Lincoln for President

Lincoln for President: An Unlikely Candidate, An Audacious Strategy,
And the Victory No One Saw Coming
By Bruce Chadwick
(Sourcebooks, Inc: Naperville, IL, 2009)

This is certainly not the biography for Lincoln that I chose to read, however it was a Christmas/birthday present from my father and so I’ve included it in my PRP (Presidential Reading Project). Besides, Lincoln’s a Biggie, if you know what I mean and so I felt safe including an extra book about him (just like I did with Andrew Jackson. So just deal with it.) After reading so many biographies of unknown presidents, it’s an absolute pleasure to finally get to old Honest Abe. Besides, upon receiving this book, I was curious to see how this historian, any historian, could write an entire book about one single presidential campaign.

Let’s find out, shall we?

What I immediately liked about this book was the detailed and informative picture of Lincoln that is drawn from numerous contemporary sources and friends of his, prior to the election of 1860. I think that most people today know what Lincoln looks like primarily because his image is simply everywhere. The craggy face, the aura of sadness, the stovepipe hat, the rail-thin body. If you haven’t grown up familiar with Mount Rushmore or the Lincoln Memorial or a freaking penny for crissakes then I’m guessing that you’re not from around these parts.

Although we grew up Knowing About Lincoln, we’ve never seen the Lincoln of the 1850s back before he was a national figure or anybody in particular really. Noah Brooks, an audience member for Lincoln’s Cooper Union (NY) speech said “When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He was tall—oh, how tall! And so angular and awkward that I had, for an instant, a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man. His clothes were black and ill fitting, badly wrinkled—as if they had been jammed carelessly into a small trunk. His bushy head, with the stiff black hair thrown back, was balanced on a long and lean head stalk, and when he raised his hands in an opening gesture, I noticed that they were very large” (p. 3). Of course, I had to laugh but Lincoln’s appearance made a perfect foil for his public-speaking and politicking, which just happened to be mesmerizing and wonderful. I appreciated getting a good look at the younger Abe Lincoln right from the start of the book, just as the Republican National Convention of 1860 comes into view.

I have to say that I am really impressed with the way Lincoln’s team worked to get their relatively-unheard of politician to eclipse the big wigs of that day—William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Simon Cameron. The election of 1860 was supposed to be the apogee of William Seward's career, who had been a prominent NY politician for decades. (You may remember him for his rivalry with fellow New Yorker, Millard Fillmore). But Lincoln and his team of faithful friends planned in advance for their boy to lead the Republican ticket. For example, they worked to get the Nomination Convention to be held in Chicago, IL for the first time. Chicago was still a little town at this time, but they knew that if Lincoln was to even stand a chance then he needed to have home field advantage. Then on the night before the convention, the Lincoln team had a Good Idea. The tickets for the convention were parceled out evenly between all the candidates and their supporters but Lincoln’s team replicated tickets and handed them out to pro-Lincoln men, telling them to be at the Wigwam (the place where the convention would be held) early the next morning. The Lincoln fans showed up early and were seated. That meant that there was no room for any other candidate’s supporters and the Lincoln fans cheered every time his name was mentioned.

Lincoln, of course, won the nomination. Seward, on the first ballot, won the most votes but he did not have the requisite two-thirds majority. Some men switched to Lincoln on the next ballot, then more on the next, and finally the vote landslided in Lincoln’s favor. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering and I find it extremely interesting that most of the men that Lincoln ran against at the convention were later to be found in his Cabinet, allowing us to assume that promises had been made for votes. “”None of Lincoln’s team ever admitted they actually offered cabinet posts to any of the state leaders or, later, to William Seward in the middle of the campaign. But when Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, Simon Cameron became secretary of war, Seward was named secretary of state, Chase secretary of the treasury, Smith secretary of the interior, Bates attorney general, and Montgomery Blair postmaster general” (p. 84).

All the minutiae of the election is included in this book, including bios on all the major candidates, the split of the Democratic party, the campaign strategies for all the parties, and finally the actual electioneering for the candidates. The election of 1860 is unusual for a variety of reasons. First of all, the Democratic Party split and at one time there were 5 men in the race for the presidency, including Sam Houston. The Democrats split along sectional lines with Stephen Douglas garnering the northern vote, John Breckenridge getting the southern vote, and John Bell heading the newly formed Constitutional Union Party, which was compose of “disgruntled Southern Democrats, old-line Whigs, transformed Know-Nothings, and hundreds of former public officials and political figures” (p. 38). Secondly, there was talk of secession if Lincoln was elected president and so Lincoln decided on a bold strategy: he would only campaign in the Northern states.

When I say that Lincoln would campaign, I meant that figuratively. No politician in this age ever campaigned for themselves. In Lincoln’s case, he was completely mute from the moment that he was selected as the Republican nominee until after he was elected president of the United States. His team of men did all the talking, promising and campaigning for him while he sat at home in Springfield, IL awaiting results. However, Lincoln was the principle decision-maker of the group and the sheer number of his letters to his team amply proves it. Lincoln made the decision that he would pour all the Republican money and time into the Northern states alone. Since he knew that he would not win any Southern states, he recognized that to win the 1860 election, he would need every single Northern state. And so he morphed his campaign to take into account the already splintered country.

The Republicans also came up with a diverse party platform that would not merely focus on slavery, like the Democratic one. Instead, the Republicans used the corruption of the Buchanan presidency as a springboard against political corruption across the country. They also focused on promoting the Homestead Act (which aided new farmers on the frontier), a transcontinental railroad, and tariff reform (so important to iron workers in Pennsylvania).

Lincoln’s bold strategy worked but his success was also due to the split Democratic vote. “The Southern Democratic races were marred by endless mudslinging, and managers of both were unable to focus on Lincoln” (p. 221). Amazingly, Lincoln won in every Northern state, including California and Oregon. But the big prize was New York with its 34 electoral votes that sealed the deal. Thus, in November of 1860, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was elected the 16th President of the United States. He was also the very first Republican president ever and ushered in 24 years of Republican rule.

I enjoyed learning more about the causes of the war and indeed there is a whole chapter worth reading about the secessionist view of slavery. A popular misconception of the time in the minds of Northerners was that if slavery was abolished, the non-slaveholding Southern population would join the North in an uprising, thereby producing some sort of balance in the country. However, Chadwick’s research showed that most Southern people, slaveholding or not, were interested in supporting the institution of slavery. The reasons were varied. For the poorer Southern man, he supported slavery because he did not want the slaves, if they were emancipated, to take his job, plus the prosperity of the plantations would trickle down to him eventually. Plus, men, like doctors or merchants who didn’t own slaves, had patients and customers that did and so they supported slavery as well. I thought this chapter was quite unique on an economic standpoint and as a later cause for war.

Although the book is about Lincoln’s triumph and there were a lot of little things I didn’t know, I can’t say that I would recommend this book as light reading, if you know what I mean. The book is over 360 pages, which I thought was really quite long for the subject, and sometimes I felt like the author was padding the chapters. For instance, Bruce Chadwick includes what I felt was every single letter Lincoln received during the campaign and every single warning about Lincoln’s safety. Some of the chapters got completely bogged down for me because it seemed like Chadwick didn’t have the courage to leave out some information. I know that there was tons of material to work with relating to the election of 1860 and its ramifications but I think a truly good author knows how to edit. Not every source needs to be used, not every piece of information about the subject must be included. I’m just saying.

