diane who in her first marriage to an abusive husband and a poll of my early days took on her and her triumph strengthened me and thousands of others. time and time again experiences of trial and turmoil have produced transcendent -- contributed to my idealism. i want to defend and encourage that idealism because it is what motivates people to make what seems improbable possible. that may sound corny to some of you in hard bitten washington d.c. but in fact there is nothing at all corny about hope and there is nothing at all empowering or noble about the alternative. about pessimism. in fact as governor it has been a sense of the possible that

helped us achieve many remarkable things against war and customary odds. people are hungry for something positive and affirming that the steady diet of know that they get. it has implications on both policy level and personal level. on a policy level without renewed sense of idealism. with all the risk of failure and disappointment that that entails and a central part of the national character, our can do spirit will be in jeopardy and none of the big challenges facing this country will successfully be faced. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. now on booktv historian and legal scholar paul finkelman recounts the presidential tenure of millard fillmore who took office following the death of president zachary taylor. this is about an hour.

it is always a wondrous occasion that before you have been introduced you are invited out for drink. definitely -- i was expecting you to tell me to come back and give a talk about grover cleveland. then i would have the buffalo trifecta. so what does one say who holds the mckinley chair when you come here? first time i came here was after i received the chair and came with some trepidation and there were a couple people in the audience who seemed angry about that. but i think we are safe. i should point out that while mckinley sadly was assassinated here when he mustered out of the ohio volunteers in 1867 he went to the closest law school he could find in northern ohio which was in albany, new york so he is an alumni where i teach.

millard fillmore is a complicated figure. most americans know very little about him other than that he has perhaps the weirdest first name of any american president and it goes down from there. he is little remembered and no one quite knows why he was there. i would like to give you some perspective on that. i should say that what you are going to hear would not make him happy if he were alive today. this will not be a flattering talk about i want to start on the upside by a pointing out there are a number of pieces of millard fillmore's life that were quite wonderful and this institution is one of them as many of you know. he was one of the founders of the buffalo historical society and the first chancellor of the university of buffalo and indeed

in many ways fillmore's greatest accomplishments were here in buffalo. his greatest accomplishments were as the city builder and institution builder and the man who understood the importance of his own city and probably of all the things he did in his two years as president the thing he liked the most was to signed a gigantic public works bill which was known as the harbors and white house bill. a significant amount of that money went to new york state and a good deal of that new york state money went to dredging the harbor on lake erie and fortifying some of the other pieces of the infrastructure of buffalo's water harbor and its connection to the erie canal.

in many ways fillmore was a great civic booster. fillmore was born in cuyahoga county on lake skinny at less about 20 miles from auburn. ironically as a new york politician his greatest rival would be william henry seward whom moved to auburn as a young man and made his career as an auburn politician. you have within a few miles of each other fillmore and seward the two rivals in the new york state whig party. he grows up and impoverished farm boy. the second or third least prosperous person in his youth to become president in the nineteenth century. in many ways he parallels lincoln although lincoln grew up in greater poverty. one difference between fillmore and lincoln is fillmore grows up in rural upstate new york which

means there are public schools and so he gets a kind of rudimentary education through about age 13 or 14 when his father apprenticeds him to work in a textile mill. later on when the mill is closed and the panic of 1819 america's first depression, he enrolled in a local academy to get as much of a high school education as he can in one year. not sure how much education he gets but what he does get is his teacher abigail powers who he later mary's. so at least he has an instructor in the white house for his career as president. in the 1820, the fillmores leaves cairo the county and move to east aurora which in those days is in the middle of nowhere and is today a suburb of buffalo but in those days it would have been a long day's horse ride

into buffalo. in 1822 when he is a full majority over 21 emancipated he teaches school and work for a law firm and after a year of clerking and a lot from the lawyers in the firm and other lawyers in buffalo go to the local court and petitioned the local courts to add fillmore to the bar early because he is such a smart guy and hard-working guy. if you can imagine millard fillmore in the teen 23 recently admitted to the bar about six feet tall by the standards of the times strikingly handsome. from the middle of nowhere, deeply insecure about his social status, always dressing as properly and conservatively as possible to hide the fact that he is not quite secure where he

is, reading constantly to improve himself, just admitted to the bar and he leaves the firm in buffalo and goes back to practice law. there are no other lawyers and figures he will have no competition. he later tells people he went to east aurora because he was afraid to practice law in buffalo because he didn't know enough. this personal insecurity. this uncertainty about who he was will haunt him in many ways for the rest of his life and will have a dramatic and not particularly helpful impact on his presidency. at the age of 26 because he was born in 1800 he goes back to cuyahoga county and mary's abigail powers and brings her to buffalo where he is a prosperous lawyer. one can imagine the transition

in his own mind. he left east aurora on foot. the impoverished son of impoverished farmers who in an age when owning your own farm was the most important thing they lost their land through either fraud or not being smart about the land they've bought. they were renters. they were at the bottom of the social status. fillmore returns to east or rock in a carriage with the nicest suits he can buy to marry his sweetheart and bring her to east aurora where she continues to teach school. indicating perhaps that fillmore is not as financially well off as the carriage and the closing would have implied. just as a footnote abigail powers becomes the first first lady to work outside the home in

