Margaret ("Peggy") O'Neill Eaton 2

She is as chaste as a virgin!

Andrew Jackson

Age cannot wither nor time stale her infinite virginity.

Henry Clay

Margaret ("Peggy") O'Neill Eaton

[T]he political history of the United States, for the last thirty years, dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton's knocker.

James Parton, Life of Jackson (1860).

"Quinzy"?

According to to Daniel Walker Howe, the "Quincy" of "John Quincy Adams" is "pronounced 'Quinzy.'"

I'm stunned. C'mon, be honest. Did you know that?

Sean Wilentz Has Lost His Mind . . . Again

Remember this? Now consider this:

Historians cannot expect all politicians and their supporters to know as much about American history as, say, John F. Kennedy, who won the Pulitzer Prize for a work of history.

I'm glad we cleared that up.

Does the man not realize he's making a laughingstock out of himself?

"First They Came for Piglet"

You've got to hand it to Mark Steyn. I happen to agree with most of what he says, but putting that aside (although it's hard to do), the fact is that is that he's a superb writer with a brilliant ear for the absurd. I often find myself laughing out loud reading his columns.

In his latest production, for example, he discusses Britain's ludicrous decision to refer to Islamic terrorism as "anti-Islamic activity." After all, "'There is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorize, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief,' [British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith] told her audience. 'Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic.'”

Concerning which Mr. Steyn gently observes:

Well, yes, one sort of sees what she means. Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be “anti-Islamic” — in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an “anti-German activity.” But I don’t recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a five-year-old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen.

Augieblogging

Around Christmas, my sister and her husband became the proud parents of of an American Mastiff puppy, on whom they bestowed the name Augustus, a/k/a "Augie." Here he is at about 11 weeks.

What they say about the breed appears to be true. Augie is going to be huge. His father reportedly weighs 185 pounds. Augie is growing by leaps and bounds, and his paws are still much bigger than his body. But he's extremely gentle and good natured, licks up a storm if offered the opportunity, and seems to be taking well to training. In short, he's a doll.

Rifles at Thirty Yards!

While I was writing the last post, I read (and linked to) the Wikipedia entry on William M. Gwin, a southerner who transplanted to California and became one of that state's first two senators.

The entry includes a description of an event that I can't help but share:

Gwin had a duel with Congressman Joseph McCorkle with rifles at thirty yards following an argument over his alleged mismanagement of federal patronage: Shots were fired by both men but only a donkey some distance off was shot dead.

I can't figure out what stuns me more: that two guys decided to duel with rifles at thirty yards, or that they both shot and missed.

"Let all the disorderly be taken out"

One of the great things about the internet for history lovers is that so much original material is readily accessible. I am, for example, reading Holman Hamilton's Prologue to Conflict, on the Compromise of 1850. After reading about Henry Clay's February 5 - 6, 1850 speech in support of his compromise resolutions, I decided to find it. A few clicks later, and there it is!

Sometimes the little things are the most interesting. Even from the dry transcript, as reported in the Congressional Globe, one gets a sense of the nervous anticipation that accompanied Senator Clay's speech. The Senate Chamber and galleries were packed. People were so eager to be present that they assembled in the hallways leading to the chamber and in adjacent rooms, where they could not hear. Inevitably, disruption ensued as people jostled and, I would guess, whispered to other and relayed to those outside that the speech was beginning.

Perhaps a minute into the speech, the disruptions became so pronounced that Clay was forced to stop so that order could be restored:

Mr. CLAY. . . . But what have we seen during this very session? One whole week -- I think it was an entire week -- exhausted in the vain endeavor to elect a Doorkeeper of the House!

[Much confusion prevailed in the lobbies and the avenues leading to the Senate chamber.]

Mr. CASS. Will the honorable Senator pause a few moments, until order is restored here?

The VICE PRESIDENT. The Sergeant-at-Arms will see that the avenues to the galleries and this chamber are closed, and that a sufficient number withdraw from them to give room for those who are in, and to restore order.

Mr. FOOTE. Let all the disorderly be taken out.

Mr. BADGER. There are persons in the ante-rooms that, because they cannot hear themselves, will not let others hear. I would suggest the propriety of extending the order to their case also.

