348 LIFE AND SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. place may be equalized in another, extravagance avoided, and the whole country put on that career of prosperity which shall correspond with its extent of territory, its natural resources, and the intelligence and enterprise of its people. SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF HANNIBAL HAMLIN, REPURLICAN CANDIDATE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT. MR. HAMLIN was born in Paris, county of Oxford, State of Maine, August 27, 1809. His father, Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, was a surgeon and physician, and a native of Massachusetts. He was clerk of the courts for several years, and subsequently sheriff of Oxford county. He was one of the leading influential citizens of his town and county, and died in 1828, aged about fifty-eight years. Mr. Hamlin's mother was a daughter of Dea. Elijah Livermore, of the town of Livermore, Oxford county, Maine. She was a very estimable lady, and died in 1851, aged about seventy. Mr. Hamlin was fitted for college, but his father dying, he abandoned the idea of a college course, and for a while labored at home upon the old homestead farm. Before commencing the study of law, he worked in a printing office in his native town, and for more than a year conducted the Jeffersonian, since merged in the Oxford Democrat, in connection with the Hon. Horatio King. Subsequently, he studied law with the late Judge Cole, and after completing his course of study, he was admitted to the bar, and removed to Hampden, Maine, where he enjoyed an extensive practice until he voluntarily retired from it. His first entrance into public life was in 1836, when he was elected a representative from the town of Hampden to the Maine legislature. He was re elected in 1837, 1838, 1839, 1840, and again in 1847. He was speaker of the house of representatives in 1837, 1839, and 1840. In 1840 he was a candidate for Congress, but owing to the great popularity of General Harrison, and the remarkable success of the Whig party in that campaign, he was defeated by a few hundred votes. In 1842 he again run for Congress, and was elected by a large majority, and in 1844 he was also elected to the same body, by an increased vote. By the death of the lamented Governor Fairfield, a vacancy was created in the United States Senate, and on the 26th of May, 1848, Mr. Hamlin was elected for four years to fill that vacancy. In July, 1851, he was re-elected to the Senate for six years. In 1856, he was elected Governor of Maine, and resigned his seat in the Senate to assume the duties of the office, January 7, 1857. On the 16th day of the same month, he was elected by both branches of the legislature to the United States Senate for six years, and resigned the office of Governor, February 20, 1857. Until he resigned the position, he was for a long time chairman of the committee on commerce in the Senate. The above brief sketch of the early life and public services of Mr. Hamlin, while it may be a matter of interest to the American people, is far from being all they inquire after connected with his personal history. Placed as he now is before the people of this great country, as a candidate for the second office in their gift, it is perfectly natural they should desire to know something of his political history and public record. Mr. Hamlin's antecedents are democratic. On arriving at his majority, he connected himself with the old Democratic party, and acted with that political organization until 1856, when, in a brief and eloquent speech in the Senate, he publicly withdrew from it, and allied himself to the Republican party. Upon looking over Mr. Hamlin's public record in Congress upon the slavery question, we find nothing inconsistent with his present position upon that subject. When he first entered Congress, he manfully battled for the right of petition against the gag rules introduced into that body. He not only voted to receive the petitions of the people, but upon more than one occasion spoke eloquently in favor of this great constitutional right. In 1845, while he voted against the joint resolution for the annexation of Texas, yet he was not opposed to the measure provided it could be brought about by negotiation and treaty, and provided further that at least an equal portion of said domain should be kept free territory, for the benefit of the great laboring interests of the free States. Had his counsels, and the counsels of Colonel Benton, Silas Wright, and other great lights in the party, been adhered to, the Mexican war and all its evil consequences would have been avoided. When the "Two-Million Bill" was before the House in 1846-7, proposing to put into the hands of the President a certain amount of money with which to negotiate a treaty of peace with Mexico, Mr. Hamlin stood up side by side with David Wilmot, Preston King, and other influential democrats, in defence of the celebrated "Proviso," known as the "Wilmot Proviso," prepared by Judge Wilmot, yet actually offered by Mr. Hamlin, in the absence of the author. For this proviso he uniformly voted and labored until it passed the House. In the house of representatives, in Maine, at the session in 1847-to which he was elected immediately after his return from Congress-he introduced resolutions embodying the same sentiments, advocated them in a masterly speech, and mainly through his influence they passed the house with only six nays, and the senate with only one dissenting vote. Following up his record upon this question, we find him. voting in the United States Senate in 1848, in favor of the Jefferson Proviso for the restriction of slaveery in the bill for the organization of a territorial government for Oregon. Still later, in 1850, he voted to insert a similar restriction in the . bills giving territorial governments to Utah and New-Mexico. The proviso being defeated, he voted against the bills in strict accordance with the instructions of a democratic legislature in Maine. In the same year, 1850, Mr. Hamlin made the first speech in the United States Senate in favor of the unconditional admission of California as a free State, and his speech was then considered one of the most able delivered upon that subject. He also voted against the bill giving ten millions of dollars to Texas, for the relinquishment of lands to which she never had the slightest title. In 1854, following his own convictions of duty, he labored and voted against the repeal of the Missouri compromise, in strict conformity with the resolutions of the then democratic legislature of Maine, and then in the last Congress did all in his power to defeat the perfidious Lecompton Constitution. We have thus given Mr. Hamlin's record upon some of the great leading questions connected with the subject of slavery. during the last fourteen years, showing that upon no occasion has he ever acted or voted in any way not perfectly consistent with this record. Upon other matters, during his long Congressional career, his votes have been uniformly consistent and in perfect harmony with the character of the man. Upon all matters of financial policy, while he never has been disposed to withhold justice from honest claimants, he has sternly resisted dishonest, fraudulent claims, got up with an intention to rob the treasury. In justice to Mr. Hamlin, we should here say that no man in Congress for the last twenty years has been more faithful, or has labored more untiringly to aid poor but honest claimants upon the bounty of the government than he. There is scarcely a town in the State of Maine, where you will not find men who have been made in |