U.S. President #13: Millard Fillmore (Part I)

Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States (1850–1853), the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. A former U.S. representative from New York, Fillmore was elected the nation's 12th vice president in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency in July 1850 upon the death of President Zachary Taylor. He was instrumental in the passing of the Compromise of 1850, a bargain that led to a brief truce in the battle over slavery. He failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852, but he gained the endorsement of the nativist Know Nothing Party four years later, finishing third in the 1856 presidential election.

Fillmore was born into poverty in the Finger Lakes area of New York state—his parents were tenant farmers during his formative years. Though he had little formal schooling, he rose from poverty through diligent study and became a successful attorney. He became prominent in the Buffalo area as an attorney and politician, and was elected to the New York Assembly in 1828, and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1832. Initially, he belonged to the Anti-Masonic Party, but became a Whig as the party formed in the mid-1830s; he was a rival for state party leadership with editor Thurlow Weed and Weed's protégé, William H. Seward. Throughout his career, Fillmore declared slavery an evil, but one beyond the powers of the federal government, whereas Seward was not only openly hostile to slavery, he argued that the federal government had a role to play in ending it. Fillmore was an unsuccessful candidate for Speaker of the House when the Whigs took control of the chamber in 1841 but was made Ways and Means Committee chairman. Defeated in bids for the Whig nomination for vice president in 1844, and for New York governor the same year, Fillmore was elected Comptroller of New York in 1847, the first to hold that post by direct election.
As vice president, Fillmore was largely ignored by Taylor, even in the dispensing of patronage in New York, on which Taylor consulted Weed and Seward. In his capacity as President of the Senate, however, he presided over angry debates there as Congress decided whether to allow slavery in the Mexican Cession. Fillmore supported Henry Clay's Omnibus Bill (the basis of the 1850 Compromise) though Taylor did not. Upon becoming president in July 1850, Fillmore dismissed Taylor's cabinet and pushed Congress to pass the Compromise. The Fugitive Slave Act, expediting the return of escaped slaves to those who claimed ownership, was a controversial part of the Compromise. Fillmore felt himself duty-bound to enforce it, though it damaged his popularity and also the Whig Party, which was torn North from South. In foreign policy Fillmore supported U.S. Navy expeditions to open trade in Japan, opposed French designs on Hawaii, and was embarrassed by Narciso López's filibuster expeditions to Cuba. He sought election to a full term in 1852 but was passed over by the Whigs in favor of Winfield Scott.
As the Whig Party broke up after Fillmore's presidency, many in Fillmore's conservative wing joined the Know Nothings, forming the American Party. In his 1856 candidacy as that party's nominee Fillmore had little to say about immigration, focusing instead on the preservation of the Union, and won only Maryland. Fillmore was active in many civic endeavors—he helped in founding the University at Buffalo and served as its first chancellor. During the American Civil War, Fillmore denounced secession and agreed that the Union must be maintained by force if necessary, but was critical of the war policies of Abraham Lincoln. After peace was restored, he supported the Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson. Though he is largely obscure today, Fillmore has been praised by some for his foreign policy, and criticized by others for his enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act and his association with the Know Nothings.
Early life and career
Millard Fillmore was born on January 7, 1800, in a log cabin,[b] on a farm in what is now Moravia, Cayuga County, in the Finger Lakes region of New York. His parents were Phoebe Millard and Nathaniel Fillmore—he was the second of eight children and the oldest son.  Nathaniel Fillmore was the son of Nathaniel Fillmore Sr. (1739–1814), a native of Franklin, Connecticut, who became one of the earliest settlers of Bennington, Vermont, when it was founded in the territory then called the New Hampshire Grants.
Nathaniel Fillmore and Phoebe Millard moved from Vermont in 1799, seeking better opportunities than were available on Nathaniel's stony farm, but the title to their Cayuga County land proved defective, and the Fillmore family moved to nearby Sempronius, where they leased land as tenant farmers, and Nathaniel occasionally taught school.  Historian Tyler Anbinder described Fillmore's childhood as "... one of hard work, frequent privation, and virtually no formal schooling".