american history and the first first lady to work after marriage. other first ladies would work before she married john kennedy but after marriage she would not work but abigail powers works both before and after marriage and it will be a very long time into the 20th century before we would have first ladies who worked outside the home either before or after marriage. in 1827 fillmore becomes involved in politics. he gives speeches at the anti masonic party. some of you will scratch your head and say what is the anti masonic party? just what it says. of political party dedicated to stopping the dangerous conspiracy of the masons because people in western new york and the erie county believe the masons were part of an

international conspiracy to take over america. the anti masonic party begins when a stone mason named morgan disappears in erie county. his body is never found and the claim is the masons assassinated morgan because he was going to reveal the hard secrets of the masonic order. the real motive was to fight off andrew jackson who happened to be a mason and martin van buren because everybody knew andrew jackson would be running against the incumbent john quincy adams in the next election but fillmore isn't clued in to this. he is giving speeches and buys into this fear of a huge masonic conspiracy. next time we see shriners in their little motorcycles with their hats we can begin to wonder what was he thinking?

but it gets him elected to the state legislature and he is elected to the state legislature in 1828-1830 running as the anti masonic candidate from erie county. is our culture and in the legislature is to propose a bill to bans sending people to jail if they are in debt. the old english law notion of debtors' prison was most people who went into debt in medieval england were wealthy people who borrow money to get more wealth and they didn't pay their debts the assumption was they were hiding their wealth. they were hiding their assets so if you put them in jail they would find money to get themselves out of jail. that may have made sense in medieval england. it made no sense in america in the 1820s and 30s when farmers went into debt to buy land and

went in bankrupt and couldn't pay their land. fillmore is responsible for drafting the bill that ends debtors prison but he has to back off and let the democrats pass the bill and get the glory for it. in 1830 he declares he won't run for reelection to the legislature and instead moves to the big bustling future metropolis of western america, buffalo. he practices law and also practices politics because in 1832 he is elected to congress. he spends one term in congress but he does become friends with daniel webster who is one of the great orators and stars of american politics. webster takes fillmore under his wing of the way webster took many under his wing because

webster has only one goal in life and that is to live in the white house. the more people he can get to like webster the more chance of being president. "millard fillmore" will be a lifelong friend and when he becomes president he will bring webster into his camp. in 1836 -- in 1834 he does not run for congress. he wants to stay at home. he goes back to practicing law and in 1836-38-40 he is reelected to congress four times from buffalo. it was a safe seat. he could have in buffalo's congressman for the rest of his life. in an age the new york legislature would elect senators it would have been entirely possible that he stayed in congress three four terms he would have gone to the senate.

instead he leaves congress at the end of 1843 and returns to new york and besides he wants to be the vice-presidential candidate in 1844. why he thought he should be the vice-presidential candidate is something i, having read a lot about him cannot figure out. he is virtually unknown. up until this time every elected vice president had been at figure of national significance. governors and senators and generals and founding fathers like john adams. "millard fillmore" -- fillmore with the four term legislature. hardly the stuff of national politics. his name is mentioned in the 1844 convention. he did not get the nomination. he does get the nomination for

governor and that is more plausible. he could bring western new york to the whig party and get elected president or governor. but in fact he isn't elected in 1844. he loses by 10,000 votes in a close election. henry clay running as a whig candidate for president loses new york by 5,000 votes and fillmore comes away from that election better at two groups. he believes the reason he lost the election is the anti slavery people didn't support him and catholic immigrants didn't support him. the anti slavery people didn't support him because fillmore never said anything hostile to slavery. never said he was opposed to slavery in any way and is running on a ticket with henry clay who is a slaveholder from kentucky. 15,000 new yorkers vote for the

liberty party. why would these antislavery people vote for the whigs when they were no different from the democrats? the catholic vote is important but where does fillmore stand on the catholic vote? he is making a speeches and making himself available to another weird third party. the north american party. the north american party wants to stop all catholic emigration in the united states. not surprising the catholics didn't support fillmore. he doesn't get it. his rival in the whig party is william henry seward. while they are personal rivals they also disagree on important issues. soo word is openly anti slavery and in favor of expanding rights for african-americans in new york state. seward will sign a number of laws when he is governor to help

blacks. in 1838 seward had run for governor ed won. he had done a great deal for african-americans and to put new york on the edge of opposing slavery wherever permissible under the constitution. similarly steward was comfortable with catholic immigration and supported the demands and claims of catholic immigrants that either the new york schools stop forcing bible reading because the bibles were protestant and stop having school prayer because the prayers were protestant or the new york state legislature support catholic schools. seward could go either way but he understood the mostly irish catholic immigrants had a legitimate complaint and required to go to school and on the other hand once they got to school had to say protestant prayers and read from the protestant bible. fillmore said he is in favor of

separation of church and state without acknowledging that the public schools in new york were protestant public schools teaching protestant religion and protestant theology. this is a blindness that fillmore has. after the governorship fillmore goes back to buffalo and in 1847 is elected to the new elected office as comptroller of new york. the first elected comptroller. he is a brilliant control with a great mind for numbers. he is a good finance guy. had he remained comptroller of new york would probably have held the job for a long time and we might look at fillmore as the man who said new york finances on the road to success. where is millard fillmore when we need him? but he wants bigger things.

