Karen S. H. Roggenkamp
Department of Literature and Languages
Texas A&M University, Commerce
Karen_Roggenkamp@tamu-commerce.edu

I.  Introduction

Since 1824 presidential campaign biographies have constituted a distinct, if somewhat unappealing, genre of American literature.  Beginning with a Jacksonian appeal to the mass electorate, these biographies engaged stereotypical images in order to create politically correct symbols of the candidate, which could be directed toward an increasingly literate and print-bound nation.  All campaign biographies employed some of the same stock sets of images, and in addition, Whigs and Democrats had more particular sets of folklore calculated to resonate with voters.

Between 1824 and 1852, biographies became a fixture in each presidential campaign--party presses and independent publishers churned them out every four years, spurring competition among writers and between presses to create a principal biography, one that pamphlets, party tracts, and newspapers would excerpt widely.  But 1852's election is particularly noteworthy for its intense biographical competition--in this year Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life of Franklin Pierce met David Bartlett's The Life of General Frank. Pierce in a battle over eminence, authenticity, and literary capital.

The cost books of Ticknor and Fields note the marketing war between Hawthorne's publisher--Ticknor, Reed, and Fields--and Bartlett's publisher, Derby and Miller.  And Scott Casper has investigated that war with more detail.  Hawthorne agreed to write the Life of Franklin Pierce in early June 1852.  But David Bartlett, a twenty-four-year-old aspiring author, had begun his biography of Pierce a few days earlier--a work that Pierce had apparently already authorized and that the two men had discussed in person.  For reasons that remain unclear, by the middle of July Pierce dissociated himself from Bartlett's work.  About that same time, Hawthorne began earnest work on his biography--but the time lag between the two authors meant that Bartlett's biography would appear in early August, a month earlier than Hawthorne's.  To counter the possibility that the earliest work would be the one that gathered the most attention and sales, Ticknor, Reed, and Fields opened an aggressive advertising campaign forecasting the arrival of Hawthorne's latest great work.  William Ticknor then offered the Hawthorne biography for a lower price than Bartlett's, advertised it nationally, and denigrated Bartlett's work in letters to booksellers.  Ticknor's efforts paid off, for Hawthorne's work attracted a buzz of notoriety while Bartlett's work drew few reviews and remains little more than a footnote in political history.

The efforts that Ticknor, Reed, and Fields undertook to market Hawthorne's work is, however, only half the story.  I found that continued study of this case was necessary because a reading of the complex intersections between politics and publishing points suggestively outside the narrow genre of the campaign biography to a larger print culture and literary market evolving in antebellum America.

Today, I'd like to sketch out first how Hawthorne understood the "required elements" of a Democratic campaign biography, secondly how Bartlett misunderstood those same elements, and finally how both publishers--not just Ticknor, Reed, and Fields--engaged in a campaign against each other to market their firms, their authors, and their shares of the literary marketplace.

II.  Hawthorne's portrayal of Pierce

Hawthorne's biography of Pierce offers both a conventional rehearsal of Democratic party folklore and a coincidentally unconventional gesture toward a wider literary culture.  The formula for a campaign biography must have been obvious and well-practiced by 1852, for Hawthorne captures all the "required" scenes and tropes in his unfolding narrative.  He manipulates the obligatory stages of a candidate's life--for instance, childhood, education, Democratic Party service, career, military involvement--and girds each element with unflappable Democratic symbols.  So, Pierce grows up honoring the concept of a self-made man, for his father was both toughened and educated in the New Hampshire wilderness.  in school Pierce joins the "progressive" crowd, establishing his life-long loyalty to the party.  From childhood he displays a "democracy of good feeling" toward all classes of people.  When he faces failures at school, at law practice, and in Congress, he pulls himself up by the bootstraps and industriously makes himself into a new and improved man.  He even gets a ringing endorsement from Old Hickory himself.

Hawthorne, on the other hand, crafts the solid promotional literature that will sell both his candidate and his book.  But what he also achieves in the Life of Franklin Pierce is a subtle reminder that while he may "merely" be a life-long observer of the candidate, he is also a noted contemporary author.  He adroitly employs narrative devices which refer the reader to the world outside the biography, where being a famous author matters, and where the number of books sold nationally--romances as well as biographies--also matters.

