Millard Fillmore
13th President of the United States
1800 CE to 1874 CE
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) is the 13th President of the United States (1850–1853) and the last member of the Whig Party to hold the office of president.
As Zachary Taylor's Vice President, he assumes the presidency after Taylor's death.
He is the only president to have been born in a centennial year.
Fillmore opposes the proposal to keep slavery out of the territories annexed during the Mexican–American War in order to appease the South and so supports the Compromise of 1850, which he signs, including the Fugitive Slave Act ("Bloodhound Law") which is part of the compromise.
On the foreign policy front, he furthers the rising trade with Japan and clashes with the French over Napoleon III's attempt to annex Hawaii and with the French and the British over the attempt of Narciso López to invade Cuba.
After his presidency, he joins the Know-Nothing movement; throughout the Civil War, he opposes President Abraham Lincoln and during Reconstruction supports President Andrew Johnson.
He is consistently included in the bottom 10 of historical rankings of Presidents of the United States.
Fillmore co-founds the University at Buffalo and helps found the Buffalo Historical Society, and Buffalo General Hospital.
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The Anti-Masonic party has practically superseded the National Republican party in New York since the election of 1828.
New York state assemblyman Millard Fillmore, elected to the US Congress in 1832 as an Anti-Mason, joins the Whig party, the anti-Jackson coalition.
By this time, however, the movement has lost its focus on Masonry, and has spread to neighboring states, becoming especially strong in Pennsylvania and Vermont.
City leaders of Buffalo had sought to establish a university in the city from the earliest days of the city.
A "University of Western New York" had been begun at Buffalo under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church and property had been purchased at North Street and College, (the site of the later YMCA), on the north side of the Allentown district.
This university was chartered by the state on April 8, 1836.
However, the project collapsed and no classes were ever offered, and only the layout of College Street remains.
The University of Buffalo is founded as a private medical school to train the doctors for the communities of Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and surrounding villages.
Future U.S. President Millard Fillmore, a lawyer who had recently served in the United States House of Representatives, is one of the principal founders.
James Platt White, who was instrumental in obtaining a charter for the university from the state legislature, will also teach the first class of eighty-nine men in obstetrics.
The doors will first open to students in 1847 and after associating with a hospital for teaching purposes, the first class of students will graduate the medical school in July 1847.
Fillmore serves as the school's first chancellor, a position he will hold until 1874, even as he serves in other capacities during that time, including Comptroller of New York, U.S. Vice President, and eventually President.
Fillmore's name now graces the continuing education school Millard Fillmore College on the South campus as well as the Millard Fillmore Academic Center, an academic and administrative services building at the core of the residential Joseph Ellicott Complex, on the North Campus.
Whig Zachary Taylor of Louisiana defeats Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan in the first U.S. presidential election held in every state on the same day, November 7, 1848, in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War.
Despite Taylor's unclear political affiliations and beliefs, and the Whig opposition to the Mexican–American War, the 1848 Whig National Convention had nominated the popular general over party stalwarts such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.
For vice president, the Whigs had nominated Millard Fillmore, a New York Whig known for his moderate views on slavery.
Incumbent President James K. Polk, a Democrat, had honored his promise not to seek re-election, leaving his party's nomination open.
The 1848 Democratic National Convention had rejected former President Martin Van Buren's bid for a second term, instead nominating Senator Cass.
Van Buren had broke from his party to lead the ticket of the Free Soil Party, which opposes to the extension of slavery into the territories.
The Whig choice of Zachary Taylor had been made almost out of desperation; he is not clearly committed to Whig principles, but he is popular for leading the war effort.
The Democrats have a record of prosperity and had acquired the Mexican cession and parts of Oregon country.
It appeared almost certain that they would win unless the Whigs picked Taylor.
Taylor wins a plurality of the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote, while Van Buren wins 10.1% of the popular vote, a strong showing for a third party candidate.
Taylor's victory make him the second of two Whigs to win a presidential election, following William Henry Harrison's victory in the 1840 presidential election.
Like Harrison, Taylor will die during his term, and he will be succeeded by Fillmore.
Discounting Republican Abraham Lincoln's 1864 re-election on the National Union ticket, Taylor is the most recent individual who was not a member of the Democratic or Republican parties to win a presidential election.
July 4, 1850, was a very hot day in Washington, and President Taylor, who attended Fourth of July ceremonies, refreshed himself, likely with cold milk and cherries.
