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

Vice president (1849–1850)

Millard Fillmore was sworn in as vice president on March 5, 1849, in the Senate Chamber. March 4 (then Inauguration Day) fell on a Sunday, so the swearing-in was postponed until the following day. Fillmore took the oath from Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and in turn swore in the senators beginning their terms, including Seward, who in February had been elected by the New York legislature.
Fillmore had spent the four months between the election and swearing-in being feted by the New York Whigs and winding up affairs in the comptroller's office. Taylor had written to him, promising influence in the new administration; the president-elect mistakenly thought that the vice president was a cabinet member, which was not true in the 19th century. Fillmore, Seward and Weed had met and come to general agreement on how to divide federal jobs in New York. Once he went to Washington, Seward made friendly contact with Taylor's cabinet nominees, advisers, and the general's brother. An alliance between the incoming administration and the Weed machine was soon under way behind Fillmore's back. In exchange for support, Seward and Weed were allowed to designate who was to fill federal jobs in New York, with Fillmore given far less influence than had been agreed. When Fillmore discovered this after the election, he went to Taylor, which only made the warfare against Fillmore's influence more open. Fillmore supporters like Collier, who had nominated him at the convention, were passed over for candidates backed by Weed, who was triumphant even in Buffalo. This greatly increased Weed's influence in New York politics and diminished Fillmore's. According to Rayback, "by mid-1849, Fillmore's situation had become desperate."  Despite his lack of influence, office seekers pestered him, as did those with a house to lease or sell, for there was then no official vice-presidential residence. He enjoyed one aspect of his office, due to his lifelong love of learning: he became deeply involved in the administration of the Smithsonian Institution as a member ex officio of its Board of Regents.
Through 1849, the slavery issue was unresolved in the territories. Taylor advocated the admission of California and New Mexico,[g] both likely to outlaw slavery. Southerners were surprised to learn the president, despite being a Southern slaveholder, did not support the introduction of slavery into the new territories, as he believed the institution could not flourish in the arid Southwest. There was anger across party lines in the South, where making the territories free of slavery was considered excluding Southerners from part of the national heritage. When Congress met in December 1849, this discord was manifested in the election for Speaker, which took weeks and dozens of ballots to resolve as the House divided along sectional lines.
Fillmore countered the Weed machine by building a network of like-minded Whigs in New York state; with backing from wealthy New Yorkers, their positions were publicized by the establishment of a rival newspaper to Weed's Albany Evening Journal. All pretense at friendship between Fillmore and Weed vanished in November 1849 when the two happened to meet in New York City, and they exchanged accusations.
Fillmore presided over some of the most momentous and passionate debates in American history as the Senate debated whether to allow slavery in the territories. The ongoing sectional conflict had already excited much discussion when on January 21, 1850, President Taylor sent a special message to Congress urging the admission of California immediately and New Mexico later, and that the Supreme Court settle the boundary dispute whereby the state of Texas claimed much of what is now the state of New Mexico. On January 29, Henry Clay introduced what was called the "Omnibus Bill". The bill would give victories to both North and South: it would admit California as a free state, organize territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah, and ban the importation of slaves into the District of Columbia for sale and export out of it. It would also toughen the Fugitive Slave Act, as resistance to enforcement in parts of the North was a longtime Southern grievance. Clay's bill provided for the settlement of the Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute; the status of slavery in the territories would be decided by those living there (known as popular sovereignty). Taylor was unenthusiastic about the bill, and it languished in Congress. After hearing weeks of debate, however, Fillmore informed him in May 1850 that if senators divided equally on the bill, he would cast his tie-breaking vote in favor. Fillmore did his best to keep the peace among the senators, reminding them of the vice president's power to rule them out of order, but was blamed for failing to maintain it when a physical confrontation between Mississippi's Henry S. Foote and Missouri's Thomas Hart Benton broke out on April 17. Before other senators intervened to separate them, Foote pointed a gun at his colleague as Benton advanced on him.
Presidency (1850–1853)
Succession amid crisis
July 4, 1850 was a very hot day in Washington, and President Taylor, who attended Fourth of July ceremonies to lay the cornerstone of the Washington Monument, 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 came as a shock to the nation.
