illustrations for the riding and this image is an image that comes from that particular collection so it is a wonderful image by prentice taylor. the executor happened to live in georgetown d.c., and his executor gave the permission to reprint the image on the cover of the book. >> james mother's the chairman of the american studies department here at george washington university. in that your subtitle you use the word legacy of the trial. what is the legacy? >> i was concerned as a student with the ways in which scottsboro worked its way into the vocabulary of american race relations. the way in which the language circulates and language continues to carry meaning and the residents' long after the trade-off have occurred so the

legacy for me is not just a leap of the legacy and not just the political legacy is the ways in which language and forms even in the history in bed in that language. ..

>> now an booktv, recounting the presidential tenure of millard fillmore who took over from zachary taylor in 1850. this is about an hour. [applause] >> thank you very much. it's always a wondrous occasion before you are introduced, you've been invited out for a drink. [laughter] and so definitely -- i was expecting you'd tell me i'd have to talk about grover cleveland, and then i'd have the buffalo trifecta; right? [laughter] what does one say who holds a

chair when you come here? the first time i came here was after i received the chair, and i said i came with a bit of trepidation, and there's people in the audience who seemed angry about that, but i think we're safe. i should point out that while mckinley was sadly assassinated here after he mustered out ohio volunteers, he went to the closest law school he could find in ohio which was in new york, so he's an alum of the law school where i teach. millard fillmore is a complicated figure, and most americans, of course, know very little about millard fillmore other than he has the weirdest first name, and it goes down there. nobody knows why he was there. i want to give you perspective on that. i should say that what you're

going to hear will not make millard fillmore happy if he were alive today. this will not be a particularly flattering talk, but i want to start out on the upside by pointing out there's a number of pieces of millard fillmore's life that were wonderful and this institution is one of them. as probably many of you know, he was one of the founders of the historical society, the first chancellor of the university of buffalo, and indeed in many ways, phyllis schlafly's greatest accomplishments were right here in buffalo. his greatest accomplishments were as a city builder, a institution builder, as a man who understood the importance of his own city, and probably of all the things he did in his two and a half years as president, the thing he probably liked the most was to sign a big public works bill which was nope as the -- known as the harbors and white

house bill, and as you might guess, 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 own lake erie and fortifying some of the other pieces of the infrastructure of buffalo's water harbor and its connection to the erie canal so, in fact, in many ways, fillmore was a great civic booster. he was born in new york on lake skinny atlas about 25 miles from auburn. ironically, of course, as a new york politician, his greatest rival would be william henry saward who moved to auburn as a young man and made a career of being a politician. here you have within a few miles

of each other the two rivals in the new york state wig party. he grows up as an imposerrished pardon farm boy. he's probably the second or third least prosperous person in his youth to become president in the 19th century. he parallels lincoln, even though lincoln probably grew up in greater poverty. one of the differences between the two 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 apprentices him to work in a textile mill. later on when the mill is closed during the panic of 1819, america's first depression, he enrolls in a local academy to kind of get as much of a high school education as he can in one year. i'm not sure how much education he gets, but what he does get is

his teacher who four or five years later, he mar -- marry, and so he was an instructor in the white house for his career as president. in 1820, the fillmore's leave rural county and move to east aurora which is quite frankly no those days the middle of nowhere and today is 5 -- a suburb of buffalo, but in those days, it was a long horse ride into buffalo. at the age of 22 when he's a full majority over 21, emancipated, he moves to buffalo, teaches school, works for a law firm, and after a year of clerking at a law firm, the lawyers in the firm and other lawyers in buffalo go to the local court and petition the local court to get fillmore to the bar early because he's such a smart guy and such a hard

working guy. if you can imagine millard fillmore in 1823 recently admitted to the bar, about six feet tall, by the standards of the times, strikingly handsome, from the middle of nowhere, deeply in secure about his social status, always dressing as absolutely properly and conservatively as possible to, in fact, hide the fact that he's not quite secure where he is, reading constantly trying to improve himself, had just been admitted to the bar, and what does he do? he leaves the firm in buffalo, leaves buffalo, and goes back to east aurora to practice law. why? because there's no other lawyers there and he'll have no competition. he was afraid to practice in buffalo at the time because he didn't know enough, and 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. in 1823 at the age -- in 1826 at the age of 26 because he was born in 1800, he finally married power, and then brings her to buffalo where he's now a prosperous lawyer, and one can imagine the transition in fillmore's own mind. he left east aurora on foot, the impoverished son of farmers when in an age of owning your farm was the important thing, they lost their land through either fraud or not being very smart about the land they bought. they had been renters. they were at the very bottom of the social status, and fillmore returns to east aurora, returns