What he consumed probably gave him gastroenteritis, and he died on July 9.
Taylor, nicknamed "Old Rough and Ready", had gained a reputation for toughness through his military campaigning in the heat, and his sudden death comes as a shock to the nation.
President Fillmore is sworn in on July 10.
The Compromise of 1850, a package of five separate bills introduced by Whig Senator Henry Clay (who failed to get them through himself; they had been shepherded to passage in Congress by Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas and Whig Senator Daniel Webster), attempts to resolve the territorial and slavery controversies arising from the Mexican-American War.
Opposed by Senator John C. Calhoun, the Compromise was possible after the death of President Zachary Taylor, who was in opposition also.
Succeeding President Taylor is his Vice President, Millard Fillmore, who is a strong supporter of the compromise.
The five laws balance the interests of the slave states of the South and the free states.
California is admitted as a free state on September 9; Texas receives financial compensation for relinquishing claim to lands west of the Rio Grande in what is now New Mexico; the territory of New Mexico (including present-day Arizona and Utah) is organized without any specific prohibition of slavery; the slave trade (but not slavery itself) is abolished in Washington, D.C.; and the stringent Fugitive Slave Law is passed on September 18, requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves.
Although the Compromise temporarily defuses sectional tensions in the United States, postponing the secession crisis and the American Civil War, California’s admission to the Union upsets the balance between slave and free states.
The Compromise drops the Wilmot Proviso, which never became law but would have banned slavery in territory acquired from Mexico.
Instead the Compromise further endorses the doctrine of "Popular Sovereignty" for the New Mexico Territory.
The Mormon pioneers had originally planned to petition for territorial status after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had made the entire Southwest United states soil in 1848, but learning that California and New Mexico were applying for statehood, the settlers of the area had in 1849 applied for statehood with an ambitious plan for a new state called Deseret.
The United States Congress rebuffs the settlers in 1850 and on September 9 establishes the Utah Territory, which is much smaller than the proposed state of Deseret, but still contains all of the present states of Nevada and Utah as well as pieces of modern Wyoming and Colorado.
It is created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore, named after President Millard Fillmore, is designated the capital.
The territory is given the name Utah after the Ute tribe of Native Americans.
The Ostend Manifesto is the high watermark of United States interest in acquiring Cuba peacefully in the 1850s.
Other efforts, however, prove bolder.
During the administrations of Zachary Taylor (president, 1849-50) and Millard Fillmore (president, 1850-53), pro-slavery elements are discouraged by the lack of official support.
Some had turn to filibustering expeditions, hoping that they might lead to the overthrow of Spanish power on the island.
The principal filibusterer was Narciso López, a Venezuelan-born Spanish general.
He lived in Cuba and had become involved in a conspiracy and various expeditions to the island in an attempt to annex Cuba to the United States.
The incumbent Millard Fillmore, who had acceded to the presidency after the death of President Zachary Taylor in 1850, is one of three presidential candidates of a divided Whig Party in its last national election in 1852.
Due to Fillmore's support of the Compromise of 1850 and his enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, he is popular in the South but opposed by many Northern Whigs.
On the 53rd ballot of the 1852 Whig National Convention, Scott defeats Fillmore to clinch the party's nomination.
The Democrats are divided among four major candidates, who had trade leads through the first forty-eight ballots of the 1852 Democratic National Convention.
On the 49th ballot, dark horse candidate Franklin Pierce had won his party's nomination.
The Free Soil Party, a third party opposed to the extension of slavery into the territories, nominates Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire.
Pierce, a political unknown, sports side-whiskers more modest than those worn by the elderly Scott.
With no major policy differences between the two major candidates, the election had become a contest of personalities.
Though Scott had been the top U.S. general in the Mexican–American War and had had a long and distinguished military career, Pierce had also served in the Mexican–American War.
The Whigs are badly divided between their Northern and Southern wings, and Scott's anti-slavery reputation had further damaged his campaign in the South.
A group of Southern Whigs and a separate group of Southern Democrats had each nominated their own tickets, but both efforts failed to attract support.
Pierce and his running mate William R. King win by a comfortable majority in the popular vote and carry twenty-seven of the thirty-one states, while Scott wins 43.9% of the popular vote.
Pierce has won the highest share of the electoral vote since James Monroe's uncontested 1820 re-election.
In the aftermath of this overwhelming defeat the Whig Party will rapidly collapse as a national political force as internal tensions regarding the issue of slavery cause mass abandonment of the party.