Charles Warren Fairbanks

Charles Warren Fairbanks (1852-1918), American political leader and 26th vice president of the United States. (1905-1909).

Fairbanks was born on May 11, 1852, near Unionville Center, Ohio, and educated at Ohio Wesleyan University. Admitted to the bar in 1874, he began to practice in Indiana; subsequently he became a successful railroad lawyer. Fairbanks was active in politics, gaining leadership of the Republican Party in Indiana, and was elected to the U.S. Senate by the state legislature in 1897. In 1898 he was chairman of the U.S. commissioners on the British-American Joint High Commission for the adjustment of disputes between the United States and Canada, notably on the boundary between the U.S. and Alaska. He resigned from the Senate in 1905 after his election as vice president of the U.S. under President Theodore Roosevelt. Fairbanks was again nominated for vice president in 1916, running on the unsuccessful Republican ticket with the jurist Charles Evans Hughes. He died in Indianapolis, Indiana, on June 4, 1918.