Also the author repeated himself, which drove me crazy considering the length of the book. He would mention something in the first chapter and then again, the same thing with the same wording in a later chapter. Urgh! It was frustrating because I don’t have that bad a memory! Finally, Chadwick uses rhetorical questions like there was a Rhetorical-Question-Fire-Sale going on and he bought everything at a greatly reduced price. Honestly, he throws those things around as if he were writing a cheap mystery-thriller. Many chapters ended tawdrily with inane rhetorical questions, presumably to hook us into turning the page. Here’s one: “They did everything a shrewd campaign team should have done. But would it be enough” (p. 157)? “Lincoln, they believed, could not win. Or could he” (p. 116)? It makes me want to hear a melodramatic organ dum-dum-duming after the question mark. What about this? “Could they [Republican] keep their fragile alliance with the Know-Nothings as the election turned more and more on slavery? Could they make any dents in the steel belt of southern counties along the Maryland and Virginia borders that repeatedly went Democratic and would be targeted by Breckenridge? Could they beat both Douglas and Breckenridge, plus political history, all the same time” (p. 191)? Dum-Dum-Dum! And I’m pretty sure that’s a run-on question in the middle of all that madness. But the best was yet to come…

“ Would the razor-thin margins of victory Lincoln’s polls predicted hold up throughout the long night? A shift of just a few thousand votes in one or two states could cost him the election, and the vote appeared to be that close in several states, especially in the Northwest. Could he carry New York? The latest telegram from Thurlow Weed, that he had hid from everyone but his wife, indicated he might not. Could the Bell, Douglas, and Breckenridge men carry even just one large Northern state, plus a small one, and in so doing, toss the election into the House of Representatives? Would his massive voter registration drive attract enough new voters to the Republican banner to give him a cushion of brand-new votes needed to carry states where the race was supposed to be very close? Would his North-only strategy backfire on him” (p. 300)?

You have got to be kidding me!?! At each question, I want to scream “No, goddamn it” and then punch the author in the face. Chadwick makes it seem like we don’t know the end of this story when most 3rd graders can tell you that Lincoln won that election. It’s like the Titanic movie, quite beautiful and moving but in reality, we all know how it’s going to end.

#15: James Buchanan Part 2

“To many he [James Buchanan] seemed half apparition, ready for the graveclothes that would swathe a past epoch.” Carl Sandburg

Cool Stuff about James Buchanan
1. He never had to shave. “Buchanan was a prize local catch with his handsome, whiskerless face (Buchanan never had to shave), blond hair, and six foot frame…” (p. 19).
2. Buchanan had odd-looking eyes. “To compensate for a defect in his eyes, Buchanan characteristically leaned his head forward and cocked it to one side. He did this not only because he suffered from wandering eyes—what ophthalmologists today call exodeviation—but because he was also nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other. Some observers thought he looked as if he had a stiff neck; others found it an attractive mannerism that made him appear intensely interested in every conversation” (p. 19).
3. Buchanan was a bachelor his entire life (the only president to do so) but he was engaged at one point to a lovely little thing, Ann Coleman. Ann eventually broke the engagement and though the reasons are not clear (apparently he worked too much and was also seeing another lady), she was upset enough for her mother to send her to Philadelphia to recuperate. Instead, the young girl ended up dying, some said of a broken heart. “Soon her mother had rushed her off to recover in Philadelphia, where, inexpicably, this previously healthy twenty-three-year-old died suddenly of what one doctor diagnosed as ‘hysterical convulsions’” (p. 20).
4. Due to a number of reasons, Buchanan was regularly labeled as a homosexual, contemporarily and historically. It did not help that he was a lifelong bachelor and preferred male company to female. He also had a femininity about him that caused tongues to wag. “Referring to his femininity, Andrew Jackson once called him an ‘Aunt Nancy’” (p. 25). “On the basis of slender evidence, mostly the circumstance of his bachelorhood and three asides by contemporaries about his effeminacy, Buchanan has been dubbed America’s first homosexual president” (p. 25).
5. Buchanan was the first to take the term “First Lady” and apply it to the current woman in the White House. Because Buchanan never married, he needed to go elsewhere to find a female hostess for all his parties and so he used his sister’s daughter, Harriet Lane. “When Buchanan moved to the White House in March 1857, Harriet Lane became his first lady, so designated in the first use of that term because she was not his wife, but rather his official lady and hostess” (p. 48).
6. I love that Buchanan’s followers named themselves the “Buchaneers.” Ha! “Politicians and civil servants who had long observed the abuses of American politics believed that Buchanan’s Buchaneers—the inner circle of friends and members of his administration—had reached unacceptable levels in terms of the use of public authority and funds for private and party profit” (p. 113).
7. Buchanan won the presidential election of 1856 but this was also the first election in which the Republican Party ran a candidate, John C. Fremont.
8. One of the domestic issues that Buchanan had to deal with during his presidency was the Mormon question in Utah. The Mormons at this time considered Utah as their own personal property, whereas Buchanan was trying to bring it into the Union as a state. Led by Brigham Young, the Mormons resorted to massive amounts of violence to keep the federal officials out of their territory, even so far as committing the worst civilian massacre in American history. “In September 1857 a group of emigrants from Arkansas—en route to California—discovered the danger when Young and his militia were responsible for the worst civilian atrocity in U.S. history. One hundred and twenty-five pioneers were murdered in Mountain Meadows, Utah, in an act that until recently was blamed on the Paiute Indians, but in which the Mormon militia participated and which Brigham Young covered up” (p. 91).
9. Due to the unprecedented evidence of blatant corruption in Buchanan’s administration, the Republicans in the House established a committee to investigate these abuses. “The focus was on the practices used by the president and his cabinet to pass the Lecompton constitution, but soon a wider net was cast. The administration’s use of patronage came under investigation, as did payroll taxes levied on patronage holders at election time, changes in post office personnel, bribing voters, and especially granting lucrative government printing contracts to supporters, who then returned a portion of their profits to the party” (p. 113). People were horrified at the indecent level of corruption in their government but instead of impeaching him, the Congress decided to wait just a little longer for Buchanan’s natural term to end.
10. John Updike, the famous author, did his part to avenge Buchanan’s life from his critics. “Another loyal Pennsylvanian, the novelist John Updike, wrote a three-act play, Buchanan Dying, with bit parts for everyone from Buchanan’s housekeeper, Hetty Parker, to Ann Coleman and Charles Sumner. Updike is sympathetic to his hero, who in the moments before death consoles himself with the thought that ‘once death has equalized all men, worth flies from their artifacts.’ But for Buchanan, who is possibly a better subject for novelists than for accusatory historians, the reverse—the disappearance of his flawed reputation—has not occurred” (p. 147).

Well, I can safely say that Jean Baker is most certainly not a fan of James Buchanan. I feel that she does truly try to remain unbiased but Buchanan’s penchant for bad decisions doesn’t help his case at all and ties her hands somewhat. However, on page 5 she gives us her intentions upon writing this biography and it reads along as if she was against Buchanan from the start. “The book seeks to suggest some of the reasons for Buchanan’s failure and specifically to explain the gap between Buchanan’s experience and training before his presidency and his lamentable performance in office, during which, tone-deaf to the kind of compromises that might have fulfilled his intentions, he blundered on with policies that undermined his goals” (p. 5).