Mr. CASS. Is the Sergeant-at-Arms in the chamber.

The VICE PRESIDENT. He is discharging his duty in restoring order.

Mr. BADGER. Let the ante-rooms be entirely closed.

Order having at length been restored,

Mr. CLAY continued. . . .

Henry Clay's speech was captured in a famous lithograph (above). In the version below, I have added numbers that correspond to the list below, identifying some of the senators:

1. Henry Clay (Whig, KY)
2. Daniel Webster (Whig, MA)
3. Thomas Hart Benton (Dem., MO)
4. Lewis Cass (Dem., MI)
5. William Seward (Whig, NY)
6. Vice President Millard Fillmore (Whig, NY)
7. William L. Dayton (Whig, NJ)
8. William M. Gwin (Dem., CA)
9. John Caldwell Calhoun (Dem., SC)
10. James A. Pearce (Whig, MD)
11. Robert F. Stockton (Dem., NJ)
12. Henry S. Foote (Dem., MS)
13. Stephen A. Douglas (Dem., IL)
14. Pierre Soule (Dem., LA)
15. Truman Smith (Whig, CT)
16. Salmon P. Chase (Free Soil, OH)
17. William R. King (Dem., AL)
18. John Bell (Whig, TN)
19. James M. Mason (Dem., VA)
20. James Cooper (Whig, PA)
21. Willie P. Mangum (Whig, NC)
22. Sam Houston (Dem., TX)

I obtained the list of names from this webpage. You will need to scroll down about one-third of the way.

Presumably, Gwin was present as an interested observer, California not yet having been admitted as a state. He took his seat on September 10, 1850.

The presence of Robert F. Stockton is something of a mystery. Although I have listed him as a Senator, he was not at the time. According to his Congressional biography, Stockton did not begin his service in the Senate until March 4, 1851 -- more than a year after Clay delivered his speech. Although a native of New Jersey, he had close contacts with California. Stockton served in the navy, rising to the title of Commodore. He was responsible for the Pacific coast, fought in battles in California during the Mexican War, and became the first military governor of California. (The city of Stockton, California is named after him.) By 1850, he was back in the East. It is possible that his stature and connections with California earned him a front row seat in the Senate chamber.

"What is to be done? O my God, I don't know; but something must be done!"

Thomas Ritchie of Virginia was an Old Republican and a leader of the Richmond Junto. He purchased the Richmond Enquirer in 1804 and published and edited that paper for forty years.

Robert Pierce Forbes quotes the following editorial, published January 7, 1832. It is simply astounding. You can figure out the topic:

Are we forever to suffer the greatest evil which can scourge our land, not only to remain but to increase in its domains? . . . We may shut our eyes and avert our faces, if you please . . . but there it is, the black and gnawing evil at our doors – and meet the question we must at no distant day. God only knows what is the part of wise men to do on that momentous and appalling subject. Of this I am sure, that the difference, nothing short of frightful – between all that exists on one side of the Potomac and all on the other side, is owing to that cause alone. The disease is deep rooted – it is at the heart’s core – it is consuming, and has all along been consuming our vitals, and I would laugh, if I could laugh at such a subject, of the ignorance and folly of politicians who ascribe that to an act of government which is the inevitable effect of the eternal laws of nature. What is to be done? O my God, I don’t know; but something must be done!

Jefferson Cries Wolf In the Night? 1

In his new book, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America, Robert Pierce Forbes intriguingly suggests that Jefferson’s famous “fire bell in night” comment was, let us say, a bit disingenuous. Particularly since I'm no Jefferson fan, I thought I'd spend a few posts laying out the argument.

Although the letter is readily available elsewhere, it probably makes it easier to have it in front of us. The letter is dated April 22, 1820 – about seven weeks after the resolution of the first Missouri Crisis – and is addressed to one John Holmes (we’ll return to him later). Here is the body. I have added additional paragraph breaks for readability, but I have not changed spelling, capitalization or punctuation:

I thank you, Dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. it is a perfect justification to them.

I had for a long time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once concieved and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.

I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. the cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. but, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one state to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a greater number of co-adjutors. an abstinence too from this act of power would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress, to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a state. this certainly is the exclusive right of every state, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them and given to the general government. could congress, for example say that the Non-freemen of Connecticut, shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other state?

