Representative Henry Washington Hilliard - Contact Information

Henry Washington Hilliard (August 4, 1808 – December 17, 1892) was a U.S. representative from Alabama, a diplomat, and a colonel in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War who, in later life, became a proponent of abolitionism in Brazil. He was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and educated in South Carolina, where he showed early promise as a scholar and orator. Hilliard graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) at Columbia in 1826, and while a student he was active in the Euphradian Society, one of the college’s principal literary and debating societies. After graduation he read law under the prominent attorney and statesman William C. Preston, gaining the legal training that would undergird his subsequent career in politics and diplomacy.

Admitted to the bar in 1829, Hilliard began his professional life in Athens, Georgia, where he established a law practice. In 1831 he accepted an academic appointment at the newly established University of Alabama, serving as Professor of English Literature. He held that position from 1831 to 1834, during a formative period for the institution, before resigning to resume the practice of law in Montgomery, Alabama. His move to Montgomery placed him at the center of Alabama’s political and legal life, and he quickly emerged as a leading Whig voice in the state.

Hilliard entered elective office as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, serving from 1836 to 1838. His rising profile within the Whig Party led to his selection as a delegate to the Whig National Convention at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1839. The following year he ran as a Whig presidential elector in the 1840 election, supporting the national Whig ticket. He was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Twenty-seventh Congress but remained active in party affairs and public life. His diplomatic career began soon afterward when he was appointed chargé d’affaires to Belgium, serving in that post from May 12, 1842, to August 12, 1844, representing U.S. interests in a period of expanding American commercial and political engagement in Europe.

Returning from Belgium, Hilliard was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth, and Thirty-first Congresses, serving three consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1845, to March 3, 1851. As a member of the Whig Party representing Alabama, he contributed to the legislative process during a significant period in American history, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents in a Congress grappling with sectional tensions, territorial expansion, and the approach of the Compromise of 1850. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1850. Following the end of his congressional service, he joined the short-lived Union Party, which supported the Compromise of 1850 in an effort to preserve the Union and avert secession. Remaining engaged in national politics, he later served as a presidential elector on the American (Know-Nothing) Party ticket in 1856.

With the secession crisis and the outbreak of the Civil War, Hilliard cast his lot with the Confederacy. In 1861 he was appointed by Confederate President Jefferson Davis as Confederate commissioner to Tennessee, charged with helping to secure and solidify that state’s alignment with the Confederate cause. During the war he also served as a colonel in the Confederate States Army. Hilliard’s Legion, the unit that bore his name, was organized at Montgomery, Alabama, in June 1862 and consisted of five battalions, one of which—a mounted battalion—was early detached and became part of the Tenth Confederate Cavalry. Nearly 3,000 strong, the Legion proceeded from Montgomery under Hilliard’s command and was placed in McCown’s Brigade. It took part in the siege of Cumberland Gap and spent the fall and winter campaigning in Kentucky and East Tennessee. Hilliard resigned from the army on December 1, 1862, citing the need to attend to personal affairs and dissatisfaction that he had not been promoted to brigadier general.

After the collapse of the Confederacy, Hilliard resumed civilian life in a radically altered South. In 1865 he moved to Augusta, Georgia, where he returned to the practice of law. As Reconstruction and postwar politics unfolded, he aligned himself with the Republican Party, reflecting both the complexities of Southern politics in this era and his evolving views. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for election to the Forty-fifth Congress in 1876. Hilliard continued his legal career in Augusta and later relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, where he maintained his practice and remained a figure of some prominence in legal and political circles.

Hilliard’s later public service took him abroad once more. He was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Brazil, serving from July 31, 1877, to June 15, 1881. In Brazil he worked with leading abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco and with Emperor Pedro II in support of the movement to end slavery in that country. His advocacy marked a significant evolution from his earlier Confederate service to a later-life role as a proponent of abolitionism in Brazil, aligning him with international efforts that culminated in the gradual dismantling of slavery in the Brazilian Empire. His diplomatic tenure thus linked his long political career to one of the major humanitarian causes of the late nineteenth century.

In his final years, Hilliard lived in Atlanta, where he continued his legal and literary pursuits and saw his long public career reassessed by a new generation. He died in Atlanta on December 17, 1892. His remains were returned to Alabama and interred in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery, underscoring his enduring ties to the state he had represented in Congress and served in war and peace. Long after his death, his contributions to the legal profession were formally recognized when, in 2022, Henry Washington Hilliard was inducted into the Alabama Lawyers Hall of Fame.