CHUCKLES THE BUSY BEE
James Knox Polk was an utterly humorless workaholic who believed that public servants, especially the president, had no business indulging in anything as frivolous as private time. He kept preposterously long hours, his sense of fun was notoriously lacking, and he was by all accounts incapable of discussing subjects that didn’t relate to politics. Vacations were simply not an option. He and his wife, Sarah, were the first presidential couple to spend their summers in the Executive Mansion—indeed, Polk would be absent from the capital for just six weeks throughout his four years in office.
AND NOW, THE MOST BORING DIARY ENTRY YOU’LL EVER READ
Polk viewed handshaking as a labor to be endured and once wrote a lengthy essay in his diary that relegated the act to an academic subject: “If a man surrendered his arm to be shaken, by some horizontally, by others perpendicularly, and by others again with a strong grip, he could not fail to suffer severely from it, but that if he would shake and not be shaken, grip and not be gripped, taking care always to squeeze the hand of his adversary as hard as he squeezed his, that he suffered no inconvenience from it . . .” blah, blah, blah.
The Price of Power
Polk may have been very proud of his devotion to his duty—but this devotion would ultimately be his undoing. At age forty-nine, he was the youngest president yet to take office. But only three months after his term ended, Polk died. The immediate cause was some sort of intestinal disorder, but most historians agree that the poor guy weakened his system by literally working himself to death.
12 ZACHARY TAYLOR
November 24, 1784–July 9, 1850
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1849–1850
PARTY: Whig
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 64
VICE PRESIDENT: Millard Fillmore
RAN AGAINST: Lewis Cass
HEIGHT: 5′8″
NICKNAME: “Old Rough and Ready”
SOUND BITE: “Tell him to go to hell” (in response to Mexican general Santa Anna’s demand to surrender).
When someone asked General Zachary Taylor during the war with Mexico whether he would run for president, he replied that “such an idea never entered my head. Nor is it likely to enter the head of any sane person.” Less than two years later, the American people—crazy or not—made him their twelfth president.
Taylor was a simple man. Despite being a career officer, he had a conspicuous dislike of formal military attire. His run-down look became legendary, as did his willingness to share in his troops’ hardships. His unimpressive appearance, however, belied a gift for martial leadership. Having made a name for himself in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, and the Seminole War, “Old Rough and Ready” became a national hero in the conflict with Mexico after a series of stunning victories.
But Taylor was as ignorant of politics as he was knowledgeable of battlefield tactics. A political naïf who openly admitted to having never voted (!), he was nevertheless vigorously courted by both parties to run for president. He eventually settled on the Whigs and went on to defeat Democratic opponent Lewis Cass in the 1848 election.
Unfortunately, this political amateur took the reins of government at a time that would’ve challenged a president with ten times the political savvy. The problem, of course, was slavery, a subject that was threatening to tear the country apart. After the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, settlers began swarming west to make their fortunes, and soon the territory was petitioning the government for admission as a state—a free state. The controversy that ensued would ignite regional tensions and paralyze Congress as men such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun fed the flames with some of the most eloquent oratory in American history. When Clay introduced a bill offering all kinds of concessions to Southern slaveholders in compensation for a slave-free California, Taylor—the last president to own slaves—surprised everybody by insisting that the admission of California shouldn’t hinge on placating a bunch of whining Southerners. Indeed, Taylor not only opposed the expansion of slavery, but he also noisily vowed to lead the army personally against anyone so treasonous as to secede from the Union, which many Southerners were threatening to do.
Taylor’s hat and clothes were so tattered that many Americans would mistake the president for a farmer.
Called the Compromise of 1850, Clay’s bill and the rancor it caused were an ominous sign of things to come. But Taylor wouldn’t live long enough to witness the Civil War. Stricken with a nasty intestinal affliction brought on by the searing heat and some bad cherries, Old Rough and Ready died on July 9, 1850, leaving lackluster veep Millard Fillmore to handle America’s fiercest sectional conflict to date.
He may not have been the most gifted president we’ve ever had. But Taylor exemplifies how even the simplest, weirdest, and downright funniest-looking men can aspire to the White House.
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UGLY AMERICAN
With all due respect to our twelfth president, Taylor was one strange-looking dude. Given his thick trunk, long, spindly arms, and a face like shoe leather, he bore an unsettling resemblance to an orangutan. Old Rough and Ready may have been at home in the saddle, but he needed help getting into it—his legs were too short and bow-shaped to do it alone. His hat of choice was a broad-rimmed, floppy thing woven of palmetto leaves, which—along with the mismatched set of rags that he frequently passed off as clothes—led some people to mistake their general and president for a farmer. Though he never drank or smoked, he did chew tobacco and was known as a sure shot when spitting—which he was willing to do on the White House carpet when a proper vessel wasn’t within range.
Mail Drop
Even after the Whig party had nominated Taylor as their candidate, he almost lost his chance to accept. They had sent him word of their choice by mail that wasn’t prepaid—a common practice at that time. The ever-frugal Taylor had instructed his post office not to deliver mail that wasn’t already paid for, and the letter notifying him of his candidacy sat unopened for weeks. By the time he learned of it, the Whigs had almost given up on him.
