Former U.S. Senator Thomas Eagleton, who resigned as a vice presidential nominee in 1972 after it was disclosed he had been hospitalized for depression, died yesterday in St. Louis. He was 77 and had been in poor health.

Eagleton served in the Senate representing Missouri from December 1968 through January 1987.

He was George McGovern’s vice presidential nominee in 1972, but dropped out after it was revealed that he had been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment and had undergone electroshock therapy for depression. Mr. McGovern chose Sargent Shriver to replace Eagleton. The 1972 Democratic ticket lost by a landslide to Nixon/Agnew in the general election.

Eagleton was born in St. Louis in 1929, the son of noted civil trial attorney Mark Eagleton, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor and encouraged his son’s interest in politics.

Thomas Eagleton was elected circuit attorney at age 26 in 1956, the youngest man ever elected to the position.

He was elected Missouri attorney general in 1960 and lieutenant governor in 1964 before winning election to the U.S. Senate.

Eagleton was considered liberal, but he criticized busing to achieve school desegregation and, as a practicing Roman Catholic, strongly opposed abortion.

“Being vice president ain’t all that much,” he he told the Associated Press in 2003.

“My ambition, since my senior year in high school, was to be a senator. Not everybody achieves their ambition. I got to the level that I really had no great right to claim.”

He said he had not had any symptoms of depression for years and “didn’t think it was all that big a deal.”