MILLARD FILLMORE.

Millard Fillmore, being elected Vice-President to President Taylor, became his constitutional successor, and served the unexpired term from 1850 to 1853. Very exciting questions arose during his term of office: among them the slavery question, the admission of California into the Union as a free State, and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law-providing for the return to their owners of slaves escaping to a free State. During the debate of these questions, for awhile it seemed as if the Union would be rent asunder. Mr. Fillmore treated them with dignity, if not with statesmanship, till finally conciliatory measures prevailed, and the questions were amicably settled.

In every respect Mr. Fillmore discharged the duties of President as a conscientious, sensible man, thoroughly acquainted with legislative and general political principles.

President Fillmore was born in Cayuga co., New York, January 7, 1800, and died March 8,

success.

1874. He had not a very liberal education, and, when young, served as an apprentice to the fuller's trade. In the year 1821, he was admitted to the bar and practiced law with From 1832 to 1840 he was a member of Congress; in 1842 he was nominated by the Whigs of New York for Governor, and was defeated; and in 1856 the Native American party run him for President, and he received only the electoral vote of Maryland.

Upon the death of President Taylor, the entire Cabinet resigned.

Administration.

On the death of General Taylor, Fillmore became President. During his administration the Omnibus Bill was passed, 1850.-This admitted California as a free state and settled a number of other questions.-It also provided for the capture of runaway slaves (FugitiveSlave Law), a measure which caused much trouble in the North.-A Fisheries Treaty was concluded with Great Britain.-Franklin Pierce was elected President in 1852.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

Franklin Pierce was born at Hillsborough, New Hampshire, on the 23d of November, 1804, and died in 1869. He graduated at Bowdoin College, Maine, in 1824; studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1827. He was President from 1853 to 1857.

Mr. Pierce had barely attained the requisite legal age when he was elected to the Senate. He found there such men as Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Thomas H. Benton, and Silas Wright. Nathaniel Hawthorn says in his biography of Mr. Pierce: "With his usual tact and exquisite sense of propriety, he saw it was not the time for him to step forward prominently on this highest theatre in the land. He beheld these great combatants doing battle before the eyes of the Nation, and engrossing its whole regards. There was hardly an avenue to reputation save what was occupied by one or another of those gigantic figures." During Tyler's administration, he resigned. When the Mexican war broke out, he enlisted as a volunteer, but soon rose to the office of brigadier-general. He dis

tinguished himselfunder General Scott, against whom he afterwards successfully ran for the Presidency, and upon whom,during his administration, he conferred the title of lieutenantgeneral. On the question of slavery, Mr. Pierce always sided with the South, and opposed antislavery measures in every shape. In a message to Congress in 1856, he characterized the formation of a free State government in Kansas as an act of rebellion, and justified the principles of the Kansas and Nebraska act. He, however, espoused the National cause at the opening of the civil War, and urged a cordial support of the administration at Washington.

Administration.

The Gladstone Purchase from Mexico gave us a large piece of territory (1853). In 1854 a Treaty of Commerce was concluded with Japan.-In 1858 the Kansas and Nebraska Bill was passed, though opposed by the North.— This allowed the people of those territories to choose whether they should come in as free or slave states when they applied for admission.-The South and North both sent emigrants to Kansas, where a bloody civil war began, which lasted till 1861.