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Millard Fillmore

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: USA Presidents

   Millard Fillmore
   Millard Fillmore
     __________________________________________________________________

   13th President of the United States
   In office
   July 9, 1850 –  March 4, 1853
   Vice President(s)   none
   Preceded by Zachary Taylor
   Succeeded by Franklin Pierce
     __________________________________________________________________

   12th Vice President of the United States
   In office
   March 4, 1849 –  July 9, 1850
   President Zachary Taylor
   Preceded by George Dallas
   Succeeded by William R. King
     __________________________________________________________________

   Born January 7, 1800
   Summerhill, New York
   Died March 8, 1874
   Buffalo, New York
   Political party Whig
   Spouse Abigail Powers Fillmore (1st wife)
   Mrs. Caroline Carmichael McIntosh (2nd wife)
   Religion Unitarian
   Signature

   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 that office. He succeeded from
   the Vice Presidency on the death of President Zachary Taylor, who died
   of acute gastroenteritis, becoming the second U.S. President to assume
   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 again failed to win election as President as the Know Nothing Party
   candidate.

Early life

   Fillmore was born in poverty to Nathaniel Fillmore and Phoebe Millard
   Fillmore in Summerhill, New York as the second of nine children and the
   eldest son. Though a Unitarian in later life, Fillmore was descended
   from Scottish Presbyterians on his father's side, and English
   dissenters on his mother's. He was first apprenticed to a fuller to
   learn the clothmaking trade. He struggled to obtain an education under
   frontier conditions, attending New Hope Academy for six months. Later,
   Fillmore bought out his apprenticeship and moved to Buffalo, New York
   to continue his studies. He was admitted to the bar in 1823 and began
   his law practice in East Aurora. In 1828, he was elected to the New
   York Legislature and served from 1829 to 1831.

Early political career

   Fillmore was elected as a Whig to the 23rd Congress (1833-1835); he was
   also 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 1848 to 1850.

Vice-Presidency

   Whig Party banner from 1848 with candidates Zachary Taylor and Millard
   Fillmore.
   Enlarge
   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
   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.)

   Taylor and Fillmore disagreed 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 as a means of appeasing 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 the president that, should there
   be a tie vote on Henry Clay's bill, he would vote in favour of it.

Presidency 1850–1853

Policies

   Fillmore ascended to the presidency upon the sudden and unexpected
   death of President Taylor in July 1850. The sudden change in leadership
   also signaled 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 of 1850.

   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 his
   support 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
   shift 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 gave 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 for lost lands.
     * Grant territorial status to New Mexico.
     * Place Federal officers at the disposal of slaveholders seeking
       escapees—the 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 sending
   of Commodore Matthew C. Perry to open Japan to Western trade, though
   Perry did not reach Japan until Franklin Pierce had replaced Fillmore
   as president.

Administration and Cabinet

   Fillmore postage stamp
   Enlarge
   Fillmore postage stamp
   OFFICE                    NAME                  TERM
   President                 Millard Fillmore      1850–1853
   Vice President            None
   Secretary of State        Daniel Webster        1850–1852
                             Edward Everett        1852–1853
   Secretary of the Treasury Thomas Corwin         1850–1853
   Secretary of War          Charles Magill Conrad 1850–1853
   Attorney General          John J. Crittenden    1850–1853
   Postmaster General        Nathan K. Hall        1850–1852
                             Samuel D. Hubbard     1852–1853
   Secretary of the Navy     William A. Graham     1850–1852
                             John P. Kennedy       1852–1853
   Secretary of the Interior Thomas McKennan       1850
                             Alexander Stuart      1850–1853

Supreme Court appointments

   Fillmore appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the
   United States:
     * Benjamin Robbins Curtis - 1851

States admitted to the Union

     * California – September 9, 1850

Legacy

   Some 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

   Statue of Fillmore outside City Hall in downtown Buffalo, New York
   Enlarge
   Statue of Fillmore outside City Hall in downtown Buffalo, New York

   Fillmore was one of the founders of the University of Buffalo. The
   school was chartered by an act of the New York State Legislature on May
   11, 1846, and at first was only a medical school . Fillmore was the
   first Chancellor, a position he maintained while both Vice President
   and President. Upon completing his presidency, Fillmore returned to
   Buffalo, where he continued to serve as chancellor.

   While touring Europe in 1855, Fillmore was offered an honorary Doctor
   of Civil Law (D.C.L.) degree by the University of Oxford. Fillmore
   turned down the honour, explaining that he had neither the "literary
   nor scientific attainment" to justify the degree. He is also quoted as
   having explained that he "lacked the benefit of a classical education"
   and could not, therefore, understand the Latin text of the diploma,
   then joking that he believed "no man should accept a degree he cannot
   read."

   By 1856, Fillmore's Whig Party had ceased to exist, having fallen apart
   due to dissension over the slavery issue, and especially the
   Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Fillmore refused to join the new
   Republican Party, where many former Whigs found refuge. Instead,
   Fillmore joined the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic American Party, the
   political organ of the Know-Nothing movement. He would run in the
   election of 1856 as their candidate, attempting to win a
   non-consecutive second term as President (a feat that has been
   accomplished only once in American politics, by Grover Cleveland).
   Fillmore finished third, carrying only the state of Maryland and its
   eight electoral votes, but he won 21.6% of the popular vote, one of the
   best showings ever by a Presidential third-party candidate.

   On February 10, 1858, he married a widow Mrs. Caroline Carmichael
   McIntosh.

   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)
     * A bookworm who 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
       Republican, with Democrat Andrew Johnson as his running mate).
     * Fillmore, Utah, located in Millard County, was named after this
       president.
     * ESPN anchor Neil Everett often makes references to Millard Fillmore
       while hosting Sportscenter.
     * Fillmore County, Minnesota was named after this president.

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