Hannibal Hamlin
Hannibal Hamlin would have been President of the United States had he not been dropped from the ticket as a political expediency in 1864. Hamlin was Abraham Lincoln’s first Vice President, an office which he held from March 1861 to March 1865. He was not personally close to the President while in office and maintained his own office spaces in the Capitol, which was the custom of the time. Hamlin was the first Vice President from the Republican Party although through most of his earlier political career he had been a Democrat. Lincoln and Hamlin had many differing political opinions, he was selected to the ticket because of sectional advantages rather than political reasons.
Hamlin was a New Englander from Maine who served in the House of Representatives and later the Senate, a vocal supporter of the attempts to limit the spread of slavery. When the Kansas – Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise, Hamlin argued against the Act but failed to muster the votes to prevent its passage. During the 1856 Democratic National Convention the delegates passed a plank endorsing the Kansas – Nebraska Act, and Hamlin left the Democratic Party, formally joining the Republican Party, an act which drew national notice. In 1857 Hamlin was elected Governor of Maine after running as a Republican.
Up until the mid-to-late twentieth century the office of the Vice President was considered to be more of a legislative than executive position, since the only authority granted to it by the Constitution is that of presiding over the Senate. During the Lincoln Administration and those which preceded it the Vice President was not considered to be a member of the President’s cabinet and seldom if ever attended their meetings. Hamlin was not very influential within the Lincoln Administration though he did express his views supporting the President’s agenda and urged several appointments be made by the President. Hamlin was a member of the Maine Militia and when his company was called up he decided to serve in the summer of 1864, being mustered out in September of that year.
By then it was known that he would not be on the ticket with Lincoln in the Presidential election that year, being replaced by Andrew Johnson, selected in large part because he was a Democrat from the southern state of Tennessee. Ironically the former Democrat, Hamlin, was believed to be less effective in dealing with the Democrats in Congress than would be Johnson. As a Republican, Hamlin had found himself to be one of the so-called Radical Republicans (who would at a later date impeach Johnson) and Lincoln was by that time looking ahead to the process of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the South without slavery.
Hamlin was appointed to the highly lucrative position of Port Collector of Boston by President Johnson but he soon resigned, unhappy with Johnson’s positions regarding reconstruction. He returned to the Senate where he served two additional full terms before retiring from elected office. He then served for a little over a year as Ambassador to Spain. Hamlin was probably the most influential politician on the national stage to have ever come from the state of Maine. He died on the Fourth of July in the Tarratine Club in Bangor, Maine at the age of 81.