Horace Greeley wrote privately that "my own first choice has long been Millard Fillmore," and others thought Fillmore should try to win back the governor's mansion for the Whigs. Fillmore had stated that a convention had the right to draft anyone for political service, and Weed got the convention to choose Fillmore, who had broad support, despite his reluctance. Fillmore warned that electing the Republican candidate, former California Senator John C. Frmont, who had no support in the South, would divide the Union and lead to civil war. [65] Nevertheless, there were sound reasons for Fillmore's selection, as he was a proven vote-getter from electorally-crucial New York, and his track record in Congress and as a candidate showed his devotion to Whig doctrine, allaying fears he might be another Tyler were something to happen to General Taylor. Millard Fillmore Middle Name: None Millard Fillmore, our 13th president, was the second president to assume the presidency following the death of his predecessor (Taylor) but the first. Birthday: November 24, 1784 ( Sagittarius) Born In: Barboursville, Virginia, United States 71 30 Presidents #44 Leaders #124 Quick Facts Died At Age: 65 Family: Spouse/Ex-: Margaret Smith father: Richard Taylor mother: Sarah Dabney (Strother) Taylor siblings: Joseph Pannell Taylor The 1851 completion of the Erie Railroad in New York prompted Fillmore and his cabinet to ride the first train from New York City to the shores of Lake Erie, in the company with many other politicians and dignitaries. Thus Fillmore not only achieved his legislative goal but also managed to isolate Tyler politically. [157], Fillmore, with his wife, Abigail, established the first White House library. [35] Despite Fillmore's support of the Second Bank as a means for national development, he did not speak in the congressional debates in which some advocated renewing its charter although Jackson had vetoed legislation for a charter renewal. [48], Out of office, Fillmore continued his law practice and made long-neglected repairs to his Buffalo home. He spent over a year, from March 1855 to June 1856, in Europe and the Middle East. Although Fillmore urged Congress to authorize a transcontinental railroad, it did not do so until a decade later. [69][70], Northerners assumed that Fillmore, hailing from a free state, was an opponent of the spread of slavery. Abigail Powers. [1] Fillmore did his best to keep the peace among the senators and reminded them of the vice president's power to rule them out of order, but he was blamed for failing to maintain the peace when a physical confrontation between Mississippi's Henry S. Foote and Missouri's Thomas Hart Benton broke out on April 17. [64], Weed had wanted the vice-presidential nomination for Seward, who attracted few delegate votes, and Collier had acted to frustrate them in more ways than one, since with the New Yorker Fillmore as vice president, under the political customs of the time, no one from that state could be named to the Cabinet. [148] Steven G. Calabresi and Christopher S. Yoo, in their study of presidential power, deemed Fillmore "a faithful executor of the laws of the United States for good and for ill". [52], Putting a good face on his defeat, Fillmore met and publicly appeared with Frelinghuysen and quietly spurned Weed's offer to get him nominated as governor at the state convention. [69] Taylor and Fillmore corresponded twice in September, with Taylor happy that the crisis over the South Carolinians was resolved. [68] There was a crisis among the Whigs when Taylor also accepted the presidential nomination of a group of dissident South Carolina Democrats. [41], The rivalry between Fillmore and Seward was affected by the growing anti-slavery movement. [1] At the conventions, Fillmore and one of the early political bosses, the newspaper editor Thurlow Weed, met and impressed each other. [60], Before moving to Albany to take office on January 1, 1848, he had left his law firm and rented out his house. Many rank-and-file Whigs backed the Mexican War hero, General Zachary Taylor, for president. In 1832, Millard Fillmore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. [113] Fillmore was encouraged by the success of the Know Nothings in the 1854 midterm elections in which they won in several states of the Northeast and showed strength in the South. Fire! The Know Nothing convention chose Fillmore's running mate: Andrew Donelson of Kentucky, the nephew by marriage and once-ward of President Jackson. Webster had outraged his Massachusetts constituents by supporting Clay's bill and, with his Senate term to expire in 1851, had no political future in his home state. A similar plan was adopted by Congress in 1864. California was admitted as a free state, the District of Columbia's slave trade was ended, and the final status of slavery in New Mexico and Utah would be settled later. The Continentals trained to defend the Buffalo area in the event of a Confederate attack. Fillmore's East Aurora house was moved off Main Street. [88] Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas then stepped to the fore, with Clay's agreement, proposing to break the omnibus bill into individual bills that could be passed piecemeal. Despite his promise, Kossuth made a speech promoting his cause. In the early 1850s, there was considerable hostility toward immigrants, especially Catholics, who had recently arrived in the United States in large numbers, and several nativist organizations, including the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, sprang up in reaction. [53] Fillmore's biographer Paul Finkelman suggested that Fillmore's hostility to immigrants and his weak position on slavery had defeated him for governor. "[47], Weed deemed Fillmore "able in debate, wise in council, and inflexible in his political sentiments". The Campaign and Election of 1848: Millard Fillmore remained loyal to Henry Clay heading into the Whig nominating convention, but the presidency would elude Clay yet again. SIBLINGS Millard Fillmore was the second child in a family of nine. The vacancy was finally filled after Fillmore's term, when President Franklin Pierce nominated John Archibald Campbell, who was confirmed by the Senate. Fillmore signed the bills as they reached his desk and held the Fugitive Slave Bill for two days until he received a favorable opinion as to its constitutionality from the new Attorney General, John J. Crittenden. Through the legislative process, various changes were made, including the setting of a boundary between New Mexico Territory and Texas, the state being given a payment to settle any claims. Fillmore ran a. President Millard Fillmore. [95], Fillmore appointed one justice to the Supreme Court of the United States