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Show K - ' )5 Years Ago Occurred fhe Death I Of "The President Nobody Knows11 cyclopedias and Dictionaries of Biography Give Little Space to Millard Fillmore Yet He ' Was One of the Most Interesting Characters Who Ever Occupied the White House and c; Many Important Measures Were Passed During His Administration. Western Newspaper Union. . h ' 1 j . I - i f ' -v ' ' ' ' an Ki.--'-'-' "inrriMil t,m 'i-i-Hirft intern that country. Carrying out a strict policy of non-intervention in the affairs of foreign nations, he used stern measures to suppress sup-press filibustering expeditions to the Latin American countries and with equal firmness exacted from other countries respect for our flag. But so unpopular did he make himself with the anti-slavery element ele-ment in the North by his signing the bill which admitted California, Califor-nia, thus virtually abrogating the Missouri Compromise, and more especially by his signing the Fugitive Fu-gitive Slave law and his attempts to have it enforced, that the Whigs denied him a renomina-tion renomina-tion in 1852. During all his career as a statesman in Washington, his "right hand" had been his wife, who has been described as "perhaps "per-haps the most remarkable of the wives of our Presidents" and "the wings by which her husband hus-band soared so high." Finding the White House destitute of books when she became the "First Lady of the Land," Mrs. Fillmore prevailed upon her husband hus-band to obtain an appropriation from congress for a library in the executive mansion. So the famous collection of books in the White House today is a perpetual perpet-ual memorial to Abigail Fillmore. Fill-more. Mrs. Fillmore died soon after the inauguration of her husband's successor on March 30, 1853. A year later their only daughter also died and in 1855 the lonely ex-President took a trip to England Eng-land where he received numerous attentions from Queen Victoria and her cabinet ministers. Returning Re-turning to the United States the next year he became a "third party candidate" for the Presidency Presi-dency when he was nominated by the American or "Know Nothing" Noth-ing" party. In the election he received the electoral vote of only a ELMO SCOTT WATSON '"THE President No-Lr No-Lr I body Knows! " S - That title could be &'en, and not inappropriate- to an American who died years ago this month. He J;s Millard Fillmore, 13th 'jssident of the United States, l I; he has been the subject ,lE":ewer biographies and less ice is devoted to him in the 3S Cyclopedias and diction-etes diction-etes of biography than has ,t ,.;n the case with any other majour Chief Executives. So ! &: average American knows nPy little, if anything, about T:i as a man or as a President. 0 $ )ug!v'et he was one of the most ng cresting characters who herr occupied the White n"ise and during his Presi-n Presi-n itcy occurred several events spec)ustanding importance in ha':erican history. :olo::imore was born in a log cab-livir!n cab-livir!n a farm in Cayuga county, ving York, a few miles southeast Entie little city of Moravia, on f st:;-uary 7f 1800. Opportunities havem education were limited in er. primitive schools which ex-' ex-' you in that region and which TNG, g Fillmore attended less than )rder months of each year. There ;ents no newspapers or magazines r bo':able and his father's "li-ig "li-ig E consisted of only two e. I3 the Bible and a collection ay se:mns. In fact, it is said that posi;g Fillmore never saw a his-211 his-211 of the United States nor a , 111. of his country until he was 19 ! old! J len Fillmore was 15, he was 2;nticed to a wool carder and ier and with his first wages lased a small English dic- "ry which he studied while sding the carding machine. ie time he was 19 he had ffged to become atawyer. His ' of apprenticeship had two ;nt x years to run but he made 1 the!rangement -witl-i his employ- lereby he agreed to relin-sticat relin-sticat hjs wages for the last r anr, services and also prom-e prom-e bot3 pay $30 for his time. ysH he made an arrangement Judge Wood of Moravia, a sred i country lawyer, by which ipes a13 to receive his board in 'onsolprit for working in the of-He of-He began "reading law" cbone e judge's direction, and, ily asPP'emen'; h's 'ncome, he est rer school a part of the time, ne foss 'ie ac learned enough be admitted as an attorney court of common pleas of ounty, even though he had jnpleted the course of study MILLARD FILLMORE built for her with his own hands and they began their struggle to live on the meager earnings of the young lawyer. To help her husband continue his studies, Abigail Fillmore went back to school teaching. In 1827 Fillmore was admitted to the bar as a full-fledged attorney-at-law and the next year he was elected to the state legislature. At that time the anti-Mason excitement was at its height and Fillmore was sent to Albany as the representative repre-sentative from Erie county of that wing of the Whig party. In 1829 he was granted the right to plead before the state Supreme court and the next year he was reelected re-elected to the legislature. Fillmore distinguished himself by drafting the bill, passed in 1831, which abolished imprisonment imprison-ment for debt in New York. The next year he was elected to congress con-gress and after serving one term, retired until 1836, when he was re-elected. He was again returned re-turned to Washington in 1838 and 1840 but declined a renomination in 1842. In 1847 he was elected comptroller comp-troller of the state of New York and in his annual report for 1848 suggested the establishment of a national bank, with the stocks of the United States as the sole basis ba-sis upon which to issue its currency. cur-rency. Out of this suggestion grew eventually our present system sys-tem of national banks. During this same year Fillmore again entered the arena of national politics. pol-itics. Conspicuous for his anti-slavery anti-slavery views, he was chosen by the Whigs as their candidate for vice president and running mate for Gen. Zachary Taylor in the campaign of 1848. By virtue of his election to that office Fillmore presided over the United States senate during the heated debate in the session of 1849-50 over the slavery question. Angered by the bitter language used by the senators, Fillmore made a forcible speech announcing announc-ing his determination to maintain order and declaring that he would rescind the rule, established by Vice President Calhoun in 1826, which deprived the vice president presi-dent of authority to call senators to order. Instead of resenting this encroachment upon their procedure by an executive order, the senators cheered Fillmore at the conclusion of his speech and directed that his remarks be entered en-tered in full on the pages of the senate journal. Fillmore presided with equal firmness during the exciting debate de-bate over Henry Clay's "omnibus "omni-bus bill" which dragged on for weeks. Then the controversy ended abruptly when President Taylor died on July 9, 1850, and Millard Fillmore left the senate to take up his new duties as President Pres-ident at the other end of Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania avenue. In accordance with his wishes, the severest simplicity sim-plicity marked his inauguration. Falls in Fillmore Glen state park, near Moravia, N. Y. -.A few years ago there came to light in the musty .files of the state department at Washington a document which was an interesting inter-esting echo of the foreign policy of President Fillmore. It was a letter which he sent in 1851 to Seyed Syeed Bin, sultan of Muscat, Mus-cat, at Zanzibar in protest against the Sultan's closing the harbors of his country to American Ameri-can commerce. Written in the flowery style of the Orient, the letter pictured the United States with all the extravaganza of an Arabian Nights' Tale. The letter opens with President Fillmore explaining that he is Chief Executive of the 31 United States of America, and enumerating enumer-ating each of the states. The message, the President says, he is sending by an officer of high rank in the United States navy, on the "steam ship Susquehanna, one of the many hundreds of ships belonging to this great nation, na-tion, which now float over all seas, bearing to all nations offers of peace and good will and serving serv-ing also as means of defense and national power." Of the size of his country the President tells the Sultan: "From the region of ice which bounds the United States on the north to the flowery land of the orange on the south is a journey of 100 days, and from trie eastern east-ern shores, which receive the first beams of the rising sun, to those on the west, where rest his setting rays, is 150 days' journey, and this immense country is not a sandy waste, but filled with populous cities, traversed by mighty rivers and crowned with lofty mountains. By railroads or in steamboats the citizens of this immense country pass from one place to another with inconceivable inconceiv-able rapidity. "From the seat of government at Washington I send my commands com-mands in a few minutes by the Lightning Telegraph, to all parts of the United States; and they are obeyed. I speak of these things not for the sake of boasting; boast-ing; but in the Spirit of Friendship Friend-ship and Peace, and that you may know that all parts of this country are open to you and your Ships and your people for the purposes of Commerce and Trade. I shall welcome in all our ports the Ships which bear your flag. Having thus extended full hospitality hos-pitality to the Sultan's ships the President then chides his "Great and Good Friend" for not being so generous. "How can you' think to be just," the President writes, "that while we open so many hundred ports to you, you should wish to confine us to a single port, or prevent our ships from going to all parts of your dominions. Great and Good Friend, this cannot be. Free trade everywhere is desirable, desir-able, for so can the various productions pro-ductions of different countries best be distributed throughout the world. I hope the traffic of our country with yours is mutually beneficial. I hope it will continue and increase." "The flag of this country," he says, "was treated by you and your people with disrespect, therefore, Consul Charles Ward left your court. In this matter he acted rightly and I approve his course. He has shown me your letters in which you promise to listen to my wishes. If I send another