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Framed 1870 Autograph and Portrait of President Millard Fillmore

This is a autograph of President Millard Fillmore that was signed in Buffalo, New York on April 14, 1870 that is nicely framed, matted and glazed with a portrait of President Fillmore.  The story of Millard Fillmore is the story of Horatio Alger in real life. His family was so poor that they sold him into indentured servitude and he received a mere six months of formal education, but his thirst for learning and ambition eventually made him a lawyer, Congressman, chief financial officer of the state of New York and eventually President of the United States.  The later job came to him after President Zachary Taylor died in office in July 1850.

 Fillmore quickly allied himself with Speaker of the House Henry Clay and Senator Stephen Douglas and appointed Daniel Webster as Secretary of State. Together they supported the famous Compromise of 1850 which admitted California as a state but as a condition to mollify the South, passed the Fugitive Slave Law.  By the later measure he lost the political support of the North and by not opposing the invasion of Cuba he lost the South. As a result he could not win renomination as the dying Whig Party candidate for President and Fillmore was the last Whig Party candidate to be President.  Below is a close-up of the portrait with facsimile autograph and the authentic autograph of Fillmore.

After the Presidency and his ill-fated attempt to run again in 1856 as the American Party candidate (he won Maryland and 21% of the vote) he returned to his home in Buffalo, New York where he resumed his law practice and signed our autograph. He hosted Abraham Lincoln in Buffalo in February 1861 when Lincoln was on his way to his Inauguration and supported the Union cause in the Civil War.

Price: SOLD