Tag Archives: Hannibal Hamlin

Israel Washburn Jr. steps down as Maine’s first war-time governor

Late on Monday, January 5, 1863, a weary Governor Israel Washburn Jr. walked from his office to the Executive Council Chamber located elsewhere in the Maine State House in Augusta. But Washburn likely gave little thought to such concerns tonight. As he approached the Executive Council Chamber’s rosewood doors, the bespectacled and diminutive Washburn exchanged […]

The 6th Maine Infantry’s heroes meet 50 years later

Ellsworth rolled out the red carpet when the 6th Maine Infantry’s elderly survivors converged on the Hancock County shiretown 50 years after going forth to defend the Union. When the 2nd Maine Infantry Regiment left Bangor for Washington, D.C. by train on May 14, 1861, five unattached companies remained at Camp Washburn. These companies were […]

Will the real John Smith please stand up?

NEW YORK, N.Y. — With kudos to a TV game show popular with Americans during the 1950s and 1960s … Whispers ripple through the live audience seated at Studio 54 on W. 54th St. as host Bud Collyer steps on stage at 7 p.m., Monday, December 18, 1865.1 Dressed elegantly despite the cold winter swirling […]

Enjoying Dunkin’s coffee with Hannibal Hamlin

Imagine meeting Vice President Hannibal Hamlin for hot coffee and a doughnut, maybe a Boston cream doughnut (popular in New England). Imagine settling into comfortable chairs at a local coffee shop and chatting with Hannibal Hamlin about his vice presidency and his opinion of Abraham Lincoln. Where we live in Hampden, Maine, the idea isn’t […]

Hannibal Hamlin sparks life into a dying soldier

Vice President Hannibal Hamlin was no faith healer, laying his hands on sick people, and nor did he peddle miracle cures involving mysterious liquids packaged in colored bottles. But one sick young Maine soldier supposedly on his way to a military graveyard credited the unassuming vice president with keeping that particular grave unfilled. Frank D. […]

Returning Port Hudson veterans meet Hannibal Hamlin

What happens when warriors fresh off the battlefield spend two weeks traveling home? Hopefully they don’t stink, at least. Bloodied at Irish Bend in April 1863 and at Port Hudson that May and June, the 26th Maine Infantry boys probably lined the rails and cheered jubilantly as their steamboat chugged upriver, away from Port Hudson […]

Emancipation: The Maine press reacts, Part 2

Having printed the Emancipation Proclamation in its entirety and without acerbic commentary in the January 9, 1863 edition of his Republican Journal, publisher William H. Simpson understood that an influx of black soldiers would buttress the Union’s battle- and disease-thinned ranks. More Union soldiers and sailors meant more military pressure applied to Confederate defenders already […]

Mount Hope Cemetery walking tour will launch Civil War weekend in Bangor

A Civil War walking tour of Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor will kick off Drums on the Penobscot: A Civil War Experience, slated to be held Friday-Sunday, July 28-30 in Bangor. Led by historian Ryan Hews and titled Soldiers at Rest, the Civil War walking tour will begin at 6 p.m., Friday, July 28. Visitors […]

You’ve got the wrong guy in that coffin!

Stephen King could have penned the Somerset County horror story unfolding in mid-January 1863. At Pittsfield on the Sebasticook River, Reverend Ephraim Johnson and his wife, Abigail, had bid their two oldest sons, 23-year-old Franklin and 20-year-old Henry, “farewell” in the past few months. Farmers toiling the soils near the flood-prone Sebasticook, Ephraim and the […]

A Hamlin could get away with cowardice

If he did not skedaddle from Manassas in late day on Sunday, July 21, 1861, then why did Augustus Choate Hamlin expend so much ink explaining why he was not a coward? Thanks to his vice-presidential uncle, Hamlin enjoyed a distinguished surname that fateful spring. A doctor by profession and a Republican by choice, he […]