Millard Fillmore"The Accidental President, The Last Whig President"

Millard Fillmore was born January 7, 1800, into poverty, receiving little formal education before largely teaching himself law while working as an apprentice. He rose through New York politics, serving in the state assembly and then the U.S. House of Representatives, before being chosen as Zachary Taylor's running mate in 1848. He became President in July 1850 after Taylor's sudden death, and his presidency (1850–1853) was defined by the Compromise of 1850, a package of laws intended to ease tensions between free and slave states, including the highly controversial Fugitive Slave Act, which Fillmore signed and enforced despite significant moral objections from abolitionists. He failed to win his party's nomination for a full term in 1852, and the Whig Party itself disintegrated shortly afterward, largely over the same slavery divisions his presidency had tried to paper over.