I also found Buchanan a very sad case. After reading 15 presidential biographies, I’ve come to realize that it almost makes no difference who the man was before his election—it only matters what he does with the power once he has it. Buchanan is a prime example of this—he is a relatively savvy lawyer and politician before becoming president and then he turns right around and makes every conceivable mistake once he is president. It’s amazing! I have to admit that reading about Buchanan’s presidency made my heart hurt. It was just like a train wreck in that it was too hard to stop reading but in hindsight it is quite easy to see all the various places he could have made better decisions. And it’s not like Buchanan made one, gigantic error—what is so painful about his story are all the little moments, two paths diverged in a wood if you will, in which he took the road less traveled by. And that has made all the difference…and not in a good way.

I also feel that there is a reason the Civil War began just as he was sliding out the door. Although Abe’s election was the spark that started the Southern stampede to secede (it rhymes!), I really believe that if Buchanan had pulled an Andrew Jackson and nipped that shit in the bud then Lincoln wouldn’t have been stuck with such a mess. “To study Buchanan is to consider why the American Civil War, unthinkable a decade before, became inevitable, why northern Democrats behaved the way they did during the war; and why secessionist southerners, at first a minority in the Confederacy, carried the day” (p. 6-7).

Buchanan also seemed remarkably obtuse when it came to gauging his own northern constituency. Baker has already made it quite clear that Buchanan was very, very pro-southern in his political leanings—“Both physically and politically, he had only one farsighted eye, and it looked southward” (p. 73)—but he was also vehemently anti-Republican, anti-abolitionist. Buchanan, it appears, had a truly myopic approach to political labels and failed to read the times. He believed that abolitionists were complete fanatics, ready to tear the Union apart, and that Republicans were worse even than that. “In his years as president, Buchanan did a great deal to popularize the view that the Republicans were a threat to the South, thereby encouraging its secession from the Union when Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860” (p. 73). This is a hard truth indeed—it seems that on every possible level Buchanan lead the country closer to the brink of war.

I just want to say that on my part I was merely sad when I read this book. Whatever his failings as president, Buchanan, like all US Presidents, was given unlimited possibilities to use his power for the good of his people and to uphold the Constitution, which he vowed to do. And what is so sad to me is that he did neither.

#15 James Buchanan (1791-1868)

Oddly enough, my first real impression of James Buchanan came from the book on Andrew Jackson. In that book, the author mentions that Buchanan had a high, nasally voice which Henry Clay, famous compromiser and eminent politician, loved to mimic behind his back. Classic! I love hearing little tidbits like that because it makes history so current, don’t you think? I mean what’s more universal than making fun of other people?

Obviously since Jackson, I’ve run across Buchanan quite a bit and can see his influence as a senator from Pennsylvania, the Secretary of State under Polk and even the Ambassador to Great Britain (which I will cover later) pervade numerous presidential biographies. What interests me the most is the fact that Buchanan is regularly listed in the Top Five Most Hated Presidents. Whoa—I already know that Buchanan was the president right before the Civil War but what on earth did he do to fall so low? The author, Jean Baker of James Buchanan: American Presidents Series (Times Books: New York, 2004), weighs in on this circumstance as well. “Four years later Buchanan left the presidency in disgrace, condemned by Republicans, vilified by northern Democrats and dismissed even by the southerners whom he had tried so hard to please and whose personal affection he craved” (p. 2). She then follows that up with “By ever measure except his own—whether that of his contemporaries or historians—Buchanan was an abysmal failure as chief executive” (p.3).

I have a couple of good friends from Pennsylvania that keep asking me about Buchanan and what kind of president he was. I am sad to say that it does not look too hopeful but let’s find out if the critics are correct about James Buchanan.

He was born in 1790 to a family who owned a local trading post in southern Pennsylvania. James was the oldest son of eleven and had an undisputed position of power within the family. There is not much information about James’ upbringing and childhood but in 1807, he was sent to Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. He was known for being a follower rather than a leader and was even expelled from school because he was a part of a gang of unruly, drunken boys. “It was not the expulsion that is surprising, but rather Buchanan’s insistence in his unfinished autobiography that he was not ‘dissipated’ himself, but had drunk, roistered, and disturbed in order to be considered ‘a clever and spirited youth.’” (p. 13). Through his family connections, he was eventually reinstated but he harbored a hatred for Dickinson ever afterward.

After graduation, he promptly moved to Lancaster, PA and took up law. “Even as a neophyte, James Buchanan sought high-profile cases that brought prominence, more clients, and larger fees in a circular process that made him, before he was thirty-five, one of the best-known lawyers in southern Pennsylvania” (p. 16). Even though his law career was blossoming, Buchanan was drawn to politics and in 1814 was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly as a Federalist.

Then in 1820 his political career began in full with the first of five consecutive terms in the United States Congress (he was elected right after the Missouri Compromise was passed). During this time, his political leanings began to favor the ascendant Democratic Party under Andrew Jackson while his political friendships veered toward the South. His pro-southern leanings would eventually color his entire presidency and would become an issue in the incipient Civil War. He would remain a politician who fervently believed in states’ rights and a strict construction of the Constitution.

In 1831, he retired to private life. He was not married or financially in need but he proposed to work for the Democrats on the sidelines and to resurrect his successful law practice. “Yet he remained politically ambitious and hoped to be on the rise again after his ten years in Congress” (p. 30). His retirement was not of long duration for in 1832, Jackson nominated him as Ambassador to Russia. After much hesitation, he accepted the position but was only in St. Petersburg for about a year and half.

Upon his return, he began another long stint, intermittently from 1834 to 1852, in Congress but this time in the upper house, the Senate. Slavery was slowly becoming a more pressing issue and James Buchanan had his own ideas on it. “Quietly opposed to the institution in theory for reasons he never explained, he believed it the nations’ weak link, not because it was inhumane, but rather for its potential to destroy the Union” (p. 33). In a rather brilliant political move, he turned down Martin Van Buren’s offer of the Attorney General position and remained in the Senate to propound his views. “Throughout his years in the Senate he held fast to two popular principles: manifest destiny and states’ rights” (p. 34).

“Through hard work, party loyalty, and residence in the second most populous state in the Union, Buchanan advanced in stature and position, moving up the committee ladder to ever more important positions and even more national notoriety. He was appointed to the Judicial Committee, the Committee on the District of Columbia, and eventually the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was as a member of the latter that he became best known and made his most significant contributions to the future of the nation” (p. 34).


Under Polk’s administration, Buchanan was made Secretary of State. Although this is a very prestigious position, Buchanan, very clearly, played second fiddle to Polk on the foreign affairs front. Polk conducted the war and while he pulled Buchanan’s strings, the United States added more territory from Mexico, including Texas, California and pretty much all the areas in between.

Since Polk did not run for reelection, Buchanan was essentially out of a job in 1849 and he returned to his house, Wheatland, in Lancaster, PA. He was offered a Supreme Court position at one point and vacillated terribly until he finally came to the conclusion that it would damage his chances of being President of the US. No one had gone from the judicial to the executive branches in the history of the country before. He was getting older and so he became more open about his dreams of the presidency. “Fifty-eight years old in 1849, Buchanan had spent the best years of his life in public office. During that time he changed from energetic party enthusiast into an overweight, ambivalently ambitious politician…With his tilted head, protruding stomach, proportionally diminutive lower body, and heavily lidded eyes, one sometimes shut, he resembled an erect, two-footed tyrannosaur” (p. 46-7).

In 1852, his named was bandied about as president at the Democratic National Convention but he eventually lost to the dark horse candidate, Franklin Pierce. Pierce, as President, generously offered Buchanan the Ambassadorship to Great Britain. Another series of vacillations ensued but in the end, Buchanan decided in favor of this esteemed station and made his way to London during an extremely volatile period in US history.

