Peter A Wallner

He might be New Hampshire's favorite son but not history's. It has a lot to do with the fragmented, clique-like nature of politics in his day. His vision was very parochial, he did not see the bigger picture.

The year is 1853. Southern politicians are bent on getting their way and many northern politicians were willing to let them in the name of Union. Men like Pierce, Fillmore, and Douglas became the South's enablers, helping walk the nation to the precipice. They stopped listening to their own constituents when the message became strident and unwelcome.

This is part one of Peter Wallner's biography of one of our most forgotten presidents. Forgotten because his presidency was an epic fail when the country most needed a great statesman to lead them home. He wasn't a bad man, or a corrupt man, or an incompetent man, but a man out of his depth. Since this volume ends just as Pierce is elected president it leaves all the important questions unanswered but Wallner's portrait of the man makes it very easy to imagine how it all happened.

He was a very successful man with what was probably a not very happy home life. He was a political wunderkind who ran the Democratic Party in New Hampshire. He was an extremely competent trial lawyer, an elegant speaker, with abundant courage, as he proved in the war with Mexico.

What he did not have was the capacity to see that agitation about slavery and the south's agenda was not a few malcontents stirring up the pot but a serious problem that needed to addressed immediately.

Wallner has done a very fine job setting the table and I'm looking forward to feasting on his description of the events surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act and final slide towards disunion or civil war.… (mais)