Franklin Pierce: Young History of the Granite Hills

Franklin Pierce — the fourteenth President of the United Sates – has existed in the public mind as a stereotype rather than as a many-sided human being. The predominate picture that we have of him is that of a weak and shallow man, a mediocrity who left little imprint upon the history of the United States. This stereotype, however, is grossly misleading, for Franklin Pierce was not a simple man. Indeed, his personality was complex, made up of varying strengths and conflicting inadequacies, while his life, full of inner turmoil, had an aspect of overwhelming tragedy. This authoritative biography makes available a full-scale study of an unusually interesting human being. With the same thoroughness and intensity that have distinguished all if his historical writing, Roy F. Nichols follows Pierce’s life from his earliest years in New Hampshire, though his college career at Bowdoin, his marriage into the distinguished ranks of an established New England family, his rise in politics, his services as a brigadier general of volunteers in the Mexican War, and his election to the Presidency as a dark Horse candidate of the Democratic Party.