This isn’t a Trump rant.
However, this report. Over the weekend, Donald Trump posted a video of his supporters driving past the camera on golf carts yelling, “White Power.” Along with the video, he wrote, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages.”
It was taken down from his Twitter feed hours later. His cronies purport that Trump didn’t hear what the people had been shouting in the clip. Shouting.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-promotes-video-appearing-show-supporter-shouting-white-power-n1232356
This. Is the President of the United States.
But this isn’t a Trump rant. No. I decided instead, to look up who the worst presidents have been historically — by their ratings. In the bottom of the basement, are a handful. They are:
Warren Harding
James Buchanan
Franklin Pierce
Millard Fillmore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
It is hard to pick one, by just “eyeing” the chart, I’m putting old Franklin Pierce at the lowest low.
He was the 14th president of the United States. Franklin Pierce was born on November 23, 1804, in a log cabin in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. He died on October 8, 1869, at the age of 64, at his home in Concord, New Hampshire. And there is a lot in between.
First of all, he wins the award for having the most interesting Vice President, in the way of a name. His VP? William Rufus De Vane King
And his own nickname was Handsome Frank. Oh, and he was the first president to put a Christmas Tree in the White House. That’s the lighter side of things.
His biggest failure, though, was that he alienated anti-slavery groups by supporting and signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act.
“The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.” (Wikipedia)
So then, of course, the people in those areas, the settlers, disagreed. As a result, that area became “Bleeding Kansas.” Between roughly 1855 and 1859, Kansans engaged in a violent guerrilla war between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery sides.
He also enforced the Fugitive Slave Act. So. With all of this, the conflict over slavery was mounting between the North and South. He failed yet again in meeting that challenge. His actions in office, the clashes in Kansas, all set the stage for Southern secession and the American Civil War.
Those are the biggest failures. But there were more.
I’ll tell you though, he had a rough time of it with other things. Personal things. He was married to a woman named Jane Means Appleton. All three of their children passed away young.
The story of his last son is tragic. Weeks after his election, on January 6, 1853, the Pierce family had been traveling from Boston by train. For whatever reason, their car derailed and rolled down an embankment. This was near Andover, Massachusetts.
Somehow, both Franklin and Jane Pierce survived. But not their son. They found him in the wreckage. His name was Benjamin. He was 11 years old. He had been crushed to death. They found his body, nearly decapitated. Pierce was not able to hide the horrific sight from his wife.
After the tragic incident, they both suffered severe depression. In fact, she was not seen publicly for nearly two years. Many historians think this likely affected Pierce’s performance as president. Jane Pierce wondered if the train accident was “divine punishment” for her husband’s pursuit and acceptance of the presidency. And so it goes.
He started drinking heavily. It would keep up with him his entire life.
But after his failure during those four years, his party no longer supported him. He was a one-termer, serving from March 4, 1853 – March 4, 1857.
The Civil War came. He showed his sympathies for the south, supporting them with his words and actions. His wife, Jane, died of tuberculosis in Andover, Massachusetts in December 1863. Pierce was further grieved by the death of his close friend Nathaniel Hawthorne in May 1864. Pierce was with Hawthorne when the author died unexpectedly. (Hawthorne had dedicated his final book to Pierce, which was highly controversial on the public stage.)
Through all of this, he continued to drink heavily. And then some. He had severe cirrhosis of the liver. Pierce hired a caretaker, as none of his family members were present in his final days.
And that was the worst-ranked president of the United States. Until now.
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“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War
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“There are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
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