Over time, Nathaniel became more successful in Sempronius, though during Millard's formative years the family endured severe poverty.[c] Nathaniel became sufficiently regarded that he was chosen to serve in local offices including justice of the peace.  In hopes his oldest son would learn a trade, he convinced Millard at age fourteen not to enlist for the War of 1812  and apprenticed him to cloth maker Benjamin Hungerford in Sparta.  Fillmore was relegated to menial labor; unhappy at not learning any skills, he left Hungerford's employ.  His father then placed him in the same trade at a mill in New Hope.  Seeking to better himself, Millard bought a share in a circulating library and read all the books he could.  In 1819, he took advantage of idle time at the mill to enroll at a new academy in the town, where he met a classmate, Abigail Powers, and fell in love with her.
Later in 1819, Nathaniel moved the family to Montville, a hamlet of Moravia.  Appreciating his son's talents, Nathaniel followed his wife's advice and persuaded Judge Walter Wood, the Fillmores' landlord and the wealthiest person in the area, to allow Millard to be his law clerk for a trial period.  Wood agreed to employ young Fillmore and to supervise him as he read law.  Fillmore earned money teaching school for three months and bought out his mill apprenticeship.  He left Wood after 18 months—the judge paid him almost nothing—and the two quarreled after Fillmore, unaided, earned a small sum advising a farmer in a minor lawsuit.  Refusing to pledge not to do it again, Fillmore gave up his clerkship.  Nathaniel again moved the family, and Millard accompanied them west to East Aurora, in Erie County, near Buffalo.  There Nathaniel purchased a farm which became prosperous.
In 1821, Fillmore turned 21 and reached adulthood.  He taught school in East Aurora and accepted a few cases in justice of the peace courts, which did not require the practitioner to be a licensed attorney.  He moved to Buffalo the following year and continued his study of law—first while teaching school, and then in the law office of Asa Rice and Joseph Clary. At that time he also became engaged to Abigail Powers. In 1823, he was admitted to the New York bar, declined offers from Buffalo law firms, and returned to East Aurora to establish a practice as the town's only resident lawyer.  Later in life, Fillmore said that initially he lacked the self-confidence to practice in the larger city of Buffalo; his biographer, Paul Finkelman, suggested that after being under others' thumbs all his life, Fillmore enjoyed the independence of his East Aurora practice.[24] Millard and Abigail wed on February 5, 1826. They would have two children, Millard Powers Fillmore (1828–1889) and Mary Abigail Fillmore (1832–1854).
Buffalo politician
Other members of the Fillmore family were active in politics and government in addition to Nathaniel's service as a justice of the peace. Millard's grandfather, Nathaniel Sr., served in local offices in Bennington—as hayward ("hedge warden"), highway surveyor and tax collector. Millard then also became interested in politics—the rise of the Anti-Masonic Party in the late 1820s provided his initial attraction and entry.
Many Anti-Masons were opposed to the presidential candidacy of General Andrew Jackson, a Mason. Fillmore was a delegate to the New York convention that endorsed President John Quincy Adams for re-election and also served at two Anti-Masonic conventions in the summer of 1828.  At the conventions, Fillmore and one of the early political bosses, newspaper editor Thurlow Weed, met and impressed each other.  By then, Fillmore was the leading citizen in East Aurora. He successfully sought election to the New York State Assembly and served in Albany for three one-year terms (1829 to 1831).  Fillmore's 1828 election was in contrast to the victories of the Jacksonian Democrats (soon the Democrats), who swept the general into the White House and their party to a majority in Albany—thus Fillmore was in the minority in the Assembly. He proved effective anyway, promoting legislation to provide court witnesses the option of taking a non-religious oath, and in 1830 abolishing imprisonment for debt.[10] By then, much of Fillmore's legal practice was in Buffalo and later that year he moved there with his family; he did not seek re-election in 1831.
