Potus Geeks Summer Reruns: The President Who Was a Volunteer Fireman
Millard Fillmore was born and raised in a cabin in upstate New York. His only reading material was said to be a Bible and a hymnal, but despite the paucity of reading material accessible to him as a child, Fillmore grew up with a love of books, an fact often overlooked when consideration is given to the 13th President. When Fillmore became President in July of 1850 following the death of President Zachary Taylor, one of his favorite sources of reading material was the Library of Congress.
It was one of Fillmore's predecessors, James Madison, who came up with the idea of creating a congressional library, something he first proposed in 1783. The Library of Congress was formally established April 24, 1800 when President John Adams signed an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. Part of the legislation appropriated $5,000 "for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress and for fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them." Eventually a collection consisting of 740 books and three maps which were housed in the new United States Capitol.
On January 26, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson signed a bill that allowed the president to appoint the librarian of Congress and establishing a Joint Committee on the Library to regulate and oversee it. The new law also extended borrowing privileges to the president and vice president. During the War of 1812, the British army burned Washington in August of 1814. They destroyed the Library of Congress and its collection, which by that time had numbered over 3,000 books. Within a month, Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his personal library as a replacement. Jefferson needed the money an Congress accepted his offer in January 1815, appropriating $23,950 to purchase his 6,487 books. The measure did not have unanimous support. New Hampshire representative Daniel Webster wanted to return "all books of an atheistical, irreligious, and immoral tendency."
Despite this opposition, Jefferson's collection of books was quite amazing for its time. He had spent 50 years accumulating a wide variety of books in several languages and on subjects such as philosophy, history, law, religion, architecture, travel, natural sciences, mathematics, studies of classical Greece and Rome, modern inventions, hot air balloons, music, submarines, fossils, agriculture, meteorology and even cooking. He said: "I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from their collection. There is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer."
On the morning of December 24th of 1851, the Library of Congress caught fire. The Captain of the Capitol Police had opened the doors of the Capitol at about six o’clock on Wednesday morning, when everything appeared to be fine. About eight o’clock, he could smell the odor of fire and on opening the door, a portion of the library was found to be on fire, and the flames spread with great rapidity. The fire companies had been kept up late by a fire the previous night, causing them to arrive late. A lot of time was lost in bringing the engines into position.
President Millard Fillmore sprang to action. He had been enjoying the holidays with his family early on Christmas Eve morning. Fillmore was alerted to the call of the Washington, D.C. fire chiefs calling out “Fire! Fire! The Library of Congress is on fire.” The call was met with eight fire “engines,” which were wagons loaded with water barrels and hoses, pulled by draft horses. Millard Fillmore rushed from the White House to roll up his sleeves and serve as a volunteer fireman. He and several of his cabinet members, as well as other congressmen, pitched in to help to try to put out the fire. The president also ordered some US Marines to come from the Washington Navy yard and join the bucket brigade. The volunteers kept working for the rest of that day and overnight until noon on Christmas Day. It was reported that Fillmore personally was at the front of the line, very close to the fire.
Despite the best efforts of the fire fighters, 35,000 books were burned, including two-thirds of those purchased from Thomas Jefferson. The loss was a significant one for President Fillmore. He pressed for Congress to appropriate funds to rebuild the Library of Congress. He was also able to obtain funding to establish a Presidential White House Library. Fillmore spent $65.62 out of the White House account before the library was even approved by Congress, in order to purchase Noah Webster’s Dictionary. He and his wife Abigail selected all the books eventually that were purchased for the Presidential Library, based on recommendations from local book sellers. He obtaining cost estimates and perused book catalog.
Congress approved the purchase of one thousand and fifty books for the new Library of Congress and Presidential Library. Fillmore wanted to insure a separation of church and state pursuant to interpretations of the First Amendment, so no religious works were purchased, other than the Bible. The fictional works purchased were mostly written by British authors, except for the books of Washington Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. The library also did contained the collected works of Benjamin Franklin as well as writings from Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and even Andrew Jackson.
As far as my research has been able to discern, the cause of the fire was attributed to a faulty chimney.