in 1848 his name is introduced at the whig convention to be vice presidential candidate. the whig convention is very weird. between 1847-1848 the united states is fighting the mexican war. the whigs were opposed to the mexican war so who do the whigs nominated? general zachary taylor. the hero of the mexican war. a man who has never voted in his entire life, never run for public office his entire life. in fact never done anything his entire life except be a soldier and bought some sugar plantations from an absentee landowners. here the man with zero electoral political experience but a certain amount of experience because you don't get to be a major general in the army in the

nineteenth century without having a lot of political skills. in many ways taylor is like dwight eisenhower, a man who never held public office but turned out to be a shrewd politician once he became president because you don't get to be the commander of the allied armies without having great political skills. to balance the ticket with taylor you have to have a northerner. and number of northerners are up for the vice president the and for some reason or other which i detail in my book "millard fillmore" which is why we are here, shameless plug, all the other potential candidates get knocked off and fillmore is left. his main campaign manager runs around the convention telling everybody what they want to hear so he tells northerners that fillmore is against expanding

slavery into the territories. that he will support the will lot proviso which is a bill to ban slavery in new territories and tells others don't worry about fillmore. he will be okay. mostly he talks to other northerners because everybody knows he northerner will get the vice-presidential nomination. some northerners support him because taylor won't put a new yorker in his cabinet because if he did put a new yorker in it would be steward and many people in the whig party despised steward because he was hoddy and arrogant and very smart and usually right. that is a bad combination. is wanted to be arrogant and wrong but another to the right and honest. when you combine them it is a problem. those who were -- fillmore gets

the nomination. zachary taylor never met millard fillmore and millard fillmore never met zachary taylor. amy three days before the presidential inauguration. fillmore goes down to washington believing that he is going to be the political puppeteer behind the taylor administration because taylor knows nothing about politics. he has been congressman for four terms and in the new york legislature three terms. that makes him think he is a great politician. he thinks taylor will consult him on all appointments and will control all new york patronage. but by the time he gets to washington he finds out the newly elected u.s. senator william henry seward is already good friends with three or four members of taylor's cabinet and hanging out with taylor all the time. even though taylor is a slave owner with 100 slaves and seward

is an abolitionist they get along wonderfully well. when steward is not arrogant he is enormously charming. for fillmore this is a problem because he is incapable of being charming and he is also in capable of being arrogant because he is insecure. what turns out in the taylor administration that fillmore gets a few appointments but seward gets as much patronage as fillmore and fillmore hates the cabinet. he hates taylor. he hates being vice president. he hates living in washington in a hotel because he can't find a house to rent that he can afford and hates that abigail is in buffalo and refuses to move to washington until he has a house and he doesn't have a house.

she won't come. meanwhile congress debates the compromise of 1850. the nation is in a crisis. we have defeated mexico and acquired vast territories in the southwest. others insist this be open to slavery and northerners in since none of them be open to slavery and the california gold rush is on and california have almost 100,000 people and is ready to come in as a state and everything is in chaos. southerners are demanding a new fugitive slave law. northerners say we should end slavery in the district of columbia because it is obscene to have people bought and sold in the shadow of the nation's capital. taylor, the general, sees these problems. as a man who defeated santa anna's army when outnumbered still defeats santa ana. as a general who understand how

to fight your wars taylor sees these as a serious issue and he wants to tackle them one at a time. first he will bring california into the union as a free state and then he will bring mexico in as a free state. they don't want slavery. then he will deal with the rest of the territories and then the fugitive slave and then slavery in the district of columbia. along will weigh -- along the way the absurd demand that texas wants to take everything to santa fe and deal with texas's demand that since the texas republic came into the union -- if you have cellphone could you turn them off? thank you. tenants texas was saddled with debts from the texas republic texas is demanding the

government bailout texas and texas is bankrupt. the first federal bailout in american history is texas. i wish somebody would teach governor rick perry of texas now has he talked about secession and running for president. i wonder what country he would run for president as. taylor would deal with these one at a time. in the senate however, henry clay, grand old man of american politics has a different idea. he hates taylor. he hates taylor because he thought he should be the with the nominee in 1848. he doesn't understand how this upstart politicians who never did anything should be president rather than henry clay who earned it and his plan is to run congress and force what he calls an omnibus bill putting these issues together in 1 bill and drive it like a bus through

congress and make taylor sign it. what he wants to do is to run the country and taylor will be the figure head. fillmore of the vice president aligns himself with clay and tells zachary taylor the omnibus bill is up for a vote that is a tie vote. even though taylor said he would oppose the omnibus bill because he doesn't want to deal with these issues, fillmore will vote for it. he will break the tie and force his own president to veto it. great politics. he tells taylor this early in july. on july 4th zachary taylor goes to a july 4th picnic. he sits in the hot sun for hours

