Jane Means Appleton Pierce: Introversion and Tragedy

image taken from goodreads.com

To learn about the wife of President Franklin Pierce, I read Ann Covell’s Jane Means Appleton Pierce: U.S. First Lady (1853-1857): Her Family, Life, and Times. More than half the book was devoted to telling the story of Jane’s immediate family and ancestors plus the story of Franklin Pierce. The set-up made the book a bit repetitious, but it also allowed the reader to glean an understanding of, as the title says, the life and time of this reluctant First Lady.  

Jane Appleton was a well-educated, shy young lady, who frequently suffered from physical illness. The author speculates that her shyness and introversion were related to her being a middle child and that her frequent illness might have been the result of anorexia, depression, or both. Despite these challenges and the disapproval of her family to their daughter marrying the son of a former tavern owner (before becoming Governor of New Hampshire), Jane Appleton and Franklin Pierce were married in 1834. Over the next 19 years, before the Presidency, their marriage was a series of ups and downs, filled with the stresses of Washington, the calm of Concord, and multiple tragic family deaths, including two young sons.  

Jane Pierce with son Benny c. 1850
image from wikimedia commons

Jane was always happiest when Franklin was retired from the Congressional life, and when he won the Presidential nomination, after assuring his wife it was entirely unlikely, their marriage was seriously challenged. Even more so when he won the Presidency. Yet, the most tragic challenge to their domestic life was when their third young son died in a tragic train accident just weeks before President Pierce’s inauguration. Two years of self-imposed mourning put a major damper on the often lively social scene of the White House, as First Lady responsibilities were taken over by Abigail Kent Means (the wife of Jane’s uncle), whose main concern was caring for her niece and friend. Jane spent her personal time in the White House by herself or with family and largely secluded from the President. After those first two years, Jane dutifully attended the necessary social events, but the role of First Lady proved tiresome for introverted Jane.  

A three-year tour of Europe after President Pierce’s single term proved to be the happiest and most relaxed time for both Franklin and Jane. Upon return to Concord, Jane again became depressive and her health deteriorated. She died of tuberculosis in 1862.  

Abigail Powers Fillmore: A teacher and accidental First Lady

Image from: https://issuu.com/wintersking74/docs/080508715x-millard_fillmore_by_paul

Written by law professor Paul Finkelman, Millard Fillmore, in The American President series, focuses much less on the life of Fillmore himself and more on a political and legal analysis of what got him into the office of Vice President in the first place and his policy decisions once President that the author argues would pave the way for Civil War in the long-term and in the short-term prevent Fillmore’s outright election to a term as President. Finkelman spends a large chunk of the middle section of the book discussing the machinations of the Compromise of 1850 and how it was in no way a real compromise and then repetitiously reminding us of Fillmore’s aggressive implementation of the Fugitive Slave Act that was part of that “Compromise.”  

image from:
 http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=14

We are only offered a few small pieces of information about Fillmore’s wife and family. Fillmore came from a poor family in central New York. He was almost entirely self-taught, but met his future wife while briefly enrolled in a local academy. Abigail Powers was a teacher at the school. “She was two years his senior, the daughter of a deceased Baptist minister and the sister of a local judge. Abigail was well read and as sophisticated as one could become at the time in a tiny town in rural central New York” (4-5). Millard and Abigail married in February 1826. Abigail continued teaching for two years after their marriage, making her “the only first lady before the twentieth century to have worked outside the home after marriage” (10). As Finkelman points out, “Her employment after marriage also suggests that while Fillmore was rising in his profession [law], he was hardly economically secure at this time” (10). Abigail remained in Buffalo for much of her husband’s vice presidency. The book says that after Fillmore moved into the White House as President in July 1850, “in the fall Abigail, who had last visited her husband in March, returned to Washington” (72). We learn nothing else about Abigail during her time as First Lady except that either she or her husband started the White House library, and the Fillmore family was personally involved in ordering books (96). Abigail Fillmore died less than a month after President Fillmore left office and their daughter, Mary Abigail, died in July 1854. Finkelman tells us when mentioning her death that Mary Abigail “often served as the official hostess in the White House” (131-32), but we learn nothing else about life in the White House or any other details of the personal lives of the Millard family.  

While reading this book, I was most struck by how much Millard Fillmore seems to have had in common with our current president. While significant differences are that Fillmore did not come from a wealthy family and was a largely self-educated, voracious reader, both Fillmore and 45 had, respectively, little to no political experience and unexpectedly gained their nominations. Each fumbled his way through most of his time in high office – making costly mistakes and lacking any real backbone and leadership abilities in cases where it might have actually been beneficial to himself or the country. At the same time, each proved stubborn in obsessively enforcing unfair and potentially damaging policy and let his fear of outsiders and disregard for the most vulnerable populations dictate his policy and campaigns. And similar to what seems to be the trajectory of the current administration, Millard Fillmore’s “leadership, or lack thereof, did little to either solve the nation’s problems or reduce its tensions. Indeed, his presidency exacerbated both” (4). I’ll let the reader consult Finkelman's book or other research for details and to make their own determination in this regard, but consider this: When Fillmore ran for president again in 1856, he did so under the nomination of the American Party (also known as the Know-Nothing Party) whose slogan was “Americans Must Rule America.” Sound at all familiar?   

