An Examination of the Question, "Is It Right to Require Any Religious Test as a Qualification to Be a Witness in a Court of Justice?"

by Millard Fillmore

Excerpt from An Examination of the Question, "Is It Right to Require Any Religious Test as a Qualification to Be a Witness in a Court of Justice?"

It may appear like presumption in any person to assume the nega tive of this question. He will undoubtedly be told, that the wisdom of ages has sanctioned the doctrine, that if a person be deficient in certain articles of established faith he ought not to be permitted to be sworn in a court of justice; that no testimony ought to be given without the sanction of an oath; that the oath itself in such case would be but a mockery, and therefore, the witness ought not to be heard at all.

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20 pages, Hardcover

Published February 13, 2018

About the author

Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States (1850–53), the last Whig president, and the last president not to be affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties. Fillmore was the only Whig president who did not die in office or get expelled from the party, and Fillmore appointed the only Whig Supreme Court Justice. As Zachary Taylor's vice president, he assumed the presidency after Taylor's death. Fillmore was a lawyer from western New York state, and an early member of the Whig Party. He served in the state legislature (1829–1831), as a U.S. Representative (1833–35, 1837–43), and as New York State Comptroller (1848–49). He was elected vice president of the United States in 1848 as Taylor's running mate, and served from 1849 until Taylor's death in 1850, at the height of the "Crisis of 1850" over slavery.

As an anti-slavery moderate, he opposed abolitionist demands to exclude slavery from all the territory gained in the Mexican War. Instead he supported the Compromise of 1850, which briefly ended the crisis. In foreign policy, Fillmore supported U.S. Navy expeditions to open trade in Japan, opposed French designs on Hawaii, and was embarrassed by Narciso López's filibuster expeditions to Cuba. He sought election to a full term in 1852, but was passed over for the nomination by the Whigs.

When the Whig Party broke up in 1854–56, Fillmore refused to join the Republican Party. Other conservative Whigs joined the American Party, the political arm of the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic "Know-Nothing" movement, though Fillmore did not join the American Party. While out of the country, Fillmore was nominated by the American Party candidate for President in 1856, but finished third in the election, surpassed by the Republican Party candidate. During the American Civil War, Fillmore denounced secession and agreed that the Union must be maintained by force if necessary, but was very critical of the war policies of President Abraham Lincoln. After the war, he supported the Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson. Although some have praised Fillmore's restrained foreign policy, he is criticized for having further aggravated tensions between abolitionists and slaveholders, he is placed near the bottom 10 of historical rankings of Presidents of the United States by various scholarly surveys.

Fillmore founded the University at Buffalo and was the university's first chancellor. He also helped found the Buffalo Historical Society and the Buffalo General Hospital.