Junius Hillyer was an American politician and lawyer. He served as a U. S. Representative from Georgia.
Background
Junius Hillyer was born on April 23, 1807 in Wilkes County, Georgia, United States. He was the son of Shaler and Rebecca (Freeman) Hillyer. His paternal grandfather, Asa, was a native of Connecticut and served in the Revolutionary War; his maternal grandfather, John Freeman, was a Revolutionary soldier in Georgia. When Junius was fourteen years old his father died. His mother removed to Athens, the seat of the University of Georgia, to educate her three sons.
Education
Hillyer received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the university in 1828 and shortly after graduation was admitted to the bar.
Career
Hillyer began practice in Athens. At twenty-seven he was elected solicitor-general of the western district of Georgia and seven years later he became judge of the superior court in the same district, holding the position for four years, 1841-1845. In the stirring campaign of 1851, led by Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb, for the purpose of swinging the people of Georgia to support the compromise measures of 1850, Hillyer supported the triumvirate, helped elect Cobb as governor, and fell heir to the latter's seat in Congress (1851-1855). After the election of Buchanan he became solicitor of the United States treasury and held this post until secession forced his retirement.
Initially elected to U. S. House of Representatives in 1850 as a Unionist, Hillyer was re-elected in 1852 as a Democrat, and he served from March 4, 1851 to March 3, 1855. In his second term Hillyer was chairman of the Committee on Private Land Claims.
During his last days in office Hillyer addressed a series of letters to Howell Cobb which are important in that they reveal the ideas of a trained observer of events. Late in January 1861, he believed that none of the border states would follow the South in secession and therefore thought that the approaching Montgomery Convention of seceding states should act with circumspection to avoid alienating them. If, as was anticipated, the Confederate government should establish free trade, Virginia and Maryland, Hillyer felt, would be lost; if the navigation of the Mississippi were obstructed, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri would remain in the Union.
Writing on February 9, he strongly argued that free trade with direct taxation as the means of raising revenue in the Confederacy would ruin the cause and urged that a tariff for revenue was the only expedient measure. He was confident that the Republican party would acquiesce in secession, if a collision were avoided until Lincoln's inauguration.
On resigning as solicitor of the treasury, February 13, 1861, Hillyer returned to Georgia and appears to have taken no part in the Civil War nor to have again offered for public office. He lived twenty-five years longer. This quarter-century he devoted to his private law practice, to developing the economic resources of Georgia, and to furthering the educational interests of the state.
Long before the Civil War he had been one of the original projectors of the Georgia Railroad. For many years he was a trustee of the University of Georgia and of Mercer University at Macon.
He died in Decatur, Georgia, which had been his home since 1871.
Hillyer married, in October 1831, Jane (Watkins) Foster. His son, George Hillyer, was a prominent Georgia politician who led a regiment in the Confederate States Army at the Battle of Gettysburg and later as Mayor of Atlanta.