. Okay. But she didn't come out the other end of that experience better.

We can say, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Because also the sources say that he was like booked and arrested, but then discharged due to a lack of sufficient evidence. So it's a murky tale. But sometime in 1853, while the sitting president of the United States, Franklin Pierce, was

arrested by the police for running down a lady with his horse. And then there was a big argument about it. Right. And you can say if the problem in any case in the 1850s was lack of evidence he did that no matter what the case is he did it we didn't have a sophisticated enough forensics department to solve these problems really a big steam-powered dna thing like oh well it looks like yeah it seems like i i'm really inclined to believe the uh alleged victim right who's going around making up a story about the president running them over that's not gonna work unless it's true right right it's the 1850s and it's like look i didn't i don't want to be the woman

who's known for getting like mowed down by the president's horse, but things being what they are, this happened. I also hadn't thought about it that way that like, it becomes your reputation or your old timey version of your top Google result. Yeah. Like once you accuse the president of running you over with a horse, that's mainly people aren't like, she's also a seamstress. Like nobody cares at that point you're yeah my main thing is i'm a doctor but also the president

mowed me down with his horse wow what kind of doctor that nobody's responding that way no that's not absolutely not well and also uh there was no secret service at the time because that comes about under lincoln and so he you know he was that i think is part of how it happens too like the president is just out and about hell yeah in a way they weren't after that and so uh but this was kind of just hand waved and moved on we never let that but like that's the thing like i don't want to get too political right now but um we never let presidents just like get fucking drunk and mow down people with their horses anymore that's the thing like after lincoln

we stopped that and i'm not saying it's good i'm not saying it's bad i'm not saying it i'm i'm just saying it was free there was a freedom to presidents like pier who got just like, get drunk, be handsome, run on a horse for a while. And like, if you knock someone over, you knock someone over, whatever. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It's the, it's, wake up. It's the past. We do things like that.

And now we don't do that anymore. It's sad. I'm not saying it's worse. I'm saying it's sad. Alex, do you agree? Yeah, the president can't just like let it all hang out. You know what I mean? Or they can't be like, I want something to 7-Eleven.

You know, like you can't do that. No, no. I'm remembering now. I know it's a real thing. And I think I have the details right. I think there's a story about Willie Nelson, like, visiting the Carter White House and smoking on the roof. But, like... He smoked on the roof of the White House?

Yeah, apparently. And I'll cut all this if it's not true. Holy Hannah. Yeah, apparently he just was allowed to do that, partly because it was the 70s. But also, I feel like that's, like, the last time anybody did anything relaxed around the white house yeah it was willie nelson good for him yeah kudos willie nelson that was the last time anything interesting happened at the white house and now you're gonna just like hang out in maui and that's in need of you to do i guess yeah good for him well and then the uh the other key horse accident we've got hashtag key horse accident is uh the mexican war uh this was specifically in 1847 because pierce

was in that war yeah but he was basically just in that war to uh self-induce horse accidents and get injured okay he didn't really do any, like, fighting, fighting. All right. So he signed up to do horse accidents? That's your stance. That's what you're saying is real. So he, it is an interesting question, like, exactly why he signed up, because I'm sure he was a patriot. But also, it seems like it was at least a little bit to, like,

build a political career, because he'd already been in Congress. He also volunteered and was immediately promoted from private to brigadier general apparently according to slate on the strength of his family connections like his dad being a governor of new hampshire and being like a distinguished rich guy so he he immediately just rocketed up the command structure through privilege um there's a podcast called presidents are people too by alexis ko and elliot kalin and they pick out that pierce was a member of what was called the aztec club during the mexican war which was a club of mexican war american army officers who got together to drink a whole lot okay so he was in like a drinking club for privileged people

while he was in the military so does and for all we know it contributed to the horse accidents so he didn't do a lot of like he didn't do a lot of like fighting no no he wasn't like out there like doing anything he was just um what was he doing was he uh like telling people where to go fight? I don't know anything about war. What was he doing? It's also my sense of the military now is you sign up in a very well-run federal organization and you get ordered what to do. But I think in the 1800s, it was a lot of a rich guy organizes a bunch of people, and then his job is to have organized people.

