Fairbanks, Charles Warren

Fairbanks, Charles Warren (1852-1918), American political leader and 26th vice-president of the United States (1905-1909). Fairbanks was born on May 11, 1852, near Unionville Center, Ohio, and educated at Ohio Wesleyan University. Admitted to the bar in 1874, he began to practise in Indiana; subsequently he became a successful railway lawyer. Fairbanks was active in politics, gaining leadership of the Republican party in Indiana, and was elected to the US Senate by the state legislature in 1897.

In 1898 he was chairman of the US commissioners on the British-American Joint High Commission for the adjudication of disputes between the United States and Canada, notably on the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska (the so-called Alaska Boundary Dispute). He resigned from the Senate in 1905 after his election as vice-president of the United States under President Theodore Roosevelt. Fairbanks was again nominated for vice-president in 1916, running on the unsuccessful Republican ticket with the jurist Charles Evans Hughes. He died in Indianapolis, Indiana, on June 4, 1918. The city of Fairbanks in Alaska is named after him.