Maine

ALGONQUIAN-SPEAKING NATIVE AMERICANS originally occupied Maine; the French established the first European settlement in 1604. In 1652, it became a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. With the formation of the United States, the Province of Maine was formally confirmed as a part of Massachusetts, although the final boundary was not settled until 1842 with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. Maine gained its statehood on March 15, 1820, as a part of the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri into the Union and divided Maine from the rest of Massachusetts, creating it as a separate state to allow the number of slave states and free states to remain equal. The state capital was Portland, until 1832 when it was moved to Augusta.

The first governor of Maine was William King, a Democratic-Republican. He was born at Scarborough in what became a part of Maine, and was an elected member of the Massachusetts senate. When Maine became a state, he was elected as the first governor. He was succeeded by five more members of the Democratic-Republican Party; only one, Albion K. Parris, was in office for any length of time—for five years. In 1829 Nathan Cutler was elected governor, the first for the Democratic Party. In 1830, Jonathan G. Hunton of the National Republicans became governor, with the Democrats returning to office soon afterward.

In the 1834 gubernatorial elections, Democrat Robert P. Dunlap managed to defeat William King, the first governor of the state who campaigned on behalf of the Whig Party. Four years later, Edward Kent of the Whig Party was elected, his term of office ending as the Aroos-took War began. This started as a series of hostilities between the state of Maine and New Brunswick in Canada over a border dispute. In 1839, the new governor, John Fairfield, declared war on Britain—the only time a U.S. governor has declared war on a foreign power. The conflict was quickly settled, and in 1842, Fairfield was re-elected as governor, but in the following year he decided to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Six other Democrat governors succeeded him before William G. Crosby became the last Whig governor of the state in 1853. Although the Whig party managed to win the 1853 elections in Maine, their colleagues in Ohio, trying to introduce a prohibition law, failed dismally. In 1855, Anson P. Morrill became Maine's first Republican governor, although in the subsequent elections, the state elected Samuel Wells for the Democrats.

With slavery becoming a major campaign issue, in 1857, Republican Hannibal Hamlin was elected governor. Hamlin had been a vigorous opponent of the extension of slavery. He was a member of the U.S. Senate and opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, eventually resigning from the Democratic Party to join the newly formed Republican Party on June 12, 1856, reflecting a major political transition from the Democrats to the Republicans. In 1860, he was chosen as the running mate of Abraham Lincoln, and Lincoln won the state easily with 62,811 votes (62.2 percent) to 29,693 (29.4 percent) for Stephen Douglas, with the remainder of the electorate either voting for John Breckinridge or John Bell. Lot M. Morrill, brother of former governor Anson P. Morrill, had been elected as a Republican governor in the previous month.

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