Millard Fillmore was a compromise vice presidential nominee who backed into the White House upon Zachary Taylor's sudden death. The nation was in the middle of a sectional crisis and a bitterly-divided Congress was about to send Fillmore some legislation cobbled together in a desperate bid to avert civil war. His signing of the controversial Fugitive Slave Act may have helped resolve the crisis, but it would become a dark cloud that plagued his presidency. Tasked with holding together not just a fracturing Union but his own fracturing Whig Party, Fillmore did his best to reconcile the increasingly irreconcilable elements of antebellum America. Also: Our Top 5 Embarrassing Political Blunders counts down some of the biggest bonehead moves and unforced errors by which presidents have shot themselves in the foot.
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| H.F. Bailey’s Gothic Hall Bowling Saloon – Buffalo Morning Express & Illustrated Buffalo Express (Buffalo, NY) – July 24, 1850 |
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| Thomas and Deborah Seaver – Orleans County Gazette (Irasburgh, VT) – May 3, 1851 |
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| Deborah Seaver responds – Orleans County Gazette (Irasburgh, VT) – May 3, 1851 |
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| Rum for sale – Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, VA) – January 19, 1853 |
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| Stanton’s hemorrhoidal ointment – Vermont Journal (Windsor, VT) – May 2, 1851 |
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| Reward for cemetery desecrators – The Alton Telegraph (Alton, IL) – April 23, 1852 |
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| Reward for barnburner – Vermont Journal (Windsor, VT) – May 2, 1851 |
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| Astrologer C.W. Roback – State Indiana Sentinel (Indianapolis, IN) – June 19, 1851 |
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| Guns and Pistols for sale – The Alton Telegraph (Alton, IL) – April 23, 1852 |
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| Married People’s Ball – Buffalo Evening Post (Buffalo, NY) – January 24, 1851 |
