| Franklin Pierce: The American Presidents Series: The 14th President, 1853-1857 Contributor(s): Holt, Michael F. (Author), Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Editor), Wilentz, Sean (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0805087192 ISBN-13: 9780805087192 Publisher: Times Books OUR PRICE: $30.60 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2010 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Presidents & Heads Of State - Biography & Autobiography | Historical |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 2009036425 |
| Series: American Presidents (Times) |
| Physical Information: 1" H x 5.8" W x 8.6" (0.80 lbs) 176 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 19th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The genial but troubled New Englander whose single-minded partisan loyalties inflamed the nation's simmering battle over slavery Charming and handsome, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was drafted to break the deadlock of the 1852 Democratic convention. Though he seized the White House in a landslide against the imploding Whig Party, he proved a dismal failure in office. Michael F. Holt, a leading historian of nineteenth-century partisan politics, argues that in the wake of the Whig collapse, Pierce was consumed by an obsessive drive to unify his splintering party rather than the roiling country. He soon began to overreach. Word leaked that Pierce wanted Spain to sell the slave-owning island of Cuba to the United States, rousing sectional divisions. Then he supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which limited the expansion of slavery in the west. Violence broke out, and Bleeding Kansas spurred the formation of the Republican Party. By the end of his term, Pierce's beloved party had ruptured, and he lost the nomination to James Buchanan. In this incisive account, Holt shows how a flawed leader, so dedicated to his party and ill-suited for the presidency, hastened the approach of the Civil War. |
Contributor Bio(s): Holt, Michael F.: - Michael F. Holt is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of six books, including the award-winning The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party and By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.Wilentz, Sean: - Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University, is the author or editor of several books, including Chants Democratic and The Rise of American Democracy. He has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and other publications. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.Schlesinger, Arthur M.: - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (1917-2007) was the preeminent political historian of our time. For more than half a century, he was a cornerstone figure in the intellectual life of the nation and a fixture on the political scene. He won two Pulitzer prizes for The Age of Jackson (1946) and A Thousand Days (1966), and in 1988 received the National Humanities Medal. He published the first volume of his autobiography, A Life in the Twentieth Century, in 2000. |