Hannibal Hamlin

Hannibal Hamlin
15th Vice President of the United States
In office March 4, 1861 – March 4, 1865
President	Abraham Lincoln
Preceded by	John C. Breckinridge
Succeeded by	Andrew Johnson
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine's 6th district
In office March 4, 1843 – March 3, 1847
Preceded by	Alfred Marshall
Succeeded by	James S. Wiley
United States Senator from Maine
In office June 8, 1848 – January 7, 1857 March 4, 1857 – January 17, 1861 March 4, 1869 – March 3, 1881
Preceded by	Wyman B. S. Moor Amos Nourse Lot M. Morrill
Succeeded by	Amos Nourse Lot M. Morrill Eugene Hale
26th Governor of Maine
In office January 8, 1857 – February 25, 1857
Preceded by	Samuel Wells
Succeeded by	Joseph H. Williams
Born	August 27, 1809 Paris, Maine
Died	July 4, 1891 (aged 81) Bangor, Maine
Political party	Democrat, Republican
Spouse(s)	Sarah Jane Emery (m. 1833–1855) , her death Ellen Vesta Emery Hamlin (m. 1856–1891) , his death
Religion	Unitarian
Signature

Hannibal Hamlin (August 27, 1809 – July 4, 1891) was the 15th Vice President of the United States, serving under President Abraham Lincoln from 1861–1865. He was the first Vice President from the Republican Party.

Prior to his election in 1860, Hamlin served in the United States Senate, the House of Representatives, and, briefly, as the 26th Governor of Maine.

Early life

Hamlin was born to Cyrus Hamlin and Anna Livermore in Paris, Maine. He is a descendant of James Hamlin in the sixth generation, who had settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639. Hamlin was a great nephew of U.S. Senator Samuel Livermore II of New Hampshire,^{[citation needed]} and a grandson of Stephen Emery, Maine's Attorney General in 1839–40.

Hamlin attended the district schools and Hebron Academy and later managed his father's farm. For the next few years he worked at several jobs: schoolmaster, cook, woodcutter, surveyor, manager of a weekly newspaper in Paris, and a compositor at a printer's office. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1833. He began practicing in Hampden, a suburb of Bangor, where he lived until 1848.

Hamlin married Sarah Jane Emery of Paris Hill in 1833. After Sarah died in 1855, he married her half-sister, Ellen Vesta Emery in 1856. He had four children with Sarah: George, Charles, Cyrus and Sarah. And he had two children, Hannibal E. and Frank, with Ellen. Ellen Hamlin died in 1925.^[1]

Political beginnings

Hamlin's political career began in 1836, when he began a term in the Maine House of Representatives after being elected the year before. He served in the bloodless Aroostook War, which took place in 1839. Hamlin unsuccessfully ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1840 and left the State House in 1841. He later served two terms in the United States House of Representatives, from 1843–1847. He was elected to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy in 1848, and to a full term in 1851. A Democrat at the beginning of his career, Hamlin supported the candidacy of Franklin Pierce in 1852.

From the very beginning of his service in Congress, he was prominent as an opponent of the extension of slavery. He was a conspicuous supporter of the Wilmot Proviso and spoke against the Compromise Measures of 1850. In 1854, he strongly opposed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise. After the Democratic Party endorsed that repeal at the 1856 Democratic National Convention, on June 12, 1856, he withdrew from the Democratic Party and joined the newly organized Republican Party, causing a national sensation.

The Republicans nominated him for Governor of Maine in the same year. He carried the election by a large majority and was inaugurated on January 8, 1857. In the latter part of February 1857, however, he resigned the governorship, and was again a member of the United States Senate from 1857 to January 1861.

Vice presidency

In 1861, Hamlin became Vice President under Abraham Lincoln, whom he did not meet until after the election. Maine was the first state in the Northeast to embrace the Republican Party, and the Lincoln-Hamlin ticket thus made sense in terms of regional balance. Hamlin was also a strong orator, and a known opponent of slavery. While serving as Vice President, Hamlin had little authority in the Lincoln Administration, although he urged both the Emancipation Proclamation and the arming of Black Americans. He strongly supported Joseph Hooker's appointment as commander of the Army of the Potomac, which was a dismal failure. In June 1864, the Republicans and War Democrats joined to form the National Union Party. Although Lincoln was renominated, War Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee was named to replace Hamlin as Lincoln's running mate. Lincoln was seeking to broaden his base support and was also looking ahead to Southern Reconstruction, at which Johnson had proven himself adept as war governor of occupied Tennessee. Hamlin, by contrast, was an ally of Northern radicals (who would later impeach Johnson). Lincoln and Johnson were elected in November 1864, and Hamlin's term expired on March 4, 1865.

Hamlin and Lincoln were not close personally, but had a good working relationship. As with the time, White House etiquette did not require the Vice President to regularly attend cabinet meetings; thus, Hamlin did not regularly visit the White House. It was said that Mary Todd Lincoln and Hamlin disliked each other. For his part, Hamlin complained, “I am only a fifth wheel of a coach and can do little for my friends.” ^[2]

Although Hamlin narrowly missed becoming President, his vice presidency would usher in a half-century of sustained national influence for the Maine Republican Party. In the period 1861–1911, Maine Republicans occupied the offices of Vice President, Secretary of the Treasury (twice), Secretary of State, President pro tempore of the United States Senate, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (twice), and would field a national presidential candidate in James G. Blaine, a level of influence in national politics seldom matched by subsequent Maine political delegations.