LONG SHOT
You’ve got to respect Taylor’s presidential victory, if only because so many people didn’t think he had it in him. Including Taylor himself.
His wife wasn’t hot on the idea, either. She’d spent her adult life as the spouse of a career officer (living in tents in remote garrisons, churning butter and gathering firewood, raising colicky brats without the comforts of civilization, and so on), but Peggy Taylor drew the line at being a first lady. Afraid that the presidency would steal the last years of their marriage, she actually prayed every day for her husband’s defeat during the electoral campaign of 1848. Apparently, she didn’t pray hard enough.
As for those in government—well, James Polk called Taylor “narrow-minded,” “bigoted,” and “exceedingly ignorant of public affairs.” And here’s what Congressman Horace Mann had to say: “[Taylor] talks artlessly as a child about affairs of State, and does not pretend to a knowledge of anything of which he is ignorant. He is a remarkable man in some respects and it is remarkable that such a man should be President of the United States.”
AN UNDIGNIFIED CONCLUSION
On the Fourth of July, 1850, Washington was in the midst of one of its infamous heat waves. But that didn’t stop ol’ Zach Taylor from attending the festivities being held on the newly designated grounds of the future Washington Monument. Cholera had broken out throughout the city, and people were warned not to eat raw fruit or drink water without knowing where it came from. Taylor, having endured the usual round of interminable speeches in the scorching sun, stumbled back to the White House, where he proceeded to quench his thirst with as much water as he could pour down his parched throat. Still unsatisfied, he wolfed down a bowl of cherries. Then he moved on to iced milk.
Whether the culprit was the water, the milk, or the cherries, nobody knows for sure. But the presid
ent soon became sicker than a dog. By July 6, his system had succumbed to severe dehydration from constant diarrhea and vomiting, despite the efforts of his doctors. He was dead by 10:30 P.M. on July 9.
13 MILLARD FILLMORE
January 7, 1800–March 8, 1874
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1850–1853
PARTY: Whig
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 50
VICE PRESIDENT: None
RAN AGAINST: N/A
HEIGHT: 5′9″
NICKNAME: “His Accidency”
SOUND BITE: “It is a national disgrace that our presidents, after having occupied the highest position in the country, should be cast adrift, and, perhaps, be compelled to keep a corner grocery for subsistence.”
Millard Fillmore was the second American vice president to be unceremoniously yanked from the comfortable obscurity of his office by the untimely death of his boss. And the situation he inherited must’ve made him curse Zachary Taylor’s love of fruit.
Fillmore was a self-made, self-educated man who rose from meager beginnings to public office in Buffalo, New York. He served in Congress and distinguished himself as an accomplished comptroller of his home state. But this experience failed to prepare him for the challenges of the presidency; when contemporary historians look back and rank the men of the White House, Fillmore almost always ends up in the bottom ten.
Is Millard Fillmore the handsomest man you’ve ever seen? Queen Victoria thought so.
Of course, his presidency had its fair share of challenges. The question of slavery’s extension into the new territories was inflammatory enough, and the new president had also inherited a border dispute between Texas and New Mexico that promised to ignite into all-out war. Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850, stalled by Taylor before he died, was now given the go-ahead by Fillmore, who saw it as the only hope of keeping the nation from blowing apart. California was brought into the Union as a free state, and—to placate Southerners—a new fugitive slave act was passed, requiring greater, more aggressive action against runaway slaves in free states. In the end, it accomplished little, except to delay the inevitable Civil War. Many Southerners looked at the Compromise as a sellout, while in the North, mobs of abolitionists forcibly rescued runaway slaves taken back into custody.
By 1852, Fillmore’s own party had abandoned him—they gave their nomination to Winfield Scott, another hero from the Mexican War. But Fillmore wasn’t ready to quit. In 1856, he staged a comeback as the presidential candidate of the notorious American party, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, anti-all-sorts-of-things group that sought somehow to heal the nation’s growing rift by fostering a lot of others. He carried only Maryland. Too bad.
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GOLDEN GUANO
The Compromise of 1850 wasn’t Millard Fillmore’s only legacy to American history. He also sent a fleet of ships under Commodore Mathew C. Perry to open Japan to American trade (though it wouldn’t bear fruit until the next administration). And he negotiated a treaty with Peru that was literally for the birds.
Peru maintained a giant bird reserve offshore for the harvesting of droppings. (Back then, bird excrement was a cheap and abundant fertilizer.) Thanks to Fillmore’s administration, American businessmen secured access to it, ensuring a steady stream of—well, filthy lucre.
Royal Favorite
Unlike his predecessor, Millard Fillmore cut quite a figure. He was well built, a natty dresser, and considered good-looking. We have corroboration from no less a source than Queen Victoria, who, upon receiving the former president in 1855, called him the handsomest man she’d ever met.
A DEGREE OF HUMILITY
Though he achieved the highest office in the land, Millard Fillmore never had a very high opinion of himself. He had come from a humble background and never forgot it. In 1855, during Fillmore’s visit to Great Britain, Oxford University offered him an honorary degree. He turned it down, claiming that “no man should, in my judgment, accept a degree he cannot read.”
