Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)
Thirteenth President of the United States. Born at Summer Hill, Cayuga County, N. Y., Feb. 7, 1800. Died at Buffalo, N. Y., March 8, 1874. Lawyer, practicing at Aurora, N. Y. Was Whig member of Congress from New York 1833-35 and 1837-41, was Comptroller State of New York 1847-49. Was elected Vice-President with Taylor 1848. Became President by the death of President Taylor 1850. Ordered troops to New Mexico to protect the boundary. Championed the fugitive Slave Law. Cheap postage was enacted during his Presidency and extension of the National Capital 1851. Also Perry Treaty opening the ports of Japan. Retiring from office March 4, 1853, and was defeated as the National American candidate 1856. Appointed Daniel Webster Secretary of State, and approved Henry Clay's Compromise Bill 1850. Buried Forest Lawn, Buffalo, NY.
Millard Fillmore was born in a log cabin in frontier Cayuga County, New York, in 1800. Although he had limited opportunity for an education in his youth, he began to study law when he was about 18 and gained admittance to the bar in Buffalo five years later. Preferring a small town practice to a partnership in the larger city, he soon moved to East Aurora, where he was the only lawyer. Both he and his wife taught there as well.
He quickly rose in prominence, elected to the State legislature in 1828 on the Anti-Masonic Party ticket. In East Aurora, he began his 20-year association with Thurlow Weed, boss of the Anti-Masonic and later Whig political machines in New York State. In 1830, Fillmore moved to Buffalo, which would be his home for the rest of his life. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1832 to 1842. In 1844, he ran for governor and suffered defeat for the first time in his life.
When slaveholder Zachary Taylor became the Whig candidate for president, Weed and other leaders supported northerner Fillmore as vice president to “balance the ticket.” Millard Fillmore rose to the vice-presidency, in part, because he was from New York. In presidential elections from 1812 to 1968, that state had the nation's largest congressional delegation and therefore was entitled to cast more votes in the electoral college than any other state. New York's electoral riches account for the fact that, during the century from 1801 to 1901, eight of the twenty-two vice presidents called that state home. In designing a presidential ticket that would attract large blocks of electoral votes, the national parties always paid very careful attention to New York political leaders.
Millard Fillmore would occupy the nation's second highest office for fewer than seventeen months. During his brief tenure, he suffered the fate of other vice presidents: his president ignored him, his state's party leaders undercut him, and the Senate over which he presided barely tolerated him. Yet the office benefitted him, just as he improved it. The experience ratified and extended his stature as a significant national figure.
To his role as the Senate's president, Fillmore brought a deep knowledge and understanding of the institution's rules, precedents, and culture. Aware that the incendiary climate in the Senate chamber during 1850 could foster an explosion of devastating national consequence, he insisted on order, decorum, and fair play. For his successors, he provided a valuable example, couched in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson a half century earlier.
When Zachary Taylor's death in July 1850 thrust Fillmore into the presidency, few seriously doubted that he was up to the job. His close relations with senators at a time when the Senate served as the final arbiter of crucial national policy issues eased passage of the vital compromise legislation that staved off national political disintegration for another decade. Congress was already embroiled in a fierce debate about Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850, which Taylor had opposed. Fillmore, opposed to slavery but seeking a middle ground between Northern abolitionists and Southern secessionists, strongly supported the measure.
Passed piecemeal in September 1850, the compromise admitted California as a free State; established the territories of Utah and New Mexico, giving residents the right to vote on whether slavery would be legal or not. It also settled a bitter boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico, abolished the slave trade (but not slavery) in the District of Columbia, and created a strong Federal fugitive slave law. Both slaveholders and abolitionists had objections to the compromise. Secessionists in the South threatened insurrection, while Northerners vowed to ignore the Fugitive Slave Law. The compromise helped postpone for 10 years but did not avert the Civil War.
President Fillmore believed that by preserving the Union, the Compromise of 1850 would give the nation’s transportation, commerce, and industry an opportunity to develop. The remainder of his administration was prosperous. Federal land grants encouraged the construction of new railroads. Settlement continued to move across the prairies. In foreign affairs, Fillmore restored some of the good will lost in Latin America because of the Mexican War. He also sent Matthew Perry to Japan to establish trade and diplomatic relations.
Angered by Fillmore's support of the Compromise of 1850, northern Whigs blocked his re-nomination in 1852, and he returned to Buffalo. In 1856, he accepted the presidential nomination of the American, or "Know Nothing," Party, but met overwhelming defeat. Although he never again sought public office, Fillmore continued to play a leading role in philanthropic, civic, and cultural life. Throughout the Civil War he opposed President Lincoln and commanded a corps of home guards. During Reconstruction he supported President Johnson. He died March 8, 1874.
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