and hours, eating either cucumbers and milk or cherries and milk. not much refrigeration. he gets a stomach ache. at the time he weighs close to 300 pounds. a stomachache is a disaster and a few days later he is dead. suddenly the man from the middle of nowhere is president of the united states. on the day he is inaugurated the day after taylor's death all members of the cabinet hand fillmore a pro forma resignation. whenever an accidental president comes into power members of the cabinet hand in a resignation. boasts a thank you and put it in their desk and if they need them later they take them out. bobby kennedy for instance offered to resign when lyndon

johnson became president and lyndon johnson said no. go grieve your brother and a year or so later said it is time to take this out and ask bobby kennedy to leave. fillmore does what no other accidental president has done. he accepts every one of these resignations when they're offered the day that he is inaugurated. here we have a president in a great political crisis with congress debating this, southerners ranting and northerners ranting. with texas saying they will invade new mexico which taylor felt was absurd. taylor knew the terrain. he would have personally hand the governor of texas the way andrew jackson promised. not threatened but promised to lead an army into columbia and hang the governor of south carolina in the nullification crisis but taylor is upset but

fulmer is upset by the fact the texans might invade mexico. what does he do? fires the secretary of war and secretary of the interior and everybody else. he then spends the first three weeks of his administration trying to put it together. gets most people in order but peculiarly he can find no one to take the secretary of the interior or the secretary of war positions. the two people he needs most to deal with the issue of the territories. he brings as secretary of state daniel webster, his old friend. daniel webster spent his entire life wanting to be president as he plots to get the eighteenth it -- eighteen 52 nomination. if i can fast-forward to the 1852 whig convention fillmore

wants the nomination. the other hero of the mexican war, general winfield scott wants the nomination and daniel webster wants the nomination. for 33 ballots the whig convention can't nominate a president because fillmore and scott are neck in neck and webster holds 30 or 40 delegates and will not release them. if you can imagine a sitting president of the united states who is too insecure or confused or indecisive to call his own secretary of state to the white house and say release your delegates to me or resign from the cabinet or i will fire you. you have ten minutes to make up your mind. he can't do that. instead he lets webster humiliate him until finally

fillmore's delegates abandon him and vote for scott because they know how to humiliating this is to fillmore and the whig ticket goes down disastrously. webster remains until the following fall when he dies. that is fillmore as a politician. he becomes president and congress debates the compromise bill and they passed them one at a time just as taylor thought they should. congress brings california into the union as a free state and that is one gift to the north. those of you who remember high school history or college history will think back and say that was a victory because it gave the north a permanent majority in the senate. gave it a permanent majority of free states but no one knew that in 1850 because after making california a free state the next thing congress does is organize the rest of the western

territories. what is today arizona and new mexico and utah and nevada and oklahoma and a piece of texas and parts of wyoming, all with no ban on slavery. the north could get calif.. one could imagine the other states coming in as slave states. people say you can't grow cotton in that part of the region until they irrigate arizona and west texas but you can mine in those states and slave labor was used for mining and was used for mining in the south. southerners look upon this as a great victory. then congress passes a bill to see if texas -- an enormous amount of money to pay off its debt from the republican period. then it takes a piece of new mexico and gives it to texas. not as far as santa fe but to el paso. far more than texas ever had

when it was a mexican province. when it with a mexican state. then congress bans the public slave trade. it doesn't ban slavery but just the slave trade which is a meaningless gesture because you can't take your slaves to alexandria wherever you want. you can buy and seldom privately whenever you want. you simply couldn't have a public option. but the big issue is the fugitive slave law of 1850. congress creates for the first time a national bureaucracy that puts the federal commission for the purpose of selling black people back to slavery if they're found to be runaway slaves. under the law people interfering with the return of a fugitive slave could get a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. the alleged slave could not have

a jury trial. habeas corpus could not be issued to protect the slaves and the alleged slave was not allowed to testify on his own behalf. the federal commissioner would get $5 if he decided the person was not a slave and $10 if he decided the person was a slave. northerners believed this was an attempt to buy justice. e immediately after this law is passed fillmore vigorously, almost fanatically enforces it. i will give you two examples. in 1851 a maryland man tries to seize a slave in pennsylvania and the slaves resist and the slave owners killed. at the time about 50 men are hanging around watching this. refuse to come to the aid of the u.s. marshal or help the fugitive slave. they stand around and watch. 47 are indicted not for

violating the fugitive slave law but for treason. largest treason trial in the history of the united states. president fillmore personally called the u.s. district attorney from pennsylvania to come to washington and insist on treason indictments and daniel webster helps write the indictment. we claytor on october 1st with a liberty party convention in syracuse down the road from us and the county fair going on lots of people in town the u.s. marshal rest of fugitive slave. they planned the arrest because they wanted going on when the liberty party was there so that they could be in the face of the abolitionists. this is brilliant planning. 5,000 people attacked the jail that night. jerry as the fugitive slave is no ends up in canada and the

fillmore administration insists as many people as the identified be indicted. they're indicted in syracuse that then shipped to buffalo and albany for trial because it is a federal case it can be anywhere in new york. fillmore knows the people in buffalo and albany are less sympathetic to abolitionists' then syracuse. when they are indicted and jailed a local politician put up their bond so they can be let out of jail. his name is senator william henry seward. fillmore writes a letter to daniel webster and says god knows i detest slavery and when one looks at fillmore's administration one would only say that if the almighty knew this, no one else did.