And if he commands them, who knows? And so I think he kind of did that. And then he was relatively late getting to the war. According to historian James M. Lundberg of Notre Dame, his, like, first main battle was the Battle of Contreras in 1847. And, quote, in Pierce's brigade's first engagement, his horse spooked at the sound of artillery fire and began bucking and rearing wildly. A strong kick of the back leg sent Pierce lurching forward into an awkward and blindingly painful pelvic encounter with the pommel of his saddle. The hero fainted and fell to the ground, only to have his horse fall on his knee, and a subordinate allegedly call him a damned coward when he didn't get up the horse fell on his first battle yeah like pierce crushes his own uh crotch on the yeah so i i i get that part i get like going if you go forward you don't want me to talk about it no no yeah describe it i get like moving moving forward forward and crushing your nutsack on the pommel.

But then you'd have to fall sideways off the horse and the horse would land on your knee. Yeah, that's what happened. Yeah. Okay. So he crushed his crotch, falls off his own horse, and then his horse falls on him. And that was his contribution to this battle. Yeah. Have you, you personally, have you ever ridden a horse before no i find that

idea very scary i don't really you've never ridden a horse yeah i don't think i want to do it oh shoot i've ridden several horses that's pretty cool i i you don't you don't you don't think it is you're scared by it you hate it i feel like you would like it. It's like, cause like you're not, um, you're from Illinois. And so when I say Illinois, I mean Chicago. Yeah. And by which I mean city. Yeah. So even though you're like functionally a city mouse,

I don't associate you with cities. I think you would like riding a horse out in the, in the world. Okay. In the wild. i'm i've like interrupted your podcast several thousand times in this conversation and i apologize for that but i also think like like here's the thing that i'm thinking of right now it's schmitty riding a horse on the beach wow hey and you and and like both of you you and the horse

are very happy the horse is like this is what i was waiting for and you're like this is nice i would enjoy it the most because i would feel like i'm a historical figure like the actual activity is fine yeah but i would be like i'm some sort of person from the 1800s or like 2000 BC or any other moment, you know? Like we only started doing cars, you know, not that long ago. Until then it was, you know, horse culture all the time. It was horse culture for so long. And horses are great. And you'd be, oh my God.

I can't get over the image of you on a horse. You'd be so happy. You would be absolutely, you'd need to wear a hat. I've never seen you in a hat before, but you'd need to wear a hat because the sun would roast you. Oh, yeah. Because you're very pale. I've done that, yeah.

Hey, listeners, Photoshop me on a horse if you think I should be encouraged to, you know, just see what that would be and maybe that'll get me on it. No, shut up. Shut up. Listeners, pay for Schmitty to get on a horse. Don't Photoshop anything. Just let him get on a horse and run it on the beach and be free the way that men are supposed to be.

Oh, I want this for you so bad oh this sucks i want it somebody okay somebody's gonna photoshop it and you're gonna be in the replies like no a go fund me you fool it doesn't count it doesn't count absolutely doesn't count i'm gonna have soren make sure that you do this soren yeah i feel like soren is spiritually on horseback a lot of the time you know what i mean absolutely he's very stately in that fashion if i had anyone in the entire world that i've met in my entire life who had a horse guy it would be soren i could text soren tomorrow and be like i need a horse for alex and he'd be like all right give me 24 hours anyway is that what you wanted to talk about today where my life's going and what i need to bring into it yeah yeah yeah that's

right yeah okay good well also i i feel like pierce's horse accidents are a product of it is horse times if you're a if you're like an important masculine person, you ride a horse. He just sort of like privileges his way into being an officer, but probably didn't actually train on how to ride one. But, you know, I figure that's the chain of events that leads to this like Looney Tunes action on the battlefield, you know? Absolutely. Yeah.

He also, he was in another battle the following day where he was injured but tried to uh continue fighting uh but then he wrenched his knee that he injured the previous day and fainted so that was his contribution to the battle of churubusco the following day he fainted have you ever fainted in your life? No. I only know it from cartoons and comedy. I know people do it. Yeah, people do it. It's like a fun pastime that people do. I've heard stories of people who, like,

oh, I saw blood and I fainted, like, fully passed out. And it's a very alien experience to me. Right, like, I just freak out and remain fully conscious. That's what I do. Get really upset and no escape. What are the, what are the, what are the things that freak you out?

