George Frisbie Hoar (August 29, 1826 – September 30, 1904) was an American attorney and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1877 until his death in 1904. He belonged to an extended family that became politically prominent in 18th- and 19th-century New England.
An abolitionist and Radical Republican, Hoar regarded slavery as immoral and was raised in a household which actively opposed racial bigotry and often defied laws they deemed unjust. Hoar strongly opposed and assailed the Democratic Party, which he viewed as the "party of the saloon keeper, ballot-box stuffer, and Klansman."
Hoar was referred to by his middle name "Frisbie" among friends.
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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. 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, of which he became the leader, 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. From 1856 to 1861, Hoar actively supported the Kansas Free-Staters.
In 1868, he was elected US Representative, and was re-elected three times, serving from 1869 to 1877. In 1877, he was elected US Senator, and was re-elected four times, serving until his death in 1904. For one term during his House service, from 1873 to 1875, his brother Ebenezer 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.
As US Representative, he supported the Freedmen's Bureau, and took a leading part in reconstruction legislation. He took part in the investigation of the Crédit Mobilier scandal and the impeachment of William W. Belknap, President Grant's secretary of war. In 1877, he served on the Electoral Commission which resolved the disputed 1876 presidential election. As Senator, he served as a member, and at times chairman, of the important Senate Judiciary Committee.
Hoar 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."
An economic nationalist, Hoar believed in capitalism as progress for civilization in accordance with the plans of God. He supported measures which aimed at protecting American industries from foreign competition.
In Congress, Hoar established a reputation as a conservative on economic issues. He opposed monetary inflation, post-war greenbacks without the backing of gold, and free coinage of silver. In addition to viewing silver as an "inferior metal," Hoar favored protectionist tariffs, a common position within the Republican Party.
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, and served as vice-president from 1878 to 1884, and then served as president from 1884 to 1887. In 1887 he was among the founders of the American Irish Historical Society. He was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1880, an overseer of Harvard University from 1896, 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.
Hoar was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1901. His autobiography, Autobiography of Seventy Years, was published in 1903. It appeared first in serial form in Scribner's magazine.
In 1904, he was one of several high-profile investors who backed the Intercontinental Correspondence University, but the institution folded by 1915. He attended the Unitarian Church of All Souls in Washington, D.C.
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.
Family
In 1853, Hoar married Mary Louisa Spurr (1831–1859). In 1862, he married Ruth Ann Miller (1830–1903). With his first wife, he was the father of a son, U.S. Representative Rockwood Hoar, and a daughter, Mary (1854–1929). With his second wife he was the father of a daughter, Alice (1863–1864).
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.
G. F. Hoar's father, Samuel Hoar, was a prominent lawyer who served on the Massachusetts state senate and the United States House of Representatives.
G. F. Hoar's brother Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar was an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, one of Ulysses S. Grant's attorneys general, and a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
G. F. Hoar's first cousin Roger Sherman Baldwin was Governor of Connecticut and a U.S. senator; and William Maxwell Evarts was US secretary of state, U.S. attorney general and a U.S. senator.
He was the uncle of U.S. representative Sherman Hoar, and the great-uncle of Massachusetts state senator and assistant attorney general Roger Sherman Hoar.
His second wife's sister, Alice Miller (1840—1900), married U.S. representative William W. Rice, G. F. Hoar's successor as U.S. representative from Massachusetts.