Hannibal Hamlin

But instead of tension, fortunately, all laughed and they proceeded.

Other notables that visited, the senator from Illinois, the little giant Stephen A. Douglas, Michigan senator and 1848 Democratic candidate for president, Louis Cass, the pathfinder and future first Republican candidate for president, John C. Fremont, and future vice president of the United States, the senator from Maine, Hannibal Hamlin.

The buzz to have a likeness made spread to more than just presidents and political figures.

In May of 1849, in walked American lawyer and poet William Ross Wallace with a fellow writer-poet.

Sure, sure.

Hannibal Hamlin, which is a wonderful alliterative name, He was vice president during Abraham Lincoln's first term.

He began his career as a Democrat in the main House of Representatives, was elected to the House and Senate, and an abolitionist, Hannibal Hamlin.

Well, it depends how many other choices I get if I get Andrew Johnson as a choice later.

But not knowing that, I would take Hamlin just to be able to talk about the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln with him.

People packed the grounds around the new obelisk as ministers and politicians spoke.

Among them was the sitting Vice President of the United States, Bangor's own Hannibal Hamlin.

The monument's inscription reads, In memory of our citizen soldiers who died for their country.

Fifty-five names were carved on its sides, and at the top of the list was Carpenter's.

Statesmen and lumber barons rest on these hills, too, and so does an outlaw whose final warning would one day make its way into the pages of a horror novel.

Once you look at who lies beneath these hills, you begin to see the history of Maine itself.

Hannibal Hamlin rests in his family plot in the Riverview Lawn section.

He began his political life as a Democrat, but in 1854, he fought against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened a new territory to slavery.

[gunshot] [instrumental music] When Lincoln died the next morning, the United States would have its third accidental president.

The Southern Unionist Andrew Johnson of Tennessee had replaced Hannibal Hamlin as Lincoln's vice presidential running mate in 1864.

Now, just 42 days after inauguration, Johnson was President of the United States, facing a monumental task: reconstructing the Union.

The Civil War had ended just a week before Lincoln's assassination.

[laughs]

Right.

In some ways, the decision to replace Hannibal Hamlin with Andrew Johnson was a brilliant stroke.

That is, Lincoln runs on what's known as the, the National Union ticket, not the Republican Party ticket.

Well, Andrew Johnson, remember, had the unendurable task of following the assassination of, uh, Abraham Lincoln.

And remember that, um, Lincoln had run for re-election in 1864 under Hannibal Hamlin, his vice president, who he didn't get along with very well, and he didn't really work.

He was a Maine guy, and he wanted, um, more breadth.

So he thought that two northerners, 'cause he would had-- with-- Lincoln was no longer identified with Kentucky as much as Illinois, so he needed a southerner who was not a secessionist from a border state.

Very good.

Listen, by the way, it was Hannibal Hamlin, Roger, and they didn't meet until after they were elected.

Lincoln picked him because Hamlin was from Maine to help him get votes from the Northeast.

How about that? He went the whole campaign, never met his vice president.

They indulged the belief in proud confidence that their great political prestige would continue to serve them among party associates at the North, and that the councils of the adversary would be distracted and his power weakened by the effects of dissension.

When the Republican banner bearing the names of Abraham Lincoln for President and Hannibal Hamlin for Vice President flung its folds to the breeze in eighteen sixty, there was a panic of apprehension at such bold maneuvering.

Mob law reigned in Boston, Utica, and New York City, which witnessed the greatest destruction of property in the endeavor to put down the growing public desire to abolish slavery.

Elijah Lovejoy's innocent blood spoke in trumpet tones to the reformer from his quiet grave by the rolling river.