Biography of Millard Fillmore

Introduction

In the spring of 1853, Millard Fillmore, the subject of the following biographical sketch, retired from the Presidency. Several of our most illustrious statesmen, who, at the commencement of his administration, were master-spirits in the national councils, had been gathered to their fathers. Calhoun, indeed, had been summoned away before the dispensation of Providence which placed a new pilot at the helm of State, and before the portentous storm, then raging, had gathered all its blackness. His last speech in the Senate, read for him by a friend because he was too feeble to dehver it, is pervaded by dark forebodings scarcely relieved by a gleam of hope. His two great compeers, who sympathized in his apprehensions, although they did not share in his despondency, were still spared to the country, and, at the commencement of Mr. Fillmore's administration, were leading members of the Senate. Clay had, some years before, bid a formal, and, as he supposed, a final farewell to this theater of his labors; but a great and perilous crisis had now summoned him again to the service of his country. Webster,

VI INTRODUCTION.

then also in the Senate^ had recently put forth one of the most powerful eflforts of his eloquence for the preservation of the endangered Union. Although, to use his own language, "the imprisoned winds are let loose" — although "the east, the west, the north, and the stormy south, all combine to throw the whole ocean into agitation, to toss its billows to the skies, and to disclose its profoundest depths," he would neither shrink from his duty nor abandon hope. " I am looking out for no fragment," he says, " upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be, but for the good of the •whole, and the preservation of the whole ; and there is that which will keep me to my duty during this struggle, whether the sun and stars shall appear, or shall not appear for many days."

It was in the midst of an agitation, which thus aroused the energies — in the midst of dangers which thus alarmed the apprehensions of our greatest and most experienced statesmen, that the administration of Millard Fillmore commenced. Before he had been two months in power, there was a lull in the storm — the crisis had passed — and although a heavy ground-swell continued, for some time, to mark the violence of the recent tempest, the country was fast settling into tranquillity. As the ablest men of both political parties had lent their influence to secure the compromise, so they now united to give it stability by all the combined weight of their characters. Two years afterwards, both the great political parties, into which the country was then divided, solemnly endorsed it, in their national conventions, as the final settlement of a most dangerous controversy.

INTRODUCTION. VII

But no sooner liad the administration whicli had brought about this auspicious result retired from power, than other counsels beo-an to prevail. The first Congress that met after the inauguration of President Pierce, signalized itself by carrying' out his wishes in the repeal of a compromise of more than thirty years' standing, regarded by the country as an inviolable compact. Thus were the flood-gates of sectional agitation wantonly re-opened, and during the whole period of the present Democratic administration, the country has been distracted by heated controversies, on a subject which it was supposed the compromise of 1850 had withdrawn forever from the arena of national politics.

We are still in the midst of these controversies. Two of the three great parties into which the country is nojv divided, insist on making the slavery question the leading issue in the approaching presidential campaign. Granting the importance of this question to be as great as these parties contend, in whose wisdom can the American people so fully confide to preside over its settlement, as in that of the statesman who, three years ago, extricated the country from the same dangers into which the Democratic party has re-plunged it? He who has once piloted the tempest-tossed ship into a safe harbor, is the most suitable man to be again placed at the helm, when her moorings have been wantonly severed, and she is again drifting on the same stormy sea, exposed to be split on the same dangerous rocks.

But the present importance of the slavery question is greatly over-rated. The repeal of the Missouri compromise, which had no other object than to gain the favor of the South

ViLl INTRODUCTION.

by opening Kansas to slavery, will injure the interest it was intended to promote. Kansas is as certain to be a free State as if the Missouri compromise were standing to-day, intact and irrepealable. So far as relates to territorial extension for their peculiar institutions, the South have gained nothing — the North lost nothing. Other laws than the Missouri compromise — laws which no congressional enactment can repeal — the laws of chmate and soil — laws which govern emigration, and, above all, laws written on the human heart, have decreed the exclusion of slavery from the whole territory to which the Missouri compromise appUed. The pretended friends of the South have not only conferred no benefit on that section of the country, but have called into existence the most formfdable party that has ever been arj^ayed against southern interests, and armed that party with specious and plausible arguments. Will the South support a policy so fruitless in good, a policy so teeming with evil, to themselves ? Will they act with a party that has wantonly revived an agitation which it was clearly foreseen would peril their most cherished interests ? So far as regards the spread of slavery, nothing has been gained or lost by the repeal of the compromise. That repeal is simply a fountain of political excitement, furnishing topics of declamation to demagogues who aim to purchase power at the expense of the public tranquillity. The American party, seeing that neither section of the country has anything to gain by the continuance of the controversy, refuse to take any part in it, except for the purpose of restoring peace.