Later life and death

Not content with private life, Hamlin returned to the U.S. Senate in 1868 to serve two more terms before declining to run for re-election in 1880 because of a weak heart. His last duty as a public servant came in 1881, when Secretary of State James G. Blaine—a Mainer—convinced James Garfield to name Hamlin minister to Spain, nominating him for the post of ambassador to Spain. Hamlin held the position for two years, then retired to Bangor, Maine. He continued, however, to be a behind-the-scenes influence in the local and state Republican Party.

Upon returning from Spain, Hamlin retired from public life to his home in Bangor, where he had bought an Italianate mansion in 1851 at 15 Fifth St., on the west side of the city. On July 4, 1891, while playing cards at the Tarratine Club (which he founded) in downtown Bangor, Hannibal Hamlin died on the club's couch. He was 81. Hamlin was buried with honors in the Hamlin Family plot at Mount Hope Cemetery, in Bangor, Maine.

Family

Hamlin had three sons who grew to adulthood: Charles Hamlin, Cyrus Hamlin, and Hannibal Emery Hamlin. Charles and Cyrus served in the Union forces during the Civil War, both becoming generals. Cyrus was among the first Union officers to argue for the enlistment of black troops, and himself commanded a brigade of freemen in the Mississippi River campaign. Charles and sister Sarah were present at Ford's Theater the night of Lincoln's assassination. Hannibal Emery Hamlin was Maine Attorney General from 1905 to 1908. Hannibal Hamlin's great-granddaughter Sally Hamlin was a child actor who made many spoken word recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company in the early years of the 20th century.

Hannibal's older brother, Elijah Livermore Hamlin, was president of the Mutual Fire Insurance Co. of Bangor, and the Bangor Institution for Savings.^[3] He was twice an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Maine in the late 1840s, though he did serve as Mayor of Bangor in 1851–52. The brothers were members of different political parties (Hannibal a Democrat, and Elijah a Whig) before both becoming Republican in the later 1850s.^[4] Hannibal's nephew (Elijah's son) Augustus Choate Hamlin was a physician, artist, mineralogist, author, and historian. He was also Mayor of Bangor in 1877–78, and a founding member of the Bangor Historical Society.^[5] Augustus served as surgeon in the 2nd Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War, eventually becoming a U.S. Army Medical Inspector, and later the Surgeon General of Maine. He wrote books about Andersonville Prison and the Battle of Chancellorsville.^[6]

Hannibal's first cousin Cyrus Hamlin, who was a graduate of the Bangor Theological Seminary, became a missionary in Turkey, where he founded Robert College. He later became president of Middlebury College in Vermont. His son, A.D.F. Hamlin, Hannibal's first cousin once removed, became a professor of architecture at Columbia University and a noted architectural historian.

There are biographies of Hamlin by his grandson Charles E. Hamlin (published 1899, reprinted 1971) and by H. Draper Hunt (published 1969).

Monuments and memorials

Hannibal Hamlin is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor.

Hamlin County, South Dakota, is named in his honor, as is Hamlin, New York, and Hamlin Lake, Mason Co., Michigan. There are statues in Hamlin's likeness in the United States Capitol and in a public park (Norumbega Mall) in Bangor. There is also a building on the University of Maine Campus, in Orono, named Hannibal Hamlin Hall. This burned down in 1945, in a fire that killed two students, but was subsequently rebuilt. Hannibal Hamlin Memorial Library is next to his birthplace in Paris Maine.

Hamlin's house in Bangor subsequently housed the Presidents of the adjacent Bangor Theological Seminary. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hamlin's house in Paris is currently household to former New Hampshire International Speedway owner, Bob Bahr. It also is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In popular culture

In the acclaimed 2008 video game Fallout 3, Hannibal Hamlin is the name of the Leader of the Temple of the Union, the group responsible for taking care of runaway slaves.

Biographies

• Harry Draper Hunt (1969). Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Lincoln's first Vice-President. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815621423. OCLC 24587.
• Charles Eugene Hamlin (1899). The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin. Syracuse University Press. OCLC 1559174. http://books.google.com/books?id=uBFCAAAAIAAJ.

References

External links

• Hannibal Hamlin at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Biography at Mr. Lincoln's White House
• The life and times of Hannibal Hamlin by Charles Eugene Hamlin
• Bangor in Focus: Hannibal Hamlin
• Ted Widmer (November 22, 2010). "Lincoln Speaks". NY Times. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/lincoln-speaks/.

Political offices
Preceded by John C. Breckinridge	Vice President of the United States March 4, 1861 – March 4, 1865	Succeeded by Andrew Johnson
Preceded by Samuel Wells	Governor of Maine January 8, 1857 – February 25, 1857	Succeeded by Joseph H. Williams
United States Senate
Preceded by Lot M. Morrill	United States Senator (Class 1) from Maine March 4, 1869 – March 4, 1881 Served alongside: William P. Fessenden, Lot M. Morrill, James G. Blaine	Succeeded by Eugene Hale
Preceded by Amos Nourse	United States Senator (Class 1) from Maine March 4, 1857 – January 17, 1861 Served alongside: William P. Fessenden	Succeeded by Lot M. Morrill
Preceded by Wyman B. S. Moor	United States Senator (Class 1) from Maine June 8, 1848 – January 7, 1857 Served alongside: James W. Bradbury and William P. Fessenden	Succeeded by Amos Nourse
United States House of Representatives
Preceded by Alfred Marshall	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine's 6th congressional district March 4, 1843 – March 4, 1847	Succeeded by James S. Wiley
Party political offices
Preceded by William L. Dayton	Republican Party vice presidential candidate 1860	Succeeded by Andrew Johnson(1)
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Lucius Fairchild	United States Minister to Spain June 30, 1881 – October 17, 1882	Succeeded by John W. Foster
Notes and references
1. Lincoln and Johnson ran on the National Union ticket in 1864.