In the 1860 general election, Hamlin balanced the successful Republican ticket as a New Englander partnered with the Northwesterner Lincoln.

After being appointed Collector of the Port of Boston, Hamlin was elected to two more terms in the Senate, and finally served as U.S. Minister to Spain before retiring in 1882.

He was a descendant in the sixth generation of English colonist James Hamlin, who had settled in Barnstable, part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639.

According to folklore, Hamlin's life was saved when he was an infant by a Native American medicine woman named Molly Ockett.

[4] He studied law with the firm headed by Samuel Fessenden,[5] was admitted to the bar in 1833, and began practicing in Hampden, Maine, where he lived until 1848.

Appointed a Major on the staff of Governor John Fairfield, he served with the militia in the bloodless Aroostook War of 1839.

He facilitated negotiations between Fairfield and Lieutenant Governor John Harvey of New Brunswick, which helped reduce tensions and make possible the Webster–Ashburton Treaty, which ended the war.

[14] He strongly supported Joseph Hooker's appointment as commander of the Army of the Potomac,[15] which ended in failure at the Battle of Chancellorsville.

[17] When the company was called up in the summer of 1864, militia leaders informed Hamlin that because of his position as vice president, he did not have to take part in the muster.

Lincoln was seeking to broaden his base of support and was also looking ahead to Southern Reconstruction, at which Johnson had proven himself adept as military governor of occupied Tennessee.

Republicans had supported Johnson as part of the National Union ticket during the war, but opposed him after he became president and his position on Reconstruction deviated from theirs.

[22] Not content with private life, Hamlin returned to the U.S. Senate in 1869 to serve two more terms before declining to run for reelection in 1880 because of an ailing heart.

Incorporating Victorian, Italianate, and Mansard-style architecture, the mansion was posted to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Third Class was the MOLLUS division created to recognize civilians who had contributed outstanding service to the Union during the war.

On July 4, 1891, Hamlin collapsed and fell unconscious while playing cards at the Tarratine Club he founded in downtown Bangor, and died there a few hours later, at the age of 81.

Cyrus was among the first Union officers to argue for the enlistment of black troops, and commanded a brigade of freedmen in the Siege of Port Hudson.

[26] Hannibal's nephew (Elijah's son) Augustus Choate Hamlin was a physician, artist, mineralogist, author, and historian.

[28] Hannibal's grand-nephew (Elijah's grandson) Isaiah K. Stetson was Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives in 1899–1900,[29] and owned a large company in Bangor which manufactured and shipped lumber and ice and ran a shipyard and marine railway.

[30] Hannibal's first cousin Cyrus Hamlin, who was a graduate of the Bangor Theological Seminary, became a missionary in Turkey, where he founded Robert College.

There are statues in Hamlin's likeness in the United States Capitol and in a public park (Norumbega Mall) in Bangor, Maine.

[33] The Hampden Maine Historical Society exhibits a restoration of his first law office at its Kinsley House Museum grounds.

[35] Hamlin appears briefly in three alternate history writings by Harry Turtledove: The Guns of the South, Must and Shall, and How Few Remain.