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APPENDIX A

PROCEEDINGS OF THE

BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

RELATIVE TO MR. FILLMORE

TRIBUTE OF THE HON. JAMES O. PUTNAM.

At a meeting of the Buffalo Historical Society, March 11, 1874, the Hon. James O. Putnam, rising to second the resolutions which had been presented, spoke as follows:

MR. PRESIDENT: How much of the renown and glory of our city have departed within the past week. Our two most illustrious citizens, eminent alike in private virtues and distinguished public services, have in quick succession been summoned away. It is within a single week that we were startled by the intelligence that the pure, the incorruptible, the great-hearted Hall was cut down in the midst of his usefulness and honor.1 Today we stand, as it were, by the grave of his first friend, whose public career was crowned with the highest honors of the republic, and whose private life blossomed and fruited with every gentle humanity, with every charm of friendship, and every social grace. No, sir, I do wrong in saying that the renown and glory reflected from his citizenship have departed. The sun of a great character never sets. The beauty and lustre of their lives will be a lasting inspiration.

I know the loss we are called upon to mourn today is national. I know that the character and fame of Mr. Fillmore belong to the country and to mankind. But there is a peculiar sense in which his loss is ours. He was our neighbor and friend. He had aided in forming nearly all our institutions of art, charity and education, and he gave the weight of his great name and character to every valuable enterprise which sought to promote our social interests. He took upon himself every burden imposed for the public good, and his hand and his voice, his heart and his purse were ever at the service of his fellow-citizens. Then he was a part of our daily personal

1. Hon. Nathan K. Hall died March 2, 1874.

life. In the street, at his own hospitable home, in all our homes, he was ever and always the same courteous gentleman-the same appreciative friend, the kind neighbor, seeking by good and unostentatious offices to make others happy. Wherever he was he created an atmosphere of kindliness and cheer-most felt and most appreciated by those who stood most in need of social sympathy. His personal relation to Buffalo he always recognized and spoke of with interest and affection.

But we may be permitted here to dwell for a moment on the broader side of the life of Mr. Fillmore. He rose to the foremost rank of American statesmen, and his life and character in his public career have become a part of the permanent history of his country and his time. What was the secret of that marvelous success which took the modest apprentice, with little advantage of early education, by rapid steps from the legislative hall of his own State to the Presidential office? It was not by genius, it was not by the skillful combination of force through political necromancy, and, least of all, it was not by the low arts of that lowest of all characters that ever crawls to high places-the arts of the demagogue-that he was borne to this dazzling elevation. What then was the secret of this success so rapid and so brilliant? It may be expressed in these three words, adequacy, fidelity, opportunity. He never entered upon an office that he did not at once rise to its plane and demonstrate his ability to fill it. His character challenged public confidence, and won it from his very entrance upon the race. He dazzled nobody by his brilliancy, but he set himself at hard work in the legislature of his own State and in Congress, and, leaving to whoever sought it, the reputation of genius, he won the solid fame which follows honest work wrought out into beneficent legislation and public policy.

As an illustration of this, take his labors as chairman of the committee of Ways and Means in Congress in 1842. A new Administration came into power upon the issue of a revision of the revenue policy. A revision of the tariff was a great measure to the then dominant Whig party, and to the enormous details attending it Mr. Fillmore addressed himself with characteristic patience and industry. He devoted months to its study. He mastered it in all its details, and the whole complex system became to him as his A B C. He was upon the floor of Congress during the long debate for the measure what Sir Robert Peel, to whom he bears a strong resemblance in character, was in the House of Commons in a similar discussion-master of the situation. The most insignificant item of our commerce and all its relations to our industry, he understood as a master. No skill in debate could disconcert him. He was always ready, always master of the facts, and as such he carried through both his measures and himself. He came out of that Congress with a national reputation as a practical, honest, adequate statesman.

As such his own State accepted him, and made haste to crown him with the highest proofs of her confidence and esteem. He barely failed of an election by his party as Governor, having for his opponent by far the ablest and most popular man of the opposition-a man like Mr. Fillmore in many of his characteristics-a man whom New York will long cherish as one of her noblest, purest,

best of sons-Silas Wright. He was elected comptroller subsequently, an office hardly to his taste, yet one whose duties he discharged with great ability.

And from this office he is transferred to the broader sphere of national politics. His nomination as Vice-President was simply the recognition of his prominence already won, both in his own State and at Washington. The death of his lamented colleague, General Taylor, imposed upon him as the executive of the nation, some of the highest responsibilities of the Government. And here we enter upon the ground where the ashes of a fire intensified by every element of human interest, ambition, sentiment and passion, are still warm, if not of burning heat. That struggle and its incidents and surroundings and its master leaderships, who that witnessed it will ever forget? It was the battle of the giants, almost the last great conflict of the political leaders of the first half of our century, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Douglas, Chase, Seward, and others of less fame, leading the conflict with all the fire of genius and all the enthusiasm of conviction. Can we have any doubt that the moral providence which governs the world, overruled that strife for the best-best for the country-best for the ultimate triumph of principles of human freedom? It is to be remembered that Mr. Fillmore came to the administration of the Government in the transition period of public sentiment and interest on the slavery question. Mr. Fillmore called about him some of the wisest statesmanship of the land-and when the law-making branch of the Government presented him a scheme for the final settlement of the disturbing questions of the hour, he had but to satisfy himself they violated no constitutional principle, and to give it his executive sanction. Mr. Fillmore regarded the compromise measures a finality and pledge that every advantage which had been given to freedom and to free territory by the settlement of 1821, should remain forever intact. But this, sir, is for history, and to her calm judgment I would leave every act and every actor in that great drama.

