"I am a Southern man."

Robert M.T. Hunter was born on April 21, 1801, in Essex County, Virginia and educated at the University of Virginia. He represented Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives (1837-43, 1845-47), serving as Speaker of the House from 1839-41, and in the U.S. Senate from 1847-1861.

In the U.S. Congress he emerged as a major spokesman of the Democratic party's states rights faction. Although his erudition and conservatism gave an appearance of moderation to his position, Hunter remained uncompromisingly pro-slavery and pro-Southern.

R.M.T. Hunter, [Senator from Virginia],
produced by Mathew Brady's studio, between 1844 and 1860.
America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotypes, 1839-1862

"I am a Southern man," declared Virginia's senator Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter to his son, Robert Jr., on the eve of his departure to Washington, D.C., for the second session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress. The Republican triumph in the presidential election of November 6, 1860, had precipitated a political crisis of massive proportions…With the convoking of one of the most important meetings in the history of the United States Congress, Hunter's comment assumed deep significance. To save the endangered nation from disintegration and civil war, Americans would have to forsake any provincial interests for the welfare of their country.

"Southern Moderates and Secession: Senator Robert M. T. Hunter's Call for Union" by William S. Hitchcock, in The Journal of American History, March, 1973, page 871.

When South Carolina called a convention to vote on secession and other Southern states followed, Hunter called for union, not of North and South, but of the Southern border states and the gulf states. During the Civil War, Hunter served as Confederate secretary of state and in the Confederate Senate. In 1865, Hunter participated in an effort, known as the Hampton Roads Conference, to negotiate a peaceful end to the Civil War.

Vice President Alexander Stephens, Confederate States Government,
Brady National Photographic Art Gallery, circa 1860-1865.
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865

Jefferson Davis, Carte de Visite [detail], [President of the Confederate States of America],
Civil War Photograph Album,
Brady National Photographic Art Gallery, circa 1861-1865.
Words and Deeds in American History

Secretary of State Robert M. T. Hunter, Confederate States Government,
Brady National Photographic Art Gallery, circa 1860-1865.
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865

Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed Hunter, along with Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America (former representative from Georgia) and John A. Campbell, assistant secretary of war for the Confederacy (former U.S. Supreme Court justice) to attend a peace conference with Union representatives. The delegation's insistence that any peace must recognize the independent union of the Confederate states doomed the conference to failure.

Hunter, Stephens, and Campbell met with President Lincoln and U.S. Secretary of War William H. Seward on February 3, 1865, on the Federal steamship River Queen, which they boarded at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

Mr. Lincoln told a few stories, everybody was reasonably friendly, but nothing came of it or could come of it, considering the Federal demand for unconditional restoration of the Union and the Confederate demand for terms between two independent nations…thus ended the last and only real effort at peace before surrender.

E.B. and Barbara Long, The Civil War Day By Day (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), page 633.

Brick Chimneys of Burned Houses, Hampton, Virginia, between 1860 and 1865.
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865

Two weeks later the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina surrendered the city to the Union Army, and one month later, General Lee evacuated Richmond and surrendered to General Grant at the village of Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

Amid the devastation of the South, the former Officers of the Confederate States of America, including Hunter and the other delegates to the Hampton Roads Conference, were captured and sent to prison.

After his prison term, Robert Hunter returned to Virginia where he continued to serve in public office for his home state and died at his home "Fonthill" in 1887.

• Search the Today in History Archive on Civil War for more features on events and battles.
• Search on burn and ruin in Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865 to see more photographs of the war-ravaged South.
• The Time Line of the Civil War, a Special Presentation in the American Memory collection of Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865, provides an overview of the sequence of events leading up to the start of the conflict as well as major battles and events during the war.
• Search on Fort Monroe, Ft. Monroe, or Hampton Roads in Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865 and Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920, for photographs of the site of the peace conference.

  
  Officers and Ladies on Porch of a Garrison House, Fort Monroe, Virginia, 1864.
  Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865

• For biographies of Robert M.T. Hunter and Alexander Stephens, and other Members of Congress, search the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present created by the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.
• The Legal Information Institute's Gallery of Former Justices includes biographies of former U.S. Justices of the Supreme Court and their major decisions. A brief biography of John A. Campbell, Associate Justice 1853-1861, one of the delegates to the Hampton Roads Conference, is contained at this site.