Fillmore was also successful as a lawyer. Buffalo was then in a period of rapid expansion, recovering from British conflagration during the War of 1812 and becoming the western terminus of the Erie Canal. Court cases from outside Erie County began falling to Fillmore's lot, and he reached prominence as a lawyer in Buffalo before he moved there. He took his lifelong friend Nathan K. Hall as a law clerk in East Aurora—Hall became Fillmore's partner in Buffalo and his postmaster general as president. Buffalo was legally a village when Fillmore arrived, and although the bill to incorporate it as a city passed the legislature after Fillmore had left the Assembly, he helped draft the city charter. In addition to his legal practice, Fillmore helped found the Buffalo High School Association, joined the lyceum and attended the local Unitarian church; he became a leading citizen of Buffalo.  He was also active in the New York Militia and attained the rank of major as inspector of the 47th Brigade.
Congressman
In 1832, Fillmore ran successfully for the House of Representatives. The Anti-Masonic presidential candidate, William Wirt, former attorney general, won only Vermont, as President Jackson easily gained re-election. At the time, Congress convened its annual session in December, and so Fillmore had to wait more than a year after his election to take his seat. Fillmore, Weed, and others realized that opposition to Masonry was too narrow a foundation on which to build a national party. They formed the broad-based Whig Party from National Republicans, Anti-Masons, and disaffected Democrats. The Whigs were initially united by their opposition to Jackson, but became a major party by expanding their platform to include support for economic growth through rechartering the Second Bank of the United States and federally funded internal improvements including roads, bridges, and canals.  Weed joined the Whigs before Fillmore and became a power within the party; his anti-slavery views were stronger than Fillmore's (who disliked slavery but considered the federal government powerless over it), and closer to those of another prominent New York Whig, William H. Seward of Auburn, who was also seen as a Weed protégé.
In Washington, Fillmore urged the expansion of Buffalo harbor, a decision under federal jurisdiction, and privately lobbied Albany for the expansion of the state-owned Erie Canal. Even during the 1832 campaign, Fillmore's affiliation as an Anti-Mason had been uncertain, and he rapidly shed the label once sworn in. Fillmore came to the notice of the influential Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster, who took the new congressman under his wing. Fillmore became a firm supporter, and the close relationship between the two would continue until Webster's death late in Fillmore's presidency.  Despite Fillmore's support of the Second Bank as a means for national development, he did not speak in the congressional debates in which some advocated renewing its charter, although Jackson had previously vetoed legislation for a charter renewal.  Fillmore supported building infrastructure, voting in favor of navigation improvements on the Hudson River and constructing a bridge across the Potomac River.
Anti-Masonry was still strong in Western New York, though it was petering out nationally. When the Anti-Masons did not nominate him for a second term in 1834, Fillmore declined the Whig nomination, seeing that the two parties would split the anti-Jackson vote and elect the Democrat. Despite Fillmore's departure from office, he was a rival for state party leadership with Seward, the unsuccessful 1834 Whig gubernatorial candidate.  Fillmore spent his time out of office building his law practice and boosting the Whig Party, which gradually absorbed most of the Anti-Masons.  By 1836 Fillmore was confident enough of anti-Jackson unity that he accepted the Whig nomination for Congress. Democrats, led by their presidential candidate, Vice President Martin Van Buren, were victorious nationwide and in Van Buren's home state of New York, but Western New York voted Whig and sent Fillmore back to Washington.
Second through fourth terms
Van Buren, faced with the economic Panic of 1837, caused in part by lack of confidence in private banknote issues after Jackson had instructed the government to accept only gold or silver, called a special session of Congress. Government money had been held in so-called "pet banks" since Jackson had withdrawn it from the Second Bank; Van Buren proposed to place funds in sub-treasuries, government depositories that would not lend money. Believing that government funds should be lent to develop the country, Fillmore felt this would lock the nation's limited supply of gold money away from commerce. Van Buren's sub-treasury and other economic proposals passed, but as hard times continued, the Whigs saw an increased vote in the 1837 elections and captured the New York Assembly. This set up a fight for the 1838 gubernatorial nomination. Fillmore supported the leading Whig vice-presidential candidate from 1836, Francis Granger; Weed preferred Seward. Fillmore was embittered when Weed got the nomination for Seward but campaigned loyally; Seward was elected, while Fillmore won another term in the House.
