Today in 1804, the birthday of President Franklin Pierce. He's not well known today, but in his time, people learned about the 14th president through a biography written by the acclaimed novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Do note that while the state did honor Pierce with a statue after fifty years or so, they made sure it was technically on city - not state - ground, as if to say, he's mostly yours, Concord.
Franklin Pierce Dollar, a photo by bcarlson33 on Flickr.
My coworker Stephanie loaned me this piece from the now-scaled-back presidential dollar series.
A number of presidents are considered failures; Franklin Pierce is one of them. But he had a pretty good excuse: everyone in his life was dying around him.
