Steve Israel  00:00

Taylor dies. Fillmore is now president. No legislative compromise has been passed by the Congress to determine how these territories will be incorporated into the Union, and the risk of Southern secession, which perhaps it's it's not really may not have been said directly. It's beginning to loom as a real possibility, and now you have Millard Fillmore. Nobody believes he can solve the problem.

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Colleen Shogan  00:25

Millard Fillmore spent a restless night in the Willard Hotel in Washington on the evening of July 9, 1850. Hours earlier, President Zachary Taylor had died after a short illness. The weight of the presidency was now on Fillmore's shoulders, and it robbed him of his sleep. Fillmore began his unexpected tenure as president with an expanded nation, yet one deeply divided over the question of slavery. Years earlier, Thomas Jefferson had warned that slavery was like holding a wolf by the ears, and as today's guest, former Congressman Steve Israel, argues Fillmore faced the question of whether the nation could hold that wolf or safely let him go. I'm Colleen Shogan, and this is In Pursuit, a podcast that explores lessons from America's past to write the history of America's future. Episode 10: Millard Fillmore kicks the can down the road. Congressman Steve Israel, welcome to In Pursuit.

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Steve Israel  01:26

Colleen, thanks so much for having me with you.

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Colleen Shogan  01:29

We're here today to talk about a president that a lot of people don't know much about, Millard Fillmore. So, can you start us off and tell us where did he come from and what was his early life, like?

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Steve Israel  01:42

Well, you're exactly right. Not a household name in the litany of great of presidents in American history. He was born in the quintessential log cabin in 1800 in Cayuga County, New York, and that's near the Finger Lakes. And he grew up in poverty, received very little schooling as a child. He apprenticed as a cloth maker, hated it. He viewed it as a form of slavery, and then began dedicating himself to the study of of law. Passes the bar at the age of 23 and becomes a pretty well known and and fairly effective lawyer in Buffalo.

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Colleen Shogan  02:24

How does he get his start in politics in New York? And maybe tell us a little bit about what was politics like with in that machine era.

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Steve Israel  02:34

Well, politics hasn't changed much much in New York from the machine era of the 19th century to today. You would know, yeah. He well, he establishes himself as a rising lawyer, and then in the late 1820s, the anti-masonic party asks him to run for office. He runs for the New York State Legislature. He actually serves three terms, and he focuses on legislation to end debtor imprisonment, and that was probably inspired by his very difficult childhood. And then in 1832, he was elected to the House of Representatives. But not unlike today, it wasn't necessarily what you know, but who you know in New York politics. And his success was enabled by his friendship with a New York political boss, Thurlow Weed, Weed becomes one of the most powerful political figures in New York State politics, and as the anti-masonic party folds into the Whig Party, Weed helps orchestrate Fillmore's Fillmore's rise in in that new party.

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Colleen Shogan  03:41

Of course, at this time, the biggest issue facing the country, rising issue, is slavery.

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Steve Israel  03:47

Yeah.

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Colleen Shogan  03:47

So, what is Millard Fillmore's opinion of slavery?

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Steve Israel  03:52

It's conflicted. He thinks slavery is wrong, but he does not believe that the federal government can or should end it. He didn't want to promote slavery. He didn't believe in slavery, but he didn't want to the federal government to engineer its end at the risk of the union's disintegration. He believed that a a federal law or the passage of legislation ending slavery would lead to disunion. In fact, he wrote a letter to Secretary of State Daniel Webster that really crystallized his thinking and summarizes it. He wrote, and I quote: "God knows I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution, till we get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world," and that view ultimately contributes to the unraveling of his reputation.

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Colleen Shogan  04:56

In 1848, the Whigs decide to. Nominate Zachary Taylor, not the most famous Whig of the time frame, but there's reasons for that. And Millard Fillmore becomes his running mate as vice president. So why did they pick Fillmore? Why did he match on that ticket?