Margaret “Peggy” Mackall Smith Taylor: The First Lady rumored to be a recluse

I knew very little about Zachary Taylor going into this read except that he was known as “Old Rough and Ready” and died early in his term supposedly from eating too many cherries. I knew, from a very brief internet search, that his wife actively did not want him to run for president and that she passed off the entertaining duties of First Lady to her daughter. I learned a little more about each of them by reading the brief biography of Zachary Taylor by John S. D. Eisenhower in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s The American Presidents Series.  

More than half the book focuses on Zachary Taylor’s military career, on which he built his very brief political career. Taylor, a gentleman farmer from a prominent family, first joined the army in 1808, served in the War of 1812, and became president based on his leadership in the Mexican-American War (when he was in his sixties!). He was elected president later the same year the war ended. Apparently long furloughs for army officers were common in the years between wars, so he spent his time between his plantations in Kentucky and Louisiana and his service at relatively remote military outposts on the frontier. It was unclear from the biography how much time his wife, Margaret, whom he married in 1810, spent at these military outposts or war camps, though the author describes her as “devoted” and a “conscientious helpmeet” who likely spent at least some of her time travelling to be with him. I wish I could have learned more about their marriage. 

The remainder of the book deals with the politics behind the 1848 election and the issues Taylor dealt with during his 16 months in office. One of the driving presumptions of the book is that Taylor, had he lived to serve a full term or two, might have had the most success in postponing or even preventing the Civil War because he was a southern slaveholder who did not support the unmitigated spread of slavery to new states and territories. As such, there is much discussion of the political debates surrounding statehood for Texas, California, New Mexico, and Utah – how their status as slave or free could upset the voting balance in the Senate, issues that were not resolved until shortly after his death with the Compromise of 1850.  

In brief snippets throughout the book we learn of Taylor’s family life, but it is never really enough to paint a full picture. We know he and Margaret Mackall Smith met and were married in 1810 while Taylor was on extended leave in Louisville. We know they had six children, half of whom died young and tragically, including a daughter who married future Confederate President Jefferson Davis only to die of malaria very shortly after their nuptials. When his wife and four daughters suffered with measles in 1820, two of them died and his wife’s health was left “permanently impaired” (described in the timeline at the back of the book as “semi-invalid”). It was, in part, this impaired health that prevented Mrs. Taylor from taking on her expected duties as First Lady. In fact, she so badly wanted a simple domestic life with her husband after the Mexican War, that she actively prayed that someone else would receive the Whig nomination instead of Taylor. Upon Taylor's election to the Presidency, Mrs. Taylor agreed to live at the White House on the compromise that while her husband ran politics and her daughter, Betty Bliss, entertained on the main floor, she enjoyed her simpler domestic life upstairs. Such living arrangements led people to spread rumors that Mrs. Taylor was a simple-minded recluse, while in reality she was likely an educated woman since she came from a prominent family even before marriage. Mrs. Taylor shunned the typical public life of a president’s wife, but she ruled domestic life at the White House, remaining genial and welcoming to the many relatives and personal guests who passed through. 

A few other interesting things of note that came from this book:  

1) While it is true that President Taylor ate large quantities of apples and cherries several days before his death, it is unlikely they were the cause of his death from an unidentified bodily infection. Apparently, other prominent people, including John Clayton, William Seward, George Crawford, and William Bliss, suffered from similar symptoms without having eaten the massive amounts of fruits. 

2) Mrs. Taylor refused to have her husband buried in Washington, D.C., and instead insisted he be buried on a family plantation in Louisville, KY, finally getting him settled there four months after his death. 

3) Apparently, Zachary Taylor coined the term “First Lady,” but not in reference to his own wife or daughter; rather, he used it to describe Dolley Madison at her funeral in 1849 after which it came to apply to the wives of presidents more generally.  

Sarah Childress Polk: A Most Influential First Lady

I’m thinking about changing how I manage this blog, meaning changing my own personal expectations when it comes to writing about the books I read. I take notes while reading each biography, in the hopes that I will refer back to them and compose organized, well-written and thought-out blog posts in a timely manner after completing the books. If anyone has been following along, those well-thought-out posts are scattered and rare and almost never completed in a timely manner. Here I am again, having completed the book months ago and still not written a blog post. Because I want to it to be “scholarly reflection” quality, like back in my grad-school or museum-interning days, but in my current life situation, that motivation is lacking (not impossible, mind you, for any museum hiring managers who may be reading; I am still a fabulous and accomplished writer when presented with the right motivation and focused time). I’m now starting to think that a sentence or a few sentences to summarize the most compelling thing I learned from a book might have to suffice. Maybe with some rambling thoughts to go along with it. Maybe even that minimalist approach won’t be enough to get this writing-averse blogger online to publish something within a week or so of completing a book. But maybe it’s worth a shot.  

With that caveat, Bumgarner’s biography on Sarah Childress Polk is rather direct about the fact that Mrs. Polk was more actively influential in the policy work of the President than any First Lady before her. Mrs. Polk actually served as President Polk’s personal secretary, so she was privy to pretty much everything that came across his desk. Apparently, President Polk was a workaholic who was actually rather weak health-wise and likely could not have performed the work of president without the assistance of his wife, whose advice he not only respected but solicited. So, when it comes to the Mexican-American war, looks like we have more than just one Polk to blame for our colonizing aggression.  

Yet, Bumgarner’s brief biography of Sarah Childress Polk is not the best biography I have ever read. It struggles with a tendency to want to tell amusing or interesting anecdotes that all seem terribly disconnected from each other, any overarching argument, and the general context of the time. So, while I certainly learned things, I often found myself baffled at why I was learning them, why I was being told this particular nugget of information at any given moment, and what it was supposed to tell me about the Polks as people within American history.