USA > Minnesota > Meeker County > Album of history and biography of Meeker County, Minnesota > Part 7
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PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
MILLARD FILLMORE.
ILLARD FILL- MORE, the thir- : teenth President of the United States, 1850-'3, was born in Summer Hill, Cayuga County, New York, Janu- ary 7, 1800. He was of New England ancestry, and his educational advantages were limited. He early learned the clothiers' trade, but spent all his leisure time in study. At nineteen years of age he was induced by Judge Walter Wood to abandon his trade and commence the study of law. Upon learning that the young man was entirely destitute of means, he took him into his own office and loaned him such money as he needed. That he might not be heavily burdened with debt, young Fillmore taught school during the winter months and in various other ways helped himself along.
At the age of twenty-three he was ad- mitted to the Court of Common Pleas, and commenced the practice of his profession in the village of Aurora, situated on the
eastern bank of the Cayuga Lake. In 1825 he married Miss Abigail Powers, daughter of Rev. Lemuel Powers, a lady of great moral worth. In 1825 he took his seat in the House of Assembly of his native State, as Representative from Erie County, whither he had recently moved.
Though he had never taken a very active part in politics his vote and his sym- pathies were with the Whig party. The State was then Democratic, but his cour- tesy, ability and integrity won the respect of his associates. In 1832 he was elected to a seat in the United States Congress. At the close of his term he returned to his law practice, and in two years more he was again elected to Congress.
He now began to have a national reputa- tion. His labors were very arduous. To draft resolutions in the committee room, and then to defend them against the most skillful opponents on the floor of the House requires readiness of mind, mental resources and skill in debate such as few possess. Weary with these exhausting labors, and pressed by the claims of his private affairs, Mr. Fillmore wrote a letter to his constitu- ents and declined to be a candidate for re- election. Notwithstanding this communi-
Milland Filimon)
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MILLARD FILLMORE.
cation his friends met in convention and renominated him by acclamation. Though gratified by this proof of their appreciation of his labors he adhered to his resolve and returned to his home.
In 1847 Mr. Fillmore was elected to the important office of comptroller of the State. In entering upon the very responsible duties which this situation demanded, it was nec- essary for him to abandon his profession, and he removed to the city of Albany. In this year, also, the Whigs were looking around to find suitable candidates for the President and Vice-President at the ap- proaching election, and the names of Zach- ary Taylor and Millard Fillmore became the rallying cry of the Whigs. On the 4th of March, 1849, General Taylor was inaug- urated President and Millard Fillmore Vice-President of the United States.
The great question of slavery had as- sumed enormous proportions, and perme- ated every subject that was brought before Congress. It was evident that the strength of our institutions was to be severely tried. July 9, 1850, President Taylor died, and, by the Constitution, Vice-President Fillmore became President of the United States. The agitated condition of the country brought questions of great delicacy before him. He was bound by his oath of office to execute the laws of the United States. One of these laws was understood to be, that if a slave, escaping from bondage, should reach a free State, the United States was bound to do its utmost to capture him and return him to his master. Most Chris. tian men loathed this law. President Fill- more felt bound by his oath rigidly to see it enforced. Slavery was organizing armies to invade Cuba as it had invaded Texas, and annex it to the United States. Presi- dent Fillmore gave all the influence of his exalted station against the atrocious enter- prise.
Mr. Fillmore had serious difficulties to
contend with, since the opposition had a majority in both Houses. He did every- thing in his power to conciliate the South, but the pro-slavery party in that section felt the inadequency of all measures of tran- sient conciliation. The population of the free States was so rapidly increasing over that of the slave States, that it was inevita- ble that the power of the Government should soon pass into the hands of the free States. The famous compromise measures were adopted under Mr. Fillmore's admin- istration, and the Japan expedition was sent out.