Even though he was abroad, Buchanan did manage to stir up a little trouble there as well. Along with the US Ambassadors to Spain and France, Buchanan signed the Ostend Manifesto which stated that the US had the right to take Cuba, over every objection. It was so incendiary that Pierce quietly acted as if he never received it but it was unearthed by the media years later and people howled in protest.

Ok, we’ve made it to 1856. Buchanan won the Democratic nomination for president over Stephen Douglas, Senator of Illinois, mainly because he was abroad during Pierce’s presidential debacles. On the flip side, the Whigs had slowly winked out of existence since Fillmore’s presidency and in 1856, they were split into several different factions, including the Know-Nothing (American) Party, the Republicans, and a very, watered-down version of the Whigs. The Know-Nothings nominated former President Millard Fillmore while the newly-organized Republican Party nominated John C. Fremont, governor of California and adventurer. Buchanan won but not in a landslide. The American people should have taken notice of all the votes that Fremont and the Republicans received.

How do I begin to tell of the problems with the Buchanan presidency? Since there are so many I’ve decided just to list them out.
1. Dred Scott vs Sandford: After his election but before his inauguration, Buchanan used his influence to shape the outcome of the Dred Scott case by pressuring a Pennsylvania justice to change his vote. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Dred Scott, a free black man, could be sold into slavery were he to venture into the South. In fact, they stated that blacks had no rights whatsoever, thereby sounding the death knell of the Missouri Compromise. “Without Buchanan’s encouragement, Grier, the only northerner to join in Taney’s [the Chief Justice] decision, might not have joined the others” (p. 86).
2. Patronage: As stated in other blogs, patronage was a Big Deal for any president. If used properly, it was a great way to reward loyalty and gain votes and successful patronage appointments would almost guarantee an easy time for any president. However (and you knew there would be an ‘however’), Buchanan did not successfully use his patronage to endear himself to his followers. Not only did a disproportionately-large number of northern Democrats find themselves out of a job and other southern Democrats stepping into them, but Buchanan fired any Democrat that had ties to Pierce or to Stephen Douglas. Buchanan’s heavy-handed handling of his patronage opportunities would deal a severe blow to the Democratic Party.
3. The Cabinet: Sigh. Buchanan’s sheer inability to find a workable cabinet is startling, even after he had spent decades of his life in political circles. “In the end Buchanan’s cabinet selections proved a disaster. To choose, as he did, four members from the future Confederacy and three northern Democrats who, like Buchanan, were doughfaces was an insult to the North” (p. 79). It didn’t help that his vice president, Lewis Cass, was practically too old to function and the others all shared the same southern ideas and values. It wouldn’t help either that most of his cabinet would be involved in major governmental corruption scandals on a huge scale. “Certainly his cabinet officers were among the most corrupt in American history” (p. 114).
4. The Panic of 1857: After Buchanan’s inauguration, banks began to fold in an effort to call in unrecoverable loans, while land values and jobs disappeared. This Panic would hit the North hardest of all since the South, at that time, was agriculturally self-sufficient.
5. The Deficit: “Despite his plans for a balanced budge, Buchanan left Lincoln a deficit of over $17 million” (p. 90).
6. Kansas: Ooohhh, this political issue was a whopper. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, during Pierce’s presidency, gave Kansas and Nebraska the option, as new states, to choose whether they wanted to have slavery or not (even though both were above the Missouri Compromise line.) Nebraska was immediately seen as a free state but Kansas was desired by the South even though Kansans themselves wished to be free. Bloody chaos ensued along with rigged elections, phony government, and an unfair constitution touting pro-slavery restrictions over the popular majority. Buchanan did help matters when he stubbornly refused to throw out the Lecompton (proslavery) government and he feverishly worked to have Kansas’s “constitution” slammed through Congress. Even though Buchanan and his sketchy cabinet used immense amounts of lobbying and even bribery to secure the vote, it was dismissed in the House of Representatives. Another vote was held in Kansas, a fair vote this time, and the overwhelming majority of Kansans stated that they wished to be free state. In an effort to look on the bright side, Buchanan merely claimed that the violence in Kansas was now over, thanks to him. “With the insouciance that often marked his failures, he noted his pleasure that the excitement over slavery in Kansas had been resolved” (p. 105).
7. The Democratic Party Split: The split in the Democratic Party would not be noticeable until the presidential convention in 1860 but already Buchanan was sowing the seeds of discord within his own party. With his obvious reliance on southern Democrats, his contempt of northern Democrats became every day more apparent. Not only did he find most Northerners too radical but he did not like to reward loyal Democrats because they were followers of Douglas and Pierce. Pierce was a political has-been at this juncture but Stephen Douglas was at the top of his game and the treatment that he would receive from Buchanan, a fellow Democrat, aided the final split.
8. Use of Imperial Powers: Buchanan, during his presidency, used his presidential powers almost indiscriminately. At one point, he wanted Cuba so much (as another slave state) that he nearly forced Congress to vote him the funds to buy it. He also wanted more of Mexico and even sent a squadron of the US Navy down to Paraguay on a supposed insult.
9. Ignorance of Secession: Throughout his presidency, Buchanan simply ignored the idea that the South, his friends, might actually stick to their word and secede from the Union. When secession became a very real issue in 1860, Buchanan famously vacillated some more and finally issued a statement saying that he could not force anyone to stay in the Union. “While northern Republican newspapers complained that he brought dishonor to the nation and should be impeached, the New York Senator William Seward, soon to be Lincoln’s secretary of state, observed that what Buchanan espoused was that no state had a right to secede unless it wanted to and that the government must save the Union unless someone opposed it” (p. 128). In the months before Lincoln was inaugurated, Buchanan did absolutely nothing to halt the flow of various states that seceding right before his eyes. “In fact Buchanan’s failing during the crisis over the Union was not inactivity but rather his partiality for the South, a favoritism that bordered on disloyalty in a officer pledged to defend all the United States…In his betrayal of the national trust, Buchanan came closer to committing treason than any other president in American history” (p. 142).

The Democratic National Convention of 1860 split into three separate groups, none of them nominating Buchanan. After Lincoln’s inauguration and the dissolution of the Union, he retired to his home at Wheatlands but maintained a strictly pro-Union stance. Buchanan spent his last days trying to vindicate his presidency with an interesting and biased, yet unfinished autobiography. He died of pneumonia at the age of 77.