One of these devices involves Hawthorne's casting of himself as a character in the book.  Most campaign biographies begin with a conventional preface in which the writer humbly introduces himself and presents his "non-partisan" credentials.  But where other authors make these typically modest authorial claims and then drop from the narrative entirely, Hawthorne asserts his presence throughout the biography.  He reintroduces himself, for instance, when describing Pierce's days at Bowdoin, where he notices his classmate's innate good will toward all people, along with his admirable patriotism and character.  The men graduate and go their separate ways, but Hawthorne refuses to write himself out of the story.  His character appears again when Pierce enters the political arena, and Hawthorne realizes how his friend has grown as a man, yet how he still possesses an aversion to political cunning and corruption.  A final timely meeting occurs prior to Pierce's departure for war, when Hawthorne notices how fit Pierce is to be a leader of men.

III.  Bartlett's portrayal of Pierce

Even acknowledging such telling authorial manipulations, if read by itself Hawthorne's campaign biography may seem conventional, though filled with troubling political ideologies.  But read against David Bartlett's campaign biography and against the marketing war that occurred between publishers, the whole nature of these two biographies changes dramatically.

Bartlett's book starts off well enough, with the conventional claim to impartiality, and a disclaimer that "General Pierce is not responsible for a line in this volume" (vii).  If Pierce read the entire book, he was no doubt relieved by the disclaimer, for the Bartlett biography never draws a cohesive, let alone glowing, portrait of Pierce.  In fact, the first chapters, while gesturing toward conventional campaign biography elements, actually draw Pierce as an oafish bumpkin rather than as a potential president.

A telling example occurs in the second chapter of the book, where Bartlett sends Pierce off to school and exposes him as a dismal student.  Pierce was in fact a dismal student, but a biographer had to be careful of how to negotiate that fact.  Hawthorne draws from the Democratic Party's image book in this situation, explaining how Pierce became a stronger man precisely because he was once a struggling student.  But Bartlett tries another tactic, one that he probably thought would touch a collective nerve of understanding in his audience.  In this scene, Pierce, having academic problems at Bowdoin, starts cheating from classmate Calvin Stowe's slate.  The teacher calls on him and wonders where in the world Pierce got the correct answer.  Bartlett explains:

Now Frank Pierce could no more tell a lie than he could be guilty of any other wicked and mean action, and supposing that the tutor was soberly asking him a question which he wished answered, he replied:  'Where did I get the answer? Why, from Stowe's slate, to be sure!' The reply came with such perfect san froid that the class burst into merry laughter, while the tutor, if he was displeased with Pierce's want of study, became thoroughly convinced of his honesty of character.  And this has ever been one of the finest traits in his character. . . . He can never lie--is never inconsistent.  (24)

At least in this case Bartlett tries to draw some meaning out of the yarn, but he offers other folksy anecdotes early in the biography without that explanatory context.  When Pierce is teaching country school, for instance, that pesky arithmetic stumps him once again, and he can only solve an algebra problem for his class when he miraculously finds it already worked out by someone else.  In this case, Bartlett presents the scene without a word of explanation, leaving the reader to conclude that Pierce is either decidedly dim-witted, or else an unrepentant plagiarist.  He can't even solve math problems with the great Democratic perseverance that he should inherently display.

Scott Casper argues that such anecdotes serve to give a "novelistic" or popular feel to the text; but in fact the anecdotes undermine Pierce's character rather than define it politically or poetically.  Even more grievously, Bartlett continues to adopt pieces of Whig tradition in his sketch of the candidate.  Bartlett's Pierce springs from a privileged background--nothing of his early life suggests rugged American struggle.  He lacks early and intense loyalties to his party.  In Whiggish form, he is remarkably moral and religious.  He sails easily through his early law practice with his innate intelligence and leadership.  As a statesman, his connections with the lower classes seem weak--indeed, he is a "gentleman," and "a favorite in the best circles of Washington society" (32).  Bartlett even portrays the beloved Andrew Jackson as crass, unlike Pierce, who is "a graceful, polished man." (124).

