The USA in the Time of Millard Fillmore
1850-1853
by Mike Donovan
The Finger Lakes President - Lawyer –‘Moderate Whig’ – The Apprentice – California Statehood –Buffalo Fill – FSL – Fillmore the Fill-in – No VP
Fillmore was the last President who was neither Democrat nor Republican. “His accidency” took over upon the death of Taylor and is one of our least respected Presidents. Comedians who want to put an obscure President into a punch line usually choose Fillmore. I prefer Chester Alan Arthur.
Millard Fillmore was an exemplary Christian. He didn’t smoke or drink and when he was traveling he requested to stay at inns where they didn’t serve booze or allow stand-up comedy. When he was a teen-ager Millard won a small lottery and immediately promised that he would never gamble another penny as long as he lived and he never did (apparently he knew the secret slogan of the casino, ‘you can’t beat the time’). Of course, Las Vegas didn't exist at the time, so it wasn't the same challenge to keep the pledge as it would be today.
No great scandal rocked Fillmore’s time and he led us into no war. However he does stand accused by history of doing too much to avoid war. It was Millard who helped pass the Compromise of 1850, supposedly settling the differences between the Yankees and the South and avoiding armed rebellion.
It was a no-win situation that all the pre-Civil War Presidents were stuck with. If you prevent the Civil War you are praised by your contemporaries and condemned by historians for the next several hundred years. If you stand up to the slave power and start the Civil War you are condemned by your contemporaries and praised by historian for the next several hundred years.
Who wants to start a war? Prevention is the obvious. But the strategy of peace through strength only works when applied to foreign nations. To prevent Civil War only peace through appeasement had any hope and was adopted by several men who held the Presidency before 1860.
Outgoing President Zachary Taylor although a Southerner himself, had been something of a hard-liner for the Northern interest, to the South’s surprise and dismay. Henry Clay and his compromise team could not get their bills through while Taylor was alive. When Taylor died and the more mellow Fillmore became Chief of State, the Compromise of 1850 became law.
The Compromise was not a single bill, but a series of individual bills that were all agreed upon piece by piece.
Several parts of The Compromise of 1850 were highly favorable to the Northern side of the great issues. But the most controversial point was the one which favored the South. That was the Fugitive Slave Law which gave Southern slaveowners the right to track down and apprehend runaway slaves in the North. Even though the South lost much more than it gained in the Compromise of 1850, it was in the North that was outraged by the Compromise.
CABINET
When Fillmore took office, all the cabinet members from the Taylor administration resigned except for Dan Webster.
Sec. of State---Daniel Webster (MA)---1850-1852
Edward Everett (MA)-----1852-1853
Secretary of War----C. M. Conrad-------1850-1853
Sec. of Treasury-----Thomas Corwin----1850-1853
Attorney General-----J.J. Crittenden-----1850-1853
Secretary of the Navy ---John Kennedy- 1850--1852
CABNOTES
One of Fillmore’s Secretaries of the Navy was John Kennedy. On his first day in office he gave a speech in which he said, “Ask not what the Navy can do for you, ask what you can do for the Navy.” Then he cheated on his wife 489 times.
Edward Everett of Massachusetts was the former President of Harvard and later ran for Vice President in the Election of 1860 on the Constitutional Union ticket.
BIO
Millard Fillmore was born on January 7 1800 in Locke, New York, (Cayuga County) not far from Rochester. Locke today is called the town of Summerhill. I was a radio DJ right where the letter N is in New York on the map below. It’s a region of old mountains alternating with verdant valleys spotted with many lakes and rivers, a unique and beautiful mix. Beer is king.
Locke in 1800 was on the fringe of European-settled territory. It was part of the ‘wild west’ at the time. Life was precarious. The nearest cabin to the Fillmore homestead was six kilometers away.
Fillmore’s father was a poor farmer from Vermont who had migrated west. After an early pioneer life without a day of formal education, Fillmore became an apprentice to a fuller (cloth maker) at the age of 14.
But Fillmore’s master was a brutal man. One day young Millard lost his temper and threatened his boss with an ax. Probably not a good idea. It's not the kind of thing you want to put on your next job application. ‘Reason for leaving last position.’ - ‘Threatened the boss with an axe.’
Fillmore bolted. He finished his apprenticeship with another master and purchased his freedom in 1819 for $30.
Then he became apprenticed to a Mr. Wood who was (fortunately for him) a decent man and a lawyer. If Fillmore had attacked Mr. Wood with an axe it would have made for some witty headlines and a different 14th President. Fillmore was determined to become a lawyer and began to support himself by teaching school.
Then it was the bright lights of the big city.
Buffalo!
Fillmore packed up and went to the city of snow without a friend unless you count the four dollars he had in his pocket. Millard found the same jobs in Buffalo that he had held before, teaching and becoming a lawyer’s aide. He also did some time as a POW (post office worker.)