from east aurora in a carriage with the nicest suit he can buy to marry his sweet heart and bring her to east aurora, where she continues to teach school, indicating perhaps that fillmore is not as well off as the carriage and clothing would have implied. it's also just as a footnote, ab gail powers becomes first, first lady to have worked outside of the home in american history, and the first, fist lady, of course, to have worked after marriage. other fist ladies like jack lin would work before she married john kennedy, but after marriage, of course, she would nonet work, but abigail works before and after marriage, and it's a long time into the 20th century that we had first ladies working outside the home before or after marriage.

in 1827, fillmore becomes involved in politics. he begins to give speeches at something known as the anti-massanic party. some ask what is that party? well, it's just what it says it is. it's a political party dead dedicated to stopping the vast dangerous conspiracy of the masons because people in western new york and erie county believed the masons were part of an international conspiracy to take over america. the antima sonic party begins when a stone mason named morgan disappears, his body is never found, and the claim is the ma sons assassinated him because he was going to reveal the horrid secrets of the masonic order. the real motive of the anti-ma sonic party was a hooter to fight off --

horse to fight off andrew jackson because everyone knew andrew jackson would be running against the incumbent in the next election, but fillmore is just giving speeches in the anti-masonic party and buys into the fear of 5 huge masonic conspiracy. the next time we see the shriners in their motorcycles with hats, we can begin to wonder what was he thinking? [laughter] but, it gets him elected to the state legislature, and he's elected to the state legislature in 1828, 1829, and 1830 running as the anti-masonic candidate from erie county. he proposes a bill to ban sending people to jail if they are in debt, sending people to debtors prison. the old english law notion of

debtors prison was this. most people who went into debt in wealthy england were wealthy people who borrowed money to get more money. the assumption was they hid their assets, and they would fess up in jail. that may have made sense in england, but it made no sense in america in the 1820s and 1830s when farmers went into debt to buy land and sometimes went bankrupt. fillmore is responsible for drafting the bill that ends debtors' prison in america, but because he's a minor party, he has to back off and let the democrats who control the legislature pass the bill and get the glory for it. in 180, he declares he's not running for reelection, and instead moves to the western

america, buffalo, and he moves to buffalo in 1830 and practices law, but he also practices politics because in 1832, he's legislated to the united states congress, spends one term in congress, do you want do anything remarkable, but he becomes friends with daniel webster who is, of course, one the great or tores and one of the great stars of american poll sicks, and webster takes fillmore under his wing like he did many because webster just has one goal in life, and that is to live in the white house, and so the more people he can get to like webster, the more chances there will be that webster will someday be president. fillmore will remain a lifelong friend of webster, and when fillmore becomes president, he'll bring webster into the cabinet. in 1834, he does not run for congress. he didn't like washington. he has young children. he wants to be at home.

he goes back to practices law, and then in 1836, 38, and 40, he is reelected to congress three times from buffalo. it was a safe seat. he probably could have been buffalo's congressman for the rest of his life, and in an age when the new york legislature elected the senators because in those days the legislature legislated senators, it would have been possible he would have stayed in congress for three or four more terms, would have eventually gone to the senate. instead, he leaves the congress at the end of the congress in 1843, returns to new york, and promptly decides he wants to be the vice presidential candidate in 1844. why fillmore thought he should be the vice presidential candidate is something that i, having read an awful lot about him, cannot figure out because he's virtually unknown. no one's ever heard of him. up until this time, every elected vice president has been

a figure of national significance. they had been governors. they had been senators. they had been generals. they had been founding fathers like john adams. fillmore was a four term congressman from new york and a three term state legislature from new york, hardly the stuff of national politics. his name is mentioned in the 1844 wig convention. he does not get the nomination, but he does get the nomination for governor, and that's much more plausible. he's a man who can bring western new york to the wig party and perhaps get elected president, get legislated governor, but, in fact, he's not elected in 1844. he loses by about 10,000 votes in a very close election. henry clay, running as the wig candidate for president, loses new york by 5,000 vote, and fillmore comes away from that election bitter at two groups. he believes the reason he lost the election is because the

