Remarks Of Mr. Hamlin Of Maine 1856 Lincoln Future VP Joins The Republican Party

Remarks Of Mr. Hamlin, Of Maine On Resigning his Position As Chairman Of The Committee Of Commerce, And The Test Of The Cincinnati Convention. In the Senate of the United States, June 12, 1856. 8 pages. Uncut folded sheet, approximately 19x12". Scarce first printing of one of the most promising declarations of the 1856 presidential election, in which Lincoln's future Vice President joins the Republican Party. For 13 years, Senator Hannibal Hamlin had been elected to Congress as a Democrat. But after the Democratic Convention in Cincinnati nominated Buchanan on a platform that supported the right of any state to accept slavery, Hamlin declared in the Senate: "I can maintain political associations with no party that insists upon such doctrines...I can support no man for President who avows and recognizes them…” A week later, after the Republican Convention nominated Fremont on an anti-slavery platform. Hamlin became a Republican and his new Party distributed this speech with a new title "Senator Hamlin's Withdrawal from the Democratic Party". While Hamlin returned to the Senate, Fremont was defeated by Buchanan. But the campaign set the stage, four years later, for the Republican presidential nomination of Abraham Lincoln - who chose Hannibal Hamlin as his running mate. Buell & Blanchard, Printers, Washington, D.C. A brief biography of Hamlin is as follows: Hannibal Hamlin (August 27, 1809 – July 4, 1891) was the 15th Vice President of the United States (1861-1865), serving under President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. He was the first Vice President from the Republican Party. Prior to his election in 1860, Hamlin served in the United States Senate, the House of Representatives, and, briefly, as the 26th Governor of Maine. Hamlin was born to Cyrus Hamlin and Anna Livermore in Paris, Maine. Hamlin attended the district schools and Hebron Academy and later managed his father's farm. For the next few years he worked at several jobs: schoolmaster, cook, woodcutter, surveyor, manager of a weekly newspaper in Paris, and a compositor at a printer's office. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1833. He began practicing in Hampden, a suburb of Bangor, where he lived until 1848. Hamlin married Sarah Jane Emery of Paris Hill in 1833. After Sarah died in 1855, he married her half-sister, Ellen Vesta Emery in 1856. He had four children with Sarah: George, Charles, Cyrus and Sarah, and had two children, Hannibal E. and Frank, with Ellen. Ellen Hamlin died in 1925. Hamlin's political career began in 1836, when he began a term in the Maine House of Representatives after being elected the year before. He served in the bloodless Aroostook War, which took place in 1839. Hamlin unsuccessfully ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1840 and left the State House in 1841. He later served two terms in the United States House of Representatives, from 1843–1847. He was elected to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy in 1848, and to a full term in 1851. A Democrat at the beginning of his career, Hamlin supported the candidacy of Franklin Pierce in 1852. From the very beginning of his service in Congress, he was prominent as an opponent of the extension of slavery. He was a conspicuous supporter of the Wilmot Proviso and spoke against the Compromise Measures of 1850. In 1854, he strongly opposed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise. After the Democratic Party endorsed that repeal at the 1856 Democratic National Convention, on June 12, 1856, he withdrew from the Democratic Party and joined the newly organized Republican Party, causing a national sensation. The Republicans nominated him for Governor of Maine in the same year. He carried the election by a large majority and was inaugurated on January 8, 1857. In the latter part of February 1857, however, he resigned the governorship, and was again a member of the United States Senate from 1857 to January 1861. In 1861, Hamlin became Vice President under Abraham Lincoln, whom he did not meet until after the election. Maine wa... read more