It’s Professor Dave, let’s discuss Millard Fillmore.
Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States, and he was most definitely
not lucky thirteen.
He was such a mediocre president that he virtually killed off the Whig Party.
He was another accidental president, elevated from the role of vice president due to the
unexpected death of Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War.
He failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852, but gained the endorsement of the
Know Nothing Party four years later, finishing third in that election.
He was another in a string of weak presidencies that predated the Civil War.
Fillmore became prominent in the Buffalo area as both an attorney and a politician, gaining
election to the New York Assembly in 1828, and to the House of Representatives in 1832.
Initially, he was of the Anti-Masonic Party, but became a Whig as the party formed in the
mid-1830s.
Fillmore was an unsuccessful candidate for Speaker of the House when the Whigs took control
in 1841, but was made Ways and Means chairman.
He was defeated in bids for the Whig nomination for vice president in 1844, and for New York
governor the same year.
Fillmore’s political friends got him the vice presidential nomination in 1848 as Zachary
Taylor’s running mate, but when the two were elected, he was largely ignored by Taylor.
As vice president, Fillmore presided over angry debates in the Senate as Congress decided
whether to allow slavery into territories won in the Mexican War.
Senator Henry Clay drafted the compromise of 1850, a set of five bills, to settle this
issue, which made California a free state, and outlined new Utah and New Mexico territories.
Fillmore supported Clay’s compromise, but Taylor did not.
After Taylor died in July 1850, Fillmore dismissed the cabinet and changed the administration’s
policy, using pressure to gain the passage of the Compromise, which gave legislative
victories to both North and South.
It was enacted by September of that year.
But it was the controversial Fugitive Slave Act, a part of the Compromise that mandated
the return of escaped slaves, that was the most damaging to both his standing and that
of the Whig Party, which was already divided on the issue.
Throughout his career, Fillmore denounced slavery as an evil, but one beyond the powers
of government.
In 1852, he was passed over by the Whigs in favor of General Winfield Scott, another hero
of the Mexican War.
As the Whig Party collapsed after his presidency, Fillmore joined the newly formed American
Party, the political wing of the nativist and anti-Catholic Know Nothing movement, and
was its nominee in the 1856 election, winning only Maryland.
During the Civil War, he denounced secession, but was critical of the war policies of Abraham Lincoln.
After peace was restored, he supported the Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson.
Ever since, Millard Fillmore has faded into obscurity.