Millard Fillmore was the 13th president of the United States. He was elected as the 12th US Vice President in 1848. He succeeded to the presidency in July 1850 upon the death of US President Zachary Taylor. Fillmore failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852 but gained the endorsement of the nativist Know Nothing Party four years later. He finished third in the 1856 presidential election.
About Millard Fillmore in brief
Millard Fillmore was the 13th president of the United States. He was elected as the 12th US Vice President in 1848. He succeeded to the presidency in July 1850 upon the death of US President Zachary Taylor. Fillmore failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852 but gained the endorsement of the nativist Know Nothing Party four years later. He finished third in the 1856 presidential election. He declared slavery an evil but that it was beyond the powers of the federal government. During the American Civil War, Fillmore denounced secession and agreed that the Union must be maintained by force if necessary, but he was critical of Abraham Lincoln’s war policies. In retirement, he remained involved in civic interests in retirement, including as chancellor of the University of Buffalo, which he had helped found in 1846. He died in Buffalo, New York, in 1887, at the age of 87. He is buried in the New York State Capitol in New York City, next to his wife, Mary Ann, who he married in 1832. He had a son, Nathaniel Fillmore, and a daughter, Mary Anne Fillmore. The Fillmore family was one of the earliest settlers of Bennington, Vermont, when it was founded in 1799. The family moved to Cayuga County, NY, in 1800, where they became tenant farmers. They later moved to nearby Sempronius County, New Hampshire, and later to the Finger Lakes region of New York. Millard was the second son of Nathaniel and Phoebe Fillmore Sr., a native of Franklin, Connecticut, who was a tenant farmer as well.
He became a successful attorney and politician, and was elected to New York Assembly in 1828 and to the House of Representatives in1832. In 1841, he was made the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He also served as Comptroller of the state, the first to hold that post by direct election. In 1850, he pushed Congress to pass the Compromise of 1850, a bargain that led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery. He supported US Navy expeditions to open trade in Japan, opposed French designs on Hawaii, and was embarrassed by Narciso López’s filibuster expeditions in Cuba. As the Whigs Party broke up after Fillmore’s presidency, many in his conservative wing joined the Know Nothings and formed the American Party. In his 1856 candidacy as the party’s nominee, he had little to say about immigration, focused instead on the preservation of the Union, and won only Maryland. The last Whig candidate to be a member of the White House was Winfield Scott, who ran for president as the Republican Party’s candidate in 1856 and won. He later became a prominent philanthropist and served as the chancellor of Buffalo University. He served as president of Buffalo until his death in 1881, when he was succeeded by his son Nathaniel Fill more than a decade later.
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