United States Senator, 26th Vice President. Charles Warren Fairbanks served one term as the 26th U.S. Vice President, after being selected as the running mate of Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Born into poverty in a log cabin, Fairbanks attended Ohio Wesleyan University, graduating with honors in 1872. He received a law degree from the Cleveland Law College on July 10, 1874, relocated to the State of Indiana, and became a very successful lawyer, specializing in railroad law. Over the course of his career, he became general solicitor for the Ohio Southern and the Dayton and Ironton railroads; president and principal stockholder of the Terre Haute and Peoria Railroad; and director, general solicitor and principal stockholder of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad. During his days with these various railroad enterprises, he entered the world of Indiana Republican politics and campaigned on behalf of Civil War General Benjamin Harrison, who was elected President in 1888. In 1892 he met future United States President, William McKinley, who supported Fairbanks for the U.S. Senate in 1897. Serving in the United States Senate from 1897 to 1905, he was quietly effective, a conservative, and quickly became acknowledged as the principal spokesman for that body. He served as key presidential adviser to McKinley during the Spanish-American War and was the Chairman of the Committee on Immigration and the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds. At one point, he was seriously being considered as a presidential candidate.. In June 1904, Fairbanks was selected as the Republican vice presidential nominee to run with presidential candidate, Teddy Roosevelt. During his four years in office, Fairbanks played little or no role in the Roosevelt administration, as he opposed many of Roosevelt's progressive programs. As a result, Roosevelt supported William Howard Taft for the 1908 Republican presidential nomination. When the party was divided in 1912, Fairbanks supported Taft, the eventual nominee, instead of Roosevelt, who ran as the candidate of his own Bull Moose Party. Fairbanks was a vice presidential candidate again in 1916, this time on the unsuccessful Republican ticket with Charles Evans Hughes, Sr., who lost in a close race to Woodrow Wilson. Fairbanks was one of two vice presidential candidates that ran in non-consecutive political races; both candidates lost the race. After the election, his health declined rapidly with his death from renal failure within two years; he would have died in office if elected. He was sometimes referred to as “the last of America’s log-cabin statesmen.” Since he served as senator on the committee establishing the borderline between Alaska and Canada, the city of Fairbanks, Alaska was named in his honor. Also named in his honor were cities Fairbanks, Minnesota; Fairbanks, Oregon; and Fairbanks Township, Michigan. A historical marker has been placed at both his Indiana home and at his Ohio birthplace home.