Search results
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853, the last president to have been a member of the Whig Party while in office.
- Union Continentals
Millard Fillmore: The Union Continentals was a volunteer...
- Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was an...
- Mary Abigail Fillmore
Mary Abigail Fillmore (March 27, 1832 – July 26, 1854) was...
- Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an...
- Thurlow Weed
Edward Thurlow Weed (November 15, 1797 – November 22, 1882)...
- Know Nothing Party
History Uncle Sam's youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing, an...
- Presidency
The presidency of Millard Fillmore began on July 9, 1850,...
- Union Continentals
- Overview
- Early life and career
- Presidency
Millard Fillmore (born January 7, 1800, Locke township, New York, U.S.—died March 8, 1874, Buffalo, New York) 13th president of the United States (1850–53), whose insistence on federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 alienated the North and led to the destruction of the Whig Party. Elected vice president in 1848, he became chief execu...
Fillmore was born in a log cabin to a poor family and was apprenticed to a wool carder at age 15. He received little formal education until he was 18, when he managed to obtain six consecutive months of schooling. Shortly afterward he secured his release from apprenticeship and started work in a law office, and in 1823 he was admitted to the bar. He married his first wife, Abigail Powers (Abigail Fillmore), in 1826.
Britannica Quiz
U.S. Presidents and Their Years in Office Quiz
Fillmore entered politics in 1828 as a member of the democratic and libertarian Anti-Masonic Movement and Anti-Masonic Party. In 1834 he followed his political mentor, Thurlow Weed, to the Whigs and was soon recognized as an outstanding leader of the party’s Northern wing. Following three terms in the New York state assembly (1829–32), he was elected to Congress (1833–35, 1837–43), where he became a devoted follower of Senator Henry Clay. Losing the New York gubernatorial election in 1844, he was easily elected the first state comptroller three years later. At the national Whig convention in 1848, Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War (1846–48), was nominated for president and Fillmore for vice president, largely through Clay’s sponsorship.
Fillmore believed that Whig success at the polls heralded the rise of a truly national party that would occupy a middle ground between sectional extremists of both North and South. This outlook was embodied in Clay’s Compromise of 1850, which sought to appease both sides on the slavery issue. Fillmore, though personally opposed to slavery, supported the compromise as necessary to preserving the Union. When the legislation was finally passed two months after Taylor’s death, the new President Fillmore felt obligated to respect the provision that required the federal government to aid in the capture and return of runaway slaves to their former owners (the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850), and he publicly announced that, if necessary, he would call upon the military to aid in the enforcement of this statute. Although this section of the compromise assuaged the South and had the effect of postponing the Civil War for 10 years, it also meant political death for Fillmore because of its extreme unpopularity in the North.
Fillmore was an early champion of American commercial expansion in the Pacific, and in 1853 he sent a fleet of warships, under the command of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, to Japan to force its shogunate government to alter its traditional isolationism and enter into trade and diplomatic relations with the United States. The resulting Treaty of Kanagawa (1854) led to similar agreements between Japan and other Western powers and marked the beginning of Japan’s transformation into a modern state.
In 1852 Fillmore was one of three presidential candidates of a divided Whig Party in its last national election, which it lost. He ran again in 1856 as the candidate of the Know-Nothing party (also known as the American Party), finishing third behind Democrat James Buchanan and Republican John C. Frémont. Fillmore then retired to Buffalo, where he became a leader in the city’s civic and cultural life. In 1858, some five years after the death of his wife Abigail, he married Caroline Carmichael McIntosh.
Are you a student? Get Britannica Premium for only 24.95 - a 67% discount!
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Oct 29, 2009 · Learn about the life and career of Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States who succeeded Zachary Taylor in 1850. Find out how he handled the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the sectional crisis over slavery.
People also ask
How did Millard Fillmore die?
Was Millard Fillmore a Whig?
When did Millard Fillmore become president?
Who was Millard Fillmore?
By Michael Holt. Born into desperate poverty at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Millard Fillmore climbed to the highest office in the land—and inherited a nation breaking into fragments over the question of slavery. Despite his best efforts, the lines of the future battles of the Civil War were drawn, and Fillmore found himself rejected ...
Learn about the life and presidency of Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States and the last nonpartisan leader. Find out how he handled the Compromise of 1850 and the slavery issue in the face of sectional tensions.
Apr 2, 2014 · Learn about the life and career of Millard Fillmore, who became the 13th U.S. president after Zachary Taylor's death in 1850. Find out how he handled the Compromise of 1850, the Treaty of Kanagawa, and the Civil War.
