MAKING THE AMERICA PARTY GREAT AGAIN:

Fillmore presented himself as a loyal Whig, but his political career had begun with the Anti-Masons, a political movement tied to a bizarre hostility toward Freemasons. He was attracted, writes Paul Finkelman, a legal historian at Albany Law School, "to oddball political movements, conspiracy theories, and ethnic hatred." [...]

The Fugitive Slave Act, perhaps the cruelest measure ever enacted by Congress, was vigorously resisted in many Northern cities. But President Fillmore backed the law and prosecuted citizens who tried to interfere with the slave-catchers.

Rarely has there been a more repugnant law. For the first time in US history, the Fugitive Slave Act created a national system of law enforcement. Its purpose: hunting escaped slaves and returning them to bondage. Federal commissioners were appointed nationwide, and empowered not only to adjudicate fugitive slave claims, but to assemble local posses to capture slaves on the run. The law imposed harsh penalties on anyone caught aiding a fugitive slave. And even free blacks were at risk of being seized and charged as runaways, since the law, with grotesque disregard for due process, forbade accused fugitives from testifying in their own behalf.

Fillmore enforced the law with determination, and dispatched federal troops to prevent opponents from interfering. He denounced Northern communities that vowed to resist the law -- "sanctuary cities" aren't a 21st-century innovation -- and piously proclaimed that "without law there can be no real practical liberty." Scores of fugitives were captured and returned to the South during Fillmore's presidency.  [...]

He migrated to the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic "Know-Nothing" Party, running as its presidential nominee in 1856. His slogan was "Americans Must Rule America." 

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