Fillmore had been called from his chair presiding over the Senate on July 8 and had sat with members of the cabinet in a vigil outside Taylor's bedroom at the White House. He received the formal notification of the president's death, signed by the cabinet, on the evening of July 9 in his residence at the Willard Hotel. After acknowledging the letter, and spending a sleepless night, Fillmore went to the House of Representatives, where, at a joint session of Congress, he took the oath as president from William Cranch, chief judge of the federal court for the District of Columbia, and the man who had sworn in President Tyler. The cabinet officers, as was customary when a new president took over, submitted their resignations, expecting Fillmore to refuse, allowing them to continue in office. Fillmore had been marginalized by the cabinet members, and he accepted the resignations, though he asked them to stay on for a month, which most refused to do. Fillmore is the only president who succeeded by death or resignation not to retain, at least initially, his predecessor's cabinet. He was already in discussions with Whig leaders, and on July 20 began to send new nominations to the Senate, with the Fillmore Cabinet to be led by Webster as Secretary of State. Webster had outraged his Massachusetts constituents by supporting Clay's bill, and with his Senate term to expire in 1851, had no political future in his home state. Fillmore appointed his old law partner, Nathan Hall, as Postmaster General, a cabinet position that controlled many patronage appointments. The new department heads were mostly supporters of the Compromise, as was Fillmore.
The brief pause from politics out of national grief at Taylor's death did not abate the crisis. Texas had attempted to assert its authority in New Mexico territory, and the state's governor, Peter H. Bell, had sent belligerent letters to President Taylor. Fillmore received another one after becoming president. He reinforced federal troops in the area and warned Bell to keep the peace.
By July 31, Clay's bill was effectively dead, as all the significant provisions other than the organization of Utah Territory had been deleted by amendment. As one wag put it, the "Mormons" were the only remaining passengers on the Omnibus. Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas then stepped to the fore, with Clay's agreement, proposing to break the Omnibus into individual bills that could be passed piecemeal.  Fillmore endorsed this strategy, with the Omnibus to become (as it proved) five bills.
Fillmore sent a special message to Congress on August 6, 1850, disclosing the letter from Governor Bell and his reply, warning that armed Texans would be viewed as intruders, and urging Congress to defuse sectional tensions by passing the Compromise. Without the presence of the Great Triumvirate of John C. Calhoun, Webster, and Clay, who had long dominated the Senate; Douglas and others were able to lead that body towards the administration-backed package of bills. Each bill passed the Senate with the support of the section that wanted it, plus a few members who were determined to see all the bills passed. The battle then moved to the House, which had a Northern majority because of population. Most contentious was the Fugitive Slave Bill, whose provisions were anathema to abolitionists. Fillmore applied pressure to get Northern Whigs, including New Yorkers, to abstain rather than oppose the bill. Through the legislative process, various changes were made, including the setting of a boundary between New Mexico Territory and Texas—the state would be given a payment to settle any claims. California was admitted as a free state, the District slave trade was ended, and the final status of slavery in New Mexico and Utah would be settled later. Fillmore signed the bills as they reached his desk, holding the Fugitive Slave Bill for two days until he received a favorable opinion as to its constitutionality from the new Attorney General, John J. Crittenden. Although some Northerners were unhappy at the Fugitive Slave Act, relief was widespread, as it was hoped this would settle the slavery question.
Domestic affairs
The Fugitive Slave Act remained contentious after its enactment: Southerners complained bitterly about any leniency in its application, but its enforcement was highly offensive to many Northerners. Abolitionists recited the inequities of the law: anyone aiding an escaped slave was punished severely, and it granted no due process to the escapee who could not testify before a magistrate. The law also permitted higher payment to the hearing magistrate for deciding the escapee was a slave rather than free. Nevertheless, Fillmore believed himself bound by his oath as president and by the bargain made in the Compromise to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. He did so even though some prosecutions or attempts to return slaves ended badly for the government, with acquittals or the slave taken from federal custody and freed by a Boston mob. Such cases were widely publicized North and South, and inflamed passions in both places, undermining the good feeling that had followed the Compromise.
In August 1850, the social reformer Dorothea Dix wrote to Fillmore, urging support of her proposal in Congress for land grants to finance asylums for the impoverished mentally ill. Though her proposal did not pass, they became friends, met in person and corresponded, which continued well after Fillmore's presidency.  In September of that year, Fillmore appointed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leader Brigham Young as the first governor of Utah Territory.  In gratitude, Young named the first territorial capital "Fillmore" and the surrounding county "Millard".
