Millard Fillmore –East Aurora, NY & Bethesda, MD - July 20-21, 2013

My friend, Lisa, suggested that I lighten the tone of our adventures; that our travel log is too dense with facts—many of them quite depressing.  But how do you lighten the tone of the tragedy that was playing out on the American tapestry?

The single biggest issue that dominated the United Sates from its inception to the Civil War was slavery. Nothing is remotely close. Sure, territory was added. Another war with England was fought, and yet another with Mexico. The Indians were shamelessly brutalized. But it was the government sanctioned enslavement of millions of people that really got people torqued.

Every territorial discussion involved slavery. Texas: slave or free? California: slave or free? New Mexico: Slave or free? Even the placement of the national capital in the South was an appeasement to the slave-holding South.

Fillmore’s Early Home, East Aurora, NY 

We journeyed to East Aurora, New York, to see the early home of President No. 13, Millard Fillmore.

On the Porch of Charlie's Diner

We waited    out a long downpour on the porch of Charlie’s Diner on Main Street in the small town. The rainy, cool weather was a pleasant change from the heat wave enveloping our home in the Washington, DC area. Cathy found a soul mate in our friendly waitress who shared Cathy’s aversion to eggs. When I expressed disappointment in my Mediterranean chicken sandwich, Cathy noted, “at the end of the day this is a diner.”

Fillmore's House

Fillmore’s green two-story wood frame house is built in the Federal style. Fillmore constructed this house in 1825 for his betrothed, Abigail Powers, and they resided here until 1830. The house originally stood on another street in East Aurora, directly opposite Fillmore’s law office. It was moved in 1916 and has been slowly restored over time. (There are plans to expand the site and add a replica law office across from the house.)

When we entered the house, we were greeted by the ghostly apparition of the six-foot Fillmore, actual

Cathy & Millard

ly a life-size cardboard cutout. The three docents, escorted us through the artifact-filled house, pointing out interesting items such as Fillmore’s horsehair mattress bed with his name and address carved into one of the slats. He took the bed with him to the White House. The bed is short because people at that time slept propped up on pillows.

In addition to Fillmore family artifacts, the house contains period paraphernalia. For example, a large American flag is displayed in the hallway. At first glance it looks like one of the original American flags with 13 stars in a circle. But this flag, discovered in the Fillmore barn, has only 12 stars in a circle. Nobody knows why.

Another Accidental Presidency

When Zachary Taylor died suddenly in 1850, America was once again led by a man who few knew. Just as John Tyler had little in common with his predecessor, William Henry Harrison, Millard Fillmore was the anti-Taylor. Taylor enslaved people but did not support the expansion of slavery. Millard Fillmore, a Northerner from New York, owned no slaves but was an ardent supporter of slavery. Author Paul Finkelman (2011), no great fan of Fillmore, labels him a “doughface,” a Northerner with Southern sympathies. To top things off, Fillmore was also anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic.

He was also petulant.

Upset that Taylor had not included him in administration meetings, he accepted the Cabinet’s pro forma resignations on his first day in office, then asked them to stay on during a transition period. They all refused and Fillmore was left without a cabinet. (This is the only time this has happened in U.S. history.)

The Compromise of 1850 

The Compromise of 1850, put forward by Henry Clay during the presidency of Zach Taylor, now became Fillmore’s problem. Taylor had not supported the Compromise.

He wanted to admit California and New Mexico as states first before dealing with the other issues in the Compromise. When Taylor died, Clay’s bill was split into five separate bills and dealt with one by one. First, Texas would renounce its previous claims to portions of the New Mexico territory in exchange for the Federal government taking on its debt. Second, California would be admitted as a free state. Third, New Mexico and Utah could decide whether they wanted to be free or slave. (This was in direct opposition to the Wilmot Proviso which forbade slavery in the new territories won in the Mexican War.) Fourth, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793—often ignored by Northern states—was replaced by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. And fifth, slave trading—but not slavery—was banned in Washington, DC. Fillmore signed the bills one by one and by September 1850, all were law.

The most controversial bill was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This gem made it a crime for anyone to assist an escaped enslaved person in EITHER a slave or free state. And it established federal commissioners in each county to enforce the law. These officials received $10 for every person “returned” to slavery but only $5 if said person was released. (Guess what the officials had an incentive to do?) Hiring an enslaved person would also bring a big penalty. (This sounds a bit like the current restrictive anti-illegal alien laws of today.) Due process was ignored as the enslaved had no right to testify in their own defense. Thus any white person could finger anyone who appeared to have any African blood (enslaved or free) and pretty much remand them to a life of slavery.

It was an outrageous law and provoked huge outcries from abolitionists (including many members of Fillmore’s Whig party).

It also prompted Harriet Beecher Stowe to write a book.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin 

Stowe’s controversial 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, describes the injustices of an America that countenanced and continued slavery.

