Millard Fillmore was born in 1800 in a log cabin to a poor tenant farmer in New York. He was named Millard after his mother’s maiden name. His father and uncle had been sold a land title sight unseen. The land turned out to be hard clay not good for farming. On top of that, the title was faulty and they lost the land. They ended up moving a few miles south where the land wasn’t much better.

Fillmore grew up doing farm chores. He had four brothers and four sisters. His father considered hunting and fishing (“sporting”) to be a waste of time. When Fillmore was 14, he was apprenticed to an ill-tempered cloth maker. He quit after 4 months, but his father found him another cloth-making apprenticeship that he stayed at for years.

He had only basic knowledge of reading and math. When he was 17, a library opened, allowing him to read books other than the Bible. When he was 19, a teacher opened a school nearby. He saw a map for the first time and learned grammar. He also fell in love with his teacher, Abigail Powers, who was 2 years older than him. She was the daughter of a preacher and sister to a judge.

Fillmore’s father sold his tenancy and moved the family a dozen miles to Montville, New York to become a tenant of the wealthy Judge Walter Wood. He convinced the judge to try out Millard as a clerk in his law office for a couple months. When Millard learned the news at the family dinner table, he burst into tears of joy, then ran from the table, embarrassed at his emotional display.

After the two months, the judge offered to continue teaching him law, and offered to loan him the money to pay for it. Fillmore bought his way out of his apprenticeship to pursue a career in law. He bought fine leather shoes and suits with high white collars and began to carry a cane, which he considered the mark of a true gentleman.

Helping the judge with his tenant farms, Fillmore had to evict poor tenant families. In 1821, a local farmer offered him 3 dollars to defend him in a justice-of-the-peace case. It was his first case and he ended up settling out of court. However, Judge Wood was angry and told him not to do it again. Fillmore quit. He went back to the family farm and made a little money handling justice-of-the-peace cases and teaching. He was 21.

The family had moved again near Buffalo, which had recovered from the War of 1812 and was now booming. The Erie Canal had been announced and speculators were investing. Law clerks were in high demand and he got a job as a clerk, while also keeping his teaching job. He became so well-known in Buffalo, it became a common phrase for people to say, “If Millard Fillmore goes for it, so do I.”

He was admitted to the bar after just 27 months instead of the usual 7 years. Lacking experience and unsure of himself, he decided to leave the big city and practice law in the small town of East Aurora. Two years later, he felt able to support a family and married his former teacher Abigail Powers. Within the year, he became attorney, then counselor, for the NY Supreme Court.

After the murder of William Morgan, anti-Masonic feeling spread throughout the country. Fillmore joined the Antimason Party and was elected Assemblyman. He wasn’t an eloquent orator, instead speaking slowly using common words in short direct sentences.

He and his wife joined the Unitarian church. They had a boy and a girl. After being elected to Congress, he helped found the Whig party to oppose Andrew Jackson. Fillmore opposed slavery, but didn’t want to commit himself to the opposition, which would have hurt his political prospects. Fillmore was usually calm, but had a fiery temper when he was roused.

In 1841 when he was 41 years old, he became Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. It was an important job since the country had been hit by a depression and he was in charge of economic policy. He supported the Bankruptcy Act of 1841 which allowed businessmen to declare bankruptcy. He also supported the Tariff Act of 1842 which discouraged imports. The depression began to lift.

Fillmore then decided to retire from Congress. He returned to his law practice and began campaigning for vice president, which didn’t work out due to the treachery of Thurlow Weed. Weed was a Whig boss and had once been an ally to Fillmore, but he betrayed him by working behind the scenes to get a different candidate (William Seward) to be the Whig’s vice presidential candidate.

Fillmore then ran for governor of New York and barely lost. He became a Whig boss himself, helping to elect others. He got elected to state comptroller, which gave him more control over New York’s finances than anyone, including the governor. He pushed for canal and harbor improvements and introduced a new currency system that Congress adopted as part of the National Banking Act 16 years later.

Thurlow Weed mended his relationship with Fillmore and said they should work together to ensure a New York Whig got the presidential nomination, instead of southern Whig like Zachary Taylor. Fillmore agreed, however, Weed again secretly advocated for William Seward.

When slaveholder Zachary Taylor got the Whig presidential nomination, anti-slavery Whigs were furious. Fillmore was chosen as the vice presidential candidate to placate them. While Fillmore opposed slavery, he didn’t intend to do anything to stop it. He considered it each state’s decision whether to allow slavery or not. When asked about new states, Fillmore avoided the question in order to get both sides to think he agreed with them.

After Fillmore was elected vice president, Thurlow Weed again pretended that he wanted to work with him, this time to fill a senate vacancy. He wanted William Seward to fill the vacancy, naturally. The overly-trusting Fillmore fell for Weed’s tricks yet again and helped get Seward elected. Weed, meanwhile, secretly instructed Senator Seward to undermine Fillmore.

Seward and Weed formed an alliance with Taylor’s cabinet (although Taylor himself may not have known about it.) Fillmore and Weed were supposed to share control of New York’s patronage system, but Weed wanted to control it by himself. Weed ended up filling several important positions in New York before Fillmore realized what was happening. Fillmore told Taylor, but Taylor was bamboozled by his cabinet and Weed. Weed suggested New York’s patronage be given to the supposedly unbiased Governor Hamilton Fish and Taylor agreed. However, Fish was secretly working for Weed.

