Hon. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar

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Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (February 21, 1816 – January 31, 1895) was an influential American politician and lawyer from Massachusetts.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Political and legal career
• 3 Hoar family relations
• 4 See also
• 5 Notes
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Early life

Born in Concord, Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard University in 1835 and became a lawyer. Beginning in 1840 he practiced in Concord and Boston, Massachusetts. That same year he married Caroline Downes Brooks (1820-1892), of Concord.

Political and legal career

In 1846 Hoar was elected to the Massachusetts Senate as an anti-slavery Whig. He was a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Boston from 1849 until 1855 and then an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1859 to 1869.

He was appointed 31st Attorney General of the United States by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869 and served for a little over a year. The US Department of Justice was created during his term. During the same period, he was nominated by Grant to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court but was not confirmed by the United States Senate.

He was one of five members of a commission on Civil War claims against England. The commission's work led to the signing of the Treaty of Washington in 1871.[1]

He was an Alabama Claims commissioner in 1871 and was elected as a Republican to the 43rd Congress (1873–75). He was not a candidate for renomination in 1874 and returned to practicing law. He chaired the 1875 U.S. Centennial celebration of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, held in Concord and attended by many leading individuals of the day, including President Grant.[1]

He served on the board of overseers of Harvard University from 1868 through 1882 and died in Concord in 1895. He is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

Hoar family relations

His brother was influential U.S. Congressman and Senator for Massachusetts, George Frisbie Hoar. His father was influential lawyer and politician Samuel Hoar (1778 - 1856). Through his mother, Sarah Sherman, he was the grandson of American founding father Roger Sherman and Rebecca Minot Prescott. His children include Sherman Hoar (1860 - 1898) and Samuel Hoar (1845-1904).

   * Hoar's first cousin Roger Sherman Baldwin was Governor of Connecticut and a US Senator.

   * Another first cousin William Maxwell Evarts was US Secretary of State, US Attorney General immediately preceding Hoar, and a US Senator.

See also

   * Baldwin, Hoar & Sherman family

   * Unsuccessful nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States

Notes

  1. ^ a b Robbins, Paula The Hoar Family Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography. Unitarian Universalist Historical Society. Retrieved January 30, 2007.

References

   * Ebenezer R. Hoar at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress "HOAR, Ebenezer Rockwood, (1816 - 1895)"

   * Butler, Benjamin Franklin. Letter of General Benj. F. Butler, to Hon. E. R. Hoar . [Lowell?, Mass.]: N.p., 1876.

   * Cox, Jacob Dolson. How Judge Hoar Ceased to be Attorney General. Atlantic Monthly July 1895, p 162-173. (Available online: Making of America. Cornell University Library)

   * Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood. Address at the laying of the corner stone of the Memorial Hall . Boston: Tolman & White, printers, 1870.

   * Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood. Address in the old Concord Meeting House, April 19, 1894 . Boston: Beacon Press, T. Todd, printer, 1894.

   * Hoar, George Frisbie. The charge against President Grant and Attorney General Hoar of packing the Supreme Court of the United States . Worcester, Mass.: Press of C. Hamilton, [1896?]

   * Massachusetts. Bar. Tributes to the Bar and of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth to the memory of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar. Cambridge, Mass.: J. Wilson and Son, University Press, 1895.

   * Storey, Moorfield, and Edward W. Emerson. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar: A Memoir. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911.

External links

   * Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography: The Hoar Family

   * Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts: Office of Reporter of Decisions (1804–Present) 163 Mass. 597 (1895) Ebenezer R. Hoar Memorial

   * Ebenezer Hoar Papers: University of Michigan

   * Sherman Genealogy Including Families of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, England By Thomas Townsend Sherman

   * Hoar-Baldwin-Foster-Sherman family of Massachusetts at Political Graveyard

Source: Downloaded Jan. 2011 from Wikipedia.

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (February 21, 1816 – January 31, 1895) was an influential American politician and lawyer from Massachusetts.

Born in Concord, Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard University in 1835 and became a lawyer. Beginning in 1840 he practiced in Concord and Boston, Massachusetts. That same year he married Caroline Downes Brooks (1820-1892), of Concord.

Political and legal career

In 1846 Hoar was elected to the Massachusetts Senate as an anti-slavery Whig. He was a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Boston from 1849 until 1855 and then an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1859 to 1869.

He was appointed 31st Attorney General of the United States by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869 and served for a little over a year. The US Department of Justice was created during his term. During the same period, he was nominated by Grant to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court but was not confirmed by the United States Senate.

He was one of five members of a commission on Civil War claims against England. The commission's work led to the signing of the Treaty of Washington in 1871.[1]

He was an Alabama Claims commissioner in 1871 and was elected as a Republican to the 43rd Congress (1873–75). He was not a candidate for renomination in 1874 and returned to practicing law. He chaired the 1875 U.S. Centennial celebration of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, held in Concord and attended by many leading individuals of the day, including President Grant.[1]

He served on the board of overseers of Harvard University from 1868 through 1882 and died in Concord in 1895. He is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

Hoar family relations

His brother was influential U.S. Congressman and Senator for Massachusetts, George Frisbie Hoar. His father was influential lawyer and politician Samuel Hoar (1778 - 1856). Through his mother, Sarah Sherman, he was the grandson of American founding father Roger Sherman and Rebecca Minot Prescott. His children include Sherman Hoar (1860 - 1898) and Samuel Hoar (1845-1904).