because he does everything he can to preserve and protect slavery. his administration's founders on these issues while he is constantly kowtowing to the south. doing everything he can to support southerners. hoping southerners will support him in the 1852 election. he loses the nomination. tragically his wife dies shortly after that. his daughter died shortly after that. he goes on the grand for to europe, travels around europe. meets queen victoria who says he is the handsomest man she ever met. one wonders what kind of ophthalmologists there were in england. he was certainly a good looking man. has an audience with the pope which he is reluctant to have because he is afraid he has to kiss the pope's ring and he is fiercely anti catholic. within a month of meeting the

pope he accepts the nomination to be presidential candidate on the know nothing party which is the most powerful and successful anti catholic party in america. one of the planks of his presidential platform is no catholic should never hold public office in the united states. no immigrant can become a citizen unless they have lived here for 21 consecutive years. it is deeply hostile to catholics and emigrants. he runs on the know nothing ticket and carries maryland but no other state. and comes back to buffalo and spends the next five years being a spectacularly good citizen for buffalo. he is still chancellor of buffalo university and organizes the historical society and other civic activities and is a very good citizen. in 1860 with his friend because

he knew lincoln in congress and almost all the old wigs are republicans fillmore vote for the constitutional union party. another party you never heard of. lincoln spend the day in the fillmore mansion because fillmore is a wealthy man having the two things to become rich, the first being to choose rich parents and the second to marry someone who is rich. fillmore mary's a wealthy woman and lives in a great mansion and the lincolns stay with him. when the war breaks out he organizes a home guard of old guys when he is 61 years old to march around and be patriotic. he helps raise money to support wounded soldiers and for the first two years of war he is a

patriot. then something happens. lincoln declares he is going to free the slaves. fillmore turns on lincoln and attacks the lincoln administration. he is asked to speak at a fund-raiser for wounded soldiers and in this speech he says we are making war on desolating affairs portion of our nation and loading of the nation with an enormous debt rather than talking about emancipation. rather than talking about freedom or the traders in the south who made war on their own country or people like robert e. lee who took an oath at west point to defend the constitution and turned on his country. he is saying we are making war on the fairest part of the country. he argued it was caused by petty jealousy and malignant envy and

intriguing selfish ambition and the diluted fanatics in the north, the abolitionists. they for the trees and word around. the lincoln administration had a stronger sense what treason is than he did when he prosecuted abolitionists for refusing to help enforce the fugitive slave law. had he not been a former president is possible giving speeches like that would have led to his arrest in the civil war. after the war he shrinks into obscurity. what do we make of millard fillmore's legacy? things i have not talked about. he pushes for transcontinental railroad which lincoln implements. he advocates opening japan to american trade and sands, or perry but it takes so long to

get the perry expedition off the ground into the ocean that when he finally gets to japan franklin pierce is president, not millard fillmore. he maintains an american presence in why because someday america will want it but william mckinley annexes the hawaiian islands. and he pushes for a central american canal but doesn't do anything about it leaving it to teddy roosevelt. he has ideas but no follow-through. on the central issues of his age his vision is myopic and his legacy is worse. he opens at the west to slavery and destroys the missouri compromise. the appeasement of the south encourages new demand for slaves land. the solution to the issue of slavery in the territories leads

to the kansas/nebraska act and the evisceration of the missouri compromise and the upper midwest and further conflict in the west. he enforces the fugitive slave law which is the most depressing lot of american slavery and runs for president on a ticket that openly attack foreigners, immigrants and catholics. in retirement he opposes emancipation, campaigns in 1864 against lincoln for a peace candidate who would have left millions of african-americans in bondage. ..

>> i had the pleasure of having you five years ago with paul benson and you were in front of two history teachers. and i thought of you a couple of weeks ago when "time" magazine came out with the cover that pretty much supported your

theory by the civil war and how this whole generation room was taught that the civil war -- the primary cause of states rights and you go what state right was that and i just loved that piece and you were so compelling and i was wondering if you could replay it through a short order here. and i know it's not on the topic but on the anniversary of the civil war. >> well, thank you. of course, the event in jamestown was for high school teachers and middle school teachers where we in the academy can do to bring what we know to the ground level and doing it here is fabulous and a multiplier effect as my economist friends would call it. basically, i think almost every serious scholar understands that the central issue of america in midcentury is slavery. the central issue is how you deal with slavery. and if you read the declarations

of secession of the southern states, if you read the declaration of south carolina or mississippi or texas or florida, they all say we are leaving the united states because slavery is threatened by a man who does not support slavery, abraham lincoln. they all say this. perhaps it is most says that right before the war begins that in the north they believe in racial equality and they are opposed to slavery. and in the south and now i'm paraphrasing fillmore second, we understand and then he uses this word that the cornerstone of the confederacy -- that the cornerstone of the confederacy is that the north is wrong about racial equality and that we are right about slavery. slavery is the cornerstone of the confederacy.

