Hannibal Hamlin (27 August 1809 – 4 July 1891) was Vice President of the United States from 4 March 1861 to 4 March 1865 under President Abraham Lincoln, succeeding John C. Breckinridge and preceding Andrew Johnson. He previously served as a member of the US House of Representatives (D-ME 6) from 4 March 1843 to 3 March 1847 (succeeding Alfred Marshall and preceding James S. Wiley), Governor of Maine from 8 January to 25 February 1857 (succeeding Samuel Wells and preceding Joseph H. Williams), and a US Senator from 8 June 1848 to 7 January 1857 (succeeding Wyman B.S. Moor and preceding Amos Nourse), from 4 March 1857 to 17 January 1861 (succeeding Nourse and preceding Lot M. Morrill), and from 4 March 1869 to 3 March 1881 (succeeding Morrill and preceding Eugene Hale).
Biography[]
Hannibal Hamlin was born in Paris, Maine on 27 August 1809, descended from the original 17th century settlers of New England. Hamlin worked on his father's farm before becoming a newspaper editor, and he became a lawyer in Hampden, Maine in 1833. Hamlin was elected to the State House of Representatives as a Democrat two years later, and he helped in negotiating an end to the Aroostook War in 1839. In 1843, he was elected to the US House of Representatives, and he was known for being an active opponent of slavery; he supported the Wilmot Proviso and the Compromise of 1850. In 1854, he strongly opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act's passage, and he became a member of the Republican Party. In 1861, he was elected Vice President of the United States as Abraham Lincoln's running mate, and he attempted to convince other anti-slavery Democrats that their future lay with the Republican Party. In 1864, Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat, was chosen as President Lincoln's Vice President, and Hamlin served in a Maine volunteer regiment during the American Civil War. Hamlin served as a customs collector at the port of Boston after Johnson gave him the job, but he quit the job due to disagreements with Johnson over Reconstruction; he was a Radical Republican. From 1869 to 1881, he served as Senator from Maine, and he died in 1891 at the age of 81.