George F. Hoar | |
|---|---|
 Hoar c. 1870s | |
| United States Senator fromMassachusetts | |
| In office March 4, 1877 (1877-03-04) – September 30, 1904 (1904-09-30) | |
| Preceded by | George S. Boutwell |
| Succeeded by | Winthrop M. Crane |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts | |
| In office March 4, 1869 (1869-03-04) – March 3, 1877 (1877-03-03) | |
| Preceded by | John Denison Baldwin |
| Succeeded by | William W. Rice |
| Constituency | 8th district (1869–73) 9th district (1873–77) |
| Member of theMassachusetts Senate from theWorcester district | |
| In office January 7, 1857 – January 5, 1858 | |
| Preceded by | Francis H. Dewey Jabez Fisher Artemas Lee Salem Towne |
| Succeeded by | John M. Earle (redistricting)[a] |
| Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from theWorcester district | |
| In office January 7, 1852 – January 4, 1853 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1826-08-29)August 29, 1826 Concord, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | September 30, 1904(1904-09-30) (aged 78) Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican (after 1855) |
| Other political affiliations | Free Soil (before 1855) |
| Alma mater | Harvard University Harvard Law School |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Signature |  |
George Frisbie Hoar (August 29, 1826 – September 30, 1904) was an American attorney andpolitician, representedMassachusetts in theUnited States Senate from 1877 until his death in 1904. He belonged to an extended family that became politically prominent in 18th- and 19th-centuryNew England.
Anabolitionist andRadical Republican,[1] Hoar regardedslavery as immoral[2] and was raised in a household which actively opposed racial bigotry and often defied laws they deemed unjust.[3] Hoar strongly opposed and assailed theDemocratic Party, which he viewed as the "party of thesaloon keeper,ballot-box stuffer, andKlansman."
Hoar was referred to by his middle name "Frisbie" among friends.[4]
Hoar was born inConcord, Massachusetts, on August 29, 1826. He studied for several months at a boarding school inWaltham, Massachusetts, run by Samuel andSarah Bradford Ripley.[5] He graduated fromHarvard University in 1846 and earned his law degree atHarvard Law School in 1849. He was admitted to the bar and settled inWorcester, Massachusetts, where he practiced law. Initially a member of theFree Soil Party, of which he became the leader, he joined theRepublican Party shortly after its founding.[6]
Hoar was elected to theMassachusetts House of Representatives in 1852 and to theMassachusetts Senate in 1857.He represented Massachusetts as a member of theU.S. House of Representatives for four terms from 1869 to 1877 and then served in theU.S. Senate until his death during his fifth term.[7] For one term during his House service, from 1873 to 1875, his brotherEbenezer Rockood Hoar served alongside him. He was a Republican, but generally avoided heavy partisanship, and did not hesitate to criticize other members of the party whose actions or policies he believed were in error.
Between 1856 and 1857 Hoar was active as a KansasFree-Stater, supported theFreedmen's Bureau, and took a leading part inreconstruction legislation. He took part in the investigation of theCrédit Mobilier scandal and the impeachment ofWilliam W. Belknap,President Grant's secretary of war.[6]
In 1880 Hoar was chairman of the1880 Republican National Convention. WhenJames Garfield, who eventually won the party's nomination and the presidential election, rose to object that votes were being cast for him without his consent, Hoar disallowed his objection. He later said: "I was terribly afraid that he would say something that would make his nomination impossible."[8]
Aneconomic nationalist, Hoar believed incapitalism as progress for civilization in accordance to the plans by God.[4] He supported measures which aimed at protecting American industries from foreign competition.
In Congress, Hoar established a reputation as aconservative on economic issues.[1] He opposed monetary inflation, post-wargreenbacks without the backing ofgold, and free coinage of silver. In addition to viewing silver as an "inferior metal," Hoar favoredprotectionisttariffs, a common position within the Republican Party.[1] He served as a member, and at times chairman, of the importantSenate Judiciary Committee.[6]
In 1874, a dyingCharles Sumner lay on his deathbed, and among his last visitors were Rep. Hoar.[1] Sumner told the representative to ensure passage of what became known as theCivil Rights Act of 1875:
You must take care of the civil rights bill – my bill, the civil rights bill – don't let it fail!
— Charles Sumner, March 11, 1874
Indeed, Hoar successfully fought in ensuring the bill's passage,[9] although it became law in a weakened form.[1]
Hoar was long noted as a fighter againstpolitical corruption. He campaigned for the rights ofAfrican Americans andNative Americans, which included the reusing of tribal lands for individual settlement of Native Americans. He was a strong advocate of theDawes Act and allotment schemes which allocated communal tribal lands to individuals. He explained these views by comparing federal Indian relations to that of "a father to his son, or by a guardian to an insane ward..."[10] - out of context. He opposed theChinese Exclusion Act of 1882, describing it as "nothing less than the legalization of racial discrimination"[11][12][13] He was a member of theCongressional Electoral Commission that settled the highly disputed1876 U.S. presidential election. He authored thePresidential Succession Act of 1886.
