Hannibal Hamlin

Hannibal Hamlin (August 27, 1809 – July 4, 1891) was an American politician from Maine. Hamlin served in the Maine Legislature and later the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the U.S. Senate. Hamlin began his career as a Democrat but later became a member of the Republican Party. He was Governor of Maine before being elected Vice President as Abraham Lincoln's running mate in the 1860 presidential election.

In "Must and Shall," Hamlin took the inaugural oath as President on July 21, 1864, after Lincoln's was shot by a sniper while examining the defense of Washington, D.C. on July 12. In his Inauguration speech, Hamlin said


 * "Stand fast! That has ever been my watchword, and at no time in all the history of our great and glorious republic has our heeding it been more urgent. Abraham Lincoln’s body may lie in the grave, but we shall go marching on—to victory!
 * "The responsibility for this great war, in which our leader gave his last full measure of devotion, lies solely at the feet of the Southern slaveocrats who conspired to take their states out of our grand Union for their own evil ends. I promise you, my friends—Abraham Lincoln shall be avenged, and those who caused his death punished in full.
 * Henceforward, I say this: let us use every means recognized by the Laws of War which God has put in our hands to crush out the wickedest rebellion the world has ever witnessed. This conflict is become a radical revolution—yes, gentlemen, I openly employ the word, and, what is more, I revel in it—involving the desolation of the South as well as the emancipation of the bondsmen it vilely keeps in chains.
 * "They have sowed the wind; let them reap the whirlwind. We are in earnest now, and have awakened to the stern duty upon us. Let that duty be disregarded or haltingly or halfway performed, and God only in His wisdom can know what will be the end. This lawless monster of a Political Slave Power shall forevermore be shorn of its power to ruin a government it no longer has the strength to rule.
 * "The rebels proudly proclaim they have left the Union. Very well: we shall take them at their word and, once having gained the victory Providence will surely grant us, we shall treat their lands as they deserve: not as the states they no longer desire to be, but as conquered provinces, won by our sword. I say we shall hang Jefferson Davis, and hang Robert E. Lee, and hang Joe Johnston, yes, hang them higher than Haman, and the other rebel generals and colonels and governors and members of their false Congress. The living God is merciful, true, but He is also just and vengeful, and we, the people of the United States, we shall be His instrument in advancing the right."

Hamlin and his successors instituted a policy to oppress the former Confederate States which results in the destruction of their economy, and racial division.

Life Before the POD
Hamlin was born in the Paris Hill district of South Paris, Maine, in Oxford County. He attended the district schools and Hebron Academy there, 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, where he lived until 1848.

The political career of Hamlin began in 1836, when he began a term in the Maine House of Representatives after being elected the year before. He served in the Aroostook War, which took place in 1839. Hamlin left the House in 1841. He served two terms in the United States House of Representatives, from 1843-1847. He was elected to fill a 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 Bill, which repealed the Missouri Compromise. After the Democratic Party endorsed that repeal at the Cincinnati Convention two years later, 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, and having carried the election by a large majority he was inaugurated in this office on the January 8, 1857. In the latter part of February, however, he resigned the governorship, and was again a member of the Senate from 1857 to January 1861.

He was chosen for the second place on the winning Republican ticket in 1860. While Vice President he was one of the chief advisers to President Abraham Lincoln, and urged both the Emancipation Proclamation and the arming of African Americans. His identification with the Radical Republicans caused him to be dropped from the ticket in 1864 in favor of Andrew Johnson, who was a member of the Democratic Party and a southerner.