A longtime supporter of national infrastructure development, Fillmore signed bills to subsidize the Illinois Central railroad from Chicago to Mobile, and for a canal at Sault Ste. Marie. The 1851 completion of the Erie Railroad in New York prompted Fillmore and his cabinet to ride the first train from New York City to the shores of Lake Erie, in company with many other politicians and dignitaries. Fillmore made many speeches along the way from the train's rear platform, urging acceptance of the Compromise, and afterwards went on a tour of New England with his Southern cabinet members. Although Fillmore urged Congress to authorize a transcontinental railroad, it did not do so until a decade later.
Fillmore appointed one justice to the Supreme Court of the United States and made four appointments to United States District Courts, including that of his law partner and cabinet officer, Nathan Hall, to the federal district court in Buffalo.[98] When Supreme Court Justice Levi Woodbury died in September 1851 with the Senate not in session, Fillmore made a recess appointment of Benjamin Robbins Curtis to the high court. In December, with Congress convened, Fillmore formally nominated Curtis, who was confirmed. In 1857, Justice Curtis dissented from the Court's decision in the slavery case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, and resigned as a matter of principle.
Justice John McKinley's death in 1852 led to repeated, fruitless attempts by the president to fill the vacancy. The Senate took no action on the nomination of New Orleans attorney Edward A. Bradford. Fillmore's second choice, George Edmund Badger, asked that his name be withdrawn. Senator-elect Judah P. Benjamin declined to serve. The nomination of William C. Micou, a New Orleans lawyer recommended by Benjamin, was not acted on by the Senate. The vacancy was finally filled after Fillmore's term, when President Franklin Pierce nominated John Archibald Campbell, who was confirmed by the Senate.
Foreign relations
Fillmore oversaw two highly competent Secretaries of State, Daniel Webster, and after the New Englander's 1852 death, Edward Everett, looking over their shoulders and making all major decisions.  The president was particularly active in Asia and the Pacific, especially with regard to Japan, which at the time still prohibited nearly all foreign contact. American merchants and shipowners wanted Japan "opened up" for trade. This would not only allow commerce, but would also permit American ships to call there for food and water, and in emergencies without being punished. They were concerned that American sailors cast away on the Japanese coast were imprisoned as criminals.  Fillmore and Webster dispatched Commodore Matthew C. Perry on an expedition to open Japan to relations with the outside world. Perry and his ships reached Japan in July 1853, four months after the end of Fillmore's term.
Fillmore was a staunch opponent of European influence in Hawaii. France, under Napoleon III, sought to annex Hawaii, but backed down after Fillmore issued a strongly worded message warning that "the United States would not stand for any such action."  Taylor had pressed Portugal for payment of American claims dating as far back as the War of 1812, and had refused offers of arbitration; Fillmore gained a favorable settlement.
Fillmore had difficulties regarding Cuba; many Southerners hoped to see the island part of the U.S. as slave territory: Cuba was a colony of Spain where slavery was practiced.  Venezuelan adventurer Narciso López recruited Americans for three filibustering expeditions to Cuba, in the hope of overthrowing Spanish rule there. After the second attempt in 1850, López and some of his followers were indicted for breach of the Neutrality Act but were quickly acquitted by friendly Southern juries. The final López expedition ended with his execution by the Spanish, who put several Americans before the firing squad, including the nephew of Attorney General Crittenden. This resulted in riots against the Spanish in New Orleans, causing their consul to flee. The historian Elbert B. Smith, who wrote of the Taylor and Fillmore presidencies, suggested that Fillmore could have had war against Spain had he wanted it. Instead, Fillmore, Webster and the Spanish worked out a series of face-saving measures that settled the crisis without armed conflict. Many Southerners, including Whigs, supported the filibusters, and Fillmore's response helped divide his party as the 1852 election approached.
A much-publicized event of Fillmore's presidency was the arrival in late 1851 of Lajos Kossuth, the exiled leader of a failed Hungarian revolution against Austria. Kossuth wanted the U.S. to recognize Hungary's independence. Many Americans were sympathetic to the Hungarian rebels, especially recent German immigrants, who were now coming to the U.S. in large numbers and had become a major political force. Kossuth was feted by Congress, and Fillmore allowed a White House meeting after receiving word that Kossuth would not try to politicize it. In spite of his promise, Kossuth made a speech promoting his cause. The American enthusiasm for Kossuth petered out, and he departed for Europe; Fillmore refused to change American policy, remaining neutral.