During the1884 United States presidential election, Hoar expressed sharp anger atMugwumps, Republicans who supportedBourbon DemocratGrover Cleveland over GOP nomineeJames G. Blaine; he asserted to a friend who supported Cleveland:[3]
There was a time when I hoped to meet you in heaven, it is gone.
— Sen. George Frisbie Hoar
Hoar argued in the Senate in favor ofwomen's suffrage as early as 1886. He was one of only seven senators, and one of only two Republican senators (along withHenry W. Blair ofNew Hampshire), to vote against theEdmunds–Tucker Act of 1887, which abolished women's suffrage inUtah after it had been a territorial right since 1870 (among other stipulations which were mainly aimed at eliminatingMormon polygamy and curbing the institutional power ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there).[14]
Hoar was a consistent opponent of American imperialism. He did not share his Senate colleagues' enthusiasm for American intervention in Cuba in the late 1890s. In December 1897, he met with Native Hawaiian leadersopposed to the annexation of their nation. He then presented theKūʻē Petitions to Congress and helped to defeat PresidentWilliam McKinley's attempt to annex theRepublic of Hawaii by treaty, though the islands were eventually annexed by means ofjoint resolution, called theNewlands Resolution.[15]
After theSpanish–American War, Hoar became one of the Senate's most outspoken opponents of theimperialism of the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations. He denounced thePhilippine–American War and called for independence for thePhilippines in a three-hour speech in the Senate, saying:[16][17]
You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture. Your practical statesmanship which disdains to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of the Revolution or of the Civil War as models, has looked in some cases to Spain for your example. I believe—nay, I know—that in general our officers and soldiers are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare with a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty.Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your men when they landed on those islands with benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries can not eradicate.
By this time, one of his strongest opponents on the pro-imperialist side was his fellow Massachusetts senatorHenry Cabot Lodge, who was a leading advocate for theTreaty of Paris.[18]
Hoar pushed for and served on theLodge Committee, investigating allegations, later confirmed, ofUnited States war crimes in the Philippine–American War. He also denounced theU.S. intervention in Panama.
Hoar voted against theChinese Exclusion Act.[3]
In 1865, Hoar was one of the founders of the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science, now theWorcester Polytechnic Institute.
Hoar was active in theAmerican Historical Association and theAmerican Antiquarian Society, serving terms as president of both organizations. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1853,[19] and served as vice-president from 1878 to 1884, and then served as president from 1884 to 1887.[20] In 1887 he was among the founders of theAmerican Irish Historical Society.[21] He was a regent of theSmithsonian Institution in 1880, an overseer of Harvard University from 1896,[6] and a trustee of thePeabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Through his efforts, the lost manuscript ofWilliam Bradford'sOf Plymouth Plantation (1620–1647), an important founding document of the United States, was returned toMassachusetts, after being discovered inFulham Palace, London, in 1855.[22]
Hoar was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1901.[23] Hisautobiography,Autobiography of Seventy Years, was published in 1903. It appeared first in serial form inScribner's magazine.
In 1904, he was one of several high-profile investors who backed theIntercontinental Correspondence University,[24] but the institution folded by 1915. He attended the Unitarian Church of All Souls in Washington, D.C.[25]
Hoar enjoyed good health until June 1904. He died in Worcester on September 30 of that year and was buried inSleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord. After his death, astatue of him was erected in front of Worcester's city hall, paid for by public donations.
In 1853, Hoar married Mary Louisa Spurr (1831–1859).[26] In 1862, he married Ruth Ann Miller (1830–1903).[27] With his first wife, he was the father of a son, U.S. RepresentativeRockwood Hoar, and a daughter, Mary (1854–1929).[27] With his second wife he was the father of a daughter, Alice (1863–1864).[27]
Through his mother, Sarah Sherman, G. F. Hoar was a grandson of prominent political figure,Roger Sherman and Sherman's second wife,Rebecca Minot Prescott. Roger Sherman signed theArticles of Confederation,United States Declaration of Independence and theUnited States Constitution.
Taking the ground that the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal, is the cardinal principle upon which this Government is established, he went on to declare that no question of policy could be made a pretext for setting it aside to make a distinction against any race of men. He said that all the arguments against the negroes used years ago were now applied to the Chinese.
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts's 8th congressional district 1869–1873 | Succeeded by John M. S. Williams (district moved) |
| Preceded by Alvah Crocker (district moved) | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts's 9th congressional district 1873–1877 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. Senate | ||
| Preceded by | U.S. senator (Class 2) from Massachusetts 1877–1904 Served alongside:Henry L. Dawes andHenry Cabot Lodge | Succeeded by |
