Hudson & Berkshire Rail-Road Company $1,000 bond signed by Millard Fillmore as Comptroller of the State of New York, dated September 15, 1848. Handsome partly-printed document measuring approximately 13.5" x 14", issued under state authorization during the period of railroad expansion linking New York and Massachusetts. Boldly signed “Millard Fillmore” at lower right as Comptroller, less than two years before becoming the 13th President of the United States. The bond features the embossed corporate seal of the Hudson & Berkshire Rail-Road Company at left and retains a series of its original printed and handwritten interest coupons (“warrants”) along the lower margin. Light toning with intersecting folds, small edge splits, and minor corner wear, otherwise clean and well-preserved with strong, crisp signatures.
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) 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 vice president in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency in July 1850 upon the death of Zachary Taylor. Fillmore was instrumental in passing 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 to which the linen broadside is refering.
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