Robert R. Hitt

Infobox US Cabinet official
name=Robert Roberts Hitt


order=13th
title=United States Assistant Secretary of State
term_start=May 4, 1881
term_end=December 19, 1881
predecessor=John Hay
successor=J.C. Bancroft Davis
birth_date=birth date|1834|1|16|mf=y
birth_place=Urbana, Ohio, U.S.
death_date=death date and age|1906|9|20|1834|1|16|mf=y
death_place=Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, U.S.
party=Republican
spouse=
profession=Secretary, Politician

Robert Roberts Hitt (January 16, 1834 – September 20, 1906) 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 short hand writer and only one at that time who represented that skill, he became a very close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, so close that during the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, at the request of Lincoln, Hitt was used as a short hand 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 Charge d'Affaires a part of that time. 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. He was appointed in July 1898 by President William McKinley as a member of the commission to establish government in the Sandwich Islands. 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.

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