Fillmore, Millard, Thirteenth President

A remarkably revealing letter about slavery, emancipation, and race relations in the United States, written by a former president on the day of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Fillmore's tortured indecisiveness on the subject can be read as microcosmic of nineteenth-century national attitude and reasoning: on the one hand, he claims to "have always regarded Slavery as a blot upon our national escutcheon"; on the other, he believes "a large portion of [black Americans] are wholly incapable of providing for themselves, and too indolent, without compulsion, to try to make the effort."

Reverdy Johnson was a prominent jurist and Democratic senator from Maryland who played a prominent role in keeping Maryland out of the Confederacy. Although he thought the Emancipation Proclamation unconstitutional, Johnson strongly supported the Thirteenth Amendment; a copy of a speech that he gave in favor of this amendment prompted the present letter from Fillmore. The former Whig president professes to welcome emancipation, but as he develops his thoughts he reveals the same moral and political vacillation that allowed him to proclaim Henry Clay's compromise acts, including the Fugitive Slave Act, the "final settlement" of the slavery question: "I beg of you to accept my thanks for several valuable public documents under your frank, and especially for your able and interesting speech in the Senate in favor of the proposed Constitutional amendment abolishing and prohibiting Slavery throughout the Union. I need not say that I read this speech with more than ordinary interest—not solely from the fact that it contained the views of a statesman for whose opinions I entertain the highest respect—but also from the fact, that I looked upon its author as a representative man from a slave state, advocating immediate and universal emancipation by a constitutional provision.

"If this can be safely done, be assured that no man would rejoice more than I should to see it accomplished. I have always regarded Slavery as a blot upon our national escutcheon, and in our social organization a great political evil, alike injurious to the white and black races, and I have long been of the opinion that unless we could contrive some mode of getting rid of it, peaceably, it would cause civil and servile wars, drenching the land in blood, and probably ending in the destruction of the Union.

"Whether we look at this war as caused by the unconstitutional and unjustifiable attacks upon the institution of slavery by the abolitionists of the North, or the equally unjustifiable and criminally armed rebellion of the South to sustain, or the mutual animosity engendered by both, it must, I think, be conceded that slavery is the cause of the war; and the probability now is that it will be abolished by a constitutional amendment forced upon a majority of the slave states, by the overwhelming power of the free states."

Such reasoning cost Fillmore renomination to the Whig ticket in 1852, as most northern members of the party followed the more aggressive anti-slavery policy advocated by William Seward. In 1856, he accepted the American (or Know-Nothing) nomination for president, largely because he thought that party represented "the only hope of forming a truly national party, which shall ignore the constant and disturbing agitation of slavery." In 1865, Fillmore must have realized that slavery could no longer be ignored, but he continued to fantasize about somehow simply removing its victims.

"Had the South seen fit to stand upon its constitutional rights, and had its representatives in Congress not deserted their posts, no such event could have taken place, but having appealed to the God of Battles ... it is questionable whether they have any just cause of complaint whatever may be the result. But conceding that Slavery is legally abolished by a constitutional amendment duly ratified by three-fourths of all the States, there still remains the great question, what is to be done with the 4,000,000 of ignorant, helpless blacks? I suppose a large portion of them are wholly incapable of providing for themselves, and too indolent, without compulsion, to try to make the effort. Are they to fill our poor houses as paupers, or our penitentiaries as criminals? Will they not prove such a nuisance that they will be expelled by ... one state after another until they find no resting place in our dominions? Some of the states already exclude them (as I am informed) by legal enactments and in one by a constitutional provision; and even the Governor of Massachusetts would not consent that they should be sent to his state, and if that state, which is so strongly in favor of abolishing slavery, will not tolerate them within its limits, what chance has the poor African any where within the United States! And will not this state of things, sooner or later, result in a war of races, which through much blood-shed and suffering to both races, must end in the expulsion or extermination of the African race."

In a patronizing conclusion, Fillmore endorses Johnson's comments on emancipation, while clearly implying that they are misguided: "I judge from the ground which you have taken on this subject that you do not fear these evils, and you certainly must know better than I can, whether they are likely to occur, and this makes me hope that my apprehensions are groundless; but when I recollect the frightful [draft] riots which recently disgraced New York and other cities, and the vengeful feeling manifested against the negroes by the rioters, I can not help feeling an apprehension that we are laying the foundation for a war of races on this continent that no friend of the black or white race can contemplate without dread of its consequences. Is their any remedy for this short of colonization either in Africa or the West Indies, and if not, then why not Africanize the whole island of Hispaniola, and as they shall be wanted, also, Cuba and Jamaica, and settle more blacks there."

Fillmore had planned to discuss his impracticable scheme of colonization in his 1852 state of the union address, but he was persuaded to cut it. However, sitting in Buffalo, just five days after Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, Fillmore cannot resist the chance to boost again his unrealistic solution to slavery: "In my last annual message to Congress, I had prepared some remarks on the subject of Slavery, but after the message was in type, I yielded to the better judgment of my cabinet, who thought their publication might be injurious to our party in a political point of view, and I struck them out, but preserved the slips [that is, proof sheets] and have since had a few copies printed in confidence and I take the liberty of enclosing one to you [not present]. I have been solicited by some friends to consent to its publication, but not seeing that it could do any good, and feeling a reluctance to appear in the public prints, I have withheld it. Please to regard is as private."

Fillmore had not kept his views on slavery and emancipation private enough, however; when news of President Lincoln's murder reached Buffalo, an angry throng vandalized the façade of his home with black paint.