woman; with a sunny nature that enabled her to endure uncomplainingly the many hardships of a frontier life, and that her closing days were gladdened by the frequent visits of her second son, who was then in public life, with every prospect of a successful professional and political career. From a brief manuscript autobiography prepared by "worthy Mr. Fillmore," as Washington Irving described him, we learn that, owing to a defective title, his father lost his property on what was called the "military tract," and removed to another part of the same county, now known as Niles, where he took a perpetual lease of 130 acres, wholly unimproved and covered with heavy timber. It was here that the future president first knew anything of life. Working for nine months on the farm, and attending such primitive schools as then existed in that neighborhood for the other three months of the year, he had an opportunity of forgetting during the summer what he acquired in the winter, for in those days there were no newspapers and magazines to be found in pioneers' cabins, and his father's library consisted of but two books-the Bible and a collection of hymns. He never saw a copy of "Shakespeare or Robinson Crusoe," a history of the United States, or even a map of his own country, till he was nineteen years of age! Nathaniel Fillmore's misfortunes in losing his land through a defective title, and again in taking another tract of exceedingly poor soil, gave him a distaste for farming, and made him desirous that his sons should follow other occupations. As his means did not justify him or them in aspiring to any profession, he wished them to learn trades, and accordingly Millard, then a sturdy youth of fourteen, was apprenticed for a few months on trial to the business of carding wool and dressing cloth. During his apprenticeship he was, as the youngest, treated with great injustice, and on one occasion his employer, for some expression of righteous resentment, threatened to chastise him, when the young woodsman, burning with indignation, raised the axe with which he was at work and told him the attempt would cost him his life. Most fortunately for both, the attempt was not made, and at the close of his term he shouldered his knapsack, containing a few clothes and a supply of bread and dried venison, and set out on foot and alone for his father's house, a distance of something more than a hundred miles through the primeval forests. Mr. Fillmore in his autobiography remarks: "I think that this injustice-which was no more than other apprentices have suffered and will suffer-had a marked effect on my character. It made me feel for the weak and unprotected, and to hate the insolent tyrant in every station of life." In 1815 the youth again began the business of carding and cloth-dressing, which was carried on from June to December of each year. The first book that he purchased or owned was a small English dictionary, which he diligently studied while attending the carding machine. În 1819 he conceived the design of becoming a lawyer. Fillmore, who had yet two years of his apprenticeship to serve, agreed with his employer to relinquish his wages for the last year's services, and promised to pay thirty dollars for his time. Making an arrangement with a retired country lawyer, by which he was to receive his board in payment for his services in the office, he began the study of the law, a part of the time teaching school, and so struggling on, overcoming almost insurmountable difficulties, till at length, in the spring of 1823, he was, at the intercession of several leading members of the Buffalo bar, whose confidence he had won, admitted as an attorney by the court of common pleas of Erie county, although he had not completed the course of study usually required. The writer has recently seen the dilapidated one-story building in Buffalo where Mr. Fillmore closed his career as a school-master, and has also conversed with one of his pupils of sixty-five years ago. The wisdom of his youth and early manhood gave presage of all that was witnessed and admired in the maturity of his character. Nature laid on him, in the kindly phrase of Wordsworth, "the strong hand of her purity," and even then he was remarked for that sweet courtesy of manner which accompanied him through life. Millard Fillmore began practice at Aurora, where his father then resided, and fortunately won his first case and a fee of four dollars. In 1827 he was admitted as an attorney, and two years later as counsellor of the supreme court of the state. In 1830 he removed to Buffalo, and after a brief period formed a partnership with Nathan K. Hall, to which Solomon G. Haven was soon afterward admitted. By hard study and the closest application, combined with honesty and fidelity, Mr. Fillmore soon became a sound and successful lawyer, attaining a highly honorable position in the profession. The law-firm of Fillmore, Hall & Haven, which continued till 1847, was perhaps the most prominent in western New York, and was usually engaged in every important suit occurring in that portion of the state. In 1853, while still in Washington, Mr. Fillmore made an arrangement with Henry E. Davies to renew, on retiring from the presidency, the practice of his profession in New York in partnership with that gentleman, who, after occupying a judge's seat in the court of appeals, returned to the bar. Family afflictions, however, combined with other causes, induced the ex-president to abandon his purpose. There were doubtless at that time men of more genius and greater eloquence at the bar, of the great city; but we can not doubt that Mr. Fillmore's solid legal learning, and the weight of his personal character, would have won for him the highest professional honors in the new field of action. Mr. Fillmore's political career began and ended with the birth and extinction of the great Whig party. In 1828 he was elected by Erie county to the state legislature of New York, serving