The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914/Millard Fillmore
, thirteenth president of the
United States, born in the township of Locke (now
Summerhill), Cayuga County, N. Y., January 7,
1800; died in Buffalo, N. Y., March 7, 1874. The
name of Fillmore is of English origin, and at
different periods has been variously written. Including
the son of the ex-president, the family can be
traced through six generations, and, as has been
said of that of Washington, its history gives proof
“of the lineal and enduring worth of race.” The
first of the family to appear in the New World
was a certain John Fillmore, who, in a conveyance
of two acres of land dated November 24, 1704, is
described as a “mariner of Ipswich,” Mass. His
eldest son, of the same name, born two years
before the purchase of the real estate in Beverly, also
became a sea-faring man, and while on a voyage
in the sloop “Dolphin,” of Cape Ann, was captured
with all on board by the pirate Capt. John Phillips.
For nearly nine months Fillmore and his three
companions in captivity were compelled to serve
on the pirate ship and to submit, during that long
period, to many hardships and much cruel
treatment.
After watching and waiting for an
opportunity to obtain their freedom, their hour at length
came. While Fillmore sent an axe crashing
through the skull of Burrall, the boatswain, the
captain and other officers were despatched by his
companions, and the ship was won. They sailed
her into Boston harbor, and the same court which
condemned the brigands of the sea presented John
Fillmore with the captain's silver-hilted sword and
other articles, which are preserved to this day by
his descendants. The sword was inherited by his
son, Nathaniel, and was made good use of in both
the French and Revolutionary wars. Lieut. Fillmore's
second son, who also bore the name
Nathaniel, and who was the father of the president,
went with his young wife, Phebe Millard, to what
at the close of the past century was the “far west,”
where he and a younger brother built a log cabin
in the wilderness, and there his second son, Millard,
was born. Nathaniel Fillmore was one of “God
Almighty's gentlemen,” whose creed was contained
in two words, “do right,” and who lived to see his
son elevated to the highest position in his native
land. Of the president's mother, who died in the
summer of 1831, little is known beyond the fact
that she was a sensible and, in her later years, a
sickly woman; with a sunny nature that enabled
her to endure uncomplainingly the many hardships
of a frontier life, and that her closing days were

gladdened by the frequent visits of her son, who
was then in public life, with every prospect of a
successful professional and political career.

From a brief manuscript autobiography
prepared by “worthy Mr. Fillmore,” as Washington
Irving described him, we learn that, owing to a
defective title, his father lost his property on what
was called the “military tract,” and removed to
another part of the same county, now known as
Niles, where he took a perpetual lease of 130 acres,
wholly unimproved and covered with heavy timber.
It was here that the future president first knew
anything of life. Working for nine months on the
farm, and attending such primitive schools as then
existed in that neighborhood for the other three
months of the year, he had an opportunity of
forgetting during the summer what he acquired in the
winter, for in those days there were no newspapers
and magazines to be found in pioneers cabins, and
his father's library consisted of but two books — the
Bible and a collection of hymns. He never saw a
copy of “Shakespeare” or “Robinson Crusoe,” a
history of the United States, or even a map of his
own country, till he was nineteen years of age!
Nathaniel Fillmore's misfortunes in losing his land
through a defective title, and again in taking
another tract of exceedingly poor soil, gave him a
distaste for farming, and made him desirous that his
sons should follow other occupations. As his means

did not justify him or them in aspiring to any
profession, he wished them to learn trades, and accordingly
Millard, then a sturdy youth of fourteen, was
apprenticed for a few months on trial to the business
of carding wool and dressing cloth. During
his apprenticeship he was, as the youngest, treated
with great injustice, and on one occasion his
employer, for some expression of righteous resentment,
threatened to chastise him, when the young
woodsman, burning with indignation, raised the
axe with which he was at work, and told him the
attempt would cost him his life. Most fortunate
for both, the attempt was not made, and at the
close of his term he shouldered his knapsack,
containing a few clothes and a supply of bread and
dried venison, and set out on foot and alone for his
father's house, a distance of something more than a
hundred miles through the primeval forests. Mr.
Fillmore in his autobiography remarks: “I think
that this injustice — which was no more than other
apprentices have suffered and will suffer — had a
marked effect on my character. It made me feel
for the weak and unprotected, and to hate the
insolent tyrant in every station of life.”

