The one-star presidents: Harrison & Pierce

William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren Harding each received one-star ratings on A Visual History of the American Presidency. Harrison, really, deserves an incomplete — he only served thirty-two days in office.

The other three men who fall into our one-star category are slightly more interesting. President Franklin Pierce, for example, filled his cabinet with political rivals,  and to this day remains the only administration not to see any change in the cabinet during his tenure. He suffered from a seeming lack of willpower, however, when it came to the expansion of slavery.

Pierce stated in his inauguration that his administration “will not be deterred by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion.” Pierce continually temporized, refusing to cool the passions aroused by the Compromise of 1850 or the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Posts on Buchanan — the president everyone loves to hate — and Harding will follow shortly.