Review of Millard Fillmore by Paul Finkelman

Good biographies are characterized by a compelling and engaging account of the subject’s life that is not hagiographic, but takes seriously the subject’s flaws.  At the same time, biographers should resist the urge to condemn their subjects, except in rare cases where the subject is an obviously evil person like a Stalin or a Hitler.  Finally, a good biography should provide just enough information about significant events of the day to place the subject’s actions in their proper context, but no more; the life and thought of the subject must remain the central focus. 

Paul Finkleman’s Millard Fillmore, part of the “American Presidents” series of brief presidential biographies, certainly steers clear of overly praising Fillmore, but it fails the other tests, for three main reasons  First, while the book is generally well-written, it is not particularly engaging.  Worse, it is highly repetitive.  Finkleman often repeats the same information two or even three times, without any qualifying verbiage like “as we have seen…”  For example Finkleman mentions three times that Fillmore was personally opposed to slavery but never took a public stand on the issue.  He mentions the Priggs v. Pennsylvania court case once and then later mentions it again as if the reader had never heard about it.  Other examples abound.  In a biography limited to 130 or 140 pages, such repetition is inexcusable.

A second major flaw of Finkleman’s work is that he devotes too much time to current events, so much so that Fillmore himself is often pushed to the side.  Finkleman seems virtually obsessed with the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, devoting approximately 30 of the book’s 137 pages to it.  Fillmore is absent during much of this discussion.  While there can be no doubt that the Fugitive Slave Act had an enormous impact on antebellum American history and on the presidency and legacy of Fillmore, it does not merit nearly 25% of a Fillmore biography.  While reading this biography, I sometimes felt I was reading a history of the Fugitive Slave Act, with a brief introduction and conclusion about Fillmore.

A third flaw of the biography, and by far the most significant one, is the lack of balance.  Finkleman has very little good to say about Fillmore and much bad.  When narrating Fillmore’s actions and statements, Finkleman often uses highly pejorative language, verbiage that one would expect from an internet discussion thread rather than a scholarly biography.  Fillmore did not simply “state” things or “speak”; rather, Finkleman would have us believe, he “blustered” or “grandly declared.”  In another instance, Finkleman compares Fillmore to a “petulant teenager.”  Finkleman’s biography is more of a hit piece than an objective, scholarly biography.

In Finkleman's defense, the book is not completely without merit.  For example, his explanation of the controversy about slavery in the territories (THE most important issue in American politics from 1846-1861) is insightful and concise; in fact, it may be the best I have ever read.  Still, this and the few other positives are greatly outweighed by the negatives.

There is little doubt that Millard Fillmore, our second “accidental” president and the first of three “doughfaces” (northern men with pro-Southern principles), hardly ranks among our top presidents and probably deserves to be counted among the 10 worst.  Still, he deserves a better biography than this.  Readers wanting a more objective narration of Fillmore’s life will need to read Robert Rayback’ 1959 biography, dated and difficult to read as it is.  Or better yet, perhaps someone will write a new one.   How about you?