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Peter A. Wallner
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Franklin Pierce: Martyr for the Union Paperback – April 20, 2009

by Peter Wallner (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 16 ratings
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Second volume of Wallner's insightful two-volume biography of President Franklin Pierce. This volume covers Pierce in the White House and the controversial years after his presidency. Both volumes are also available in hardcover. Volume 1 was featured on C-Span's Booknotes and on the History Channel.
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  1. Print length
    498 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Plaidswede Publishing Co.
  4. Publication date
    April 20, 2009
  5. ISBN-10
    0979078490
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0979078491
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Exhaustively researched, the volume is rich in detail on topics that are routinely granted only a cursory glance in other books on the period ... [Wallner] has succeeded in the goal, outlined in the first volume of the biography, to put Pierce the man back on the antebellum stage. --Kenneth Nivison, Historical New Hampshire

Having studied Franklin Pierce for half a decade with laudable industry and a sympathetic eye, Peter Wallner has produced a valuable corrective to the easy put-downs of the nation's 14th president. -- --Michael Birkner in the Concord Monitor

About the Author

Peter Wallner is the library director of the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Plaidswede Publishing Co. (April 20, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 498 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0979078490
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0979078491
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.9 pounds
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 16 ratings

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Peter A. Wallner

Peter A. Wallner

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4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
16 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Pugwash
5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive Biography of an Obscure Chief Executive
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2013
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It is difficult to think of Antebellum America as a bucolic time after reading biographies of the Political giants of those times, and watching the recent spate of movies dealing with slavery in the South. Franklin Pierce has been relegated to obscurity and a low ranking by historians because he did not save his letters nor his diary. He has also suffered from being sandwiched in betwen the administrations of Taylor/Fillmore and Buchanan.

This was certainly a low ebb of Chief Executives in American history, but it has been easy to dismiss the Pierce Presidency with these others because few historians had much to read about his life and Presidency, or really evaluate.

Peter Wallner has done American history a favor in giving a definitive biography of his life and times to study and learn about. Pierce, under greater scrutiny appears as a strong, principled, and committed figure who happened to the Presidency in a time that was embattled politically, and polarized nationally. He cared deeply about keeping the Union together, and looked to avoid the Civil War he foresaw.

He looked to the Constitution to guide his policy, and his conscience, as did his less principled successor, James Buchanan. It is easy to look at a man in light of his times and judge him by today's mores. Pierce was anti-abolitionist, and by today's standards, this seems odious. However, his reasons were not necessarily that he supported slavery. It was that he abhored the thought of Civil War.

The traits he bore were noble. Loyalty, principle, strength of character. He is the only President ever to serve a full term and keep his entire Cabinet intact.

This historical perspective is interesting in that it brings to light some of the Lincoln administration's abuses of the Constitution to save the Union, and Pierce's objections. Though not a political giant, as ex-president, even a maligned one, his opinions carried some weight.

Though dwarfed by Lincoln, Pierce's administration and his decisions compare extremely favorable to his successor's administration. This is an excellent study of of the surprisingly fast moving times moving up to the Civil War.
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CMW-Tzvi
5.0 out of 5 stars A very well documented book covering one of our most underappreciated & reviled Presidents
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2018
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Starting at the beginning of Franklin Pierce's administration & continuing through to the end of his life, Peter Wallner has achieved what no other historian (with the possible exception of Gary Boulard) has even attempted: the redemption of the memory of possibly the most reviled President in history - Franklin Pierce. The first 308 pages of text cover his actual time as President with another 71 pages of text covering to the end of his life. If you realize that there were numerous cases of lynch mobs bent on his hanging (especially through the War Against Southern Independence) it seems a miracle that he survived to his death of natural causes in 1869!

The 379 pages of text added to 13 pages worth of introduction and followed by 77 pages of notes, 20 pages of bibliography, and 20 pages of Photo credits & index bring the size of just this volume to a total of 509 pages. Not bad for a biography of a presidency often dismissed by 'historians' as inconsequential. Add to this Mr. Wallner's first volume which constitutes (with this volume) a complete biography of President Pierce (322 pages) and you have 831 pages covering one of the most honest persons (along with John Tyler) to have served as President!!
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Miro Jencik
3.0 out of 5 stars Too much
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2014
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No need for two volumes. I thought the books were too detailed for Franklin Pierce. I wanted more of an historical perspective when he was president.
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Glenn R. Springstead
4.0 out of 5 stars Pierce No Martyr
Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2008
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This book is a much needed contribution to the study of the presidency in the ante-bellum era generally, and of Franklin Pierce, the nation's 14th chief executive, in particular. As reviewers of the author's first volume have noted, Wallner is the first author to provide a significant work on behalf of Pierce since the 1930's. Wallner's task is made all the more difficult by the fact that Pierce apparently did not save many of his letters.