Is it blood? Do you freak out at blood? I'm interviewing you now. Blood. I'm pretty good. I'm phobic about sea creatures, especially like the wiggly ones, like jellyfish and stuff.

I really don't like that. Really? So do you, I'm pretty good with like sharks, like anything that's like salad, you ones, like jellyfish and stuff. I really don't like them. So do you? I'm pretty good with like sharks, like anything that's like salad, you know? Do you? Jellyfish, anemones, nothing. So do you stay away from the ocean? Because like that's where jellyfish live?

Yeah, I don't love swimming. And I am nervous about sea creatures, yeah. Really? Fantastic. Fascinating. Oh my goodness. I went to, I was at summer camp once as a kid and it was on Lake Michigan cause that's where we went.

And what I thought was a jellyfish washed up on the beach and I really had a hard time handling it. But then it was pointed out to me that they're not jellyfish in fresh water and it was an old balloon. So it was fine. It was not a big deal. What is this podcast about? So sorry. I've taken this astray so many times.

I apologize. Okay. So Pierce has a horse accident and then aggravates the injury from the horse accident. And then this historian in Slate, James M. Lumberg, also says that, quote, Pierce's brigade was present for the climactic battle of Chapultepec, but Pierce himself was conspicuously absent, suffering terribly from Montezuma's revenge in the sick ward. That's a poop disease, right?

Yeah, I think it's like diarrhea from Mexican water kind of thing. Yeah. So that was his army service was mostly falling down, hurting himself, horse trouble, and then diarrhea is like his military heroic career. Pooping too much, yeah. The other thing, so he hand waved the arrest by just not going to jail or any charges or anything. And then Pierce obviously proceeded to be elected president, even though he had this hilarious, embarrassing military career where he fell down a lot and stuff. And part of how he was able to hand-wave it

is his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a biography of him and made a bunch of claims and stories about how Pierce was a great and amazing guy, even though he was not. And one of the things Hawthorne kind of massaged is the whole military horse accident thing. Yeah. Do you know why Hawthorne did that? You can say no it's totally

fine if you don't know it's it's totally fine if the answer is like they're they're buddies and that's it it was because they're buddies and also hawthorne was uh greedy maybe so there's an article by jill lapore in the new yorker where she talks about how opponents of pierce said that he fainted or was drunk in battle and then hawthorne rewrote the story so that Pierce was an incredibly critical soldier, and they were begging him to recuperate, but he insisted on being on the field. And then the really tricky thing he did is in the election of 1852, Pierce ran against a guy named Winfield Scott, who was the commander of the entire U.S. Army in the Mexican War, and did much more military stuff, much more important. The way

Hawthorne wrote the story, it was, quote, the general looked again at Pierce's almost disabled figure and seemed on the point of taking his irrevocable resolution. You are rash, General Pierce, said he. We shall lose you and we cannot spare you end quote and this whole story the way hawthorne wrote it uh pierce's campaign opponent was uh the general saying you're so important we can't lose you in this battle wow which was very uh sneaky it wasn't true yeah and um hawthorne stinks but what do i want to say i want to i really i feel like i I want to say? I want to say, I really, I feel like I've really boxed you. I want to say he's... I apologize. Just a little bit more about Hawthorne. He was doing this book partly to cash in.

Like after Pierce won the election, he was rewarded with a job working for the U.S. Consul in Britain. And had also gotten a job that way from the 1846 election. And this was all like a cash-in thing for him. But also Hawthorne and Pierce were college friends. And like Hawthorne rushed to Pierce's side when Pierce's wife died. And they were traveling together when Hawthorne died. And Pierce was the one to find the body. And they were like legitimately very, very, very close friends.