In 1815 the youth again began the business of
carding and cloth-dressing, which was carried on
from June to December of each year. The first
book that he purchased or owned was a small
English dictionary, which he diligently studied while

attending the carding machine. In 1819 he
conceived the design of becoming a lawyer. Fillmore,
who had yet two years of his apprenticeship to
serve, agreed with his employer to relinquish his
wages for the last year's services, and promised to
pay thirty dollars for his time. Making an
arrangement with a retired country lawyer, by
which he was to receive his board in payment for
his services in the office, he began the study of law,
a part of the time teaching school, and so struggling
on, overcoming almost insurmountable
difficulties, till at length, in the spring of 1823, he was,
at the intercession of several leading members of
the Buffalo bar, whose confidence he had won,
admitted as an attorney by the court of common pleas
of Erie County, although he had not completed
the course of study usually required. The writer
has recently seen the dilapidated one-story building
in Buffalo where Mr. Fillmore closed his career
as a school-master, and has also conversed with one
of his pupils of four-score years ago. The wisdom
of his youth and early manhood gave presage of
all that was witnessed and admired in the maturity
of his character. Nature laid on him, in the kindly
phrase of Wordsworth, “the strong hand of her
purity,” and even then he was remarked for that
sweet courtesy of manner which accompanied him
through life. Millard Fillmore began practice at
Aurora, where his father then resided, and
fortunately
won his first case and a fee of four
dollars. In 1827 he was admitted as an attorney,
and two years later as counsellor of the supreme
court of the state. In 1830 he removed to Buffalo,
and after a brief period formed a partnership with
Nathan K. Hall, to which Solomon G. Haven was
soon afterward admitted.

By hard study and the closest application,
combined with honesty and fidelity, Mr. Fillmore soon
became a sound and successful lawyer, attaining a
highly honorable position in the profession. The
law-firm of Fillmore, Hall & Haven, which
continued till 1847, was perhaps the most prominent
in western New York, and was usually engaged in
every important suit occurring in that portion of
the state. In 1853, while still in Washington, Mr.
Fillmore made an arrangement with Henry E.
Davies to renew, on retiring from the presidency,
the practice of his profession in New York, in
partnership with that gentleman, who, after occupying
a judge's seat in the court of appeals, returned to
the bar. Family afflictions, however, combined
with other causes, induced the ex-president to abandon
his purpose. There were doubtless at that time
men of more genius and greater eloquence at the
bar of the great city; but we cannot doubt that
Mr. Fillmore's solid legal learning, and the weight
of his personal character, would have won for him

the highest professional honors in the new field of
action.

Mr. Fillmore's political career began and ended
with the birth and extinction of the great Whig
party. In 1828 he was elected by Erie County to
the state legislature of New York, serving for three
terms, and retiring with a reputation for ability,
integrity, and a conscientious performance of his
public duties. He distinguished himself by his
advocacy of the act to abolish imprisonment for
debt, which was passed in 1831. The bill was
drafted by Fillmore, excepting the portion relative
to proceedings in courts of record, which was
drawn by John C. Spencer. In 1832 he was elected
to congress, and, after serving for one term, retired
until 1836, when he was re-elected, and again
returned in 1838 and 1840, declining a renomination
in 1842. In the 27th congress Mr. Fillmore, as
chairman of the committee on ways and means — a
committee performing at that period not only the
duties now devolving upon it, but those also which
belong to the committee on appropriations — had
herculean labors to perform. Day after day, for
weeks and months, Fillmore had to encounter many
of the ablest debaters of the house, but on all
occasions he proved himself equal to the emergency.
It should not be forgotten that, in the opinion of
John Quincy Adams, there were more men of talent
and a larger aggregate of ability in that congress

than he had ever known. Although Mr. Fillmore
did not claim to have discovered any original system
of revenue, still the tariff of 1842 was a new
creation, and he is most justly entitled to the
distinction of being its author. It operated successfully,
giving immediate life to our languishing
industries and national credit. At the same time
Mr. Fillmore, with great labor, prepared a digest
of the laws authorizing all appropriations reported
by him to the house as chairman of the committee
on ways and means, so that on the instant he could
produce the legal authority for every expenditure
which he recommended. Sensible that this was a
great safeguard against improper expenditures, he
procured the passage of a resolution requiring the
departments, when they submitted estimates of
expenses, to accompany them with a reference to
the laws authorizing them in each and every
instance. This has ever since been the practice of
the United States government.