The Fillmore Cabinet
Election of 1852 and completion of term
As the election of 1852 approached, Fillmore remained undecided whether to run for a full term as president. Secretary Webster had long coveted the presidency and, though past seventy, planned a final attempt to gain the White House. Fillmore, sympathetic to the ambitions of his longtime friend, issued a letter in late 1851 stating that he did not seek a full term, but he was reluctant to rule it out, fearing the party would be captured by the Sewardites. Thus, approaching the national convention in Baltimore, to be held in June 1852, the major candidates were Fillmore, Webster and General Scott. Weed and Seward backed Scott; in late May, the Democrats nominated former New Hampshire senator Franklin Pierce, who had been out of national politics for nearly a decade before 1852 but whose profile had risen as a result of his military service in the Mexican War. His nomination as a northerner sympathetic to the southern view on slavery united the Democrats and meant the Whig candidate would face an uphill battle to gain the presidency.
By then, Fillmore was unpopular with northern Whigs for signing and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act but had considerable support from the South, where he was seen as the only candidate capable of uniting the party. Once the convention passed a party platform endorsing the Compromise as a final settlement of the slavery question, Fillmore was willing to withdraw. He found that many of his supporters could not accept Webster and his action would nominate Scott. The convention deadlocked, and this persisted through Saturday, June 19, when a total of 46 ballots had been taken; delegates adjourned until Monday. Party leaders proposed a deal to both Fillmore and Webster: if the secretary could increase his vote total over the next several ballots, enough Fillmore supporters would go along to put him over the top; if he could not, Webster would withdraw in favor of Fillmore. The president quickly agreed, but Webster did not do so until Monday morning. On the 48th ballot, Webster delegates began to defect to Scott, and the general gained the nomination on the 53rd ballot. Webster was far more unhappy at the outcome than was Fillmore, who refused the secretary's resignation. Bereft of the votes of much of the South, and also of Northerners who depended on peaceful intersectional trade, Scott was easily beaten by Pierce in November. Smith suggested that the Whigs might have done much better with Fillmore.
The final months of Fillmore's term were uneventful. Webster died in October 1852, but during his final illness, Fillmore effectively acted as his own Secretary of State without incident, and Everett stepped competently into Webster's shoes. Fillmore intended to lecture Congress on the slavery question in his final annual message in December, but was talked out of it by his cabinet, and he contented himself with pointing out the prosperity of the nation and expressing gratitude for the opportunity to serve it. There was little discussion of slavery during the lame duck session of Congress, and Fillmore left office on March 4, 1853, succeeded by Pierce.
Post-presidency
Tragedy and political turmoil (1853–1855)
Fillmore was the first president to return to private life without independent wealth or possession of a landed estate. With no pension to anticipate, he needed to earn a living and felt it should be in a way that would uphold the dignity of his former office. His friend Judge Hall assured him it would be proper for him to practice law in the higher courts of New York, and Fillmore so intended.  The Fillmores had planned a tour of the South after leaving the White House, but Abigail caught a cold at President Pierce's inauguration, developed pneumonia, and died in Washington on March 30, 1853. A saddened Fillmore returned to Buffalo for the burial.  The fact that he was in mourning limited his social activities, and he made ends meet on the income from his investments.  He was bereaved again on July 26, 1854, when his only daughter, Mary, died of cholera.
The former president ended his seclusion in early 1854, as debate over Senator Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Bill embroiled the nation. This would open the northern portion of the Louisiana Purchase to settlement, including slavery, and would end the northern limit on slavery under the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Fillmore retained many supporters and planned an ostensibly non-political national tour, while privately rallying disaffected Whig politicians to preserve the Union, and back him in a run for president. Fillmore made public appearances opening railroads and visiting the grave of Senator Clay but met with politicians out of the public eye during the late winter and spring of 1854.
