AHC: Make Millard Fillmore interesting

Millard Fillmore has gone down as one of the least interesting presidents in U.S history, to the point that he's known for being forgettable and having a ridiculous name. But does that have to be the case? Is there a time and place he could've been president and/or vice president and be a notable historical figure? The challenge is to find a scenario where he would be. Earliest point of divergence is 1840, ten years before he became president IOTL and during the election between Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison
 
Have him veto the Fugitive Slave Bill. The Compromise of 1850 would fall apart, secession and civil war would come a decade early, and Fillmore definitely would become more "interesting" and maybe with an enhanced reputation--provided, of course, the North won...
 
Have him veto the Fugitive Slave Bill. The Compromise of 1850 would fall apart, secession and civil war would come a decade early, and Fillmore definitely would become more "interesting" and maybe with an enhanced reputation--provided, of course, the North won...

*Have the correspondence with his son survive

*Have him required to deal with allegations of a sexual relationship between his first vice president and his presidential successor

*Have a more assertive Peter Bell - because Texas isn't big enough in 1850!

*Make him keep part or all of Tyler's cabinet

*Get Fillmore to authorize a transcontinental railroad in 1851 - he actually toyed with doing this

*Drag the US into war for Cuba (and Puerto Rico and the Philippines?) in 1852 after the execution of several Americans including a cabinet member's nephew

*Generate favor for Lois Kossuth and have American support for Hungarian independence, perhaps in the wake of Spanish involvement?

*Give France under Napoleon III more bluster in their response about nor annexing Hawaii
 
He is from the Buffalo, NY area. When the AFL is launched, instead of the Buffalo Bills, his rich legacy would be the Buffalo Fills.

Have old Millard be the railroad POTUS for a trans continental railroad.
 
People spent decades speculating that Zachary Taylor was poisoned, though I think studies on his corpse proved that he wasn't. What if he was and after those studies, people suspected Fillmore.
 
Simple: Millard Fillmore wins in 1856. He’s either able to avert or at least delay the civil war, or he gets viewed similarly to Buchanan in OTL.

He’d also be the first Know-Nothing president, making them a relevant political party and possibly allowing them to replace either the Democrats or the Republicans.

And, of course, he’d be the only president who served non-consecutive terms.
 
Fillmore's support of the Compromise of 1850 may have been wrong but it was hardly unimportant or uninteresting. Arguably it delayed the coming of the ACW by a decade. There certainly have been presidents less consequential than Fillmore--at least if Daniel Webster was right in saying that "if General Taylor had lived we should have had civil war." https://books.google.com/books?id=FbUBAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA231 Some historians have claimed that Taylor, though opposed to the "Omnibus," would have signed the individual Compromise bills. However, there is a question of whether the bills would have passed in the first place without active pressure of the type Fillmore exerted. As I wrote here a few years ago:

"Of course, saying that Taylor would not have vetoed the Compromise does not necessarily mean that it would have passed in the first place had he still been president. Positive aid, not just a willingness not to veto, was if not absolutely necessary, at least helpful, and here Fillmore was certainly more useful than Taylor could have been. As Smith notes, Fillmore, having served as Congressman and Vice-President, was better acquainted personally with members of Congress, was more tactful, understood the workings of the system better, etc. The mere fact that he was known as an enemy of Seward's made some Southerners more friendly to the compromise, and he apparently did use personal relations and make a few patronage promises when the compromise was in its final stages. But Smith thinks that by then pro-compromise sentiment was so strong in most states (South Carolina of course being an exception) that passage was practically assured...

"I should add that Michael Holt (in *The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party* puts more emphasis than Smith on Fillmore's role in getting the Compromise passed. The key vote, according to Holt, was the passage of the so-called "Little Omnibus" by 107-99. (Some of the preliminary votes were even closer.) Critical for its passage was the support of a number of Northern Whigs who had previously opposed any organization of new territories without the Wilmot Proviso. Holt thinks that while they may have been seriously worried about saving the Union, they were also influenced by the use of patronage by Fillmore and his Secretary of State, Webster... Holt's analysis can be found on pp. 539-543 of *The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party.* http://books.google.com/books?id=5aGyVFn3VnMC&pg=PA539
 
Have him accidentally shot and killed on the Senate floor, during the gun-waving incident between Senator Foote and Senator Benson.

Then Taylor dies, forcing a special Presidential election in November 1850 between Seward and Atchison.
 
Have him accidentally shot and killed on the Senate floor, during the gun-waving incident between Senator Foote and Senator Benson.

Then Taylor dies, forcing a special Presidential election in November 1850 between Seward and Atchison.

A corpse will do and Tyler too?
 
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