Perhaps being president isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

October 8, 1869 –
Franklin Pierce, an American politician and the fourteenth President of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857 is to date the only president from New Hampshire and was the first president born in the nineteenth century.

His good looks and inoffensive personality caused him to make many friends, but he suffered tragedy in his personal life (all three of his children died in childhood – don’t ask how his third child died) 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.

After losing the Democratic nomination for a second term, Pierce reportedly quipped “there’s nothing left to do but get drunk” (quoted also as “after the White House what is there to do but drink?“) which he apparently did frequently. He once ran over an elderly woman while driving a carriage drunk. Franklin Pierce died in Concord, New Hampshire on this date at 64 years old, from cirrhosis of the liver, thus ending his miserable life.

And so it goes