In
his rise from a log cabin to wealth and the White
House, Millard Fillmore demonstrated that through
methodical industry and some competence an
uninspiring man could make the American dream come
true.
Born
in the Finger Lakes country of New York in 1800,
Fillmore as a youth endured the privations of
frontier life. He worked on his father's farm, and
at 15 was apprenticed to a cloth dresser. He
attended one-room schools, and fell in love with the
redheaded teacher, Abigail Powers, who later became
his wife.
In
1823 he was admitted to the bar; seven years later
he moved his law practice to Buffalo. As an
associate of the Whig politician Thurlow Weed,
Fillmore held state office and for eight years was a
member of the House of Representatives. In 1848,
while Comptroller of New York, he was elected Vice
President.
Fillmore
presided over the Senate during the months of
nerve-wracking debates over the Compromise of 1850.
He made no public comment on the merits of the
compromise proposals, but a few days before
President Taylor's death, he intimated to him that
if there should be a tie vote on Henry Clay's bill,
he would vote in favor of it.
Thus
the sudden accession of Fillmore to the Presidency
in July 1850 brought an abrupt political shift in
the administration. Taylor's Cabinet resigned and
President Fillmore at once appointed Daniel Webster
to be Secretary of State, thus proclaiming his
alliance with the moderate Whigs who favored the
Compromise.
A
bill to admit California still aroused all the
violent arguments for and against the extension of
slavery, without any progress toward settling the
major issues.
Clay,
exhausted, left Washington to recuperate, throwing
leadership upon Senator Stephen A. Douglas of
Illinois. At this critical juncture, President
Fillmore announced in favor of the Compromise. On
August 6, 1850, he sent a message to Congress
recommending that Texas be paid to abandon her
claims to part of New Mexico.
This
helped influence a critical number of northern Whigs
in Congress away from their insistence upon the
Wilmot Proviso--the stipulation that all land gained
by the Mexican War must be closed to slavery.
Douglas's
effective strategy in Congress combined with
Fillmore's pressure from the White House to give
impetus to the Compromise movement. Breaking up
Clay's single legislative package, Douglas presented
five separate bills to the Senate:
-
Admit
California as a free state.
-
Settle
the Texas boundary and compensate her.
-
Grant
territorial status to New Mexico.
-
Place
Federal officers at the disposal of slaveholders
seeking fugitives.
-
Abolish
the slave trade in the District of Columbia.
Each
measure obtained a majority, and by September 20,
President Fillmore had signed them into law. Webster
wrote, "I can now sleep of nights."
Some
of the more militant northern Whigs remained
irreconcilable, refusing to forgive Fillmore for
having signed the Fugitive Slave Act. They helped
deprive him of the Presidential nomination in 1852.
Within
a few years it was apparent that although the
Compromise had been intended to settle the slavery
controversy, it served rather as an uneasy sectional
truce.
As
the Whig Party disintegrated in the 1850's, Fillmore
refused to join the Republican Party; but, instead,
in 1856 accepted the nomination for President of the
Know Nothing, or American, Party. Throughout the
Civil War he opposed President Lincoln and during
Reconstruction supported President Johnson. He died
in 1874.
Millard
Fillmore