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Steve Israel  05:14

So Taylor runs for president immediately after the U.S. wins the Mexican-American War, and now the United States has to decide what to do with the areas that it won: California, New Mexico, Utah, several other modern-day states. How will they be incorporated into the Union? And of course, the massive issue is: will they be incorporated as slave states, or will they be incorporated as free states? Taylor appeals very broadly to Whigs as a popular former general, but also he's a slave owner from Kentucky, and that is a very awkward fit in a party that contains significant anti-slavery factions. So they bring Fillmore onto the ticket to balance the issue. Fillmore is known to be against slavery, but again, not somebody who believes that the federal government should take a firm hand in the matter, and that balances the ticket and balances it successfully. They win.

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Colleen Shogan  06:10

How do Fillmore and Taylor get along if they don't see eye to eye necessarily on the biggest issue facing the country at that time?

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Steve Israel  06:17

Well, that was a significant difference between them. Taylor wants to fast track the admission of California, New Mexico, to the union as free states. He doesn't want the territorial status to linger, and he believes that the states should determine whether they are a slave or free. Now, if you bring in California, New Mexico as free states, that alters the balance of the Senate. Now you have four new senators who are who support an end to slavery. So there's this very tricky balance. There's concern that the admission of free states will destabilize the country due to backlash in the South, and Senator Henry Clay begins working on a compromise designed to assuage the concerns of the South against Taylor's wishes, Vice President Fillmore discreetly supports Clay's compromise behind the scenes, and that creates a bit of a rupture in the relationship between the president and the vice president.

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Colleen Shogan  07:15

Yeah, that doesn't seem like a good thing if you're, you know, at odds with the boss when you're the vice president.

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Steve Israel  07:20

That's exactly right. Never a good policy.

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Colleen Shogan  07:22

Taylor doesn't unfortunately last his entire term. He dies after a very quick illness. He eats something that they think maybe causes his his early death, and so Fillmore is thrust into the presidency. And so, how does he react when he all of a sudden he becomes president of the United States?

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Steve Israel  07:45

Taylor attends a ceremony at the Washington Monument, and he's eating milk and cherries on a warm day. And some believe that that ultimately led to his demise. Taylor dies. Fillmore is now president. No legislative compromise has been passed by the Congress to determine how these territories will be incorporated into the Union, and the risk of Southern secession, which perhaps it's it's not really may not have been said directly, it's beginning to loom as a real possibility, and now you have Millard Fillmore. Nobody believes he can solve the problem, and there's a great quote that I came across when I was working on the essay about Millard Fillmore for you. Senator William Seward tells Thurlow Weed, "Quote: Providence has at last led the man of hesitation and double opinions to the crisis where decision and singleness are indispensable." So there's not a lot of faith that Millard Fillmore, who is known for ducking issues, trying to avoid issues, doesn't really take on things head-on. Very little faith in his ability to solve this problem.

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Colleen Shogan  08:59

This becomes known as the Compromise of 1850, and can you tell us a little bit about Henry Clay's initial bill to try to solve this crisis?

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Steve Israel  09:10

Well, the mission is imperative, and that is to find a compromise that keeps the union whole. And they're trying to balance some very significant disagreements. Clay is skeptical from the start that Taylor's plan to bring in California, New Mexico as free states will survive the South's fury. He doesn't see a path. He does want to create a compromise that incorporates the new lands while also offering an olive branch to the South. So it's the old deal making, right? Everybody gets something at the end, and nobody's happy with what they got. His olive branch is the Fugitive Slave Act, which would require free states to return escaped slaves to their owners in the South. The problem is, and I loved reading about this and studying it because I've been there, done. On the floor of the House, trying to construct a compromise with all sorts of legislative pathways and multiple hurdles, the problem is that Clay packages the whole thing in one massive bill. Now it's a legitimate compromise, but it's all in one what we call an omnibus, and that vehicle gets attacked from all sides. The South does not want to pass something that will admit free states. The free states are livid about the Fugitive Slave Act. There's intense disagreement over Texas's borders, and compounding this problem, and here's where kind of real life humanity seeps into history, is that Henry Clay is now in his 70s. He's in poor health, and he's not able to to hold it all together. the the the The Act ultimately passes, but it goes through significant changes in structure.

