Henry W. Hilliard

Henry W. Hilliard was an Alabama state representative before election to U.S. Congress in 1845. He was a Commissioner of the Confederate States, sent to persuade Tennessee to secede, and fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Formerly a Whig, Hilliard and other Alabama politicians and industrialists gravitated toward the Know-Nothing Party in the mid-1850s for its espousal of white supremacy and infrastructure improvements.