that is what the reason is. the problem when understanding that is that when lincoln asks for volunteers to join a union he doesn't say it's a crusade of slavery because he doesn't believe he has the constitutional and legal power to end slavery and he's desperately hoping to keep the upper south states, virginia, north carolina, tennessee and arkansas in the union as well as maryland, delaware, kentucky and missouri. and, of course, after the war begins, the four -- the most southern of those, virginia, tennessee, north carolina and arkansas will secede but the other four will remain in the union. very early in the war, a group of ministers go to lincoln and they say will you free the slaves. if you freed the slaves you would have god on your side and lincoln famously said i would like to have god on my side but i need kentucky.

l[laughter] >> so he waits until he has kentucky. he knows he could probably win the war and then he moves to emancipation. but the suits to protect slavery. to give you one weird example. when lee invades pennsylvania in 1863, and here you have an army invading the north, you would think that lee's goal would be to destroy an industry of southern pennsylvania. to destroy factories building guns and making gunpowder and he sends his troops out into the countryside to hunt runway slaves and bring them back to virginia. this is what the confederate army is doing in 1863. because this is what the confederacy is about. americans don't want to hear this. they don't want to think about it because especially those americans who have southern ancestry do not want to contemplate that their ancestors may have fought to preserve human bondage.

unfortunately, for them, if they read the records of what their ancestors say, there's no doubt that's -- [inaudible] >> and fillmore was on the wrong side of this. >> after the mexican war and you talk about the southern majority and the house of representatives. >> yes >> how does it work in the three fifth rule? >> okay. at the constitutional convention, this is great -- i teach at a law school, of course, that teaches constitutional law so anything you can ask me something that i can tie to the constitution i reach my fillmorian comfort level, maybe even above it. in any event, at the constitution convention there's, of course, a debate how do you allocate representation in congress? and everybody -- most people want it by population but the southerners say we have to have blacks represented northerners, of course, say well, how can you

have slaves represented in congress when slaves aren't citizens and they don't vote. the compromise is reached is the three fifth compromise. that you will allocate representation in congress by counting all of the free people and three-fifths of all other people. so what the south does is get a bonus in the house of representatives by counting the slaves for purposes of representation. for example, in 1860 there are 4 million slaves in the united states. if we just to do simple math, if we need each congressional district would have 400,000 people that would be 40 but then you would factor the two-thirds. so it would be -- if i knew math i wouldn't be a law professor, right? [laughter] >> it would be a substantial member of members of the house of representatives. in fact, when you look at the

vote on the fugitive slave law, a very close vote without the three-fifths clause, the fugitive slave law could not pass. without the extra representatives from the south, created by counting slavery, the fugitive slave law would not have passed. the other thing to remember is that the electoral college is created and the states get their electors by counting their house of representatives and adding to that the number of senators so that the south gets a bonus in the presidential election. in 1800 the election between thomas jefferson who owns close to 200 slaves and john adams who's never owned a slave -- adams loses by six electoral votes. if you take the electoral votes away from jefferson and adams, caused by counting slaves, jefferson doesn't get elected president, america might have been a very different place if an opponent in slavery might have been in office when we

brought louisiana from the french from a man who spends most of his life supporting slavery and doing everything he can to protect slavery. these are very serious issues. >> you said there are 4 million slaves in 1860? >> the census figure was 3.9. i was rounding up. >> what was the -- >> you shouldn't be embarrassed what the monetary value. slaves are property. if you go on the internet and you say, you know, what's $1,000 in 1860 worth today, you'll get four or five different answers ranging -- depending on how they figured it out. sometimes they do a market basket. how much would it cost to buy a

loaf of bread, a pound of meat, et cetera in 1860 today or sometimes they do as a function of gross national product. i say we should think of slaves as cars. a slave is worth as much as a car. of course, my students look at me and say, what do you mean by that? and i say, you know, there are old rundown dodge darts running around and there are brand-new mercedes and there are old slaves that have some value but not much and there's some slaves that are worth thousands and thousands of dollars. slaves are enormously valuable. but my good friend denny wall who's an economist in minnesota has just done a paper on this. she knows overwhelmingly that it would have been far cheaper to buy all the slaves at their highest market value than it would have been to fight the civil war. >> that was my question.