The rivalry between Fillmore and Seward was affected by the growing anti-slavery movement. Although Fillmore disliked slavery, he saw no reason it should be a political issue. Seward, however, was hostile to slavery and made that clear in his actions as governor, refusing to return slaves claimed by Southerners. When the Buffalo bar proposed Fillmore for the position of vice-chancellor of the eighth judicial district in 1839, Seward refused and nominated Frederick Whittlesey—indicating that if the state senate rejected Whittlesey, he still would not appoint Fillmore.
Fillmore was active in the discussions of presidential candidates that preceded the Whig National Convention for the 1840 race. He initially supported General Winfield Scott, but really wanted to defeat Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, a slaveholder he felt could not carry New York state. Fillmore did not attend the convention, but was gratified when it nominated General William Henry Harrison for president, with former Virginia senator John Tyler his running mate.  Fillmore organized Western New York for the Harrison campaign, and the national ticket was elected, while Fillmore easily gained a fourth term in the House.
At the urging of Senator Clay, Harrison quickly called a special session of Congress. With the Whigs able to organize the House for the first time, Fillmore sought the Speakership, but it went to a Clay acolyte, John White of Kentucky.  Nevertheless, Fillmore was made chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.  Harrison was expected to go along with anything Clay and other congressional Whig leaders proposed, but died on April 4, 1841, elevating Vice President Tyler to the presidency. Tyler, a onetime maverick Democrat, soon broke with Clay over congressional proposals for a national bank to stabilize the currency, which he vetoed twice, leading to his expulsion from the Whig Party. Fillmore remained on the fringes of that conflict, generally supporting the congressional Whig position, but his chief achievement as Ways and Means chairman was the Tariff of 1842. The existing tariff did not protect manufacturing, and part of the revenue was distributed to the states, a decision made in better times that was by then depleting the Treasury. Fillmore prepared a bill raising tariff rates that was popular in the country, but the continuation of distribution assured a Tyler veto and much political advantage for the Whigs. Once Tyler vetoed it, a House committee headed by Massachusetts' John Quincy Adams condemned his actions. Fillmore prepared a second bill, this time omitting distribution, and when it reached his desk, Tyler signed it, but in the process offended his erstwhile Democratic allies. Thus, Fillmore not only achieved his legislative goal but managed to isolate Tyler politically.
Fillmore received praise for the tariff, but in July 1842 he announced he would not seek re-election. The Whigs nominated him anyway, but he refused it. Tired of Washington life and the conflict that had revolved around President Tyler, Fillmore sought to return to his life and law practice in Buffalo. He continued to be active in the lame duck session of Congress that followed the 1842 elections and returned to Buffalo in April 1843. According to his biographer, Scarry: "Fillmore concluded his Congressional career at a point when he had become a powerful figure, an able statesman at the height of his popularity".  Thurlow Weed deemed Congressman Fillmore "able in debate, wise in council, and inflexible in his political sentiments".
National figure
Out of office, Fillmore continued his law practice and made long-neglected repairs to his Buffalo home. He remained a major political figure, leading the committee of notables that welcomed John Quincy Adams to Buffalo. The former president expressed his regret at Fillmore's absence from the halls of Congress. Some urged Fillmore to run for vice president with Clay, the consensus Whig choice for president in 1844. Horace Greeley wrote privately that "my own first choice has long been Millard Fillmore"; others thought Fillmore should try to win back the governor's mansion for the Whigs.  Seeking to return to Washington, Fillmore wanted the vice presidency.
