Robert R. Hitt
American politician
Robert Roberts Hitt (January 16, 1834 – September 20, 1906) was an American diplomat and Republican politician from Illinois. He served briefly as assistant secretary of state in the short-lived administration of James A. Garfield but resigned alongside Secretary of State James G. Blaine after Garfield's assassination in 1881. He returned to Washington to represent Northwestern Illinois in the United States House of Representatives from 1882 to his death. After 1885, he was the senior Republican on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which he chaired from 1889 to 1891 and 1895 until his death in 1906.
Early life
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. He was educated at Rock River Seminary and De Pauw University.
He became a very close friend of future President of the United States Abraham Lincoln. As an expert shorthand writer, Hitt served as a note-taker for Lincoln during the famous Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858.
In 1872, Hitt was a personal secretary for Indiana Senator Oliver P. Morton.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4942305. VIAF identifies the subject as 41403558. The Library of Congress control number is no91027270. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1834, 1906, 1881 and 1882.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert R. Hitt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.