Samuel Hoar (May 18, 1778 – November 2, 1856) was an Americanlawyer andpolitician. A member of a prominent political family in Massachusetts, he was a leading 19th century lawyer of that state. He was associated with theFederalist Party until its decline after the War of 1812. Over his career, Hoar developed a reputation as a prominent Massachusetts anti-slavery politician and spokesperson. He became a leading member of the MassachusettsWhig Party, a leading and founding member of the MassachusettsFree Soil Party, and a founding member and chair of the committee that organized the founding convention for theMassachusetts Republican Party in 1854.
Hoar may be best known in American history for his 1844 trip toCharleston, South Carolina as an appointed Commissioner of the state ofMassachusetts. He went to South Carolina to investigate and contest the laws of that state, which allowed the seizure of sailors who were free African Americans (often who were citizens of Massachusetts) and placed into bondage, if such sailors disembarked from their ship. Hoar was prevented from undertaking his appointed tasks by resolutions of the legislature and efforts of the governor of South Carolina, and was escorted back onto a ship by Charleston citizens fearing mob violence against the agent from Massachusetts. News of the thwarting of Hoar inspired anti-slavery political reaction in Massachusetts.
Hoar was delegate to the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1820. He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1824.[1] Hoar served in the State senate in 1826, 1832, and 1833. Elected as an Anti-Jacksonian candidate to the Twenty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1835 – March 3, 1837), he was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1836 to the Twenty-fifth Congress.[2]He was a Massachusetts delegate to the 1839 Whig national party convention.[3] Hoar was an expert on the laws pertaining to waterways, canals and maritime commerce.[4]
Massachusetts commissioner to South Carolina, 1844
There was an ongoing constitutional and legal conflict between the state ofMassachusetts and the states ofSouth Carolina andLouisiana regarding the seizure of Massachusetts citizens. South Carolina had enacted laws prohibiting the emancipation of slaves, or the entry into the state of freeAfrican Americans. South Carolina agents would arrest free African American seamen from Massachusetts, members of the crew aboard ships that arrived at South Carolinasea ports; if the arrestee or the captain of the ship failed to pay fines for the criminal entry into the state, the arrestee would be sold intoslavery to pay the fines.
In 1844 the Massachusetts legislature authorized the governor to appoint a Commissioner to reside in Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana, to collect information as to the number from Massachusetts citizens unlawfully seized in those cities, and to prosecute some of the suits before higher courts for the purpose of testing the constitutionality of the laws under which the forcible seizures were being made. In 1844, Massachusetts governorGeorge N. Briggs (Whig party) appointed Hoar commissioner to South Carolina.[5]
Upon receipt of the letter from Massachusetts Governor Briggs announcing Hoar's appointment, South Carolina GovernorJames H. Hammond promptly placed it before the South Carolina legislature, which issued several resolves, declaring the right of South Carolina to exclude its borders all persons whose presence might be considered dangerous; denying that free Negroes were citizens of the United States, and for the Massachusetts commissioner:[5]
That his excellency, the governor, be directed to expel from our territory the said agent, after due notice to depart; and that the legislature will sustain the executive authority in any measures that may be adopted for the purpose aforesaid.
The effective result was that Hoar was prevented from appearing before that state's courts to test the law. On his arrival, with daughter Elizabeth Sherman Hoar, in Charleston, December 1844, local citizens warned Hoar to leave town. Local leading citizens secretly escorted the Hoars out of their hotel, to a ship, in advance of feared mob violence.[4]When news of this incident reached Massachusetts it aroused much ire, contributing to a developing sentiment in Massachusetts against slavery and in favor ofabolitionism.[2][6]
Hoar in his report as Massachusetts commissioner stated:[5]
Has the Constitution of the United States the least practical validity or binding force in South Carolina? She prohibits, not only by lower mobs, but by her legislature, the residence of a free white citizen of Massachusetts within the limits of South Carolina whenever she thinks his presence there inconsistent with her policy. Are the other States of the Union to be regarded as the conquered provinces of South Carolina?
In 1854, he chaired a committee which issued an announcement, summoning leading anti-slavery politicians and citizens to a meeting at theAmerican House in Boston (July 7, 1854), to discuss the potential formation of a new party and to organize a state convention. Anger over theKansas-Nebraska Act, and the issue of slavery in Federal territories were motivating factors leading to the subsequent convention in Worcester. The mass convention of 2,500 people, held in open air on the common inWorcester, September 7, 1854, founded theMassachusetts Republican Party, principally from members of the Massachusetts Free Soil Party, with a few Whig Party, and anti-slavery Democrats.[7] The Massachusetts Free Soil Party in itsSpringfield convention, on October 17, 1854, voted to adopt the Republican candidates, and to merge into the new Republican organization.[8]
In 1855, at the age of 77, Hoar was appointed chair of a Massachusetts Republican committee to organize mass assemblage or convention, to consider and promote actions might be taken by Massachusetts citizens against the pro-slavery violence in the recent Kansas elections (subsequently known asBleeding Kansas), with the intent of unifying with all anti-slavery citizens of Massachusetts in national anti-slavery efforts[9]
Samuel and Sarah Hoar had five surviving children (of six offspring); several led influential or prominent lives.