#14 Franklin Pierce Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Franklin Pierce
1. Franklin Pierce went to Bowdoin College in Maine where he would become life-long friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nathaniel wrote Pierce’s campaign biography in 1852 and then dedicated his last book Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches to Franklin Pierce. In fact, Hawhorne died while vacationing with Pierce in New Hampshire.
2. Franklin Pierce was considered a heavy drinker pretty much his entire life. “Heavy drinking and Pierce’s name go together like a horse and carriage, and years later his political opponents would label him a drunkard” (p. 7). Pierce would eventually die of liver damage.
3. Pierce was exceedingly prosouthern in his political viewpoint, causing him to espouse southern causes even over the voices of his own northern constituency. In fact, Pierce was the author of the infamous Gag Rule that kept all talk of slavery out of Congress during the 1830s and 1840s. “The proper course, Pierce told the House in a speech on December 18, was to receive but then automatically table such [abolitionist] petitions without any further consideration, the solution that the House would ultimately adopt in May 1836 in what became known as the Gag Rule” (p. 18).
4. Accusations of cowardice would follow him his entire life. In the North he was known as a “doughface.” “Significantly this article also labeled Pierce a doughface, a term that subsequently connoted a northern with southern sympathies, but in the North at the time it was an allegation of personal cowardice” (p. 19). And of course, there was his Mexican War record. “That Pierce had seemingly fainted in response to enemy fire inspired someone to shout, ‘Take command of the brigade. General Pierce is a damned coward’” (p. 29).
5. Pierce really did have a remarkable memory. Not only did he remember just about every name and face he met, but he would use them in his legal and political career. When he was arguing a case, he would call the jurors by name. Even as president, he stunned people with his method of recall. “At his inauguration on March 4, 1853, he astonished the crowd by delivering his carefully prepared address without once glancing at the notes that he held next to his thigh” (p. 52).
6. It was during Pierce’s administration that the continental United States filled out its present day size through the Gadsden Purchase. “When Pierce announced that he had no fear of territorial acquisition, one of the targets he had in mind was the area of northern Mexico south of New Mexico Territory, an area that seemed necessary for the completion of any transcontinental railroad to the Pacific coast along a southern route” (p.55).
7. It is a dubious distinction for Pierce that his presidential policies were credited for the rise of the nascent Republican Party. “One of the new parties that emerged in reaction to the organization of Nebraska, which Pierce endorsed, was the Republican Party, and it was the victory of that party in the presidential election of 1860 that provoked secession and the Civil War” (p. 73).
8. Franklin Pierce was good friends with Jefferson Davis and even tried to become his lawyer in 1867 when his trial for treason was scheduled. “In a long conversation that lasted well into the evening, Davis made it clear that he did not need Pierce’s legal help at the trial...Still Davis was deeply touched by Pierce’s effort. Before Pierce left, Davis jotted a brief note of thanks: ‘Given this day made bright by a visit of my beloved friend and ever honored chief’” (p. 130).

I felt that Michael Holt did a good job of bringing Franklin Pierce to life and to bring us newbies into the heated, suffocatingly-sectional world of mid-nineteenth century America. Just reading about this time period has me on the edge of my seat with all the anticipation and foreshadowing of the Civil War. Holt also gives us some good information about balloting and elections at this time and reasons why political parties came and went like water. “In the nineteenth century, however, governments did not print and distribute ballots. That was the job of the political parties themselves. In effect, this system meant that all that was needed to launch a new party was access to printing presses and enough volunteer manpower to distribute the ballot at the polls” (p. 84).

I was not a fan of the author’s redundant use of the word “precocious.” To Holt, it appeared that everything Frank did was precocious. It just got on my nerves. A fully grown man can no longer be labeled precocious, Mr. Holt.

With all the deliciously bad things I had heard about Franklin Pierce, I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed. Now he wasn’t a great president, mind you, but he wasn’t the evil, Union-destroying sadist that I was led to expect. In fact, I believe that he is more of a lovable doofus rather than an outright evil mastermind. Let’s put it this way, Franklin Pierce made some Very Bad Decisions, probably without knowing the full ramifications, and history has judged him very harshly thereby. “Historians almost uniformly rank Pierce among the nation’s worst presidents, indeed, because of his role in securing organization of Nebraska and thus bringing on the Civil War” (p. 73). But, goodness, how was he to know?

Holt gives us his reasons for Pierce’s continuously low rating as president. “Historians, indeed, usually rank Pierce among the six or eight worst presidents the country has ever had. Two things primarily account for that negative judgment. A passionately committed Democratic Party loyalist, Pierce during his presidency managed to divide his party into fiercely warring factional camps. More important, he helped propel the nation down the road to the Civil War…Also as a result, Pierce was the only president in the nineteenth century who sought, but was denied, renomination by his beloved party” (p. 2).

Yes, Franklin Pierce could have used sounder judgment and a more farsighted approach to his political decisions. Also he allowed the love of party and a general insecurity to overwhelm his political wisdom in certain vital matters. But I still maintain that he is painted blacker than he should be. After all, weren’t the sectional issues already very pronounced by Pierce’s presidency? And couldn’t we indict many people, presidents and otherwise, who helped propel the country toward war, possibly including Lincoln himself? Franklin Pierce probably would have been a decent president if nothing untoward had gone down during his administration. He was a perfect peacetime candidate. Unfortunately, this looks like a scenario of “wrong place, wrong time” and I heartily feel sorry for him.

#14: Franklin Pierce (1804-1869)

I just love when a PBG (Presidential BioGraphy) starts this way! “Franklin Pierce was arguably the most handsome man ever to serve as president of the United States. He was certainly one of the most amiable and congenial men to hold that office. Because of his popularity, personal charm, and family lineage, he enjoyed a meteoric political career in New Hampshire” (p. 1). And just like that, the author, Michael Holt, describes the keys to a successful political career that have been around since the beginning of time.

Interestingly, there are not very many PBGs of Franklin Pierce and so, since I was quite limited, I found myself falling back on the old standby—the American Presidents Series. Thus, I read Franklin Pierce: American Presidents Series by Michael F Holt (Times Books: New York, 2010). As I’ve mentioned before, I was looking forward to this biography with some anticipation. Other authors have stated that Pierce was a pretty total loss as a president and of course, this has got to mean some eye-opening material. And after all, he’s soooo cute!

Frank was born on November 23, 1804 to a very prestigious family in New Hampshire. His father was not only a general in the Revolutionary War but also a sheriff and a governor of the state. It was a relatively happy household and Frank thrived, growing tall and brawny.

The Pierces were always staunch Democratic-Republicans, in the vein of Jefferson and Madison, and so Pa Pierce decided that his son, on his way to college, must not be sent to Harvard, bastion for Federalism. Instead Frank attended Bowdoin College in Maine where he mainly drank, partied, and generally did pretty poorly at school. He graduated however and went on to read law, in which he excelled. Correction: his personal appeal and not his logic was a prime factor in the success of his cases. “He displayed a prodigious memory for names and faces, a trait that obviously benefited him in his political career as well…he had a deep, rich voice, again a trait that helped his political career because his audience could actually hear his unamplified voice at political rallies. Most important, he exuded a personal charm, an amiable temperament, and an instinctive human empathy. Pierce directed his arguments to the emotions of the jurors, not to the collective logic, and he usually won” (p. 10). He was admitted to the bar in 1827 and then as he slowly joined political movements, was elected to the state legislature in 1829 when he was only 25 years old.

In 1832, he was elected to the US Congress and by 1834 had married Jane Means Appleton, a girl he met while studying law in Amherst. If opposites attract, then it is understandable how they got together. Jane’s family was staunch Federalists, while Jane herself was very plain, shy and sickly. And on top of all that, she hated Frank’s political career and urged him to retire all the time.

He was elected to the US Senate in 1837 and served steadily until 1841 when he resigned before his requisite six-year term could expire. He stated that it was important to be home with his wife and to supplement their income by a return to his law practice but there may have been other reasons. “That Pierce resigned his Senate seat after spending only four months in the minority [as a Democrat] is telling. He liked to compete only when he held a winning hand. Political defeat was a new and intolerable experience” (p. 25).

Under the Polk administration, Pierce was appointed the US Attorney General of the state of New Hampshire. When the Mexican War began, however, Pierce was ready. In 1847, he was commissioned a brigadier general and was told to recruit regiments for the war which he would then lead to Mexico. He and his regiment joined the Winfield Scott expedition that would take them to Veracruz and ultimately Mexico City.

