Speeches of Hon. Eppa Hunton, of Virginia, and Hon. William F. Vilas, of Wisconsin on Bill to establish the University of the United States, delivered ... of the United States, December 13, 1894
Eppa Hunton was an American lawyer and politician. He also served as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.
Background
Eppa Hunton was born on September 22, 1822, in Warrenton, United States. He was the son of Eppa and Elizabeth Marye Brent Hunton. Eppa, who lost his father during his childhood, was reared with the help of an uncle, state Senator Charles Hunton.
Education
Eppa had a limited education, attending the new Baltimore Academy in Fauquier County, where he studied under the Reverend John Ogilvie before he taught school himself.
Career
Eppa Hunton taught school for three years, then read law, was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1843, and practiced in Brentsville, Prince William County, Virginia.
Hunton was a colonel and, in 1847, a general in the county militia. From 1849 to 1861, he was the commonwealth's attorney for Prince William County.
In 1860, he was a John C. Breckinridge elector, and at the state secession convention, he favored immediate secession. He resigned from the convention when the war began and entered the military service of the state of Virginia. As colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment, he fought gallantly at the battle of First Manassas in July 1861 and during the Seven Days in 1862.
He was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg and attained the rank of brigadier general on August 9, 1863. He recruited for the Confederate Army at Chaffin’s Farm until the spring of 1864, when he fought Grant at Cold Harbor, Drewry’s Bluff, Petersburg, and, in 1865, at the battle of Sayler’s Creek. He surrendered in April 1865 and was held prisoner for three months.
After the war, he practiced law in Warrenton and opposed radical Reconstruction. He was a Democrat in the United States House of Representatives from 1873 to 1881 and was appointed by the Virginia legislature to the United States Senate from 1892 to 1895. In 1877, he was the only Southern member of the electoral commission which resolved the disputed Hayes-Tilden election.
Hunton, who favored free coinage of silver, supported William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896. After 1881, he practiced law in Washington.
Hunton was a member of the Democratic Party. He opposed Congressional Reconstruction and particularly disabilities which the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868 sought to place on former Confederates.
Connections
Eppa married Lucy Caroline Weir in June 1848. They had two children, Elizabeth Boothe Hunton and Eppa Hunton.