Great Yoosta Bees in History: Millard Fillmore, 1852

“My beloved Whig Party — the great party of Henry Clary and Daniel Webster, of Willie Magnum and Theodore Frelighuysen — used to stand for important if not always exciting issues.

The National Bank.

Consignment of Indians to small, forgettable reservations on submarginal lands.

A ship canal, jointly constructed by the United States and Great Britain, to be located somewhere in Nicaragua.

A railroad across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The unlimited importation of Peruvian guano.

Our stance on these issues, along with a cowardly, deferential silence on the great question of slavery, has animated Whiggish American youth for the last two generations of our nation’s great history. While the rapacious Democrats — the party of Jacksonian wild men — fought for unrestrained executive power, gutted the economy with their paranoid suspicion of finance capitalism, and pushed the country into reckless, jingoistic wars, my party set forth a vaguely appealing, milquetoast agenda underscored by a prim, moralizing Protestantism and a kinder, gentler variety of white supremacy than that offered by our bloodthirsty opponents.

Now, sadly, my beloved party has been sundered by sectional radicals who have lost focus on the greater good of our nation. We have been beset especially by those abolitionists of the North who have lately so violently aroused by my endorsement of Fugitive Slave Act among other so-called ‘compromises,’ each of which I regarded as judicious and necessary to preserve the spirit of national brotherhood. Although you and I may personally regard slavery as a great evil, I believe that as a party we must studiously avoid uncomfortable, divisive discourse if we are ever to win support in regions of the country that may not share our peculiar values.

I used to believe this was possible, but it appears the party has left me. I used to be a Whig, but the Whigs I knew are no more. I pray to the Divine Providence that my brethren will one day return to the sane ideas of yesteryear, when we were all committed to a temperate, pro-business agenda. But I’m not holding my breath.”