George Stillman Hillard (September 22, 1808 – January 21, 1879) was an American lawyer and author. Besides developing his Boston legal practice (with Charles Sumner as a partner), he served in the Massachusetts legislature, edited several Boston journals, and wrote on literature, politics and travel.
Hillard was a Democrat who opposed slavery and supported the Union during the American Civil War. He was a member of the Massachusetts legislature: the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1836, and the Massachusetts Senate in 1850. There he was conspicuous as an orator, and his policies were praised by Daniel Webster.[4][5] Hillard was a member of the Boston Common Council and served as its president in from July 1, 1846, through July 1, 1847.[1] He was a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1853, city solicitor for Boston from 1854 until 1856,[6] and in 1866–70 was United States district attorney for Massachusetts.
Beginning in 1837, Hillard rented rooms to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had recently taken a job at the customhouse in Boston.[7][8] Around that time, he was a founding member of an informal social group called the Five of Clubs which also included Sumner, author Henry Russell Cleveland (1809–1843),[9]Cornelius Conway Felton, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[10]
Hillard devoted a large portion of his time to literature. With George Ripley, he edited the Christian Register,[6] a Unitarian weekly, beginning in 1833; in 1834, in association with Sumner,[6] he became editor of The American Jurist (1829–1843), a legal journal to which Sumner, Simon Greenleaf and Theron Metcalf contributed; and from 1856 to 1861 he was an associate editor of the Boston Courier.
He wrote the 19th-century school textbook series Hillard's Readers. "He is credited with having instilled a love of good literature, and a knowledge of the best English writers to generations of Americans".[13]
Public speaking
In addition to his oratorical contributions in meetings of the Massachusetts legislature, he gave the July 4 oration in Boston in 1835; he spoke on “Dangers and Duties of the Mercantile Profession” to the Mercantile Library Association (1850); he spoke before the New York Pilgrim Society (1851); and he delivered a eulogy on Daniel Webster in 1852.[6] He gave a series of 12 lectures on the “Life and Writings of Milton” as part of the Lowell Institute's lecture series for the 1846–47 season.[14]
In 1834 Hillard married Susan Tracy Howe, the daughter of Northampton Law School founder Judge Samuel Howe. They had one child, George S. Hillard Jr. (1836-1838).[17]
.png){kind=small}
