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/index.php/node/5655.