Hunter, Robert Mercer Taliaferro

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    South
    Origins
    Slave State
    Education
    University of Virginia
    Occupation
    Politician
    Attorney or Judge
    Political Parties
    Democratic
    Whig
    Government
    Confederate government (1861-65)
    US Senate
    US House of Representatives
    State legislature
    Other state government

    Robert Hunter (Congressional Biographical Directory)

    Reference
    HUNTER, Robert Mercer Taliaferro, a Representative and a Senator from Virginia; born at “Mount Pleasant,” near Loretto, Essex County, Va., April 21, 1809; tutored at home; graduated from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1828; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1830 and commenced practice at Lloyds; member, State general assembly 1834-1837; elected as a States-Rights Whig to the Twenty-fifth, Twenty-sixth, and Twenty-seventh Congresses (March 4, 1837-March 3, 1843); Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Twenty-sixth Congress; unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Twenty-eighth Congress; elected to the Twenty-ninth Congress (March 4, 1845-March 3, 1847); chairman, Committee on the District of Columbia (Twenty-ninth Congress); elected to the United States Senate in 1846; reelected in 1852 and 1858 and served from March 4, 1847, to March 28, 1861, when he withdrew; expelled from the Senate in 1861 for support of the rebellion; chairman, Committee on Public Buildings (Thirtieth through Thirty-second Congresses), Committee on Finance (Thirty-first through Thirty-sixth Congresses); delegate from Virginia to the Confederate Provincial Congress at Richmond; Confederate Secretary of State 1861-1862; served in the Confederate Senate from Virginia in the First and Second Congresses 1862-1865 and was President pro tempore on various occasions; was one of the peace commissioners that met with President Abraham Lincoln in Hampton Roads in February 1865; briefly imprisoned at the end of the Civil War; State treasurer of Virginia 1874-1880; collector for the port of Tappahannock, Va. 1885; died on his estate ‘Fonthill,’ near Lloyds, Va., on July 18, 1887; interment in ‘Elmwood,’ the family burial ground, near Loretto, Va.
    "Hunter, Robert Mercer Taliaferro," Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774 to Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=H000988.
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Hitchcock, William S. "The Limits of Southern Unionism: Virginia Conservatives and the Gubernatorial Election of 1859." Journal of Southern History 47, no 1 (1981): 57-72. view record
    Hitchcock, William S.  "Southern Moderates and Secession: Senator Robert M. T. Hunter's Call for Union," Journal of American History 59, no. 4 (1973): 871-884. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Hunter, Robert Mercer Taliaferro," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/5947.