Elizabeth Sherman Hoar (July 14, 1814 – April 7, 1878) was engaged to Charles Chauncy Emerson (1808–1836), youngest brother ofRalph Waldo Emerson and young law partner of Samuel Hoar; Charles died of tuberculosis before they could marry, and she never married. She was an intimate of the Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau families.[11] R.W. Emerson invited Elizabeth into theTranscendentalist community, and she aided in producing their journal,The Dial.[4]
Sarah Sherman Hoar (1817–1907) married Robert Boyd Storer (1796–1870), aBoston, Massachusetts importer trading with Russia, and Russian Consul at Boston.[12][13]
Samuel Johnson Hoar (February 4, 1820 – January 10, 1821), died in infancy.[14]
Edward Sherman Hoar (1823–1893) (Harvard class of 1844), married childhood neighbor Elizabeth Hallet Prichard of Concord,[15] and was an intimate ofHenry David Thoreau (the Thoreau family lived across Main Street from the Hoars, in several different houses over the years). Edward with H.D. Thoreau accidentally allowed a cooking fire to get out of control, and caused more than 100 acres (400,000 m2) of forest to burn on April 30, 1844, along theSudbury River in the Fairhaven Bay section of Concord. Edward accompanied Thoreau on some of Thoreau's hiking and canoeing excursions.[16][17][18][19] Edward Sherman was a California state district attorney for the fourth judicial district in 1850. He returned to Massachusetts in 1857.[20] His extensive collection of pressed plants collected mostly from Concord, Massachusetts, including a significant number of specimens that Thoreau left to him, were donated by his daughter in 1912 to the New England Botanical Club herbarium housed at Harvard University.[21]
The Hoar family, a prominent political family in Massachusetts, has had a number of individuals named Samuel Hoar since the 18th century:
His father,Samuel Hoar (1743–1832), was a lieutenant of theLincoln, Massachusetts company at the Concord battle on April 19, 1775. For many years a member of the Massachusetts General Court as a representative and senator, and a member in the 1820–1821 Massachusetts Constitutional Convention.[22]
Son, Samuel Johnson Hoar (February 4, 1820 – January 10, 1821) died in infancy[14]
His son,Samuel Hoar (1887–1952), was a partner in a prominent Boston law firm, called during his lifetimeGoodwin, Procter and Hoar. The firm was founded in 1914, and Hoar's name was added in 1917 when Hoar joined the firm.[24] In the 1940s he donated several parcels of land to the federal government, which became the founding kernel of theGreat Meadows National Wildlife Refuge on the Concord and Sudbury rivers in Massachusetts. He co-founded a second and still operatingConcord Academy in 1922 in Concord, Massachusetts.[citation needed]
His son,Samuel Hoar (1927–2004), ofEssex, Massachusetts, also was a senior partner in the firm formerly known asGoodwin, Procter and Hoar.[24][25] As board member of theConservation Law Foundation (CLF), he was a leading member of the litigation team that compelled the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to comply with federal environmental law, and build appropriate facilities to properly treat sewage discharged into Boston harbor, a legal battle that was most intense from 1983 into the 1990s.[26]
His son, Samuel Hoar (born 1955), is a lawyer practicing inBurlington, Vermont. He served as president of the Vermont Bar Association in 2006 and 2007.[27]
His son Samuel Rockwood Hoar (born 1988) is a graduate of theMiddlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts and a graduate in the class of 2011 of Vermont'sMiddlebury College.[28][29]
^This first Concord Academy is unrelated to a secondConcord Academy, which was co-founded by his grandsonSamuel Hoar (1887-1952) in 1922. The co-founders of the first Concord Academy were these leading citizens of Concord: Samuel Hoar (1778–1856), Josiah G. Davis (1773–1847), William Whiting (1788–1847), Nathan Brooks (1788–1862) and Abiel Heywood (1759–1839).
^Henry David Thoreau; (edited by Robert Sattelmeyer, Mark R. Patterson, and William Rossi)Journal 3: 1848-1851 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 75-78 and Annotation 75.16-78.19.
^Harding, Walter.The Days of Henry Thoreau, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 159-162.
^Felton, R. Todd.An Early Naturalist Burns Down a ForestConcord Magazine, Autumn 2006.Excerpt from Felton:A Journey Into the Transcendentalists' New England. (Roaring Forties Press, 2006)
^Wheelright, Edward. (1896) "Edward Sherman Hoar."Harvard Class of 1844: Harvard College, 50 Years after Graduation Harvard College. (Cambridge Massachusetts)
^Paolini, Bob."An Interview with VBA President Sam Hoar"(PDF).Vermont Bar Journal, No. 167, (Fall 2006) Volume 32, No. 3. Vermont Bar Association. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on March 26, 2009. RetrievedJanuary 14, 2007. (via archive.org)
Samuel Hoar's Expulsion from Charleston, Old South Leaflets, Volume vi No. 140.
Hoar, George Frisbie.Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Volume III. (Boston, 1883) (A memoir of Samuel Hoar)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.Lectures and Biographical Sketches (Boston, 1903) (On Samuel Hoar)
Robbins, Paula Ivaska.The Royal Family of Concord : Samuel, Elizabeth, and Rockwood Hoar and their friendship with Ralph Waldo EmersonISBN1-4010-9970-X. Pub. Xlibris. Philadelphia PA, 2003.[self-published source?]
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