March 4, 1853, having served onc term, President Fillmore retired from office. He then took a long tour through the South, where he met with quite an enthusiastic reception. In a speech at Vicksburg, al- luding to the rapid growth of the country, he said:
" Canada is knocking for admission, and Mexico would be glad to come in, and without saying whether it would be right or wrong, we stand with open arms to re- ceive them; for it is the manifest destiny of this Government to embrace the whole North American Continent."
In 1855 Mr. Fillmore went to Europe where he was received with those marked attentions which his position and character merited. Returning to this country in 1856 he was nominated for the Presidency by the " Know-Nothing" party. Mr. Bu- chanan, the Democratic candidate was the successful competitor. Mr. Fillmore ever afterward lived in retirement. Dur- ing the conflict of civil war he was mostly silent. It was generally supposed, how- ever, that his sympathy was with the South- ern Confederacy. He kept aloof from the conflict without any words of cheer to the one party or the other. For this reason he was forgotten by both. He died of paralysis, in Buffalo, New York, March 8, 1874.
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PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
FRANKLIN PIERCE.
RANKLIN PIERCE, the fourteenth Presi- dent of the United States, was born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, Novem- ber 23, 1804. His father, Governor Benjamin Pierce, was a Rev- olutionary soldier, a man of rigid integrity ; was for sev- eral years in the State Legis- lature, a member of the Gov- ernor's council and a General of the militia.
Franklin was the sixth of eight children. As a boy he listened eagerly to the argu- ments of his father, enforced by strong and ready utterance and earnest gesture. It was in the days of intense political excite- ment, when, all over the New England States, Federalists and Democrats were ar- rayed so fiercely against each other.
In 1820 he entered Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, Maine, and graduated in 1824, and commenced the study of law in the office of Judge Woodbury, a very distin- guished lawyer, and in 1827 was admitted to the bar. He practiced with great success in Hillsborough and Concord. He served
in the State Legislature four years, the last two of which he was chosen Speaker of the House by a very large vote.
In 1833 he was elected a member of Con- gress. In 1837 he was elected to the United States Senate, just as Mr. Van Buren com- menced his administration.
In 1834 he married Miss Jane Means Appleton, a lady admirably fitted to adorn every station with which her husband was honored. Three sons born to them all found an early grave.
Upon his accession to office, President Polk appointed Mr. Pierce Attorney-Gen- eral of the United States, but the offer was declined in consequence of numerous pro- fessional engagements at home and the precarious state of Mrs. Pierce's health. About the same time he also declined the nomination for Governor by the Demo- cratic party.
The war with Mexico called Mr. Pierce into the army. Receiving the appointment of Brigadier-General, he embarked with a portion of his troops at Newport, Rhode Island, May 27, 1847. He served during this war, and distinguished himself by his bravery, skill and excellent judgment. When he reached his home in his native State he was enthusiastically received by
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Franklin Rence
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FRANKLIN PIERCE.
the advocates of the war, and coldly by its opponents. He resumed the practice of his profession, frequently taking an active part in political questions, and giving his sup- port to the pro-slavery wing of the Demo- cratic party.
June 12, 1852, the Democratic convention met in Baltimore to nominate a candidate for the Presidency. For four days they continued in session, and in thirty-five bal- lotings no one had received the requisite two-thirds vote. Not a vote had been thrown thus far for General Pierce. Then the Virginia delegation brought forward his name. There were fourteen more bal- lotings, during which General Pierce gained strength, until, at the forty-ninth ballot, he received 282 votes, and all other candidates eleven. General Winfield Scott was the Whig candidate. General Pierce was elected with great unanimity. Only four States-Vermont, Massachusetts, Ken- tucky and Tennessec-cast their electoral votes against him. March 4, 1853, he was inaugurated President of the United States, and William R. King, Vice-President.
President Pierce's cabinet consisted of William S. Marcy, James Guthric, Jefferson Davis, James C. Dobbin, Robert McClel- land, James Campbell and Caleb Cushing.
