Hooker, Charles Edward, 1825-1914

Charles Edward Hooker was a Mississippi state representative, Confederate officer, the state’s attorney general, and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi.

Born on April 9, 1825, in Union, South Carolina, Hooker was raised in the south but graduated from Harvard Law School in 1846. He moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and in 1848 became a practicing attorney. By 1850 he secured a position as district attorney in Mississippi, serving in that role until 1854. In 1859 he won election to the Mississippi state legislature.

During the secession crisis following Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860, Hooker was appointed as a secession commissioner to South Carolina. He strongly supported southern separation from the Union, and upon Mississippi's secession he resigned his political seat to enlist in the military. Rising to the rank of captain, Hooker served with the First Regiment of Mississippi Light Artillery and took part in the Vicksburg campaign. He was severely wounded, resulting in the loss of an arm, during the fighting at Vicksburg in the summer of 1863. Despite the severity of his wound, Hooker remained in the army and received a promotion to colonel, commanding cavalry soldiers for the rest of the war.

After the Civil War, Hooker reentered politics, and secured election in 1865 as attorney general for Mississippi. However, federal authorities overturned much of Mississippi’s rebuilt civil government due to efforts by former Confederates to enact harsh restriction against African American civil rights. As a result Hooker was removed from office, along with several other conservative white Democrats. In 1868, Hooker was again elected attorney general.

In the 1870s Hooker pursued national level political office. He won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from March 1875 to March 1883. In 1884, he served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, where he stood out compared to many of his former Confederate colleagues with his more progressive approach to race relations. He opposed policies against Chinese immigration (an issue driven by large numbers of Chinese immigrants being used for labor on railroads in the U.S. west), and declared that African Americans were full citizens—a particularly radical position in the post-Reconstruction south.

Hooker continued to serve various terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, holding a seat from 1887 to 1895, and then again from 1901 to 1903. When he was not in office, Hooker practiced law in Jackson, Mississippi.

He was married to Francis Cecilia LeBreton. The couple had four children. He died on January 3, 1914. Hooker is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi.

(Wikipedia; FindaGrave)

Charles E. Hooker belonged to the following social groups: