Background
HILTON, Robert B. was born in 1821 in Virginia, United States, United States.
HILTON, Robert B. was born in 1821 in Virginia, United States, United States.
Public school.
Details of his early life are unknown. He worked for a Savannah newspaper in the mid-1840s. A lawyer and a Democrat, he moved to Florida in 1848 and edited the Tallahassee Floridian before the Civil War.
He was married and had a family. Hilton divided his time between Tallahassee and Savannah, supported the secession of Florida, and enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army. He was also an active member of the first and second Confederate House, representing Florida’s Second Congressional District.
Besides serving on the Military Affairs Committee of the House during both of his terms, Hilton was a member of the Inauguration, Patents, Post Office and Post Roads, and War Tax Committees during his first term, and of the Conference, Elections, and Territories and Public Lands Committees during his second. In 1865, he also was a member of the special committee set up to persuade state governors to decrease their granting of military exemptions and to levy additional taxes. In May 1863, he sponsored a bill to allow a small number of exemptions for plantation overseers because he believed that slaves needed supervision.
He was a major supporter of General Lee’s promotion to commander-in-chief of the Confederate armies. Hilton lost everything but his personal liberty during the war. After the war, he was a lawyer and newspaper editor in Tallahassee, Florida.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.