HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (1809-1891), vice-president of the United States (1861-65), was born at Paris, Me., on Aug. 27, 5809. After studying in Hebron academy, 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. Entering politics as an anti slavery Democrat, he was a member of the State house of repre sentatives in 1836-40, serving as its presiding officer. He was a representative in Congress from 1843-47, and was a member of the U.S. Senate 1848-56. 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 of 1850, and in 1856, chiefly because of his party's endorsement of the passage in of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which repealed the Missouri Com promise, he withdrew from the Democrats and joined the newly organized Republican Party. The Republicans of Maine nomi nated him for governor in the same year, and having carried the election by a large majority he was inaugurated in this office on Jan. 8, 1857. In February, however, he resigned the governor ship, and was again a member of the Senate 1857-61. 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 advisers of President Lincoln, and urged both the Emancipation Proclama tion and the arming of the negroes. After the war he again served in the Senate (1869-81), was minister to Spain (1881-83), and then retired from public life. He died at Bangor, Me., on July 4, 1891.
See Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (Cambridge, Mass., 1899), by C. E. Hamlin, his grandson.