Millard Fillmore: The American Presidents Series: The 13th President, 1850-1853 - Hardcover

Finkelman, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080508715X ISBN 13: 9780805087154

Publisher: Times Books, 2011

Synopsis

The oddly named president whose shortsightedness and stubbornness fractured the nation and sowed the seeds of civil war

In the summer of 1850, America was at a terrible crossroads. Congress was in an uproar over slavery, and it was not clear if a compromise could be found. In the midst of the debate, President Zachary Taylor suddenly took ill and died. The presidency, and the crisis, now fell to the little-known vice president from upstate New York.

In this eye-opening biography, the legal scholar and historian Paul Finkelman reveals how Millard Fillmore's response to the crisis he inherited set the country on a dangerous path that led to the Civil War. He shows how Fillmore stubbornly catered to the South, alienating his fellow Northerners and creating a fatal rift in the Whig Party, which would soon disappear from American politics―as would Fillmore himself, after failing to regain the White House under the banner of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" Party.

Though Fillmore did have an eye toward the future, dispatching Commodore Matthew Perry on the famous voyage that opened Japan to the West and on the central issues of the age―immigration, religious toleration, and most of all slavery―his myopic vision led to the destruction of his presidency, his party, and ultimately, the Union itself.

About this title

About the Authors

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (1917-2007) was the preeminent political historian of our time. For more than half a century, he was a cornerstone figure in the intellectual life of the nation and a fixture on the political scene. He won two Pulitzer prizes for The Age of Jackson (1946) and A Thousand Days (1966), and in 1988 received the National Humanities Medal. He published the first volume of his autobiography, A Life in the Twentieth Century, in 2000.

Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University, is the author or editor of several books, including Chants Democratic and The Rise of American Democracy. He has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and other publications. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Edition details

• Publisher: Times Books
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080508715X
• ISBN 13: 9780805087154
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 171
• Editor: Schlesinger Jr. Arthur M., Wilentz Sean