There are two seasons in Buffalo. The Fourth of July, and winter.
Like Barak Obama, Millard Fillmore fell in love with his law teacher. She was 22, three years his senior. It’s not unusual for an American boy to fall in love with his teacher, but in this case she loved him back. Abbie Powers taught Millard the finer points in reading, writing and law. In 1826 Mr. Fillmore made Miss Abigail Powers, Mrs. Fillmore. He paid her back for teaching him to read by making her the First Lady of the United States.
The newlywed Millard began his law practice in East Aurora, NY. He quickly gained a statewide reputation for excellence.
Then came politics.
MF was elected to the NY State legislature in 1828. He began his political career as an Anti-Mason under the guidance of the famous Thurlow Weed. Millard lobbied hard for the abolition of the jail sentence for people in debt. Three cheers for Millard Fillmore. If they hadn't done away with debtor prison, Firestone Tire would have put me away 27 years ago.
Fillmore was twice elected to the US Congress and served as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
Then he became United States Senator Fillmore from New York.
When the Whigs picked him for VP, Millard was considered an anti-slavery man, but then as he began presiding over the debates on the subject in the Senate he began to display a more and more a pro-South view.
Like many of our obscure Presidents, Fillmore had a delightful personality. That is, by all accounts. I never met the guy.
In his post as Senate chairman, Millard earned a reputation as a reasonable and likeable man with a good sense of humor. Fillmore’s persona helped to diffuse some of the tensions in the Senate chambers.
Historians can call him a mediocrity all they want, but Millard Fillmore possessed a sharp mind and was popular man. Smug historians can write all they want about “mediocrities” and “nonentities” in the White House but no one gets there by accident, and they certainly have more bragging rights than any sniper historians puffing their pipes at a typewriter a hundred years later. Even the obscure ones like Harding, Fillmore and the Harrisons did not get that far in life without the help of their personality and their deeds. “Obscure president” and “nonentity in the White House are both oxymoronic,” as surely as calling someone a “billionaire loser.” The job speaks for itself. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Historians calling various presidents mediocrities is a bit silly really. Check out the mirror, buddy. The worst presidents of all time were fantastic individuals even if only for having seen the events of history and politics from that amazing center of the wheel. A mediocrity could maybe walk in to the Presidency, but a mediocrity could never walk out.
A lot of the President bashing that goes on in this country is just auto-eroticism. If I can say that the President is a moron or an evil fascist or an incompetent mediocrity, then look at how great that makes me by implication. That's the psychological motivation behind a lot of that. It's no coincidence that the more rich a person is, the bigger they are in life, the less likely they are to start calling the current president an idiot. I look up to Presidents of the United States. I don't look down on any of them. No, not even Jimmy Carter!
EVENTS,
COMPROMISE OF 1850
CALIFORNIA STATEHOOD 1850
SLUMP OF 1851
THE CRAFTS RESCUED IN BSOTON
MINKINS RESCUED IN BOSTON
FRANK LOPEZ FILIBUSTER
PERRY MISSION TO JAPAN
MAINE ADOPTS PROHIBITION
DEATH OF CLAY AND WEBSTER
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
INAUGURATION
Fillmore’s was the hottest inaugural in American history. The new president took the oath of office on a day that the thermometer read a humid 92 degrees. (The coldest inaugural was Reagan in 1985. It was actually 78 but his heart was cold.)
MILLARD’S ECONOMY
Fillmore’s served his time in a difficult economy. I hear that Obama read about him recently and felt bad for the guy.
There was a mini-slump that bottomed out in 1851. While times were good for American farmers and those living in rural areas, the cities were hurting. The flood of immigrants created housing shortages, depressed wages, high unemployment. (That’s not to mention Marxism, which the German immigrants brought in like a bubonic plague.)
High tariffs kept the price of imported manufactures too high for most people and hurt the US shipping industry. The cityslump of 51 was the reverse of a later situation in the 1920’s when the cities were ‘roaring’ but the farmers were suffering.
YOUNG AMERICA
Immigration was coming on strong in Fillmore’s time, especially the Irish. The newcomers had few grey hairs, which is more than I can #!&*?% say. European visitors often remarked about the youth of the nation. In France at this time, 52% of the people were under 30 years of age. In the United States more than 70% were less than 30.
A criminal cult was even formed in New York City whose goal was to make death mandatory for anyone in America over the age of 70. Charles Kinison, the leader of the “Get in the Box Society” was arrested and sent to an asylum after two elderly people were kidnapped and rescued in the nick of time.
COMPROMISE OF 1850;
Throughout the slavery debates, the issue in Washington was not the right or wrong of slavery but only the legality or illegality of it. The debate over right and wrong was left to places like Boston and Charleston respectively. The logjam over the Omnibus Compromise of Henry Clay (see last chapter) was broken up by double-death.
