The New International Encyclopædia/Fillmore, Millard
FILL'MORE,  (1800-74). The
thirteenth President of the United States. He
was horn in Cayuga County, N. Y., February 7,
1800. After a youth of industry with little
opportunity for education, he undertook the study
of law, and was admitted to the bar in 1823. His
practice of his profession, chiefly at Buffalo,
continued actively for twenty-four years. His political
life began in 1828 with his election as an
Anti-Mason (q.v.) to the State Legislature,
where he served for three terms. In 1832 he
was elected to Congress as a Whig, and retained
his seat, with one intermission (1835-37), until
1843. During this period he was prominent as
a debater on the Whig side, upheld the right of
petition, served as chairman of the Committee on
Ways and Means in the Twenty-seventh Congress,
and reported the Tariff Act of 1842, of which
he was virtually the author. He sought without
success the Presidential nomination in 1844; and
in the same year he ran for governor of the State
on the Whig ticket, but was defeated by Silas
Wright (q.v.). He became Comptroller of New
York State in 1847. In the following year he
was elected by the Whig Party Vice-President
on the ticket with Zachary Taylor (q.v.). Upon
the death of the President, in July, 1850, Fillmore
succeeded him, and the change in
administration was marked by the early passage of the
Compromise Measures. (See
../Compromise Measures of 1850/.)
Fillmore's support of those measures,
and especially his signing of the
../Fugitive Slave Law/ (q.v.), alienated many of the extreme
Northern members of his party. Aside from the
developments of the slavery problem, his
administration was marked by one conspicuous
event — the establishment of diplomatic relations
with Japan. In 1852 he was a prominent Presidential
candidate before the National Convention
of the Whig Party. In 1856 he was a candidate
for the Presidency on the ticket of the
Know-Nothing (q.v.) or American Party, and although
supported by many conservative Whigs, such as
../Edward Everett/ (q.v.), he received the electoral
votes of only one State, Maryland. He took no
active part in the Civil War, and spent the
remaining years of his life at Buffalo, where he
died March 8, 1874. Consult: Chamberlain,
Biography of Millard Fillmore (Buffalo, 1856);
and Wilson, The Presidents of the United States
(New York, 1894). For an account of his
administration, see .