Fillmore hoped to gain the endorsement of the New York delegation to the national convention, but Weed wanted the vice presidency for Seward, with Fillmore as governor. Seward, however, withdrew before the 1844 Whig National Convention. When Weed's replacement vice presidential hopeful, Willis Hall, fell ill, Weed sought to defeat Fillmore's candidacy to force him to run for governor. Weed's attempts to boost Fillmore as a gubernatorial candidate caused the former congressman to write, "I am not willing to be treacherously killed by this pretended kindness ... do not suppose for a minute that I think they desire my nomination for governor."  New York sent a delegation to the convention in Baltimore pledged to support Clay, but with no instructions as to how to vote for vice president. Weed told out-of-state delegates that the New York party preferred to have Fillmore as its gubernatorial candidate, and after Clay was nominated for president, the second place on the ticket fell to former New Jersey senator Theodore Frelinghuysen.
Putting a good face on his defeat, Fillmore met and publicly appeared with Frelinghuysen, quietly spurning Weed's offer to get him nominated as governor at the state convention. Fillmore's position in opposing slavery, but only at the state level, made him acceptable as a statewide Whig candidate, and Weed saw to it the pressure on Fillmore increased. Fillmore had stated previously that a convention had the right to draft anyone for political service, and Weed got the convention to choose Fillmore, who had broad support, despite his reluctance.
The Democrats nominated Senator Silas Wright as their gubernatorial candidate and former Tennessee governor James K. Polk for president. Although Fillmore worked to gain support among German-Americans, a major constituency, he was hurt among immigrants by the fact that New York City Whigs had supported a nativist candidate in the mayoral election earlier in 1844—Fillmore and his party were tarred with that brush.  He was not friendly to immigrants and blamed his defeat on "foreign Catholics".  Clay was beaten as well.  Fillmore's biographer Paul Finkelman suggested that Fillmore's hostility to immigrants and his weak position on slavery defeated him for governor.
In 1846, Fillmore was involved in the founding of what is now the University at Buffalo (earlier the University of Buffalo) and became its first chancellor; he served until his death in 1874. He had opposed the annexation of Texas, and spoke against the subsequent Mexican–American War, seeing it as a contrivance to extend slavery's realm. Fillmore was angered when President Polk vetoed a river and harbors bill that would have benefited Buffalo, and wrote, "May God save the country for it is evident the people will not."  At the time, New York governors served a two-year term, and Fillmore could have had the Whig nomination in 1846, had he wanted it. He actually came within one vote of it while maneuvering to get the nomination for his supporter, John Young, who was elected. A new constitution for New York state provided that the office of comptroller was made elective, as were the attorney general and some other positions that were formerly chosen by the state legislature. Fillmore's work in finance while Ways and Means chairman made him an obvious candidate for comptroller, and he was successful in getting the Whig nomination for the 1847 election. With a united party at his back, Fillmore won by 38,000 votes, the largest margin a Whig candidate for statewide office would ever achieve in New York.
Before moving to Albany to take office on January 1, 1848, he left his law firm and rented out his house. Fillmore received positive reviews for his service as comptroller. In that office, he was a member of the state canal board, supported its expansion and saw that it was managed competently. He secured an enlargement of Buffalo's canal facilities. The comptroller regulated the banks, and Fillmore stabilized the currency by requiring that state-chartered banks keep New York and federal bonds to the value of the banknotes they issued—a similar plan was adopted by Congress in 1864.
Election of 1848
Nomination
President Polk had pledged not to seek a second term, and with gains in Congress during the 1846 election cycle, the Whigs were hopeful of taking the White House in 1848. The party's perennial candidates, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, each wanted the nomination and amassed support from congressional colleagues. Many rank and file Whigs backed the Mexican War hero, General Zachary Taylor, for president. Although Taylor was extremely popular, many northerners had qualms about electing a Louisiana slaveholder at a time of sectional tension over whether slavery should be allowed in the territories ceded by Mexico. Taylor's uncertain political views gave others pause—career Army, he had never cast a ballot for president, though he stated that he was a Whig supporter, and some feared they might elect another Tyler, or another Harrison.
