Background
Benjamin Franklin Hallett was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts.
Benjamin Franklin Hallett was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts.
After graduating from Brown University in 1816, he studied law and began a journalistic career in Providence, Rhode Island.
He soon moved to Boston, where he began with the Boston Advocate, shifting to the Boston Daily Advertiser in 1827. As a candidate for Congress in 1844 and 1848 he was defeated both times by Whig Robert C. Winthrop. In 1848 he became, for four years, the first Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
In March 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed Hallett to succeed George Lunt for a four-year term as United States District Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.
At the 1856 Democratic National Convention, Hallett was chairman of the Platform Committee. Role in the splintering of the 1860 Democratic Convention
In 1860 he was chosen as a delegate, but skipped the Charleston, South Carolina, meeting (the convention, scheduled April 23-May 3, 1860, coincided with the death of Hallett"s wife, Laura Smith Larned, of bilious fever, on May 3, 1860).
Trying to regain the seat he had vacated, the convention at Baltimore voted 138 to 112 to deny Hallett the seat. He then joined the walk-out Convention that nominated John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane.
In the latter race Charles Sumner was also a candidate, representing the Free-Soil Party.
He joined and became a prominent member of the Suffolk County, Massachusetts Barometer