Mr. Fillmore retired from congress in 1843, and
was a candidate for the office of vice-president,
supported by his own and several of the western states,
in the Whig convention that met at Baltimore in
May, 1844. In the following September he was
nominated by acclamation for governor, but was
defeated by Silas Wright, his illustrious contemporary,
Henry Clay being vanquished at the same
time in the presidential contest by James K. Polk.

In 1847 Fillmore was elected comptroller of the
state of New York, an office which then included
many duties now distributed among other departments.
In his report of January 1, 1849, he
suggested that a national bank, with the stocks of the
United States as the sole basis upon which to issue
its currency, might be established and carried on,
so as to prove a great convenience to the government,
with perfect safety to the people. This idea
involves the essential principle of our present system
of national banks.

In June, 1848, Millard Fillmore was nominated
by the Whig national convention for vice-president,
with Gen. Taylor, who had recently won military
renown in Mexico, as president, and was in the
following November elected, making, with the late
occupant of the office, seven vice-presidents of the
United States from New York, a greater number
than has been yet furnished by any other state. In
February, 1849, Fillmore resigned the comptrollership,
and on March 5 he was inaugurated as
vice-president. In 1826 Calhoun, of South Carolina,
then vice-president, established the rule that that
officer had no authority to call senators to order.
During the heated controversies in the session of
1849-50, occasioned by the application of
California for admission into the Union, the vexed
question of slavery in the new territories, and that
of the rendition of fugitive slaves, in which the

most acrimonious language was used, Mr. Fillmore,
in a forcible speech to the senate, announced his
determination to maintain order, and that, should
occasion require, he should resume the usage of his
predecessors upon that point. This announcement
met with unanimous approval of the senate, which
directed the vice-president's remarks to be entered
in full on its journal. He presided during the
exciting controversy on Clay's “omnibus bill” with
his usual impartiality, and so perfectly even did
he hold the scales that no one knew which policy
he approved excepting the president, to whom he
privately stated that, should he be required to
deposit a casting vote, it would be in favor of
Henry Clay's bill. More than seven months of
the session had been exhausted in angry controversy,
when, on July 9, 1850, the country was
startled by the news of President Taylor's death.
He passed away in the second year of his presidency,
suddenly and most unexpectedly, of a
violent fever, which was brought on by long
exposure to the excessive heat of a fourth of July
sun, while he was attending the public ceremonies
of the day.

It was a critical moment in the history of our
country when Millard Fillmore was on Wednesday,
July 10, 1850, made president of the United States.
With great propriety he reduced the ceremony of
his inauguration to an official act to be marked by

solemnity without joy; and so, with an absence of
the usual heralding of trumpet and shawm, he was
unostentatiously sworn into his great office in
the hall of representatives, in the presence of both
houses. The chief justice of the circuit court of
the District of Columbia — the venerable William
Cranch, appointed fifty years before by President
John Adams — administered the oath, which being
done, the new president bowed and retired, and the
ceremony was at an end. Mr. Fillmore was then in
the prime of life, possessing that which to the
heathen philosopher seemed the greatest of all
blessings — a sound mind in a sound body. The
portrait which appears in this work is after a photograph
taken in Buffalo some twenty years later.
Of Fillmore's keen appreciation of the responsibility
devolving on him we have the evidence of letters
written at that time, in which he says he should
despair but for his humble reliance on God to help
him in the honest, fearless, and faithful discharge
of his great duties. President Taylor's cabinet
immediately resigned, and a new and exceedingly
able one was selected by Mr. Fillmore, with Daniel
Webster as secretary of state; Thomas Corwin,
secretary of the treasury; William A. Graham, secretary
of the navy; Charles M. Conrad, secretary of
war; Alexander H. H. Stuart, secretary of the
interior; John J. Crittenden, attorney-general; and