At the demand of slavery the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and all the Ter- ritories of the Union were thrown open to slavery. The Territory of Kansas, west of Missouri, was settled by cmigrants mainly from the North. According to law, they were about to meet and decide whether slavery or freedom should be the law of that realm. Slavery in Missouri and other Southern States rallied her armed legions, marched them into Kansas, took possession of the polls, drove away the citizens, deposited their own votes by handfuls, went through the farce of count- ing them, and then declared that, by an overwhelming majority, slavery was estab-
lished in Kansas. These facts nobody denied, and yet President Pierce's adminis- tration felt bound to respect the decision obtained by such votes. The citizens of Kansas, the majority of whom were free- State men, met in convention and adopted the following resolve :
"Resolved, That the body of men who, for the past two months, have been passing laws for the people of our Territory, moved, counseled and dictated to by the demagogues of other States, are to us a foreign body, representing only the lawless invaders who elected them, and not the people of this Territory ; that we repudiate their action as the monstrous consummation of an act of violence, usurpation and fraud unparalleled in the history of the Union."
The free-State people of Kansas also sent a petition to the General Government, im- ploring its protection. In reply the Presi- dent issued a proclamation, declaring that Legislature thus created must be recog- nized as the legitimate Legislature of Kan- sas, and that its laws were binding upon the people, and that, if necessary, the whole force of the Governmental arm would be put forth to inforce those laws.
James Buchanan succeeded him in the Presidency, and, March 4, 1857, President Pierce retired to his home in Concord, New Hampshire. When the Rebellion burst forth Mr. Pierce remained steadfast to the principles he had always cherished, and gave his sympathies to the pro-slavery party, with which he had ever been allied. He declined to do anything, either by voice or pen, to strengthen the hands of the National Government. He resided in Concord until his death, which occurred in October, 1869. He was one of the most genial and social of men, generous to a fault, and contributed liberally of his moderate means for the alleviation of suf- fering and want. He was an honored communicant of the Episcopal church.
So
PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
AMES BuCE
AMES BUCHANAN, the fifteenth President of the United States. 1857-'61, was born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, April 23, 1791. The place where his father's cabin stood was called Stony Batter, and it was situated in a wild, romantic spot, in a gorge of mount- ains, with towering sum- mits rising all around. He was of Irish ancestry, his father having emigrated in- 1783, with very little prop- erty, save his own strong arms.
James remained in his secluded home for eight years enjoying very few social or intellectual advantages. His parents were industrious, frugal, prosperous and intelli- gent. In 1799 his father removed to Mer- cersburg, where James was placed in school and commenced a course in English, Greek and Latin. His progress was rapid and in iSor he entered Dickinson College at Carlisle. Here he took his stand among the first scholars in the institution, and was able to master the most abstruse subjects with facility. In 1809 he graduated with the highest honors in his class.
He was then eighteen years of age, tall,
graceful and in vigorous health, fond of athletic sports, an unerring shot and en- livened with an exuberant flow of animal spirits. He immediately commenced the study of law in the city of Lancaster, and was admitted to the bar in 1812. He rose very rapidly in his profession and at once took undisputed stand with the ablest law- y'ers of the State. When but twenty-six years of age, unaided by counsel, he suc- cessfully defended before the State Senate one of the Judges of the State, who was tried upon articles of impeachment At the age of thirty it was generally admitted that he stood at the head of the bar, and there was no lawyer in the State who had a more extensive or lucrative practice.
In 1812, just after Mr. Buchanan had entered upon the practice of the law, our second war with England occurred. With all his powers he sustained the Govern- ment, eloquently urging the rigorous pros- ccution of the war; and even enlisting as a private soldier to assist in repelling the British, who had sacked Washington and were threatening Baltimore. He was at that time a Federalist, but when the Con- stitution was adopted by both parties, Jefferson truly said, " We are all Federal- ists: we are all Republicans."
