Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (21 April 1809-18 July 1887) was a member of the US House of Representatives (W-VA 9) from 4 March 1837 to 3 March 1843 (succeeding John Roane and preceding Samuel Chilton) and from VA 8 from 4 March 1845 to 3 March 1847 (succeeding Willoughby Newton and preceding Richard L.T. Beale). He went on to serve as a US Senator (D) from 4 March 1847 to 28 March 1861 (succeeding William S. Archer and preceding John S. Carlile), as the CSA Secretary of State from 25 July 1861 to 18 February 1862 (succeeding Robert Toombs and preceding William M. Browne) and as a Confederate Senator from Virginia from 18 February 1862 to 10 May 1865.
Biography[]
Hunter in 1865
Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter was born in Loretto, Virginia in 1809, and he became a lawyer in 1830. In 1834, he was elected to the House of Delegates, and he served in the US House of Representatives from 1837 to 1843 and from 1845 to 1847, and as a US Senator from 1847 to 1861. He supported slavery and its extension, favored extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, and supported the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, while he opposed the abolition of slavery in Washington DC. Although he did not believe that President Abraham Lincoln's election was a sufficient cause for secession, he quietly supported the creation of the Confederacy, and he served as its Secretary of State from 1861 to 1862 and as a Senator from 1862 to 1865. His first cousins Robert S. Garnett and Richard B. Garnett were both killed while serving as Confederate States Army generals during the American Civil War, and, in 1867, President Andrew Johnson pardoned Hunter. He unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 1874, and he served as Treasurer of Virginia from 1874 to 1880. He died in Lloyds, Virginia in 1887.