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MILLARD FILLMORE: INSPIRED LIFE, UNINSPIRED PRESIDENCY - MICHAEL FAZZINO
Millard Fillmore: Inspired Life, Uninspired Presidency
Michael Fazzino
“It is a national disgrace,” said President Millard Fillmore, “that our presidents, after having occupied the highest position in the country, should be cast adrift, and, perhaps be compelled to keep a corner grocery store for subsistence.”[1] Yet our nation’s thirteenth president, a man from Cayuga County, NY, has fallen into the obscurity that he himself detested. Fillmore’s life was not one of idleness, but rather of lofty ambition. As presidential historian Kathryn Moore states, “Fillmore was born into poverty, apprenticed to a tradesman, managed to educate himself and learn the law, became a successful attorney, and then embarked on a successful political career that eventually led him to the White House.”[2] He led a determined and fruitful life, but where his successes in New York can be praised, his administration in the White House will forever be criticized for doing little to abate the rising problem of slavery. While many view him as a best forgotten President, it is largely due to the notion that the Civil War was inevitable that he is blamed for prolonging the conflict. Had his actions been less thoughtful and more decisive, history would certainly have been much more kind to his memory. While his leadership was lukewarm at best, Fillmore was notorious for studying the issues, being pragmatic, and basing his decisions upon the good of the nation and mankind.
Humble Beginnings
Born to Nathaniel and Phoebe Fillmore on January 7th, 1800, Millard Fillmore was the first President to be born after the death of a former President (George Washington died December 14th, 1799) and was born into relative obscurity. As a farm boy, Millard’s education came primarily from the outdoors, but strove to continue with his education – eventually managing to learn the basics in writing and mathematics. Although strong and useful around the farm, Nathaniel apprenticed Millard to a cloth maker when he was just fourteen years old. Although Millard disliked the trade, he soon found himself at work in New Hope, New York. Mindful of his poor educational background, Millard purchased a dictionary and in between tending the machines, would “look up an unfamiliar word and then concentrate on committing it to memory as he continued his work.”[3]
As Millard’s love of reading grew, so did his ambition to be further educated. He enrolled in the New Hope Academy and began taking classes under Abigail Powers. Not only was he an adept student, but soon fell in love with Ms. Powers – yet he knew he was in no standing to raise a family. Under his father’s influence, Judge Walter Wood of New York agreed to teach Millard law in Buffalo, where he “gained respect by his modesty and solidness of character.”[4] Upon passing the bar in 1823, he opened a small law office where there was little competition. Now making sufficient money, he married Abigail and soon had a son, Millard Powers Fillmore. They would later have a daughter, Abby.
Millard’s first political foray came when he met Thurlow Weed, a man who aided in John Quincy Adam’s “corrupt bargain”, at an Anti-Mason convention. Weed was so impressed that he nominated Fillmore as the Anti-Mason party’s state assembly candidate. It was here that Fillmore won his first political race. In the assembly, Fillmore learned the ins and outs of politics, and by his next term he truly transformed into an active politician. While his speeches utilized a “slow, deliberate delivery,”[5] Fillmore was respected for talking from the heart and driving home his points (President Taylor would later be criticized for doing the exact opposite.) His successes in the legislature coupled with his expanding law firm in Buffalo would be what propelled him to the House of Representatives in 1832, where he would serve for ten years. In the House, Fillmore was outspoken in opposing Andrew Jackson’s policies and helped push the Anti-Mason party into supporting the prominent Whigs. He would enjoy great support from the party which would later shun him.
The Vice Presidency
Fillmore was far from the “executive” Vice-President that Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale would later help create. When the Whigs nominated Zachary Taylor as their candidate, they decided on a northern Vice President to balance out their slave holding southerner. Ironically, the massive issue of slavery was left out of the Whig’s main platform. Even after winning the election of 1848 with 163 electoral votes, Fillmore had yet to meet Taylor. They first met in passing just one week prior to being sworn in. It was soon made clear that Fillmore’s counsel “was not welcomed by the Taylor administration,”[6] leaving him as “with the possible exception of Lyndon B. Johnson, America’s most unhappy vice-president.”[7]
Fillmore soon noticed that in the first months of the administration that his old friend Thurlow Weed, now the New York Whig party boss he had blocked from the vice-presidential nomination, was undermining each decision made. Fillmore’s retaliation for being so excluded was to create an opposition newspaper, the New York State Register, to counter Weed’s paper in Albany. Frustrated nevertheless, Fillmore withdrew and was utterly ignored by Taylor’s entire administration. Because Fillmore was essentially selected to balance the ticket, he was doomed to become a less than vocal part of the Taylor administration. Constitutionally mandated, his only real job was to chaperone the Senate debates over whether or not to allow slavery in the Mexican Cession territories. Fillmore remained silent towards any opinion, agreeing with John Adams that the vice-presidency was the “most insignificant office.”[8]
Yet in a shocking turn of events, Fillmore would be deemed incredibly valuable to Taylor. It looked as though there was a very real possibility that the Senate would vote on the omnibus bill and be split in half. In the event Fillmore would need to vote, Taylor wanted him to vote in line with the administration and oppose the bill. Still, even after gaining a long overdue audience with the President, Fillmore declared that “it was not out of any hostility to him or his Administration, but the vote would be given (in favor of the Compromise), because I deemed it for the interests of the country.”[9] This hotly contested issue would have to wait until after the 4th of July, while the Congress recessed in honor of Independence. Little did Fillmore know that this debacle would soon be the least of his troubles.
