Discovery Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 6/21/2012
This incredible Autograph Letter signed with free frank cover on obverse, where Millard Fillmore is trying to bring down Macy and his Albany Regency political machine. Fillmore writes to Ralph Plumb the supervisor of Collins NY in Erie. Letter datelined Buffalo NY, on July 17th, 1834 under the title of Confidential, Fillmore writes “We have ascertained to our entire satisfaction that a most desperate effort is making by the regency party to reelect Macy with his $6,000,000 mortgage and thereby sanction all the corrupt acts of the present general and state administrations.” That they have raised funds to circulate the Argus “This unprincipled paper to deceive the people and bring them into the support of this corrupt administration.” and that he is making arrangements to “procure at our own expense the Albany Weekly Journal” which he will send 5 copies and to distribute them, “to provide people the opportunity to read both sides.”
The Albany Regency was a loosely organized group of politicians with similar views and goals which was among the first American Political machines. First formulated in 1833 by one of their number (Marcy),that said “to the victors belong the spoils”, which is where the term the spoils system came from. Thurlow Weed who coined the name "Albany Regency", wrote he "had never known a body of men who possessed so much power and used it so well". Their organ of information was the newspaper Argus of Albany.
Important Millard Fillmore Letter
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