Nathan K. Hall, postmaster-general. Of these,
Mr. Webster died, and Messrs. Graham and Hall
retired in 1852, and were respectively replaced by
Edward Everett, John P. Kennedy, and Samuel
D. Hubbard. Stuart, of Virginia, who died
February 13, 1891, was the last survivor of the
illustrious men who aided Mr. Fillmore in guiding the
ship of state during the most appalling political
tempest, save one, which ever visited this fair land.
It is certainly not the writer's wish to reawaken
party feelings or party prejudice or to recall those
great questions of pith and moment which so seriously
disturbed congress and the country in the
first days of Fillmore's administration, but yet, even
in so cursory a glance as we are now taking of his
career, some comment would seem to be called for
in respect to those public acts connected with slavery
which appear to have most unreasonably and
unjustly lost him the support of a large proportion
of his party in the northern states. Whatever the
wisdom of Mr. Fillmore's course may have been,

it is impossible to doubt his patriotism or his honest
belief that he was acting in accordance with his oath
to obey the constitution of his country. The president's
dream was peace — to preserve without
hatred and without war tranquillity throughout the
length and breadth of our broad land, and if in
indulging this delusive dream he erred, it was surely
an error that leaned to virtue's side. There is a
legend that “he serves his party best who serves his
country best.” In Mr. Fillmore's action it is
confidently believed that he thought not of party or of
personal interests, but only of his bounden duty to
his country and her sacred constitution.

One of the president's earliest official acts was
to send a military force to New Mexico to protect
that territory from invasion by Texas on account of
its disputed boundary. Then followed the passage
by a large majority of the celebrated compromise
measures, including the fugitive-slave law. The
president referred to the attorney-general the
question of its constitutionality, and that officer
in a written opinion decided that it was constitutional.
Fillmore and the strong cabinet that he
had called around him concurred unanimously in
this opinion, and the act was signed, together with
the other compromise measures. The fugitive-slave
law was exceedingly obnoxious to a large portion of
the Whig party of the north, as well as to the
anti-slavery men, and its execution was resisted. Slaves

in several instances were rescued from the custody
of the United States marshals, and a few citizens of
Christiana, in Pennsylvania, were killed. Although
it was admitted that Fillmore's administration as
a whole was able, useful, and patriotic, although
his purity as a public man was above suspicion,
and no other act of his administration could be
called unpopular, still, by the signing and
attempted enforcement of the fugitive-slave law and
some of its unfortunate provisions, of which even
Mr. Webster did not approve, the president, as
has been already stated, lost the friendship and
support of a large portion of his party in the north.
Mr. Fillmore's administration being in a political
minority in both houses of congress, many wise and
admirable measures recommended by him failed of
adoption; nevertheless we are indebted to him for
cheap postage; for the extension of the national
capitol, the corner-stone of which he laid July 4,
1851; for the Perry treaty, opening the ports of
Japan, and for various valuable exploring expeditions.
When South Carolina in one of her indignant
utterances took Mr. Fillmore to task for sending
a fleet to Charleston harbor, and he was
officially questioned as to his object and authority,
the answer came promptly and to the purpose, “By
authority of the constitution of the United States,
which has made the president commander-in-chief
of the army and navy, and who recognizes no
responsibility
for his official action to the governor
of South Carolina.” With stern measures he
repressed filibustering, and with equal firmness
exacted from other countries respect for our flag.
Mr. Fillmore carried out strictly the doctrine of
non-intervention in the affairs of foreign nations,
and frankly stated his policy to the highly gifted
Kossuth, who won all hearts by his surpassing
eloquence. At the same time, however, it was clearly
shown how little the administration sympathized
with Austria by the celebrated letter addressed to
her ambassador, Hülsemann, by Daniel Webster,
who died soon after. His successor as secretary of
state was Edward Everett, whose brief term of
office was distinguished by his letter declining the
proposition for a treaty by which England, France,
and the United States were to disclaim then and
for the future all intention to obtain possession of
Cuba. In his last message, however, the president
expressed an opinion against the incorporation of
the island with this Union.

Nothing in Mr. Fillmore's presidential career
was, during the closing years of his life, regarded
by himself with greater satisfaction than the
suppressed portion of his last message of December
6, 1852. It was suppressed by the advice of the
cabinet, all of whom concurred in the belief that,
if sent in, it would precipitate an armed collision,
and he readily acquiesced in their views. It related

