13.Millard Fillmore

Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th President of the United States (1850–1853) and the last member of the Whig Party to hold the office of president. As Zachary Taylor's Vice President, he assumed the presidency after Taylor's death.
Fillmore opposed the proposal to keep slavery out of the territories annexed during the Mexican–American War (to appease the South), and so supported the Compromise of 1850, which he signed, including the Fugitive Slave Act ("Bloodhound Law") which was part of the compromise. On the foreign policy front, he furthered the rising trade with Japan and clashed with the French over Napoleon III's attempt to annex Hawaii, and with the French and the British over the attempt of Narciso López to invade Cuba. After his presidency, he joined the Know-Nothing movement; throughout the Civil War, he opposed President Lincoln and during Reconstruction supported President Johnson.
Fillmore co-founded the University of Buffalo and helped found the Buffalo Historical Society.In 1828, Fillmore was elected to the New York State Assembly on the Anti-Masonic ticket, serving three one-year terms, from 1829 to 1831. In his final term he chaired a special legislative committee to enact a new bankruptcy law that eliminated debtors' prison. As the measure had support among some Democrats, he maneuvered the law into place by taking a nonpartisan approach and allowing the Democrats to take credit for the bill. This kind of inconspicuousness and avoiding the limelight would later characterize Fillmore's approach to politics on the national stage.
He later won election as a Whig (having followed his mentor Thurlow Weed into the party) to the 23rd Congress in 1832, serving from 1833 to 1835. He was reelected in 1836 to the 25th Congress, to the 26th and to the 27th Congresses serving from 1837 to 1843, declining to be a candidate for re-nomination in 1842.
In Congress, he opposed admitting Texas as a slave territory. He came in second place in the bid for Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1841. He served as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1841 to 1843 and was an author of the Tariff of 1842, as well as two other bills that President John Tyler vetoed.After Taylor died suddenly on July 9, 1850, Fillmore became president. The change in leadership also signaled an abrupt political shift. Fillmore had very different views on the slavery issue. Before Taylor's death, Fillmore told him that, as President of the Senate, he would give his tie-breaking vote to the Compromise of 1850.[11] When Fillmore took office, the entire cabinet offered their resignations.[11] Fillmore accepted them all and appointed men who, except for Treasury Secretary Thomas Corwin, favored the Compromise of 1850.[11] When the compromise finally came before both Houses of Congress, it was very watered down. As a result, Fillmore urged Congress to pass the original bill. This move only provoked an enormous battle where "forces for and against slavery fought over every word of the bill."[11] To Fillmore's disappointment the bitter battle over the bill crushed public support.[11] Clay, exhausted, left Washington to recuperate, passing leadership to Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. At this critical juncture, President Fillmore announced his support of the Compromise of 1850.[11]
On August 6, 1850, he sent a message to Congress recommending that Texas be paid to abandon its claims to part of New Mexico. This, combined with his mobilization of 750 Federal troops to New Mexico, helped shift 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 message to Congress gave momentum 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 the state for lost lands.
Grant territorial status to New Mexico.
Place federal officers at the disposal of slaveholders seeking escapees—the Fugitive Slave Act.
Abolish the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia.


Portrait of Millard Fillmore
Each measure obtained a majority, and, by September 20, President Fillmore had signed them into law. Webster wrote, "I can now sleep of nights." Whigs on both sides refused to accept the finality of Fillmore's law (which led to more party division, and a loss of numerous elections), which forced Northern Whigs to say "God Save us from Whig Vice Presidents." Fillmore's greatest difficulty with the fugitive slave law was enforcing it without showing favor to Southern Whigs. His solution was to appease both northern and southern Whigs. He called for enforcing the fugitive slave law in the North, and enforcing in the South a law forbidding involvement in Cuba (for the sole purpose of adding it as a slave state).
Fillmore appointed Brigham Young as the first governor of the Utah Territory in 1850.[12] In gratitude for creating the Utah Territory in 1850 and appointing Brigham Young as governor, Young named the territorial capital "Fillmore" and the surrounding county "Millard".[13] Fillmore, a bookworm, started the White House library when he found the White House devoid of books.
by Wikiedia