HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (1809-189x)

This article appears in Volume V12, Page 896 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GUI-HAN

HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (1809-189x) , vice-president of the United States (1861-1865), was born at Paris, Maine, on the 27th of August 1809. After studying in Hebron

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

, he 'conducted his father's farm for a time, became schoolmaster, and later managed a weekly newspaper at Paris. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and rapidly acquired a reputation as an able lawyer and a, good public

speaker

SPEAKER

. Entering politics as an

anti

ANTI, or CAMPA

-slavery Democrat, he was a memberof the state

House

HOUSE
HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
Gothic
- GOTHIC
it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)

of Representatives in 1836-184o, serving as its presiding officer during the last four years. He was a representative in Congress from 1843 to 1847, and was a member of the United States Senate from 1848 to 1856. 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, spoke against the Compromise

Measures

MEASURES

of-185o, and in 1856, chiefly because of the passage in 1854 of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, and his party's endorsement of that repeal at the Cincinnati Convention two years later, he withdrew from the Democrats and joined the newly organized Republican party. The Republicans of Maine nominated him for

governor

GOVERNOR (from the Fr. gouverneur, from gouverner, O. Fr. governer, Lat. gubernare, to steer a ship, to direct, guide)

in the same year, and having carried the election by a large

majority

MAJORITY (Fr. majorite; Med. Lat. majoritas; Lat. major, greater)

he was inaugurated in this office on the 8th of January 1857. In the latter part of February, however, he resigned the

governor

GOVERNOR (from the Fr. gouverneur, from gouverner, O. Fr. governer, Lat. gubernare, to steer a ship, to direct, guide)

-ship, and was again a member of the Senate from 1857 to January 1861. From 1861 to 1865, during the Civil War, he was Vice-President of the United States. `While in this office he was one of the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

advisers of President Lincoln, and urged both the Emancipation Proclamation and the arming of the negroes. After the war he again served in the Senate (1869-1881), was minister to Spain (1881-1883), and then retired from public life. He died at Bangor, Maine, on the 4th of July 1891.
See Life and Tinies of Hannibal Hamlin (

Cambridge

, Mass., 1899), by C. E. Hamlin, his grandson.

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