anti-slavery people didn't support him, and catholic immigrants didn't support him. now, the anti-slavery people didn't support him because fillmore had never, ever said anything hostile to slavery, never opposed slavery, and he's running on a ticket with henry clay who is a slave holder from kentucky, so, in fact, 15,000 new yorkers vote for the liberty party, a third party. had they all voted for the wigs, the wigs would have won, but why would they vote for them when the wigs from the per speckivetive of people who opposed slavery were no different than the democratic party. where husband fillmore stand -- where does fillmore stand on the catholic vote in he's making speeches and available to another weird third party, the north american party, and that's a party what wants to stop all

catholic immigration into the united states. it's not surprising the catholics didn't support fillmore. he doesn't get it. his rival in the wig party is william henry seward, and while they are personal rivals, they also disagree on very important issues. seward is openly anti-slavely, and in favor of expanding rights for african-americans in new york stay. seward will sign a number of laws when he's governor to help blacks, and, in fact, in 1838, sewardward won for governor and won, and in two terms of governor, had done a great deal for african-americans and had done a great deal to put new york on the edge of opposing slavery wherever permissible under the constitution. similarly, seward was comfortable with catholic immigration. seward supported the demands, the claims of catholic

imimmigrants that either the new york school stopped forcing bible reading and stopped having school prayer because the prayers were all protestant, or the new york state legislature supports catholic schools. seward could go either way, but he understood that the mostly irish-catholic immigrants had a legitimate complaint, and on one hand, they were required to go to school, and on the other hand, once they were in the school, they had to say protestant prayers and read from the protestant bib. fillmore is in separation of church and state without ever acknowledging that the public schools of new york were, in fact, protestant public schools teaching protestant religion and protestant theology. this is, again, a kind of a blindness that fillmore has. after the governorship, fillmore goes back to buffalo, and then in 1847, he is elected to the new elected office as comptroller of new york. he's the first elected

comptroller. he's brilliant and has a mind for numbers. he's a good finance guy. had he remained controller of new york, he would have had that job for long time, and we might look at fillmore as the man who set new york finances on the road to success. where is millard fillmore when we need him? [laughter] but he wants bigger things. in 1848, his name is introduced at the wig convention to be the vice presidential candidate. now, the wig convention is very weird. between 1847 and 1848, the united states had been fighting the mexican war, actually it began in 1846. the wigs were opposed to the mexican war. who do the wigs no , ma'am nate? -- nominate? zachary taylor, hero of the war,

a man who never voted in his entire life, never run for public office in his entire life. in fact, never done anything his entire lift except be a soldier and buy sugar plantations in the south where he was claiming absentee land owner. here you have a man with zero political experience, but a shrewd amount because you're not a major general in the united states in the mid 19th century without having a lot of political skills. in many ways, taylor is very much like dwight eisenhower, again, a man who never held public office, but turned out to be a very shrewd politician once he became president because you don't get to be the commander of all of the allied armies without having great political skills. to balance the ticket with taylor, you have to have a northerner, and a number of

northerners are up for vice president, and for some reason or another, millard fillmore -- all the other potential candidates get knocked off, and fillmore is left. his main campaign manager, a new york state senator 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'll support the provisa, a bill in congress to ban slavery in the new territory, and he tells southerners, don't worry about fillmore, he's okay. he mostly talks to other northerners because everybody knows a northerner gets the vice presidential nomination. in addition, some northerners support fillmore because they know if fillmore is the vice president, then taylor won't put a new yorker in the cabinet because if he did put a new

yorker in, it would be seward, and there were many people to depiased seward because he was obnoxious, smart, and usually right, and those are very bad combinations for people. [laughter] it's one thing to be hauty and wrong, but to be right is another story. taily and fillmore run for office. they've never met each other. they meet three days before the presidential inaugust gracious if you can -- inauguration if you can imagine this. fillmore goes to washington believing that he is going to be the political puppeteer behind the taylor administration because taylor knows nothing about politics. fillmore, after all, 1 the great political genius because he's

been in congress for four terms and the new york legislature for three terms. that makes him think he's a great politician and thinks taylor will consult him and he thinks he'll control all of new york patronage. by the time he's in washington, he finds out that the newly elected u.s. senator, william henry seward, is already good friends. with three or four members of the cabinet, and hanging out with taylor all the time, and even though taylor is a slave owner, a planter with 100 slaves and seward is an abolitionist, seward and taylor get along wonderfully well because when seward is not arrogant, he's capable of being enormously charming. for fillmore, this is 5 problem because fillmore is incapable of being charming, and he's not -- he's also incapable of being arrogant because he is, in fact, insecure. what turns out in the taylor administration is that fillmore

gets a few patronage appointments, but, in fact, seward gets as much patronage as fillmore, and fillmore hates the cabinet. he hates taylor. he hates seward. 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 he hates the fact that abigail is still in buffalo refusing to move to washington until he has a house, and because he doesn't have a house, she won't come. meanwhile, congress debates the compromise of 1850. the nation is in something of a crisis. we have defeeted mexico. we acquired vast territories in the southwest. southeasterners insist that all of this -- southerners insist this is open to slavery, the northerners don't want it open to slavery. the gold rush is on, and california has almost 100,000 people, about ready to be a

state, and everything is in chaos. southerners want a new fugitive slave law. northerners say to end slavery in the district of columbia because it's obscene to have people bought and sold in the shadow of the nation's capitol. taylor, the general, sees all these problems and as a general, as a man who defeated santa ana's army, outnumbered, still wins, a general who understands how to fight wars, taylor sees these as a series of separate issues, and he wants to tackle them one at a time. first he'll bring california into the union as a free state. then he'll bring new mexico in as a free state because there's enough people to come in, and they don't want slavery there, and then he'll deal with the other territories, then he'll deal with fugitive slaves, then slavery in the district of columbia. along the way, he'll deal with

texas' absurd demands that half of new mexico should go to teaks. texasments everything from -- texasments -- wants everything from santa fe -- i have to ask if you all have cell phones -- please turn them off. thank you. since texas came into union, there were debts, texas is demanding that 9 united states government bailout texas because texas is bankrupt. by the way, we'll do this. the first federal bailout in american history is texas, and i wish somebody would teach this to governor perry of texas now talking about succession and running for president at the same time. the -- taylor would deal with these one at a time. in the senate, however, henry

clay, the grand old man of american politics has a different idea. he hates taylor. he hates taylor because he thought he should have been the wig nominee in 1848. he doesn't understand how the politician who never did anything should suddenly be present rather than henry clay who'd earned it, and his plan is to run congress and force what he calls an omnibus bill, a series of putting all issues together in one bill, drive is like a bus through congress, make taylor sign it, and what he realliments to do is be the guy who runs the country, and taylor will be the figure head. fillmore, the vice president, aligns himself with clay. fillmore tells zachary taylor that if the omnibus bill comes up for a vote in the senate, and it's a tie vote, even though taylor will oppose the bill because he doesn't want to deal with all the issues at once, fillmore will vote for it. he will break the tie and force

his own president to veto it. great politics there. 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 -- i'm sorry, 5 july 4th parade, sits in the sun for hours and hours eating cherries and milk or cucumbers and cherries, not sure which. not many refrigeration. he gets a stomach ache. he weighs 300 pounds. a stomach ache for him is a disaster, and three days later, he's dead, and suddenly, the man from the middle of nowhere is

president of the united states. he's inaugurated the day after taylor's death. all the members of the cabinet hand fillmore a resignation. this is common when a accidental president comes into to power, they hand them a resignation. most say thank you and put them in the desk, and if they need them later, they take them out. ..

>> and hang the governor of south carolina during the nullification case. taylor is upset and fillmore is all upset that texans might invade new mexico. and what he does do? he fires his secretary of interior and everybody else in the cabinet. he then spends the first three weeks of his administration trying to put a cabinet together. he gets most of the people in order but peculiarly he can find someone to take the secretary of interior or the secretary of war position, the two people he

needs most to deal with the issue of the territories. he brings in as secretary of state panel webster his old friend. expo begins to plot to get the 1852 whig nomination for the president. if i can fast forward to the 1852 whig convention. fillmore wants the nomination. he wants to run on his own. the other hero of the mexican war, general wind field scott wants the nomination. and fillmore's own secretary of state, daniel webster wants the nomination. for 33 ballots the whig convention can't nominate a president. why? because fillmore and scott are neck and neck and webster holds

