Lot Myrick Morrill was born on May 3, 1813 in Belgrade, Maine the son of a mill owner.
He attended Waterville (now Colby) College but did not graduate, leaving to study law with Judge Edward Fuller of Readfield.
Admitted to the bar in 1837, he opened a successful law practice in Augusta and became interested in politics by virtue of his firm’s representing clients before the committees of the Maine Legislature.
Elected a State Representative on the Democratic ticket from 1853 to 1855 he was an ardent Free Soiler and temperance man, two factors that would eventually cause him to desert that party.
He ran for the State Senate in 1855 and was elected by the Democratic majority as President of that body in 1856, not because they agreed with his views but because they feared his ability as a debater and floor leader.
By the end of the year his break with the Democratic Party had become complete. Running as a Republican the following year he decisively defeated his Democratic opponent to become Governor.
Reelected for two more terms he supported Abraham Lincoln for the presidency and moved to the United States Senate to fill out the term of Hannibal Hamlin who had resigned to become Lincoln’s running mate.
Morrill, the brother of former Governor Anson P. Morrill, was reelected to the Senate in 1863, serving until 1869. While in the Senate he supported the emancipation Proclamation, Negro Suffrage, congressional reconstruction and voted for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
On the death of William Pitt Fessenden he was appointed to fill his unexpired term, being reelected in 1871.
He resigned from the Senate in 1876 to accept Ulysses S. Grant’s appointment as Secretary of the Treasury, a post which he resigned one year later because of ill health.
He then became Collector of Customs for the Port of Portland, a post which he held until his death in Augusta on January 10, 1883.