Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President [Hardcover]

Robert J. Rayback (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 470 pages
• Publisher: Amer Political Biography Pr (April 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945707045
• ISBN-13: 978-0945707042
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #425,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Portrait of a Forgotten President, August 6, 2000

By 

Philip K. Warner (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President (Hardcover)

Serving only two and a half years as president, it is not surprising that Millard Fillmore has been given short shrift among historians. This book helps history rediscover the importance of Fillmore's brief tenure. Fillmore assumed office with the country in turmoil over the question of extending slavery to the territories acquired after the war with Mexico. His predecessor, President Taylor, was presumably on an course which would have led to civil war in 1850. Fillmore carefully guided the country toward compromise and away from war. Although his enemies argue that there should be no compromise with slavery, Fillmore's prudent, but politically unpopular stance did preserve the union. Unfortunately, future presidents did not follow Fillmore's example and the country was split in two as a result of uncompromising sectionalism. This book is an excellent study of both President Fillmore and the rise and fall of the Whig Party. The book traces Fillmore's career along with the founding of the Whig party in New York as a protest again the secret organization of the Masonic Lodge, to the accession of a Whig president, to the party's degeneration into a nativist, secret organization of "Know-Nothings."

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fillmore--A Story of Unionism & Party Formation, April 28, 2005

By 

Steve Fast (Hillsboro, KS, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President (Hardcover)

This book narrates the life of Millard Fillmore through the lens of Unionism and the formation of the many political parties in which he was involved (Antimasonic, Whig, American [aka Know-Nothing]) or to which he was opposed (Liberty, Free Soil, Republican). Fillmore's dedication to the Union, especially in passing and implementing the Compromise of 1850, is well told. This book also serves to explain the rise and fall of a number of lesser known American political parties.

The book is well-written--one of the better ones, perhaps the best, in this series of American political biographies. It was one of the last written. The author relies on letters to Fillmore as one of the main sources, since his own letters are mostly missing. Generally the author is fair and balanced, although he portrays the struggle between Fillmore and Thurlow Weed rather naively as the battle between Good and Evil. He also brushes over Fillmore's willingness to allow slavery to exist as the price for preserving the Union--an opinion that was common at the start of Fillmore's career but increasingly anathema by the end of it.

The review on the dust jacket, quoted on this item's Amazon page, written by Roy Nichols, is manifestly unfair to the book and to Fillmore. The author is not nearly so naive as Nichols makes him out to be, and Fillmore, while not a great president, was not nearly the mediocrity and indecisive man as Nichols portrays him. Read the book (it's worth it) but not the dust jacket!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best author I've read so far, March 13, 2006

By 

Steven J. Carr "Presidential Student" (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President (Hardcover)

Like many other students of history, I'm reading a biography of each president. Fillmore's life and the events of his day are laid out more clearly than any other author I've read so far. I learned (should I say 'understood') more from this reading than all the others. Highly recommended.