Hannibal Hamlin

Hannibal Hamlin (August 27, 1809 – July 4, 1891) was an American politician and diplomat who was the 15th vice president of the United States, serving from 1861 to 1865, during President Abraham Lincoln's first term. He was the first Republican vice president.

As an attorney from Maine, Hamlin began his political career as a Democrat in the Maine House of Representatives before being elected twice to the United States House of Representatives, and then to the United States Senate. With his strong abolitionist views, he left the Democratic Party for the newly formed Republican Party in 1856. In the 1860 general election, Hamlin balanced the successful Republican ticket as a New Englander partnered with the Northwesterner Lincoln. Although not a close friend of the president, he lent loyal support to his key projects such as the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War.

In the 1864 election, Hamlin was replaced as vice-presidential nominee by Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat from Tennessee who remained loyal to the union, and chosen for his appeal to Southern Unionists. After being appointed Collector of the Port of Boston, Hamlin was elected to two more terms in the Senate, and finally served as U.S. Minister to Spain before retiring in 1882.

Hamlin was born to Cyrus Hamlin and his wife Anna (née Livermore) in Paris (now in Maine, then a part of Massachusetts). He was a descendant of the sixth generation of English colonist James Hamlin, who had settled in Barnstable, part of the Plymouth Colony in 1639. He was a grandnephew of U.S. Senator Samuel Livermore II of New Hampshire.

According to folklore, Hamlin's life was saved when he was an infant by a Native American medicine woman named Molly Ockett. Hamlin was gravely ill, and Ockett prescribed that he be given warm cow's milk, after which he recovered.

Hamlin attended the district schools and Hebron Academy and later managed his father's farm. From 1827 to 1830 he published the Oxford Jeffersonian newspaper in partnership with Horatio King.

He studied law with the firm headed by Samuel Fessenden, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and began practicing in Hampden, Maine, where he lived until 1848.

Hamlin married Sarah Jane Emery of Paris Hill in 1833. Her father was Stephen Emery, who was appointed as Maine's Attorney General from 1839 to 1840. Hamlin and Sarah had four children: George, Charles, Cyrus, and Sarah.