Millard Fillmore

Like James K. Polk before him, Millard Fillmore became, following his presidency and eventual death several years later, one of the most obscure presidents in US history. In fact, a society known as "the Millard Fillmore Fan Club" was once founded in honor of Fillmore's hidden nature, hosting a meeting every January 7 - Fillmore's birthday - to discuss how little people knew of him and what could be done to make him less mysterious. However, unlike Polk, Fillmore remains very obscure. A major reason for this fact is how boring many Americans, especially those with in-depth knowledge of their country's history, consider Fillmore. But I disagree. I actually consider Fillmore one of the most fascinating presidents in American history. Born into an upstate New York family suffering from abject poverty in the first week of the 19th century, Fillmore ran away from home in 1817 due to his dislike of his father and his disdain for the status of wool carder's apprentice. He settled in New Hope, New York, becoming a lawyer deeply involved in the anti-Masonic movement. He went on to be the first elected comptroller of New York in 1847. His popularity in that office propelled him to the vice presidency, where he moved into the White House upon the death of President Zachary Taylor. But fascinating does not mean good.

On July 4, 1850, President Zachary Taylor attended a party in Washington DC commemorating Independence Day. While at the celebration, Taylor ate a large number of cherries and raw vegetables alongside several glasses of milk. Unbeknownst to Taylor, these foods and drinks contained a severe stomach virus. Quickly struck down with an awful illness, Taylor died on July 9, 1850, only a few hours after Fillmore learned about the seriousness of the president's condition. With barely half a day to prepare, Fillmore was president of the United States of America. Both Taylor and Fillmore inherited a country deeply divided over the spoils of a recent war. In 1848, the Mexican-American War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty required Mexico to, among other things, cede what are now the states of California, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona to the US. This sparked a vicious, heated debate about whether or not slavery should be allowed in the new lands.

Henry Clay, the man behind the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and the Compromise Tariff of 1833, hoped to settle this new crisis with a third compromise to complete his triumvirate of intra-national treaties: The Compromise of 1850. The Compromise of 1850 stipulated the following:

• That no more slaves be imported into Washington DC
• That California be admitted into the Union as a free state
• That the federal government would pay off all of Texas' debts from the Mexican-American War if Texas relinquished its claims to land in the New Mexico Territory
• That Americans would be legally required to report any escaped slaves they witness
• That residents of the Utah Territory (what is now both Utah and Nevada) and of the New Mexico Territory (what is now both New Mexico and Arizona) would be able to vote on whether or not their territories would allow slavery

Despite being a slaveowner born in Virginia and raised in Kentucky, Taylor adamantly opposed the Compromise of 1850, fearing that the spread of slavery - as made possible by Clay's ideas - would tear his beloved Union apart. Fillmore, however, was the exact opposite. A northerner who personally opposed slavery, Fillmore paradoxically supported the Compromise of 1850. Two months after assuming office, Fillmore, in September, signed the Compromise of 1850 into law. The admission of California into the Union as a free state, the end of the slave trade in Washington DC, and the resolution to the Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute were all positives that keep Fillmore from being lower on my list. However, I ultimately think that the Compromise of 1850 did more harm than good.

Not only was the Fugitive Slave Act (the section of the Compromise of 1850 requiring Americans to report escaped slaves) deeply immoral and destructive, but it also failed to quell the sectional conflict over slavery. Northerners were predictably outraged at the Fugitive Slave Act and today, most historians consider the barbaric and tyrannical Fugitive Slave Act a major cause of the civil war. It was one of the many irritations in the ever-expanding debate over slavery which would, by 1861, explode into civil war. The reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act is just one piece of evidence, though, that debunks one of the most absurd claims about the Compromise of 1850: That it somehow delayed the civil war rather than accelerating it.

Abolitionists were not the only people upset by the Compromise of 1850. Even many southerners opposed it, viewing its pathetic attempts at satisfying the south as inadequate. This opinion was even held both by John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis. Fillmore was much like James Buchanan in that he wasted his presidency attempting to make the south happy and failed even in that useless endeavor. South Carolina even tried to secede in retaliation against the Compromise of 1850. Suppressing South Carolina's attempted rebellion was actually one of Fillmore's few successes and one of several reasons that I have him in the bottom 10 and not the bottom 5.

The Compromise of 1850 also inspired one of the other incendiary policies that inflamed the north-south rivalry: The Kansas-Nebraska Act. Upon being signed into law by Franklin Pierce in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed residents of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories to vote on whether they'd allow or ban slavery. The deranged southern support this bill received and the northern indignation it summoned further intensified the slavery debate and has condemned Pierce to the bottom 3 in nearly all historians' rankings. I, in fact, consider Pierce the worst president in US history. What's less well-known about the infamous Kansas-Nebraska Act is that it was inspired by the Compromise of 1850's section allowing most of the Mexican Cession to vote on the fate of slavery. The section of the Kansas-Nebraska Act sanctioning such elections in Kansas and Nebraska even stole exact wording from Clay's proposal.

