Henry Martyn Robert: Writer of the Rules, An American Hero

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National Association of Parliamentarians

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

O’Brien, Joseph F. and Leonard M. Young, 2019

General Henry M. Robert: Writer of the Rules, An American Hero – 1st Edition

Includes bibliographical references, illustrations and index.

Print ISN: 978-1-88404-857-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54398-032-5

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

CHAPTER I — ROBERTVILLE: HOMELAND

Soldiers and Men of God of South Carolina

Basket Fires in the Twilight

CHAPTER II — ROBERTVILLE: FATHER TO SON

Legacy of the Helping Hand: 1837-1850

CHAPTER III — WEST POINT I: ROBERT E. LEE’S MILITARY ACADEMY

Robert’s Teachers and Fellow Cadets: 1853-1855

CHAPTER IV — WEST POINT II: JEALOUS MISTRESS

Robert’s Fight for Place at the Academy: 1856-1858

CHAPTER V — WASHINGTON TERRITORY: FIRST COMMAND

Panama, Fort Cascades, and the Fight for San Juan Island: 1858-1859

Panama and Fort Cascades

The Fight for San Juan Island

CHAPTER VI — WASHINGTON TERRITORY

Forest Trails and Love Letters: 1860

CHAPTER VII — WAR STATIONS

Rules of Order —Spark, Soul Searching, and a Reading Circle: 1861-1865

Washington and Philadelphia, 1861-1862

New Bedford, Massachusetts, 1862-1865

CHAPTER VIII — WEST POINT II: TENDER NURSE

Renaissance and the Education of Adults, Little Girls, and West Point Cadets

CHAPTER IX — SAN FRANCISCO: ON THE MARCH

Frontier Forts and Apache Country: 1867-1869

CHAPTER X — SAN FRANCISCO: ON THE MARCH II

The Society for the Rescue of Fallen Women: 1870-1871

CHAPTER XI — SAN FRANCISCO: COMMUNITY SERVICE

The Chinese Sabbath School and First Rules of Order: 1870-1871

The Chinese Sabbath School

First Rules of Order

CHAPTER XII — MILWAUKEE: MILESTONE

The Pocket Manual of the Rules of Order is Born: 1874-1883

Robert Wrote for the Layman

The Pilgrim’s Progress to Publication

CHAPTER XIII — PHILADELPHIA AND THE GREAT LAKES

The Trial of Brother Murphy: 1883-1890

Oswego Interim

Philadelphia: the d’Aurias

Philadelphia: The Brother Who Walked Apart

CHAPTER XIV — WASHINGTON, D. C.

The Trial of Lieutenant Guy: 1890-1891

CHAPTER XV — ROBERT: THE CHURCHMAN

Nashville: 1891-1893

CHAPTER XVI — THE ROBERT FAMILY

New York: 1893-1900

CHAPTER XVII — NEW YORK: PRESIDING

Robert the Chairman of Meetings: 1897-1901

CHAPTER XVIII — OSWEGO: RETIREMENT

The Galveston Sea Wall and Parliamentary Correspondence: 1901-1911

The Galveston Sea Wall

Days on the River

Parliamentary Correspondence

CHAPTER XIX — MEXICO: FINAL ADVENTURE

Revision of the Rules of Order: 1911-1923

Index

List of Illustrations

(Found on Pages 101-112)

Robert a Young Man about the time he went to West Point in 1853.

West Point Cadet: Robert in 1857.

Young Lieutenant: Robert at San Juan Island in 1859. (From an old daguerreotype)

Young Lieutenant Robert stays with the Union, 1860.

Robert’s San Francisco, 1868

The Family in San Francisco: Wife Helen Marie

General Robert’s First Wife Helen Marie Thresher Robert in 1874

First Rules of Order Front Page of the Original Eight-Page Leaflet Which the Major Ran Off on His Own Hand Printing Press, San Francisco, 1869.

The Major at Milwaukee, 1876: Year of Publication of A Pocket Manual of Rules of Order.

Robert the Author: Flyer Advertising the First Edition of Robert’s Rules, 1876

Robert the Engineer: Plaque on the Sea Wall in Galveston, TX

Robert the Engineer: Galveston Sea Wall Construction

Robert the Engineer: He inspects His Great Sea Wall, 1911

Robert the Engineer: Postcard of the Completed Galveston Sea Wall

Robert in Washington, D. C., 1890: Serving on the Rock Creek National Park Commission

Robert in D.C. – Complaint about Saloons

Colonel Robert, 1893.

General Robert at his retirement 1901.

General Robert in his study, 1912.

General Robert retired, 1920.

Isabel Hoagland Robert, the General’s Second Wife.

Rose garden at Oswego, New York circa 1908: The General and Grandchild Florence.