The pro-South/pro-slavery road-block of John Calhoun ended with his death in May, and President Taylor’s pro-North obstructionism was negated by his dying in July.
When these men got in the box, the Compromise of 1850 made it out of the box.
The Compromise of 1850 was a total of five new laws passed. The exact same voting records prevailed in none of them.
One; California was to enter the Union as a free state, thus officially upsetting the balance of power in the Senate between slave and free states.
Two: The slave trade was to be abolished in the District of Columbia.
Three: Utah enters the nation as a territory without the controversial Wilmot Proviso which forbade slavery in new territories acquired in the Mexican War.
Four: New Mexico enters the Union as a territory without Wilmot and gains much land in the Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute. Texas, in return for the concession on the boundary, would be compensated by a $10 million bribe. Texas thus got its taste of Polkian diplomacy under Fillmore.
And last but not least,
Five: a new strict enforcement of the fugitive slave laws.
This final provision would create outrage in the North. From now on the entire federal machinery of courts, marshals and deputy marshals would be under orders to actively pursue all runaway slaves and capture them for their southern owner. Any sworn claim by any slave-owner would be honored without cynicism. Bounty hunters could also get in on the action with federal sanction, if not subsidy.
These fugitive slave laws were for the most part already long standing on the books in most states, north and south. A fugitive slave law was in fact in the original 1787 Constitution. But the North had been ignoring and defying these laws at the state level for dozens of years. With the Compromise of 1850, the law would be given the strength of Federal backing and enforcement.
The idea of southern slave-catchers roaming the cities of the North was simply unacceptable to many Yankees. In answer to the Fugitive Slave Laws many Northern states and towns enacted “Personal Liberty Laws.” There were local laws that defiantly contradicted and challenged the Fugitive Slave Law.
One of the evils of the nasty law was the gray area of proof. There was little discernable difference between a runaway slave and a free black accused of being one. This led to many simple kidnappings of free blacks in the North who were sold into the south and slavery. The hijacking of free blacks in Northern cities and towns increased the outcry against the FSL. 15,000 free Northern blacks were so alarmed for their safety that they fled to Canada. They in effect created an a Overground Railroad from the North to the very north.
Fugitives seized by slave-catchers in the North were not allowed to testify in their own defense, were not entitled to a trial by jury and could be identified as a runaway with ease by almost anyone with the slightly claim to a badge. A Boston poster warned free blacks not to talk to police officers lest they be arrested and sent south for the bounty. Cops like to make a little money on the side.
The FSL also did not recognize grandfather clauses or statutes of limitations. Slaves who escaped 20 years ago were to be apprehended and returned south. Worst of all, the law stipulated that all US citizens were required to assist in the capture of runaway slaves or be subject to arrest and fine for obstruction of justice! These laws, especially the one just mentioned took all the fence-sitters in the North and pushed them over to the anti-slavery side.
The Compromise of (September) 1850 was celebrated with much fanfare in many cities, especially in the South. Dixie had conceded much, but the Fugitive Slave Law was a significant consolation prize. California was admitted a free state but it was no great loss to a Southerner. Cal wasn’t about to go slave-state anyway, although some blacks and Indians were taken there as slaves in violation of several laws.
The Nashville Convention of secessionist hotheads was just getting under way when the law was passed. It backed off and accepted the Compromise. South Carolina alone voted for secession. Since it did not want to secede all by itself, South Carolina reluctantly backed down. The compromise temporarily turned the flame off the kettle and sort of united the nation.
The Fugitive Slave Act and the Compromise of 1850 marked the beginning of the end of the Whig Party. When it supported the Compromise of 1850 the Whigs exposed the Party for the opportunist weather-vane it had always been from the time they formed for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Jackson-Van Buren dynasty. The Whig fell off the liberal head revealing no real liberal at all; just bald opportunism.
The Congressional elections of 1850, two months after the passing of the Compromise, were not kind to the Whigs. The Republican Party would later be formed on the ruins of the discredited Whig Party.
Some historians write that if the Civil War had broken out in 1850, the South would have had a better chance at victory than it did later in 1861. The Compromise of 1850 bought the North ten more years to increase its population, manufacturing power and railroad communications system. If this is so then the illiberal compromise of 1850 may have in the long run saved the Union in a way that no one appreciated at the time.
TOOTSIE'S CRAFTY ESCAPE
In 1848 William and Ellen Craft were Southern slaves in Georgia who for some strange reason wanted to escape to the North.
William Caft was black. But Ellen was from mixed parentage. Her true father was her white master, so she Ellie could easily pass for a Caucasian. William and Ellen devised a crafty plan to get away from Georgia. What if Ellen dressed up as a white man and pretended to be travelling North on business with her black slave to keep “him” company? It wasn't that unusual for white slavemasters to travel into free states with their slaves and return to slave territory after finishing up their business in the free world. That's how the Dred Scott Case came about later.