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As the party Tvhicli has nommated Mr. Fillmore now enters a presidential contest for the first time, it may not be inappropriate, before sketching the history of its candidate, to say a fe\Y words of its principles. They make no appeal to a love of novelty, to that reckless passion for change which delights in perpetual innovation. They address themselves, on the contrary, to tJie sober sense, the calm conservative sentiment of the country. They are founded on patriotism — the source of all public virtue, the parent of all the great deeds that emblazon the pages of history. Love for the land that gave us birth — that instinctive feehng which alike leads men to repel the invader, and to preserve their institutions from the unhallowed touch of foreign influence — that ennobling sentiment which so constantly triumphs over the strongest of the selfish instincts, the love of life — which pours out its blood hke water in its country's cause and counts it glory — which feels that its native air is tainted and no longer worth breathing — its native soil polluted, and fit only to aflford graves for its sons, when they cease to be its sole sovereigns — this sentiment it is on which the American party is built, and on which it rests its hopes for the success of its fundamental maxim, that Americans shall rule America.

The principle is not new. Our fathers declared it when they cast off their allegiance to the British crown, and refused to be taxed by a foreign parliament. They embodied it in the Constitution of the country when they inserted in that insti'ument a provision that the two highest officers of the government — the President and Vice-president of the United

♦States — shall be native-born citizens. They recognized it in 1*

X HffTRODUCTION.

the provisions of the same instrument which forbid the election of any person to the United States Senate who has not resided in tlie country' nine years in addition to the period Congress might require for naturalization, or of any person to the House of Representatives whose residence has not extended seven years beyond the same period. The length of time aliens shall reside in the country before they can become citi^ns, was not fixed by the Constitution, but wisely left to the discretion of Congress. Circumstances might arise requiring an extension of the period, and Congress was clothed with the power to extend it as the exigencies of the country and the safety of its institutions should render expedient.

Why raise an impassable barrier against a naturalized citizen becoming eligible, by any length of residence, to either of the highest offices ? Why take such an apparent excess of precaution as to exclude from those offices a person born on ship-board during the voyage of his parents hither and wholly educated in this country ? We put the question to those who ridicule the idea of danwr to our institutions from foreign influence, and ask if all this pains was taken to guard against an unreal danger ?

From the preponderance of the native over the foreign population, a calculation of probabilities will show that there must always be a large majority of native-born members of both Houses of Congress. As the framers of the Constitution must have foreseen that the naturalized members would always be ■a minorit}^ it clearly follows that they apprehended danger from the influence of even a few who might retain their foreign prejudices and sympathies, and so excluded foreigners from

INTRODUOTION. XI

tlie national councils for a long period after they had acquired the privilege of citizenship.

The power granted to Congress over the whole subject of naturalizaltion, furnishes another conclusive argument in favor of the same position. It was foreseen that the future increase of immigration might become so great, and the danger from foreign influence so augmented, that any rule of naturalization inserted in the Constitution would prove ineffectual against the increased pressure of the evil. Congress was, therefore, invested with unlimited discretion, and left athberty to deal with the danger according to the demands of its growing magnitude.

The first Congress judged a residence of five years a sufiicient preparation for citizenship. At that time, and for a long period previous, nearly all our immigrants came from Great Britain. The present facilities for crossing the ocean did not exist; the voyage had not become so cheap as to place it within the means of the poorest part of the population, nor was there in this country the great demand for rude and unskilled labor which the growth of our cities and our extensive public works have since created. The bulk of our immigrant population was, at that time, more intelligent and respectable than it is now, and furnished materials for a better class of citizens. They were nearly all Protestants; a large. majority of them were Englishmen. As Protestants, they were inaccessible to the influence of a foreign hierarchy. As Englishmen, they had come to live under a government founded on the model of the British Constitution, and which, in copjnng from that model, had retained a great deal more than it discarded. Comparatively little transformation of character

Xll INTRODTJCTION.

was needed to bring such immigrants into full sympathy with our sentiments, into perfect harmony with our institutions.