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Colleen Shogan  10:55

When I read your essay, I was interested in the fact that Clay's omnibus, as you put it, which is a modern term, but it it you know makes sense here that the omnibus strategy did not work at this moment in time. But in modern day Congress, as you well know, the omnibus is the preferred strategy to create these big bills that that are all log rolled together. So why doesn't the omnibus strategy work then, and it does work now?

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Steve Israel  11:27

It doesn't work because you know in many omnibus vehicles there's stuff that you just hate, but there's also stuff that you love. In the original omnibus in 1850, there was not much to love and more to hate, and so they just couldn't find the votes that would pass this bill. So here's what they do, cleverly: they just they break it into they break it up. Henry Clay steps aside, and Senator Stephen Douglas, who will become a major rival to Abraham Lincoln, he takes control of the process and he streamlines the bill into five individual bills, and gets the votes to pass them one by one, and so that compromise, that piecemeal compromise, works. And so, first, California is admitted as a free state. That's Bill Number One. Bill Number Two, the Fugitive Slave Act will is instituted and obliges free states to cooperate with slave states in returning escaped slaves. Now there were senators who could never vote for that, but they could vote for the first thing, and so they cobbled together the votes on that piece. Third is they abolish the slave trade in Washington D.C. They cobbled together the votes for that. Fourth, Texas's borders are clarified. New Mexico comes in with territorial status, doesn't stipulate whether it will be free state or slave state, so that's kind of punted. And fifth, Utah is brought in as a territorial government and will be able to choose its own position on slavery. So you've got these five bills, and on each bill they find a path to get it passed, to get each one passed.

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Colleen Shogan  13:13

So the constituencies are allowed to shift. You could vote for several of the bills, but not all of them.

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Steve Israel  13:19

And again, been there, done that. Many of my colleagues, you know, deal with that. I can vote for you know, it's it's a multiple choice. I can do A, B, but not C, or I can do all the above, or I can do none of the above.

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Colleen Shogan  13:32

Right.

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Steve Israel  13:33

But Douglas figures out that that's the only way of getting this compromise and keeping the union together.

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Colleen Shogan  13:40

So was Fillmore satisfied with the Compromise of 1850? Did he support it? Did he enforce it?

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Steve Israel  13:46

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Although he remained personally opposed to slavery after the bill is passed, or after the bills are passed, he says the long agony is over. He says that these several acts-I'm paraphrasing here. These several acts are not, in all respects, what I could have, what I would have desired. But I rejoice at their passage, and he's determined to make the compromise hold. And he begins aggressively enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, including in his own home state of New York, it is very very unpopular. There's massive blowback from free states, but he feels that you know he he's this was a compromise. It was a compromise that nobody really likes, but it's a compromise that must be enforced.

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Colleen Shogan  14:38

You know, you served in Congress. You served in in the House for many terms. We typically view compromise in a large democracy like the United States as a good thing. How do we think about compromise in lieu of what we learn about about 1850?