IV.  The campaign for the literary marketplace

Throughout the narrative, Bartlett seems confused about which party folklore he should reproduce.  But if he lacked sufficient intimacy with party icons, why did he offer his services to Pierce?  The answer to the question lies, I believe, in the broader 1850s literary market, and in an aspiring writer's self interest.  Hawthorne clearly understood the weight of his name outside the political world, and he wished to take advantage of that nominal capital in order to further the sales of his book and of his candidate.  He asked that his book be billed as "HAWTHORNE'S Life of GENERAL PIERCE," with special emphasis on his own name.  "Go it strong," he tells Ticknor in one August letter.  "We are politicians now, and you must not expect to conduct yourself like a gentlemanly publisher."  And the publishers did in fact seize the opportunity for cheap advertising, both for Hawthorne and for the firm's other authors.  Some editions of the biography even presented advertisements for Hawthorne's romances on the inside cover--preceding the standard portrait of Pierce.

But if Ticknor, Reed, and Fields--and Hawthorne himself--exploited Hawthorne's name and the biographical form in some deft advertising moves, David Bartlett and his publishers also wanted to partake in a lucrative and growing market.  Bartlett had just started crafting a name for himself before the American reading public as a travel writer.  In fact, during the summer of 1852 Derby and Miller were in the publishing stages with Bartlett's first book, entitled What I Saw in London, or Men and Things in the Great Metropolis.

Bartlett was reading the proof sheets for his London book in early June 1852 when Pierce won the nomination and J. C. Derby immediately approached the young man about writing the requisite campaign biography.  I think we have to read the timing as less than coincidental.  If Bartlett's travel book could appear almost simultaneously with his campaign biography, both works and their author could assuredly gather some extra attention.  It all speaks less to political loyalty than to desire for increasing the writer's name-value in a competitive market.  Interestingly, Derby's memoirs describe Bartlett as "a firey Free-Soiler" and "a rank abolitionist."  This was clearly a business move, not a political one.

Even more suggestive is why the publishing firm of Derby and Miller might have been so interested in producing the biography--it could count on the book not only to increase the prominence of Bartlett's name, but also to increase public awareness of the firm's specialties:  popular history and, you guessed it, biography.  Unlike Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, which specialized in fiction, Derby and Miller focused on biography and history.  And in fact they had already published a principal campaign biography for Zachary Taylor.  So if Ticknor, Reed, and Fields capitalized on Hawthorne's name to promote their novelist and their fictional market share, Derby and Miller capitalized on the biographical form to promote their new non-fiction writer and their own market specialties.

V.  Conclusion

Ticknor, Reed, and Fields and Derby and Miller each pursued the lucrative campaign biography market after 1852.  Ticknor and Fields' 1856 biography of John Fremont--written, ironically, by Hawthorne's Custom House enemy Charles Upham--constituted 25% of the firm's annual print output, becoming their most profitable work for 1856.  Letter indicate that once again Ticknor and Fields engaged in a publishing war to suppress the reception of competing campaign biographies.  Derby and Miller continued its pursuit in the competitive field as well, publishing 1856 biographies of Buchanan, Fremont, and Cass, as well as Fillmore, Houston, and Law.  Apparently, party loyalty held little importance in the publishing world by now.

Ultimately, investigation into one case where politics, writing, and publishing intersect underscores the increasing importance of print culture in antebellum America.  Michael Winship observes that such politicized publishing wars demonstrate how the book trade "is a social and cultural institution situated in history" (19).  A comparison of Hawthorne's Life of Franklin Pierce and David Bartlett's The Life of Gen. Frank. Pierce loses its texture without the framework of marketing.  The knowledges, methods, and motivations of each author serve to underscore the conventions of the narrow literary genre that campaign biographies constitute.  But the other campaign of 1852--that which took place in the expanding antebellum publishing market--points outside the text to the social and cultural contexts where literature, imagery, politics, and publishing merge.