The campaign dispute between

Walter F. Mondale and Vice

President Bush over which candidate has demonstrated superior ''manhood'' has a familiar ring to David Epstein, a Georgetown lawyer. In the course of hobby-related historical research, he discovered that personal courage was an issue in the 1852 Presidential campaign between Franklin Pierce, the Democratic candidate, and Gen. Winfield Scott, a professional soldier who was the Whig nominee.

In 1845 in the Mexican War, it seems that Pierce, a volunteer officer, fainted and fell off his horse. The Whigs resurrected the incident in the campaign as evidence of cowardice and unfitness for the Presidency. But the Democrats countered that Pierce had been knocked unconscious when his horse stumbled and his saddle horn hit him in the groin.

History records that Pierce, a Senator from New Hampshire, had a drinking problem, and the opposition took to describing him as ''a hero of many a well-fought bottle.'' How the voters reacted to these particular charges is unrecorded, but Pierce won by a sizable popular and overwhelming electoral vote, foreshadowing the demise of the Whig Party.

Mr. Epstein is the founder of Friends of Franklin Pierce, a group of which, despite its title, he remains the only member, having rejected other applicants over the years. Its goal, the lawyer says of the 14th President, is ''to rescue him from the obscurity he so richly deserves.''