Millard Fillmore

May 2, 2011
In this latest addition to the American Presidents series, Finkelman (Dred Scott v. Sanford), a professor at Albany Law School, describes Millard Fillmore's nearly forgotten presidency by rigidly contrasting him with Abraham Lincoln, another self-made man who wrestled with racial and regional tensions as president. Succeeding Zachary Taylor after his death in office in 1850, Fillmore sought to win a presidential election on his own merit. This led the New York native to try to placate the Southern states by implementing the Fugitive Slave Act, a nightmare for free blacks in the Northern states. Oddly, Finkelman fails to draw on evidence of nuance in Fillmore's and Lincoln's positions, instead using blanket statements to describe their political views. Finkelman's Fillmore remains elusive without complex discussions of his evolution during and after his presidency, and focuses primarily on slavery, the major issue Fillmore faced but hardly the only one. The accidental president's achievements in opening diplomatic efforts with Japan and his focus on economic issues (such as the creation of the San Francisco mint) garner little attention as Fillmore's presidency ushers in the inevitable war between the states. This book is an enlightening view into the often overlooked beginnings of the Civil War, which history buffs and students alike will find enjoyable.

March 15, 2011

A vigorous contextual treatment of a problematic president whose name mostly elicits puzzlement.

In the most recent installment of the publisher's excellent American Presidents series, Finkelman (Law and Public Policy/Albany Law School) takes on previous biographers of Fillmore and gives a firm, unapologetic verdict based on the evidence. Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) was parochial, bigoted and more of an "accidental" leader than one to stand up for his convictions. Fillmore came of age during the great national debate over Manifest Destiny. Although he hailed from the abolitionist North and was a Whig, his actions bore out sympathy to the Southern cause. Born in Cayuga County, near Syracuse, to a family of farm renters, Fillmore mostly educated himself and decided on the study of law as a profession, eventually settling in Buffalo with his schoolteacher wife, Abigail. Tall, handsome, cautious and circumspect, he gravitated to "oddball political movements, conspiracy theories and ethnic hatred." He would, over time, embrace such unorthodox groundswells as the Anti-Masonic Movement, the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic North American Party in the 1840s and the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s. A New York Congressman, he lost the campaign for governor, then failed to gain the Whig vice presidential nomination of 1844—Finkelman is mystified how he thought he could win, being without any national qualifications—though he was finally nominated four years later. With President Zachary Taylor's sudden death, the completely unprepared Fillmore acted rashly by firing Taylor's cabinet, then pressed to enact the divisive Fugitive Slave Act, which would "taint everything else he did," even his important sponsoring of Commodore Matthew Perry's expedition to Japan in 1852.

Finkelman expertly depicts the shameful legacy of a president deeply out of touch with the beliefs of his country.

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April 15, 2011
Not as indignant as Elizabeth Drews Nixon or as revisionary as John Deans Harding, Finkelmans American Presidents series profile of the thirteenth president is more than a bit of both. Finkelman portrays Fillmore as insecurehence, alternately diffident and brashand bigotedhence, fearful of those different from him. He became president when Zachary Taylor died while the Compromise of 1850 was forged. He signed it all into effect, including the new fugitive slave law that became the scaffold on which his administration has been hanged. For while he failed to punish, as hed said he would, adventurers who broke U.S. law to invade Cuba, he rigorously enforced the slave statute by, among other follies, prosecuting alleged violators for treason. He was a quintessential doughface; that is, a Northern politician who let Southerners mold his policies. And he didnt care about even free blacks, whom the law made vulnerable to kidnapping into slavery. Although a little too free with charges of treason himself, historian-of-slavery Finkelman superbly demonstrates that this low-ranked president deserves no better.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)