Images and More: Passed Presidents - # 13

When I told Gerald Ford’s story last December, it began with the fact that in 2008, there were only four guys left to visit and I wondered how I was going to complete the Quest. Since Buffalo isn’t on the way to anywhere, I had to make a specific plan to get to Millard Fillmore, who died 140 years ago today in 1874. Thanks to Southwest Airlines and their $49 specials (now a distant, bargain memory), I was able to zip up to Buffalo, pay my respects, see Niagara Falls and be home in time for dinner.

Another one of our log cabin presidents, Fillmore was one of nine children in a dirt-poor, unsuccessful farming family. He had little formal schooling and by age 14, worked as an indentured apprentice in the textile mills. He wanted more from life. He was interested in learning and at age 19, enrolled in a new, private high school. There, he met Abigail Powers, a teacher two years his senior. She taught and studied with him. Eventually, he became a lawyer and they were married.

The Fillmore Family Plot, Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY (21 May 2008)

So Mister Fillmore, Esq. hung out his shingle and developed his legal practice. With a growing reputation came local and then state political positions and finally, election to Congress. When General Zachary Taylor ran for president in 1848, he was riding the popularity gained after beating up Mexico and acquiring all the land from Texas to the Pacific coast. But he was a slave-owning southerner and needed a running mate who could balance the ticket. I guess the anti-slave Fillmore held his nose and accepted the nomination for higher office.

Campaigning was different in those days. Fillmore never even met Taylor until after they won the election...then...bada-bing! Old ‘Rough and Ready’ dies and the VP he barely interacted with is now president.

Memorial Plaque on the Fillmore Enclosure (21 May 2008)

Forest Lawn Cemetery is the grand, old burial ground for the soldiers, industrial barons and political leaders of the Buffalo area. As long as I was there, I wandered about to find other residents and photo opportunities.

As I left for Niagara Falls, the radio noted that in the state elections held the day before, Hillary Clinton became the woman with the most primary votes for president in our history. She broke the record of Representative Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress and an unsuccessful Democratic nominee in 1972. Less than an hour earlier, I visited her final resting place.

Shirley Chisholm’s Grave, Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY (21 May 2008)

Because Millard, the infamous Number 13, lies in the middle of that dim and vacant stretch of presidents between Jackson and Lincoln, we might be giving short shrift to his wife. Another great Abigail, she was likely the first First Lady who worked outside the home. She educated her husband and encouraged him beyond his rudimentary, frontier learning. She also lobbied for and built the first library in the White House.

The sad end to her story came as they were about to leave the White House. Like President Harrison twelve years earlier, she stayed too long in the nasty weather of Franklin Pierce’s inauguration and died of pneumonia shortly thereafter. Millard returned home to Buffalo to bury his wife.

Abigail Powers Headstone (21 May 2008)

Surveys regularly place Fillmore firmly in the ‘Bottom Ten’ ranks of our presidents. He approved the Compromise of 1850 which was hardly that as it only upset both sides of the slavery issue until the Civil War broke out. Worst of all, the Compromise included the Fugitive Slave Act which required escaped slaves to be recaptured and subjected anyone who aided them to prosecution---including federal law enforcement officers if they did not work to apprehend slaves in free states. Apart from the triskaidekaphobes among us, there is little good to remember about this # 13.