Millard Fillmore: Hawaii, "The Saudi Arabia of the 19th Century"

Whale oil fueled the industrial revolution before the process of refining petroleum was discovered.

It not only powered the street lights of the cities in the Midwest that seemed to be growing exponentially overnight, but it also was used to lubricate the machines that were required for the new mass production economy.

It's no surprise that as a resource, it became a political subject. Whaling fleets in New England eventually hunted whales off their coast to the point of exhaustion and were required to look elsewhere.

In the early 1850's, it would be nearly 100 years before Hawaii became a state, but this was the time that diplomatic relations really were established with the ruling monarchy. U.S, British and Japanese whaling fleets started to span the globe looking for suitable whaling. Both the U.S and Britain competed for fishing rights over the Hawaiian islands and sent offers of protection, threats and bribes to the ruling monarchs of the islands.

Things continued to escalate, with the major powers including the confederates during the Civil War sending privateers after competing nations' vessels. Like the oil industry, it was both public and private.

Hawaii's status as a mineral rich, remote kingdom allowed it to play the major powers against each other, using one side's negotiations against the other. It would eventually fall victim to the fate of most colonies and have much of it's wealth and resources annexed, but for the time being, it's remoteness allowed it to be the Saudi Arabia of it's times, amassing enormous amounts of wealth and power for it's ruling and connected families.

It only lost this status when petroleum oil replaced whale oil as the driver of industry.

This will be the fate of Saudi Arabia not if, but when something better than petroleum is discovered.

Millard Fillmore: Where the Whigs Came From

It's fascinating to understand the origin of political movements.

The cool thing about political parties in the 1800's was that they tended to be conglomerations of different movements rather than the well rehearsed national talking points we're used to. The Whig party that Fillmore belonged to was originally made up of several smaller, more focused interest groups.

The Whigs pulled together supporters in the Northeast that were fearful of immigrants and catholics (the No Nothing Party), northerners and westerners opposed to slavery because of various moral and economic reasons (the Free Soil Party) and anti aristocratic movements (the Anti Mason movement).

The other groups that eventually merged into the Whig party were manufacturing interests that were supportive of tariffs on imports and citizens that felt the county needed to be governed in a more modern matter that didn't match with Jefferson's original vision of an agrarian, egalitarian society which the Democrats still held. In the South, they tended to attract supporters who were skeptical of the expansion of Executive power under Jackson who wanted Congress to be the most powerful branch of government.

The one thing that united all Whigs was that they hated Andrew Jackson. For the entire life of the Whig party which was from around 1830 to 1865, 'King Andrew' remained their manifestation of what they should fear the most, even years after his death.

This is similar to the modern incarnation of Republicans rising up against FDR and his liberal, new deal policy. Powerful movements can be started from love or more often hatred of a powerful personality.

Millard Fillmore: The Mormons Part II

I think I should take this opportunity to formally thank and acknowledge the great folks at Wikipedia.

I try to not rely on it too much since 1) I'm reading a whole book on each president and shouldn't need cliff notes and 2) I feel a little bit guilty about finding an interesting tidbit on there and having it be attributed to my own research.

But there's no denying that it's a wonderful tool when I end up with one of the books as I have now which is a poorly written diary on what Millard Fillmore liked to eat and do for fun, his greatest hopes and dreams etc. Wikipedia just gives me the facts in an easy to digest manner even though I sometimes wonder about the people that put them on there.

Using this tool helped me find this great piece of information- Millard Fillmore continued the policy of Polk in giving the Mormons autonomy out West and formally created The Utah Territory appointing Brigham Young governor. Yes, it's that same Brigham Young that once lobbied Polk to start a Mormon militia, is hailed as a prophet by Mormons today and has a University named after him.

In gratitude for making him governor and giving the Mormons a formal home, Brigham Young named the capital of the Utah territory 'Millard' and named the surrounding county 'Fillmore'.

I initially thought this might be some joke by a disgruntled grad student or something- but behold, I've attached an image of a shirt for the Millard Eagles. Go Millard Eagles!

Millard Fillmore: It could have been a lot worse

Millard Fillmore gets a lot of flack in American history for being mediocre. He's almost known for not being very well known as in the Seinfeld episode about "The Fillmore Boys Gang".

Perhaps that's why the only book I could find on him was written in the 1930's by what I can only assume was an unrepentant Fillmorephile since the book was a 550 page opus on the life and times of Millard Fillmore.

As I choked down page after page of this uninspiring book written in the stilted language of academics of that time, I couldn't help but think that although this guy was clearly a little too fond of Fillmore, there's plenty of people out there that are too hard on him.

Yes, he didn't do a lot in office that was very notable other than sending Commodore Perry to Japan as the first American to open trade there and start the presidential library, but he also didn't do things that made him one of the nation's worst presidents either.

He didn't commit high treason like President Tyler who joined the Confederacy in his retirement (he was the only former president to die who was denied a state funeral and flags at half staff)

He didn't do nothing to try and stave off Civil War between the North and South as President Pierce did.

He didn't have active Confederate sympathizers in his cabinet like President Buchanan (they were actually feeding information to rebels on troop levels in Federal bases prior to the Civil War)

So I would argue that it could have been a lot worse and the guy kind of gets a bad rap.

It's also important to remember that he took over after the death of Taylor, so it's not as though he was elected with some big mandate anyway. No one expected much from President Ford right?