14 FRANKLIN PIERCE
November 23, 1804–October 8, 1869
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1853–1857
PARTY: Democratic
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 48
VICE PRESIDENT: William Rufus King
RAN AGAINST: Winfield Scott
HEIGHT: 5′10″
NICKNAME: “Young Hickory of the Granite Hills”
SOUND BITE: “There’s nothing left . . . but to get drunk” (on his plans after losing a second nomination in 1856).
Franklin Pierce was such a dark horse that his own party had trouble seeing him. At the Democratic convention, his name didn’t appear until the thirty-fifth ballot. Stuck over the issues that typically divided pro- and antislavery elements, the party finally settled on Pierce because he was a “doughface,” a Northerner with Southern sympathies. He would prove a calamitous choice.
Son of a two-time governor of New Hampshire, Pierce went to school at Bowdoin College, where he rubbed shoulders with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Though he served in the Senate and fought in the war with Mexico, it was his militant devotion to the Democratic party and its core principles that put him on the organization’s radar. Indeed, his states’ rights rhetoric nearly out-Jacksoned Jackson himself, earning Pierce the nickname “Young Hickory of the Granite Hills.” His Whig opponent in the election of 1852 was Mexican War hero Winfield Scott, who was widely believed to be a haughty uniformed bandit bent on stealing power from the people. Pierce won the election by a landslide.
When Pierce’s own party changed its campaign slogan to “Anybody But Pierce,” our fourteenth president abandoned his hopes for reelection.
By now, the reader can probably guess which explosive national issue threatened to bedevil the new president. But if his predecessors managed to stumble their way through slavery’s minefield, Pierce’s footing wasn’t nearly as sure, and he blew his administration to pieces. The problems began when Senator Stephen Douglas, a fellow Democrat, sought to organize the land beyond Iowa and Missouri into a federal territory. At stake were vast chunks of real estate, a potential transcontinental railroad, and plenty of money. The proposal became known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Right on cue, powerful Southerners saw an opportunity to extend the rights of slaveholders. They convinced Douglas that the act should include legislation undoing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which set the geographical boundaries of slavery at a latitude of 36°30′). Douglas agreed to the notion of “Popular Sovereignty”; in other words, he felt the citizens of Kansas and Nebraska had the right to vote for slavery if they wanted it. Pierce gave Douglas his support, the act was passed, and the Missouri Compromise was trashed.
The results were catastrophic. Outrage against the Democratic party ignited, costing them dearly in the elections. Worst of all, settlers in Kansas and Nebraska—empowered to decide the slavery issue themselves—set about casting their ballots with bullets and bowie knives. “Bloody Kansas” descended into a fierce guerrilla conflict that gave the nation some idea of what the future would be like.
And Pierce? Unable to stop the horror that was unfolding in the American interior, he was accused of impotence. To make matters worse, he showed just as little tact in his foreign policy: After demanding that Spain offer to sell Cuba or suffer military consequences, he was reviled as a reckless blusterer. His own party’s slogan for the upcoming 1856 convention had become “Anybody but Pierce.” Oh, what a mess.
The lesson here is obvious: The next time you feel like life is getting the better of you, thank your lucky stars you aren’t Franklin Pierce.
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In a Glass by Himself
Pierce struggled with alcoholism all his life. His years as a senator had been darkened by rumors of excessive drinking—opponents called him “a hero of many a well-fought bottle.” He did manage to
fight the bottle successfully on occasion and even joined the Temperance League in Concord, New Hampshire, after leaving the Senate to practice law. He seems not to have had a drinking problem while serving as an officer in the Mexican War, either.
But then he was elected president.
And his son’s head was crushed in a train accident.
And his marriage fell apart.
And he was surrounded by congressmen who’d left their spouses back home and loved to get together and act like frat boys.
So he started drinking again, relying on the stuff to carry him through four years of strife, suspicion, loneliness, bloodshed, and criticism. It only got worse once he left the White House. By 1869, alcohol had gotten the better of him, and he died of stomach inflammation.
INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING
“You have summoned me in my weakness,” Franklin Pierce said in his inaugural address. “You must sustain me by your strength.” Given in the middle of a snowstorm, without the presence of his wife, Pierce’s speech was nothing if not grim. The cause of his sorrow was a tragedy that occurred just two months prior to his swearing-in. Shortly after boarding a train in Boston, the president-elect and his family found themselves stuck in a derailed car that was rolling down an embankment. The accident had just one fatality: Pierce’s only child, eleven-year-old Bennie.
This would’ve been hard going for anyone. But Franklin and Jane Pierce were extremely religious people who’d already lost two sons before Bennie’s death. They tortured themselves with Calvinist self-examination, scouring their faith for an answer. Jane, a withdrawn, dour, borderline fanatic who’d always hated Washington and dreaded spending another four years there, came to the conclusion that God had taken their last child so that her husband would be free to concentrate on his presidential responsibilities—a notion that didn’t cast God or her husband in a very rosy light. Her emotions overwhelmed her on the train to Washington, and she eventually disembarked, leaving her husband to be sworn in without her.
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents Page 6