Hoar's first cousin Roger Sherman Baldwin was Governor of Connecticut and a US Senator.

Another first cousin William Maxwell Evarts was US Secretary of State, US Attorney General immediately preceding Hoar, and a US Senator.
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In November, 1844, Elizabeth Hoar accompanied her father to Charleston, South Carolina. Judge Hoar had been commissioned by Governor George Briggs and the Massachusetts legislature to treat with the South Carolina government. Free black sailors, ashore in South Carolina to load cotton aboard Massachusetts ships for transport to Massachusetts mills, were apt to be impounded and, unless their ship's captain paid a ransom, sold into slavery. South Carolina legislators did not take kindly to Northern "meddling" with their State laws. When they learned of Hoar's mission, he was told to get out of town. A mob threatened to drag him from his hotel. Friendly residents with Harvard connections, among them the Rev. Samuel Gilman, minister of the Unitarian Church, and Dr. Joshua Barker Whitridge persuaded him to leave without further attempt to address the authorities. Elizabeth and her father were got secretly out of the hotel and onto a ship. On December 27 Squire Hoar reported the story to a Concord Town Meeting.

Concord people were incensed at the South Carolinians' rudeness to their most respected citizen and his daughter. Roughly to threaten an emissary from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and summarily to dismiss an issue of law was outrageous behavior. Moreover, subjection of Massachusetts ships to a shortage of hands was a serious economic matter. The episode had far-reaching effects throughout Massachusetts. Many who had seen no good in "abolitionist agitation" and those who had been reluctant to countenance the anti-slavery cause, changed their minds.

The effects of the incident on Judge Hoar and his lawyer sons, George Frisbie Hoar and Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar were to be seen in their subsequent political activities in opposition to the Slave Power. Rockwood was leader of the Mugwumps during his term in the Massachusetts State Senate 1846-48. In the course of a heated debate on the proposed annexation of Texas as a slave state, Rockwood said, "It is as much the duty of Massachusetts to pass resolutions in favor of the rights of men as in the interests of cotton." He said he himself would rather be a "Conscience Whig" than a "Cotton Whig." Having first been a Federalist, then a Whig, Squire Hoar in 1848 chaired a Free Soil Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts in which Rockwood took a prominent role. The Free Soilers opposed the extension of slavery to new states.

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (1816-95) had graduated from Harvard College in 1835 and its Law School in 1839. His law practice was in Concord. After his marriage in 1840, he and Caroline Brooks Hoar built a house on Main Street next to his father's home. He served as Judge of the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas 1849-55. He helped to organize the Republican Party in Massachusetts, ran unsuccessfully for Attorney General in 1855, and was a delegate to the national Republican Convention, serving on its platform committee, in 1856. Both Samuel and Rockwood Hoar were very active supporters of their alma mater; Rockwood served as a member of one or another of Harvard's boards for a total of 29 years.

Rockwood Hoar served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts 1859-69. In March, 1869, President Grant appointed him U.S. Attorney General. At the end of the year Grant nominated him to the Supreme Court, but out of pique with the President and with Hoar himself, who insisted that public positions should be filled on the basis of competence and merit, not political patronage, the Senate refused to confirm. Four months after the failure of confirmation, the President asked for Hoar's resignation as Attorney General. He returned to his law practice in Concord.

Rockwood served as one of five members of the commission on Civil War claims against England, which resulted in the Treaty of Washington in 1871, and served a term in the U.S. House of Representatives 1873-74. He chaired the 1875 U.S. Centennial celebration in Concord attended by many dignitaries, including President Grant. Rockwood was a member of the Standing Committee of the First Parish Church in Concord (Unitarian).

US Congressional biography: HOAR, Ebenezer Rockwood, (1816 - 1895)

HOAR, Ebenezer Rockwood, (grandson of Roger Sherman, son of Samuel Hoar, brother of George Frisbie Hoar, father of Sherman Hoar, and uncle of Rockwood Hoar), a Representative from Massachusetts; born in Concord, Mass., February 21, 1816; pursued classical studies and was graduated from Harvard University in 1835; was admitted to the bar in 1840 and commenced practice in Concord and Boston, Mass.; served in the State senate in 1846 as an anti-slavery Whig; judge of the court of common pleas 1849-1855; judge of the State supreme court 1859-1869; Attorney General of the United States from March 1869 until his resignation in June 1870; nominated in 1869 by President Grant as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court but was not confirmed by the Senate; member of the joint high commission which framed the treaty of Washington in 1871 under which the tribunal was provided for to settle the Alabama claims; elected as a Republican to the Forty-third Congress (March 4, 1873-March 3, 1875); was not a candidate for renomination in 1874; resumed the practice of his profession in Concord and Boston, Mass.; member of the board of overseers of Harvard University 1868-1882; died in Concord, Mass., January 31, 1895; interment in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Bibliography Storey, Moorfield, and Edward W. Emerson. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar; A Memoir. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911. [1, 2]

Ebenezer R. Hoar, Mass.Gov
[The Royal Family of Concord: Samuel, Elizabeth, and Rockwood Hoar and Their Friendship With Ralph Waldo Emerson https://www.amazon.com/Royal-Family-Concord-Elizabeth-Friendship/dp...]