On July 9, 1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore received word that Zachary Taylor had died; Fillmore became the last Whig politician to hold the presidency.

Born in a log cabin in upstate New York, Fillmore was apprenticed to a clothmaker. At 19, he enrolled briefly in school and fell in love with his teacher, Abigail Powers. In 1826, they married. He studied law, opened a law firm and, by age 29, he was serving in New York’s state legislature. Beginning in 1833, he served several terms in the U.S. House.

The fight over slavery dominated the years of Fillmore’s public life. As president, he signed the contentious Compromise of 1850, a series of five bills negotiating the fate of territory gained in the Mexican-American War. It brought California into the Union as a free state. Fillmore also dispatched Commodore Matthew Perry to open Japan to the West.

After finishing his term, Fillmore and his wife attended the outdoor inauguration of Franklin Pierce. There, Abigail caught cold; weeks later she died of pneumonia. Fillmore’s daughter Mary died barely a year later. Devastated, Fillmore embarked on a European tour. While there, he learned that the American Party had nominated him for president. In the election of 1856, he received over 20 percent of the popular vote and eight electoral votes, one of the best results in history for a third party. Fillmore stayed interested in national issues. He died from a stroke at his residence in Buffalo, New York, on March 8, 1874.