Such a comeback could not be under the auspices of the Whig Party, with its remnants divided by the Kansas–Nebraska legislation (which passed with the support of Pierce). Many northern foes of slavery, such as Seward, gravitated towards a new party, the Republicans, but Fillmore saw no home for himself there. In the early 1850s there was considerable hostility towards immigrants, especially Catholics, who had recently arrived in the United States in large numbers; several nativist organizations, including the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, sprang up in reaction. By 1854, the Order had morphed into the American Party, which became known as the Know Nothings. (In its early days, members were sworn to keep its internal deliberations private, and if asked, were to say they knew nothing about them.) Many from Fillmore's "National Whig" faction had joined the Know Nothings by 1854 and influenced the organization to take up causes besides nativism. Fillmore was encouraged by the success of the Know Nothings in the 1854 midterm elections, in which they won in several Northeastern states and showed strength in the South. On January 1, 1855, he sent a letter for publication, warning against immigrant influence in American elections, and soon thereafter joined the Order of the Star Spangled Banner.
Later that year, Fillmore went abroad, stating publicly that as he lacked office, he might as well travel. The trip was at the advice of political friends, who felt that by touring, he would avoid involvement in the contentious issues of the day. He spent over a year, from March 1855 to June 1856, in Europe and the Middle East. Queen Victoria is said to have pronounced the ex-president the handsomest man she had ever seen, and his coincidental appearance with Van Buren in the gallery of the House of Commons triggered a comment from MP John Bright. Fillmore was offered an honorary Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) degree by the University of Oxford; he declined, explaining that he had neither the "literary nor scientific attainment" to justify the degree.  He is also quoted as saying that he "lacked the benefit of a classical education" and could not, therefore, understand the Latin text of the diploma, adding that he believed "no man should accept a degree he cannot read."  Alternatively, Fillmore may have refused the degree to escape the heckling and taunting which Oxford students typically imposed upon the recipients of such honors.
Dorothea Dix had preceded him to Europe and was lobbying to improve conditions for the mentally ill. They continued to correspond and met several times.  In Rome, Fillmore had an audience with Pope Pius IX. He carefully weighed the political pros and cons of meeting with Pius; he nearly withdrew from the meeting when told he would have to kneel and kiss the pope's hand. To avoid this, Pius remained seated throughout the meeting.
1856 campaign
Fillmore's allies were in full control of the American Party, and they arranged for him to get its presidential nomination while he was in Europe. The Know Nothing convention chose Andrew Jackson Donelson of Kentucky to be Fillmore's running mate; he was the nephew by marriage and onetime ward of President Jackson. Fillmore made a celebrated return in June 1856, speaking at a series of welcomes, which began with his arrival at a huge reception in New York City and continued across the state to Buffalo. These addresses were portrayed as expressions of thanks for his reception, rather than as campaign speeches, which might be considered illicit office-seeking if made by a presidential hopeful. Fillmore warned that electing the Republican candidate, former California senator John C. Frémont, who had no support in the South, would divide the Union and lead to civil war. Both Fillmore and the Democratic candidate, former Pennsylvania senator James Buchanan, agreed that slavery was principally a matter for state and not federal government. Fillmore rarely spoke about the immigration question, and focused on the sectional divide, urging preservation of the Union.
Once Fillmore was back home in Buffalo, he had no excuse to make speeches, and his campaign stagnated through the summer and fall of 1856. Political fixers who had been Whigs, such as Weed, tended to join the Republican Party, and the Know Nothings lacked experience at selling anything but nativism. Accordingly, Fillmore's pro-Union stance mostly went unheard. Although the South was friendly towards Fillmore, many there feared a Frémont victory would lead to secession, and some sympathetic to Fillmore moved into the Buchanan camp lest the anti-Frémont vote be split, which might elect the Republican.  Scarry suggested that the events of 1856, including the conflict in Kansas Territory and the caning of Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate, polarized the nation, making Fillmore's moderate stance obsolete.
On Election Day, Buchanan won with 1,836,072 votes (45.3%) and 174 electoral votes to Frémont's 1,342,345 votes (33.1%) and 114 electoral votes. Fillmore and Donelson finished third, winning 873,053 votes (21.6%) and carrying the state of Maryland and its 8 electoral votes.  The American Party ticket narrowly lost in several southern states, and a change of fewer than 8,000 votes in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, where the sectional divide would have made the outcome uncertain.
