Things finally moved in Sumner’s direction in June, when the Whigs nominated General Winfield Scott, and not Millard Fillmore, as their presidential candidate. Influenced by Sumner’s legal brief, sensitive to the pleas of Dorothea Dix, and now freed from the constraining optics and politics of a presidential campaign, Millard Fillmore finally issued a full pardon for Drayton and Sayres on August 11, 1852.