The plan worked. Ellen adopted the name of Bob Craft and two traveled through the South by boat, stagecoach and train. Her servant William attended humbly to his master's needs.
The Crafts had a few close calls when some people wondered why this frail little white man would risk the flight of his big strong slave in free territory, but William would act especially dumb and fawning at the right moment, thus answering the question. The the two whites would exchange a knowing racist smile at how feeble this particular slave was indeed, and that concern would be put to rest.
Ellen was illiterate, since it was illegal in Georgia to teach slave to read or write and that presented a problem when “he” had to sign in at Hotel registers. So Ellen wrapped her hands in bandgaes and pretended to be recovering from severe burns, which wasn't far from the truth since she had been burned by slavery since the day she was born.
The Crafts made it to Philadelphia and then migrated to Boston where they both became accepted members of the community and made both black and white friends and took full time jobs.
Tne came the Fugitive Slave Laws and the old Craft masters got wind of what happened to their property, in Ellens' case the master's daughter.
Bounty hunters in the fall of 1850 had the place surrounded. The house where they were being sheltered was under seige by the bounty hunters from the South. The owner of the house filled the building with explosives and threated to “blow the whole neighborhood to smithereens if you turkeys take one ste inside this door.”
The standoff escalated when mobs of Bostonians began to follow the bounty hunters around, calling them names and threatening to “put you all in chains and then see how you like it!”
The bounty hunters were not about to give up, and only left Beantown when they got the bad news that the Crafts had decided to leave the country for Canada, giving up their little life on Beacon Hill forever. From Nova Scotia the Crafts moved to England for 17 years where the expatriots worked for the abolition of slavery until the Civil War settled it. Late in life they returned to Georgia as free man and woman, no longer pretending to both be men.
The most aggrevating thing about researching this story is that William Craft's nickname for Ellen was “Tootsie.” Its bad enough that they made that abomniably bad movie with Dustin Hoffman as a hideously ugly cross-dresser that couldn't fool a blind man with dementia. People in the Space Shuttle could glance out the window and ask, “why that guy on the ground making a fool of himself pretending to be a woman?” The real Ellen “Tootsie” Craft could pass for a mild mannered white man quite well, and her experience proved it. Hollywood had to add insult to incompetence by stealing the title from a true story and a noble couple who rescued the real Tootsie from slavery back in Fillmore's time.
SHADRACH MINKINS
Another of the most celebrated episodes of this nature involved an escaped slave named Shadrach Minkins.
Minkins was living in Boston and working as a waiter after escaping slavery in the South. He was arrested by Federal authorities on February 15, 1851.
The Fugitive Slave Law had teeth. But so did the people of Boston. A vigilante mob of the decent broke into the Boston jail and freed Shadrach. Before any countermeasures could be enforced, Minkins was safely transported to Canadian freedom. He lived a long and free life in Montreal and is buried in the catholic Mount Royal cemetery (Mount Royal of course, the name of Montreal in English.)
The South was angered by the Shadrach incident and US Secretary of State Daniel Webster was not happy with the behavior of his home state, and said so publicly. The Shadrach affair was another factor in the decline and fall of Webster’s once holy name. When Webster condemned the actions of his home state in a rightous cause, he put his picture beside the phrase “has-been”in the dictionary.
UTC FEVER 1852-3
In 1852 Cabin fever swept the country. In that year a mom from Maine with three kids wrote the most politically influential novel in American history, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was the story of a family of slaves, written with great sympathy for the enslaved blacks. Today you can write a movie or play based on slavery in 1852, get it produced, and the role of good guys and bad guys would by a foregone conclusion before you typed up the title page. But in the actual 1852 writing a novel in which the whites were the “baddies” and the slaves the “goodies” took guts and was going out on a limb with a controversial motif.
The slave-master in the story, Simon LeGree is an awful man. The main characters are a black family torn apart and suffering from the evils of slavery.
The title character, a slave named Tom had such a pure heart that he actually felt sorry for LeGree. ‘Uncle Tom’ could see that slavery had ruined his master’s soul. Tom had compassion for his terrible master even if the man might whip him if he didn’t do what Simon says.
The book was a sensation throughout the North and was made into a wildly successful stage play. Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold a million copies in less than a year and a half. That would be a successful book even today. The book was banned in the South and the play never opened there. It was not only the most influential novel in US history, it was probably the most influential book in US history, (excluding the Bible and the autobiography of Phyllis Diller - Common Sense it should be remembered was published before there even was a USA.)
The theatre version of Uncle Tom's Cabin was probably seen more than the book was read. Every city and town of any size had its own company putting it on. Some presentations had to be cancelled because of deliberately disruptive rioting in the lobbies by white supremacists, combined with angry critics who thought the acting was weak.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin changed the temperament of the North. Tomania swept the region. Art grabbed the political center and pulled it to the left. Now the average Northerner became an abolitionist fellow traveler. Garrison suddenly had plenty of company. Like the movement against the Vietnam War in the later 1960’s, the game was won when center slowly turned left. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the Tet offensive for anti-Slavery.