So it's cool in that way. I don't love that Hawthorne was essentially operating as a propaganda wing of the administration, but I guess I'm glad that they're friends. I don't know. Who am I rooting for here? It is also the big, the biggest problem with the book is that, as we'll talk about, Pierce was from the North, but he was also more or less pro-slavery. He at least believed that it could extend to the territory, so it's not a big deal.

Was he more pro or more or less? Because that's kind of important going forward. It seems like he was the kind of guy who didn't feel the need to own slaves personally, but was otherwise completely pro-slavery and felt like they're allowed to do it, and don't worry about it. Okay, I mean, no, it's not like, if he's okay with slavery, he's okay with slavery, and that's bad.

So when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the book about Pierce, he said that everything Pierce felt about slavery made sense and was fine, and said that abolitionists were out of control and this slavery will go away on its own, and a bunch of things that Hawthorne then wrote to friends saying, I've lost so many friends doing this. This was a really difficult decision for me, but I love my friend Franklin so much. He lost friends, he said?

Quote, the biography has cost me hundreds of friends here at the North in consequence of what I say on the slavery question. For the trouble of this, Pierce owes me something. End quote. Is what Hawthorne wrote to a friend. And then he got a job out of it. He did it. That's so funny.

I feel like if I wrote anything, any treaty anywhere, and was like, all of my friends hate me now, I would amend that by saying, like, by the way, it looks like I'm probably wrong. Because, like, I wrote this thing, and everyone that I surrounded myself for my entire life has now, like, excommunicated me. That means I'm probably wrong. I feel like Twitter is a magic magic website because it has exposed me to so many people who have never had that thought hot you know what i mean like there are so many

people on twitter who i run across and i'm like oh this person's just not worried about the nation pointing out to them that they they posted something dumb they're just pushing through it amazing yeah wow it's not good but no it's it's really bad but anyway um so what do you what do you think about pierce as a president you personally yeah i i wonder if his if his ranking is is accurate in your mind it's interesting with presidents i feel like we rate them based on the results of their presidency. And then we also rate them on how hard we like feel they worked or feel they tried or, or like, you know, in a vacuum, what they could have done, you know, it's like if a, it's like if a sports team makes it to the conference finals and doesn't win, if they were supposed to be bad, that's amazing. And if they were supposed to win

everything, they suck, you know, like that's's so i think we kind of do that with them yeah uh and i think pierce yeah would have been a bad president no matter what and also had hard circumstances i think that's fair i think that's the right answer what's your next segment what are we doing now all right off. Off of that, we're going to a short break followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes.

I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie,

Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, let's, no segue needed. Let's go into takeaway number two.

And there's three of them on the show, but takeaway number two. Franklin Pierce spent his entire presidency in mourning. And we might do this one relatively fast because it's so sad. And it goes back to that thing of, was Pierce a good president or not? It's partly that he was in pretty hard circumstances, like personally, for his entire presidency. And people don't necessarily know that. It's worth talking about because it's just interesting for knowing the context he was in. It's like, oh, why was Pierce such a feeble and distracted president? Well, he had a hard time. So Pierce gets elected in the fall of 1852. Inauguration is March of

1853. And in between that, like a month or two before,ce and his wife and their only son are on a train they're coming back from a funeral for his wife's beloved uncle and then according to boston magazine quote one of the train's axles suddenly fractured and the pierce's car tumbled off the tracks and down a 20 foot embankment and then uh both parents watched as their son, 11 years old, was killed immediately. His head was crushed and he died. Yeah. And then like a month or two later, Franklin Pierce has to go and be the president. That's very hard. It's, no, I don't need to have a comparison for it.

There's no reason to have a comparison. There's no metaphor that is necessary. It's not like anything else it's just exactly that your your yeah your son dies and then you have to be the president that's the the only thing right yeah because he was already elected and yeah we they like i mean we don't totally think about mental health now but they like really didn't then. So you couldn't be like, I need a break. No, it's the 1800s. Everyone's just going into a factory even though their leg fell off.

It's just constant. Or everything else. You're talking about a sad thing, but I want to make sure your listeners know that everyone is going into the factory even though their leg fell off. That's a very funny thing to say. It's very funny. But yeah, the 1800s is cartoonishly hard to me in my concept of it, and I think that's because it was. It was a very bad time, and he was president in the middle of it.