Frank, though capable of getting his men to General Scott across some hostile Mexican land, proved less than able when actually confronted with a battle. In Pierce’s first military engagement, during the initial charge, the gunfire from the Mexican artillery startled his horse, causing it to buck, pushing Pierce’s groin across the saddle pommel. He briefly lost consciousness. When he fell to the ground, the horse stepped on his knee, leaving him too wounded to continue. He was accused by his men of fainting at the imminent sign of fighting. In the next battle, Pierce twisted the same knee that had just healed. “Again his men marched by as their commander lay on the ground” (p. 29). In his regiment’s final battle, “He lay instead in a sick tent plagued with acute diarrhea” (p. 29). By December of 1847, Frank had had enough and requested a leave of absence. A few months later he resigned his commission and returned to his private life of law and politics.

At his years at home in New Hampshire, Frank played an increasingly large role in the local Democratic machinery so it was no surprise that his name would continue to make the political rounds. As the 1852 election neared, the Democrats met for their presidential convention with Lewis Cass, James Buchanan, and Stephen Douglas garnering most of the votes. However, neither of them could win with a clear majority and so people began bantering Pierce’s name around as a true dark horse candidate. By the forty-ninth ballot, Pierce became the Democratic candidate for president of the United States. “On their [Frank and Jane’s] return trip they were met by a horseback rider with the news the Pierce had been nominated. Pierce seemed stunned. Jane fainted dead away” (p. 43).

With the Whigs in freefall, splitting over their nominee, General Winfield Scott, it was probably not a surprise that Franklin Pierce was elected the 14th President. Democrats around the country unified under his name—a northern man with prosouthern leanings.

Although Frank had won a great victory, the months before the inauguration were not happy ones for him and his family. In January 1853, Frank, Jane and their only child, eleven-year-old Benjamin, were heading back to Concord on a tiny one-car train when the train derailed, slid down an embankment, and landed on its roof. Frank and Jane, who had been sitting together, were bruised and shaken but alive, whereas their son was killed instantly. Benny had been sitting behind them and during the accident, had the back of his head sheared off. “Father and mother had to view this ghastly sight and both were badly shaken” (p. 50). Under these circumstances, Franklin Pierce returned to Washington in an effort to finish his cabinet selections before his inauguration. “Carefully balanced by region, Pierce’s cabinet would prove to be one of the most ethical and effective group of advisers to serve the nation in the nineteenth century” (p. 52).

Things did not look up for Frank Pierce however. One month after his inauguration, William King, the Vice President, died, leaving Pierce vulnerable. “His death [King’s], however, meant that the president pro tempore of the Senate, David R Atchison, stood next in line for the succession, a fateful change in leadership as time would show” (p. 54). Not to mention, Pierce made a dreadful hash of his patronage opportunities. In the mid-1800’s patronage appointments were used to swing votes toward one candidate or another and to reward the party faithful that had worked hard during the election. Instead of rewarding the men that voted for him, Pierce used his patronage to promote both extremes of the Democratic Party into federal jobs. “Rather than relying on the solid men in the center of the party who had stood by the compromise [Compromise of 1850] from the start, the paper’s editors carped, Pierce had favored former Free Soilers from the North and disunionist Southern Rights Democrats with the juiciest plums” (p. 66). This mistake would ultimately aid in ruining Pierce’s presidency. “In hindsight, it is clear that Pierce’s attempts to distribute the loaves and fishes among all elements of the party proved an unmitigated disaster” (p. 67).

But then the biggest bombshell of Pierce’s presidency occurred. We all know that slavery was the powder keg of this era and most political decisions at this time were made with it in mind. To understand the full implications of what happened next, we’ll have to travel back in time to James Monroe’s presidency and recall the temporary band-aid called the Missouri Compromise. When Jefferson had bought the Louisiana Purchase, people were excited but only until the slavery question came up. Where should slavery stop inside this new big piece of land? Monroe was the president that had to deal with the repercussions because by 1820, some of the Louisiana Purchase had reached the requisite population requirement and wished to become states. Now all of sudden, people were upset—Missouri wished to be a slave state but that would throw the balance off in Congress. The band-aid, otherwise known as the Missouri Compromise, said three things: 1. Missouri will enter the Union as a slave state, 2. Maine will enter the Union as a free state (thus keeping the balance), and 3. slavery will stay below the 36º30’ latitude line.

Fast forward to the 1850s. The Compromise of 1850, which had been pushed through Congress by Millard Fillmore, tentatively negated the Missouri Compromise by allowing New Mexico and California (clearly below the 36º30’ line) to enter the Union as free states without giving the slave states anything in return except a harsher Fugitive Slave Law. Thus, when people clamored for the states of Kansas and Nebraska to be settled and then worked into the Union, the shit literally hit the fan. Both Kansas and Nebraska were technically above the Missouri Compromise line and therefore were ineligible to become slave states. However, the slave states simply wanted more states. “What made the Nebraska question so explosive was slavery. All of the area in any proposed territory that would be carved out lay north of the latitude line thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, from which slavery had been ‘forever prohibited’ by the Missouri Compromise of 1820” (p. 73).

Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois, was chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories and it fell to him to draft a compromise measure that would successfully please all parties and allow Kansas and Nebraska into the Union. He advocated “popular sovereignty” in the territories in question which basically would allow the populations of both territories to vote on whether they wished to be pro- or anti-slavery. Douglas felt he could offer this because he claimed that the Compromise of 1850 had abrogated the Missouri Compromise and thus the 36º30’ line was immaterial. The Kansas-Nebraska bill was then pushed forward under the assumption that Kansas would become a slave state and Nebraska a free one, which Franklin Pierce ultimately approved. “Pierce signed the bill into law at the end of May 1854, the second biggest mistake of his political career” (p. 82).

The Kansas-Nebraska situation would simply not go away, though. The issues merely got worse and would remain a thorn in Pierce’s side throughout the rest of his tenure as president. Because the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a nebulous idea at best, it is not surprising that the situation soon deteriorated into violence. Kansas was assumed to be a slave state but the problem lay in the fact that no one asked the Kansans what they wanted—and they wanted to be a free state. Thus, when the first elections occurred there in 1855, some fishy business seemed inevitable. “Egged on by former Senator David R Atchison, whose Senate term had ended early that March, hundreds of heavily armed Missourians, aiming to exploit an ambiguity in the original act as to what constituted ‘residency’ in Kansas, poured across the border on election day. These ‘Border Ruffians’ took over polling places in sparsely populated hamlets and cast not only their own ballots but hundreds of additional, wholly fictitious, ballots for proslavery legislative candidates” (p. 91). Pierce had unwittingly sent a proslavery territorial governor who allowed the false election results to stand. The new proslavery legislature of Kansas immediately set up shop in Lecompton and proceeded to hammer out a constitution that made the state a slaveholding one, along with an extremely strict slave code. Conversely, the majority of Kansans had a free-state mentality so they then set up their own government and constitution at Topeka, which Pierce accused of being in opposition to the federally recognized government at Lecompton.

Due to his catastrophic decision-making, Franklin Pierce effectively split his party and basically assured his own retirement at the end of his first term. At the Democratic national convention, Pierce’s own party failed to re-nominate him and instead focused on James Buchanan, the politician from Pennsylvania. Frank, then still young, found himself and Jane back in New Hampshire. Jane, however, was never quite well and so Frank took care of her most of his time. They toured Europe together in an effort to alleviate her suffering but she died in 1863.

Pierce was unhappy with the Civil War, due to his prosouthern leanings, but he never made mention of that fact in public. In fact, he outwardly supported the war effort. After his wife’s death, he purchased a farm in New Hampshire but was increasingly alone and drank heavily. On October 8, 1869, Franklin Pierce died of liver failure.