to the great political problem of the period the
balance of power between the free and the slave
states. He fully and clearly appreciated the
magnitude of the then approaching crisis, and in the
document now under consideration proposed a
judicious scheme of rescuing the country from the
horrors of a civil war, which soon after desolated
so large a portion of the land. His perfectable
plan was one of African colonization, somewhat
similar to one seriously entertained by his successor,
Mr. Lincoln. Had President Fillmore's scheme
been adopted, there are some who think that it
would have been successful, and that our country
might have been blessed with peace and prosperity,
in lieu of the late war with its loss of half a million
of precious lives and a debt of more than double
the amount of the estimated cost of his plan of
colonization. Mr. Fillmore retired from the presidency
March 4, 1853, leaving the country at peace with
other lands and within her own borders, and in the
enjoyment of a high degree of prosperity in all the
various departments of industry. In his cabinet
there had never been a dissenting voice in regard
to any important measure of his administration,
and, upon his retiring from office, a letter was
addressed to him by all its members, expressing their
united appreciation of his ability, his integrity, and
his single-hearted and sincere devotion to the public
service.

The last surviving member of Fillmore's cabinet,
who also sat in the 27th congress with him, in a
communication, with which he favored the writer,
says: “Mr. Fillmore was a man of decided
opinions, but he was always open to conviction.
His aim was truth, and whenever he was convinced
by reasoning that his first impressions were wrong,
he had the moral courage to surrender them. But,
when he had carefully examined a question and had
satisfied himself that he was right, no power on
earth could induce him to swerve from what he
believed to be the line of duty. . . . There were many
things about Mr. Fillmore, aside from his public
character, which often filled me with surprise.
While he enjoyed none of the advantages of early
association with cultivated society, he possessed a
grace and polish of manner which fitted him for the
most refined circles of the metropolis. You saw,
too, at a glance, that there was nothing in it which
was assumed, but that it was the natural outward
expression of inward refinement and dignity of
character. I have witnessed, on several occasions,
the display by him of attributes apparently of the
most opposite character. When assailed in
congress he exhibited a manly self-reliance and a lofty
courage which commanded the admiration of every
spectator, and yet no one ever manifested deeper
sensibility, or more tender sympathy, with a friend
in affliction. . . . He seemed to have the peculiar

faculty of adapting himself to every position in
which he was called to serve his country. When
he was chairman of the committee of ways and
means, members of congress expressed their sense
of his fitness by declaring that he was born to fill
it. When he was elected vice-president, it was
predicted that he would fail as the presiding officer
of the senate, yet he acquitted himself in this new
and untried position in such a manner as to
command the applause of senators. And when
advanced to the highest office of our country, he so
fulfilled his duties as to draw forth the commendation
of the ablest men of the opposite party. . . .
For the last two years of my official association with
Mr. Fillmore,” adds Mr. Stuart, “our relations,
both personal and political, were of an intimate and
confidential character. He knew that I was his
steadfast friend, and he reciprocated the feeling.
He talked with me freely and without reserve about
men and measures, and I take pleasure in saying
that in all my intercourse with him I never knew
him to utter a sentiment or do an act which, in my
judgment, would have been unworthy of
Washington.”

[  ]

His gifted contemporary, Henry Clay, thought
highly of Fillmore's moderation and wisdom, said
his administration was an able and honorable one,
and on his death-bed recommended his nomination
for the presidency (by the Baltimore convention

of 1852), as being a statesman of large civil
experience, and one in whose career there was nothing
inconsistent with the highest purity and patriotism.
After leaving Washington for the last time,
Webster said to a friend that Fillmore's administration
leaving out of the question his own share of its
work was no doubt the ablest the country had
possessed for many years. The same great statesman,
in his speech at the laying of the corner-stone
of the capitol extension, said: “President
Fillmore, it is your singularly good fortune to perform
an act such as that which the earliest of your
predecessors performed fifty-eight years ago. You stand
where he stood; you lay your hand on the cornerstone
he laid. Changed, changed is everything
around. The same sun, indeed, shone upon his
head which shines upon yours. The same broad
river rolled at his feet, and now bathes his last resting-place,
which now rolls at yours. But the site
of this city was then mainly an open field. Streets
and avenues have since been laid out and completed,
squares and public grounds inclosed and
ornamented, until the city, which bears his name,
although comparatively inconsiderable in numbers
and wealth, has become quite fit to be the seat of
government of a great and united people. Sir, may
the consequences of the duty which you perform
so auspiciously to-day equal those which flowed
from his act. Nor this only; may the principles of

your administration and the wisdom of your
political conduct be such that the world of the
present day and all history hereafter may be at no
loss to perceive what example you made your
study.”

