MILLARD F%LLMORE
E1GE3
Millard Fillmore, our thirteenth President, acceded to the presidency because of the sudden
death of Zachary Taylor. His tenure in office was wracked with the sectionalism that con
tinued to exist between the North and the South over the issues of slavery, money, power in
Congress, tariffs, and expansion. Perhaps his most important action during the thirty-two
months he served was the signing of the Missouri Compromise. Collectively, the five separate
bills that made up the agreement had the effect of delaying the eventual Civil War by ten
years. It was also during Fillmore’s administration that trade was opened between the United
States and Japan, largely through the efforts of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. Because he
tried to please both northerners and southerners, his own Whig Party deplored his modera
tions and chose another candidate for the election of 1852.
Fillmore was born in a log cabin in Loche, New York, in 1800, the son of Nathaniel and
Phoebe Fillmore, who farmed a modest plot of heavily timbered land. His early education
consisted of sporadic attendance at one-room schools. One of his teachers, Abigail Powers,
was only two years older than Millard and the two eventually fell in love. This schoolbook
courtship lasted eight years before they married in 1826. During that time Millard studied law
and taught school part-time to finance his study of the law.
His political career began when he was chosen to the New York House of Representatives in
1828. In 1832 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where he served from
1833-1835 and from 1837-1843. He ran unsuccessfully for Governor of New York in 1844. He
then became the first chancellor of the University of Buffalo.
In 1848 the Whigs chose him as the running mate of General Zachary Taylor. The watchword
during his administration as President seemed to be moderation and compromise. Millard
Fillmore ran once again for President in 1856, but the Whig Party was powerless at this point;
he ran a distant third. He returned to Buffalo, where he spent the remaining years of his life.
His wife Abigail had died shortly after he left office. Millard Fillmore married a widow, Mrs.
Caroline Carmichael Mcintosh in 1858, and he died on March 8, 1874.
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MILLARD FILLMORE
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Name
Presidential Trivia
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1.
In 1856 Millard Fillmore was nominated for President by both the Whig and____________
Parties.
2.
Millard Fillmore’s political career began in New York state with help from an Albany
publisher named
3. At the age of 14, Millard Fillmore became an apprentice to a
4. The first book Millard Fillmore ever owned was a___________________________________
5. Abigail Fillmore died shortly after her husband left office. Her death was attributed to
6. The chief “engineer” of the Compromise of 1850 was
7. The legislation which would have provided for all the land acquired from Mexico as a
result of the Mexican War to be closed to slavery was called the
8. That part of the Compromise of 1850 that angered northerners to the point they aban
doned Fillmore and brought an end to his political career___________________________
9.
Under the Compromise of
as a state.
1850,
was admitted
10. Abigail Fillmore’s love of books carried on into the White House as she established the
first
White
House
11.
Millard Fillmore once, refused an honorary degree from
because he said “he’d done nothing to earn it.”
12.
Because of her failing health, many official tasks of First Lady Abigail Fillmore were taken
over by
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University,
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MILLARD FILLMORE
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Name
For Thinking and iscuzing
1.
It was said by many that Millard Fillmore, the Vice President, looked a lot more like a
President than the President himself—Zachary Taylor. Why would people say this?
2.
The Compromise of 1850 contained these five separate acts of legislation. This bundle of
compromises designed to stave off possible armed conflict between the North and
South contained the following:
3.
The fugitive slave law so angered the North that it responded with the underground
railroad. Look in another source and explain how the railroad worked.
4.
Why was Millard Fillmore denied the Whig nomination for President in 1852?
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