And it is a zinger of a tale. Men and women are sold. Couples are separated. Children are ripped from the arms of their mothers. Many of the men are worked near to death—and in some cases to death—in the cotton fields of the Deep South. Women are raped and their offspring sold as slaves.

One of Stowe’s characters, a cynical slave owner says of the system: “Whatever is too hard, too dirty, too disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I don’t like work, Q shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it…. Quashy shall do my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal life…”

This best-selling book—300,000 copies were sold during its first year of publication—caused outrage throughout the North. The South accused Stowe of sensationalizing and exaggerating the evils of slavery. She refuted this by writing a follow-up book, The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in 1853 to demonstrate her meticulous research of the facts.

In it she mentions the life of Josiah Henson, a real life enslaved person, on whom Uncle Tom is partially based.

Josiah Henson Park

Since Josiah Henson Park is located in our home county, Montgomery County, Maryland, we decided to make an afternoon visit with Dottie, one of our friends.

Josiah Henson was born into slavery in Charles County, MD in 1789. Known for his integrity, he became highly trusted by Isaac Riley, his “master.” He was also smart and helped his master double Riley Plantation’s crop yield. When Isaac Riley encountered financial difficulties, Jenson was instructed to take 20 of his enslaved companions to his brother, Amos’s plantation in Kentucky, which he faithfully did, ignoring the opportunities for escape when they crossed through Ohio. He spent three years at that plantation, also becoming a Methodist minister on the side. Through his preaching he was able to earn money—almost enough money to buy his freedom. When he returned to the Riley Plantation, he made a down payment on his freedom. Isaac Riley accepted his money and Henson left for brother Amos’s plantation in Kentucky to retrieve his family. But when he reached Amos’s plantation, he discovered that Isaac had sent a letter to his brother saying that Henson owed much more than they had negotiated. Amos Riley then directed his son to take Henson downriver to New Orleans—most likely to sell him. One night as they floated downriver on a flatboat, Henson took an ax with the determination to kill the three white men on board and escape. But at the last instant, he became overcome with guilt and did not carry out the act. Fortunately for Henson, when they reached New Orleans, Riley’s son became extremely ill and begged Henson to take him home. Henson complied and they made a return journey upriver with the tables turned.

When Henson reached the plantation, he and his family made plans to escape. On the appointed night, Henson, his wife and their four children walked away. They spent many weeks walking and riding in wagons of sympathizers. Often, they were exhausted and near starvation. Even when they finally reached Sandusky on the shore of Lake Erie, they still had to remain in hiding. The area was crawling with Southern spies who could make money turning in escaped slaves. Finally, Henson was able to secure a place on a boat for his family and ended up in – of all places – Buffalo! From there it was a short ferry ride to Canada where Henson rolled on the ground and gave “way to the riotous exultation of my feelings.” He and his family were free. They had had to LEAVE America—Land of the Free, Home of the Brave—to secure their freedom. In 1849, Henson published The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, which Harriet Beecher Stowe read. The rest is history so to speak.

The Henson site, located in a residential neighborhood in Bethesda, consists of a large timber and mortar cabin connected to a house. It is all that is left of the Riley plantation where Henson was once enslaved. The cabin is not the actual cabin in which he lived—that building has since been destroyed. But it is representative of the type of cabin in which he might have lived. The cabin is large but it provided only the gloomiest of housing. As Henson describes it in his autobiography:

Cabin as Seen from Above

“Our lodging was in log huts, of a single small room, with no other floor than the trodden earth, in which ten or a dozen persons--men, women, and children--might sleep, but which could not protect them from dampness and cold, nor permit the existence of the common decencies of life. There were neither beds, nor furniture of any description--a blanket being the only addition to the dress of the day for protection from the chillness of the air or the earth. In these hovels were we penned at night, and fed by day; here were the children born, and the sick--neglected.”

This was the hell on earth that Fillmore countenanced and supported

Fillmore: Hero or Failure? 

Fillmore eagerly enforced the Fugitive Slave Act. For example, Fillmore became personally involved in the Shadrach Minkins case. Minkins, a fugitive slave in Boston, was arrested for escaping but his supporters broke into the jail and spirited him to Canada. The Federal government—with Fillmore’s personal involvement—tried unsuccessfully to prosecute some of those who freed him. Finkelman (2011) cites other examples of Fillmore’s personal involvement in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.

Some make Fillmore out to be a tragic-heroic figure who signed the Compromise of 1850 to save United States from disunity. The docents in the Fillmore house seem to fall into the fan category although the best that one of the docents was able to offer was that Fillmore ended debtor’s prisoners, was the first Chancellor of the University of Buffalo, was a founding member of the Buffalo Chapter of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and founded M&T Bank (actually he was just an early shareholder.) Another docent called him “an interesting man.”

Probably because of his signing of the Fugitive Slave Act, Fillmore was unable to win a slot as the Whig nominee in the election of 1852. He ran in 1856 as the nominee of the newly formed anti-immigrant American Party which was also known as the Know Nothing Party. His running mate was none other than Andrew Donelson, Andrew Jackson’s beloved nephew.