Note: The Tom character has left as its legacy the derogatory term ‘Uncle Tom’ that black people like to hurl at black people for being too nice to white people. The term in its mean-spirited extreme is now used against any black guy that doesn’t hate white people.
Another point worth mentioning is that many reader's today complain that the book just doesn't translate into the modern era. I agree. The book is absolutely unreadable.
SLAVERY IN DEFIANT RETREAT
Slavery was on the defensive in Fillmore’s time and the signs were everywhere. The controversy over UTC, the FSL, the Wilmot Proviso, the Gag Rule and everything else was indicative overall of a momentum against the crime of human bondage for profit. Slavery “had become an anachronism among modern civilized races,” in the words of historian James Truslow Adams.
Slavery still exists today in America. It’s called prison. But you have to actually do something bad to become enslaved today. Back then you only had to wake up one morning with the wrong skin color.
Lincoln had been right of course when he said that the nation could not continue on forever half slave and half free. What the Simon Legrees of the South appreciated was that it was even less likely to continue on forever with a majority of free states and a few slave. This was where the country was headed, and was why the South was becoming more and more militant in spite of all these ostensibly calming compromises.
There is no doubt that the anti-slavery agitation in the North was the number one issue in the Fillmore era.
Fillmore thought much more highly of the Compromise than it turned out to be worth in the long run. He repeatedly referred to it as the “final solution” to this “exited” problem.
CHRISTIANA RIOT 9/11 1851
Another dramatic example of resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law took place at Christiana, Pennsylvania on the morning of September 11 1851. Two angry Southerners, “Big Ed” Gorsuch and his son, “Little Ed’ tracked down four of their runaway slaves and cornered them at Christiana. The Gorsuch posse included of 18 other armed white men.
But there was an entire community of blacks sheltering and protecting these runaways in Christiana (appropriately named since we all know where Christ would have stood on the slavery issue.) The protecting group even had a name complete with capitol letters, the Negro Vigilance Committee.
The Gorsuch gang met up with the Vigilance Committee on the front porch of William Parker, a card-carrying member of NVC. There was a standoff between the groups.
Gorsuch demanded the possession of his former slave named Samuel Thompson whom he visually identified. Samuel came forward and said to his ex-master, “Old man, you had better go back home to Maryland.”
Gorsuch snapped back, “You’d better give up and come home with me.”
Samuel had an answer for that too. He grabbed Gorsuch’s rifle out of the old man’s hands and clubbed him to the ground. Gorsuch started to get up and Sam Thompson clubbed him back down. The whites tried to open fire on the blacks but weren’t quick enough on the draw. The African-Americans got in close and disarmed the whites, beating them with their own guns and sending them fleeing.
The leader of the posse, Ed Gorsuch was dead. Men were wounded on both sides.
30 blacks and whites were subsequently arrested and charged with treason. The trial was high publicity. All the defendants were found not guilty. One of them had been charged under the preposterous provision of the fugitive slave law that said that the citizen who did not help the police round up the slaves was guilty of treason. This man was a Quaker that had merely said no to joining a posse to capture the blacks, and his trial spotlighted the insanity of the law that put him on trial in the first place.
MAINE PROHIBITION;
In 1851 Maine became the first state to pass a prohibition against the manufacture or sale of alcohol. Neil Dow the Mayor of Portland and the man who has been called the “father of prohibition” guided the law through the Augusta Legislature.
Maine had already made the first breakthrough on legal restriction with an 1849 law banning the sale of booze at cattle fairs. Elsewhere, an Illinois “Quart Law” of 1851 banned sale of alcohol in quantities larger than one quart.
Opponents of the Maine Law and the prohibition movement referred to the teetotalers in derision as ‘Maine-iacs.’ People from Maine still refer to themselves by the nickname, but fewer know that Mainiac originated with the alcohol controversy.
Maine remained dry until 1934 and ‘Portland Neil’ Dow went on to run for president on the Prohibition Party ticket.
I don't know why God made alcohol. My life and this planet would be better if it had never existed. I really don't like the stuff at all, a sip of expensive red wine notwithstanding. It gives me a headache and working to drunks gives me an even bigger one.
POST OFFICE RATES
Fillmore led the way for the reduction in the postal rate from five to three cents per letter. His younger experience as a POW in Buffalo may have been the reason for his passionate interest in this ever-exiting subject. (The joke POW = Post Office Worker comes from my friend John Steiner who is writing jokes full time now after falling out of a burning second story window while working for the Boston Fire Department. I wish I was joking.)
I today's Obama era the price a first class stamp is 42 cents, but it goes up so often that I have to double check every time I mail a letter. The conceited tech-world refers to physically mailing letters as “snail mail.”
