Millard Fillmore Essay Research Paper Introduction

Millard Fillmore Essay, Research Paper

Introduction Millard Fillmore was born in 1800. Fillmore is mostly know for being the 13th President of the United States. In a critical moment in American history, Fillmore succeeded President Zachary Taylor. Because the Mexican War had let the United States gain new territories, the conflict over slavery was renewed. To the relief of Northern and Southern politicians, Fillmore pursued a moderate and conciliatory policy. In 1850, he signed the Compromise of 1850 into law, which admitted one territory as a free state and allowed slave owners to settle in the others. The compromise didn’t completely solve the slavery problem, but it did keep the topic peaceful for over a decade. Fillmore went on to die in the year 1874. Early Years Millard Fillmore began life in the year 1800 in upstate New York. He was the oldest son in a family with a total of 9 children. Several years before he was born, his parents, Nathaniel and Phoebe Millard Fillmore, moved from Vermont to upstate New York. As a young man, Fillmore did many different things. Fillmore did chores on his fathers farm, worked as an apprentice in the clothier’s trade, and attended to local schools off and on until he was 17 years old. With the help of Abigail Powers, Fillmore was able educate himself. At the age of 19, with the aid of Judge Walter Wood of Cayuga County, Fillmore began to study law. To help fund his education, he would teach classes at schools. Then his family moved to East Aurora. In 1823 he opened a law office in East Aurora. Three years later he married his old teacher, Abigail Powers. During thier marriage, they had 2 children, Mary Abigail and Millard Powers. Throughtout the beginning of their marriage, Mrs. Fillmore continued to teach school and to help her husband with his law studies. Politics In 1826, the year Fillmore was married, an incident in western New York set him on the road to the presidency. When a former member of the Masonic fraternal order who had written a book that claimed to expose the order’s secrets, named William Morgan, disappeared, a rumor spread that he had been murdered by avenging Masons. A newspaper publisher and politician by the name Thurlow Weed, picked up on the incident and to arouse public feeling against all secret organizations and helped to organize the Anti-Masonic Party. Meanwhile, Millard Fillmore had been gaining respect and popularity in East Aurora. People liked his professional ethics, temperate habits, careful speech and dress, and attractive appearance. These qualities got him the attention of the Anti-Masonic politicians, who were looking for vote-winning candidates. In 1828, Weed and his group ran Fillmore for a seat in the New York state legislature, and he was elected. Four years later, again with Weed’s backing, Fillmore was elected to the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States. United States Congressman In the mid-1830s, Fillmore be came a member of the Whig Party when Anti-Masonic Party merged with the Whig Party. In Congress Fillmore was a supporter of Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, the leader of the Whig Party. The two men believed that compromise on the slavery issue was necessary to preserve peace between the North and South. In the important position of chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Fillmore took a leading part in framing the protective tariff of 1842. The tariff raised rates to about the high level of the tariff of 1833. That tariff was opposed by the South and had provoked the state of South Carolina to pass its Ordinance of Nullification, making the tariff void within its borders. Fillmore chose not to run for reelection in 1842. He hoped for the vice presidential nomination on Clay’s Whig presidential ticket, but the party’s national convention of 1844 gave that spot to Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. Fillmore decided to accept the Whig nomination for governor of New York. In the election Fillmore was defeated by opponet from the Democratic Party, Silas Wright, and Clay lost the decisive New York vote. The Whigs nominated Fillmore for state comptroller in 1847. This office was next in power after the governors and supervised public finances and superintended the banks. Fillmore defeated his Democratic opponent by the largest margin ever gained by any Whig over a Democrat in New York. The victory established Fillmore as a vote getter placing him in competition with former Governor William Henry Seward for the position of New York’s leading Whig. The presidential election of 1848 was dominated by the recently ended Mexican War and by the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, which had been inspired by the war. The proviso said that slavery should not be brought into any territory acquired by the United States as a result of the Mexican War. Although the proviso was never passed in Congress, it raised the political issue of whether slavery should be extended past its limits prior to the war. During the Whig convention of 1848 in Philadelphia, a friend of Fillmore, Henry Clay, lost the presidential nomination to Zachary Taylor. Clay’s policy of compromise on the slavery issue was well known, whereas Taylor, a hero of the Mexican War, was associated with no particular point of view. He won the nomination mostly through the efforts of Weed and Southern leaders. After Taylor was nominated, John A. Collier, a Whig delegate from New York and a political ally of Fillmore’s, suggested to th