Henry Washington HILLIARD, Congress, AL (1808-1892)
HILLIARD, Henry Washington, a Representative from Alabama; born in Fayetteville, Cumberland County, N.C., on August 4, 1808; was graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) at Columbia in 1826; studied law; moved to Athens, Ga., where he was admitted to the bar in 1829; professor in the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa from 1831 to 1834, when he resigned to practice law in Montgomery, Ala.; member of the State house of representatives 1836-1838; member of the Whig National Convention at Harrisburg, Pa., in 1839; Whig presidential elector in 1840; unsuccessful candidate for election to the Twenty-seventh Congress in 1840; Chargé dâAffaires to Belgium from May 12, 1842, to August 15, 1844; elected as a Whig to the Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth, and Thirty-first Congresses (March 4, 1845-March 3, 1851); was not a candidate for renomination in 1850; presidential elector on the National American ticket in 1856; during the Civil War served as brigadier general in the Confederate Army; moved to Augusta, Ga., in 1865 and resumed the practice of his profession; appointed by Jefferson Davis Confederate commissioner to Tennessee; unsuccessful Republican candidate for election in 1876 to the Forty-fifth Congress; resumed the practice of law in Augusta, Ga., moving later to Atlanta; Minister to Brazil 1877-1881; died in Atlanta, Ga., December 17, 1892; interment in Oakwood Cemetery, Montgomery, Ala.
Bibliography
Durham, David I. A Southern Moderate in Radical Times: Henry Washington Hilliard, 1808-1892. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
