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ALMOST PRESIDENT: HANNIBAL HAMLIN, PART III

© John S. Cooper

At the inauguration in March 1865, incoming Vice President Andrew Johnson got drunk and made an embarrassing inauguration speech. Hamlin, in what some wags said was a bit of just revenge, was the person who provided Andrew Johnson with the whiskey on which he got drunk. Although it was in no way revenge or intentional sabotage on Hamlin’s part, he did provide Johnson with the whiskey.

Johnson was suffering from typhoid fever and from a toothache. The common remedy for a toothache was to take a gulp of whiskey and hold it on the tooth as long as possible, and then swallow it. Between the fever and the oppressive heat in the Capitol room where they waited, along with Johnson’s low tolerance to alcohol, Johnson did indeed get very drunk. What is even more ironic is that it was Hamlin who had banned liquor from the Senate, and he had to send someone out to find the whiskey.

Five weeks after the inauguration, Hamlin was in Maine when he learned that Lincoln had been assassinated. He immediately returned to Washington to attend the President’s funeral. At the White House, he stood beside his successor Andrew Johnson at the side of Lincoln’s casket. Many there noted the irony of the two men standing there and that Hamlin had missed the Presidency by a matter of mere weeks. How different history would have been had Lincoln been succeeded by Hamlin who favored the Radical Reconstruction instead of the conservative Johnson who opposed it.

After Hamlin lost his re-nomination for the Vice Presidency, Lincoln had briefly considered naming him Secretary of the Treasury (Chase had vacated the post to become Chief Justice of the United States) but Hamlin wanted to return to the Senate. Hamlin was defeated in his bid for the Senate, however, by his rival in the Maine Republican Party, William Pitt Fessenden. Again, how different history would have been. Fessenden broke with his party and voted against the removal of President Johnson during the impeachment trial in 1868. Hamlin would have almost certainly voted with the Radicals and against Johnson. Johnson won and remained in office by a margin of only one vote. Had Hamlin won instead of Fessenden, Johnson would have been removed and Senator Ben Wade would have been President.

After his defeat for the Senate, Senator Charles Sumner suggested that Hamlin be named Port Collector for the port of Boston. President Johnson made the appointment. Hamlin came to disagree more and more with Johnson’s Reconstruction policies and his lack of support and protection for the newly freed black men. As many Republican office holders resigned in protest, Hamlin, probably recognizing his political future depended on it, also resigned in protest.

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