It should be stated as a part of Mr. Fillmore's
public record that he was a candidate for nomination
as president at the Whig convention of 1852;
but although his policy, the fugitive-slave law
included, was approved by a vote of 227 against 60,
he could not command 20 votes from the free states.
Four years later, while at Rome, he received the
news of his nomination for the presidency by the
American party. He accepted the nomination, but
before the close of the campaign it became evident
that the real struggle was between the Republicans
and Democrats. Many, with whom Fillmore was
the first choice for president, cast their votes for
Gen. Frémont or James Buchanan, believing that
there was no hope of his election, and, although
he received the support of large numbers in all the
states, Maryland alone gave him her electoral vote.
In the summer of 1864 Col. Ogle Tayloe, of
Washington, wrote to Mr. Fillmore on the subject of the
presidential nomination, and his response was: “I
can assure you in all sincerity that I have no desire
ever to occupy that exalted station again, and more
especially at a time like this.” Apropos of letters,
the writer had the privilege of perusing a collection

of confidential correspondence written by President
Fillmore during a score of years while in public
life; and, after a most careful examination, failed
to find a single passage that would not stand the
light of day, not a word of ignoble office-seeking,
no paltry tricks to gain notoriety, no base designs
of fattening upon public plunder.

Having thus glanced at the professional and
political career of Mr. Fillmore, it now only
remains to allude very briefly to his private life from
1853 onward. “The circles of our felicities make
short arches.” Who shall question the wise axiom
of Sir Thomas Browne, the brave old knight of
Norwich, a favorite author with the president?
Three weeks after the close of his administration
he sustained a severe affliction in the loss of his
wife, Abigail Powers, the daughter of a clergyman,
whom he married February 5, 1826, and who
was emphatically her husband's “right-hand.” She
had long been a sufferer from ill health and was
looking forward most eagerly to a return to her
old home, when she was taken away to those temples
not made with hands. Irving says that she
received her death-warrant while standing by his side
on the cold marble terrace of the capitol, listening
to the inaugural address of Mr. Fillmore's
successor. To this Christian lady the White House
is indebted for the books which to-day make the
library one of the most attractive rooms in the

presidential mansion. In the following year their
only daughter, who had grown to womanhood, also
passed away, leaving a memory precious to all who
had the privilege of her acquaintance. His home,
now lonely from the loss of those who spread
around it sunshine and happiness, induced Mr.
Fillmore to carry out a long-cherished project of
visiting the Old World, and in May, 1855, he
sailed in the steamer “Atlantic.” During his visit
to England he received numerous and gratifying
attentions from the queen and her cabinet ministers,
and was proffered the degree of D.C.L. by
the University of Oxford, through its chancellor,
the Earl of Derby, the gifted orator who was
known as the “Rupert of debate.” This honor he
however declined, as did Charles Francis Adams
a few years later while American minister to the
court of St. James. They were alike indisposed
to submit to the scenes usual on such occasions.

We can not dwell as we could wish on Mr. Fillmore's
patriotic attitude during the early years of
the late war; of his warm interest in all the charitable
Christian work of the city in which he passed
nearly half a century; of his establishing the
Buffalo historical society; how, as the first citizen of
Buffalo, he was called upon to welcome
distinguished visitors, including Mr. Lincoln, when on
his way to Washington in 1861, and frequently to
preside over conventions and other public
gatherings,
for the control of which he was so admirably
qualified by his thorough parliamentary abilities,
his widely extended knowledge, his broad views,
and a personal urbanity which nothing could
disturb; of the method and exactness, the precision
and punctuality, with which he conducted his
private affairs, as in earlier years he had performed
his professional and public duties; of another visit
to Europe in 1866, accompanied by his second wife,
Caroline C. McIntosh, who survived him for seven
years; of his manner of life in dignified retirement,
surrounded by all the comfort and luxuries of a
beautiful and well-appointed mansion, including a
large library, and with an attached wife to share
his happy home. In a letter written to his friend
Mr. Corcoran, of Washington, but a few weeks be
fore the inevitable hour came, he remarks: “I am
happy to say that my health is perfect. I eat,
drink, and sleep as well as ever, and take a deep
but silent interest in public affairs, and if Mrs.
Fillmore's health can be restored, I should feel that
I was in the enjoyment of an earthly paradise.”

