Millard Fillmore: The American Presidents Series: The 13th President, 1850-1853 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780805087154)

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.

Author: Paul Finkelman
ISBN-10: 080508715X
ISBN-13: 9780805087154
Publisher: Times Books
Language: English
Published: 05/10/2011
Pages: 192
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.67lbs
Size: 8.52h x 5.79w x 0.78d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 04/15/2011 pg. 19
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2011
Publishers Weekly 05/02/2011

About the Author

Paul Finkelman is the author of Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History and Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. The author or editor of more than twenty-five books, he is a distinguished professor at Albany Law School and a noted specialist in American legal history, race, and constitutional law. He lives in Slingerlands, New York.