Robert R. Hitt

Robert Roberts Hitt
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 13th district
In office March 4, 1903 – September 20, 1906
Preceded by	Vespasian Warner
Succeeded by	Frank O. Lowden
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 9th district
In office March 4, 1895 – March 3, 1903
Preceded by	Thomas J. Henderson
Succeeded by	Henry S. Boutell
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 6th district
In office March 4, 1883 – March 3, 1895
Preceded by	Thomas J. Henderson
Succeeded by	Edward D. Cooke
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 5th district
In office December 4, 1882 – March 3, 1883
Preceded by	Robert M.A. Hawk
Succeeded by	Reuben Ellwood
13th United States Assistant Secretary of State
In office May 4, 1881 – December 19, 1881
Preceded by	John Hay
Succeeded by	J.C. Bancroft Davis
Personal details
Born	(1834-01-16)January 16, 1834 Urbana, Ohio, U.S.
Died	September 20, 1906(1906-09-20) (aged 72) Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Profession	Secretary, Politician

Robert Roberts Hitt (January 16, 1834 – September 20, 1906) was an Assistant Secretary of State and later a member of the United States House of Representatives.

He was born in Urbana, Ohio to Reverend Thomas Smith Hitt and Emily John Hitt. He and his parents moved to Mount Morris, Illinois in 1837. There he was educated at Rock River Seminary and later at De Paul University. An expert shorthand writer and only one at that time who represented that skill, he became a very close friend of President of the United States Abraham Lincoln, so close that during the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, at the request of Lincoln, Hitt was used as a shorthand note taker. Lincoln had first used him in many trials in Chicago, Illinois when Lincoln was a lawyer.

In 1872, Hitt was a personal secretary for Senator Oliver P. Morton and in December 1874 he was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant First Secretary of the American Legation in Paris, serving from 1874 to 1881 and as Chargé d'Affaires a part of that time.

Hitt's former home in Washington, D.C.

He was United States Assistant Secretary of State under James G. Blaine during President James A. Garfield and President Chester A. Arthur's Administrations in 1881 and was elected to represent Illinois 5th district in the United States House of Representatives in 1882. He became Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs at the beginning of the Fifty-first Congress. When the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 came up for renewal in 1892, he argued against the alien documentation provisions of the bill, saying: "Never before in a free country was there such a system of tagging a man, like a dog to be caught by the police and examined, and if his tag or collar is not all right, taken to the pound or drowned and shot. Never before was it applied by a free people to a human being, with the exception (which we can never refer to with pride) of the sad days of slavery . . . ."^[1]

He was appointed in July 1898 by President William McKinley as a member of the commission created by the Newlands Resolution to establish government in the Territory of Hawaii.

During the last years of his life he was Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He died on September 20, 1906. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Mount Morris, Illinois along with his parents.

References

External links

• Robert R. Hitt at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress