Millard Fillmore (July 9, 1850 - March 4, 1853)

Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 - March 8, 1874) was the thirteenth President of the United States, and the last member of the Whig Party to hold that office. He was the second Vice President to assume the Presidency upon the death of a sitting President, succeeding Zachary Taylor who died of acute gastroenteritis.

Millard FillmoreAs president, Fillmore dealt with increasing party divisions within the Whig party; party harmony became one of his primary objectives. He tried to unite the party by pointing out the differences between the Whigs and the Democrats (by proposing tariff reforms that negatively reflected on the Democratic Party). Another primary objective of Fillmore was to preserve the Union from the intensifying slavery debate.

Fillmore was never elected President; some northern Whigs refused to forgive him for having signed the Fugitive Slave Act and 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. In the 1856 presidential election, he again failed to win election as President as the Know Nothing Party and Whig candidate.¹

Quotes

"May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not."

"Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness."

"Where is the true-hearted American whose cheek does not tingle with shame to see our highest and most courted foreign missions filled by men of foreign birth to the exclusion of the native-born?"

"An honorable defeat is better than a dishonorable victory."

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