Hoar

75), where his brother, George R Hoar, was one
of his colleagues. Here he opposed the Sherman
Resumption Bill and the Force Bill. He was a
valuable member of the committee to which was
referred the revision of the United States stat-
utes and he served as a regent of the Smith-
sonian Institution. At the end of his term he
returned to Concord. In 1876 he was induced to
enter the campaign as a candidate for Congress
against Benjamin F. Butler [q.v.~], to whose in-
fluence in national and in state politics he had
for many years been the most vigorous opponent,
but he was heavily defeated by that astute politi-
cian. As a delegate to the Republican National
Convention in 1876, he supported Bristow till
the last ballot, when he voted for Hayes. In
1884 he supported Blaine. In his later years he
declined to reenter public service though urged
to be a member of the commission to investigate
governmental conditions in Louisiana and to act
as counsel for the United States before the fish-
ery commission.

He was a devoted son of Harvard College,
serving for nearly thirty years either as over-
seer or as member of the corporation. In the
American Unitarian Association he was a domi-
nant force. At the bar he was noted for the close-
ness of his reasoning and the keenness of his wit.
He was a brilliant conversationalist and for near-
ly forty years was a member of the Saturday
Club, which numbered many of the brightest in-
tellects in New England. On Nov. 20, 1840, he
married Caroline Downes Brooks. Of their seven
children, the youngest, Sherman Hoar, was elect-
ed as representative to Congress in 1890, third
of the family in direct descent to hold that po-
sition.

[Moorfield Storey and E. W. Emerson, E. R. Hoar
(1911); G. F. Hoar, Autobiog. of Seventy Years (2
vols., 1903) ; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc.t 2 ser., IX (1895) ;
H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899); Boston Tran-
script, Feb. i, 1895.] G. H. H.

HOAR, GEORGE FRISBIE (Aug. 29,1826-
Sept 30, 1904), lawyer, representative, senator,
was born in Concord, Mass., the son of Sarah
(Sherman) and Samuel Hoar [q.v.'] and the
brother of E. Rockwood Hoar [q.vJ\. He was
educated in the academy at Concord, Harvard
College (B.A. 1846), and the Harvard Law
School (LL.B. 1849). fr l849 he be§an tne
practice of law in Worcester, where he continued
to make his home for the rest of his life. His be-
ginning in politics was in folding and directing
the call, prepared by his father and brother, for
the convention which launched the Free Soil
oarty in Massachusetts.

He was intimately associated with the plan-
ning and the early organization of the Repub-

Hoar
lican party in the state and, for half a century,
he gave to it service in many responsible posi-
tions without, apparently, appreciating those
social and economic developments which had
changed the party of Abraham Lincoln to that
of Mark Hanna and William McKinley. He
presided over the Republican state convention in
1871, 1877, 1882, and 1885. He was a delegate
to its national convention from 1876 to 1888,
and chairman of the one which nominated Gar-
field. In 1852 he was elected to the state House
of Representatives and five years later he served
a term in the Senate. In 1869, during his ab-
sence in England, he was elected as a Republican
to Congress, and served in the House till 1877,
when he was elected by the legislature to the
Senate. Reflected four times, he continued to
represent Massachusetts in the Senate until his
death.
During his seven years in the House his most
congenial work was on the committee on the ju-
diciary. He was one of the managers of the
House in the impeachment of William Belknap
\_q.vJ\ and presented a vigorous argument for
his conviction despite the plea that the Senate
had no jurisdiction because the defendant was
no longer in office as secretary of war. He was
a member of the electoral commission which de-
termined the outcome of the Hayes-Tilden con-
troversy in 1877. In 1873 he was chairman of
the special committee which investigated gov-
ernmental conditions in Louisiana.
In the Senate his most effective work was done
upon measures of a professional or an adminis-
trative character, rather than upon more popular
political measures. In his own opinion his most
important service to the country was on the com-
mittee on claims, where he exercised great influ-
ence in determining the doctrines which guided
the Senate's action on civil war claims of indi-
viduals, corporate bodies, and states. For more
than twenty-five years he served continuously on
the committee on privileges and elections, and
his opinions are cited as authoritative. For
twenty years he was a member of the committee
on the judiciary and during much of the time its
chairman. At the request of this committee he
waited upon President McKinley [g.v.] to pro-
test against his practice of appointing senators
upon commissions whose work was later to come
before the Senate for approval. In character, in
speech, and in bearing he upheld the highest tra-
ditions of the Senate and was the author of two
of its rules demanding decorum in debate. His
speeches in opposition to the election of senators
by popular vote were among the weightiest ar-
guments on that side of the question. He was