Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the thirteenth President of the United States, serving from 1850 until 1853, and the last member of the Whig Party to hold the nation's highest office. He succeeded from the Vice Presidency on the death of President Zachary Taylor, who died of acute indigestion, becoming the second U.S. President to gain the office in this manner. Fillmore was never elected President in his own right; after serving out Taylor's term he was not nominated for the Presidency by the Whigs in the 1852 Presidential election, and in 1856 he failed to win election as President as the Know Nothing Party candidate.
Early life
Fillmore was born in extreme poverty to Nathaniel Fillmore and Phoebe Millard Fillmore in Summerhill, New York as the second of eight children and eldest son. He was first apprenticed to a fuller to learn the clothmaking trade. He struggled to obtain an education under frontier conditions. Several years later, Fillmore moved to Buffalo, New York to continue his studies. He was admitted to the bar in 1823 and began his practice of law in Aurora. In 1828, he was elected to the New York legislature and served 1829 to 1831.
Early political career
Fillmore was elected as a Whig to the 23rd Congress (1833-1835); elected to the 25th, 26th and 27th Congresses (1837-1843). (He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1842.) He was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of New York in 1844. He was State comptroller of New York from 1847–1849.
The Vice-Presidency
Whig Party banner from 1848 with candidates
Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore.
Having worked his way up through the Whig Party in New York, Fillmore eventually was selected as Zachary Taylor's running mate. (It was thought that the obscure, self-made candidate from New York would complement Taylor, a slave-holding military man from the south.)
Nevertheless, the two men came to a head on the slavery issue in the new western territories taken from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Taylor wanted the new states to be free states, while Fillmore supported slavery in those states in order to appease the South. In his own words: "God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil ... and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution."
Fillmore presided over the Senate during the months of nerve-wracking debates over the Compromise of 1850. He made no public comment on the merits of the compromise proposals, but a few days before President Taylor's death, Fillmore suggested to him that if there should be a tie vote on Henry Clay's bill, he would vote in favor of it.
Presidency 1850–1853
Policies
The sudden ascension of Fillmore to the Presidency in July 1850 brought an abrupt political shift in the administration. Taylor's cabinet resigned and President Fillmore at once appointed Daniel Webster to be Secretary of State, thus proclaiming his alliance with the moderate Whigs who favored the Compromise.
A bill to admit California to the Union still aroused all the violent arguments for and against the extension of slavery, without any progress toward settling the major issues.
Clay, exhausted, left Washington to recuperate, throwing leadership upon Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. At this critical juncture, President Fillmore announced in favor of the Compromise of 1850. On August 6, 1850, he sent a message to Congress recommending that Texas be paid to abandon her claims to part of New Mexico.
This helped influence a critical number of northern Whigs in Congress away from their insistence upon the Wilmot Proviso — the stipulation that all land gained by the Mexican War must be closed to slavery.
Douglas's effective strategy in Congress combined with Fillmore's pressure to give impetus to the Compromise movement. Breaking up Clay's single legislative package, Douglas presented five separate bills to the Senate:
- Admit California as a free state.
- Settle the Texas boundary and compensate the state.
- Grant territorial status to New Mexico.
- Place Federal officers at the disposal of slaveholders seeking fugitives. (Fugitive Slave Act)
- Abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia.
Each measure obtained a majority, and, by September 20, President Fillmore had signed them into law. Webster wrote, "I can now sleep of nights."
Another important legacy of Fillmore's administration was the opening of Japan to American trade under Commodore Matthew Perry.
Administration and Cabinet
Supreme Court appointments
Fillmore appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
States admitted to the Union
Legacy
Some of the more militant northern Whigs remained irreconcilable, refusing to forgive Fillmore for having signed the Fugitive Slave Act. They helped deprive him of the Presidential nomination in 1852.
Within a few years it was apparent that although the Compromise had been intended to settle the slavery controversy, it served rather as an uneasy sectional truce.
Later life
Upon completing his presidency, Fillmore returned to Buffalo, where he served as chancellor of the University of Buffalo.
As the Whig Party disintegrated in the 1850s, Fillmore refused to join the Republican Party; but, instead, in 1856 accepted the nomination for President of the Know Nothing (or National American Party).
On February 10, 1858, he married a widow Mrs. Caroline Carmichael McIntosh (October 21, 1813-August 11, 1881).
Throughout the Civil War, he opposed President Lincoln and during Reconstruction supported President Johnson. He commanded a corps of home guards during the Civil War.
He died at 11:10 p.m. on March 8, 1874 of the after-effects of a stroke, with his last words alleged to be, upon being fed some soup, "the nourishment is palatable." On January 7 each year a ceremony is held at his gravesite in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo.
Trivia
The myth that Millard Fillmore installed the White House's first bathtub was started by H. L. Mencken in a joke column published on December 28, 1917 in the New York Evening Mail. (See: Bathtub hoax) More factual is, having found the White House devoid of books, Millard Fillmore initiated the White House library.
As of 2006, Millard Fillmore remains the last U.S. president who was neither a Democrat nor a Republican (although Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in 1864 running on the Union Ticket instead of as a Republican with Democrat Andrew Johnson as his running mate).
See also
External links
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