IMMIGRATION
Relative to the overall population, the influx of “foreigners” in the decade from 1845 to 1855 was the most dramatic in US history. More than three million immigrants arrived in that time, the equivalent at the time of the combined population of 9 states!
Chauvinism, religious bigotry and xenophobia became major problems, especially in the cities. In many of the biggest cities the foreign-tongued outnumbered the native. This led to much resentment and to the rise in power of the racist, the placist (I hate you because of where you’re from), and the anti-Catholic movements that jelled collectively into new and sadly powerful political parties. The most prominent placist racists were the American Party (the “Know-Nothings,”) and the so called “Nativist” movement, which stood for ‘if you’re not a native, then move out.’
TRANSPORTATION
The explosion in railroad building was peaking in Fillmore’s time. When he was sworn in there were 6,000 miles of railroads in the USA; when he left the White House there were 12,000. The eastern half of the United States was being vanquished by steel. There was more movement in the transportation revolution in the 1850’s than in any decade in the US history.
On Christmas Eve 1852 the last spike was driven into the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad amidst great celebration. Now an American could travel from Baltimore to Pittsburgh without the aid of a road, horse or boat, and do it 30 times faster. The USA had finally conquered the Appalachian Mountain barrier. The way was open to Chicago and the Ohio valley and from there directly to the mighty Mississippi. The coasts would not link by rail until 1869.
All of the important railroads on Fillmore’s Inauguration Day moved in an east-west direction. Illinois Senator Douglas wanted this geo-injustice rectified. “Duggie” pushed through the Senate an appropriation for a north to south railroad, the Illinois Central. The branch from Chicago to Cairo Illinois was just completed when the Civil War broke out in 1861, but the link to the Gulf of Mexico was not. This turned out to be a political and military factor in both the outbreak and the prosecution of the Civil War. It heped the North by accident that the full line was not finished.
PERRY MISSION;
President Fillmore supported a strong navy. He authorized a famous and important foreign policy naval mission to Japan. Commodore Matthew Perry was commissioned to take our most impressive steel warships on a shock and awe visit to Tokyo.
US ships had been whaling and fishing for decades in the far Pacific, and there was a big problem with Japan. Shipwrecked American sailors killed or imprisoned when they came staggering ashore on Japanese soil. This was not an isolated incident here and there but standard operational procedure and had to stop. It as in large part to address this problem that the fleet was shipped out. The press in the US and Europe were alive with interest on how this daring and provocative Perry/Fillmore mission would fare.
Japan’s isolationist refusal to trade or even communicate with foreign powers was bothering much of the world. For 25 years Britain and Russia had been trying to convince Japan to open itself up to international trade. The Dutch and Chinese shared one isolated trading station at Nagasaki but other than that there wasn’t an occidental to be found on the four islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Yedo. Jesuit missionaries had been expelled long ago for what the Japanese saw as misbehavior.
Japan was only looking strictly inward at this time. Fillmore and his fleet were determined to turn Japan’s eyes outward.
America needed a coaling station between San Francisco and Shanghai, needed its shipwrecked sailors to be treated with mercy, and wanted the profits from trade with Japan. Perry and diplomat Townsend Harris sailed with a letter from President Fillmore giving his warmest greetings along with a more important warning of “severe chastisement” if any more American shipwrecked sailors were attacked or imprisoned. The four largest US warships bound for Japan were each 20 times more powerful than anything the Japanese possessed and could shell Tokyo at will if the Japanese Emperor told Perry to buzz off.
Perry, whose brother was the famous war hero of the 1812 Battle of Lake Erie, Oliver Hazard Perry, did not reach Japan until Pierce was president, but the great fleet of gun-ships set out under Fillmore with the eyes of the globe upon it.
LOPEZ AGAIN:
Narciso Lopez tried a second time to conquer Cuba for the United States slave interests without the approval of the United States. Contrary to popular leftist history, the United States government did not back the Central American filibusters of rogue Americans in the middle 1800’s. Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan all opposed these filibusterers because of their flagrant defiance of international law.
However Lopez almost enlisted the support and leadership of future Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. The export of the philosophy of slavery was clearly one of the motives behind the Cuba fixation of the Southern filibusters (the word ‘filibuster’ comes from the Dutch meaning freebooters or buccaneers.) Narciso’s small army of 500 men, about half of them American, the rest mostly Cuban and Hungarian exiles, set out from New Orleans with a wink from the local authorities on August 3, 1851.
The busters landed in Cuba at a place called Playtas (map) and drove inland six miles. The local population gave them no support and Spanish military forces easily defeated them. Lopez and his followers fled back to the landing site but were cut off by combat patrol boats. They surrendered. The 50 men were shot after a rapid trial and conviction. Lopez was later executed in more formal and public demonstration. The entire affair was remarkably similar to the Bay of Pigs fiasco of 1961.
