Thomas Vinciguerra: Why Millard Fillmore Gets the Laughs
Millard Fillmore. The name itself sounds vaguely ridiculous. And that’s pretty much how the poor fellow rates in the popular imagination, 133 years after his death.
Examples abound. In 1917, H. L. Mencken perpetrated a famous hoax by claiming, in a newspaper column, that Fillmore had installed the first bathtub in the White House. In the comic strip “Sally Bananas,” the cartoonist Charles Barsotti depicted the characters celebrating “Millard Fillmore’s Birthday Eve.” Mad magazine once touted the Millard Fillmore Book Club, with volumes like “The Day Millard Fillmore Didn’t Shave.”
The latest snipe is “The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President,” by George Pendle, to be published next month by Three Rivers Press, part of Random House. Despite the title, the book is no hagiography; rather, it is a satiric biography. Early on, Mr. Pendle suggests that “Millard” could rhyme with either “dullard” or “retard.” Later he writes, “His firm support for tariffs, for instance, seems to have been based on a misapprehension that a tariff was a long-legged marsh bird.”
In reality, Fillmore was far from clueless. Rising from poverty, he passed the New York bar and practiced law before being elected to the State Legislature. From 1833 to 1835, and again from to 1837 to 1843, he was a congressman with the Whig Party. After two years as New York State comptroller, he was Zachary Taylor’s running mate in the presidential election of 1848. He became president upon Taylor’s death in 1850, serving out the remainder of his term.
In short, a man of parts. Yet not everyone sees it that way.
“Secondhand, commonplace, mediocre, undistinguished: these are the words that spring naturally to mind as one surveys Fillmore’s brief rise from obscurity and quick descent into oblivion,” wrote Paul Boller in the book “Presidential Anecdotes.”
That same case, however, could be made for John Tyler and Rutherford B. Hayes, among others. So why does everyone beat up on Millard?
“I’m not sure,” said Michael F. Holt, professor of American history at the University of Virginia and author of “The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party.” “I think he’s gotten a bum rap. At least no one accused him of being an alcoholic like Franklin Pierce.”...
Read entire article at NYT
Examples abound. In 1917, H. L. Mencken perpetrated a famous hoax by claiming, in a newspaper column, that Fillmore had installed the first bathtub in the White House. In the comic strip “Sally Bananas,” the cartoonist Charles Barsotti depicted the characters celebrating “Millard Fillmore’s Birthday Eve.” Mad magazine once touted the Millard Fillmore Book Club, with volumes like “The Day Millard Fillmore Didn’t Shave.”
The latest snipe is “The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President,” by George Pendle, to be published next month by Three Rivers Press, part of Random House. Despite the title, the book is no hagiography; rather, it is a satiric biography. Early on, Mr. Pendle suggests that “Millard” could rhyme with either “dullard” or “retard.” Later he writes, “His firm support for tariffs, for instance, seems to have been based on a misapprehension that a tariff was a long-legged marsh bird.”
In reality, Fillmore was far from clueless. Rising from poverty, he passed the New York bar and practiced law before being elected to the State Legislature. From 1833 to 1835, and again from to 1837 to 1843, he was a congressman with the Whig Party. After two years as New York State comptroller, he was Zachary Taylor’s running mate in the presidential election of 1848. He became president upon Taylor’s death in 1850, serving out the remainder of his term.
In short, a man of parts. Yet not everyone sees it that way.
“Secondhand, commonplace, mediocre, undistinguished: these are the words that spring naturally to mind as one surveys Fillmore’s brief rise from obscurity and quick descent into oblivion,” wrote Paul Boller in the book “Presidential Anecdotes.”
That same case, however, could be made for John Tyler and Rutherford B. Hayes, among others. So why does everyone beat up on Millard?
“I’m not sure,” said Michael F. Holt, professor of American history at the University of Virginia and author of “The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party.” “I think he’s gotten a bum rap. At least no one accused him of being an alcoholic like Franklin Pierce.”...
[Historian Tyler Anbinder notes that Fillmore also suffered from his having run as the presidential candidate of the Know-Nothings in 1856.]