Fillmore, Millard

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Millard Fillmore
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    2
    No. of Children
    2
    Family
    Nathaniel Fillmore (father), Phoebe Millard (mother), Abigail Powers (first wife), Caroline Carmichael McIntosh (second wife, 1858), Millard Fillmore (son), Mary Fillmore (daughter)
    Occupation
    Politician
    Attorney or Judge
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Anti-Masonic
    Whig
    Government
    Taylor Administration (1849-50)
    Fillmore Administration (1850-53)
    US House of Representatives
    Other state government
    Military
    Union Army

    Millard Fillmore, Election of 1856 (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    In February 1856, while the ex-president toured Europe, his handlers secured for him the American party presidential nomination. Fillmore's campaign was a disaster from start to finish. In one of his first campaign speeches, the ex-president outraged most northerners by implying that the South would be justified in seceding should the Republican candidate, John C. Frémont, carry the election. Fillmore's supporters emphasized that he was the only candidate capable of restoring harmony between North and South in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Yet that legislation, the caning of Massachusetts abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, and the "sack" of Lawrence, Kansas, by proslavery Missourians had convinced many northerners that compromise with the South was pointless. Consequently, most northern Know Nothings repudiated Fillmore and supported Frémont instead. Even in the South, where Fillmore's message carried greater appeal, many members of the American party voted for Democrat James Buchanan out of fear that ballots cast for Fillmore's apparently hopeless candidacy would lead to a Frémont victory. On election day Fillmore carried only Maryland, and although four other southern states eluded him by just a few thousand votes, the ex-president considered his popular tally of 22 percent an embarrassment. Fillmore's defeat destroyed the American party as a national political force and marked the end of his political career.
    Tyler Anbinder, "Fillmore, Millard," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00374.html.

    Millard Fillmore (Congressional Biographical Dictionary)

    Reference
    FILLMORE, Millard, a Representative from New York, Vice President and 13th President of the United States; born in Locke Township (now Summerhill), Cayuga County, N.Y., January 7, 1800; reared on a farm; largely self-taught; apprenticed to a clothier; taught school in Buffalo while studying law; admitted to the bar in 1823 and commenced practice in East Aurora, N.Y.; moved to Buffalo, N.Y., in 1830; member, State assembly 1829-1831; elected as a Whig to the Twenty-third Congress (March 4, 1833-March 3, 1835); elected to the Twenty-fifth, Twenty-sixth, and Twenty-seventh Congresses (March 4, 1837-March 3, 1843); declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1842; unsuccessful Whig candidate for Governor in 1844; State comptroller 1847-1849; elected Vice President of the United States on the Whig ticket headed by Zachary Taylor in 1848, and was inaugurated March 4, 1849; became President upon the death of President Taylor and served from July 10, 1850, to March 3, 1853; unsuccessful candidate for the Whig nomination for president in 1852; unsuccessful candidate for president on the National American ticket in 1856; commanded a corps of home guards during the Civil War; traveled extensively; died in Buffalo, N.Y., March 8, 1874; interment in Forest Lawn Cemetery.
    “Fillmore, Millard,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774 to Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=F000115.
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    The Agitation of Slavery. Who Commenced! And Who Can End It!! Buchanan and Fillmore Compared. From the Record. Washington, DC: Union Office, 1856. view record
    Forness, Norman O. “The Seward-Fillmore Feud and the U.S. Patent Office.” Historian 54, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 255-268. view record
    Grayson, Benson Lee. The Unknown President: The Administration of President Millard Fillmore. Washington: University Press of America, 1981. view record
    Levin, Lewis C. The Union Safe!: The Contest Between Fillmore and Buchanan!: Fremont Crushed!. New York, 1856. view record
    Steins, Richard. Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Corp., 1997.  view record
    Stoddard, William Osborn. The Lives of the Presidents: Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. New York: F. A. Stokes & Brother, 1888. view record
    Tinelli, L. W. Fremont, Buchanan and Fillmore; or, The Parties Called to Order. New York: Livermore & Rudd, 1856. view record
    Wise, W. Harvey, and John W. Cronin. A Bibliography of Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Washington, DC: Riverford Pub. Co, 1935. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Fillmore, Millard," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5655.