Preface

Attempting to write a comprehensive biography of one of the great men of nineteenth century American history is a daunting task. So daunting, in fact, that several scholars have begun the process of writing about General Henry Martyn Robert ‘s life, but none have completed this monumental task.

In the 1950’s Dr. Joseph F. O’Brien, Professor of Public Speaking at Pennsylvania State University, began just such a process. Dr. O’Brien was Chair of the Department of Speech and Communications at Penn State from 1946 to 1949. During his time as a rhetoric faculty member, he published articles in several journals, such as the Journal of Speech and Communication Quarterly. He also published a book titled Parliamentary Law for the Layman: Procedures and Strategies for Meetings. Joseph O’Brien continued the tradition of debate and deliberation, expanding the men’s program and reinstating the women’s debate team upon the conclusion of WWII. Before his tenure as department head, he also served as President of the Eastern Communication Association and President of the Pennsylvania Communication Association.

In his attempt to produce a comprehensive biography of the General Dr. O’Brien held interviews with Mrs. Henry M. (Isabel Hoagland) Robert and Mrs. Henry M. (Sarah Corbin) Robert, Jr. He was given access to the private papers of General Robert including personal letters, journals and other interesting historical documents. Most of this work was done between 1954-1956.

Suddenly in 1957 Professor O’Brien suffered a massive heart attack and he was never able to complete his project. Sadly, he passed away on February 14, 1958 at the age of 54. Before he died, Dr. O’Brien gave all of his research notes and partial manuscripts to Dr. Otis Castleberry, a close friend. Dr. Castleberry had great interest in parliamentary law and was a long-time member of the National Association of Parliamentarians. After he passed away, his son gifted the research notes for this biography to the National Association of Parliamentarians in 2010 where they lay unopened in boxes until they were opened and catalogued by me in May of 2018.

As a Professional Registered Parliamentarian and a trained historian, I saw these boxes of notes and other materials as a gift from Heaven. Many parliamentarians have long wished that a comprehensive biography of General Robert would be written and available to the public.

Upon discovering this treasure trove of historical research, with the support of NAP President James N. Jones, PRP, I began the process of compiling and organizing the material to see what further work needed to be done to complete the manuscript. Considerable additional research was necessary to fill in the holes, provide citations for all necessary material, and then to complete the partially written manuscript.

Having served my denomination for ten years as its Director of Field Resources, I had the occasion to do similar things to numerous manuscripts sent to our Office of Congregational Ministries. I found that often it was more difficult to tune up a partially completed manuscript and do the necessary resource searches than it would have been to begin the project anew myself. But in the case of Professor O’Brien’s research, many of the sources he quotes were no longer available. Both Isabel Hoagland Robert (the General’s second wife) and Sarah Corbin Robert (the General’s daughter-in-law) had long ago passed away and so their voices would forever remain silent if I simply began new research. I resolved, therefore, to take the partially completed O’Brien manuscript and bring it to completion.

In the process of finishing the manuscript, it was necessary to do considerable editing of language to bring the partial manuscript up to Twenty-First Century standards, both grammatically and culturally. For example, Dr. O’Brien when describing the situation of African Americans as enslaved people on the Robert’s Plantation in South Carolina for many generations, often used the terms negros, mammies and others that would not be acceptable today. These have been updated to conform to modern sensibilities.

Dr. O’Brien’s style of writing was typical of the 1950’s. He used overly flowery language referring to things that would have been clearly understood by readers in the 1950’s, but which would be lost on casual readers of history in the Twenty-First Century. These have been edited and made more readable for today’s audience. However, I felt it necessary to leave enough of Professor O’Brien’s language and style in place so that it could be clearly identified as including his work.

There were numerous chapters that had footnotes indicated, but for which no citations were provided. Fortunately, all of the Professor’s research notes were in the box, not so carefully organized. It was necessary, therefore, to catalog the contents of the box, organize them into the same order in which the chapters of the book were presented and then to do a deep dive into these notes to try to find the missing citations. Where they citations were missing, more research was necessary.

Professor O’Brien used the endnote style that was popular in the 1950’s. I have converted these to footnotes used more commonly today in historical biographies. He uses terms like Ibid and Op Cit which a modern writer would more carefully conform to the Chicago Manual of Style or another current manual. I did not attempt to change the style of the Professor’s endnotes, but simply to clean them up and be sure that there was a correct citation for each note.

Finally, when the work was completed, I felt that it was still missing something. So I sent the manuscript to Mr. Thomas Balch, PRP a member of the current Robert’s Rules authorship team. He shared the manuscript with Mr. Henry M. Robert III, the grandson of General Robert, who wrote the introduction to this manuscript which sets this work in perspective. I am indebted to Mr. Robert for this excellent contribution to the book.