I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of ‘76. to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. if they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world.

to yourself as the faithful advocate of union I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.

In the next post, we’ll look at some of the preliminary clues: the date, the recipient, and the context.

Rest Easy, Mr. Whitney

The common conception is that Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 came as a bolt from the blue that changed history. It ignited, so the story goes, an explosion of cotton production in the United States, allowing short-staple cotton cultivation to spread inland and across the South. In the darker version of the tale, Whitney’s invention was responsible for the reinvigoration of the otherwise dying institution of slavery, condemning millions to untold misery for additional decades, and even indirectly caused the Civil War.

The only problem with the story is that it isn’t true. In Slavery and American Economic Development, economic historian Gavin Wright terms the claim that Whitney was responsible for the cotton explosion “a storybook formula hardy enough to have survived fresh debunking in every generation.”

The tremendous growth in cotton production around the turn of the 19th Century, according to Wright, “was largely driven by demand.” Beginning in about 1785, British demand for raw cotton began escalating due to technological breakthroughs. Assisted by the elimination of St. Domingue, the largest supplier, as a source in 1792, the price of cotton rose dramatically, and the profits of mainland cotton planters soared.

This, in turn, generated intensive interest in the ginning problem and related issues, such as the development of hardier, disease resistant varieties of cotton. Whitney was only one of many working on the ginning problem:

Whitney was far from the first to build a machine for separating cotton seeds from the fiber. Roller gins invented in the Bahamas were used on all types of mainland cotton as early as 1791, and improved roller gins coexisted with Whitney’s and even extended their market for another thirty years before ultimately losing out.

True, Whitney’s version was “a genuine innovation” that enhanced speed, “though at some cost in fiber quality.” Even so,

it was only after improvements provided by subsequent machinists that the variant known as the “saw gin” achieved general acceptance from planters. The transition stretched into the 1820s and entailed mutual adaptations among growers, gin makers, and the textile industry – much more an illustration of interactive diffusion than an example of a great invention that reshaped history.

I guess Eli Whitney didn't start the Civil War after all.

It Can't Happen Here?

The publisher of the Calgary, Alberta, Canada Western Standard, Ezra Levant, was hauled before the Alberta Civil Rights Commission for a hearing on whether he had committed a crime by publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons. Levant has posted at You Tube a series of four (so far) video excerpts from the hearing. I have embedded Part 1 above. Parts 2 through 4 are here, here and here.

Levant's defense of his right of freedom of speech is articulate, impassioned and compelling. If you want to understand why creeping governmental dhimmitude and pandering to radical Islam is the greatest threat to our freedoms today, watch these videos. Mark Steyn is next.

Nor is the US immune. As one example, consider the actions of officials at San Francisco State University, who put "the College Republicans on trial . . . for hosting an anti-terrorism rally at which participants stepped on makeshift Hezbollah and Hamas flags. University officials . . . alleged that the students desecrated the name of Allah, which is written on both flags in Arabic script." Only after strenuous efforts by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and others were the students acquitted. You may be confident that the enemies of free speech and Western values are continuing their efforts. Just take a look at FIRE's Speech Codes of the Month page.

All of which reminded me of Frank Zappa:

Thanks to Little Green Footballs, which posted about the videos here and here.

Update:

Mark Steyn's thoughts are here and here.

Guns and Alcohol

In Pistols, Crime and Public Safety in Early America, Clayton Cramer and Joseph Olson look at the meaning of the term “arms” in the Second Amendment. Although this sounds dry, the essay is in fact quite entertaining, since the authors spend most of the article exploring the history and use of pistols and handguns in colonial and early independent America. They establish that pistols were in common use, both as militia weapons and by civilians, who often carried multiple pistols, sometimes concealed. They were used in crimes, and accidents inevitably resulted, witness this grisly report from an 1845 issue of the National Enquirer Pennsylvania Gazette:

Monday Evening last a very melancholy Accident happen’d in this City, when a young Gentleman having been on board the Clinton Privateer, then going out, had a Pair of Pistols given to him; which on his coming on Shore he carried into a Publick House, among some of his Acquaintance, where one of them was found to be loaded [presumably referring to the pistols, although some of the Acquaintances may have been loaded as well]; upon which several Attempts were made to discharge it; but it missing Fire, he sat down in order to amend the Flint; in doing which, the Pistol unhappily went off, and shot Mr. Thomas Cox, Butcher, through the head, in such a Manner that some of his Brains came out, and he fell down dead without speaking a Word.

