MILLARD FILLMORE
On a visit to England, Fillmore was offered an honorary degree from Oxford University whose diplomas were always in Latin. He declined.
This slogan was used by the Know-Nothing Party because they would rather continue to accept slavery than plunge the nation into a civil war.
At the time, there was no pension for ex-presidents nor was any staff provided to them after they left office. Many people argued that there was no reason that an ex-President should not be a small businessman who operated a grocery store. However, there was then, as there is now some class consciousness and elitism in perception of occupations.
He was of course not the President then. But the stands that politicians took with respect to the rebellion of the South often determined their political futures. See {640752} for another future President’s quotation on the subject.
Millard Fillmore was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853, the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Upstate New York, Fillmore was elected as the 12th U.S. Vice President in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency in July 1850 upon the death of U.S. President Zachary Taylor. Fillmore was instrumental in the passing of the Compromise of 1850, a bargain that led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery. He failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852 but gained the endorsement of the nativist Know Nothing Party four years later and finished third in the 1856 presidential election.