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Steve Israel  14:57

Well, there are some compromises. That may win passage of a bill, but lose your moral high ground. Look, I'm I'm all for compromise. I created the House Center Aisle Caucus. I think that the fundamental problem and dysfunctionality in our government right now is you have two separate tribes who believe that many of whom believe that they have the absolute truth, and there's no need to compromise. We need compromise now more than ever. But Nancy Pelosi taught taught her members a good lesson, and that is, you hold to your values, but you leave room for disagreement, and that's a good thing. Hold to your values, but leave a little room for disagreement. The Compromise of 1850 ultimately proved to be a poison pill for Fillmore's political career and the entire Whig Party. It was viewed as a concession to slavery. Fillmore, many thought, betrayed his own principles, his opposition to slavery. Now he's enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, he fails to win nomination for the presidency in 1852, losing to General Winfield Scott. The Whig Party loses in a landslide that year, and the Whig Party produces four presidents and just be and and slowly disintegrates after that. And more importantly, I think this is the key aspect. It only temporarily halted the slide towards civil war. You know, those simmering tensions between the North and the South would only continue to worsen, and meanwhile, enslaved people in the South continue to face unspeakable violence and abuse every day. So, in this case, I believe a perhaps well-intended compromise fell woefully short of trying to address an existential moral challenge confronting the United States.

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Colleen Shogan  16:55

There may be some problems, like you said, that are of moral and ethical natures that are not necessarily suited for this type of horse trading compromise.

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Steve Israel  17:04

You you said it in a far more succinct way than I did.

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Colleen Shogan  17:09

I'd like to return to where we began our conversation with you know Fillmore's relative obscurity in American memory and American history. Can you tell us that you talked about this in your essay for *In Pursuit* one of your favorite rooms in the U.S. Capitol, and how that relates to Millard Fillmore.

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Steve Israel  17:29

So, look, I never pretended to be the smartest member of of Congress. Maybe that's you know some can argue whether it's a high bar or a low bar, but I prided myself on my my conscientious studies of history in the Capitol, and my favorite thing to do as a member of Congress was to lead tours of the Capitol building. And one of my favorite rooms is Statuary Hall. There, the Congress met in until 18. The House met until 1850-seven when the new wing was occupied, and in Statuary Hall, anybody who's ever been there knows that there are kind of gold plates embedded in the tile, and those gold plates mark the desk locations of members of Congress who became presidents, and one marks the location of a president who became a member of Congress, and that was John Quincy Adams. And I noticed when I began thinking about this essay, I noticed that 1000s and 1000s of tourists come to Statuary Hall, and they literally step over the Millard Fillmore plaque. They don't even know who he is. Many of them, he stepped on, stepped over, abused, disregarded. Several yards away, at the very back of Statuary Hall, is another gold plaque. It is where Congressman Abraham Lincoln sat all the way at the back because he was a one-term freshman. It's where he sat from 1848 to 1850, and there you could barely get close to it. Throngs of people surround it. They take pictures of it. They ooh and they are, and that is such a stark contrast. I think in in our nation's history, one Fillmore chose compromise to try and avoid conflict; the other was willing to endure conflict on the basis of principle, and on the basis of unity, and that is as graphic a demonstration as I think you can get in in the capital as to which position, which strategy is is most preferred, which made better history. 

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Colleen Shogan  19:59

For us, it's a perfect illustration of of what you're arguing, and I would say that you know when I asked you to write this essay, I remember you wrote back and said, "Oh boy, this is quite an assignment." But I knew you would do a great job with it, because you're because of your origins in in New York and your familiarity with it, but then also because you're such a terrific writer, and this essay, you know, you're able to really illustrate Fillmore, and including this personal story about Statuary Hall.

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Steve Israel  20:32

Well, I will tell you, not since my eighth grade history teacher gave me a midterm essay that I didn't think I could write have I had more anxiety than when you gave me Miller Fillmore.

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Colleen Shogan  20:44

I want to ask you about your most recent book. I'm I am a big fan of your writing, and you are a wonderful fiction writer. We appeared at the National Book Festival together many years ago when you wrote your first book, which is a wonderful satire about the homeland security state, and you know, really a wonderful book. But you have a new book called *The Einstein Conspiracy* and I wondered if you would tell us about this historically informed fiction.

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Steve Israel  21:17

Sure. Well, thanks. And by the way, I just got amazing news recently, which is that the Library of Congress has invited me to talk about the Einstein conspiracy at this August's oh good book festival. So I'm very very excited about that. I wrote two political satires as a member of Congress, which were reflections of the environment I was in and the things I would hear, and to try and make a point. The Einstein conspiracy is different. It's an historic spy thriller based on actual events. One, we know that Albert Einstein actually lived on Long Island in the summer of 1939, and it was from a small cottage on Long Island that he wrote a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying, "Adolf Hitler is about to achieve an atom bomb, and we need to get one." We also know that the Nazis had tried on several occasions to assassinate Einstein, and we know that the Nazis penetrated New York and the U.S. with a very, very sophisticated, pervasive spy network that worried the hell out of FDR and J. Edgar Hoover, and so I conflate those three real events in an historic spy thriller about a Nazi effort, a Nazi embedding a spy on Long Island to harm Albert Einstein so that he can't warn FDR about Hitler's bomb.

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Colleen Shogan  22:42

And you know I've written many novels, but I have never done historical fiction. So how can you tell us how do you blend history when you're writing a fictional story?

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Steve Israel  22:55

It's a great question because you are always, always on that precipice. You can you can write on the side of propulsive fiction, where your imagination is fired up, or you can write on the side of historic fidelity. And you know your bargain with the reader is to just keep turning the page. You know they pay $18 or 20-$22 for a book. You better make sure that they keep turning the page. Very difficult balance. And in fact, I have one scene based on this real event where, 1939 in February, 20,000 Americans jammed into Madison Square Garden for a pro-Nazi rally, where they chanted "Sig Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," and listened to speeches calling for the expulsion of Jews and African Americans from America-20,000 Americans-and I was so taken by that and so morbidly fascinated by it that when I submitted that chapter to my editor, the the note that came back was if you want to write a book about the Madison Square Garden Nazi rally go for it, but I want to remind you you're writing a book you're writing a historic thriller it's fiction about Albert Einstein so my 22 page scene was trimmed to a a fun and propulsive four pages so it's a great question Colleen.

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Colleen Shogan  24:21

Do you think you would ever want to write a novel about Millard Fillmore?

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Steve Israel  24:26

Wow! Only if listen, you know, it's maybe you meant it humorously, but you know, a friend of mine, Candice Millard, wrote *Destiny of the Republic* Yes, a novel about Garfield. Another great friend of mine wrote the screenplay, and it's been airing on Netflix. So who would have ever thought that the life and death of Garfield would have been interesting enough to make it to Netflix? So maybe that was the warm-up act for some creative project on Fillmore.

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Colleen Shogan  24:56

There's a lot of gems in American history. I think that's what we can. That's certainly what we're finding with in pursuit, and of course with our project, we're trying to surface and find and discover relevant lessons in our nation's past to inform our present and future. So we always ask everyone who comes on to the podcast, what can we learn from the subject they wrote about. So tell us, what can we learn about Millard Fillmore?

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Steve Israel  25:25

Avoiding conflict can precipitate a worse one.

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Colleen Shogan  25:29

Yes,

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Steve Israel  25:29

That's it.

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Colleen Shogan  25:30

And that applies to. I would say it applies to, of course, our public leaders, but it also applies to us in all kinds of walks of life: our personal lives, our civic life-it's sometimes there's moments in which it makes sense to take a stand and fight for what you believe in.

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Steve Israel  25:48

That's exactly right.

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Colleen Shogan  25:50

Well, thank you so much, Congressman Steve Israel. Thank you for joining in pursuit.

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Steve Israel  25:54

Thank you so much.

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Colleen Shogan  25:56

To read former Congressman Steve Israel's essay on Millard Fillmore, and to enjoy other great In Pursuit essays and podcasts, visit inpursuit.org. In Pursuit with Colleen Shogan is a podcast by More Perfect. The series is written and produced by Jim Imbuske. Production services provided by Stand Together. Our theme music is Kleos by Charlie Ryan, audio mixing by Curt Dahl of CD Squared. Please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast app, and tell us which Americans inspire you.

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