Yeah, and his wife who did not want him to be the president, his wife was fully against the idea of politics from the, like even before their kid died, his wife did not want to be involved in politics at all. And now their kid died and he's the president. And she is still just like, I, I,

I hate this. I hate this whole world. I hate the entire world of like, I hate this. I hate this whole world. I hate the entire world of politics. I hate DC. I hate politicians. And you're the president, which is the main version of being a politician. Yeah. Also, I think one of my favorite things in your chapter about him is that Franklin ran for president without letting his wife know that was

the plan until real late in the game no it was a secret yeah and like very early on in their life she was like i'm gonna paraphrase here he was like hey uh no matter what um don't run for president please yeah and he was like nah i got you and then like a couple years later he was like i'm running for president i'm sorry i know that's the most political thing that a person could be but i'm doing it i'm super sorry but i'm doing it no matter what yeah right that would be like a really fraught situation between the two of them no matter what and then this happens yeah and according to pretty much every source i could find uh partly because they had like 1800s theology both of the pierces explicitly blamed the death of their son

on franklin's action of like greedily running for president jane did not attend the inauguration does not attend or do anything officially as the first lady until 1855, two years into his presidency. In Franklin's inauguration speech, he said, quote, you have summoned me in my weakness, you must sustain me by your strength, end quote. They were both just like devastated by a terrible death anyway, and also one they blamed on themselves, or really himself. So also there's this horrible death for them. And then their family had also lost their

other two sons at a very young age. And then also Pierce gets into office. His running mate is a guy named William R. King. And usually you would think president, vice president, we made it, time to be a team. His vice president dies about a month after the inauguration. And in the 1800s, they never like filled that office back in when the guy died so he just didn't have a vice president either the whole time so the the thrust of your show the show that we're doing right now is that things are secretly interesting what is what do you think is the most interesting thing about Franklin Pierce? What is it? It's the, especially the very last thing is I think my favorite example,

but it's the like specific, the extremely specific ways he was a bad president and a weird guy. And cause like all these, especially these 1800s ones who only did a term, they all kind of run together, you know? And Franklin Pierce was like in much harder circumstances than you'd think and also like cartoon accidents all the time and and like a rich handsome drunk the whole time and and there are other ones who were you know much different like they were they were sick their whole presidency

or they were they were angry their whole presidency or or were angry their whole presidency. So even these very sad Pierce stories, it's like, oh, that guy was going through something while he was being a forgettable president. Yeah, that's probably part of why. Do you know? So in all of my study of that's that's a great answer, by the way. In all of my study of presidents, I didn't follow up on their lives after their presidencies. Did you follow up with Pierce afterwards? So he also basically spent the rest of his life pretty sad. It's not a funny story.

But it seems like either shortly after his presidency or during um his wife jane catches tuberculosis and so he spends like most of his post-presidency going to warm places with her because they thought going to a warm place was good for that disease yeah i think you also pick out in in your book that his he told somebody explicitly his post-presidency plan was to drink as much as possible yes and he he was either an alcoholic or the 1800s version his whole life yeah and and just like did that until he died uh so it was just really brutal and bad uh to be him from like presidency all the way to the end what's uh how do we yeah where that's where where do we go from here i think uh i think we go straight into final takeaway takeaway number three okay great

franklin pierce caused a miniature early version of the u.s civil war uh because it's through this kansas nebraska act that I mentioned a while ago. It was a law that was passed in 1854, signed by Franklin Pierce, and basically started an early mini version of the Civil War in what became the states of Kansas and Nebraska. And it was kind of his fault. He kind of did it. So I think that's one of the reasons he's a terrible president, job-wise. Yeah.

