Hoar

July 1672, on a call from the Old South Church,
he brought a letter signed by thirteen dissenting
ministers of London recommending him to the
expected vacancy in the Harvard presidency.
Before his arrival the not unprayed for demise
of the amiable but decrepit President Chauncy
\_q.v.~] took place. Hoar was promptly chosen to
the office, voted a salary of £150 (a fifty per cent,
increase) by the General Court, and inaugurated
Dec. 10,1672.

Hoar found the college in a sad decline, but his
ambition was high. His purpose to find a place
for experimental science in the curriculum is
shown by a letter to Robert Boyle of Dec. 13,
1672, declaring that he hoped to obtain "a large
well-sheltered garden and orchard for students
addicted to planting; an ergasterium for me-
chanic fancies; and a laboratory chemical for
those philosophers, that by their senses would
culture their understandings ... for readings
or notions only are but husky provender" (The
Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, edited
by Thomas Birch, 1772, VI, 653). He obtained
funds for a new building and a new charter from
the General Court, and published the first cata-
logue of graduates in the form followed by the
older American universities ever since. Yet the
Hoar administration was a complete failure, and
for what cause is still a matter of conjecture.
Apparently the Rev. Urian Oakes of Cambridge
expected the presidency himself, and conspired
with other Fellows to thwart Hoar, encouraging
the undergraduates "to Travestie whatever he
did and said," says one of them, Cotton Mather
(post, IV, 129), and accusing him of lying and
immorality. In 1673 these and other charges
were ventilated before the Board of Overseers,
the General Court, and Governor Leverett, all of
which sustained the president (Sibley, post, I,
236; Massachusetts Archives, LVIII, 89). But
by this time most of the students had left Cam-
bridge, Hoar's health suffered, and he asked to
be relieved. The General Court failed in a fresh
effort to heal the breach, the students refused to
return, and Hoar resigned the presidency on
Mar. 15, 1675. "The Hard and III Usage, which
he met withal," says Cotton Mather, brought on
"a Consumption, whereof he died," Nov. 28,
1675, in Boston. John Hull [qa^ the goldsmith,
a connection of Hoar, wrote that if "those that
accused him had but countenanced and encour-
aged him in his work, he would have proved the
best president that ever yet the college had"
(Transactions and Collections of the American
Antiquarian Society, III, 1857, p. 238).

[J. L. Sibley, Biog. Sketches of Grads. of Harvard
Univ., vol. I (1873) ; Albert Matthews, "The Harvard

Hoar
College Charter of 1672," Colonial Soc. Mass. Pubs..
vol. XXI (1920) ; H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family
(1899) J Cotton Mather, Magnolia Christi Americana
(1702), Bk. IV, p. 129; Josiah Quincy, The Hist, of
Harvard Univ. (2 vols., 1840); Hoar's letter to his
nephew on college education, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls..
i sen, VI (1800).] S.KM.
HOAR, SAMUEL (May 18, 1778-Nov. 2,
1856), lawyer, congressman, was born in Lin-
coln, Mass,, the son of Susanna (Pierce) and
Samuel Hoar, a lieutenant in the Revolutionary
War, later a magistrate and member of the Mas-
sachusetts House and Senate. He was a descend-
ant of John, one of the brothers of Leonard Hoar
[q.v.]. He was prepared for college by the Rev.
Charles Stearns of Lincoln and was graduated
from Harvard College (B.A.) in 1802. The next
two years he spent as tutor in a private family
in Virginia, where he developed a life-long ab-
horrence of domestic slavery. He studied law in
the office of Artemas Ward [q.v.] and in 1805
began practice in Concord. He rose rapidly in
his profession and for forty years was one of the
eminent lawyers in the state, ranking in court
practice with Webster and Choate. He was a
conservative in the Massachusetts constitutional
convention of 1820, served several terms in the
state Senate, and at seventy-two was elected to
the House of Representatives, where he was suc-
cessful in defeating an attempt to abolish the
corporation of Harvard College and to substitute
a board to be chosen by the legislature. Har-
vard's president declared: "Other men have
served the College; Samuel Hoar saved it" (G.
F. Hoar, Autobiography, I, 29).
In politics he was first a Federalist, then a
Whig. He was a representative in Congress,
1835-37, and vigorously upheld the power of
Congress to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia, and opposed the recognition of the in-
dependence of Texas, He was a delegate to the
convention which nominated Harrison for presi-
dent In 1848, believing that the nomination of
Taylor marked the Whig party's abandonment of
its opposition to the spread of slavery, he at once
exerted himself to bring about united political
action by men of all parties opposed to the nomi-
nations of Cass or Taylor. He was the first to
sign the call written by his son, E. Rockwood
Hoar [g.v.], for the convention, over which he
presided, at Worcester on June 28, 1848, and in
the ensuing campaign his name headed the elec-
toral ticket of the Free Soil party in Massachu-
setts. In 1854 *ie led in the movement which, at
the Worcester convention in September, first
placed "Republican" candidates in nomination
for state offices. The following year he was
chairman of the committee which called the con-