>> the southerners wouldn't have sold. it's not about money. it's about racial equality and inequality. it's about racial superiority. it's what alexander stevens says when he sees that the north is wrong believing black people are equal to white and it's about the convenience of southerners. you know, how much is it worth to be able to ring a bell at 3:00 in the morning and bring you a fresh glass of water if it means you have to go out to the pump and pump it? >> but if they weren't going to sell, does that mean the price was too low? >> it means that southerners were committed to a way of life. and that slavery is more than just about economics. i once was talking to an economist who assured me that no master would ever beat his slave because after all, why would a rational individual, you know, harm his own valuable property?

and, of course, i didn't question whether maybe owning slaves is irrational. but what i did say is, have you ever seen a man drive a cadillac into a tree. only when they're drunk and i just looked at him and i said, so -- okay, i'll buy that. have you ever seen somebody get so angry that they slammed a door so hard that they broke the window and the door. and he said yeah, so how much would it be worth if you had one of those days to be able to come home and just beat up somebody and get away with it and this guy being an economist got very excited, oh, wow, i have to think of a whole new equation to factor in the pleasure they get out of abusing people. that's understanding slavery. >> one man's terrorist is another man's patriot, i'm an irish catholic.

i'm wondering, what was the argument for not wanting catholic immigrants? and what -- what were the arguments of mckinley supporters? there must have been a tremendous number of people who saw things his way. >> well, i'm not sure what the terrorism has to do with it. because, of course, there was no -- it didn't feign in the 1840s and '50s. the argument is simply this, that people like millard fillmore believed that america was a nation where people of english, scottish and welsh ancestry and were protestant and catholics were bad because they followed the anti-christ in rome. because they followed a religion that suppressed democracy and suppressed freedom. it's fascinating, of course, to think about the way they structured their arguments.

they would always say catholicism is in opposition to democracy so what are we going to do? we're going to oppress catholics because we're good democrats. i'd think it through a little harder. fillmore appeals to those people in america who when faced with a crisis would like to blame what sociologists call the other. that is people who are different than you. so that i was giving a talk last week and i think we probably have to end in a minute. this might be my last answer -- i was giving a talk a couple months ago actually in arizona, and people asked me about the crisis of the economy in arizona 'cause the arizona economy is in disastrous shape with houses everywhere they can't sell and people being foreclosed. what they blame this crisis on?

illegal mexican workers who are coming in and taking jobs from american citizens. so all those people in their $400,000 homes are just dying to go out and pick tomatoes in the fields of arizona and illegal mexican workers are taking their jobs away from them. this, of course, is absurd. this is, of course, is nonsensical but what it is rather than look inward and say, oh, we have some really credible structural problems with our economy or we have problems with a society where 4 million people are held in bondage rather than discuss that, you find someone else you can blame to find the scapegoat. and so in the 1840s, the convenient scapegoat are irish immigrants. they are poor. they are catholic. they are different from us. and they threaten us. i should note by the way that fillmore brings a treaty with

switzerland to the senate and urges the senate to pass this treaty because it will give americans equal rights to switzerland and swiss citizens equal rights in america except the first paragraph of the treaty says this will only apply to christian americans because after cantons in switzerland did not allow jews to come into the canton much less do business or own land there and fillmore sees nothing wrong with this even though, of course, by this time there are a quarter million of juice in the united states not as many as black slaves or irish immigrants but these american citizens are not on fillmore's radar screen because they are not his americans. that's why i would argue that, in fact, what we have here is the first tea party president. and in 1856, the first tea party presidential candidate. thank you. [applause]

>> paul finkelman's millard fillmore's is part of time books the american presidents's series. for more information visit americanpresidentsseries.com. >> this is my attempt to answer a question that i was asked very frequently when i was talking about climate change, particularly, after i'd written the weather makers in 2005. and that question was, what are our chances really of surviving this shifting climate that's looming and that we are causing? and the only way i could think have to answer that question was to really go back to the scientific fundamentals, to go

back to the process that created us and our planet. and, of course, look at the intersection between our species and this thing that we call planet earth because it's at that intersection that the issue of sustainability arises and i couldn't think of a better way really of starting to look at the issue than to go back to the work of that man there, that charles darwin's westminster abby the great kind of sacred house of the great men of the british men and women of the british people. it tells you something that he was buried in the church in the great house. but nothing is said on his tombstone of his achievements. it's sort of pretty unique of all the monuments in the abbey that you wouldn't guess what i he was there, obviously, what he had found and written about with the theory of evolution

didn't -- was not kindly looked upon by his own church. the reason i wanted to start with darwin because he's the man who really explained to us how -- what was the process that made us and the process that made our earth. and his idea -- his great idea was an extremely simple one. it was simply that in every generation, there is variation between individuals and that some of those individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce than others. and that over the vastness of time that people were just becoming aware of the history of the earth in the mid-19th century, that must tell on spiritibility, on those which are on the shape species as a whole as he put it. so the very, very simple idea -- that darwin being a very wise

man, i think, a very perceptive person to decide on that idea for 20 years. and it was only when i went to darwin's house in kent that i really understood a little bit more about why he waited so long before he announced this fundamental idea that changed our view of the world. just outside his house he built a little thing that he called the sand walk, and that's it. it's actually a pebble walk. i don't know why he called it the sand walk but there you go. even great men can do odd things and every day of his life at down house he would walk for several hours around that sand walk and people have wondered why he did it. what was he thinking about? what was he doing as he walked around that racetrack. it's just a loop around the forest there. some have speculated that maybe