An Accidental Presidency
Fillmore was given a message on July 8th that President Taylor was not doing well, suffering from stomach problems brought on by milk and cherries. Taylor’s condition worsened, and at noon on July 10th, just hours after his untimely death by gastroenteritis, Fillmore succeeded to the presidency. Taylor’s cabinet, conditioned to hate Fillmore, resigned immediately and grudgingly offered to stay on for just one additional week for Fillmore to fill his own administration. This led to quick replacements, including Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, Alexander H. Stuart as Secretary of the Interior, and Thomas Corwin as Secretary of the Treasury.[10]
With the Compromise still looming in Congress, it quickly became the defining moment in Fillmore’s Presidency. With the exception of Corwin, Fillmore’s entire administration would come to support the Compromise which would lead virtually all Whigs to detest him. Fillmore was not only “the tool of the compromisers, but he did not even have the restraint of Taylor’s enormous self-interest in the preservation of slavery.”[11] The Compromise itself would allow the admittance of California as a free state as well as grant territorial status to New Mexico, settle the Texas boundary dispute, enact the Fugitive Slave Act, and abolish the slave trade in D.C. Written by both Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas, Fillmore viewed the imperfect Compromise as a fix-all and announce his full support, despite reservations specifically over the Fugitive Slave Act.
Over the summer months he and Webster would lobby hard for the Compromise. Fillmore was hesitant on only one provision: the Fugitive Slave Act. After attorney general Crittenden determined it was constitutional, Fillmore grudgingly signed the last of the Compromise into law on September 20th, 1850. Yet Fillmore would soon realize that this far from solved the ills of the nation, but opened a new wound in regards to slavery. This may be Fillmore’s darkest moment, and the nail in the coffin that would make it impossible for he or any president until Lincoln to effectively address the issue of slavery.
While his administration was victorious, it also created much unneeded tensions among the Whig party. This conflict would lead to further divisions and lost elections, with many beginning to form the idea of a Republican party which Abraham Lincoln himself would join. The greatest difficulty Fillmore’s administration would face was the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law without showing favoritism to the south. Northern law enforcement was “often met with violent resistance from mobs defending the slave,”[12] which ultimately appeared as though Fillmore was pro-slavery. In fact, Fillmore himself declared that “God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil ... and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution…but if necessary I shall not hesitate to give greater power, and finally to bring the whole force of the government to sustain the law.”[13] Despite many efforts, this Act would haunt him like no other.
While historians agree that the Compromise can be viewed as a failure to solve the issue of slavery, Fillmore had several remarkable successes. Fillmore administered over the “Great Guano Wars”, in which American businessmen were trying to extract valuable bird droppings from Peru. It was Fillmore’s administration that negotiated a successful treaty “granting American businesses the profitable rights to extract the guano from the islands of Peru.”[14] He was also able to open the “hermit Kingdom of Japan”[15] to trade after concealing itself from Christian influence in the late 1600’s. Fillmore’s appointment of Matthew C. Perry to the expedition would prove phenomenally effective, and while Japan would ultimately open its “bamboo curtain”[16], it was not until Franklin Pierce succeeded the Presidency that relations would be recognized. Fillmore also successfully deterred invasions of Cuba and Hawaii from European powers, attesting that if they were to be annexed, it would be done solely by the United States.
After a mildly successful term, in 1852 the Whigs openly refused to nominate Fillmore as their candidate. He instead joined the Know-Nothing party, which would effectively end his presidential career. Despite his shortcomings, Fillmore accomplished as much as any of the other relatively weak presidents in office at the time. While Congress was largely powerful and the issue of slavery loomed over the nation, Fillmore still managed to govern relatively effectively.
