The internet thinks that Alec Baldwin is practically the ghost of Millard Fillmore.
Alec Baldwin was born in New York. Millard Fillmore was born in New York. Baldwin's mother's family is from Syracuse. Fillmore was born on a farm just west of Syracuse.
Don't worry, we're not forgetting Zachary Taylor. Here's what you need to know about president 12. General Taylor, hero of the Mexican War (which he didn't believe in), choice of the Whig party (which he had never belonged to), won the presidential election (which he had never voted in) in 1848. The Whigs nominated him because they thought a military hero would win, and once in, would be easily controlled. If that sounds like exactly what happened with William Henry Harrison, that's because it was.
Alec Baldwin was raised as a Catholic and has remained one. Millard Fillmore hated Catholics, which he associated with immigrants. He attended a Methodist church as a child but later switched to the Episcopalian church. It was political. Episcopalian churches were more prestigious, and their preachers avoided condemning slavery.
History has largely forgotten Zachary Taylor's denomination. His wife was a devout Episcopalian. But Taylor made no show of religion. In this, as in other things, he hoped to be a uniter. He expected to dispense non-partisan wisdom from his perch in the White House. This was politically naive, since the nation had subsided into sectional hatred and nonstop political rancor.
Alec Baldwin's first leading role was playing a lawman in a TV movie. Millard Fillmore's first major job was as a lawyer in East Aurora, New York.
Zachary Taylor would be less forgettable if he had gotten anything done. There was plenty to do: Polk's war with Mexico had left the nation with a tangled knot of problems. The new slave state of Texas was trying to claim a big chunk of New Mexico. The new territory of California wanted to be admitted as a free state. This caused the South to start squawking about secession, as they did every time it looked like they might lose their unfair advantage. Taylor pontificated about unity, and Congress just ignored him.
Alec Baldwin played a cop in his first movie, Forever, Lulu. Millard Fillmore played a cop when he presided over the Senate as vice president. Slavery battles were turning Congress into a street fight: fisticuffs frequently broke out. In April of 1850, Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi pulled a gun on Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri on the Senate floor. As Vice President Fillmore pounded his gavel and shouted for order, Benton ripped open his shirt and cried "I have no pistols! . . . Let the assassin fire!" Only the quick thinking of several nearby senators kept anyone from getting shot.
President Taylor, forgotten up there in the White House, disliked the warring. But even though he was a slaveholding Southerner, he hated the proposed solution, the "Compromise of 1850." Its alleged advantages to the North were bringing in California as a free state--which was already happening--and banning slave auctions in Washington D.C.--mere window dressing. In exchange, appeasing the South, it opened the rest of the territory taken from Mexico to slavery, gave up Congress's ability to regulate the interstate slave trade, and strengthened the fugitive slave law to force northern states to capture and return runaways. Taylor saw this "compromise" as Southern overreach, and intended to veto it. But he missed his chance to do so by inconveniently dying of a gastric complaint just over a year into his administration--another victim, perhaps, of the toxic White House well.
Alec Baldwin seemingly came out of nowhere in 1988, when he starred in five major films. Millard Fillmore seemingly came out of nowhere in 1850, when he became the 13th president. The Whigs had put him on the ballot because he was a northerner with no record of opposing slavery. The highest office he had held was comptroller of New York state.
President Taylor's wife Margaret couldn't forget that she had prayed for him to lose the election, fearing the job would kill him. They had been together for 40 years and six children, three of whom had died. She had followed him to military camps on the frontier and nursed the wounded --he once said she was a better soldier than he. Now her fears had come true. She kept insisting they unpack him from the ice (it was a hot July) so she could see him. She refused to let him be embalmed.
Alec Baldwin met his first wife, Kim Basinger, at work when they played opposite each other. She was five years older than he was. Millard Fillmore met his wife, Abigail Powers, at school when she was his teacher. She was two years older than he was.
With President Taylor dead, his objections to the Compromise of 1850 were forgotten, and the act was revived. Broken into its components, each part patched together enough support to pass. President Fillmore signed the bills as they landed on his desk. He was also fielding the conspiracy theories that, within a week of President Taylor's death, were claiming he'd been poisoned. But people seemed to forget who Zachary's enemies were. Some theories implicated abolitionist Senator William Seward. Others blamed Southern slavery advocate Jefferson Davis--even though Davis, the widower of Taylor's daughter, was the General's friend.
Alec Baldwin played a clueless executive on 30 Rock. Millard Fillmore was a clueless executive in the Oval Office. He didn't just sign the noxious fugitive slave law; he asked for no changes to the legislation. As a lawyer, he must have seen its flaws: it denied accused fugitives due process, prevented them from testifying in their own defense, paid judges five dollars for siding with fugitives and ten dollars for siding with slaveholders, and levied fines and jail time for anyone who aided or interfered with the arrest of a fugitive. Now a Northerner must fear giving a black person a glass of water--since any black person could be declared a fugitive and dragged into servitude without being able to testify that they were free.
A game historians like to play is "forget what actually happened: what if Zachary Taylor had lived?" Would he have refused to appease the South? Would the Civil War have been averted if the South blinked, or started earlier if they didn't? Would the North have prevailed sooner under a president who was actually a skilled military commander? Or would they, without the mounting outrages of the 1850s, have lacked the will to carry it through?
Alec Baldwin enacted a bumbling and inept American president on Saturday Night Live. Millard Fillmore acted as a bumbling and inept American president when he spent the rest of his administration enforcing an unjust law that only raised the temperature of the nation's sectional tensions. In the most egregious case, his administration filed charges of treason--a capital offense--against five white and 36 black citizens who had been part of a crowd that succeeded in preventing the apprehension of a fugitive in Pennsylvania. The prosecution's claim that refusing to obey a law--for whatever reason--constituted treason was so outrageous, even the anti-abolitionist judge scoffed at it. The jury took 3 minutes to acquit.
In 1991, people remembered the conspiracy theories about the death of Zachary Taylor. His body was exhumed. It could be medically examined for signs of poison since he hadn't been embalmed. Tissue samples showed no sign of poisoning, except possibly by the ipecac, calomel, and opium his doctors gave him. His death was more tragic accident than murder.
In 2021, on the set of a Western, Alec Baldwin cocked and discharged a revolver he thought was a prop but that had actually been loaded with live ammunition, leading to the death of a cinematographer. In 1850, Millard Fillmore thought he was propping up the union when he cocked and discharged a weapon--the fugitive slave law--that would help lead to its death. It, too, was more tragic accident than murder.
Today, Millard Fillmore is more forgotten than Zachary Taylor. In recent surveys, only 8% of American schoolchildren can name him as one of the presidents.
Alec Baldwin: "We've never needed the people to think more critically than now, and they've taken a big nap."
Millard Fillmore: "May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not."
Twelve and Thirteen