Millard Fillmore: From Rags to the Presidency

From Log Cabin to Wealth-Millard Fillmore

Millard Fillmore came from poor, uneducated beginnings and eventually became a wealthy man. Millard Fillmore was born on January 7, 1800, in Cayuga County, New York. He worked on his father’s farm, and at age 15, and was apprenticed to a clothe dresser. Fillmore received little education until he was eighteen. He were to attend one-room schools, taught by Abigail Powers, who later became Fillmore’s wife. He was taught how to read and later became a lawyer.

In 1823, he was admitted to the bar ( lawyers considered collectively, or the profession of a lawyer). Fillmore an Abigail married on February 5, 1826, and later had two kids. He later moved his law skills to Buffalo. Then followed three terms in the New York state assembly from 1829-1832, and was elected to Congress. Where he then became a follower of the senator Henry Clay.

Fillmore was a follower of his political mentor, Thurlow Weed. In which he became an associate of the Whig party in 1834. Soon he became a leader to the party. Fillmore believed that the wig success at the election gave a sign of a truly national party that could occupy the middle borders between sectional extremist from the North and South. This was expressed in the Compromise of 1850, which purpose was to satisfy both sides on the slavery issue. It was apparent, after, that although the Compromise was

intended to settle the slavery controversy, it appealed more of a tough sectional truce. Although Fillmore wasn't against slavery, he supported the compromise to sustain the Union. Yet he did believed that nothing can be done to abolish it. He had once said, "God knows, that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsibl...

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...854. Also lead to similar agreements between Japan and other Western powers. Which then marked the transformation of Japan into a state.

Since the Whig Party had fallen apart in the 1850's, Fillmore refused to join the Republican Party, and instead had accepted a nomination for President of the Know Nothing party. After the Civil War, he out Andrew Johnson's policies aside. He then retired to buffalo, and became a leader to the city and its unique life. He became the first chancellor of the university of buffalo. Fillmore's wife, Abigail, developed pneumonia and died on March 30, 1853. In 1858, Fillmore married Caroline Carmichael McIntosh. He then suffered a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body on February 13, 1874. Then suffered another and was impossible for him to recover, and died on March 8, 1874, and was buried at Forest Lawn in Buffalo, New York.