Consul to Zanzibar, I expect ex-pect that he shall be treated with equal honor as the consuls of other oth-er nations, and that the flag which he hoists, and which is his protection, shall have the same honors paid to it, as the flags of the most-favored nations. In these respects I ask for no superiority su-periority over other nations, on the part of United States, neither can I admit any inferiority." With these business matters out of the wa3r, the President returns re-turns again to pleasanter affairs. He commends and congratulates the Sultan on his enlightened suppression sup-pression of the slave trade, elaborately elab-orately extends his best wishes and promises to write him frequently. fre-quently. The letter ends thus: "I have caused the great seal of these United States, the signal of truth and stamp of honor to be placed on this letter by the officer offi-cer who is entrusted to hold it, and to use it on great and solemn occasions. "Your good friend, "MILLARD FILLMORE." "By the President Daniel Webs'.er, Secretary of State." ABIGAIL FILLMORE one state, Maryland, and after that retired from public life to his law practice in Buffalo. In 1858 he married again, this time a widow, Mrs. Caroline C. Mcintosh. As the first citizen of Buffalo, he was frequently called upon to welcome distinguished visitors to his city, including Abraham Lincoln when he was on his way to Washington in 1861 to become President. He helped establish es-tablish the Buffalo Historical society so-ciety and, although he took no active part in the Civil war, he gave his support to the cause of preserving the Union. Fillmore died in Buffalo on March 8, 1874, and was buried in Forest Hill cemetery in that city. His fame somewhat eclipsed by that of another President whom Buffalo had given to the nation Grover Cleveland , it was not until recent years that its citizens citi-zens honored him by erecting a statue of him within its boundaries. bounda-ries. But it is different in the little city of Moravia. It is prouder of the fact that it can call Millard Fillmore its own than of the fact that it was the childhood home of John D. Rockefeller. Old tim- pr5 thprp will tpll unit tVip Ira. r 4C O) i i woman , m , jesUVAVi 8 -to 5.) ' f f , V men, jf ' ' " " ' i Comp i. - i helps V v " 1 lius help- 4 ' t i and a'v t i ( j ;e of hi ' . s f x -4 5 PlaT - - x 1 play - J ives a" . j -Tem : - . ! s ,"Y x xi CO ; u ; r ,.Uic of Fillmore in Buf-La" Buf-La" ,.N. V. 3 will- ly required. The influence -vcral leading Buffalo law- 7-rj whose conlidcnc-u he had (((jjwas mainly responsible for llAaS ore s alller was then liv-a3t:i liv-a3t:i Aurora and he went there 'ns,. Vs'" Pra'ce. He won his jot case and for doing so was rb1!ded with a fee of $4! But iinrt important than that to his .tc"r us career was an event which I'd tips' place in isg. napfinfring his term as nn appren- siW he llad mct and fallen in edinc jwith a young schoolteacher PvCi':'d AbiSail Powers. They be-ng, be-ng, engaged before Fillmore , uMth!d to El"ie county but he was 1 "',or that fur three ysrs he ''S''" n0t alTord t0 travel the 150 ,-whi", to see her. In February, RratffJ,; he journeyed at last to Mo-'Zsf.? Mo-'Zsf.? and they were married in Ijjjiome of her brother, Judge Jji-s. Then Fillmore took his back to the home he had Fillmore faced one of the most difficult tasks ever undertaken by a President. Already the United States was a "house divided against itself" over the issue of slavery and his conciliatory policies poli-cies won him the condemnation of both sides and the wholehearted whole-hearted approval of neither. Due to the fact that his party was in the minority in both houses of congress, many wise measures which he recommended failed to pass. However, the United States is indebted to him for cheap postage, post-age, for the extension of the national na-tional copitol, the cornerstone of which he laid on July 4, 1851; and for extension of contemporary knowledge of the West through various exploring expeditions which he authorized. Even more notab'.e than domestic do-mestic affairs were the international interna-tional relations developed during the Fillmore administration. He sent Ferry on the famous expedition expedi-tion which opened the ports of Japan to the world and eslab-' eslab-' lished diplomatic relations with dition of how the ambitious young lawyer, not yet 21, first attracted attention by his delivery of a Fourth of July oration which caused some of his hearers to prophesy that he "would make his mark and perhaps become a judge." Apparently, though, no one was so brash as to predict that he would become President of the United States! They will show you the old-fashioned old-fashioned home on Smith street, marked by a tablet erected by the D. A. R., which tells you that "In this house the thirteenth President, Millard Fillmore, and Abigail Powers were married on February 5, 1S26." And they will take you outside the town to a scenic spot which bears the name of Fillmore Glen, now a state park, where rushing streams that come tumbling down f.ower-stud-dcd. forest clad slopes and Mow across green-carpeted meadows keep fresh the memory of Millard Mil-lard Fillmore. For in Cayuga county, at least, he is not the "President Nobody Knows"! |