Hannibal Hamlin

Hannibal Hamlin (1809-91), 15th vice president of the United States, born in Paris Hill, Maine. Hamlin studied law in Portland, Maine, and was admitted to the bar in 1833. He was active in state politics, serving for several terms as a Democratic member of the Maine legislature. From 1843 to 1847 he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and from 1848 to 1857 served as U.S. senator from Maine. His antislavery convictions made him instrumental in securing passage in the House of the Wilmot Proviso (1846), which stipulated that slavery should never exist in certain territories Congress was then proposing to purchase from Mexico. In 1856 Hamlin joined the Republican Party, which had been formed two years earlier as an antislavery party. The same year he was elected governor of Maine, a post he held briefly in 1857 before resigning to run for the U.S. Senate; he served there again until 1861. From 1861 to 1865 Hamlin was vice president in the first administration of Abraham Lincoln and was one of Lincoln's important advisers during the American Civil War. From 1869 to 1881 Hamlin was once more a member of the Senate, and from 1881 to 1882 he was U.S. minister to Spain.