George Frisbie Hoar

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George Frisbie Hoar (29 August 1826–30 September 1904) was a prominent United States politician.

Hoar was born in Concord, Massachusetts. Through his mother he was a grandson of Roger Sherman, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. His father, Samuel Hoar, was a prominent lawyer who served on the Massachusetts state senate and the United States House of Representatives. (His brother Ebenezer R. Hoar was one of Ulysses S. Grant's Attorneys General.)

Hoar graduated from Harvard University in 1846, then studied law at Harvard Law School and settled in Worcester, Massachusetts where he practiced law before entering politics.

Hoar initially was a member of the Free Soil Party, then joined the Republican Party shortly after its founding. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1852, and the Massachusetts Senate in 1857.

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

Hoar represented Massachusetts as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1869 through 1877; he then served in the U.S. Senate until his death. 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.

Hoar was long noted as a fighter against political corruption, and campaigned for the rights of African Americans and Native Americans. He argued in the Senate in favor of Women's suffrage as early as 1886.

Hoar was part of the Congressional Electoral Commission involved with settling the highly disputed U.S. presidential election, 1876. He authored the Presidential Succession Act of 1886.

Hoar was chairman of the 1888 Republican National Convention.

With the Spanish-American War, Hoar became one of the Senate's most outspoken opponents of the imperialism of the William McKinley administration. He denounced the Philippine-American War, calling for allowing independence of the Philippines. He also denounced the U.S. intervention in Panama.

"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 irreconciliable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries can not eradicate." --Senator George Hoar, From a speech in the United States Senate in May, 1902, chastizing the Philippine-American War and the three Army officers, who were court-martialed.[1]

Hoar pushed for and served on the Lodge Committee investigating alleged, and later confirmed, war crimes in the Philippine-American War

In addition to his political career, Hoar was active in the American Historical Society and the American Antiquarian Society, serving terms as president of both organizations. He was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1880, and a trustee of the Peabody Museum.

George Frisbie Hoar's autobiography, Autobiography of Seventy Years was published in 1903; it first appeared in serial form in Scribner's magazine.

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

[edit] External Link

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

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
Preceded by: George S. Boutwell	United States Senator (Class 2) from Massachusetts 1877 – 1904 Served alongside: Henry L. Dawes, Henry Cabot Lodge	Succeeded by: Wintrop M. Crane