Washington Hunt (August 5, 1811 – February 2, 1867) was an American lawyer and politician.

Life and career

Hunt was born in

Windham, New York Windham is a town in Greene County, New York, United States. The population was 1,703 at the 2010 census. The town was probably named for the town or county of Windham, Connecticut, as many of its earliest settlers came from that state as well a ...

. He moved to

Lockport, New York Lockport is both a city and the town that surrounds it in Niagara County, New York. The city is the Niagara county seat, with a population of 21,165 according to 2010 census figures, and an estimated population of 20,305 as of 2019. Its name d ...

in 1828 to study law, was admitted to the bar in 1834, and opened a law office on Market Street in 1835. He was First Judge of the

Niagara County Niagara County is in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 212,666. The county seat is Lockport. The county name is from the Iroquois word ''Onguiaahra''; meaning ''the strait'' or ''thunder of waters''. Niaga ...

Court from 1836 to 1841. He was elected as a Whig to the

28th 28 (twenty-eight) is the natural number following 27 and preceding 29. In mathematics It is a composite number, its proper divisors being 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14. Twenty-eight is the second perfect number - it is the sum of its proper diviso ...

, 29th and

30th United States Congress The 30th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1847 ...

es, and served from March 4, 1843, to March 3, 1849. He was elected

New York State Comptroller The New York State Comptroller is an elected constitutional officer of the U.S. state of New York and head of the New York state government's Department of Audit and Control. The New York State Comptroller is the highest-paid state auditor or ...

by the State Legislature after the resignation of

Millard Fillmore Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853; he was the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. A former member of the U.S. House of Represen ...

who had been elected U.S. Vice President. In November 1849, he was re-elected, but resigned the comptrollership after his election as Governor of New York the following year. He was Governor from 1851 to 1852, and was defeated for re-election by

Horatio Seymour Horatio Seymour (May 31, 1810February 12, 1886) was an American politician. He served as Governor of New York from 1853 to 1854 and from 1863 to 1864. He was the Democratic Party nominee for president in the 1868 United States presidential elec ...

. After the break-up of the Whig Party, Hunt, despite his previous association with the Seward/

Weed A weed is a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation, "a plant in the wrong place", or a plant growing where it is not wanted.Harlan, J. R., & deWet, J. M. (1965). Some thoughts about weeds. ''Economic botany'', ''19''(1), 16-24. ...

faction of the party, was among the more conservative Whigs who refused to join the Republicans. Hunt was the chairman of the

1856 Whig National Convention The 1856 Whig National Convention was a presidential nominating convention held from September 17 to September 18, in Baltimore, Maryland. Attended by a rump group of Whigs who had not yet left the declining party, the 1856 convention was the l ...

and supported his fellow New York Whig, former president

for the presidency in that year. In 1860, Hunt joined the Constitutional Union Party and supported its nominee for the presidency, John Bell. After it became clear that Bell could not win on his own in New York, Hunt was involved in the formation of a fusion ticket with the supporters of Democrat

Stephen Douglas Stephen Arnold Douglas (April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. A senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party for president in the 1860 presidential election, which wa ...

. In his last years, Hunt moved increasingly closer to the Democrats, endorsing his two-time opponent,

for the New York gubernatorial race in 1862 and supporting

George McClellan George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885) was an American soldier, Civil War Union general, civil engineer, railroad executive, and politician who served as the 24th governor of New Jersey. A graduate of West Point, McCl ...

for the presidency at the

1864 Democratic National Convention The 1864 Democratic National Convention was held at The Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois. The Convention nominated Major General George B. McClellan from New Jersey for president, and Representative George H. Pendleton of Ohio for vice president ...

. On June 13, 1864, Hunt was at Niagara Falls to confer with Confederate Commissioner

Jacob Thompson Jacob Thompson (May 15, 1810 – March 24, 1885) was the United States Secretary of the Interior, who resigned on the outbreak of the American Civil War and became the Inspector General of the Confederate States Army. In 1864, Jefferson Davis ...

.p. 145, Castleman, John Breckenridge. Active Service. Louisville, KY: Courier-Journal Job Printing, 1917. He became a supporter of President Andrew Johnson after the war, and supported Johnson's abortive "National Union" movement, serving as a delegate at the National Union Convention of 1866, which sought to join Democrats and conservative Republicans into a new party to support Johnson. His brother was Major Edward B. Hunt, a West Point graduate, who was killed in October 1863 while working with an experimental weapons system. He was buried at the Glenwood Cemetery in Lockport. His former Lockport home at 363 Market Street is in the Lowertown Historic District. ''See also:''

Sources

Political Graveyard * www.famousamericans.net/washingtonhunt/ Bio from Appleton's Encyclopedia, at Famous Americans
Google Books
''The New York Civil List'' compiled by Franklin Benjamin Hough (pages 31, 34 and 362; Weed, Parsons and Co., 1858)

External links

Photo of his law office, at Lockport website
* ttps://books.google.com/books?id=r_xLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=wheeler+bristol+state+engineer&lr=&hl=pt-BR&source=gbs_similarbooks_r&cad=1_1#PPA403,M1''The New York Civil List'' compiled by Franklin Benjamin Hough, Stephen C. Hutchins and Edgar Albert Werner (page 403; Weed, Parsons & Co., Albany NY, 1867) {{DEFAULTSORT:Hunt, Washington 1811 births 1867 deaths Politicians from Lockport, New York Governors of New York (state) New York State Comptrollers New York (state) state court judges 19th-century American Episcopalians New York (state) Constitutional Unionists Whig Party members of the United States House of Representatives from New York (state) Whig Party state governors of the United States 19th-century American politicians 19th-century American judges