Tall and gracious Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth President of the United States, was a skillful politician whose sincere and courteous manner endeared him to his fellow Whigs. A modest man, Fillmore dressed conservatively in spite of his good looks. Despite an aggressive nature which had enabled him to rise from impoverished beginnings, Fillmore always favored a moderate political course and avoided conflict where ever possible. Though an opponent of slavery, he preferred to move gradually towards abolition in order to preserve the Union. His passage of the Compromise Bill of 1850 delayed the outbreak of the Civil War for ten years, but his commitment to upholding all provisions of the bill with equal effort, especially that of the Fugitive Slave Act, cost him considerable support within the anti-slavery movement which had elected him.
Millard Fillmore was born on January 7, 1800 in Locke, Cayuga County, New York. He was the second child of nine born to Phoebe and Nathaniel Fillmore, a poor New York farmer. As a boy, Millard Fillmore attended formal school three months out of the year and spent the other nine working on his father's farm. His education was interrupted in 1814 when he was apprenticed to a cloth maker. The cloth maker treated Millard harshly and abused him until one day the boy threatened to retaliate with an ax. In the wake of that incident Millard bought his freedom from the cloth maker for thirty dollars and returned home to continue with school. While finishing his studies at the local schoolhouse, Millard fell in love with his teacher, Abigail Powers (she was only two years older than he was), and the two began a courtship that would eventually lead to their marriage in 1826. In 1819 Millard began teaching while studying law with the local county judge. Millard Fillmore passed the New York bar in 1823.
While practicing law, Fillmore became interested in politics. He joined New York's Anti-Masonic Party, a political party opposed to the establishment of secret societies in the United States. On the Anti-Masonic ticket, Millard Fillmore was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1828. In the Assembly, Fillmore drafted a bill abolishing the imprisonment of debtors and saw the bill become New York State law. Millard Fillmore was re-elected to the Assembly twice before retiring his seat and moving to Buffalo to establish a law practice with Nathaniel Hall.
Fillmore was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1833 as a Whig. By 1834 he was the leader of the northern wing of the Whig Party, which was formed in opposition to the Democratic Party. Fillmore left the House in 1835, but returned again in 1837. In 1840 Fillmore was elected chairman of the House Committee on Way and Means. As Chairman he was responsible for the tariff bill of 1842, which protected the interest of northern manufacturers. Millard Fillmore left the House in 1843 to run for governor of the State of New York. He lost his bid for governor to the Democratic candidate, Silas Wright.
At the convention of 1848, the Whig Party nominated General Zachary Taylor, a slave-owning southerner and war hero, to the Presidency. Millard Fillmore was serving as comptroller of the State of New York when he was nominated for the Vice Presidency slot on the Taylor ticket. Millard Fillmore became Vice President of the United States on March 4, 1849.
When California petitioned for statehood in 1850, it did so as a free state. Fearing that the imbalance in Congress between slave and free states would lead to abolition, the southern states protested and demanded concessions. Though he himself was a slave owner and southerner, President Taylor felt no obligation to make concessions to the South. He declared that any attempt at secession on the part of disgruntled southern states would be met with military force. A split developed in the Whig Party, between those who supported the President's position and who that did not. Vice President Fillmore was among those who did not. Whig Party leader Henry Clay drafted a compromise plan that admitted California to the Union as a free state, while making pro-slavery concessions to the southern states. President Taylor declared that if Congress passed Clay's compromise bill, he would veto it. Vice President Fillmore informed the President that if the situation were to arise that the question of overriding the President's veto should result in a deadlock, and he as Vice President be asked to break the tie, he would vote in favor of the bill. President Taylor never got the chance to carry through with his veto. While attending fourth of July ceremonies in front of the Washington monument, President Taylor fell ill. Five days later he was dead. Millard Fillmore became the thirteenth President of the United States on July 9, 1850.
Upon Fillmore's taking office, Taylor's cabinet, who objected to the new President's policies, resigned. President Fillmore appointed a new cabinet that supported Clay's compromise bill and set about moving the bill through Congress.
President Fillmore signed the Compromise Bill of 1850 in September. Under the stipulations of the bill: California was admitted to the Union as a free state, the territories of Utah and New Mexico were created without any mention of the slavery issue, Texas was paid $10 million for surrendering its claims to New Mexico, the trading of slaves was outlawed in Washington D.C., but it was still legal to own slaves there, and the Fugitive Slave Act, a law which made officials of the federal government responsible for the capturing and returning of runaway slaves, was instituted.
The Compromise of 1850 was as unpopular in the South as it was in the North. The southern states objected to the precedent it set. They contested that the federal government did not have the right to make any type of law governing the institute of slavery. Slavery, they held, was the jurisdiction of the state governments. The North objected to the Fugitive Slave Act provision of the bill. They felt it enabled southerners to come into a free state anytime they wanted and grab any legally-free African American they saw. Determined to make the compromise successful in order to avoid civil war, President Fillmore upheld all of the provisions of the bill with equal force, and as a result, he became as unpopular as the bill.
During his Presidency, Millard Fillmore secured federal funds for the construction of an intercontinental railroad and opened up Japan to American trade.
In the election of 1852, the Whig Party did not nominate President Fillmore for re-election because of his enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. Instead, the Whigs nominated General Winfield Scott, who in turn lost the election to the Democrat candidate, Franklin Pierce. The two main leaders of the Whig Party, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, both died in 1853, thereby ending the Whig Party. Out of the remains of the Whig Party formed the Republican Party, but the Republicans still resented Fillmore for his enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and Fillmore was not asked to be a Republican.
Millard Fillmore made another attempt at re-election in 1856, this time with the support of the American Party. The American Party, or Know Nothing Party as they were called, was an ultraconservative group that believed immigrants and Catholics were plotting against the U.S. government and destroying the nation with dangerous ideologies. Fillmore's showing in 1856 was poor. He finished third, well behind the second place Republican John Fremont, and the winner, Democrat James Buchanan. A very embarrassed Millard Fillmore retired to Buffalo where he lived until his death in 1874.
Abigail Powers Fillmore had died immediately after the Fillmores left the White House in 1853. Millard Fillmore married Caroline McIntosh, a wealthy widow, in 1858. Millard Fillmore had had one son and one daughter with Abigail, and no children with Caroline. Millard Fillmore died of a stroke on March 8, 1874 at his home in Buffalo, New York.
