Millard
Fillmore was
born on January 7, 1800 in Cayuga
County , New York . He had eight brothers
and sisters. As a teenager, Fillmore served as
an apprentice to a cloth maker but received little
formal education, apart from briefly attending
New Hope Academy in New Hope, New York . In 1819,
he began to clerk for judge Walter
Wood in Montville, New York whom he
studied law under. In 1823, he was admitted to
the New York bar and started practicing in East
Aurora , New York (near Buffalo).
In 1826, he married Abigail Powers. The couple
would have two children.
Fillmore’s law career moved
quickly. In 1836, he formed the practice Fillmore,
Hall & Haven,
which would become one of western
New York ’s most successful firms.
In 1846, Fillmore founded the University of Buffal
, which today is the largest university in the State
University of New York (SUNY) system. From
1832 to 1843, Fillmore served in the New
York State Assembly as a Whig. From 1848
to 1849, he served as New York State Comptroller.
In 1849, Fillmore was selected as
Whig presidential
candidate Zachary
Taylor’s running mate. Even though
Fillmore was relatively unknown, he was selected
by Whig officials because it was thought he would
help them win the vote in New York, and to block
New Yorker Thurlow Weed from receiving the nomination.
In 1850, President
Zachary Taylor died unexpectedly and Fillmore
was sworn in as the 13th president. He would
be the last Whig president and the first president
to have been born after the death of George
Washington. Fillmore’s presidency
was dominated by dissention in the Whig
party and by the growing division over
the question of the extension of slavery into
new states. In what came to be known as the Compromise
of 1850, California was admitted to the
Union as a free state,
the New Mexico Territory was
established, and the Fugitive Slave Law was enforced
in the Northern states, enraging some northern
members of the Whig Party.
As
the dissention over the slavery issue caused
the disintegration of the Whig party, Fillmore
joined the Know-Nothing Party, an anti-Catholic,
anti-immigrant party that believed America was
being overrun by immigration. Like the Whigs, the
Know-Nothing party soon disintegrated and Fillmore’s
political career ended. In 1862, he founded the
Buffalo Historical Society and became its first
president. Fillmore died on March 8, 1874 of a
stroke.
