LIFE, ADMINISTRATION, AND TIMES OF MILLARD FILLMORE, ELEVENTH VICE-PRESIDENT AND THIRTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. July 9, 1850, to March 4, 1853. 66 CHAPTER I. THE FILLMORE FAMILY. EEST thou a man diligent in his business, he "SEE shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men." These poetic words reveal the key to the success of Millard Fillmore, and were appropriately employed as the text of a discourse to his memory, delivered at Buffalo soon after his death. Not by brilliant traits, but unremitting diligence and hard labor did Mr. Fillmore raise himself to public importance. A stroke of fortune, or something of the kind, did, indeed, put him in the Presidential Chair, but honest, faithful work had brought him to the point where this good fortune became possible. No collateral circumstances, perhaps, had pushed him forward. Diligence did it. In him the trite, and perhaps, even if the work of generations, unexceptionable 9 aphorism, "Labor overcomes all things," was literally fulfilled. Mr. Fillmore's origin makes his end admirable, even in America, where only until recently such a career was possible, and where similar means are the only royal road to success in any field. Much has been made by the world from the earliest times, of men who have risen, in almost any department of human effort, above their fellows. Especially in war and politics has this been so, and those who have succeeded by any means in getting far beyond others have been called great and held up as examples. This thoughtless and erroneous distinction may not improperly include the "great and powerful robber chief," and the "great rascal." The flippant ease with which men are called great is deserving of little respect. In this age the title of great must be won by the possession and exertion of genuine virtues, more clearly defined, perhaps, than at any other period of the Christian era. In very ancient times the possession of great virtues, even in an individual, served to mitigate or turn aside the supposed or real displeasure of Heaven from a whole State or community. By an undisputed virtue Abraham was accounted. the Friend of God. That was, indeed, distinction worth having! So dash and glitter will not endure to-day, however they may carry the masses for a time. The purposes of men will, in a long life, appear in their acts; and the world, somehow, eventually esteems them for what they have thought and felt, as well as for what they have done. No deed is great, however pleasing and deserving it may be, without a true and great motive. The standard of greatness in man is really the measure of his intrinsic goodness. It is not family, nor blood, nor manly beauty, nor the cunning of the fox, nor the wisdom of the serpent, nor wealth, nor poverty, nor long prayers, nor high places, nor undying fame. How far Mr. Fillmore deserved the real, as well as the sham, distinction of greatness may be seen, to some extent, in these pages; and how far he was indebted to family for his qualities and advance in life may be gathered with some degree of accuracy from the following account of his kindred and ancestors. The Fillmore family was not large, and being confined to a narrow territory in New England, is easily traced through four or five generations in America. Nothing reliable is known of its European origin. It is supposed, however, to have come from the more obscure but sturdy independent class of the English population. John, the first mentioned in this country, where the history of the Fillmores really begins, was a sailor. He was captured by the French during Queen Anne's War, and died at sea while on his way home after a long imprisonment as a British subject at Martinique. In 1701 he had been married at Ipswich, Massachusetts, to Abigail Tilton, and with her left three children: John, born at Ipswich in 1702, nine months after the marriage of his parents; Ebenezer and Abigail, both born at Beverly. To his widow he left what was called an estate, consisting of a house, barn, and two acres of land near Wenham Pond, on the road from Beverly to Wenham. This property he had bought for two hundred and fifty dollars; and besides this, his personalty left the widow amounted to nearly half as much. She was married again in 1717, and when her son, John, came of age in 1723, she gave up the "estate" to him, and he became administrator upon it. But the real estate was soon disposed of by John, and has ever since been out of the Fillmore family. The house long ago passed away, but the spot where it stood may be seen near North Beverly. Notwithstanding the fate of his father, John so pressed his mother to let him go to sea that she finally consented for him to make a fishing voyage to Newfoundland. The sloop on which he was engaged was captured by the pirate John Phillips. Phillips, finding nothing on her that he desired, offered to let her go without molestation if John Fillmore were given to him. One of Phillips's crew knew Fillmore, and told the chief that Fillmore would make a stong and able pirate. Mark Haskell, Fillmore's captain, notwithstanding his powerlessness to cope with the corsair, determined to resist this demand at all hazard. Phillips, not caring to fight when it was unnecessary for obtaining his end, sent over a part of his crew with a threat, but accompanied by the promise to release Fillmore in two months if he did not like the vocation. On the ground of saving Haskell and his little crew Fillmore consented to this arrangement, hoping soon to be able to make his escape, to the |