#13 Millard Fillmore Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Millard Fillmore
1. His first name is actually his mother’s maiden name.
2. The Antimason Party was the first political party to use a national nominating convention to determine their choice for the office of President of the United States. “ Its [the Antimason Party’s] righteous appeal to masses of voters, its highly organized committee system topped by a state central committee, its state-wide conventions and prompt inauguration of a national nominating convention (the first in America’s history), its conscious effort at propaganda—all represented the new departure” (p. 27).
3. Millard became a major figure in the city of Buffalo and with his prestige, he pressed for social and educational reform. Partly due to his endeavors, Buffalo became the first city in New York state to offer free elementary schools. “In 1839 the common council accepted the recommended policy, and as a result Buffalo claimed the distinction of being the state’s first community to establish free, tax-supported elementary schools” (p. 55).
4. While in Buffalo, Millard teamed up with fellow lawyers, Nathan Hall and Solomon Haven, to establish a very preeminent firm. In fact, this very law firm would produce two Presidents of the United States. “In turn, when one of its students, Grover Cleveland, took his oath of office as President of the United States, its proud members needed no legerdemain to establish the fact that their law office had the unique distinction of giving the nation two of its Presidents” (p. 55-6).
5. Millard Fillmore nearly annexed the Hawaiian Islands due to French aggression against them. “Encouraged by American citizens who filled his [the Hawaiian king’s] ears with advice, the native ruler proposed a secret annexation which would be valid only if French hostility proved true” (p. 311). However, Fillmore, who hated secrecy, shied away from this shady deal. “Fillmore and Webster [Secretary of State] deemed the pear should not be shaken into the American lap under cover of darkness” (p. 312).
6. During Millard’s presidency, he instructed Commodore Perry to open Japan with a show of force. With seven black warships in July of 1853, Perry entered the Bay of Yedo and handed the president’s message to the shogun there. Within weeks a treaty was signed allowing trade between the two nations. “Fillmore’s administration had prepared the ground for sweeping changes in the relations between the East and the West, and his highway to the Orient was taking shape” (p. 317).
7. While Millard toured England after his retirement, the University of Oxford wished to bestow an honorary degree on him. However, Millard declined to accept it, remembering the embarrassment incumbent upon Andrew Jackson when Jackson had accepted a degree from Harvard. “He [Fillmore] was thinking of Major Jack Downing’s description of Jackson receiving a similar honor from Harvard University, on which occasion the old here—according to the humorist—concluded his remarks by shouting in tones of thunder all the Latin he knew: ‘E pluribus unum! Sine qua non! Multum in parvo! Quid pro quo! Ne plus ultra’” (p. 399)! Fillmore explained himself thus. “I had not the advantage of a classical education and no man should, in my judgment, accept a degree he cannot read” (p. 398).

I actually quite liked this rendition of Millard Fillmore. The author has the distinct advantage of unchartered territory in that no one really knows anything much about this guy so everything he writes is groundbreaking information in a sense. Due to his exuberant and sometimes cheesy literary style, you can also tell that the author, Robert Rayback, is genuinely interested in the 13th president. For example, this sentence about Abigail and Millard made me giggle just a little. “In turn, his six feet of sturdy manhood aroused her admiration, while his dignified bearing forecast a promising future” (p. 7). While Millard might not be the most interesting of our presidents, Rayback’s tone gives him all the attention he deserves.

Actually, I should not have been as surprised as I was to discover that this book was less of a biography of Millard Fillmore but more of a history of the Whig Party (and, by extension, the Antimasons and the Know Nothings). Rayback warned me in the prologue that “since knowing the genesis of a book is an aid to the reader, I must admit that curiosity about the Whig Party, rather than the admiration of Fillmore, started me on the research that led to this biography” (p. viii). He then goes on to confess that “my own probing soon suggested that a biography of Millard Fillmore could be used to continue the re-examination of the Whig party” (p. viii).

In another sense, this book is as much a testament to the rabid political life of antebellum New York as anything else. It is an in-depth analysis of the small-town politics of Buffalo and then the sweeping rivalries within the Whig party throughout the entire state. If you ever wanted to know this much about behind-the-scenes political intrigue in a single US state then read on. Not even in the Van Buren book (and he was from New York, remember?) was there this much carefully-prepared information on the scheming minds behind the Whig meltdown of 1852.

Speaking of slavery, I have to admit that I am dying to get to the Civil War. Not because I am a huge fan of it per se, but because the anticipation is simply killing me! In these most recent biographies, slavery is such an issue and tempers are running so high that I can’t help but think ahead to its zenith when we devolve into killing each other and the war begins. I can’t remember what exact instance sparks the war (I know it involves Lincoln and maybe Fort Sumter but that’s really it) but I do know that it’s coming up soon and I’m excited. All this tension is driving me crazy! Can you imagine living during this time and knowing that something, something, had to go down soon?

#13 Millard Fillmore (1800-1874)

“Instead of a self-serving politician, the person who emerged from the sources was a quiet, almost modest, man who had no desire for power and who wanted to do good and make good according to the best conventions of the day. And he succeeded.” Robert Rayback

“Why doesn’t anyone have a copy of Millard Fillmore’s biography!?!” I suspired in exasperation. Of course I immediately had to cut short my melodramatic antics when I realized that the answer to the question was actually in my question. Maybe I should have asked instead whether anyone knew who Millard Fillmore was at all or if, indeed, there even was a Millard Fillmore biography. A good friend of mine incredulously repeated his name and then laughed, “I didn’t even know that he was a president of ours.” So good luck, Vanya, finding something to read on this guy.

I knew the pickings were slim when I became a member of two separate county libraries for this project only to find that neither county contained a biography on this president. Let me qualify that: all the biographies I did find were straight out of the children’s department and of no particular use to me. So I did what I always do when I have trouble finding something: I went straight to the Ultimate Source of All That is Good, Amazon.com, and bought Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert J Rayback (Newtown, CT: American Political Biography Press, 1992). It gave me a keen sense of pleasure to note that even the author has to advise us as to whom Millard Fillmore really was—a United States President.

And just for your information, I am not going to complain every single time I have to buy a book, although you must admit that it’s extremely frustrating having to do so. Of course, I can then hear you say that if it’s this frustrating why would I choose to read about the presidents in the first place? And I would have to end this imaginary exchange in a huff because I would become embarrassed upon the realization that there is just no rebuttal for that argument.

Whoa. Did I just have an entire conversation with myself? Awkward. Who knew that Millard Fillmore was such a controversial topic?

The book I read was four hundred and thirty pages so just bear with me, okay? Millard was born to an extremely poor family in upstate New York. The Fillmores had just moved south from Vermont presumably for a better life, but unfortunately for them, life did not get better. In fact, it seemed to get worse. “For Nathaniel [Fillmore senior] the birth of Millard was a brief distraction from mounting misfortune” (p. 3). Millard was born on January 7, 1800 amidst extreme economic hardship for his family. His parents had purchased a farm in New York, but along with a severe loss of crops, they discovered that their farm was a phony purchase and they were henceforth evicted. Millard’s father hated farming but with the future looking bleak, he was forced to move the family and assume tenancy of a farm in Sempronius, NY. Millard, you can say, started life as one of the poorest future Presidents in history.

