RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) –<\/p>\n
Leading up to America\u2019s 250th birthday, we are highlighting things you might not know about our presidents.<\/p>\n
He was a founder of the University of Buffalo and the last member of the Whig Party to become president.<\/p>\n
Millard Fillmore was born in a log cabin in Cayuga County in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York.<\/p>\n
He had little formal education but still became a lawyer, passing the bar in 1823.<\/p>\n
Fillmore married Abigail Powers in 1826 and served four terms in the U.S. Congress. In 1843, while serving as the comptroller of New York, he was chosen by the Whig Party to run as Zachary Taylor\u2019s vice president in the election of 1848. <\/p>\n
After only 16 months in office, Taylor died in 1850, making Fillmore the 13th President of the United States.<\/p>\n
The Compromise of 1850 defined his presidency. Fillmore was anti-slavery. The compromise abolished slavery in Washington, DC, but he was unwilling to abolish slavery in states that already had it to preserve the Union. As part of the compromise, he signed the Fugitive Slave Act that required the federal government to capture and return previously enslaved people to their owners, further angering the Whigs.<\/p>\n
In 1852, the Whig Party did not choose Fillmore to run for re-election, ending his national political career and eventually the Whig Party. Democrat Franklin Pierce won the general election. <\/p>\n
Millard Fillmore suffered a stroke and died in 1874. He was 74 years old.<\/p>\n
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