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Millard Fillmore
Thirteenth President
1850-1853
Born: January 7, 1800 in Cayuga County, New York
Died: March 8, 1874
SE Corner of 9th and St. Joseph Streets
In his rise from a log cabin to wealth and the White House, Millard Fillmore demonstrated that with work and common sense a man could make the American dream come true.
In 1823 he was admitted to the bar; seven years later he moved his law practice to Buffalo. As an associate of the Whig politician Thurlow Weed, Fillmore held state office and for eight years was a member of the House of Representatives. In 1848, while Comptroller of New York, he was elected Vice President in the Zachary Taylor administration.
Fillmore presided over the Senate during the months of nerve-wracking debates over the Compromise of 1850. Fillmore suddenly was thrust into the Presidency upon the death of Taylor in July 1850. A bill to admit California still aroused all the violent arguments for and against the extension of slavery, without any progress toward settling the major issues.
President Fillmore announced in favor of the Compromise. An effective strategy in Congress combined with Fillmore's pressure from the White House to give impetus to the Compromise movement. Breaking up a single legislative package, Stephen A. Douglas presented five separate bills to the Senate that would:
Admit California as a free state.
Settle the Texas boundary and compensate her.
Grant territorial status to New Mexico.
Place Federal officers at the disposal of slaveholders seeking fugitives.
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. His opponents 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.
As the Whig Party disintegrated in the 1850's, Fillmore refused to join the Republican Party; but, instead, in 1856 accepted the nomination for President of the Know Nothing, or American, Party. Throughout the Civil War he opposed President Lincoln and during Reconstruction supported President Johnson.
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