The Lopez filibuster had been closely monitored by a rooting public in the American South. So when Lopez was executed, there was a reaction against the Spanish in New Orleans. The Spanish consulate was sacked and burned and Spanish-owned stores were attacked and damaged while the local police whistled or read the paper.
Spain demanded an apology and compensation. Secretary of State Webster suggested that the Spanish should seek redress in the state and local courts of Louisiana. We all know what that meant. Lots of luck.
But once Webster established had the principle that the US did not have to compensate Spain for the riot damage, it was at the next step free to do so magnanimously. The USA later paid off Spain on the claims against the Louisiana rowdies.
President Fillmore discussed the Lopez affair in his Annual Message to Congress in december 1851. Millard made it clear that both he and his government had been against it from the start, had tried to prevent it, and would continue to work against any further such expeditions.
DEATH OF CLAY AND WEBSTER:
In June of 1852 Henry Clay died. Then Daniel Webster passed away in October. Both men had come ever so close to the Presidency and both had wanted it very very much. Both had been sectional candidates who tried unsuccessfully to appeal to a broad-based constituency and both had lost lifetime reputations for supporting the Compromise of 1850. As historian Woodrow Wilson puts it, both men “died with the infinite uneasiness of that last failure heavy upon them.”
Abolitionist radical Wendell Phillips in a speech against slavery in Boston on January 17, 1853 shed no tears for either man. As for the passing of Henry Clay, Phillips said that, “from a multitude of breaking hearts there went up nothing but gratitude to God when it pleased him to call that great sinner from this world.” Wo.
As for honoring the memory of both late men;
“We seek only to be honest men, and speak the same
of the dead as of the living. If the grave that hides
their bodies could swallow also the evil they have
done .. we might at least enjoy the luxury of forgetting
them. But the evil that men do lives after them, and
example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from
the grave.”
Now that’s cold. Wendell Phillips was possibly even more cold, unfair, and mean to politicians he disagreed with than Kevin Phillips!
SUPREME COURT
Fillmore the fill-in appointed one person to the United States Supreme Court. Ben Curtis of Massachusetts was verified but didn’t last long. He resigned after an argument with Taney over the Dred Scott case. Good for Ben. Curtis later was one of the defense lawyers for Andrew Johnson at his Impeachment Trial.
AFTER OFFICE;
Millard Fillmore’s wife died one month after Franklin Pierce took over the White House. His only daughter died less than one year later.
Fillmore retired to the greatest mansion in the city of Buffalo and became its first citizen. He supported culture and education for the rest of his 21 years after the presidency. In 1858 Mill married the apple of his eye, a rich woman 13 years his junior, the lovely Miss McIntosh. It was a win win win situation.
For his loyal service to the Whig Party Fillmore was rewarded with the party’s refusal to support him for the nomination in 52. The big Whigs backed him mildly at the opening, but deliberately not enough to make any difference in his behalf. Fillmore led on the first ballot at the 52 convention but was dropped in favor of war hero Win Scott.
But Fillmore was not finished. In 1856 he became the candidate of the racist and chauvinist American Party (also known as the ‘Know-Nothing’ party because of their secretive answers to outsiders) and was also the nominee of what little was left of the Whig Party. Mill Fill, a double-nominee, took the electoral vote of Maryland but finished well short of the Democrats and the Republicans in 1856.
Although he officially led a regiment of home militia in Buffalo during the Civil War, Millard Fillmore was consistently openly opposed to President Lincoln and his policies.
In April of ’65 when Abe Lincoln was killed, a crowd gathered in anger outside Fillmore’s Buffalo home. The mob was remembering that Fillmore had been long known as a ‘doughface’ President (Southern sympathizer from the North). They demanded that he change his drapes to black and poured ink on his white ones on the ground floor. Fillmore according to one perhaps apocryphal account remained defiant, making an obscene gesture at the mobsters from his attic before closing the drapes.
At ten past eleven p m on March 8, 1874, Millard Fillmore passed away at his home in his beloved Buffalo. His last words spoken at 8 p.m. were “the nourishment is palatable.”
CONCLUSION
Fillmore is generally considered to be one of our weak and ineffective presidents, the Compromise of 1850 being his big failure in judgment. 'Milf' was personally honest, and was quite presidential in demeanor.
To many, after the slob Zachary Taylor, Fillmore was a breath of fresh aristocratic air. Taylor needed a tailor, walking around in a rumpled suit that was deliberately made several sizes too big for him. Fillmore, by contrast was a polished dresser and conversationalist, a big tall full-bodied and presidential-looking guy.
But Millard Fillmore the fill-in was probably overmatched in being made the accidental president, at least that is what all the forgotten historians who never met him say definitively.
SOURCES:
The Abolitionists, A Collection of their Writings, edited by Louis Ruchames
America and its Peoples, by Mintz and McMurray
The Cambridge Modern History, Vol VII the United States, c)1901 – Amazing book, one of the best.
