Millard Fillmore: The 13th President
Annelys Reyes
Period # 3
Social Studies
Report # 1
Table of Contents
Title
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Table of
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Outline------------------------------------Page
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Introduction------------------------------Page
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Body of the
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Body of the
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Body of the
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Time
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Conclusion--------------------------------Page
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Bibliography-------------------------------Page
13
Outline
Life Before the Presidency
Fillmore in the Government
World
Slavery and the Compromise of
1850
Vice President and President
Antimason Into Whig
After the White House
Important Dates in Millard
Fillmore’s Life
Introduction
I choose to do this report on a presidents biography. The
president I choose was
Milliard Fillmore. He was the 13th president. In this
report I will tell you about
his personal life before and after the presidency.
Life Before the Presidency
Milliard Fillmore was
born on January 7, 1800. He was received by
family who
was poor and knew little.
They still struggled and failure. By the time of Milliards birth his
poor family moved to New York
from Vermont. In New York they settled in an upstate
farm between Syracuse and
Ithaca. The boy was the second child of eight children. He
was the oldest son.
Farming the lean, rocky soil of Cayuga County seemed to
be a losing of
proposition. This made the
family hungry sometimes. Eventhough
Millard had a very
reduced amount of schooling
due to the working at the farm, he still showed curiosity and
ambition. When he became a
teenager his father, Nathaniel Fillmore, arranged an
apprenticeship for his son
Millard. He did this because he thought Millard needed a trade
and perhaps relishing the
prospect of one fewer mouth to feed. A cloth maker paid the
family a small sum, and took
off with Milliard to another town. The man worked him
nearly to an early grave.
Milliard detested the drudgery of the cloth trade. He had barely
time left to read, but he
used his meager funds to buy a dictionary. He would read the
dictionary when the cloth
makers attentions where elsewhere.
The apprenticeship amounted to a little more than
slavery. With no doubt the
experience had considerable
impact on an issue that would control his political life. This
young man borrowed $30.00, an
dused them to buy the freedom of the apprenticeship.
Afterwards, he walked 100
miles to get to his family’s farm. Back home he resolved to
gain an education.he picked
up any book he could get in his hands and went to school in a
nearby town. Nathaniel
Fillmore saw that his son meant what he had said of being a
lawyer, so he arranged a
clerkship with a local judge that would also allow his son to
study. Millard attacked the
difficult bookwork with enjoyment that was untiring, in
teaching school to support
himself. His engagment proposal was accepted in 1819. By this
time Fillmore’s family had
already moved to East Aurora and has gave up their trouble in
farming. Millard taught
school and clerked. He even gained admission to the New York
bar in 1823. The young man
had opened a law practice in East Aurora. In 1826 he married
the lady that had accepted
his engagment proposal. His wife encouraged him in his job as a
lawyer and he prospered. The
couple had two kids, a boy in 1828 named Millard and a girl
in 1832 named Mary. A few
months after his marriage, a strange accident occurred and
got him into politics. There
was a hotbed of the new party lay in western New York, and
Fillmore joined it. Fillmore
wasn’t even 30 years old and he had already become
recognized in his area. Not
only that but the fledgling party’s leadership come up to him
about running for the New
york state legislature.
Fillmore in the Government
World
In 1829, Fillmore began to serve his first term out of
three of them in the state
assembly. The driving force
behind considerable legislation, he focused particular energy
on the issue of debtor
imprisonment. In that era, it was very common to throw people into
prison who couldn’t pay
debts. Not even remembering the poverty
he had just gone
through, he still worked hard
to pass laws forbidding such incarcerations. Such policies
played well with citizens in
his district, and they elected Fillmore to the U.S. house of
Representatives in 1832. At
that time Andrew Jackson was president. Fillmore was
reelected to Congress three
times between 1837 and 1843. His last term was from 1841 to
1843. He was named chairman
of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which dealt
with tax and financial
issues. He was aligned with the leader of the Whig Party, Henry
Clay. In 1843, Fillmore left
the House with hope of winning the Whig vice presidential
nomination for 1844 and join
Henry Clay on the ticket. Thurlow Weed convinced or
ordered Millard to run for
governor of New York instead. But he lost in a close race. He
blamed the defeat on
abolitionists, recent Catholic immigrants, and Thurlow Weed.
Fillmore felt that Weed had
undermined his candidacy, so he broke with the party boss. In
the end, Clay lost the
presidential election against Democrat James Polk. Since he was out
of a job he looked for
opportunities that would keep him in politics. In 1847 he won
election as New York
comptroller, or chief financial overseer.
Fillmore fostered internal
improvements and devised a
currency system that was the forerunner of the National
Banking Act. The National
Banking Act was of the year 1863. Fillmore’s winning margin
over his Democratic rival was
so wide that he was instantly seen as a leading Whig
candidate for the upcoming
1848 national campaign. At the Whig national convention that
year the nomination of Gen.
Zachary Taylor for president angered the supporters of Clay
and the opponents of slavery
extension in the territory gained by the Mexican War. The
practical Whig politicians
nominated Fillmore for vice president, feeling that he would heal
party wounds and carry New
York state.