Historian Allan Nevins wrote that Fillmore was not a Know Nothing or a nativist. He was out of the country when the nomination came and had not been consulted about running. Furthermore, "By no spoken or written word had he indicated a subscription to American tenets."  He sought national unity and felt the American Party was the "only hope of forming a truly national party, which shall ignore this constant and distracting agitation of slavery."
Remarriage, later life, and death
Caroline Fillmore
Fillmore considered his political career to be at an end with his defeat in 1856. He again felt inhibited from returning to the practice of law. However, his financial worries were removed on February 10, 1858, when he married Caroline McIntosh, a well-to-do widow. Their combined wealth allowed them to purchase a large house on Niagara Square in Buffalo, where they lived for the remainder of his life.  There, the Fillmores devoted themselves to entertaining and philanthropy; according to historian Smith, "they generously supported almost every conceivable cause".  Among these were the Buffalo Historical Society and the Buffalo General Hospital, which he helped found.
Fillmore during the Civil War
In the election of 1860, Fillmore voted for Senator Douglas, the nominee of the northern Democrats. After the vote, in which the Republican candidate, former Illinois representative Abraham Lincoln, was elected, many sought out Fillmore's views, but he refused to take any part in the secession crisis that followed, feeling that he lacked influence.  He decried Buchanan's inaction as states left the Union, writing that while the federal government could not coerce a state, those advocating secession should simply be regarded as traitors. When Lincoln came to Buffalo en route to his inauguration, Fillmore led the committee selected to receive the president-elect, hosted him at his mansion, and took him to church. Once war came, Fillmore supported Lincoln in his efforts to preserve the Union.  He commanded the Union Continentals, a corps of home guards of males over the age of 45 from the upstate New York area. The Continentals trained to defend the Buffalo area in the event of a Confederate attack. They performed military drill and ceremonial functions at parades, funerals, and other events. The Union Continentals guarded Lincoln's funeral train in Buffalo. They continued operations after the war, and Fillmore remained active with them almost until his death.
Despite Fillmore's zeal in the war effort, he gave a speech in early 1864 calling for magnanimity towards the South at war's end and counting its heavy cost, both financial and in blood. The Lincoln administration saw this as an attack on it that could not be tolerated in an election year, and Fillmore was criticized in many newspapers, called a Copperhead and even a traitor. This led to lasting ill-feeling against Fillmore in many circles.  In the 1864 presidential election Fillmore supported Democratic candidate George B. McClellan for the presidency, believing that the Democratic Party's plan for immediate cessation of fighting and allowing the seceded states to return with slavery intact was the best possibility for restoring the Union.
After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, black ink was thrown on Fillmore's house because it was not draped in mourning like others; he was apparently out of town at the time and put black drapes in the windows once he returned. Although he retained his position as Buffalo's leading citizen, and was among those selected to escort the body when Lincoln's funeral train passed through Buffalo, there was still anger towards him for his wartime positions. Fillmore supported President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policies, feeling that the nation needed to be reconciled as quickly as possible.  He devoted most of his time to civic activities. He aided Buffalo in becoming the third American city to have a permanent art gallery, with the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy.
Fillmore stayed in good health almost to the end, but suffered a stroke in February 1874, and died after a second one on March 8 at the age of 74. Two days later, he was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo after a funeral procession including hundreds of notables; the U.S. Senate sent three of its members to honor its former president, including Lincoln's first vice president, Maine's Hannibal Hamlin.
Legacy and historical view
According to biographer Scarry: "No president of the United States ... has suffered as much ridicule as Millard Fillmore".  He ascribed much of the abuse to a tendency to denigrate the presidents who served in the years just prior to the Civil War as lacking in leadership. For example, later president Harry S. Truman "characterized Fillmore as a weak, trivial thumb-twaddler who would do nothing to offend anyone", and as responsible in part for the war.  Anna Prior, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2010, said that Fillmore's very name connotes mediocrity.  Another Fillmore biographer, Finkelman, commented, "on the central issues of the age his vision was myopic and his legacy is worse ... in the end, Fillmore was always on the wrong side of the great moral and political issues".  Rayback, however, applauded "the warmth and wisdom with which he had defended the Union".
