Both Hugh and Thomas Bingham were long time abolitionists as well as active in local politics. They initially allied with the Anti-Masonic Party, led in Pennsylvania by Governor Joseph Ritner and state Representative Thaddeus Stevens. Hugh became clerk of the Mercer County court and later a perennial Whig candidate in the county, known for opposing war with Mexico. Rev. John Walker, of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, ran Franklin College and was a prominent abolitionist in Ohio as well as mentor to Titus Basfield, who, after further studies, became a Presbyterian minister. Another of Bingham's longtime and childhood friends was Matthew Simpson, who later became a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, urged President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, and ultimately delivered funeral orations for the assassinated President at the White House and his interment at Springfield, Illinois.