Encyclopedia Britannica and The World Book – Short fine bios
treatments on Fillmore and his presidency
Empire for Liberty, by Malone and Rauch, Volume One to 1865, c) 1960
Eyewitness: The Negro in American History, by William Loren Katz (editor), c)1967 -This fine collection of writings supplied the Christiana Riot details.
Graphic Story of the American Presidents, by Whitney
The Growth of the American Republic, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Harvard), and Henry Steele Commager (Columbia) – Who are the bad guys when it comes to the coming of the Civil War? Was it the slave-owners? No. It was those no good Abolitionists! I read both these volumes slowly from cover to cover and cannot believe that these two guys still retain their image as Gods in the science of American history. To me they are a couple of racists,
“How, then, shall we estimate the abolitionists? .. of
their wisdom no enemy was ever convinced, and
many friends are now doubtful. Channing predicted
in 1835 that Garrison had only succeeded in stirring
up ‘bitter passions and a fierce fanaticism.’ …
Certain it is that they closed every avenue to
emancipation save civil war; their means almost
defeated their end. Abolition came in spite of the
abolitionists rather than because of them; and in
the worst way. … Garrison’s indignant pity seared
the Northern conscience with the image of a slave
cowering under his master’s lash – but at what cost
in hatred, bloodshed, and uncharitableness!”
The hatred, bloodshed and uncharity of the Civil War are to be condemned, but the hatred, bloodshed and uncharitableness of slavery itself? Hey, no problem. Hatred is nothing to be proud of , but sometimes I can't help myself. I hate these authors.
A History of the American People, by Greabner, Fite and White, c)1970. White is of the University of Texas where I lived for two months in 1976 without attending a single class. I was more fascinated by the story of the Texas sniper, which I researched extensively at the Austin Public Library. Austin is a very nice city.
History of a Free People by Henry W. Bragdon (Phillips Exeter) and Samuel P. McCutchen (NYU) – c)1954 MacMillan
If I had to complete the assignments at the end of every mini-chapter I would never study history ever. They ruin learning with their strict tasks. Any high school student who met their standards never had a date in their entire youth and never played sports.
They give you one paragraph of text and ask the student to write a ten page report on it. I am not even exaggerating!
A History of United States Foreign Policy, by Julius W. Pratt – A rich book that is super-easy to read.
A History of the United States of America, by Henry Elson, c)1960 – Revised many times, a popular book with an actual sense of chronology.
New York Times –Obituary from March 9, 1874
National Review – Provided some details on the Lopez expedition
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – This is the Bible of PC outrageous liberal pseudo-history, although they don’t really get warmed up till Wilson.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison of Harvard – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
The man is a self-indulgent snob. Morison obviously is some sort of amateur horse-breeder, so every 8o pages or so he stops for nine utterly useless paragraphs about the state of horse-breeding in American history, a subject no other historian touches on for so much as a half a sentence.
SEM is obviously a religious man, so he includes inexcusably long complex chapters on religion, whereas other historians give it a short basic treatment in accordance with the space that should be allowed for it in a one-volume history of the USA.
He loves the arts of the highbrow so he includes 5 pages on the Hudson School of Paining alone. Give me a break, Sammy.
This guy was once my hero for his great history if WWII, but his general histories of the United States are a downer overall, although undeniably he writes smoothly and on an elevated plane. The problem is that he's aware of his own excellence and gets carried away and conceited about it and his best assets become his worst.
He is also a racist.
The Peculiar Institution, by Kenneth Stampp – A peculiarly excellent book by the guy that broke the ice and first dared to say that the Abolitionist were not the villains that brought on the Civil War, the slaveowners were.
A Short History of American Democracy, by John D. Hicks of the University of California at Berkley, c) 1943 – Hicks is a joy to read and relative to his era he is courageously liberal on the pre and post Civil War eras. He flashes a little hint of racism later in the Jim Crow years but overall he is one of the good guy historians, no doubt about it.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Columbia University – c) 1966 Harper & Row
This guy is a solid writer and scholar and way too redneck on the race question. That's my take on this crusty cracker with a sheepskin. I wonder if John Hope Franklin ever met this guy or avoided him at a party.
JAG is one of the most respected US historians of all time.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery, by William Goodell, c)1853 – A modern reprint of a dazzling collection of writing from the antebellum era.
The United States, From Colony to World Power, by Chitwood Owsley and Nixon- c) 1958 by a collection of racist nit-wit scholars who deserve abject condemnation.
The United States: The History of a Republic – by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia, William Miller co-author of The Age of Enterprise, and Daniel Aaron of Smith – c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
I often accidentally cite this title as A History of the Republic
VIDEO
WCVB Channel 5 Boston – Dick Albert the weatherman provided weather info on the hot inaugural.
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