Hannibal Hamlin

Hannibal Hamlin (August 27, 1809 – July 4, 1891) was a politician from Maine. Hamlin served as a lawmaker in Maine, governor of Maine, and member of the the U.S. House of Representatives and of the U.S. Senate. He began his career as a Democrat but later became a Republican. He was the first Republican to serve as Vice President of the United States under U.S. President Abraham Lincoln during the 1860 presidential election.

Hamlin was born in Paris, Maine. He was a descendant of James Hamlin, who had lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639.

Hamlin attended the area's schools and later managed his father's farm. For the next few years, he worked at several jobs. He studied law. He lived in Hampden, Maine, where he practiced law until 1848, when he moved away. Hamlin studied law. He was admitted to the legal profession in 1833 and quickly became known as a good lawyer and a good speaker.

In politics, Hamlin began as an antislavery Democrat. He was a member of the Maine House of Representatives from 1836 to 1840 and became in charge of it. He was a U.S. Representative from 1843 to 1847 and a U.S. Senator from 1848 to 1856. From the very beginning of his service in Congress he was a well-known opponent of the extension of slavery, a notable supporter of the Wilmot Proviso, and an opponent of the Missouri Compromise. In 1856, he left the Democratic Party and joined the new Republican Party, which had been started two years earlier.

The Republicans in tjhe state chose him as their cndidate for governor of Maine 1856, and he won a landslide victory. He was inaugurated as governor on January 8, 1857. In late February, however, he gave up the governorship, and he joined the U.S. Senate from 1857 and served until 1861.

From 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War, he was Vice President of the United States. While in this office he gave much advice to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and supported both the Emancipation Proclamation and the arming of the slaves. After the war, he served in the U.S. Senate (1869-1881), was minister to Spain (1881-1883), and then left public life. He died at Bangor, Maine, on July 4, 1891.^[1]