Hannibal Hamlin

Hannibal Hamlin (August 27, 1809 – July 4, 1891) was the 15th Vice President of the United States (1861-1865), serving under President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. 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 was a descendant in the sixth generation of James Hamlin 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, and a grandson of Stephen Emery, Maine's Attorney General in 1839–1840.

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 In 1854, he strongly opposed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise.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 of 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 6-year terms before declining to run for re-election in 1880 because of an ailing heart. His last duty as a public servant came in 1881 when then-Secretary of State James G. Blaine convinced President James A. Garfield to name Hamlin as United States Ambassador to Spain. On June 30, 1881, Hamlin was appointed as the United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Spain (the ministerial post's official title until 1913 when it became Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary). On December 20, 1881, Hamlin was officially presented with ambassadorship credentials and held the post until October 17, 1882.

Upon returning from Spain in the fall of 1882, Hamlin retired from public life to his home in Bangor, Maine, which he had previously purchased in 1851. The Hannibal Hamlin House – as it is known today – is located in central Bangor at 15 5th Street; incorporating Victorian, Italianate, and Mansard-style architecture, the mansion was posted to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.^[3]

On Independence Day, July 4, 1891, Hamlin collapsed and fell unconscious while playing cards at the Tarratine Club he founded in downtown Bangor. He was then placed on one of the club's couches and died in the evening a few hours later. He was 81. Hannibal 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, Charles by brevet. 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.^[4] 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.^[5] 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.^[6] 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.^[7]

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 listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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/.