It's tough to love this guy no yeah like no i think i like knowing why you should tell the your audience that um you did a bad job and this guy is bad that's what i think you need to say right now out here pierce sucks he sucks i know i'm not allowed to say that but he does it's bad he's really he was a bad president he was didn't help anyone no one wants to be named after him i find it fun how stubborn he ended up being about being on the wrong side of history because that's what we can get at with this kansas nebraska yeah no no. No, no, get into it. Yeah. I'm sorry. I've interrupted your show again. So the Kansas-Nebraska Act, both houses of Congress and the presidency were all controlled

by the Democratic Party. And the leading Democrats thought a good idea to resolve the thing of, hey, we keep adding new states and will they allow slavery or not? The leading Democrats like Stephen Douglas said, let's do popular sovereignty, the states get to vote on it. And the book on Franklin Pierce is basically that he was just talked into signing it because he didn't see any particular reason not to and was fine with slavery. So then Pierce signs it. And immediately the Kansas Nebraska territory that now gets to vote on slavery just gets filled with people from both sides of the issue who start shooting each other. And then Pierce's response is to do nothing. Yeah. So I mean, like being being casually fine with slavery is one of the strangest positions to have.

I like I I'm personally against slavery. The idea of someone who is, like, on the fence of it, but will still sign their name on a check is absurd to me. Yeah. Being like, ah, slavery seems kind of bad, but, like, I don't know. I don't want to, it's not my concern. So do whatever you want that's an absurd uh point of view to take in my opinion yeah it feels nuts yeah there's a book it's called lincoln and the abolitionists uh it's by fred kaplan and he talks a lot about like

what abolitionism and anti-slavery movements were like before the civil war and a lot of the opposition to abolitionism was people basically saying yeah yeah yeah slavery is bad but like let's not be divisive and and what about the economy and like a lot of like things i think of as centrist now they were like look i'm not crazy like an abolitionist i just am upset about slavery that's the normal position is what these people were saying. And so he was kind of one of these people because they were like, look, let's not upset the apple cart over what's going on down in that other region of the country.

Wow. Which was a common position. It's crazy. And Franklin Pierce's position was basically, it's not that bad. I wouldn't do it myself, but if they want to do it. And so what happened is in Kansas and Nebraska, there was a territorial governor who was against slavery. So the pro-slavery people set up their own government just separately. And then they kicked out that governor with Pierce's help.

And then the anti-slavery people set up their own government. And then there was just fighting on and off between people in Kansas and Nebraska from 1854 all the way until the Civil War starts in 1860, 1861. And it's pretty much Pierce's fault. It's not good. Yeah. All right. That's bad. I hate him. He also proceeded to be someone who was never totally a fan of the Union. And one interesting way is that, especially because his vice president died, he had a couple key cabinet people he leaned on. And one of them was Jefferson Davis, who was Pierce's secretary of war

and later the leader of the Confederacy. And according to Mental Floss, before Pierce and his wife Jane went on a trip to the Bahamas in the winter of 1859, Pierce wrote a letter to Davis telling him he needed to be the leader of the Democratic Party in the 1860 election, and like really step up for what mattered. And then also, so when Lincoln is assassinated, there's a lot of mourning throughout the country, especially the North, such as New Hampshire. assassinated there's a lot of mourning throughout the country especially the north such as new hampshire and so people in pierce's end of life hometown of concord new hampshire are like putting flags at half staff and doing memorials and stuff

and apparently everybody in town noticed that pierce had done nothing that's so petty i love it yeah yeah it's not that cool because also during the civil war pierce had called it quote a cruel heartless aimless unnecessary war end quote uh and like kind of with at least the implication that it was the north's fault and that they should have just you know reconciled and worked this out sucks so bad. And so when a mob gathers in front of Pierce's house to say, hey, why are you not doing the flag stuff we're all doing to memorialize Lincoln? Pierce goes out on his front. Hey, you used to be president and Lincoln is dead.

What are you doing? This is great. Go on. It's like, hey, at this this stage in history only like a dozen people have ever had that job and you're one of them like what are you doing none of them have been shot before like come on and then apparently pierce uh went out on his front porch and just started like lecturing the crowd and he said quote it is not necessary for me to show my devotion for the stars and stripes and then just started listing uh his war service and his ancestors war service and his work in politics until the crowd just kind of dispersed probably

out of like boredom and and being like i guess he doesn't care okay he he sucks ass hey yeah is that right yeah oh that's awesome right because like every way i learned that he sucks is special you know like there's a lot of there's a lot of color and character to it it's really exciting right not character in a positive way no he's not just a bad president he's also a racist it's fantastic he's bad all across the board yeah he also in 1863 with hawthorne helping him he gave like a public speech about how bad lincoln and emancipation were. And Pierce's 1863 anti-Lincoln speech was on the 4th of July. And then also that means that it was the day after the Battle of Gettysburg.