On the postive side, there is a lot of very good material here relating to the minutia of administrative governance and the challenges facing Pierce in the turbulent 1850's. Internationally, Pierce faced a Great Britain illegally recruiting Americans in America to serve as soldiers in the Crimean War and encroaching upon American interests in Latin America, all of which Pierce ably and honorably resolved by the end of his term. Domestically, Pierce faced a splintering Democratic Party whose leading factions were not favorable to Pierce's equitable patronage policies or to the president's determination to squash the actions of American speculators and adventurers filibustering throughout Latin America. Nor did Pierce's support for Senator Stephen Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act--which at the demand of the southern states, overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820 with its prohibition of slavery in the northern districts of the Lousiana Purchase--increase the president's popularity. While the bill passed by large margins in Congress, northerners fervently opposed it, a response that soon lead to the creation of the Republican Party and the election in 1854 of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The southern states, meanwhile, faulted Pierce for not successfully insuring that Kansas would enter the nation as a slave state. As with his patronage policies, Pierce's policy of accommodation in the territories ultimately pleased no one, helping to ensure that one of Pierce's own diplomats, James Buchanan, would succeed him in 1856. As Wallner notes, Pierce was the first president to seek, but fail to receive, the renomination of his party for president while occupying the office.

On the negative side, much in the narrative smacks of Manichaeism--Pierce's intra-party opponents are "corrupt" "turncoats" while his inter-party opponents (mostly abolitionists, along with Whig-Republicans) are derided as "radical" "agitators" acting only from a spirit of "partisanship" and malice. Only Pierce exists above it all, he alone acting in the interests of the nation and in keeping with the Constitution.

Similarly, the author doesn't do Pierce much justice in attempting to account for the former president's tunnel-blindness regarding the south's complicity for the Civil War. Again, in keeping with the book's Manichaeism world view noted above, Pierce--and apparently the author as well--can only see Lincoln's "abuse of executive power" and "unconstitutional" "coercion" and infringement of civil liberties in the aftermath of southern secession, the seizure by the south of Government installations, and finally the attack on Fort Sumter.

Finally, to the extent Pierce, on account of his views of the union, fell into disrepute during the Civil War, the former president had only himself to blame. After Lincoln's quite lawful election, Pierce wrote that only "immediate" capitulation by the north to additional southern demands for a repeal of all (unnamed) acts that "have nullified the Constitution" would prevent war or secession, or both. Otherwise, he penned to secessionists in Alabama in December 1860, "If we cannot live together in peace, then in peace and on just terms, let us separate." (page 334). One wonders what, besides the Kansas-Nebraska Act's overturning of the Missouri Compromise's 34-year precedent, and the Taney court's declaring any attempts by congress to regulate slavery in the territories un-Constitutional (as in the Dred Scott decision), just what more the union could have done for the South.

In short, while Pierce was a more capable and ethical chief executive than most superficial historical accounts have given him credit for, neither should it be said that Pierce was any kind of martyr, much less a martyr for the union, except his being perhaps a martyr in his own mind or in the service of the Lost Cause.
30 people found this helpful
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V. Gardino
5.0 out of 5 stars Phenominal Follow Up Volume
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2008
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Peter Wallner has followed up a tremendous first volume work on this "forgotten" President with yet another meticulously researched book on Pierce's Presidency and sad final years. This second volume completes a dynamic re-assessment of Pierce's life and Presidency with new insights that heretofore had not been brought to light. Wallner, as in the first volume, has left no stone unturned with a highly readable text.
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Top reviews from other countries

michael Billington
5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive work on the 14th President of the United States
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 23, 2013
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The second of two volumes on Franklin Pierce shows a man beset by personal tragedy and political crisis. Is sympathetic without glossing over the many failings of Pierce both personally and as President. The reader will come away with a greater understanding of how and why Pierce acted as he did in regards to the issues he confronted while President.
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