Theodore Gaillard Hunt

Theodore Gaillard Hunt (October 23, 1805 – November 15, 1893) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing the state of Louisiana. He was born on October 23, 1805, in Charleston, South Carolina. Details of his early family life and schooling are sparse in the surviving record, but he came of age in the early national period and pursued legal studies, preparing for a career at the bar at a time when the legal profession was a principal avenue into public life.

After completing his legal training, Hunt moved to Louisiana, where he established himself as an attorney in New Orleans. His professional abilities and growing prominence in the community led to a series of public offices. He served as district attorney for New Orleans, a position that placed him at the center of the city’s legal and civic affairs. Hunt also became a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, in which he served for sixteen years. Over this extended legislative career he participated in the development of state policy during a period marked by economic growth, sectional tensions, and the evolving politics of slavery and states’ rights in the antebellum South.

Hunt’s long service in the state legislature and his reputation as a lawyer paved the way for his election to national office. A member of the Whig Party, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana and served one term in the Thirty-third Congress, from 1853 to 1855. During his tenure in Congress he was notable as one of the few Southern representatives to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, legislation that effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise and intensified sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery. His stance set him apart from many of his Southern contemporaries and reflected a more moderate or Unionist orientation within the complex political landscape of the time.

In 1854, while still serving in Congress, Hunt sought re-election. By then the Whig Party was disintegrating, and he ran as a candidate of the American (Know-Nothing) Party, which was gaining strength in parts of the country on a platform that combined nativism with elements of former Whig economic and Unionist policies. He was unsuccessful in this bid and left Congress at the conclusion of his term in 1855. After his congressional service, Hunt returned to his legal career in Louisiana and continued to hold public responsibilities, later serving as a judge, further extending his influence in the state’s legal and political life.

With the secession crisis and the outbreak of the American Civil War, Hunt’s Unionist leanings were tested by the decisions of his adopted state. At the beginning of the conflict he entered military service on the Confederate side and became colonel of the 5th Louisiana Infantry in 1861–1862. He also held the rank of brigadier general in the Louisiana militia. However, Hunt had opposed secession, and his earlier congressional record reflected a reluctance to follow the more extreme sectional course. After the capture of New Orleans by Union forces in 1862, he resigned from the Confederate Army rather than continue in a cause he did not fully support.

Following the Union occupation of New Orleans, Hunt aligned himself with the Unionist authorities in Louisiana. He was appointed adjutant general of Union Louisiana, a position in which he helped organize and administer the state’s military affairs under Union control during the remainder of the war. This role underscored his long-standing attachment to the Union and placed him among the Southern figures who shifted their allegiance once Confederate prospects dimmed and federal authority was reestablished. In the postwar years he appears to have resumed a quieter professional life, drawing on his extensive experience as a lawyer, legislator, judge, and military officer.

Theodore Gaillard Hunt died on November 15, 1893, at the age of 88. His long life spanned from the early republic through Reconstruction and into the late nineteenth century, and his career reflected many of the central tensions of that era: the rise and fall of the Whig Party, the sectional crisis, the Civil War, and the complex loyalties of Southern Unionists.