30 or 40 did get and he will not release them. so if you can imagine a sitting president of the united states who is too insecure or too confused or too indecisive to call his own secretary of state into the office and say, daniel, either release your delegates to me or resign from the cabinet or i will fire you. you have 10 minutes to make up your mind. and webster still remains in the cabinet until he finally dies. that's fillmore as the politician. and so he becomes president. and congress debates the compromised scombilz they pass them ultimately one of at a time

just as taylor thought they should. congress brings california into a -- the union as a free state. and that is the one gift to the north. now, those of you who remember your high school history or your college history will think back and say, well, that was a great victory because that gave the north a permanent majority in the senate. gave it a permanent majority in the free states but no one knew that in 1850 because after making california a free state the next thing the congress does is to organize the rest of the western territories, what is today is arizona, new mexico, utah, nevada, most of colorado, part of oklahoma, a piece of texas, part of wyoming all with no ban on slavery. so while the north could get california, one could imagine all of these other states coming into the union as slave states and, of course, people say well, you can't grow cotton in that

part of the region. until, of course, they irrigate arizona and they irrigate west texas. but you can mine in those states and historically slave labor was always used for mining and it was used for mining in the south at this time. southerners look upon this as a great victory. then the congress gives an enormous amount of money to pay off its debt from the republic period and then it takes a piece of new mexico and gives it to texas. not as far as santa fe but all the way to el paso, far more texas had ever had when it was a mexican province, when it was a mexican state, the state of texas. and then congress bans the slave trade. the slave trade. which, of course, is a meaningless gesture because you could take your slaves across the river to alexandria and

auction them off whenever you want. you can buy and sell them privately whenever you want. you simply couldn't have a public auction. but the big issue is the fugitive slave law of 1850. under this law congress creates the first time a bureaucracy, a bureaucracy that puts a federal commissioner in every county in the united states solely for the purpose of sending black people back to slavery if they're found to be runway slaves. under the law people interfering with the return of the fugitive slave could get $1,000 fine and six months in jail. the alleged slave could not have a jury trial, a writ of habeas corpus could be issued to protect the alleged slave and the slave was not allowed to testify in his own behalf. finally the federal commissioner would get $5 if he decided that 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.

immediately after the law is passed, fillmore, almost fanatically enforces it. i will give you two examples. in 1851, a maryland man tries to sees his slave in pennsylvania and the slaves resist and the maryland slave owner is killed. at the time, about 50 men are hanging around watching this. they refuse to come to the aid of the u.s. marshal nor do they help the fugitive slaves. they just sit around and watch. 47 of them are indicted not for violating the fugitive slave act. president fillmore personally calls the u.s. district attorney from pennsylvania to come to washington and insists that he seeks treason indictments. and daniel webster who's secretary of state helps him write-up the indictments for treason. a week later on october 1st with

a liberty convention, an antislavery convention going on in syracuse just down the road from us, and the fair going on, lots of people in town, the u.s. marshal arrests a fugitive slave. they planned to arrest him and they wanted to arrest him while the liberty part could be there so they could be in the face of the abolitionists. this is brilliant planning. 5,000 people attack the jail that night. jerry as the fugitive slave is known ends up in canada. and the fillmore administration want as many people to be dyed and they are indicted in syracuse but then they are shipped to buffalo and albany for trials because it's a federal case it could be anywhere in the northern district of new york. and fillmore knows that the people in buffalo and albany are less sympathetic to aboliti abolitionists than the people in

syracuse. when they're indicted and jailed, a local politician puts up their bond so they can be let out of jail. his name is senator william henry seward. [laughter] >> fillmore writes a letter to daniel webster in which he 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. [laughter] >> because he does everything he can to preserve and protect slavery. ultimately, his administration founders on these issues -- while he's constantly cow towing to the south and hoping southerners will support him in the 1852 election. he loses the nomination. tragically his wife dies shortly

after that. tragically his daughter dies shortly after that. he goes on the grand tour to europe, travels around europe. meets queen victoria, who says he's the hansomest man whoever she met, one wonders what kind of opthamologists they had in england but certainly he was a good looking man. he has an audience with the pope which he's reluctant to have because he's afraid he's going to have to kiss the pope's ring. and he's still virulently anti-catholic but he goes and meets the pope and within a month of meeting with the pope he accepts the nomination to be the presidential candidate of the no-nothing party and the no-nothing party is the most powerful and successful anti-catholic party in america, one of the planks of his presidential platform of the no-nothing platform is that no catholic should ever 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, deeply hostile to immigrants and he comes and runs nothing on the ticket. and he comes back to buffalo and spends the next five years being a spectacularly good citizen for buffalo. he is still chancellor of buffalo university. he helps organize the historical society. he helps organize other civic activities and he is a very good citizen. in 1860, with his friend -- because he knew lincoln in congress, with his friend lincoln running for congress and almost all of the old whigs have now become republicans, fillmore votes for the constitutional union party, another party you've never heard of. but when lincoln goes to the white house he stops in buffalo and spends the day at the fillmore mansion because fillmore is now a wealthy man, having done one of the two things that one could do to become rich in america, the

