Beschreibung:

FILLMORE, Millard (1800-1874), President . Autograph letter signed ("Fillmore") to "Haven" (Solomon G. Haven), Washington, D.C., 26 January 1841. 1 pages, 4to . In very fine condition. FILLMORE BLASTS THE LOCO FOCOS AND LOOKS FORWARD TO THE INAUGURATION OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. Fillmore, New York Congressman and Chairman of the important House Ways and Means Committee, had managed William Henry Harrison's campaign in upstate New York, but had already set his own sights on the White House. Three years later, after Harrison's death and Tyler's decision to step down, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Whig party nomination. Here, he writes to his law partner, describing the capitol prior to the inauguration: "We have had...more apparent strangers, gentlemen and ladies, about the capitol than I have seen in a great while. I suppose they are beginning to flock hither in anticipation of the Inauguration. Doct. [Alexander] Duncan was emptying his filth cart in the House and Senator [John] Allen of O[hio] was roaring in the Senate. The multitudes that had flocked to the capitol seemed bewildered...they would gather in the rotunda and gaze at the pictures...all seemed anxious for some mode of whiling away the time without listening to these two great apostles of Locofocoism." A Whig himself, Fillmore concludes: "I suspect they must have been whigs or they would not have manifested such an unbecoming antipathy." Fillmore expresses Whig distaste for the Loco Foco party, a radical faction of the Democrats allied with the Jacksonians, founded in 1835.