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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—Virginia / USRobert Mercer Taliaferro HUNTER
(1809-1887)
Senate Years of Service:
1847-1861Party: DemocratHUNTER, 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
on July 11, 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.
Bibliography
Dictionary of American Biography; Fisher, John E.
“Statesman of a Lost Cause: The Career of R.M.T. Hunter,
1859-1887.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1966;
Moore, Richard Randall, “Robert M.T. Hunter and the Crisis of
the Union, 1860-1861.” Southern Historian 13 (Spring
1992): 25-35.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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