Millard Fillmore Essay, Research Paper
Fillmore, Millard ( 1800-1874 ) , 13th president
of the United States ( 1850-1853 ) and the 2nd frailty president to complete
the term of a asleep president. He succeeded Zachary Taylor at a critical
minute in United States history. The Mexican War ( 1846-1848 ) had renewed
the struggle between the Northern and Southern provinces over bondage, since
it had added new districts to the United States. The argument over whether
these districts should be admitted as free or break one’s back provinces precipitated
a crisis that threatened civil war. Much to the alleviation of Northern and
Southern politicians, Fillmore pursued a moderate and compromising policy.
He signed into jurisprudence the Compromise of 1850, which admitted one district
as a free province and allowed slave proprietors to settle in the others. This
via media did non work out the basic job of bondage but did continue
peace for about 11 old ages. During that clip the North gained the industrial
power that enabled it to get the better of the South when civil war finally came.
Fillmore was born in upstate New York in
1800. He was the 2nd kid and eldest boy in a household of nine. His parents,
Nathaniel and Phoebe Millard Fillmore, had moved from Vermont to New York
several old ages before his birth. Young Fillmore did jobs on his male parent & # 8217 ; s
farm, worked as an learner in the haberdasher & # 8217 ; s trade, and attended local
schools irregularly until he was 17. Although the lone books in his place
were the Bible, an farmer’s calendar, and a hymnal, Fillmore managed to educate
himself with the aid of a small town school teacher, Abigail Powers.
When he was 19, Fillmore began to analyze
jurisprudence with Judge Walter Wood of Cayuga County. He supported himself by learning
school. When his household moved to East Aurora, near Buffalo, New York, Fillmore
continued his survey of jurisprudence and his instruction. In 1823 he opened a jurisprudence office
in East Aurora. Three old ages subsequently he married Abigail Powers. The twosome
had two kids, Mary Abigail and Millard Powers. In the early old ages of
their matrimony, Mrs. Fillmore continued to learn school and to assist her
hubby with his jurisprudence surveies.
In 1826, the twelvemonth Fillmore was married,
an incident in western New York set him on the route to the presidential term.
When William Morgan, a former member of the Masonic fraternal order who
had written a book that claimed to expose the order & # 8217 ; s secrets, disappeared,
the rumour spread that he had been murdered by revenging Masons. Thurlow
Weed, a newspaper publishing house and politician, seized on the incident to elicit
public feeling against all secret organisations and helped to form
the Anti-Masonic Party. Meanwhile, Millard Fillmore had been winning regard
and popularity in East Aurora. Peoples admired his professional moralss,
temperate wonts, careful address and frock, and good expressions. These qualities
caught the attending of the Anti-Masonic politicians, who were looking
for vote-winning campaigners. In 1828, Weed and his group ran Fillmore for
a place in the New York province legislative assembly, and he was elected. Four old ages
subsequently, once more with Weed & # 8217 ; s backup, Fillmore was elected to the House of
Representatives in the Congress of the United States.
When the Anti-Masonic Party merged with
the new Whig Party in the mid-1830s, Fillmore became a Whig. In Congress
he was a strong protagonist of Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, the leader
of the Whigs. The two work forces agreed that via media on the bondage issue was
necessary to continue peace between the North and South.
In the of import place of president of
the House Ways and Means Committee, Fillmore took a prima portion in bordering
the protective duty ( revenue enhancement on imports ) of 1842. The duty raised rates
to about the high degree of the duty of 1833. That duty was opposed
by the South and had provoked the province of South Carolina to go through its Regulation
of Nullification, declaring the duty nothingness within its boundary lines.
Fillmore did non run for reelection in
1842. He hoped for the frailty presidential nomination on Clay & # 8217 ; s Whig presidential
ticket, but the party & # 8217 ; s national convention of 1844 gave that topographic point to Theodore
Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. Fillmore so accepted the Whig nomination
for governor of New York. In the election, nevertheless, Fillmore was beaten
by his Democratic Party opposition, Silas Wright, and Clay lost the decisive
New York ballot.
The Whigs nominated Fillmore for province
accountant in 1847. This office was 2nd in power after the governor & # 8217 ; s
and supervised public fundss and superintended the Bankss. Fillmore defeated
his Democratic opposition by 30,000 ballots, the largest border of all time gained
by any Whig over a Democrat in New York. The triumph established Fillmore
as a ballot getter and put him in competition with former Governor William
Henry Seward for the place of New York & # 8217 ; s taking Whig.
The presidential election of 1848 was dominated
by the late ended Mexican War and by the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, which
had been inspired by the war. The provision specified that bondage should
non be introduced into any district acquired by the United States from
Mexico as a consequence of the war. Although the provision was defeated in Congress,
it raised the political issue of whether bondage should be extended beyond
its prewar bounds.
At the Whig convention of 1848 in Philadelphia,
Fillmore & # 8217 ; s friend Henry Clay lost the presidential nomination to General
Zachary Taylor. Clay & # 8217 ; s policy of via media on the bondage issue was good
known, whereas Taylor, a hero of the Mexican War, was associated with no
peculiar point of position. He won the nomination mostly through the attempts
of Weed and Southern leaders. After Taylor was nominated, John A. Collier,
a Whig delegate from New York and a political ally of Fillmore & # 8217 ; s, suggested
to the convention that it lessen the letdown of the Clay protagonists
by calling Fillmore as the frailty presidential campaigner. His supplication was successful,
and Fillmore was nominated. To avoid farther contention over bondage or
any other issue, the national convention adopted no platform. At its national
convention the Democratic Party besides avoided doing an issue of bondage.
It nominated US Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan for president and William
O. Butler of Kentucky for frailty president. Cass favored holding the colonists
of new districts decide for themselves whether they would let bondage
or non, a policy subsequently called popular sovereignty. A 3rd party took portion
in the election of 1848. Called the Free-Soil Party, it included Democrats
and Whigs who disagreed with their parties, and emancipationists, who wanted
an immediate terminal to bondage. The Free-Soil Party nominated former president
Martin Van Buren of New York for president and Massachusetts legislator
Charles Francis Adams for frailty president. In the election, Van Buren took
plenty Democratic ballots from Cass in New York to give the province to Taylor,
the Whig. The electoral ballot was 163 for Taylor, 127 for Cass. In the New
York province popular ballot, Taylor got 219,000, Cass got 114,000, and Van
Buren got 120,000.
During the first half of 1850, Fillmore
as frailty president presided over the United States Senate ( the upper chamber
of Congress ) as angry arguments raged between Northern and Southern sectionalists
over the position of bondage in the late acquired lands. His equity
and sense of wit in the chair were non plenty to reconstruct peace among
the contending senators. The antislavery cabal, led by Senator Seward
( the former governor of New York ) and Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio,
clashed with the Southerners, led by Senator James M. Mason of Virginia,
Senator Jefferson Davis of M
ississippi, and Senator John C. Calhoun of
South Carolina. Angry words figuratively rocked the Senate hall, as they
did the chamber of the House of Representatives.
Although President Taylor was a Louisiana
slave owner, he leaned more toward Seward & # 8217 ; s antislavery positions. Determined
to continue the Fundamental law of the United States, the president threatened
to direct federal military personnels to protect disputed New Mexico district from an
invasion by proslavery Texans. Southerners countered that, if Taylor followed
through with his menace, the act would be the signal for an armed Southern
rebellion against federal power. Mississippi called for a convention to
meet in June 1850 at Nashville, Tennessee, to see sezession.
The best hope of via media seemed to lie
in a series of declarations drawn up by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and
based on steps proposed by representatives from both parties and both
subdivisions. These declarations were referred to a choice commission of 13,
headed by Clay. The commission recommended an omnibus measure, based on Clay & # 8217 ; s
declarations. Harmonizing to the recommended via media, California was to
be admitted as a free province, while the Utah and New Mexico districts
were to be organized without adverting bondage. This meant the districts
were unfastened to all colonists, including slave owners. The measure besides included
a new, tougher Fugitive Slave Law, which required that runaway slaves be
returned to their proprietors. The new jurisprudence had terrible punishments for nonenforcement.
A main grudge of Southerners against the old jurisprudence was that Northerners
would non implement it. Other subdivisions of the measure abolished bondage in the
District of Columbia and settled a boundary difference between Texas and New
Mexico. President Taylor did non portion the fright, held by Clay, Fillmore,
and others who favored via media, that the Union was threatened. He insisted
on the admittance of California as a free province, and he encouraged New Mexico
to follow a free position. Taylor & # 8217 ; s resistance hindered those who favored
the via media. However, he died all of a sudden on July 9, 1850, and Fillmore
took the curse as president.
President Fillmore & # 8217 ; s pick of a Cabinet
showed unmistakably that, as a moderate Whig and a enemy of provincialism,
he favored via media to avoid a national crisis. As his secretary of province,
Fillmore appointed Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, who had appealed
for via media in a famed address on March 7, 1850. Another important
Cabinet assignment was Governor John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, besides a
well-known conciliatory Whig, as lawyer general.
Fillmore made kick his desire for peace
in a message to Congress on August 6, 1850. It was hailed by influential
congressional leaders as a masterstroke of timing and persuasive moderateness.
