Most of the measures were rejected and the whole plan seemed likely to fail, when the situation was changed by the death of President Taylor and the accession of Millard Fillmore on the 9th of July 1850.
In 1853 he declined President Fillmore's offer to make him secretary of state.
President Taylor died on the 9th of July 1850, and on the next day Fillmore took the oath of office as his successor.
He was a member of the lower house of the Ohio legislature in 1821, 1822 and 1829, and of the national House of Representatives from 1831 to 1840; was governor of Ohio in 1840-1842; served in the United States Senate from 1845 to 1850; was secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of President Fillmore in 1850-1853; was again a member of the national House of Representatives from 1859 to 1861; and from 1861 to 1864 was minister of the United States to Mexico - a position of peculiar difficulty at that time.
His father, Nathaniel, in 1795, made a clearing within the limits of what is now the town of Summerhill, Cayuga county, New York, and there Millard Fillmore was born, on the 7th of February 1800.