Historic Facepalm of Epic Proportions
ISSUE NO. 10 // COME ON, GUYS
If you missed Millard Fillmore was a Trash President, you may not appreciate how hard it is for me to feature Millard Fillmore again. I gave you a chance to vote for this topic, and the majority of you voted to make me miserable.
Just kidding.
But Historic Facepalm of Epic Proportions did win, so I’m powering through for you guys! (And for any of you who voted for Venn diagrams, we have a few of those too! Everybody wins. Except me. No hard feelings.)
Let’s get this over with…
Presidential Doodler
First, a little background
To bring you up-to-speed, here’s a comparison of the first two presidents to die in office (William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor) and their contrasting but similarly abysmal vice presidents (John Tyler and Millard Fillmore).
FYI: John Tyler was the only president buried under the Confederate flag. So there’s that.
But we’re here today to talk about Millard Fillmore, is a thing that pains me to say.
Taylor & Fillmore
Back in the day, presidential candidates didn’t necessarily meet their running mates before running together. Weird move, but how could it possibly go wrong?
When he was nominated, the assumption was that Taylor (a Southern slaveholder) would want to expand slavery into new territories. And Fillmore, well, he balanced out the ticket as a Northerner, so he probably wanted to contain slavery {shrugs}.
Come on, guys
Nobody even thought to ask Fillmore his views on anything, because why bother?
Turns out, everybody had him all wrong. Including the president.
Taylor and Fillmore didn’t have a great relationship. Who could have seen this coming? Taylor even kept his VP out of cabinet meetings.
And while Taylor wanted to contain slavery and keep it out of the Southwest, Fillmore … well, he wanted to fill more of the country with it. He even told Taylor that if the issue came to a tie, he would not be siding with the president.
One week later…
Taylor died (16 months into his term). Fillmore fired his entire cabinet on Day 1. (A short-sighted maneuver that no other “accidental president” was brainless enough to try.)
As a leader, Fillmore was weak when it suited him (like when Texas toyed with invading New Mexico, conveniently forgetting that he was Commander-in-Chief) and overreached when he preferred. Like with the Fugitive Slave Act.
The Fugitive Slave Act was a huge threat to the 150,000 free blacks in the north. Not only was there danger of capture, but it affected community relationships — whites were less likely to hire blacks out of fear of the law.
If captured, the suspected “slaves” were not allowed to speak at their own trial… even to let the court know they were free.
If a white person made a mistake and helped a fugitive, they could get sued, slapped a fine, or go to jail.
Conversely, if someone who was “free” was “accidentally” captured, well, no biggie. Mistakes happen. You do you.
The entire system was rigged and the incentives grossly favored one side. The judge received double compensation when slaveholders won the case.
On the bright side, we have since learned how detrimental it is to society to have citizens enforcing the law like this. Just kidding. We haven’t learned that at all.
Doodles in this issue were inspired by Millard Fillmore by Paul Finkelman
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