Mr. Fillmore's administration was an eminently conservative one, as was his character. Let me give a single illustration. The brilliant Kossuth, before he landed upon our shores the guest of the nation, had kindled an enthusiasm in the hearts of the people almost wild with very passion. His advent to the country was the beginning of an ovation until his departure, which has no parallel in our history. Fascinating everybody by the charm of his genius and the magic spell of his eloquence, he had one single purpose, which for a moment he never lost sight of, and which he pressed upon the popular attention every day and almost every hour of his stay. It was to induce our Government and people to interfere in the dispute between Hungary and Austria. In short, to intervene between the contestants and so secure to Hungary its independence. Kossuth was féted everywhere, and almost everybody seemed to lose their senses when under this wonderful magnetic force of genius and patriotism. After the dinner given in his honor at Washington, at which both Mr. Webster and Mr. Seward crowned him with the richest garlands of their own genius, he presented himself to the President and formally made known his wants and almost demanded the interference which had been the text of all his appeals to the

country. This was wholly unexpected by Mr. Fillmore; but he was not thrown off his poise, and in a few cool but direct and forcible words, stated to the patriot and enthusiast, that our Government adheres to the principles laid down by Washington, that it would form no entangling alliances with foreign powers, and there could be no departure from that policy. From that hour, Kossuth's mission as a propagandist of his wild opinions was a failure, and the country was brought back to its "pauser reason."

I have said Mr. Fillmore was a conservative statesman. Ir recognize the value at times of less cautious statesmanship. I know no other remedy for deep-seated abuses in Church or State but that force in society we call radicalism. But I know that without its complement, conservatism, it is like Phæton driving the coursers of the sun, marking his track with desolation and ruin. Mr. Fillmore, like his friend and his chosen colleague in the Government, Mr. Webster, was in sympathy with every humane sentiment, but he looked upon our government as a delicate and complicated organization, full of checks and balances and constitutional restraints, and it was not his nature to hazard any uncertain experiments, or for slight causes to make any departure from the track laid down by the fathers of the Constitution. He stood by the ancient ways.

Mr. Fillmore's name was the synonym of integrity and honor, and the story of his rise from the humblest beginning to the heights of human distinction, like that of Lincoln, will be an inspiration to American youth for ages to come. His unpurchased, unsullied career under our republican institutions, is a patent of nobility more lasting and more noble than was ever bestowed by the hands of anointed kings.

It is fitting that as a society we honor his memory. He was its early friend, was present at its birth, watched with interest all its career, enriched its archives, and by his large intelligence and quick sympathies imparted a fresh interest to almost its every meeting down to his last illness.

It is but about four weeks since, after the reading of a very interesting paper upon Japan by Mr. Shepard, he gave us an account of the first movement made to open that country to the commercial intercourse of Western Europe and America. It is to the honor of his Administration, that the policy was inaugurated which broke down Japan's walls of exclusion, and prepared her for the great advance she has made towards a higher civilization and renovated institutions.

But I have trespassed too long already, and I second the resolutions offered.

ADDRESS ON MILLARD FILLMORE

DELIVERED BEFORE THE CLUB OF THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY, JANUARY 7, 1878

BY GENERAL JAMES GRANT WILSON.1

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: It is with unfeigned diffidence that I appear in this place and in this presence to address you on a subject with which many here present must necessarily be more conversant than I can by any possibility be, and yet when I was honored by your society with an invitation to prepare a paper on its first president, and one of the chief magistrates of our common country, I felt that it was a call that I could not decline, an opportunity that I could not omit, of publicly expressing my admiration for the many noble qualities of Buffalo's most distinguished citizen.

I am not here this evening to exaggerate his virtues or to extenuate his faults, "Paint me as I am, warts and all," said England's Cromwell; and, "Speak of me just as I was," would be to me the mandate of Millard Fillmore, could he revisit the earth and enter yonder door. Begging your gracious attention during the brief moments of a single hour, I shall without further preface proceed with my paper, in which I have attempted to tell the truthful story of his life.

Seventy-eight years ago this very day a child was born in a simple log cabin at a spot now called Summerhill, within the borders of Cayuga county, in the State of New York. The cabin stood alone, in what was then a wilderness, and was so rude and so rough that we might almost say of this child of humble origin, as was said by the proud Pope of the sixteenth century, that he was born of an illustrious house, for it was a house without a roof. The nearest human habitation was four miles away, and when the sturdy and stalwart young father returned to announce the speedy arrival of the physician, whose residence was seven miles distant, he found the young mother looking down lovingly on their new born son, sleeping sweetly by her bedside in a sap trough, for lack of a better cradle. This child of the people, in later life proud of his birth, could say what Carlyle, the great "censor of the age," remarks of Burns and Diderot, two other plebeians, like himself, "How many kings, how many princes are there, not so well born!"

Permit me to attempt another picture. Five and fifty years have passed away, and there enters in a private parlor of a highly fashionable London hotel a gentleman of lofty and most imposing presence, who has just returned from dining with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. He is dressed in complete court costume-cocked hat, sword, knee breeches, silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes-all which set off his fine face and figure to the greatest advantage. Taking a passing survey of himself in the large mirror, as he advances and lays aside his sword and chapeau, he says, with a

1. Originally prepared by Gen. Wilson at the request of Mrs. Fillmore, the author having been an intimate friend of Mr. Fillmore. Revised by the author for present publication.

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