first, of course, is to choose rich parents. the second is to marry somebody who's rich. fillmore remarries a wealthy woman. he lives in a great mansion. and the lincolns stay with him on their way to washington. when the war breaks out, he organize a local home guard of old guys. he's now 60 years old, 61 years old. he organizes a kind of home guard of really old guys to march around and be patriotic. he helps raise money to support wounded soldiers. and for the first two years of the war, he is a patriot. and then something happens. lincoln declares that he is going to free the slaves. and fillmore turns on lincoln, and he attacks the lincoln administration. he's asked to speak at a fundraiser for wounded soldiers. and in this fundraising speech he says that we are making war on the -- desolating the

enormous and rather than talking about emancipation, rather than talking about freedom, rather than talking about the traitors in the south who made war on their own country, rather than talking about people like robert e. lee who took an oath at west point who promised to take an oath on the constitution and he is making war on the country and now we're making war on the fairest part of the country. he organized that the war was caused by partisan presently, petty jealousy, envy and intriguing selfish ambition and that it was caused by the deluded fanatics in the north, the abolitionists. the buffalo papers are shocked. they throw the treason word around. fortunately for a, the lincoln administration had a stronger sense of what treason is than he did when he prosecuted be alitionists -- abolitionists

for fighting the fugitive slave trade. but had he been president, speeches like that would have led to his arrest in the civil war. after the war, he simply sharings into obscurity. so what do we make of millard fillmore? what do we make of his legacy? things i have not talked about. he pushes fillmore transcontinental railroad, which, of course, lincoln implements this. he advocates opening japan up to american trade and sends commodore perry to japan but it takes fillmore so long to get the perry expedition off the ground or actually out into the ocean that when perry finally gets to japan, franklin pierce is president and not millard fillmore he maintains an american presence in hawaii preventing the french from annexing it because he thinks some day america might want hawaii but, of course, it will be william mckin who annexes the hawaiian islands.

and he pushes for a central american canal but doesn't do anything to that, leaving that to teddy roosevelt and he does ideas but there's no follow-through but his vision is myopic and legacy is worse. he opens the west to slavery and destroys the missouri compromise line. this total appeasement of the south only encourages new demands for slave land. his solution to the issue of slavery in the territories leads to the kansas-nebraska act, the evisceration of the missouri compromise and what is the upper midwest. and further conflict in the west. he fanatically aggressively enforces the fugitive slave law which is obviously the most oppressive law in american history. he runs for president on a ticket that openly attacks foreigners, immigrants and catholics. in retirement, fillmore opposes

emancipation, campaigns in 1864 against lincoln fillmore peace candidate who have left millions of african-americans in bondage. in the end, sadly, buffalo's first president, fortunately, not its last -- buffalo's first president was on the wrong side of the great moral and political issues of the age. immigration, religious toleration, equality and most of all, slavery. thank you. [applause] ♪ >> if anyone has any questions for mr. finkelman, please make your way to this microphone

we'll be using it for the microphone. it won't amplify your voice but for the programming. and thank you for joining us, mr. finkelman. thank you. [applause] >> my name is drew and i had the pleasure of hearing you five years ago down in jamestown with paul benson and you were in front of 200 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 about the civil war and how this whole generation room was taught that the civil war -- the primary cause of state's rights and go what's state's rights was that and i just love that pace and you were so compelling and i was wondering if you could replay it to a short order here. and i know it's not on the topic of fillmore, but it's certainly on the topic of the 150th

anniversary of the civil war. >> well, thank you. of course, the event in jamestown was for high school teachers and middle school teachers which is the most important things we in the academy can do is bring what we know to the ground level and doing it here is fabulous. basically i think 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 succinctly who cessna speech 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 for a second, that we understand 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 south secedes for. now, the problem in understanding this is that when lincoln asks for volunteers to preserve the union, he doesn't say this is a crusade against slavery because he doesn't believe he has the constitutional or legal power to end slavery and furthermore, he is desperately hoping to keep the upper south states,

