AMERICAN HISTORY

How Well Do You Know Our 13th President, Millard Fillmore?

An Introduction to Our Last Whig President

Millard Fillmore. Photo by Matthew Brady. Library of Congress. Public Domain.

The name is memorable only because it is so odd. The man himself is far from memorable. Ask twenty friends how much they know about our 13th president and they may not even know whether he was before or after the Civil War.

In the event that you go to a party and someone asks who Millard Fillmore was, here’s a short list of things you can mention. It won’t make you the life of the party, but it will give folks the impression that you’re a true history buff.

1. He grew up poor, attended one room school houses. One of his teachers was a redhead named Abigail Powers whom he fell in love with and later married.
2. He was from upstate New York from a backwoods family in the Finger Lakes region. Though he became a lawyer and eventually served in Congress, he remained socially awkward, ever conscious of his inadequacies.
3. His name was put forward to be the vice presidential candidate to run with General Zachary Taylor for the Whig Party in the 1848 election. Taylor was the first president who had zero political experience and had never held office. He had been in the army since 1813. He went directly from being a hero in the Mexican…