President Fillmore?

[atlantis]

Millard Fillmore supported the union during the war but became critical of the Lincoln administration, was he correct in his view of the Lincoln gov't.

 

[FedericoFCavada]

Millard Fillmore, POTUS 13, of the 1856 Know Nothings "American Party" won the 2016 election.

 

[JeffFromSyracuse]

was he correct in his view of the Lincoln gov't.

Eye of the beholder, I guess? People back then had opinions too. His positions in 1864 echoed other Democrat sources I've seen - too expensive and too bloody.

 

[hoosier]

My brother, who has been spending a lot of time on ancestry.com, informed me just last week that he and I are sixth cousins, four times removed, of Millard Fillmore. So, I guess it's my place to take up for Cousin Millard.

I read the Wikipedia article on Fillmore. It mentions two specific instances that could be viewed as being critical of the Lincoln administration.

In one instance, it says he gave a speech in early 1864 calling for magnanimity toward the South after the war and counting its heavy cost, both in finances and blood.

He was certainly right about the war having a heavy cost in finances and blood. And Lincoln, judging from the famous phrase "with malice toward none, with charity for all" included in his second inaugural address, ultimately seems to have decided it would be good to be magnanimous toward the South.

But apparently the wording of Fillmore's speech was not to the Lincoln administration's liking. The speech was viewed as an attack on the administration that could not be tolerated in an election year.

Having thus alienated the Lincoln administration, Fillmore eventually supported George McClellan in the election of 1864, believing that the Democratic Party's plan to cease fighting immediately and permit the seceded states to return with slavery intact represented the best possibility for restoring the Union.

That was what the Democratic Party's platform called for, but McClellan actually supported continuation of the war (thus putting himself in the awkward position of repudiating a significant plank in his own party's platform), though he did not call for abolition of slavery. So Fillmore really wasn't in complete agreement with either Lincoln or McClellan.

History records that the Union was eventually restored under Lincoln and then Johnson. It probably would have been restored under McClellan, too, but then it would have been a Union half slave and half free. The general consensus of history seems to be that that wouldn't have been a good idea.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

Millard Fillmore met Lincoln at the train station in Buffalo, NY during a stop over as the President-elect was making his way to Washington for his first Inaugural. There was a crowd of approximately 75,000 people at the train station being held back by soldiers but when the former President made his way to the car that Lincoln and his entourage were exiting to meet and accompany them to awaiting carriages, the crowd broke through the soldiers injuring many in the crowd as well as some of the soldiers. Only with some heavy handed shoving and elbowing did they narrowly escape injury from the frenzied mass. The only casualty in the presidential party was that of Major David Hunter who sustained a dislocated collarbone.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

Fillmore had run as a "nativist" presidential candidate in the 1856 election and during that time Mary Todd Lincoln broke from her usual support of Abe's political views by telling him that "her weak woman's heart" forced her to support Fillmore because he understood the "necessity of keeping foreigners within bounds."