he was perfecting these arguments or constructing in his head the beautiful paragraphs and beautiful sentences that characterized the words but the testimony of these children show something very different. they left memoirs where they thought about what they knew of their father and they would play in the forest and often interrupt him as they were doing so -- and he always seemed glad of the interruption. he'd sometimes join their games, whether that's kicking a ball or whatever they're doing and that was not the actions of a man who is deeply engaged in very complex and critical thought. i think what darwin was doing as he wandered the sand walk was metaphorically fingering his the implications of his religious beliefs in his country for the shape of civil society, and other deep matters. i guess at base what he was worried about was that if he

destroyed faith by showing that we were not the unique creation of a loving and caring god but was the result of an amoral and utterly cruel process that by destroying faith he might destroy hope and charity as well and have a very adverse impact upon his society. he might never had published his theory if it had not been for this man. in 1858 when darwin first stumbled on the idea of how we and every single living thing on the planet was made, this man here, alfred russell wallace was working in indonesia. he was a man 20 years younger than darwin. he was a working class-led help mate and went to collect specimens and when he was on the

islands he had a malarial attack and as he was highly fever the idea came to him that perhaps species were created the exact mechanism as darwin had championed upon 20 years ago. when he recovered enough from his malaria he wrote a note to darwin in great excitement outlining his theory and asked darwin if he wouldn't mind transmitting it to the journals to be published and written. when darwin received the letter he was horrified. he said, you know, wallace couldn't have made a better price or summary of my notes in front of him and he thought perhaps his whole life's work was going to be stolen by this working class led. as it was he appealed to his friends. particularly those he looked after published journals including the great geologist and as a result of their intervention, both pieces of work were copublished in july

1858. but darwin's and wallace's and it is extraordinary how similar they are. the theory is presented in formness and completeness in both accounts. but for all of that, it was like a script going on in british society. no one took any notice. in fact, the man who was in charge of publishing the journal, professor bell, who was an expert on the subject, wrote in a summary in 1858 that there had been no significant scientific discoveries really published in the journal that year. nothing that would revolutionized the department of science that they bear upon. of course, he couldn't have been more wrong and that was shown the following year in 1859 when darwin published his book on the origin of species. and then as darwin perhaps

feared, it was a theory unleashed upon society, everything began to change. within five years, herbert spencer had coined the term the survive of the fitness. and social darwinism had been born. darwin didn't really help his own cause in the subtitle he picked for the book which included the line on the preservation of favored races and i could imagine going is into a bookshop in 1859 and being an averaged englishman i wouldn't have been thinking of worms that were slightly better than being worms as the favored races, right? you would be thinking of british empire builders out of india and things like that. and so there was this social impact. and over time, i think what we saw was a very, very deep impact on our society by these

darwinian ideas. everything from national socialism to eugenics through -- i would argue through neoclassical economics have born some imprint of darwinian thinking. particularly, as mediated through the likes of herbert spencer. as i was beginning to look at the process that created us, i re-read the selfish dream, re-read darwin and began to despair that perhaps we were selfish short-sighted, ruthless entities forged by an amoral and utterly cruel process. but it was this man here that really gave me hope that that may not necessarily be the case. alford russell wallace lived a very long and full life dying at the age of 90. at the age of 80, he was still writing. and, in fact, i would argue his most important work was

published in 1904. in his eighth decade. the study of results of scientific in relation of the plurality of the world, a very, very strange title indeed. but what this book really is, is a summary of wallace's understanding of what the evolutionary mechanism had created. he wasn't like darwin. he wasn't interested in drilling down with reductionist science ever more finely in terms of understanding the evolutionary mechanism. he'd done that in 1858. what he wanted to know was what he created and being a holistic thinker his field of endeavor was the entire planet. and this book is the foundation stein of biology. he compares worlds quite literally and he posits a theory that this planet is the only living planet that the others, wherever they be in the universe

are all dead. it's also the forerunner of james love lock's work. he talks in the book about the atmosphere, the way the atmosphere works, the way that dust which is often created by living things is important in regulating earth's climate system. it's an extraordinary, lucid -- what i'd say prescient work really that underpins many aspects of science especially holistic science and earth systems science and so forth. and what we learn from wallace and his work is that evolution's legacy is not nasty brutish and short. it's not a survival of the fittest world. instead this cruel and amoral mechanism has led to a world of extraordinary interconnectedness

and cooperation. and i just want to run through a few examples of that cooperation. this slide shows mytrocon dreia. it's been realized in the last 30 years or so that these mytroconn mytroconned -- mytoe con dreia has more to do with evolution and they came to cohabit the cells with our bodies much the way algae is on the coral reefs but over a billion years they have become so closely tied with ourselves and the symbiosis cannot exist without the cells within the body and now our bodily cells cannot survive without