And On to Cheerier Things

Since our tour of Fillmore's house lasted only an hour or so, and we were in New York for the weekend, we had tons of other things to see.

First, East Aurora is home of the Roycroft Arts & Crafts movement. Founded in 1895 by Elbert Hubbard, the movement featured handcrafted furniture, metal work, book binding, and text illumination as a backlash to the inhumane and machine-driven Industrial Revolution. The Roycroft campus is full of stone buildings with slate roofs, one housing a museum and another, a store.

Example of Arts & Crafts Architecture

Then we hopped in our rental car and headed about 45 minutes north to one of the United States' beautiful and most touristy attractions—Niagara Falls.

We managed to enjoy the falls without spending any money on—or standing in the super-long lines for—the tourist-bait Maid of the Mist or Cave of the Winds attractions. We just enjoyed the spectacular view from several locations at several times of day. In fact, the only money we spent was 50 cents each to get out of Canada and back into the U.S. -- something that caught us by surprise (and no change!) on our trip back across the Rainbow Bridge around 11 p.m. Fortunately, the Canadians provide change machines.

Interestingly, Nicholas Biddle, President of the Second Bank of the United States—and whom we learned about during our Andrew Jackson journey—financed the construction of a metal staircase hooked into the rocks leading from the top at Goat Island to the base. These stairs, build in 1827 and encased in a protective wooden covering, became known as the Biddle Stairs. After almost 100 years of use, the stairs were replaced by an elevator.

We stayed at the Hampton Inn in Niagara. While the surrounding area is a bit rundown, the Hampton is close to the Niagara casino (if you like gambling) and is less than a mile from Goat Island. We were able to easily walk along the street and path to one of the two bridges that carry pedestrians over what are called the Upper Rapids.

Before the Upper Rapids start, the Niagara River flows calmly and lazily downstream—or, at least that's what it looks like. Throw a stick in there and see how quickly it's moving before it heads into the rapids and then into its plunge over either the Horseshoe or American falls. There are multiple signs along the river telling tourists to stay out of the water—Cathy's not sure why anybody would even consider it: You know what's coming if you get dragged downstream.

The highlight of our visit was Sunday morning—and this is a big tourist tip: Get up early, but not

Niagara Falls - American Side

THAT early. We went running separately around 8:30 a.m. Cathy went back over the bridge to Goat Island, where she ran around the island along a trail, while Tom ran along the river to an overlook at the American Falls. What we both found was that nobody was there. We had beautiful, unblocked views of the falls that we could just enjoy at our leisure. We could run around and look at the falls from different angles without having to lean over railings or smush in between families.

After our morning checking out the falls, we moved on to one of Cathy's favorite sightseeing activities: a tour of a Frank Lloyd Wright house. The Darwin D. Martin House complex is just outside Buffalo and only about a half hour from Niagara.

This house, built for the chief financial officer of the nation's largest mail-order soap company at the time, was built by Wright in the early 1900s with basically an unlimited budget. And while the complex is undergoing major renovations, it is clear Wright had a few financial restrictions. The building is a prime example of one of Wright's Prairie houses, which feature a horizontal design to blend into the surrounding landscape. The bricks are extremely horizontal to help achieve the blending effect, and the house is cantilevered, with open vistas. It is absolutely beautiful, with telltale FLW details such as the expensive art glass throughout the house, the hidden storage compartments and ventilation system, and the open and airy design of the main house.

Darwin D. Martin House

The complex also includes Martin's sister's house, called the George Barton house, the Gardener's Cottage—which we didn't get to tour but looked amazing when we later peeked through the windows—the Conservatory and the Pergola, which is basically a breezeway connecting the Martin house to the conservatory.

Interestingly, the complex is in the middle of a housing development full of Victorians next to a big public park, designed by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. So the modern-looking house is quite easy to spot among the gingerbread and pitched roofs.

How to Get There

East Aurora is an easy 30 minute drive from the Buffalo Airport. The Fillmore house is located at 34 Shearer Avenue, just off Main Street. It is open from June-October only on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. 

Josiah Henson Park is located on 11420 Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda, Maryland. The house is open for tours on an infrequent basis. It is best to visit the website to learn about tour dates:  http://www.montgomeryparks.org/PPSD/Cultural_Resources_Stewardship/heritage/josiahhensonsp.shtm Parking is available at the Kennedy Shriver Aquatic Center, located 1.5 blocks away at 5900 Executive Blvd. 

References

Current, R., Williams, T.H., Freidel, F. 1975. American History: A Survey, Fourth Edition, Volume I: To 1877. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

Finkelman, P. Millard Fillmore. 2010. Henry Holt & Company.  New York NY.

Henson, J. 1849. The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Arthur D. Phelps. Boston.

Smith, C. 2005. Presidents: Every Question Answered. Metro Books. New York, NY.

Stowe, H, B. 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly.