"The real casualty of the Compromise of 1850 was the Whig Party, which would never again occupy the White House, although Abraham Lincoln was a former Whig. Fillmore, who had never sought, nor desired, the presidency, found himself as the only viable candidate to run on a Whig platform in 1852. No Whig could win the presidency without the support of the southern Whigs, and Fillmore, having supported the revised Fugitive Slave Act, had a southern credential to go with the largely pro-northern compromise. But Fillmore didn't want the nomination, despite having gotten the majority of delegates. He tried, instead, to push his delegates toward Daniel Webster, but they refused. With nowhere else to go, the delegates cast their ballots in favor of Winfield Scott, who secured the nomination for the Whig Party's final appearance in a national election. Thus Scott became the Whig nominee in 1852, who with William Seward's endorsement was guaranteed to lose all support from the southern Whigs. The party was dead and Franklin Pierce-an unremarkable pro-slavery Democrat-easily won the election in 1852. On January 6, just two months before taking office, Pierce's eleven-year-old son, Benjamin, was killed in a train accident. Thus, Fillmore's presidency began and ended in the White House draped in black mourning cloth. Pierce never recovered from this loss and neither did his wife, who would tragically be referred to as a White House ghost. He was a melancholy president, a sporadically functional alcoholic, who in his one high-profile decision signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which had the effect of pushing the country closer to civil war."