Millard Filmore: Biography of a President

Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert J. Rayback

Millard Fillmore, the U.S.A.’s 13^th president, is generally viewed by many historians as one the all-time worst. Curiously, you would never have fathomed that after reading this biography. Interestingly, the author alludes to this fact in this book’s introduction. He claims that whatever history has taught us about this man, more scrutiny is required. He then paints a very flattering portrait of the man throughout the entire book.  For someone like me who doesn’t know much about Millard Fillmore, who should I believe?  The author? Or the masses?  Whoever the masses may be.

So it’s very easy to be critical based on the author’s treatment of his subject matter. But before anyone judges, they should do their own homework and not frame their opinion based on what others have told us. What is undeniable to me, is that this is a very well-written book that held my interest throughout. I admit I was a bit skeptical since (according to Amazon) the author doesn’t have any other published works. I’ve also learned that ‘older’ books tend to hold my interest less.  Perhaps that’s an unfair generalization, but most biographies older than 50 years are a bit of a challenge for me when it comes to holding my interest (this book was written in 1959).

This book seemed to be the perfect length. Being that Millard Filmore served as president for less than one term (he succeeded Zachary Taylor after his death and was never elected again), one shouldn’t expect too lengthy of a narrative.  Conversely, this isn’t a carelessly written volume designed to fill a gap that can be digested over a weekend.  We read just enough about his youth, his early law career, his political beginnings, his ‘accidental’ presidency, and his waning years.  To be honest, I would have liked to have read a tad more about his life after the presidency, but perhaps sources for the author were rare and/or unavailable.

I’m learning that any biography of any United States president focuses heavily on slavery, discrimination, Jim Crow, or Civil Rights.  This is good since these issues should have always been a focus in our country’s somewhat flawed history. It’s always a bit sad, though, when we read how slow progress has always been.  With Millard Fillmore being President during the controversial decade of the 1850s, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the slavery topic is a very hot one in this bio.  To cut to the chase, Fillmore was like many of his counterparts: he was against slavery but didn’t want to rock the boat too hard as to alienate roughly half of the country.  The biggest topic of his presidency, The Compromise of 1850 (actually initiated by his predecessor) can be looked at in one of two ways. One spin is that it ‘delayed’ the Civil War by about 10 years, but the upshot of this is that slavery was in place for that much longer. Could the Civil War ever have been prevented?  Some might think so, but as bloody as it was, it achieved the goal (in a roundabout way) to finally end slavery.  So the fact that Fillmore was able to postpone such an event might not necessarily be viewed as a good thing in hindsight.

Perhaps the biggest strike against Fillmore was in his post-presidency days, he was a big advocate of what was known as ‘Nativism’. This essentially was a movement to restrict the rights of foreigners and recent immigrants (strangely, Catholics in particular).  Again, history isn’t pretty in many places, so one probably shouldn’t be too judgmental of such sentiments, but in hindsight, such feelings are a bit distressing.

I also enjoyed this book because it gives a good overview of why and how the Whig political party came into existence. Since Fillmore was right in the middle of this particular era, the author does his due diligence to educate his readers on the key players and their motivations for this new faction.  We then read about how the short-lived Whig party eventually morphed, to a degree, to the new Republican party that appeared around the late 1850s.  The main lesson is that having at least two political parties with different views is often inevitable, but also necessary.

There was also a very enjoyable chapter on the country’s desire to bridge the two oceans via a canal to aid in travel and trade.  History shows us that this wasn’t accomplished until the 1910s, but it was still very interesting to read the initial thoughts, plans, and obstacles of the originators of the idea.

So in conclusion, I would advise one not to wholly trust what they read in these pages about the man nor the times because of its obvious conflicts with the most accepted theories and recollections.  On that note, however, I’m interested to find the opposing view that is presented as well and as interesting as what Rayback has done here.   Based on that, I’d have to give this retrospective 5 stars out of 5 stars.