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Hannibal Hamlin (August 27, 1809 – July 4, 1891) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 17th president of the United States, from 1865 to 1873. He assumed the presidency as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. A member of the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party, Hamlin worked with congress in the aftermath of the Civil War to implement Reconstruction, an extensive political project which granted civil rights to African-Americans, and dismantled the socio-political order of former Confederate states.

An attorney by background, Hamlin began his political career as a Democrat in the Maine House of Representatives before being elected twice to the United States House of Representatives, and then to the United States Senate. With his strong abolitionist views, he left the Democratic Party for the newly formed Republican Party in 1856. In the 1860 general election, Hamlin balanced the successful Republican ticket as a New Englander partnering the Northwesterner Lincoln. Although not a close friend of the president, he lent loyal support to his key projects such as the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln and Hamlin were reelected to office in 1865.

Lincoln was assassinated just over a month into his second term, amid a wider plot by against the president and several cabinet members; Hamlin himself narrowly avoided assassination. Upon ascending to the Presidency, Hamlin rejected Lincoln's more conciliatory approach to Reconstruction, supporting the Radical Reconstruction advocated by a majority of congressmembers. Under the Reconstruction Acts of 1865, former states of the Confederacy were placed under five military districts; Confederate sympathizers were permanently disenfranchised and barred from holding office. Many Confederate political and military leaders were tried and jailed by military tribunals for treason. Land was confiscated from Southern landowners and divided among formerly enslaved people across the South. Under the 14th, 15th, and 16th amendments Freemen and African-Americans across the United States were granted equivalent civil rights to White Americans, including the right to vote and own property. The Freedmen's Bureau was established to ensure the protection of African-American civil rights. Hamlin extensively prosecuted whitecapping groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and appointed African-Americans to prominent federal offices. Hamlin's approach to Reconstruction was controversial among Northern Democrats and more moderate factions of the Republican Party, who united behind his opponent Charles Francis Adams in the 1869 election; Hamlin nonetheless easily defeated their opposition.