virginia, north carolina, tennessee and arkansas in the union as well as maryland delaware, and kentucky, and after the war begins -- 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 could have god on your side and lincoln famously says i would like to have god on my side but i need kentucky. [laughter] >> so he waits until he has kentucky. and he knows that he could probably win the war and then he moves to emancipation. but the south secedes to product slavery. the south fights 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 the factories making guns and gunpowder, 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 about it 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 that's what they were doing. and fillmore was on the wrong side of this. yes. >> after the mexican war, you talk about the northern majority and house of representatives? >> yes.

>> how does that work into the three-fifth rule? >> sure. okay. at the constitutional convention -- this is great. i teach at a law school, of course. i teach constitutional law so anytime you can ask me about something i can tie to the constitution, i reach my fillmorian comfort level. [laughter] >> maybe even above it. but in any event, at the constitutional convention there's, of course, a debate over 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 represent in congress when slaves aren't citizens. they don't vote. the compromise that's reached is the three-fifths compromise. that you will allocate representation in congress by counting all 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 -- just to do simple math, if we had each congressional district had 50,000 people that would be 40 and 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 number of members of the house of representatives. in fact, when you look at the vote on the fugitive slave law, which is a very close vote -- without the three-fifths clause, the fugitive slave law couldn't have passed. without those 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 the number of representatives and adding to that the number of senators. so that the south gets a bonus in presidential elections in 1800 the election betweens thomas jefferson who owns close to 200 slaves and john adams who's never owned a slave -- adams loses by 6 electoral vote. if you take the electoral votes away from jefferson and adams, causes by counting slaves, jefferson doesn't get elected president. america might have been a very different place if an opponent of slavery had been in office when we bought louisiana from the french instead of 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 were 4 million slaves in 1860?

>> the census figure is 3.9 million. i was rounding up. >> what was the monetary -- i hate to ask this question. what was the monetary -- >> you shouldn't be embarrassed by asking what the monetary value is. slaves are valuable property. >> yeah, i know. >> how do you measure what a slave is worth? if you go onto the internet and you say, what's $1,000 in 1860 worth today, you'll get four or five different answers depending on how they figure it out. sometimes it's -- they do a market basket, you know, how much could it cost to buy a loaf of bread, a pound of meat, et cetera, in 1860 and today and sometimes they do it as a function of gross national product. when i teach this, what i say is we should think of slaves as cars. a slave is worth as much of a car. of course, my students look at me and say, what do you mean by that? i say, you know, there are old

run down dodge darts that are still running around and there's brand-new mercedes there's old slaves that have value and not much and there are some slaves who are worth thousands and thousands of dollars. slaves are enormously valuable. but my good friend jenny wall who's an economist at carlton college in minnesota has just done a paper which she knows overwhelmedly that it would have been far cheaper to buy all the sleeves at their highest market value than to fight the civil war. however, the southerners wouldn't have sold because the other thing about slavery is slavery is not just about money. it's about racial equality and inequality. it's about racial superiority. it's what alexander stevens says when he says that the north is wrong in believing black people are equal to whites. 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 pump and pump it. >> if they're not going to sell, does that mean the price was too low? >> it means 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 owning slaves is irrational but what i did says, have you ever seen a man drive a cadillac into a tree. he says only when they're drunk and i just looked at him and i said, so? and he said 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 in the door? and he said, yeah, and 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 and he said, oh, wow, i have to think of a whole new equation to factor in the pleasure you got out of abusing people. that's understanding slavery. >> one man's terrorist is another man's private. i'm an irish catholic. i'm wondering, what was the argument for not wanting catholic immigrants? and what were the arguments of the mckinley supporters? is there must have been a tremendous number of people that saw things one thing. >> i'm not sure if the terrorism

part of it. the argument is simply this, that people like millard fillmore believed that america was a nation for people of english, scottish and welsh ancestry who were protestants. and catholics were bad because they followed the anti-christ in rome. because they followed a religion that suppressed democracy. it's fascinating, of course, to think about the way they structure these arguments. they would always say catholicism is in opposition to democracy so what are we going to do? we're going to oppress catholics 'cause we're good democrats. [laughter] >> you know, i mean, think it through a little harder. fillmore appeals to those people in america who when faced