With the nomination undecided, Weed maneuvered for New York to send an uncommitted delegation to the 1848 Whig National Convention in Philadelphia, hoping to be a kingmaker in position to place former governor Seward on the ticket or to get him high national office. He persuaded Fillmore to support an uncommitted ticket, though he did not tell the Buffaloan of his hopes for Seward. Weed was an influential editor, and Fillmore tended to cooperate with him for the greater good of the Whig Party. But Weed had sterner opponents, including Governor Young, who disliked Seward and did not want to see him gain high office.
Despite Weed's efforts, Taylor was nominated on the fourth ballot, to the anger of Clay's supporters and of Conscience Whigs from the Northeast. When order was restored, John A. Collier, a New Yorker and a Weed opponent, addressed the convention. Delegates hung on his every word as he described himself as a Clay partisan; he had voted for Clay on each ballot. He eloquently described the grief of the Clay supporters, frustrated again in their battle to make Clay president. Collier warned of a fatal breach in the party and stated that only one thing could prevent it: the nomination of Fillmore for vice president, whom he depicted incorrectly as a strong Clay supporter. Fillmore in fact agreed with many of Clay's positions, but did not back him for president, and was not in Philadelphia. Delegates did not know this was false, or at least greatly exaggerated, and there was a large reaction in Fillmore's favor. At the time, the presidential candidate did not automatically pick his running mate, and despite the efforts of Taylor's managers to get the nomination for their choice, Abbott Lawrence of Massachusetts, Fillmore became the Whig nominee for vice president on the second ballot.
Weed had wanted the vice-presidential nomination for Seward (who attracted few delegate votes), and Collier had acted to frustrate them in more ways than one, for with the New Yorker Fillmore as vice president, under the political customs of the time, no one from that state could be named to the cabinet. Fillmore was accused of complicity in Collier's actions, but this was never substantiated.  Nevertheless, there were sound reasons for Fillmore's selection, as he was a proven vote-getter from electorally crucial New York, and his track record in Congress and as a candidate showed his devotion to Whig doctrine, allaying fears he might be another Tyler were something to happen to General Taylor. Delegates remembered him for his role in the Tariff of 1842, and he had been mentioned as a vice-presidential possibility along with Lawrence and Ohio's Thomas Ewing. His rivalry with Seward (already known for anti-slavery views and statements) made him more acceptable in the South.
General election campaign
It was customary in mid-19th century America for a candidate for high office not to appear to seek it. Thus, Fillmore remained at the comptroller's office in Albany and made no speeches; the 1848 campaign was conducted in the newspapers and with addresses made by surrogates at rallies. The Democrats nominated Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan for president, with General William O. Butler as his running mate, but it became a three-way fight as the Free Soil Party, opposed to the spread of slavery, chose former president Van Buren.  There was a crisis among the Whigs when Taylor also accepted the presidential nomination of a group of dissident South Carolina Democrats. Fearing that Taylor would be a party apostate like Tyler, Weed in late August scheduled a rally in Albany aimed at electing an uncommitted slate of presidential electors. Fillmore interceded with the editor, assuring him that Taylor was loyal to the party.
Northerners assumed that Fillmore, hailing from a free state, was an opponent of the spread of slavery. Southerners accused him of being an abolitionist, which he hotly denied.  Fillmore responded to one Alabamian in a widely published letter that slavery was an evil, but one that the federal government had no authority over.  Taylor and Fillmore corresponded twice in September, with the general happy that the crisis over the South Carolinians was resolved. Fillmore, for his part, assured his running mate that the electoral prospects for the ticket looked good, especially in the Northeast.
In the end, the Taylor/Fillmore ticket won narrowly, with New York's electoral votes again key to the election. The Whig ticket won the popular vote by 1,361,393 (47.3 percent) to 1,223,460 (42.5 percent) and triumphed 163 to 127 in the Electoral College. Minor party candidates took no electoral votes, but the strength of the burgeoning anti-slavery movement was shown by the vote for Van Buren, who, though he won no states, earned 291,501 votes (10.1 percent), and finished second in New York, Vermont and Massachusetts.