The ex-president accepted an invitation to meet
the surviving members of his cabinet and a few
other valued friends at the residence of Mr.
Corcoran. The month of January, 1874, was designated
as the date of the meeting, but was afterward
changed to April, by Mr. Fillmore's request.
Before that time he was no longer among the
living.
After a short illness, at ten minutes past
eleven o'clock, on Sunday evening, March 8,
Millard Fillmore

He was gathered to his fathers at the ripe age of
seventy-four years, and passed away without the
knowledge that his former partner, Judge Hall,
with whom he had been so long and so closely
united in the bonds of friendship, as well as in
professional and political life, had also, a few days
previous, rested from his labors, and was then
lying in the Forest Lawn cemetery, where the
ex-president now sleeps by his side.

A phenomenal instance of literary vandalism
occurred in the city of Buffalo, early in 1891, when
all the valuable letters and documents relating to
the administration of Millard Fillmore were
destroyed by the executor of the ex-president's only
son, Millard Powers Fillmore (he died November
15, 1889), whose will contained a mandate to that
effect. Why he should have wished in this way to
destroy an important part of the history of his
country, as well as of his father's honorable career,
or why any intelligent lawyer should have
consigned to the flames thousands of papers by
Webster and other illustrious men without at least
causing copies of the most valuable of them to be
made, is entirely beyond the comprehension of

ordinary mortals. To the writer, in pointing out
his carefully preserved papers, contained in the
library of his beautiful home in Buffalo, the
ex-president said: “In those cases can be found every
important letter and document which I received
during my administration, and which will enable
the future historian or biographer to prepare an
authentic account of that period of our country's
history.” The only opportunity probably that ever
would present itself for properly defending and
explaining the signing of the fugitive-slave bill;
the existence of an unquestioned and strong public
sentiment in favor of the president's doing so; the
recommendations that the act be done, made by
Mr. Fillmore's most eminent advisers — the proof
of all these things unquestionably would have been
presented by the letters and documents referred
to; and now every one of these is gone.

Among the chief magistrates of our country
there appear more brilliant names than Fillmore's,
yet none who more wisely led on the nation to
progress and prosperity, making her name great
and preserving peace in most perilous times, without
invoking the power of the sword, or one who
could more truthfully say, “These hands are clean.”
Without being a genius like Webster or Hamilton,
he was a safe and sagacious statesman. He
possessed a mind so nicely adjusted and well balanced
that he was fitted for the fulfilment of any duty
which he was called to perform. He was always
ready to give up everything but conviction when
once convinced. A single public act honestly and
unflinchingly performed cost him his popularity.
Posterity, looking from a distance, will perhaps be

more just. All his acts, whether daily and common
or deliberate and well considered, were marked
with modesty, justice, and sincerity. What Speaker
Onslow said of Sir Robert Walpole was equally
true of President Fillmore: “He was the best man
from the goodness of his heart, to live with and
under, of any great man I ever knew.” His was
an eminently kindly nature, and the last time the
writer saw him, in 1873, he was relieving, with a
liberal hand, the necessities of an old and unfortunate
friend. He was a sound, practical Christian
“without knowing it,” as Pope remarked of a
contemporary. His temper was perfect, and it is
doubtful if he left an enemy on earth. Frederick
the Great announced with energy that “Peter the
First of Russia, to govern his nation, worked upon
it like aquafortis upon iron.” Fillmore, to win his
way, like Lincoln and Garfield, from almost hopeless
poverty to one of the most eminent positions
of the world, showed equal determination, often
times working, for weeks and months together, till
long past midnight, which happily his powers of
physical endurance permitted him to do with
impunity, and affording a fine illustration of the
proud boast of our country, that its loftiest honors
are the legitimate objects of ambition to the
humblest in the land, as well as to those favored by the
gifts of fortune and high birth. See Chamberlain's
“Biography of Millard Fillmore” (Buffalo, 1856);

Benton's “Abridgment of the Debates of Congress
from 1789 to 1856,” vol. xvi. (New York, 1861);
Thompson's “The Presidents and their
Administrations” (Indianapolis, 1873); Address before the
Buffalo Historical Society, by James Grant Wilson
(Buffalo, 1878); Von Holst's “Constitutional
and Political History of the United States,” vol.
iv. (Chicago, 1885), and “Millard Fillmore Papers,”
edited by Frank H. Severance, 2 vols.,
Buffalo Historical Society, 1907.