Weed continued putting his people into positions of power and his newspaper ran editorials belittling Fillmore, while Fillmore and his supporters lost power. Fillmore fought back by founding a newspaper of his own.

Taylor died in office and Fillmore became president. His daughter performed the duties of First Lady in place of her ailing mother, and his son, already a lawyer, served as Fillmore’s private clerk. Now that Fillmore was president, Weed was worried Fillmore would dismiss his political appointees, but Fillmore wasn’t interested in revenge. He only dismissed one of Weed’s appointees and let him keep the rest. In either case, Fillmore’s supporters gained in the New York elections that year and Weed lost influence.

Taylor’s cabinet, which had been hostile to Fillmore, all offered their resignations. Fillmore asked them to stay in office for a month so he could find replacements, but they agreed to stay only a week.

At the time Fillmore became president, tensions were high between slaveholders and abolitionists over whether the newly-acquired California and New Mexico territories would be free or slave states. Civil war was a real possibility. Texas also threatened to go to war over New Mexican territory Texas thought should be theirs. To avoid the looming crisis, Fillmore was willing to make himself politically unpopular and do whatever he could to keep the Union together.

He quickly assembled a cabinet of men willing to compromise on the slavery issue. Unlike Taylor who was rigidly anti-slavery (despite being a slaveholder himself), Fillmore was willing to compromise on slavery to avoid a civil war.

The Compromise of 1850 gave Texas 33,000 square miles of New Mexico’s territory, admitted California as a free state, established the territories of New Mexico and Utah (with the possibility of them perhaps becoming slave states), passed the Fugitive Slave Act (to placate slaveholders), and abolished the slave trade in Washington D.C. (to placate abolitionists). Neither side was completely happy, but such is the nature of compromise.

Abolitionists were furious about The Fugitive Slave Act. It strengthened an existing 1793 law, and gave federal law enforcement agencies increased responsibility and manpower to pursue, capture, and return escaped slaves. Despite being against slavery himself, Fillmore used federal troops to enforce the Act in order to preserve the union. Slaveholders were upset California (and likely New Mexico) would be free states, and continued talking about secession.

However, tensions cooled somewhat in 1851 when the nation became prosperous. The price of cotton went up. Fillmore advocated industrial and commercial growth and cities exploded in size. People began living more luxuriously, including the Fillmores.

France tried to take over Hawaii, but Fillmore stood up to Napoleon III and insisted Hawaii remain an independent nation. Fillmore also began steps to open up trade with Japan.

There were islands off the coast of Peru with a lot of sea bird guano. Guano was valuable as it was used as a fertilizer. In the past, anyone who wanted it could take it, but Peru began to enforce its claims to the islands and threatened to fire on any incoming ships. A group of New York businessmen asked Secretary of State Daniel Webster to send the Navy along on their next guano extraction trip and he agreed. When Fillmore learned about this, he said the islands belonged to Peru and the US shouldn’t be sending the Navy out, however the New York businessman pressured him into changing his mind.

Fillmore failed to get his party’s nomination for reelection and the Whigs lost the presidential election by a landslide. For all intents and purposes, the Whig Party which he had helped found, was done with.

After leaving the White House, Fillmore wanted a house befitting the dignity of a former president and began shopping for a better one than he currently owned. He had enough money to retire, but not enough to retire in style, so he decided to return to law (but would only take important cases before the highest courts to preserve his dignity.)

His wife died shortly after he left the White House. His daughter, only 22 years old, died the next year.

By 1854, the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner (an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic movement which particularly despised the Irish) had become a full-fledged political party. They called themselves the American party, but the public called them the Know-Nothing Party because when questioned about their secret activities, members always claimed to know nothing about it. Many former Whigs joined, including Millard Fillmore.

The Know Nothings were super popular for a brief period of time. Stores sold Know-Nothing Candy, Know-Nothing Tea, and Know-Nothing Toothpicks, among other items. A clipper ship was even named The Know-Nothing. By 1855, they held 48 seats in Congress, then quickly disintegrated after Fillmore lost the 1856 presidential election by a landslide.

In 1858, Fillmore married a wealthy widow. He supported the Union in the Civil War, leading the Union Continentals, a company of retired New York militia officers who marched in funerals and parades.

After the war, he devoted himself to numerous causes in his home town of Buffalo, New York: economic growth, education, health care, the arts, historic preservation, and prevention of cruelty to animals. In 1874, at the age of 74, he died of a stroke.

Fillmore is often considered one of the worst presidents because of his association with the Know-Nothings and his appeasement strategy towards slaveholders, but he avoided war on several occasions and saved a lot of lives.

While the Fugive Slave Act was reprehensible, the Compromise of 1850 prevented civil war. It also admitted California as a free state and abolished the slave trade in Washington D.C. Fillmore stood up to Texas when they threatened to invade New Mexico and got them to back down.

After Narciso López and his American allies failed to conquer Cuba for the third time, the Spanish executed him along with several Americans. There were riots against the Spanish in New Orleans. War with Spain was a real possibility, but Fillmore used diplomacy to avoid war, saving lives.

Lajos Kossuth wanted the US to recognize Hungarian independence, but Fillmore remained neutral and saved lives by not entering the war.

Although he’s not that great, think Millard Fillmore deserves a better ranking as president than he’s traditionally gotten.