and made four appointments to United States district courts, including that of his law partner and cabinet officer, Nathan Hall, to the federal district court in Buffalo. [34] Even during the 1832 campaign, Fillmore's affiliation as an Anti-Mason had been uncertain, and he rapidly shed the label once sworn in. [114], Benson Lee Grayson suggested that the Fillmore administration's ability to avoid potential problems is too often overlooked. Fillmore did not attend the convention but was gratified when it nominated General William Henry Harrison for president, with former Virginia Senator John Tyler his running mate. [43] Fillmore organized Western New York for the Harrison campaign, and the national ticket was elected, and Fillmore easily gained a fourth term in the House. He had three sisters and five brothers. The Union Continentals guarded Lincoln's funeral train in Buffalo. Their combined wealth allowed them to purchase a large house on Niagara Square in Buffalo, where they lived for the remainder of his life. Fillmore, sympathetic to the ambitions of his longtime friend, issued a letter in late 1851 stating that he did not seek a full term, but Fillmore was reluctant to rule it out for fear the party would be captured by the Sewardites. In his 1856 candidacy, he had little to say about immigration, focused instead on the preservation of the Union, and won only Maryland. The Whigs were not cohesive enough to survive the slavery imbroglio, while parties like the Anti-Masonics and Know-Nothings were too extremist. Nominated in 1852, after the convention deadlocked for 48 ballots, Pierce ran againt the Whig General Winfield Scott, his commander in the Mexican War. He enjoyed one aspect of his office because of his lifelong love of learning: he became deeply involved in the administration of the Smithsonian Institution as a member ex officio of its Board of Regents. The battle then moved to the House, which had a Northern majority because of the population. [121] Scarry suggested that the events of 1856, including the conflict in Kansas Territory and the caning of Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate, polarized the nation and made Fillmore's moderate stance obsolete. Nevertheless, Fillmore believed himself bound by his oath as president and by the bargain that had been made in the Compromise to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. [1] Harrison was expected to go along with anything Clay and other congressional Whig leaders proposed, but Harrison died on April 4, 1841. That led to lasting ill-feeling against Fillmore in many circles. The cabinet officers, as was customary when a new president took over, submitted their resignations but expected Fillmore to refuse and to allow them to continue in office. Fillmore retained many supporters, planned an ostensibly nonpolitical national tour, and privately rallied disaffected Whig politicians to preserve the Union and to back him in a run for president. Close. Many northern foes of slavery, such as Seward, gravitated toward the new Republican Party, but Fillmore saw no home for himself there. Statue by Bryant Baker at Buffalo City Hall, Buffalo, New York, 1930. President Fillmore and the Whigs: Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States of America, taking office upon the sudden. [119][120], Once Fillmore was back home in Buffalo, he had no excuse to make speeches, and his campaign stagnated through the summer and the fall of 1856. [144] Anna Prior, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2010, said that Fillmore's very name connotes mediocrity. The ongoing sectional conflict had already excited much discussion when on January 21, 1850, President Taylor sent a special message to Congress that urged the admission of California immediately and New Mexico later and for the Supreme Court to settle the boundary dispute whereby the state of Texas claimed much of what is now the state of New Mexico. "[142] He ascribed much of the abuse to a tendency to denigrate the presidents who served in the years just prior to the Civil War as lacking in leadership. He was already in discussions with Whig leaders and, on July 20, began to send new nominations to the Senate, with the Fillmore Cabinet to be led by Webster as Secretary of State. [134], In the 1864 presidential election Fillmore supported the Democratic candidate, George B. McClellan, for the presidency since he believed that the Democratic Party's plan for immediate cessation of fighting and allowing the seceded states to return with slavery intact to be the best possibility for restoring the Union. They formed the broad-based Whig Party from National Republicans, Anti-Masons, and disaffected Democrats. The Lincoln administration saw the speech as an attack on it that could not be tolerated in an election year, and Fillmore was criticized in many newspapers and was called a Copperhead and even a traitor. To avoid that, Pius remained seated throughout the meeting. Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800-March 8, 1874) served as America's 13th president from July 1850 to March 1853 having taken over after the death of his predecessor, Zachary Taylor. Although Fillmore worked to gain support among German-Americans, a major constituency, he was hurt among immigrants by the fact that in New York City, Whigs had supported a nativist candidate in the mayoral election earlier in 1844, and Fillmore and his party were tarred with that brush. Fillmore, Seward and Weed had met and come to a general agreement on how to divide federal jobs in New York. He carefully weighed the political pros and cons of meeting with Pius. Texas had attempted to assert its authority in New Mexico, and the state's governor, Peter H. Bell, had sent belligerent letters to President Taylor. A House committee, headed by Massachusetts's John Quincy Adams, condemned Tyler's actions. Fillmore made public appearances opening railroads and visiting the grave of Senator Clay but met with politicians outside the public eye during the late winter and the spring of 1854. [111], Such a comeback could not be under the auspices of the Whig Party, with its remnants divided by the KansasNebraska legislation, which passed with the support of Pierce. All these crises were resolved without the United States going to war or losing face. Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853, the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. Tired of Washington life and the conflict that had revolved around Tyler, Fillmore sought to return to his life and law practice in Buffalo. Fillmore initially belonged to the Anti-Masonic Party, but became a member of the Whig Party as formed in the mid-1830s.
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