for three terms, and retiring with a reputation for ability, integrity, and a conscientious performance of his public duties. He distinguished himself by his advocacy of the act to abolish imprisonment for debt, which was passed in 1831. The bill was drafted by Fillmore, excepting the portions relative to proceedings in courts of record, which were drawn by John C. Spenser. In 1832 he was elected to congress, and, after serving for one term, retired till 1836, when he was re-elected, and again returned in 1838 and 1840, declining a renomination in 1842. In the 27th congress Mr. Fillmore, as chairman of the committee on ways and means -a committee performing at that period not only the duties now devolving upon it, but those also which belong to the committee on appropriations had herculean labors to perform. Day after day, for weeks and months, Fillmore had to encounter many of the ablest debaters of the house, but on all occasions he proved himself equal to the emergency. It should not be forgotten that, in the opinion of John Quincy Adams, there were more men of talent and a larger aggregate of ability in that congress than he had ever known. Although Mr. Fillmore did not claim to have discovered any original system of revenue, still the tariff of 1842 was a new creation, and he is most justly entitled to the distinction of being its author. It operated successfully, giving immediate life to our languishing industries and national credit. At the same time Mr. Fillmore, with great labor, prepared a digest of the laws authorizing all appropriations reported by him to the house as chairman of the committee on ways and means, so that on the instant he could produce the legal authority for every expenditure which he recommended. Sensible that this was a great safeguard against improper expenditures, he procured the passage of a resolution requiring the departments, when they submitted estimates of expenses, to accompany them with a reference to the laws authorizing them in each and every instance. This has ever since been the practice of the government. Mr. Fillmore retired from congress in 1843, and was a candidate for the office of vice-president, supported by his own and several of the western states, in the Whig convention that met at Baltimore in May, 1844. In the following September he was nominated by acclamation for governor, but was defeated by Silas Wright, his illustrious contemporary, Henry Clay, being vanquished at the same time in the presidential contest by James K. Polk. In 1847 Fillmore was elected comptroller of the state of New York, an office which then included many duties now distributed among other departments. In his report of 1 Jan., 1849, he suggested that a national bank, with the stocks of the United States as the sole basis upon which to issue its currency, might be established and carried on, so as to prove a great convenience to the government, with perfect safety to the people. This idea involves the essential principle of our present system of national banks. In June, 1848, Millard Fillmore was nominated by the Whig national convention for vice-president, with Gen. Taylor, who had recently won military renown in Mexico, as president, and was in the following November elected, making, with the late occupant of the office, seven vice-presidents of the United States from New York, a greater number than has been yet furnished by any other state. In February, 1849, Fillmore resigned the comptrollership, and on 5 March he was inaugurated as vicepresident. In 1826 Calhoun, of South Carolina, then vice-president, established the rule that that officer had no authority to call senators to order. During the heated controversies in the sessions of 1849-50, occasioned by the application of California for admission into the Union, the vexed question of slavery in the new territories, and that of the rendition of fugitive slaves, in which the most acrimonious language was used, Mr. Fillmore, in a forcible speech to the senate, announced his determination to maintain order, and that, should occasion require, he should resume the usage of his predecessors upon that point. This announcement met with the unanimous approval of the senate, which directed the vice-president's remarks to be entered in full on its journal. He presided during the exciting controversy on Clay's "omnibus bill with his usual impartiality, and so perfectly even did he hold the scales that no one knew which policy he approved excepting the president, to whom he privately stated that, should he be required to deposit a casting vote, it would be in favor of Henry Clay's bill. More than seven months of the session had been exhausted in angry controversy, when, on 9 July, 1850, the country was startled by the news of President Taylor's death. He passed away in the second year of his presi | dency, suddenly and most unexpectedly, of a vio- able one was select- Milland Filemow of state; Thomas Corwin, secretary of the treasury; William A. Graham, secretary of the navy; Charles M. Conrad, secretary of war; Alexander H. H. Stuart, secretary of the interior; John J. Crittenden, attorney-general; and Nathan K. Hall, postmaster-general. Of these, Mr. Webster died, and Messrs. Graham and Hall retired in 1852, and were respectively replaced by Edward Everett, John P. Kennedy, and Samuel D. HubStuart, of Virginia, is now the sole surbard. vivor of the illustrious men who aided Mr. Fillmore in guiding the ship of state during the most appalling political tempest, save one, which ever visited this fair land. It is not the writer's wish to reawaken party feelings or party prejudice or to recall those great questions of pith and moment which so seriously disturbed congress and the country in the first days of Fillmore's administration, but yet, even in so cursory a glance as we are now taking of his career, some comment would seem to be called for in respect to those public acts connected with slavery which