Millard Fillmore: Forgotten

01VOA Learning English presents America's Presidents.

02Today we are talking about Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States.

03Fillmore is also likely the least remembered president.

04He has been called uninspiring and having only some competence.

05But Fillmore provided an example of the American dream come true.

06He rose from a poor family to become a wealthy man.

07He was elected to Congress four times and nominated for Vice President under Zachary Taylor.

08When Taylor unexpectedly died in office in 1850, Fillmore took his place.

09Other presidents' campaigns, such as Andrew Jackson's, had spoken proudly of their candidates' modest beginnings.

10William Henry Harrison's supporters especially linked him with the image of a simple house called a log cabin, even though William Henry Harrison was a wealthy man.

11But Millard Fillmore really was born in a log cabin.

12His family was poor.

13They raised him and his seven brothers and sisters in a rural part of New York State.

14Millard Fillmore did not receive much education as a child.

15However, he was very interested in learning, so interested that he fell in love with his teacher, Abigail Powers.

16The two married after he launched his career as a lawyer.

17They had two children, a son and a daughter.

18Millard Fillmore soon entered politics.

19He won elections to the New York State Assembly and then to the U.S.

20House of Representatives.

21After eight years in Washington, D.C., Fillmore returned to New York.

22He failed to be elected governor, but succeeded to become comptroller of New York.

23In other words, he oversaw the state's finances.

24At that time, Americans were preparing for another presidential election.

25President James Polk was retiring from the White House after only one term, as he had promised.

26The opposition party, the Whigs, nominated Zachary Taylor as their presidential candidate.

27Taylor, a popular war hero from the South, owned slaves.

28But the Whigs realized that many anti-slavery voters in the North would not support Taylor.

29Party leaders were looking for someone to balance the ticket.

30A Northerner voters would consider a friend of business.

31They found Millard Fillmore.

32In 1847, the Whigs nominated Fillmore as Taylor's vice president.

33The two men had never met, and when they did meet, they did not like each other very much.

34Taylor was short-legged, poorly educated, and rarely seemed concerned about his physical appearance.

35Fillmore was taller, learned, and elegant.

36Their personalities did not fit together any better than their appearances did.

37But a majority of voters liked them.

38The Whigs won the election, and Fillmore returned to Washington.

39As vice president, Millard Fillmore was the leader of the Senate.

40But President Taylor did not seek his advice on the major political issue of the day.

41At the time, both lawmakers and the public were debating whether the government should, and could, ban slavery in the territories the U.S.

42had gained after the war with Mexico.

43In general, Northerners did not want to permit slavery in new states.

44But many Southerners did.

45The debate was so heated that one of the southern states, South Carolina, threatened to leave the Union.

46President Taylor did not want to expand slavery.

47To restrict it, he proposed a change to the rules so California and New Mexico could enter the Union quickly as slave-free states.

48But before Taylor's idea could get too far, he became sick.

49Fillmore learned the president was not well and prepared for the worst.

50It came.

51Taylor died after being in office for only 16 months.

52The following day, Fillmore was sworn in as president.

53One of Fillmore's first acts as president was to show where he stood on the slavery issue.

54He appointed a man who opposed Taylor to secretary of state.

55That man, Daniel Webster, and others, wanted to pass a compromise bill on slavery.

56With Fillmore's support, they succeeded.

57The Compromise of 1850 included several measures related to slavery.

58Two measures limited it.

59California was admitted as a free state.

60And the slave trade in Washington, D.C.

61ended.

62On the other hand, New Mexico and Utah were left open to slavery.

63And both the federal government and ordinary citizens were required to return suspected escaped slaves to their owners.

64That last measure, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, targeted even free African Americans and enslaved people who had escaped to free states.

65The compromise aimed to end the conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces.

66But neither side was really satisfied.

67And President Fillmore did not help matters.

68He was personally opposed to slavery.

69However, he did not act on his beliefs.

70Instead, he tried to keep the South in the Union by strongly enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.

71By the end of Fillmore's three years in the White House, many members of his Whig Party were angry with him.

72Party leaders did not nominate him again for the next election.

73But their chosen candidate was not successful either.

74Fillmore turned out to be the last Whig president.

75The end of Fillmore's presidency included difficulty in his private life, too.

76His wife, Abigail, became sick on the day the next president was sworn in.

77She died within a month.

78Soon after, Fillmore's daughter died, too.

79To help deal with their loss, Fillmore tried to stay active in politics.

80In the presidential election of 1856, Fillmore served as the candidate for a new party, the Know-Nothing Party.

81The Know-Nothings were strongly opposed to immigration.

82They especially wanted to limit the number of Irish Catholics who could come to the United States.

83Fillmore did not agree with the party's anti-immigration policies.

84But he did not have a chance to put his opinions into policy.

85Fillmore finished third out of the three major candidates in the election.

86After that loss, he finally retired to the city of Buffalo, New York.

87There, Fillmore married a second time to a wealthy widow named Carolyn McIntosh.

88He remained an important figure in the city's charities and other causes.

89But the political situation in the country grew only more intense.

90Americans continued to be divided over the issue of slavery.

91Fillmore's time in office and his compromise bill may have delayed but did not stop the American Civil War.

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