Although Fillmore has become something of a cult figure as America's most forgettable chief executive, Smith found him to be "a conscientious president" who chose to honor his oath of office and enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, rather than govern based on his personal preferences.  Steven G. Calabresi and Christopher S. Yoo, in their study of presidential power, deemed Fillmore "a faithful executor of the laws of the United States—for good and for ill".  But, according to Smith, the enforcement of the act has given Fillmore an undeserved pro-southern reputation. Fillmore's place in history has also suffered because "even those who give him high marks for his support of the compromise have done so almost grudgingly, probably because of his Know-Nothing candidacy in 1856".  Smith argued that Fillmore's association with the Know Nothings looks far worse in retrospect than it did at the time and that the former president was not motivated by nativism in his candidacy.
Benson Lee Grayson suggested that the Fillmore administration's ability to avoid potential problems is too often overlooked. Fillmore's constant attention to Mexico avoided a resumption of the Mexican–American War and laid the groundwork for the Gadsden Treaty during Pierce's presidency.  Meanwhile, the Fillmore administration resolved a controversy with Portugal left over from the Taylor administration, smoothed over a disagreement with Peru over guano islands, and peacefully resolved disputes with Britain, France, and Spain over Cuba. All of these crises were resolved without the United States going to war or losing face. Grayson also applauded Fillmore's firm stand against Texas' ambitions in New Mexico during the 1850 crisis.  Fred I. Greenstein and Dale Anderson praised Fillmore for his resoluteness in his early months in office, noting that Fillmore "is typically described as stolid, bland, and conventional, but such terms underestimate the forcefulness evinced by his handling of the Texas–New Mexico border crisis, his decision to replace Taylor's entire cabinet, and his effectiveness in advancing the Compromise of 1850".
Millard Fillmore, with his wife Abigail, established the first White House library.  There are a number of remembrances of Millard Fillmore; his East Aurora house still stands, and sites honor him at his birthplace and boyhood home, where a replica log cabin was dedicated in 1963 by the Millard Fillmore Memorial Association.  A statue of Fillmore stands outside Buffalo City Hall.  At the university he helped found, now University at Buffalo, Millard Fillmore Academic Center and Millard Fillmore College bear his name.  On February 18, 2010, the United States Mint released the thirteenth coin in the Presidential $1 Coin Program, bearing Fillmore's likeness.
According to the assessment of Fillmore by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia:
Any assessment of a President who served a century and a half ago must be refracted through a consideration of the interesting times in which he lived. Fillmore's political career encompassed the tortuous course toward the two-party system that we know today. The Whigs were not cohesive enough to survive the slavery imbroglio, while parties like the Anti-Masonics and Know-Nothings were too extremist. When, as President, Fillmore sided with proslavery elements in ordering enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, he all but guaranteed that he would be the last Whig President. The first modern two-party system of Whigs and Democrats had succeeded only in dividing the nation in two by the 1850s, and seven years later, the election of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, would guarantee civil war.
Notes
Fillmore was Vice President under President Zachary Taylor and became President upon Taylor's death on July 9, 1850. Prior to the adoption of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 1967, a vacancy in the office of Vice President was not filled until the next ensuing election and inauguration.
The original log cabin was demolished in 1852, but in 1965 the Millard Fillmore Memorial Association, using materials from a similar cabin, constructed a replica, which is located in Fillmore Glen State Park in Moravia.
Later, Nathaniel, the first father of a president to visit his son at the White House, alluded to his family's onetime poverty when he told a questioner how to raise a son to be president: "Cradle him in a sap trough".
Fillmore's uncle Calvin Fillmore served in the New York State Assembly; another uncle, Simeon Fillmore, served as town supervisor of Clarence, New York.
South Carolina did not yet use the popular vote for choosing electors, with the legislature electing them instead.
Until 1913, senators were elected by state legislatures, not by the people.
The modern-day states of New Mexico and Arizona, less the Gadsden Purchase
The constitution designates the vice president as the Senate's presiding officer.
The term derives from the transportation vehicle, as the bill carries all the related proposals as 'passengers'.
Calhoun was dead, Webster was Secretary of State, and Clay was absent, recovering from his exertions on behalf of the bill at Newport, Rhode Island.
In fact, Fillmore had been awarded an honorary LL.D. from Geneva College in 1850; he accepted, even though its text was in Latin.
Fillmore thus became the first former president to receive electoral votes, a distinction which later also included Grover Cleveland (1892) and Theodore Roosevelt (1912).