He was educated at Hampden Sydney College, where he taught briefly. During his time at Hampden-Sydney College he delivered an address to the literary societies about the importance of classical education.[2] Garland then studied law at the University of Virginia.
Career
Garland practiced the law in Boydton, Virginia, where his brother Landon Garland was a professor at Randolph Macon College. During that time, Garland's wife, Anne Burwell Garland, ran a female seminary. The house where they lived and operated the school is still extant.[3]
In September 1840, Garland addressed a meeting of Democrats in Groton, Connecticut, and attacked abolitionists. After this he was known as the champion of the "Northern Man with Southern feelings." In 1845 he delivered an oration commemorating Andrew Jackson in Petersburg, Virginia, where he was practicing law.[5]
Ten slaves were owned by Hugh Garland in federal census in 1850 in Missouri.[7] Anne Burwell Garland, his wife, owned her half-sister Elizabeth Keckley for some time. The widow Mrs. Garland allowed Elizabeth Keckley and her son to be emancipated in 1855 for $1,200 (~$39,240 in 2023).[8] The half-sister of Mrs. Garland, who later became close to Mary Todd Lincoln, wrote a memoir about her time in slavery.[9] Keckley wrote about the brutal treatment she received from the Burwell family and its friends in her autobiography.
Garland wrote a two-volume biography of John Randolph of Roanoke.[10] The southern intellectual historian Michael O'Brien interprets Garland's biography of Randolph as influenced by the Romantic tradition and suggests that Garland made Randolph into a figure of the Romantic era.[11] Garland also wrote Protestantism and Government (1852).[12]
Death and legacy
Garland died unexpectedly in St. Louis on October 14, 1854, at age 49.
A Discourse on the Importance of Classical Learning; pronounced before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Hampden Sydney College, at their fifth anniversary, in September, 1828. Thomas Willis White, Richmond (1828)
Oration in commemoration of the life and services of Andrew Jackson, delivered in Petersburg, Virginia, on the 12th. of July, 1845, Bernard, Richmond (1845)
"The second war of revolution; or The great principles involved in the present controversy between parties. By a Virginian" Office of the Democratic Review, Washington (1839)[15]
^Hugh A. Garland, A Discourse on the Importance of Classical Learning; Pronounced before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Hampden Sydney College, at their Fifth Anniversary, in September, 1828 (Richmond, T.W. White 1828).
^Hugh A. Garland, Oration in commemoration of the life and services of Andrew Jackson, delivered in Petersburg, Virginia, on the 12th. of July, 1845 (Richmond: Bernard, 1845). See also Hugh A. Garland, An oration in celebration of the second Declaration of Independence, or, The passage of the Independent Treasury Bill: pronounced in Castle Garden, July 27th, 1840.
^Missouri's Dred Scott Case, 1846-1857; Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics 256 (1978) (discussing Garland as lawyer for Scott's owner, Sanford).
^Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley 341 (2004).
^Michael O'Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 (2005): 667.
^Hugh Garland, A Course of Five Lectures, Delivered in St. Louis, on Protestantism and Government (1852); Thomas R. Ryan, Orestes A. Brownson's Lectures in St. Louis, Missouri, 1852 and 1854, 89 Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 45, 58 (1978) (Bronson and Garland were friends).
^Keckley, Elizabeth "Behind the scenes, or, Thirty years a slave and four years in the White House", by Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley; G.W. Carleton & Co.; New York, NY, US; 1868.]