Apparently even in 1845, guns and alcohol did not mix.

David Potter on Causes of the Civil War

I was browsing at the Strand several weeks ago when I ran across an old book of essays by David M. Potter. On the theory that David Potter can do no wrong, I grabbed it. I’m glad I did.

The third essay in the volume, entitled “The Historian’s Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa,” is outstanding. Some excerpts:

To explain an antagonism which sprang up suddenly, and died down suddenly, the historian does not need to discover, and cannot effectively use, a factor which has been constant over a long period, as the cultural difference between the North and the South has been. He needs to identify a factor which can cause bitter disagreement even among a people who have much basic homogeneity. No factor, I would suggest, will meet this need better than the feeling, widespread in the 1850’s in the South, that the South’s vital interests were being jeopardized, and the region was being exposed to the dangers of a slave insurrection, as a result of the hostility of antislavery men in the North. Applied to the sectional crisis, such a view of the sources of friction would make possible the explanation of the Civil War, without making impossible the explanation of the rapid return to union after the war. No cultural explanation will do this.

* * *

Insofar as it is sound to regard the equilibration of interests as a condition necessary to nationalism, it follows that the American Civil War must be interpreted less in terms of antitheses and dissimilarities between North and South, and more in terms of the prolonged sequence of interest conflicts which crystallized along sectional lines. Southerners became progressively more alienated as they became more convinced, first, that the Union was sacrificing their economic welfare by its tariff policy; later, that it was denying them parity in the process of national expansion; and finally, that it was condoning the activities of men who would loose a slave insurrection upon them and expose them to possible butchery.

* * *

If the adjustment of conflicting interests rather than the elimination of cultural differences is in this instance the key to perpetuation of national unity, and if an equilibrium of power is the condition most favorable to the adjustment of conflicting interests, then the historian has an explanation for the seeming paradox that the crisis of American nationalism came not when regional diversity was greatest, but after many common denominators between the sections had developed and had substantially increased the measure of cultural uniformity. He has also a key to the anomalous fact that from 1787 to 1861 national growth always seemed to endanger national unity: it upset the equation between North and South by introducing new factors of power which potentially jeopardized sectional interests that had previously seemed to be in balance.

Millard Fillmore, Fulcrum of History

About a week a ago, in anticipation of Millard Fillmore’s birthday, I published a post discussing the crucial impact he had on securing the passage of the Compromise of 1850.

By coincidence I have just acquired Holman Hamilton’s recently republished Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis & Compromise of 1850. In his introduction, Michael F. Holt succinctly restates how crucial a role Fillmore played. Holt comes pretty close to saying that that the Compromise would not have been achieved if Zachary Taylor had lived:

[P]erhaps because of his loyalty to Taylor and convictions about the superiority of Taylor’s approach, Hamilton unduly minimizes the pivotal role that the new president Millard Fillmore and his secretary of state Daniel Webster played in securing passage of the Compromise after Taylor’s death on July 9, 1850. Their intervention into the Senate debate with special messages on August 6 decisively shifted the legislative agenda from California statehood, which Douglas had hoped to take up first, to resolution of the Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute, thus greatly facilitating passage of the compromise measures. Both Fillmore and Webster, moreover, exerted great pressure on northern Whigs in the House to support the Compromise, and their pressure resulted in voting patterns that would have been impossible had President Taylor still been alive.

Millard Fillmore, Know Nothing: Part X

In assessing Millard Fillmore’s 1855-56 candidacy, several conclusions stand out.

First, he sought and accepted the nomination of the National Americans for the best of reasons – reasons having nothing to do with the original nativist agenda of KNs. Both Michael Holt and Tyler Anbinder are unequivocal on the point: Fillmore was convinced that the safety of the Union required locating a non-sectional, pro-Union party; the alternative was increasing sectional animosity, leading to disunion and civil war. The Know Nothings were simply the vehicle that Fillmore believed he had to use to accomplish that goal.

It is entirely reasonable to question or criticize Fillmore’s implicit decision to value the concept of Union more highly than moral qualms over slavery. In this respect, it might be said, he was simply another doughface and no better than the victor in that election, James Buchanan. On the hand, it is fair to observe that in 1855-56 most members of the coalescing Republican party were not acting out of concern for black slaves either. Many hated the Slave Power because of its perceived domination of the North; many others despised slavery because it degraded free, white labor and were seeking to prevent the spread of slavery to preserve the territories for free white men. Virtually no one was proposing to abolish slavery in the southern states.

Second, Fillmore’s few statements in support of the original, nativist principles of the Americans were remarkably bland. The name “Know Nothings” typically conjures up lurid images of rabble-rousing demagogues violently denouncing whiskey-soaked Irishmen and beer-swilling Germans and urging their brutish followers to ransack churches and hunt down imaginary Popish plotters in the streets. I have quoted at length the statements that Fillmore made precisely so that you can see for yourself that his campaign bore no resemblance to such stereotypes. It is fair to say that Fillmore said the bare minimum – or less than the minimum – necessary to justify his credentials as the American nominee. When he did speak, he eschewed ethnic or religious slurs and focused largely on the need to educate immigrants in the ways of democracy.

Would I have preferred Fillmore to have chosen a vehicle other than the Know Nothings for his unsuccessful run? Sure. But even (or especially) from this distance, it is hard to see what other choice Fillmore, and other men of his persuasion, had in the mid-1850s. History is not foreordained. If events such as the Sack of Lawrence and the caning of Sumner had not driven more and more northerners – including former Know Nothings – into the arms of the Republicans during the course of 1856, perhaps Fillmore and his allies might have succeeded in their quest to transform the Americans into a credible, cross-sectional, pro-Union party, jettisoning most of the Americans’ nativist baggage in the process. Millard Fillmore could not know that events would betray him; at least he tried.

Cause vs. Motivation 3

But it is by no means certain historically that the participants in a war necessarily understand why they fight, nor that the conscious objectives of belligerents are an adequate measure of the historical meaning of a war.

David M. Potter, “The Literature on the Background of the Civil War,” in The South and the Sectional Conflict (Louisiana State University Press 1968), at 105.

Millard Fillmore, Know Nothing: Part IX

The focus of Fillmore’s campaign was so clearly on Unionism – and not on nativism – that he never did dispel the concerns of many about his lack of commitment to Americanism. Ironically, a number of KNs expressed the belief that he was not even the strongest pro-native candidate in the field: despite (false) rumors that Republican candidate John C. Fremont was a Catholic, and although the Republicans had reneged on their commitment to nominate a KN as their vice presidential candidate, some KNs opined that Fremont was more likely than Fillmore to champion key portions of the American agenda. As Tyler Anbinder has explained:

North Americans [KNs from the north who had bolted the national party over slavery] also believed that once the slavery issue was settled, Fremont would be more responsive than Fillmore to the Order’s nativist agenda. Nativist newspapers throughout the North reported that Fremont had assured Know Nothing leaders of his sympathy with their movement. In a comparison they portrayed Fillmore as a “parlor Know Nothing” who had never attended a lodge meeting and who had accepted membership in the Order merely to gain the American party’s nomination. As a result, said North Americans, nativists would find Fillmore “less disposed to carry out the great principles of the American party than Col. Fremont will be.” . . . Veteran Massachusetts nativist Jonathan Peirce stated privately that if Fremont “is elected no aliens or Roman Catholics will be retained in office.” Even the Catholic Bishop of Buffalo believed that the Republicans had replaced the Americans as the most anti-Catholic political party.

Millard Fillmore, Know Nothing: Part VIII

Millard Fillmore arrived back in New York harbor at the end of June 1856. His backers arranged for a series of dinners and events to celebrate his return as he traveled from New York City to his home in Buffalo, at which he could deliver impromptu remarks without violating the conventions of the period.