Jesus. So like the union wins Gettysburg and he's like, I'm going to give a speech about how bad the union's leadership and direction is. I really don't like it. God almighty. Just cartoony. Just terrible.

Yeah. Just bad. Start to finish. So how do we sum up Franklin Pierce? What do you think? Hard life. Still bad either way. Yeah.

It's also, I always, whenever I learn about the really bad presidents, I try to take some solace in, solace in that that was common. So if occasionally we have a president who makes no sense and is really terrible it's not like a total outlier you know like our system it's bad that our system generates that but it does it means that like the era i'm in is not some huge outlier historically that's so generous are you do you think um you think of yourself as an optimist it seems like it. Yeah, broadly. Yeah, I think so.

Hmm. There's something there. There's something. There's something you're hiding. I'm optimistic except about horses. They seem very dangerous. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Daniel O'Brien for encouraging me to get back on that horse. Or take the word back out.

Encouraging me to get on a horse. Very literally and specifically. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic, William Rufus Devane King. He was Franklin Pierce's vice president, who died right away. He was way more than that when he was alive. Visit SIFpod.fun to hear Daniel and I on that bonus, and to back this entire podcast operation.

And thank you for exploring Franklin Pierce with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Franklin Pierce with us, here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Franklin Pierce's entire career depended on hand-waving his horse accidents. Takeaway number two, Franklin Pierce spent his entire presidency in mourning. And takeaway number three, Franklin Pierce caused a miniature early version of the U.S. Civil War. Also, a low-key takeaway in there, that Franklin Pierce was honest, actual best friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables and a bunch of other important books. So, uh, weird. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest. Daniel O'Brien writes for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO. I think they're on a break right now. They also just won

an Emmy or two. So please watch it, you know, when it returns. And holy cow, Daniel O'Brien co-hosts a podcast with Soren Bui every week. It is called Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. Search that name in your podcast app or follow the links for this podcast episode at sifpod.fun. One more Daniel O'Brien thing that also takes us into the research sources, he wrote a book called How to Fight Presidents. There's also a version for like young learners and readers as well. It's a very, very, very fun look at every president who was deceased at the time of publication. It's a very, very, very fun look at every president who was deceased at the time of publication. It's a very, very fun way to process the presidents and their history and many, many stories about them. And that was a big influence on a lot of the material

in this episode. So really grateful to him for obviously mainly that chapter on Pierce, because that's who we talked about. Buchanan comes up as well in the bonus, just very helpful all around. Many research sources in addition to How to Fight Presidents. Here are some key ones. A great article in The New Yorker. It's by historian Jill Lepore of Harvard University. That article is titled Bound for Glory. Another great article, this one from Slate.com by historian James M. Lundberg of the University of Notre Dame. That article is titled Nathaniel Hawthorne Party Hack. That article and the Jill Lepore article really bring together almost all the takeaways in this episode,

but especially about Pearson Hawthorne and his war service and how that was spun and kind of faked. And also a great podcast to recommend is called Presidents Are People Too, and that's hosted by historian Alexis Coe and comedy writer Elliot Kalin. And it's very fun and has a lot of further Franklin Pierce information if you're looking for more. One thing that jumps out to me from that is that when the Franklin Pierce home in New Hampshire was going to be demolished, the New Hampshire state legislature sold commemorative

bottles of bourbon celebrating Pierce's life, and that raised enough money to save the house. It also was like selling bourbon to commemorate an alcoholic. So it was a very, very weird chapter of New Hampshire state history. Now you know that about the Granite State. Find those and more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken, Unshaven by The Budos Band, and their next album is called Long in the Tooth. It's coming soon. It releases October 9th. Pre-order your copy at

daptonerecords.com. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. See more of Burt's art on Instagram at Burt Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that?

Talk to you then.