Today is Presidents Day and as the New Yorker recently pointed out, “Presidents” (the spelling, without an apostrophe), implies that all presidents are to be honored.

Franklin Pierce, Bowdoin College class of 1824, is generally regarded as one of our nation’s worst presidents. His name is rarely spoken on campus, namely because the New Hampshire native, who resided in the White House from 1853-1857, was a “doughface,” a term referring to a notherner with southern sympathies. He is also credited with furthering the fissures in the Union that led to the Civil War.

From the venerable wikipedia: “His good looks and inoffensive personality caused him to make many friends, but he suffered tragedy in his personal life and as president subsequently made decisions which were widely criticized and divisive in their effects, thus giving him the reputation as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Pierce’s popularity in the North went down sharply after he came out in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing the Missouri Compromise and reopening the question of the expansion of slavery in the West.”

Ah, good ol’ fashion support for slavery, that just doesn’t play well.

Somewhere, Pierce is watching this Bush presidency unfold with a smile on his face.

Check back later in the day for a look at James Buchanan and, if there’s time, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and maybe a few others.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 9:35 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.