The Post-Presidency
After leaving the Oval Office, Fillmore returned to New York for a quiet retirement. His wife Abigail sadly passed away from being left in the cold during Pierce’s inauguration, leaving Fillmore to care for his son and daughter (who would die of cholera just a year later). During James Buchannan’s presidency he was highly critical of his decision to not take action against South Carolina when is seceded.[17] During the Civil War, Fillmore was outspokenly opposed to President Lincoln because he believed the war could have been avoided, and likewise during reconstruction supported President Johnson for his lax treatment of Confederate leaders. Upon the dissolving of the Whig party (heavily due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act), Fillmore refused to join with the Republicans. He instead joined the Know-Nothing party and would run in the election of 1856, in an attempt to win a non-consecutive term; a feat accomplished later solely by Grover Cleveland. He finished third with 21.6% of the popular vote, making this the second-best performance ever by a Presidential third-party candidate; Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull-Moose party gained 27.4% of the popular vote in 1912.[18]
While Fillmore did oppose Lincoln’s policies, when the Civil War commenced he rallied the men of New York to enlist and even commanded the Union Continentals which functioned as the city’s “home guard.”[19] He lived out the rest of his life in Buffalo, working for various charitable organizations including the Buffalo General Hospital, the Fine Arts Academy, and co-founded the Buffalo chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.[20] This can be viewed somewhat as the beginning of a trend in “activist” ex-presidents upon leaving office. At age 74, he died peacefully of the aftereffects of a stroke on March 8, 1874 with his second wife at his bedside. The noble man from humble beginnings would leave the world as underappreciated as he had come into it.
Why Fillmore Matters
Had Fillmore not rose to the Presidency after Taylor’s death, it is likely that a man of such ambition would have sought it out himself. Truly, despite all his shortcomings and failures to prevent further entrenchment of the mounting conflict between the North and South, he was a man of ambition and honor. He was, like Taylor, “an aggressive defender of the United States rights and a promoter of United States advantages wherever feasible, but [did not believe] in taking advantage of another nation’s weakness or in following any policy that could not be morally defended.”[21]
Fillmore taught the nation valuable lessons at his own expense. Foremost, bandages like the Compromise of 1850 cannot be made to solve massive divisive issues that threaten the country. On a partisan scale, it is evident that divisions within a party so strained as the Whigs can only spell disaster, which is what irrefutably occurred. Yet further, Fillmore is much more than “America’s most forgettable president.”[22] Fillmore’s administration was able to solve serious disagreements in Peru, Mexico, Cuba, Japan, and at home in the contested territories. Never did the United States go to war in Fillmore’s reign, nor did they appear weak on an international front. In an attempt to support the nation’s retired Presidents, Fillmore proposed the idea of a $12,000 presidential pension – an idea that would not be adopted until Harry S Truman’s pestering of Congress in 1952.
Daniel Webster described Fillmore as “a good-tempered, cautious, intelligent man, with whom it is pleasant to transact business. He is very diligent, and what he does not know he quickly learns.”[25] Smith goes on to say that without the controversy surrounding the Fugitive Slave act, Fillmore may be remembered as “the ideal spokesman for an optimistic age of scientific, technological, economic, and social progress.”[26] Fillmore truly led an inspired life that forever helped shape our nation. While exercising an admirable combination of “aggressiveness, restraint, and imagination in advancing and protecting American interest abroad,”[27] coupled with his successes in international policy, Fillmore deserves the appreciation of his countrymen and a far better historical representation than he and our lesser known presidents have received.
Bibliography
Robert J. Rayback, Millard Fillmore, Biography of a President (New York: Henry J, Stewart, Inc., 1972).
Elbert B. Smith, The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor & Millard Fillmore (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988).
Michael A. Genovese, The Power of the American Presidency (New York: Oxford, 2001).
Kathryn Moore, The American President (New York: Barnes and Nobles, 2007).
Miller Center of Public Affairs, “American President,”University of Virginia, http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/fillmore/essays/biography/8.
Millard Fillmore, Millard Fillmore Papers Volume II, (New York: Buffalo Historical Society, 1907).
Joseph J. Eillis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Vintage, 2002).
[1] Millard Fillmore, Millard Fillmore Papers Volume II, (New York: Buffalo Historical Society, 1907) 139.
[2] Kathryn Moore, The American President (New York: Barnes and Nobles, 2007), 144.
[7] Elbert B. Smith, The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor & Millard Fillmore (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988) 159.
[8] Joseph J. Eillis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Vintage, 2002) 166.
[9] Robert J. Rayback, Millard Fillmore, Biography of a President (New York: Henry J, Stewart, Inc., 1972) 237.
[14] Michael A. Genovese, The Power of the American Presidency (New York: Oxford, 2001) 72.
[23] Miller Center of Public Affairs, “American President,” University of Virginia, http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/fillmore/essays/biography/8.
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