George Frisbie Hoar

George Frisbie Hoar (August 29, 1826 – September 30, 1904), a prominent American politician and United States Senator from Massachusetts from 1877 to 1904, belonged to an extended family that became politically prominent in 18th- and 19th-century New England.

"Senator Hoar" redirects here. For other uses, see Senator Hoar (disambiguation).
George Frisbie Hoar
United States Senator
from Massachusetts
In office
March 4, 1877 (1877-03-04) – September 30, 1904 (1904-09-30)
Preceded byGeorge S. Boutwell
Succeeded byWinthrop M. Crane
Member of the
U.S. House of Representatives
from Massachusetts
In office
March 4, 1869 (1869-03-04) – March 3, 1877 (1877-03-03)
Preceded byJohn Denison Baldwin (8th)
Alvah Crocker (9th)
Succeeded byJohn M. S. Williams (8th)
William W. Rice (9th)
Constituency8th district (1869–73)
9th district (1873–77)
Member of the Massachusetts Senate
In office
1857
Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
In office
1852
Personal details
Born(1826-08-29)August 29, 1826
Concord, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedSeptember 30, 1904(1904-09-30) (aged 78)
Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Political partyRepublican (after 1855)
Other political
affiliations		Free Soil Party (before 1855)
Alma materHarvard University
Harvard Law School
ProfessionLawyer
Signature

Early life

Hoar was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on August 29, 1826. He studied for several months at a boarding school in Waltham, Massachusetts, run by Samuel and Sarah Bradford Ripley.[1] He graduated from Harvard University in 1846 and earned his law degree at Harvard Law School in 1849. He was admitted to the bar and settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he practiced law. Initially a member of the Free Soil Party, he joined the Republican Party shortly after its founding.

Political career

Hoar was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1852 and to the Massachusetts Senate in 1857.

He represented Massachusetts as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for four terms from 1869 to 1877 and then served in the U.S. Senate until his death during his fifth term. For one term during his House service, from 1873 to 1875, his brother Ebenezer Rockood Hoar served alongside him. He was a Republican, who generally avoided party partisanship and did not hesitate to criticize other members of his party whose actions or policies he believed were in error. In 1880 he was chairman of the 1880 Republican National Convention. When James 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."[2]

Hoar was long noted as a fighter against political corruption. He campaigned for the rights of African Americans and Native Americans, though his "campaigning" for Native Americans included the breakup of tribal lands for white settlement. He was a strong advocate of the Dawes Act and allotment schemes which stole millions of acres of Native land. He justified these views by comparing Federal Indian relations to that of "a father to his son, or by a guardian to an insane ward..."[3] He opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, describing it as "nothing less than the legalization of racial discrimination"[4][5][6] He was a member of the Congressional Electoral Commission that settled the highly disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. He authored the Presidential Succession Act of 1886.

He argued in the Senate in favor of women's suffrage as early as 1886.

He was a consistent opponent of American imperialism. He did not share his Senate colleagues' enthusiasm for American intervention in Cuba in the late 1890s. On December 1897, he met with Native Hawaiian leaders opposed to the annexation of their nation. He then presented the Kūʻē Petitions to Congress and helped to defeat President William McKinley's attempt to annex the Republic of Hawaii by treaty, though the islands were eventually annexed by means of joint resolution, called the Newlands Resolution.[7]

George F. Hoar in his later years.

After the Spanish–American War, Hoar became one of the Senate's most outspoken opponents of the imperialism of the McKinley administration. He denounced the Philippine–American War and called for independence for the Philippines in a 3-hour speech in the Senate, saying:[8][9]

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.

Hoar pushed for and served on the Lodge Committee, investigating allegations, later confirmed, of war crimes in the Philippine–American War. He also denounced the U.S. intervention in Panama.

Other interests

In 1865, Hoar was one of the founders of the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science, now the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Hoar was active in the American Historical Association and the American Antiquarian Society, serving terms as president of both organizations. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1853,[10] and served as vice-president from 1878 to 1884, and then served as president from 1884 to 1887.[11] In 1887 he was among the founders of the American Irish Historical Society.[12] He was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1880 and a trustee of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Through his efforts, the lost manuscript of William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation (1620–1647), an important founding document of the United States, was returned to Massachusetts, after being discovered in Fulham Palace, London, in 1855.[13]

Hoar was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1901.[14] His autobiography, Autobiography of Seventy Years, was published in 1903. It appeared first in serial form in Scribner's magazine.

He attended the Unitarian Church of All Souls in Washington, D.C.[15]

Hoar enjoyed good health until June 1904. He died in Worcester on September 30 of that year and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord. After his death, a statue of him was erected in front of Worcester's city hall, paid for by public donations.

Hoar family and relations

In 1853, Hoar married Mary Louisa Spurr (1831–1859).[16] In 1862, he married Ruth Ann Miller (1830–1903).[17] With his first wife, he was the father of a son, Rockwood Hoar, and a daughter, Mary (1854–1929).[17] With his second wife he was the father of a daughter, Alice (1863–1864).[17]

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 the Articles of Confederation, United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

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See also

References
  1. Hoar, George F. (1903). Autobiography of Seventy Years. I. Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 82.
  2. Graff, Henry F. (June 26, 1960). "Playing Political Possum Isn't Easy". New York Times. p. 40. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  3. Congressional Record, 55th Congress, version 29, part 3 (available at the Library of Congress).
  4. Daniels, Roger (2002). Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. Harper Perennial. p. 271. ISBN 978-0-06-050577-6.
  5. Puleo, Stephen (2007). The Boston Italians. Boston: Beacon Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-8070-5036-1.
  6. Dunlap, David W. (March 17, 2017). "135 Years Ago, Another Travel Ban Was In the News". New York Times. Retrieved December 20, 2018. 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.
  7. Silva, Noenoe K. (1998). "The 1897 Petitions Protesting Annexation". The Annexation Of Hawaii: A Collection Of Document. University of Hawaii at Manoa. Retrieved December 19, 2016.
  8. Hoar, George Frisbie (1906). "Subjugation of the Philippines Iniquitous". In William Jennings Bryan (ed.). The World's Famous Orations:America: III (1861–1905). X. Francis W. Halsey, associate editor (On-line edition published March 2003 by Bartleby.com ed.). New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
  9. Millard, Candice (February 17, 2012). "Looking for a Fight: A New History of the Philippine-American War". New York Times. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  10. "Members". American Antiquarian Society. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  11. Dunbar, B. (1987). Members and Officers of the American Antiquarian Society. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society.
  12. "History Building Ready". New York Times. April 9, 1940. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  13. Hoar, George F. (1905). Autobiography of Seventy Years. II. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 235ff. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  14. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  15. "Ulysses G. Pierce, Unitarian Leader". New York Times. October 12, 1934. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  16. "Biographical Sketch, Rockwood Hoar". Rockwood Hoar Papers. Boston, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
  17. "Biographical Sketch, Rockwood Hoar".

Additional sources

U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by
John D. Baldwin		 Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Massachusetts'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
from Massachusetts's 9th congressional district
1873–1877		 Succeeded by
William W. Rice
U.S. Senate
Preceded by
George S. Boutwell		 U.S. senator (Class 2) from Massachusetts
1877–1904
Served alongside: Henry L. Dawes and Henry Cabot Lodge		 Succeeded by
Winthrop M. Crane
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