Fillmore and Donelson finished third by winning 873,053 votes (21.6%) and carrying the state of Maryland and its eight electoral votes.[j] The American Party ticket narrowly lost in several southern states, and a change of fewer than 8,000 votes in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, where the sectional divide would have made the outcome uncertain.[127]
The historian Allan Nevins wrote that Fillmore was not a Know Nothing or a nativist, offering as support that Fillmore was out of the country when the nomination came and had not been consulted about running. Nevins stated about Fillmore that "by no spoken or written word had he indicated a subscription to American tenets."[128][129] However, Fillmore had sent a letter for publication in 1855 that explicitly denounced immigrant influence in elections[117] and Fillmore stated that the American Party was the "only hope of forming a truly national party, which shall ignore this constant and distracting agitation of slavery."[4]

Remarriage, later life, and death[edit]
Caroline Fillmore
Fillmore considered his political career to have ended with his defeat in 1856. He again felt inhibited from returning to the practice of law. 