Samuel Dexter Hastings Sr. (July 24, 1816 – March 26, 1903) was an American businessman, politician, and Wisconsin pioneer.

In January he introduced a series of bills calculated to force the hand of Democrats and Whigs, both of which parties were courting the newly successful Free Soilers with an eye towards merger.

The "Hastings resolutions", as they came to be called, urged Wisconsin's Representatives and instructed its Senators (then elected by the Legislature) to apply their power and influence to completely break with slavery: to forbid the admission of new slave states, to ban slavery in all federal territories, and to repeal any laws that favored slave labor over free.

He was a founding member of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters,[3] and later served as Treasurer of that body.

[4] Hastings argued against the idea that the introduction of the wine-drinking habit into the United States would be a preventative for drunkenness.