Take Her Down Fifty Meters, Number One! Rig for Silent Running!

Sound the klaxon! I have spied, like a tanned Yank sub captain [Style Ed.: Doubless, in your imagination, played by Cary Grant? Ombud: Yes.] seeing a low-flying Japanese torpedo plane approaching his command from out of the sunrise over the South China Sea, another person on the blogosphere besides the Doc committed to the study of Franklin Pierce!

(Alarm; running feet; sound of men falling through the hatch)

Red Ted (which, I must say, I believe to be a pseudonym) wonders what the heck was the nature of Frank Pierce's religious belief. He begins with this startling admission:

"I have spent much of the evening trying to make sense of Franklin Pierce."

(Sound of rushing water; hatches slamming shut; wheels being spun frantically)

"I know that I am not alone, [Ombudsman: Yeah, whatever, buddy] and that many of us spend our time trying to figure the guy out. Most of the blogosphere is well aware that Frank was the 14th president of the U.S., that he came from New Hampshire, that he was a dark horse candidate elected on a late ballot as a pro-Southern Democrat from New Hampshire, that he was widely derided during the campaign as being the "hero of many a well fought bottle" because of his disastrous experience as a Brigadier during the Mexican-American War, and that he is widely considered one of the worst American Presidents.

He is confusing to me because of his religious beliefs. A New England Episcopalian, he chose to affirm rather than swear his oath of office. Unusually for Democrats (and political hacks, he qualified as both) his public pronouncements show a complicated sense of civil religion and national providence. Unlike the simple-minded triumphalism of James K. Polk et al, and unlike the civic Providence of Jackson, Harrison, and Taylor (so long as we hold to the Constitution, then the nation will prosper and be blessed), he called forward a sense of national frailty and contingency, a national providence that might not be granted for the future. His term as high priest of American Civil Religion thus looked far more like James Madison and John Quincy Adams than like his contemporaries. The closest similarity is Abraham Lincoln, and yet the two men's Gods, biographies, and backgrounds are mightily different. About the only thing they had in common was a sense of humor.

Then again, humor is tied to an awareness of pain, so perhaps it is not so surprising that the two mid-century advocates of contingent Providence were also much funnier than Buchanan, Fillmore, Polk, or the rest of the crew. For that matter, I have trouble imagining Andrew Jackson teasing his friends the way that Pierce teased Benjamin Brown Finch after the accident with the rum and the lemonade."

The crew is silent; sweat running down their faces; they wait for the sound of a torpedo in the water. Then the Captain clears his throat and says, softly:

So, Doc, what exactly was the accident with the rum and lemonade? Is that some kind of New Hampshire cocktail?

The crew blanches; surely they are now for it...