The speeches that Fillmore delivered along the way centered on the preservation of the Union, not on immigrants or Catholics. In the words of Tyler Anbinder, they “revealed how sharply the goals of the American party differed from those espoused during” 1854 and early 1855:

Instead of criticizing the political power of Catholics and immigrants, Fillmore attacked those who disturbed the harmony of the Union. He condemned “the present agitation” of the slavery issue, “which distracts the country and threatens us with civil war,” and insisted that these conditions had been “recklessly and wantonly produced” by the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Although the Democrats had initiated the crisis, Fillmore blamed the Republicans for the persistence of the sectional hostility . . .. Fillmore promised that the American party would restore sectional harmony by favoring neither North nor South, insisting that “I know only my country, my whole country, and nothing but my country.”

This is not to say that Fillmore ignored nativism entirely. Given the persistent doubts about his commitment to the cause, he could not afford to do so. Solomon Haven warned Fillmore that he needed to make statements that were “strong[ly] American, and a little Protestant.” To satisfy this requirement, Fillmore typically made brief endorsements of “Americanism.” His most detailed statement on the subject appears to have taken place during remarks in Newburgh, New York, in which he asserted that

Americans should govern America. I regret to say that men who come fresh from the monarchies of the old world, are prepared neither by education, habits of thought, or knowledge of our institutions, to govern America. The failure of every attempt to establish free government in Europe, is demonstrative of this fact; and if we value the blessings which Providence has so bounteously showered upon us, it becomes every American to stand by the Constitution and the laws of his country, and to resolve that, independent of all foreign influence, Americans will and shall rule America.

Again, at least to this sympathetic auditor, this is pretty tame stuff. KNs had advocated increasing the naturalization period from five to twenty-one years or more. Fillmore’s speech pointedly failed to endorse even this requirement. So far as one can tell, the existing five-year period might be sufficient to inculcate the values of democracy in “men who come fresh from the monarchies of the old world.” Certainly, neither the Constitution nor the existing laws required more. Likewise, there was no mention of Catholicism or Popish plots. A skeptic might even point out that Ireland was omitted entirely, since it was not really a “monarchy” (unless England was).

Millard Fillmore, Know Nothing: Part VII

Millard Fillmore sailed for Europe in May 1855, having made a single statement designed to ingratiate himself with Know Nothings, and did not return to the United States until June 1856.

In his absence, a Know Nothing convention nominated him for the presidency at the end of February 1856. From the very outset, many Know Nothings expressed doubts about Fillmore’s commitment to the American cause. Tyler Anbinder cites complaints by the Albany State Register (February 29, 1856), the Jamestown [NY] Journal (March 7, 1856), and the Steubenville True American (March 5, 1856). Also in early March 1856, Thomas Ford, an Ohio Know Nothing leader, urged Ohio KNs to renounce Fillmore’s nomination.

Such condemnations generated rumors that Fillmore would decline the nomination. Solomon Haven and others therefore urged Fillmore to accept as soon as possible. Fillmore did so by letter from Paris dated May 21, 1856, addressed to Alexander H.H. Stuart and other members of the National Americans’ executive committee.

To placate concerns about his bona fides, Fillmore’s letter included endorsements of the party and its platform. But what is most remarkable about the letter is how frank Fillmore was in describing his priorities and reasons for doing so. The KNs, Fillmore asserted, were the only political organization that had the power to silence the “violent and disastrous agitation” between the sections -- sectional divisions could lead to disunion. It was for this reason that Fillmore, and “every earnest friend of the integrity of the Union,” was compelled to embrace the National Americans:

As the proceedings of the Convention have marked a new era in the history of the country, by bringing a new political organization into the approaching presidential canvass, I take occasion to reaffirm my full confidence in the patriotic purpose of that organization, which I regard as springing out of the public necessity forced upon the country to a large extent by unfortunate sectional divisions, and the dangerous tendency of those divisions towards disunion.

It alone, in my opinion, of all the political agencies now existing, is possessed of the power to silence this violent and disastrous agitation, and restore harmony by its own example of moderation and forbearance. It has a claim, therefore, in my judgment, upon every earnest friend of the integrity of the Union.

So estimating this party, both in its present position and future destiny, I freely adopt its great leading principles, as announced in the recent declaration of the National Council in Philadelphia, a copy of which you were so kind as to enclose to me, holding them to be just and liberal to every true interest of the country, and wisely adapted to the establishment and support of an enlightened, safe, and effective American policy, in full accord with the ideas and the hopes of the fathers of our Republic.