Samuel Hoar (1778 - 1856) was a United States lawyer and politician.

Hoar was a native of Lincoln, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1802. He helped establish the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts.

He served two terms in the Massachusetts State Senate and was a member of the United States House of Representatives in 1835 - 1836.

Hoar was an expert in maritime law. In 1844 the state of Massachusetts chose him to represent the state in a legal conflict with South Carolina over the later state's seizing free African Americans working on ships docked at their sea ports and selling them into slavery unless the ship captain paid ransom. After landing at Charleston, South Carolina, locals mobbed him as a Yankee medler and warned him to leave town, and the South Carolina legislature barred him from appearing before that state's courts. When news of this incident reached Massachusetts it aroused much ire, and contributed to sentiment against slavery and in favor of abolitionism.

Samuel Hoar's son George Frisbie Hoar became a prominent U.S. Senator; his son Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (1816-1895) became a judge on the state supreme court.

External links

• The Hoar Family on Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography