Fillmore, Millard (Administration)

MILLARD FILLMORE BEGAN his political career in New York, and was a founding member of the Anti-Masonic Party and later a Whig. In Congress, Fillmore supported strong protectionist legislation, including the Whig Tariff of 1842. He also supported the antislavery faction of the Whig Party but tended to take moderate positions. He believed that while slavery was evil, its existence in the south was guaranteed by the Constitution.

In 1848, Fillmore received the party's nomination for vice president. His nomination counterbalanced the presidential nomination of the southern slaveowner Zachary Taylor. His vice presidency was mostly notable for his fights over patronage jobs in New York. At the time, almost no one believed that government should play any direct role in alleviating poverty. Rather, the major debate was over the government's role in trying to limit or restrict the expansion of slavery.

Taylor died suddenly in 1850 in the middle of a particular crisis on the issue of slavery. For the previous 30 years, the Missouri Compromise had kept an uneasy peace by limiting expansion of slavery to southern territories and keeping a balance between free and slave states. However, the acquisition of new southern territories threatened to upset that balance. Taylor had proposed admitting California and New Mexico as free states. This outraged southerners, who saw that they would soon be a minority in Congress if these free states entered the Union.

During President Millard Fillmore's time (the early 1850s), the primary antipoverty programs were poorhouses or almshouses.

Fillmore believed in a weak presidency. He felt that Congress better represented the diversity of views in the nation and that the president should not oppose any Constitutional laws passed by Congress. To do otherwise, he believed, could lead to crisis and possibly civil war.

As a result, he reluctantly supported what came to be called the Compromise of 1850 to resolve the crisis. California was admitted as a free state and the status of the new southwestern territories of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada would be organized with the slavery question left up to the new settlers. The agreement also abolished slavery in Washington, D.C.

To assuage southern concerns about changing the balance of free and slave states by admitting California, Congress passed the infamous Fugitive Slave Act, which required northern states to assist in the recapture of escaped slaves and their return to the south. This inflamed northern hostility to slavery, as their African-American neighbors were frequently captured and returned to [Page 363]slavery in the south. Although a supporter of high tariffs, Fillmore also supported foreign trade. He sent Commodore Matthew Perry to open trade relations with Japan and signed commercial treaties with many other countries. Fillmore supported a failed effort to build a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific through Nicaragua.

Fillmore supported infrastructure as ongoing internal improvements, such as canals and railroads. He was the first president to provide federal support for railroads. The resulting reduced transportation costs allowed for a significant reduction in postal rates. During his three years in office, the federal budget remained under $50 million, with budget surpluses of about $4 million each year.

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