Lastly, the long, circuitous struggle Clay and his allies had to endure before passing the Compromise of 1850 also shows how unsuccessful it was in quashing the slavery debate. Clay originally proposed the Compromise of 1850 as a single bill. But this bill was easily shot down in Congress. Northern delegates saw it as too accommodating to the south and southern delegates saw it as too accommodating to the north. It was only when Stephen Douglas, the infamous rival of Abraham Lincoln, split the Compromise of 1850 into 5 separate bills that it was able to pass. Through Douglas' strategy, northern Congressmen were able to support pro-north elements of the compromise and southern Congressmen could just support the pro-south bills. The fact that taken together, the Compromise of 1850 was that divisive and unpopular shows that it couldn't quell the slavery debate.

Fillmore had others flaws separate from the Compromise of 1850. For instance, his response to the Hungarian Revolution was awful. At the end of 1847 and the beginning of 1848, while James K. Polk was still president, Europe became outraged at its increasingly-damaged economy and increasingly-authoritarian monarchies. As a result, on January 9, 1848, riots began in Sicily, sparking the Revolutions of 1848. The movement spread from Sicily to the rest of Italy. From there, it reached out and into countries like France, Prussia, and Hungary. On March 15, 1848, Hungarians retaliated against the arrest of prominent progressive Lajos Kossuth by orchestrating their own riots. Austria, which occupied Hungary at the time, responded by instituting a number of liberal reforms in that province, including the abolition of feudalism.

Ethnic minorities in Hungary were upset by this, ironically, as they continued to be persecuted even as the rest of the country improved. So, they launched a new insurrection, which was quickly reinforced by a bitter Austria. Following several defeats at the hands of Hungarian troops, Austria called in Russian assistance on September 29, 1848. By April 1849, it became apparent that Hungary was now on the losing side and its local government adjourned. In their place, Kossuth himself reluctantly became the leader of the whole province. On August 12, 1849, he himself fled Hungary for the US, ending the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

In 1851, Kossuth attended a dinner at Fillmore's White House where he asked for help in reviving the revolution. Fillmore flatly refused. Generally, I would support Fillmore's actions here. Kossuth was one man and thus unable to speak for all Hungarians. Fillmore couldn't be sure if the majority of Hungarians seriously supported intervention and so it would be best to play it safe. But by the time this dinner took place, Fillmore had received numerous signs that both Hungarians and Americans largely desired intervention and support from his administration. And yet, Fillmore refused.

Diplomacy and foreign policy weren't all bad for Fillmore, however. In 1823, James Monroe instituted the aptly-named Monroe Doctrine. This foreign policy perspective split the world into two geopolitical halves: The Western Hemisphere, which was composed of North and South America, and the Eastern Hemisphere, which was essentially everyone else. From there, Monroe promised to prevent US involvement in Eastern Hemisphere affairs in exchange for a pledge by the Eastern Hemisphere to respect the sovereignty of the Western Hemisphere. Any attempts by Eastern Hemisphere powers to intervene in Western Hemisphere affairs would be met with a declaration of war by the US. John Tyler then expanded on the Monroe Doctrine, adding Hawaii to the Western Hemisphere. During Fillmore's presidency, France tried to annex Hawaii, but Fillmore successfully used the Tyler Doctrine to prevent that.

One of Fillmore's biggest mistakes is something that is often lauded as one of his biggest accomplishments. By the 1850s, the West had been growing increasingly frustrated with Japan's isolationist policies which had existed since 1636. Not only did Europe and the US feel a moral obligation to spread Western culture and Christianity, but they also wanted a coast in the Pacific Ocean that they could fish off of and a place to stop and refuel ships. So, as president, Fillmore sent Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan. Perry was instructed to give the Japanese emperor (in reality, the shogunate or major general was in control and had been since the 1100s) a model train, telegram machine, and a bottle of Western wine in order to convince him that trade with Europe and America would benefit Japanese society. If that didn't work, Fillmore approved the use of force.

Eventually, Perry became fed up with using diplomacy to convince the shogun to thaw Japan out of its isolation. So, he threatened to bomb Tokyo. Terrified, the Japanese government then agreed to the Treaty of Kanagawa. Signed on March 31, 1854, the Treaty of Kanagawa opened up Shimoda and Hakodate as trade ports and legalized the construction of a US embassy in Japan. Fillmore's actions here were of a mean-spirited bully who thought he knew Japan better than Japanese knew Japan. This decision also arguably caused much of the pain and turmoil seen in modern East Asia, as the fear that Perry and Fillmore's actions foreshadowed a Japan tossed around and abused by Western powers fueled the rise of Japanese imperialism.

Millard Fillmore was a terrible president. Although he was right to preserve Hawaiian independence and right to prevent South Carolina from seceding, few other positives in his administration exist. By in large, the Compromise of 1850 was an abysmal package of bills that Fillmore was idiotic in signing. Through enacting the Compromise of 1850, Fillmore accelerated America's collapse into disunion and civil war. Internationally, Fillmore denied himself the opportunity to become a hero of progressivism and national liberation by turning his back on Lajos Kossuth and instead focusing on the cruel bullying and totalitarian imperialism that would create the Frankenstein's monster of Japanese expansionism.