Millard Fillmore

Who is this?

Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853. He was the last president to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House, and the last to be neither a Democrat nor a Republican. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Fillmore was elected vice president in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency when Zachary Taylor died in 1850. Fillmore was instrumental in passing the Compromise of 1850, which led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery. Fillmore was born into poverty in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York. He had little formal schooling, but studied to become a lawyer. Fillmore became prominent in the Buffalo area as an attorney and politician, and was elected to the New York Assembly in 1828 and the House of Representatives in 1832. Fillmore initially belonged to the Anti-Masonic Party, but became a member of the Whig Party as it formed in the mid-1830s. He was a rival for the state party leadership with Thurlow Weed and his protégé William H. Seward. Throughout his career, Fillmore declared slavery evil but said it was beyond the federal government's power to end it. Conversely, Seward argued that the federal government had a role to play. Fillmore was an unsuccessful candidate for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives when the Whigs took control of the chamber in 1841, but was made chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Defeated in bids for the Whig nomination for vice president and for New York governor in 1844, Fillmore was elected Comptroller of New York in 1847, the first to hold that post by election. As vice president, Fillmore was largely ignored by Taylor; even in dispensing patronage in New York, Taylor consulted Weed and Seward. In his capacity as president of the Senate, Fillmore presided over its angry debates as the 31st Congress decided whether to allow slavery in the Mexican Cession. Unlike Taylor, Fillmore supported Henry Clay's omnibus bill, the basis of the 1850 Compromise. Upon becoming president in July 1850, he dismissed Taylor's cabinet and pushed Congress to pass the compromise. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, expediting the return of escaped slaves to those who claimed ownership, was a controversial part of the compromise. Fillmore felt duty-bound to enforce it, though it damaged his popularity and also the Whig Party, which was torn between its Northern and Southern factions. In foreign policy, he supported U.S. Navy expeditions to open trade in Japan, opposed French designs on Hawaii, and was embarrassed by Narciso López's filibuster expeditions to Cuba. Fillmore failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852. As the Whig Party broke up after his presidency, Fillmore and many in its conservative wing joined the Know Nothings and formed the American Party. Despite his party's emphasis on anti-immigration and anti-Catholic policies, during the 1856 presidential election he sai

Career

1. 1800
   Born
2. 1874
   Passed away

Trivia

• •Place of birth: Summerhill
• •Citizenship: United States
• •Known as: politician, lawyer, statesperson
• •Spouse: Abigail Fillmore