Slavery and the Compromise
of 1850
Henry Clay had crafted
a series of proposal into an omnibus bill that became
known as the Compromise of
1850, a patchwork of legislation that forbade slavery in
some states that had been
formed from the new territory gained in the Mexican War. The
Compromise also established a
Fugitive Slave Law that guaranteed that runaway slaves,
apprehended anywhere in the
United States would be returned to their owners. Taylor
refused to take a stand, and
the Compromise bill was stalled in endless debates in the
Senate by mid-1850. But then
the unthinkable happened: the president died, possibly of
cholera. As a president,
Fillmore strongly supported the Compromise. Allying himself with
the Democratic senator
Stephen Douglas, Fillmore engineered its passage. Fillmore by
forcing these issues,
believed he had helped to safeguard the Union, but it soon became
clear that the Compromise,
rather than satisfying anyone, gave everyone something to
hate. Under the strains of
the failed agreement, the Whig Party began to come apart at the
seams. Millard on the
international stage dispatched Commodore perry to “open” Japan to
Western trade and worked to
keep the Hawaiian Islands out of European hands. Fillmore
refused to back an invasion
of Cuba by a group of southern adventures who wanted to
expand the South into a
slave-based Caribbean empire. The southerners blamed Fillmore
because the “filibustering”
expedition failed. At that time he offended Northerners by
enforcing the Fugitive Slave
Law in their region. Weary and dispirited, he tried to decline
to run again but was
prevailed upon to allow his name to be put forward only to lose the
nomination to General
Winfield Scott. Shortly thereafter, his beloved Abigail died,
followed by his
twenty-two-year-old daughter Mary.
In 1856, he ran for election as the presidential
candidate of the Whig-American
party. A mixture of the
remaining Whigs and the anti-immigrant American Party. The
votes of the electoral
college of Maryland, and 21 percent of the popular vote was in favor
of him.Even in defeat the
newly organized Republican Party eclipsed Fillmore and the
Whigs, winning 33 percent of
the vote. Fillmore’s poor performance marked the end of his
party. Millard Fillmore died
of a stroke in March 8, 1874.
Vice President and
President
As a vice president, Fillmore presided over the Senate in
capable fashion. The
senators generally bowed to
his admonitions, but Seward, who had been elected to the
Senate in January 1849,
regarded him with unrelenting hostility. A bitter struggle over
patronage in New York state
developed between the two men. President taylor’s
confidence was won by Seward
and his appointment became virtually
complete. Seward
and Fillmore also differed
over the proper method of dealing with the slavery crisis.
Fillmore favored the
Compromise of 1850, but Seward opposed it as granting too much to
the South and supported
Taylor’s plan for the prompt admission of California and possibly
New Mexico as states.
The Compromise made little progress during the spring and
early summer of 1850,
but on July 9, Taylor died,
and Fillmore became president of the United States. His choice
of Daniel Webster as
secretary of state and John J. Crittenden as attorney general
indicated his pro-Compromise
stand, and his message to Congress (Aug. 6, 1850)
proposed indemnification of
Texas for surrendering its claim to New Mexican territory.
The support Fillmore and his
cabinet gave to the Compromise was a help to ensure the
passage of its various bills.
Antimason Into Whig
On Fillmore’s first few days in the nation’s capital he
was getting acquainted with
his new surroundings. He met
many future colleagues, caught glimpses of some of the
famous personages who
gathered in Gadsby’s dining room and chatted with a few of the
national figures. He had the
good fortune to dine in the company of Senator Daniel
Webter who was enjoying,
temporarily, high popularity both for his defense of Jackson in
the nullification crisis and
his conciliatory, yet anti-Jackson, position in the great issue of
the day: the Bank of the
United States. The Senator’s great warmhearted nature meant
more to Fillmore than the
Webster political attitude.
After the White House
After Fillmore left the White House in 1853 he returned
to his law practice in
Buffalo. Abigail Fillmore
died that same year, and in 1858 he married Mrs. Caroline
Carmichael McIntosh, a widow.
In the 1856 election Fillmore ran for president as a
candidate of the American, or
Know-Nothing, Party. He only carried Maryland. The
Democrat that won the elction
was James Buchanan. When the Civil War broke out in
1861, Fillmore was a loyal
supporter of the Union, even though he was critical of
Lincoln’s policies.When he
was in Buffalo he was active in civic affairs. The founder of
the General Hospital was
Millard. He was also the president of the historical society,
where his letters are now
kept, and chancellor of the University of Buffalo.
IMPORTANT DATES IN MILLARD
FILLMORE’S LIFE
1800--- Born at Locke, New
York, January 7.
1823--- Asmitted to the bar;
began practicing law in East Aurora, New York.
1826--- Married Abigail
Powers.
1828--- Elected to the New
York legislature.
1830--- Moved to Buffalo, New
York.
1833-1843--- Served in the
United States House of Representatives.
1848--- Elected Vice
Presedent.
1850--- President Zachary
Taylor died in office July 9 and Fillmore sworn in as president July 10.
1850-1853--- 13th
president of the United States
1856--- Unsuccessful
presidential candidate of the American, or Know-Nothing, Party.
1874--- Died at Buffalo, New
York, March 8, 1874.
Conclusion
My project is on Millard Fillmore. He was the 13th
president. I learned that he was
a loyal supporter of the
Union when the Civil war broke out. He was also the founder of
the General Hospital. I think
Millard Fillmore had to go through a lot to be who he was,
especially when he was a
child. I also think that he is a perfect role model to this world
and that he should me
remembered for what he did.
Bibliography
The New Book Knowledge
Bernard Eisenberg
1983
Volume# 6
Millard Fillmore: Biography
of a President
Robert J. Rayback
1959
Book
Millard Fillmore
Printed on: 9/12/02
The Compromise President
Printed on: 9/8/02
The Compromise President
(Fast Facts)
Printed on: 9/8/02
The American Presidency:
Millard Fillmore
Glyndon G. Van Deusen
Printed on: 9/8/02
www.gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/bios/13pfillm.html
Millard Fillmore: 13th
President
www.usahistory.com/presidents/
Search: Millard Fillmore
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