The opposition of the Federalists to the war with England, and the alien and sedi-
James Buchananp
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GAMES BUCHANAN.
tion laws of John Adams, brought the party into dispute, and the name of Federalist became a reproach. Mr. Buchanan almost immediately upon entering Congress began to incline more and more to the Repub- licans. In the stormy Presidential election of 1824, in which Jackson, Clay, Crawford and John Quincy Adams were candidates, Mr. Buchanan espoused the cause of Gen- eral Jackson and unrelentingly opposed the administration of Mr. Adams.
Upon his elevation to the Presidency, General Jackson appointed Mr. Buchanan, minister to Russia. Upon his return in 1833 he was elected to a seat in the United States Senate. He there met as his associates, Webster, Clay, Wright and Calhoun. He advocated the measures proposed by Presi- dent Jackson of making reprisals against France, and defended the course of the Pres- ident in his unprecedented and wholesale removals from office of those who were not the supporters of his administration. Upon this question he was brought into direct col- lision with Henry Clay. In the discussion of the question respecting the admission of Michigan and Arkansas into the Union, Mr. Buchanan defined his position by saying:
" The older I grow, the more I am in- clined to be what is called a State-rights man."
M. de Tocqueville, in his renowned work upon "Democracy in America," foresaw the trouble which was inevitable from the doctrine of State sovereignty as held by Calhoun and Buchanan. He was con- vinced that the National Government was losing that strength which was essential to its own existence, and that the States were assuming powers which threatened the perpetuity of the Union. Mr. Buchanan received the book in the Senate and de- clared the fears of De Tocqueville to be groundless, and yet he lived to sit in the Presidential chair and see State after State, in accordance with his own views of State
rights, breaking from the Union, thus crumbling our Republic into ruins; while the unhappy old man folded his arms in despair, declaring that the National Consti- tution invested him with no power to arrest the destruction.
Upon Mr. Polk's accession to the Presi- dency, Mr. Buchanan became Secretary of State, and as such took his share of the responsibility in the conduct of the Mexi- can war. At the close of Mr. Polk's ad- ministration, Mr. Buchanan retired to pri- vate life; but his intelligence, and his great ability as a statesman, enabled him to exert a powerful influence in National affairs.
Mr. Pierce, upon his election to the Presidency, honored Mr. Buchanan with the mission to England. In the year 1856 the National Democratic convention nomi- nated Mr. Buchanan for the Presidency. The political conflict was one of the most severe in which our country has ever en- gaged. On the 4th of March, 1857, Mr. Buchanan was inaugurated President. His cabinet were Lewis Cass, Howell Cobb, J. B. Floyd, Isaac Toucey, Jacob Thomp- son, A. V. Brown and J. S. Black.
The disruption of the Democratic party, in consequence of the manner in which the issue of the nationality of slavery was pressed by the Southern wing, occurred at the National convention, held at Charleston in April, 1860, for the nomination of Mr. Buchanan's successor, when the majority of Southern delegates withdrew upon the passage of a resolution declaring that the constitutional status of slavery should be determined by the Supreme Court.
In the next Presidential canvass Abra- ham Lincoln was nominated by the oppo- nents of Mr. Buchanan's administration. Mr. Buchanan remained in Washington long enough to see his successor installed and then retired to his home in Wheatland. He died June 1, 1868, aged seventy-seven years.
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PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
BRAHAM LIN- COLN, the sixteenth President of the United States, 1861-'5, was born February 12, 1809, in Larue (then Hardin) County, Kentucky, in a cabin on Nolan Creek, three miles west of Hudgensville. His parents were Thomas and Nancy (Hanks) Lincoln. Of his an- cestry and early years the little that is known may best be given in his own language : " My parents were both born in Virginia, of un- distinguished families-second families, per- haps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now remain in Adams, and others in Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abra- ham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockbridge County, Virginia, to Kentucky in 1781 or 1782, where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians-not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a «farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to iden-
tify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more defi- nite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mor- decai, Solomon, Abraham and the like. My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he grew up, liter- ally, without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew to manhood.
