Peter Bryce (Napoleon's World)

Peter Lawrence Bryce (April 19 1820 - July 8 1894) was a 19th-century American politician who served as both Senator and Governor of Delaware and as President of the United States from 1870-1873, following the death of his predecessor, Horatio Seymour.

A career Nationalist and owner of the Philadelphia Exchange newspaper company, Bryce was from the business establishment of the National Party. Described as an "uncharismatic, dull and uninteresting specimen," Bryce made few public appearances and influenced little police in his two-and-a-half years as President, spending the majority of his time in Delaware and living at the White House on seldom occasions. His hands-off approach to the Presidency, an office he detested, is often cited as one of the reasons why the military and abolitionist wings of the "three-tiered party" took an enormous amount of power away from the monied interests that had dominated the National Party since the 1820's. Bryce is often cited as one of the worst Presidents in history in most historian polls.