appear to have most unreasonably and unjustly lost him the Whatever the wisdom of Mr. support of a large proportion of his party in the northern states." Fillmore's course may have been, it is impossible to doubt his patriotism or his honest belief that he was acting in accordance with his oath to obey the constitution of his country. The president's dream was peace-to preserve without hatred and without war tranquillity throughout the length and One of the president's earliest official acts was to Mr. Fillmore's administration being in a political minority in both houses of congress, many wise and admirable measures recommended by him failed of adoption; nevertheless we are indebted to him for cheap postage; for the extension of the national capitol, the corner-stone of which he laid 4 July, 1851; for the Perry treaty, opening the ports of Japan, and for various valuable exploring expeditions. When South Carolina in one of her indignant utterances took Mr. Fillmore to task for sending a fleet to Charleston harbor, and he was officially questioned as to his object and authority, the answer came promptly and to the purpose," By authority of the constitution of the United States, which has made the president commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and who recognizes no responsibility for his official action to the governor of South Carolina." With stern measures he repressed filibustering, and with equal firmness exacted from other countries respect for our flag. Mr. Fillmore carried out strictly the doctrine of non-intervention in the affairs of foreign nations, and frankly stated his policy to the highly-gifted Kossuth, who won all hearts by his surpassing eloquence. At the same time, however, it was clearly shown how little the administration sympathized with Austria by the celebrated letter addressed to her ambassador, Hulsemann, by Daniel Webster, who died soon after. His successor as secretary of state was Edward Everett, whose brief term of office was distinguished by his letter declining the proposition for a treaty by which England, France, and the United States were to disclaim then and for the future all intention to obtain possession of Cuba. In his last message, however, the president expressed an opinion against the incorporation of the island with this Union. was, during the closing years of his life, regarded Nothing in Mr. Fillmore's presidential career by himself with greater satisfaction than the suppressed portion of his last message of 6 Dec., 1852. all of whom concurred in the belief that, if sent It was suppressed by the advice of the cabinet, in, it would precipitate an armed collision, and he readily acquiesced in their views. It related to the great political problem of the period-the balance He fully and clearly appreciated the magnitude of power between the free and the slave states. of the then approaching crisis, and in the document now under consideration proposed a judicious scheme of rescuing the country from the horrors of a civil war, which soon after desolated so large a portion of the land. His perfectly pracwhat similar to one seriously entertained by his ticable plan was one of African colonization, somesuccessor, Mr. Lincoln. Had President Fillmore's scheme been adopted, it is quite possible that it try might have been blessed with peace and proswould have been successful, and that our counperity, in lieu of the late war with its loss of half a million of precious lives and a debt of more than double the amount of the estimated cost of his plan of colonization. Mr. Fillmore retired from the presidency, 4 March, 1853, leaving the country at peace with other lands and within her own borders, and in the enjoyment of a high degree of prosperity in all the various departments of industry. In his cabinet there had never been a dissenting voice in regard to any important measure of his administration, and, upon his retiring from office, a letter was addressed to him by all its members, expressing their united appreciation of his ability, his integrity, and his single-hearted and sincere devotion to the public service. who also sat in the 27th congress with him, in a The surviving member of Fillmore's cabinet, communication, with which he has favored the writer, says: "Mr. Fillmore was a man of decided opinions, but he was always open to conviction. His aim was truth, and whenever he was convinced by reasoning that his first impressions were wrong, he had the moral courage to surrender them. But, when he had carefully examined a question and had satisfied himself that he was right, no power on earth could induce him to swerve from what he believed to be the line of duty. . . . There were many things about Mr. Fillmore, aside from his public character, which often filled me with surprise. While he enjoyed none of the advantages of early association with cultivated society, he poshim for the most refined circles of the metropolis. sessed a grace and polish of manner which fitted You saw, too, at a glance, that there was nothing ral outward expression of inward refinement and in it which was assumed, but that it was the natudignity of character. I have witnessed, on several occasions, the display by him of attributes apparently of the most opposite character. When assailed in congress he exhibited a manly self-reliadmiration of every spectator, and yet no one ever ance and a lofty courage which commanded the manifested deeper sensibility, or more tender sympathy, with a friend in affliction. every position in which he was called to serve his to have the peculiar faculty of adapting himself to He seemed country. When he was chairman of the committee of ways and means, members of congress expressed their sense of his fitness by declaring that he was born to fill it. When he was elected vicepresident, it was predicted that he would fail as the presiding officer of the senate, yet he acquitted himself in this new and untried position in such a |