Nathaniel’s hatred of farming would be the unwitting means of moving his son further up the economic ladder though it started humbly enough. At age 14, Nathaniel apprenticed Millard to a cloth-dresser and this allowed the young boy to come into contact with society, of a sort. Millard realized that he was pretty ignorant, not having had any real formal schooling, so he enrolled in a new academy during the slow season. (Does cloth-dressing have a slow season!?!) “For the first time he heard a sentence parsed, for the first time saw a map, and for the first time he began to experience the pleasures of female society” (p. 6). “Female society” devolved into Abigail Powers, the youngest daughter of a reverend, and whom Millard resolved to marry one day.

Just as Millard’s father was the method of furthering the young boy’s entrance into a marketable job, he was also the instrument for ultimately introducing his son to the law profession. In 1819, Nathaniel persuaded the judge whose land he tenanted to take Millard on as a law clerk. The judge agreed and Millard began his long and distinguished career as a lawyer. After serving the judge for four years, Millard quit and moved to the thriving but still new city of Buffalo in an effort to broaden his experience. “Bit by bit he impressed himself on the community. Modulated speech, meticulous dress, serious attitude, carefully selected words, orthodox opinions, decorous bearing, correct manners, temperate habits—all gained the approval of his associates” (p. 12). On February 8, 1826, he was doing well enough to finally marry Abigail Powers.

In that same year an unusual political phenomenon developed—the Anitmason Party. In western New York, an Arch Mason, William Morgan, disappeared after he published a book bearing the secrets of the Masonic order. Public opinion rose against all masons thereafter and a political party sprang up in the meantime, promising the demise of the Masons. Millard jumped on the bandwagon and by 1828, he was voted to the state assembly on the Antimason ticket. “He shed his protective cocoon of anonymity and with increasing frequency took the floor of the assembly” (p.34). Through his passionate efforts for the Antimason cause, he was then elected to Congress.

It makes sense to me that the Antimason Party was doomed to be short-lived. The furor over the Masons’ secret order very soon was eclipsed by the Panic of 1837 and while Millard continued to work as a lawyer in Buffalo during the off season, he began to move into the Whig Party camp. Through his zeal, he was able to help get William Henry Harrison elected in the 1840 campaign and he was sent to Congress yet again, but this time as a Whig. He lost the 1841 Speaker of the House election but he was instead sent to assume leadership of the very powerful Ways and Means Committee.

In 1842, he retired from Congress for local Whig reasons but, in his heart he wanted the Vice Presidential nomination. “He reasoned that he could do more good during the next two years back in New York, where political fences were in need of much repair, than to continue serving in Congress” (p. 146). While he was waiting for the next presidential election, he was prevailed upon by the local Whigs to run for Governor of the state of New York. He lost but was given the important job of comptroller for the state, which also was a vital position because it dealt with the New York’s finances. He did not receive the nomination for vice president in 1844.

However, with the election of 1848 right around the corner and Zachary Taylor’s campaign picking up speed, the Whigs realized that the vice president really needed to come from the North (since Taylor was of the West). Millard was then nominated as the vice presidential candidate to run on the Whig ticket. When Taylor won the presidency, Millard found himself returning to Washington and to Congress but this time as Vice President and head of the Senate.

Unfortunately, it was Millard being sent to Washington that eventually split the Whig party and ultimately destroyed it. While Fillmore was away, William Seward, a New York politician, and Thurlow Weed, a Whig newspaper editor, combined to do everything in their power to thwart Millard’s influence in the state, causing a very bitter intrapolitical rivalry. Weed and Seward caused Fillmore’s political recommendations to be blocked and they even went so far as to cozy up to Zachary Taylor’s ear. These issues were to cause great distress in the Whig ranks.

All these machinations were moot, however, when, in 1850, Taylor died and the office of President of the United States felll upon Millard Fillmore. “Most Presidents have four months before taking office to form their policies. He [Millard] had one night. He was fully aware of the taut condition of the bonds of the union. No President has ever taken office in the face of such impending disaster” (p. 240). The impending disaster referred to here was the future Compromise of 1850. Taylor had died amidst huge political upheaval as California and New Mexico wanted to enter the Union as free states and the South was simply livid over it. The Compromise of 1850, which was actually four or five separate bills, was only voted into law because Millard Fillmore placed his entire presidential force behind it. The bills established Texas’ boundary with New Mexico, California and New Mexico would be admitted to the Union as free states, the slave trade was abolished in the district of Columbia, and there were new, harsher measures affixed to the Fugitive Slave Law. And, of course, no one was happy with it.

Other than the overwhelming suffocation of the slavery issue during his presidency, Millard’s presidency was distinguished by a laidback, gentlemanly feel. He was a conservative at heart and dealt with the various situations in that light. “His foreign policy was simplicity itself: promote, by honorable means only, every legitimate interest of Americans. This meant that bellicose action or unwonted greed on the part of either foreigners or Americans must be restrained. He cared neither to flaunt the power of America nor to test the strength of others. And when his term of office was over, his record would be remarkably clear of bluff, bombast, or aggression” (p. 301.) He was not a huge proponent of “manifest destiny” but he would not allow foreign powers to come tramping in either.

The slow schism that developed in the Whig Party grew ever broader as the election of 1852 grew nearer. Millard wished to retire but his Whig cronies demanded that he keep his hat in the race because the Southern Whigs trusted him. However, behind Fillmore’s back, Weed and Seward were promoting the presidency of General Willard Scott and between them, they split the party right down the center. Scott eventually won the nomination after a long and emotion-filled convention, but with Franklin Pierce becoming the next president, the Whigs would soon break up into other political parties.

It was unfortunate that Abigail Fillmore died in 1853 just as Millard began his long retirement from office, thereby making his time at home worse than it should have been (after being abandoned by his own political party). Also, the office of President did not pay very well and so Millard was forced to resume his law profession afterwards just to keep his financial situation stable.

However, politics would simply not go away and Millard found himself in the thick of things as usual. “In his eyes the preservation of the Union had become the highest goal of statesmanship” (p. 386). Because he felt this way, Millard decided to go on an extended tour of the Union promoting unity. It was during this tour that his young daughter, only 22 years old, died suddenly.

In grief, Fillmore traveled throughout Europe only to return to the United States to join yet another political party, the Know Nothings. The Know Nothings were a random group of people (some were old Whig adherents) that were anti-immigrants, anti-Catholics, and anti-party incumbents and they nominated Millard Fillmore as their 1856 presidential nominee.

Millard did not win the election but life was not over. In 1858, he married a wealthy widow, Mrs. Caroline C McIntosh, which took care of his financial situation, and allowed him to devote even more time, now that the Civil War had begun, to effecting internecine peace. “With armed conflict at hand Fillmore made restoration of the Union his sole war aim” (p. 423). He supported the war from the northern side and even put together the Union Continentals, a “company in the home guard—that portion of the New York militia composed of mean too old to be subject to the call by the federal government but prepared to act in a local emergency” (p. 424).

It was unfortunate for Millard Fillmore that his remarkable career did not end right there because his sterling reputation was eventually tarnished by his criticism directed to the Republican Party and Lincoln in particular. The media honed in on this seeming “treason’ by the ex-President and for the rest of his years, Millard would be branded a traitor.

After the war was over, Millard was placed on the board of directors for the newly built University of Buffalo medical school and he was chairman for the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “Upon his personal world he could smile benignly. It had been kind to him and generous with its material and spiritual wealth. The years passed in unhurried, comfortable living” (p. 443). On the morning of February 13, 1874, Millard was shaving when his hand went numb, soon followed by the left side of his face. This paralysis occurred again two weeks later and on March 8th, he died.