Within the last twenty years all this has changed. Our immigrants are no longer mainly Protestants. A majority of them no longer come from the country whose language we speak, by whose literature our minds are formed, from whom we have borrowed the habeas corpus, trial by jury, representative government, and the common law. We receive now, with a great many estimable, industrious, self-respectingpeople, the very dregs and scum of the population of Europe. All that is benighted by ignorance — all that is debased by superstition — all that is squahd by poverty^ all that is besotted by intemperance — all that is detestable in morals — all that is odious and abominable by crime — have, for the last few years, been poured upon our shores, to taint our moral atmosphere, and add to the corruption of our large cities. Without any knowledge of our institutions — without even any acquaintance with our language, they are invested with the most sacred of our political privileges — the elective franchise — and either sell their votes directly to demagogues for some paltry bribe, or yield them indirectly through the influence of priests, whose wishes they are too superstitious to resist. If our fathers thought it necessary to guard so carefully against foreign influence when our immigrants, comparatively few in numbers, were of our own blood and lineage, our own language and religion, and our own habits of thought, who can consistently say that the necessity is not greatly enhanced, when, besides the alarming increase of numbers, the character of our foreign population has become so much changed for the worse ?

INTRODUCTION. Xlll

Another consideration of great weight iq this connection, is derived from the local laws of the several States at the adoption of the Constitution, and the passage of the present naturalization law. It is well known that the State Constitutions then required a property qualification of some kind, generally a freehold, as preliminary to the right of suffrage. At that time an alien, when naturalized, did not necessarily become a voter. Under the then existing State regulations, none of that class of foreigners whose abuse of the elective franchise has given origin to the American party, would have been suffered to approach a ballot-box. None except those who had some stake in the government were allowed a voice in its policy. The extension of suffrage till it has, in most of the States, become universal, seems a wise change, when considered in relation to our native population. With the enlightened love of country which springs from American birth and education; with the habits of industry, thrift and enterprise so characteristic of our people, which makes the acquisition of property and social position the common aim of all; universal suffrage is not only free from danger, but is as wise and just as it is safe. But the great increase of an ignorant and debased foreign population creates an imperative necessity for either restoring the property qualification, or altering the naturalization laws. At all events, it must be admitted, that naturalized citizens wield far more political power, in proportion to their numbers, than if the possession of a freehold had remained a qualification for the right of suffrage. The law as it stands was framed with reference to a different condition of things from that in which it now operates.

Xiv INTRODUCTION.

When it was enacted, our foreign population was neither so numerous, so ignorant, nor so dissimilar to ourselves as it has since become ; nor was it immediately invested with the right of suffrage, b}^ the mere possession of naturalization papers; and, above all, the country at that time had no experience of the abuses of which we have been witnesses within a more recent period.

To remedy the evils introduced into the .politics of the country by demagogues who pander to the prejudices and purchase the votes of foreigners — to remove the corruption which taints the fountains of power — to restore to Americans the influence which rightfully belongs to them in the government of their own country — to rekindle the fires of patriotism, and foster that national spirit which is at once the cheapest defence of the country and the surest conservator of its institutions — these are the purposes of the American party, which now enters the field for the first time with a candidate for the highest oflSce of the government. That candidate having been selected, it is thought that a simple and impartial recital of the leading events of his Hfe will be acceptable to the American people.

The task of preparing the following unpretending sketch has devolved on the present writer, in consequence of the absence from the country of the gentleman whose hterary talents and long personal association wilh Mr. Fillmore would render him the most suitable biographer of his distinguished friend. I refer to Dr. Thomas M. Foote, late Minister to Austria; who, summer before last, was urgently solicited by some of Mr. Fillmore's friends to write the history of his

INTRODUCTION. XV

administration. He at length yielded to their persuasions, and promised to prosecute the work. The writer of these pages, then in habits of daily intimacy with Dr. Foote, had frequent conversations with him relating to the plan, topics, arrangement, and mode of execution of the proposed history, and was to have assisted him in the composition of some of its chapters. The preparation of the work for the press was postponed during the autumn of 1854 and the following winter, in consequence of Dr. Foote's feeble health, and during the summer of 1855, by his occupation in superintending the building of a new house. All this while, however, it continued to be a frequent topic of conversation; and when, last fall. Dr. Foote left the country on his present European tour, there seemed a propriety, if, during his absence, circumstances should render advisable the publication of a brief sketch of Mr. Fillmore's life, that I should be entriisted with its preparation. By abridging the materials Dr. Foote would have used in a larger and less ephemeral work, and giving more fullness and prominence than he had intended to Mr. Fillmore's early history, and his public life previous to his elevation to the Presidency, it was thought that a more authentic and acceptable biography could be written, than would be likely to be produced by any person not conversant with Dr. Foote's plan, and without access to his materials.

I have deemed it proper to make these statements, partly as an apology to the reader, but principally to enable him to judge of the authenticity of the following hastily written sketch, by the opportunities the writer has enjoyed for acquiring correct information.

BIOGRAPHY

MILLARD FILLMORE.