Cyrus Hamlin (general)

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Cyrus Hamlin (April 26, 1839 – August 28, 1867) was an attorney, politician, and a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Hamlin was born in Hampden, Maine, a suburb of Bangor. He was the third son of the Vice President of the United States, Hannibal Hamlin. His brother, Charles Hamlin, was also a Civil War general. He was educated at the Hampden Academy and studied at Waterville College (now Colby College) in Waterville, Maine. He was admitted to the bar in 1860 and practiced law for a year in Kittery, Maine.

Hamlin enlisted in the Union Army in April 1862, serving as an aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont. Hamlin was among the first to advocate enlisting African-American troops in the Union Army. In February 1863, he was appointed the first colonel of the 80th United States Colored Troops and was assigned to field duty in Louisiana, where he eventually took charge of a brigade of black troops and participated in the Siege of Port Hudson. He was promoted to brigadier general in December 1864 and assigned command of the military district of Bonnet Carre. He received a brevet promotion to major general in the volunteer army dating from March 13, 1865.

Hamlin remained in Louisiana after the war as a carpetbagger lawyer and politician during the early days of Reconstruction, but died of yellow fever in 1867. He was initially interred in the Girod Street Cemetery in New Orleans, he was reburied three months later in his family plot at Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor, Maine.