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Millard Fillmore: The Last Whig President

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Is Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States, the least significant of all the commanders in chief? Or the most underestimated? Jared Cohen, author of Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America, has the answer.

Script:

No one was more surprised than Millard Fillmore when the Whig Party chose him to be Zachary Taylor’s running mate in the 1848 election.

Working as the comptroller (essentially the treasurer) of New York State at the time, Fillmore was well known in Washington. He had been a New York congressman for a decade. But the VP slot? Fillmore didn’t see it coming.

And he didn’t hesitate to say yes when offered the job.

On the surface, Taylor and Fillmore seemed to be a good fit.

Taylor had never run for elective office. He was the great hero of the Mexican-American War. When he wasn’t soldiering, he lived on a plantation in the Deep South.

Fillmore, a northerner, spent his professional life in politics.

Both had grown up on the edge of the frontier. Both were entirely self-made.

It was a marriage made in machine-politics heaven.

And it worked.

Well, to be more accurate, it worked for Taylor.

It didn’t work for Fillmore.

When they won the 1848 election, Fillmore figured that as Vice President he could dispense lucrative federal jobs to his supporters, securing his future as a major force in New York and maybe even national politics.

He also figured that with his knowledge of Congress and his vast experience in the political arena, he would be a trusted Taylor advisor.

He figured wrong on both counts.

Taylor gave him no access to patronage. He wasn’t interested in boosting Fillmore’s career in New York or anywhere else.

And Taylor did not bring Fillmore into his inner circle. The two men didn’t even meet until after the election. And when they did, they didn’t much like each other. It seems that their many differences on political issues, though assets during the campaign, were detriments after it. For example, Taylor, the Southerner, accepted slavery (though, to his credit, he did oppose its spread to new states), while Fillmore, the Northerner, opposed slavery.

Fillmore made one more miscalculation.

He never thought Taylor would die in office.

After dedicating the base of the Washington Monument on a very hot, humid day, Taylor returned to the White House with heat exhaustion. Then, the doctors got a hold of him. In the mid-19th century, this was not necessarily a good thing. Over the next few days, Taylor’s health got worse. He died on July 9, 1850. The doctors, trying all manner of nostrums, including bleeding him from the wrist, effectively cured him to death.

Fillmore—thanks to the precedent John Tyler established ten years before—suddenly found himself the thirteenth President of the United States.

For the full script, visit: https://l.prageru.com/3WRbo3v

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33 Comments

  2. Are you sure you are people of God?
    Then allow me to give you some insight to what you missed.

    You missed something. The switch? You also missed the reason why Taylor passed. God?

    See, God was setting up a punishment to America because of slavery.

    So, Taylor had to go. Then the Wig party became Republicans?

    History is about to repeat itself? It depends on how you react to God's changes

    The Republicans pre-switch, led to ending slavery, but it was the works of Nat Turner's rebellion & later John Brown & his sons massacre of white slave owners.

    This led to the fear in non slave owners to force the Republicans to abolish slavery.

    Which led to the South to go to war because of it.

    Then the South was winning until the North let their black soldiers enter the fight & GAME CHANGER!

    Imagine putting a football or basketball or baseball in their hands, but it's a gun with a knife at the tip of it?

    Imagine? & even Hockey was invented by ex-slave black people from America' but fled to Canada.

    However, after they entered the fight, the tide changed & the North won.

    But? It was a punishment to both sides & I know that because of what I read about the words John Brown spoke before they hung him.

    "God would punish this nation because of the sin of slavery upon His Children, black people, there would be a massive blood spilled in the nation's soil".

    Then they hung him & years later, the war began & at the end of it, over 620,000 men blood had spilled in the nation's soil. Did it not?

    So, because President Lincoln was planning on sending black people back to Africa, God didn't stop his assassination. He thought black people should be a second class citizen & that's not what God wanted, so.

    So, then a racist became president & they abolished that plan, even though Liberia was created & the African Americans there are actually American Africans.

    Then because the Republicans was the party black people selected to run for office & won.

    So ..the switch happened. This is when the white Republicans switched to the Democratic party.

    Then years later the Democratic party started focusing on equality & so black people switched back to Democratic party.

    President Johnson, use to say "nword" a lot, passed a Civil rights bill.

    Then Switched from Democrats to Republicans, under Nixon, criminal ways seeped in.

    The drugs was used to attack black people and hippies.

    It continue through President Reagan "drug war" & his start out campaign was at a racist town to send a message to the white people that had that hidden in their hearts.

    Then God punished Jefferson Davis?

    President Obama is his descendent. What are the idds of having the first black president of the Union be from the genepool of the first & only "president" if the Confederacy?

    After President Obama won, the "tea party" came out in full force.

    And I warned them then: "your hate would destroy you" & I was correct & it's still destroying people who display hate

    Then "45" came & God had nothing to do with him winning. I know that from what God told me on the night he won.

    So when he won, his fate was sealed.

    Then today, BLM movement just brought out the wickedness of their hearts against black people.

    My warning to you people is that God is watching you.

  3. Thank you for the pointless fact check Youtube, but I'll take my information from the National Constitution center or the History Channel before I'd go to Wikipedia.
    The context is Zachary Taylor's doctors officially reported "he died of Cholera Morbus". The Modern Medical theory is Zachary Taylor's actual diagnosis would have been Gastroenteritis, likely from the unsanitary drinking water and food handling practices of the time.

  10. From the time I first learned of the US Civil War, to today, I have always been a bit surprised at the unquestioned assumption that secession automatically has to lead to Civil War.
    The north could have simply said "good riddance, problem solved" to the south and their demand to maintain slavery. Why secession automatically had to be responded to with a war of conquest and forced reintegration into the Union is never discussed.
    In fact, the Civil War is not accurately named. A Civil War is when multiple parties are fighting for the control of a country. That is not what happened in the 1860s. The Confederacy seceded, then the Union went to war to conquer the Confederacy and force it's renewed participation in the Union.

  13. As usual, a superb Prager vid. But as usual, the Google goons and YouBoobs felt compelled to offer meaningless "context" from laughable Wickedpeedeeyah. Pity Sundar Pichai left India. He should have gone to Cuba.

  14. This video says someone opposes slavery and the following line is, “He made one more miscalculation.”

    I’m sure you are not saying opposing slavery was a miscalculation, but the writing and delivery should be reviewed and changed.

  16. The irony is that Taylor had been a President willing to face civil war, and as a Southerner, he understood just how little leverage the South actually had. Indeed, the whole point of the Compromise of 1850 was to pull the nation back from the brink of a crisis that Taylor had initiated, and by averting the crisis, Fillmore had made civil war all but inevitable.