Aided by the full power and support of Fillmore & # 8217 ; s disposal, Clay & # 8217 ; s
omnibus measure, known as the Compromise of 1850, was split into five separate
steps, all of which were passed by Congress and signed into jurisprudence by Fillmore.
Meanwhile, the Nashville convention adjourned without taking any action
against the Union.
One of the five steps was the new Fugitive
Slave Law. Fillmore signed and, more of import, enforced the Fugitive Slave
Law, actions that were wholly in maintaining with his conciliatory policy.
As a consequence, he won the hate of the more extremist antislavery group. Seward
and Weed, the antislavery Whig leaders of New York, opposed Fillmore vehemently,
and the president countered by taking pro-Seward people from federal
office. At a Whig convention in Syracuse, New York, declarations were passed
O.K.ing Seward & # 8217 ; s extremist place. Thereupon a contingent of Fillmore
conservativists walked out, led by Francis Granger, whose grey hair gave
the name & # 8220 ; Silver Gray Whigs & # 8221 ; to that cabal. This act widened the breach
in the Whig Party, which was besides disintegrating in other parts of the
state on the issue of bondage.
The most of import facet of Fillmore & # 8217 ; s
foreign policy was his countenance of a program to open Japan to universe commercialism,
which had been mostly prohibited there for more than 200 old ages. Influenced
by requests to Congress and other groundss of public involvement, he approved
an expedition to open the & # 8220 ; sealed & # 8221 ; imperium. In January 1852 a naval expedition
was entrusted to Commodore Matthew C. Perry. In July 1853, four months
after Fillmore left the presidential term, Perry arrived in Japan with four ship of the line.
That visit and another visit the undermentioned twelvemonth culminated in a commercial
pact between the United States and Japan.
Fillmore was loath to function a 2nd
term, but participated in the Whig national convention of 1852 because
he wanted to guarantee that the party platform supported the Compromise of
1850. After procuring that, he asked that his name be withdrawn at an opportune
minute and his delegates transferred to Daniel Webster, another rival
for the Whig presidential nomination. However, Fillmore & # 8217 ; s Southern Whig
protagonists, who believed he would win, backed him smartly and ne’er
did retreat his name. They held out for Webster to let go of his delegates.
By the clip Webster did that, it was excessively late. The antislavery Whigs had
secured control of the convention and, mindful of Fillmore & # 8217 ; s enforcement
of the Fugitive Slave Law, they succeeded in holding General Winfield Scott
named the party & # 8217 ; s campaigner. In November, Scott was resolutely defeated
by his Democratic opposition, Franklin Pierce. After the 1852 election the
Whig Party broke up over the slavery issue. By 1856 its topographic point had been
taken by the Republican Party, led by Seward and Weed.
Fillmore turned over the presidential office
to Pierce in March 1853. His married woman died less than a month subsequently, and the
former president returned to his place in Buffalo.
In 1856, Fillmore accepted the presidential
nomination of the American Party, a alliance of Silver Gray Whigs and
Know-Nothings, a close political group opposed to in-migration. In the
1856 national election, contested by the Democrat James Buchanan, the Republican
John C. Fr & # 233 ; mont, and the American Fillmore, Buchanan triumphed by
a little border. Fillmore carried merely the eight electoral ballots of Maryland,
a boundary line slave province. The popular ballot was 1,838,169 for Buchanan, 1,341,264
for Fr & # 233 ; mont, and 874,534 for Fillmore.
Fillmore returned for good to private
life, but he continued to see the political scene with involvement and
anxiousness. Critical events? the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the
sezession of the Southern provinces in 1860 and 1861 that led to the eruption
of the Civil War? induced Fillmore to take the platform to plead against
sezession and disunion. Always for conciliation instead than coercion, Fillmore
opposed some of President Lincoln & # 8217 ; s steps. In 1864, when Lincoln ran
for reelection, Fillmore supported General George B. McClellan, the Democratic
campaigner and a conservative. After the war, Fillmore & # 8217 ; s understandings were
with President Andrew Johnson in resistance to the Radical Republicans
in Congress, who inflicted their drastic, punitory Reconstruction policy
on the defeated secessionist provinces.
In 1858, Fillmore remarried. His 2nd
married woman was Mrs. Caroline C. McIntosh of Albany, New York. He continued his
jurisprudence pattern in Buffalo, disrupting it to do two trips to Europe. His
civic involvements included the University of Buffalo, now SUNY Buffalo, and
he was its first Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was a laminitis of the Buffalo Historical
Society and the Buffalo General Hospital, and he was active in other community
undertakings, such as the Natural Science Society. He died in 1874.
