Millard Filmore Flashcards
Millard Fillmore
13th President of the United States
In office
July 9, 1850 – March 4, 1853
Vice President None
Preceded by Zachary Taylor
Succeeded by FrMillard 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 in order 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 Abraham Lincoln and during Reconstruction supported President Andrew Johnsonanklin Pierce
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Compromise of 1850
The Compromise was greeted with relief, although each side disliked specific provisions.
Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico, which it had threatened war over, as well as its claims north of the Missouri Compromise Line, transferred its crushing public debt to the federal government, and retained the control over El Paso that it had established earlier in 1850, with the Texas Panhandle (which earlier compromise proposals had detached from Texas) thrown in at the last moment.
California’s application for admission as a free state with its current boundaries was approved and a Southern proposal to split California at parallel 35° north to provide a Southern territory was not approved.
The South avoided adoption of the symbolically significant Wilmot Proviso[1] and the new New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory could in principle decide in the future to become slave states (popular sovereignty), even though Utah and a northern fringe of New Mexico were north of the Missouri Compromise Line where slavery had previously been banned in territories. In practice, these lands were generally unsuited to plantation agriculture and their existing settlers were non-Southerners uninterested in slavery. The unsettled southern parts of New Mexico Territory, where Southern hopes for expansion had been centered, remained a part of New Mexico instead of becoming a separate territory.
The most concrete Southern gains were a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, the enforcement of which outraged Northern public opinion, and preservation of slavery (but not the slave trade) in the national capital.
The slave trade was banned in Washington D.C.
pg. 357-360
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel “helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War”, according to Will Kaufman.
The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people. These include the affectionate, dark-skinned “mammy”; the “pickaninny” stereotype of black children; and the “Uncle Tom”, or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the negative associations with Uncle Tom’s Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a “vital antislavery tool.”
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United States presidential election, 1852
The United States presidential election of 1852 was the 17th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1852. It bore important similarities to the election of 1844. Once again, the incumbent president was a Whig who had succeeded to the presidency upon the death of his war-hero predecessor. In this case, it was Millard Fillmore who followed General Zachary Taylor. The Whig party passed over the incumbent for nomination — casting aside Fillmore in favor of General Winfield Scott. The Democrats nominated a “dark horse” candidate, this time Franklin Pierce. The Whigs again campaigned on the obscurity of the Democratic candidate, and once again the strategy failed.
Pierce and running mate William R. King went on to win what was at the time one of the nation’s largest electoral victories, trouncing Scott and his vice-presidential nominee, William Alexander Graham of North Carolina, 254 electoral votes to 42. After the 1852 election, the Whig Party quickly collapsed, and the members of the declining party failed to nominate a candidate for the next presidential race. It was soon replaced as the Democratic Party’s primary opposition by the new Republican Party. In spite of the appearance of Democratic triumph, no presidential candidate from the Democratic party would again win both a majority of the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote until 1932.
pg.359