" There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond ' readin', writin', and cipher- in' to the rule of three.' If a straggler, sup- posed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write and cipher to the rule of three, and that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. I was raised to farm-work, which
your friend or even
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois and passed the first year in Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store.
. "Then came the Black Hawk war, and I was elected a Captain of volunteers-a suc- cess which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated ; ran for the Legislature the same year (1832) and was beaten, the only time I have ever been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the Legislature, and was never a candidate afterward.
" During this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was elected to the Lower House of Congress; was not a can- didate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, inclusive, I practiced the law more assid- uously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig elec- toral tickets, making active canvasses, I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise roused me again. What I have done since is pretty well known."
The early residence of Lincoln in Indi- ana was sixteen miles north of the Ohio River, on Little Pigeon Creek, one and a half miles east of Gentryville, within the present township of Carter. Here his mother died October 5, 1818, and the next year his father married Mrs. Sally (Bush) Johnston, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. She was an affectionate foster-parent, to whom Abraham was indebted for his first encour- agement to study. He became an eager reader, and the few books owned in the vicinity were many times perused. He worked frequently for the neighbors as a farm laborer ; was for some time clerk in a store at Gentryville; and became famous throughout that region for his athletic
powers, his fondness for argument, his in- exhaustible fund of humerous anecdote, as well as for mock oratory and the composi- tion of rude satirical verses. In 1828 he made a trading voyage to New Orleans as " bow-hand" on a flatboat; removed to Illinois in 1830; helped his father build a log house and clear a farm on the north fork of Sangamon River, ten miles west of Decatur, and was for some time employed in splitting rails for the fences-a fact which was prominently brought forward for a political purpose thirty years later.
In the spring of 1851 he, with two of his relatives, was hired to build a flatboat on the Sangamon River and navigate it to New Orleans. The boat "stuck " on a mill-dam, and was got off with great labor through an ingenious mechanical device which some years later led to Lincoln's taking out a patent for "an improved method for lifting vessels over shoals." This voyage was memorable for another reason-the sight of slaves chained, mal- treated and flogged at New Orleans was the origin of his deep convictions upon the slavery question.
Returning from this voyage he became a resident for several years at New Salem, a recently settled village on the Sangamon, where he was successively a clerk, grocer, surveyor and postmaster, and acted as pilot to the first steamboat that ascended the Sangamon. Here he studied law, inter- ested himself in local politics after his return from the Black Hawk war, and became known as an effective "stump- speaker." The subject of his first political speech was the improvement of the channel of the Sangamon, and the chief ground on which he announced himself (1832) a candi- date for the Legislature was his advocacy of this popular measure, on which subject his practical experience made him the high- est authority.
Elected to the Legislature in 1834 as a
PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
" Henry Clay Whig," he rapidly acquired that command of language and that homely but forcible rhetoric which, added to his intimate knowledge of the people from which he sprang, made him more than a match in debate for his few well-educated opponents.
Admitted to the bar in 1837 he soon established himself at Springfield, where the State capital was located in 1839, largely through his influence; became a successful pleader in the State, Circuit and District Courts ; married in 1842 a lady be- longing to a prominent family in Lexington, Kentucky; took an active part in the Pres- idential campaigns of 1840 and 1844 as candidate for elector on the Harrison and Clay tickets, and in 1846 was clected to the United States House of Representatives over the celebrated Peter Cartwright. During his single term in Congress he did not attain any prominence.
He voted for the reception of anti-slavery petitions for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia and for the Wilmot proviso; but was chiefly remem- bered for the stand he took against the Mexican war. For several years there- after he took comparatively little interest in politics, but gained a leading position at the Springfield bar. Two or three non- political lectures and an culogy on Henry Clay (1852) added nothing to his reputation.
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