This essay is on President Millard Fillmore. It gives a breif bio and explains what he did during his presidency for the country and gives my view.

Essay by MikeW73High School, 11th gradeA, January 2004

download word file, 3 pages 1.0

Millard Fillmore was the president of the United States between 1850-1853. Born in the Finger Lakes county of New York in 1800, Fillmore as a youth endured the hardships frontier life and was a hard worker. He worked on his father's farm, and at 15 was apprenticed to a cloth dresser. He attended one-room schools and later moved his law practice to buffalo as an associate of the Whig party.

During his three-year term Millard Fillmore finally settled the Compromise of 1850, which was the annexation of Texas to the United States and the gain of new territory by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Hostility began between North and South concerning the question of weather or not Texas should be a slave state or a free state. Fillmore was against slavery and didn't want to bring in another slave state into the union. After the death of John Tyler, Millard Fillmore was given presidency made the compromise more feasible.

After long debates and failure to pass the omnibus bill, Congress passed the measures as separate bills in September 1850. Many people, North and South, said the compromise wasn't a final solution to the question of slavery in the territories.

On September 9, 1850, as part of the first act of the Compromise of 1850, California was accepted as the 31st state into the Union. California was admitted as a free state, while the other states created from territory acquired from Mexico were to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to be free or slave states.

Fillmore's administration was chiefly noteworthy for its interest in the nation's economic development. Fillmore had earlier cooperated with Senator Stephen A. Douglas in arranging the first federal land grants for railroad construction, and as president he encouraged internal improvements and the expansion of...