The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Fillmore, Millard
FILLMORE, Millard, American statesman,
13th President of the United States: b.
Summer Hill, Cayuga County, N. Y., 7 Feb.
1800; d. Buffalo, 8 March 1874. He was
descended from New England parentage and
reared to the hard life of a frontier farm in
western New York. He studied law at Buffalo
and began the practice of his profession in
1827 in the neighboring town of Aurora. In
1830 he moved to Buffalo and formed, with
Nathan K. Hall and Solomon G. Haven, a law
partnership which soon became well-known

throughout the region. But he had already
served two years in the New York legislature
and identified himself with the repeal of the
harsh law of the State for the imprisonment of
debtors. In 1832 he was sent to the national
House of Representatives as a follower of
Henry Clay. During the next decade he alternated
between membership in the House and
the work of his profession, building all the
while a state-wide reputation as a political
leader. As a result of the “landslide” of 1840
he found himself in Congress and chairman of
the House committee of ways and means and
as such he drew the tariff bill of 1842 which
became a law and also set in motion the free
trade influences of the lower South. He was
thus a representative of the industrial and
financial interests of the North against which the
South and West made an alliance in the
presidential campaign of 1844. He became a
candidate for the governorship of New York upon
the retirement of William H. Seward in 1844
and was defeated by Silas Wright, the
democratic candidate. Three years later he was
elected comptroller of the State of New York
from which office he was chosen in 1848 to be
a candidate for the vice-presidency with
General Taylor. Taylor and Fillmore were elected.
By this time a sharp difference of opinion
between the Seward and the Fillmore men had
developed. Seward, Wed and Greeley labored
hard and long to gain the favor of the new
President. They were successful. Fillmore
naturally tended to a closer support of Clay,
who manifested a hearty ill will toward Taylor.
Fillmore was inaugurated vice-president in
March 1849; Seward became a member of the
Senate in December following. The division
in the Whig party of New York was typical
of the larger division in the party as a whole.
When President Taylor took a vigorous stand
against the threats of Southern leaders to secede
in 1849-50, Seward and most of the Northern
Whigs supported him and seemed ready to
take the chance of civil war. But Fillmore drew
still nearer to Clay and the southern Whigs,
endeavoring to avoid conflict by compromise.
Thus when Congress took up the problem of
restricting slavery in the territories acquired
from Mexico, the administration took one view
while the great leaders of the party in
Congress took another. Fillmore's position as
president of the Senate was, therefore, very
difficult. After several months of debate and an
apparently complete deadlock, President Taylor
suddenly died. Fillmore succeeded to the
presidency on 9 July 1850. The Taylor cabinet
promptly resigned. A new one was formed
with Webster at its head. Clay was now in
close touch with the administration, if he did
not actually advise and direct its course. There
was no longer a question of the peaceable
solution of the pending issues. Clay, Webster,
Fillmore and the Southern Whigs, aided by the
Northern Democrats, arranged for the admission
of California, the organization of New
Mexico, the payment of the Texan claims, the
prohibition of the slave trade in the District
of Columbia and the return of fugitive slaves.
Although Clay died two years later the popular
hero of the compromise struggle, Webster and
Fillmore lost standing in the North. When
the next Whig convention met, Fillmore
endeavored to secure the nomination for the
presidency.
Webster's friends pressed his claims,
but Seward and the irate Northern Whigs
would not permit either nomination. The
foreign policy of the Fillmore administration was
strong and vigorously American, although it
was not expansionist like so many others of
that period. Fillmore indicated to Europe very
plainly that American ideals were still strongly
democratic through Webster's famous Hulseman
letter in which the government of Austria
was told that the people of the United States
always sympathized with democratic revolutions,
especially with the Hungarian uprising
against government imposed from without.
There has never been a stronger presentation
of the American attitude than that put forth by
Fillmore and Webster in 1852. At the close of
the administration Fillmore returned to Buffalo
where he spent the remainder of his life
except two or three prolonged visits to Europe.
In 1856 the American or Know Nothing party
nominated him for the presidency but he
received only a small popular vote and the one
electoral vote of a single State, Maryland. He
and his supporters in the North, men like
Edward Everett and Robert Winthrop, were
known as the Silver Grey or Cotton Whigs.
But when President-elect Lincoln passed
through Buffalo on his way to Washington in
1861 Fillmore was chosen to greet him on
behalf of the city. Nor was there ever any
question of his loyalty to the cause of the
Union. There is no good life of Fillmore,
although a great many of his papers have been
published in volumes X and XI of the Buffalo
Historical Society publications. Consult also
Rhodes, J. F., ‘History of the United States’
(Vol. I), and Bancroft, Frederic, ‘Life of
William H. Seward’ (Vol. I).

MILLARD FILLMORE

Thirteenth President of the United States