The National Association of Parliamentarians has supported the publication of this book in the hope that scholars and researchers into the history of parliamentary law in America will now have access to this important material. Dr. and Mrs. O’Brien had no children and were wise to send this manuscript through Dr. Castleberry and into the possession and ownership of NAP. In this way, the great work of the Professor could be completed and now shared with the world.

Dr. Leonard M. Young, PRP

Introduction

For many years the Robert family has looked forward to the prospect of a scholarly biography of my grandfather, General Henry Martyn Robert, whose name I have been privileged to share. For that reason, our family was happy to cooperate in the 1950’s with Professor Joseph O’Brien’s research in preparation for such a book. Sadly, his untimely death prevented its completion and publication. I am therefore most pleased that the discovery of his research notes and partially completed manuscript in the all-but-forgotten archives of the National Association of Parliamentarians has prompted its former president, Dr. Leonard M. Young, to edit, expand and complete this biography, and now to share the book with the public.

General Robert is today best known for Robert’s Rules of Order, the parliamentary manual that in its many editions has brought order to millions of meetings. But where did he come from? What made him the man he was?

As perception of it has come down to me and as some students of the family history have seen it, the heritage at its broadest was above all a tradition–a family culture if you will–of dedication to learning and service. One writer described it as a code of noblesse oblige. I would prefer the words, Remember man, ‘To whom much is given, of him shall much be required.’

I venture to suppose that, in his upbringing, Henry Robert was made to feel he had a great deal to live up to–as, indeed, happened to me. His forebears’ presence in this country began with three generations of Huguenot pastors. The son of the last of these and the great-grandfather of General Robert was John Robert. He fought under General Francis Marion in the Revolutionary War and then was one of the principal founders of Robertville, South Carolina, about 40 miles north of Savannah, Georgia. He fared well as a planter and evidently responded to efforts by the Baptist Church at the time to evangelize that portion of the country by becoming a leading member of the Black Swamp Congregation established there.

John Robert’s son, James Jehu Robert, came to own many plantations in the region, had 19 children, and also was for 50 years the pastor of the Black Swamp Baptist Church in Robertville, having been named to that position at the approximate age of 21! Owning slaves and pastoring a church may seem a strange combination to many now, but that was the culture of the time and place.

And now we come to Henry Robert’s father, James Jehu’s son, Dr. Joseph Thomas Robert. More should become known about him. He was probably an equally remarkable man to Henry, and by looking at his life, it’s not hard to sense where Henry’s strengths came from. Joseph wanted to be a minister like his father, who, however, compelled him to study medicine and become a doctor, also gifting one of his plantations to him. But he later did study for the Baptist ministry and became ordained. After a long struggle of conscience, he came to the conviction that a slave-served society was a bad environment for his children to grow up in. So, he freed all his slaves, sold his land and moved to Ohio to accept a pastorate there. A prodigiously scholarly man, he later became a college teacher, and still later president of a college in Iowa.

In 1867, under the auspices of the American Baptist Home Mission Society and the Springfield Baptist Church, a school for recently freed slaves had opened in Augusta, Georgia under the name of the Augusta Theological Institute, with the purpose of preparing freedmen for ministry. Concerned at the school’s precarious state three years after its founding, the Reverend James Dixon, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Augusta, who was acquainted with my great-grandfather, initiated a request that the American Baptist Home Mission Society secure his services to take charge of the school, and he agreed. He filled the position of its president until his death in 1884.

In 1879 the school moved to Atlanta – and in 1913 acquired its present name, Morehouse College. As I noted when I was privileged to address an audience at Morehouse in 2013, the college’s illustrious graduate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial, said he dreamed of the day when on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood; at what was to become Morehouse College it was a former slave owner and former slaves who sat together at that table.

Joseph Thomas Robert named his son after Henry Martyn after an English missionary of academic background who lived from 1781 to 1812, working in the Near East and India and perishing from overexertion at the age of 31.

It is noteworthy that, according to a 1917 History of Morehouse College by its then-dean, Benjamin Brawley, in 1877-78, President Robert’s son, then Major Robert, donated 1000 copies of his Parliamentary Guide to his father’s school. The Guide was a 25-cent set of excerpts from the 75-cent second edition of Robert’s Rules of Order. According to Dean Brawley, This little book did a great deal for the quickening of the forensic ability of the students, who even so early began to make a reputation as able speakers. It is clear that President Robert saw the importance of his son’s work in parliamentary procedure, because every second Wednesday the students held meetings of what was called the Literary Society, during which they improved themselves in extemporaneous speaking and acquired a practical acquaintance with the methods of procedure in deliberative assemblies.

Although I never knew my grandfather personally, I have vivid recollections of how his son and namesake, my father, would speak of him to me from the time I was a small boy. It is, perhaps, natural for a young boy to look up to his father as an almost all-powerful and all-knowing being. Certainly, that was the way I thought of my father. However, both my father and my mother spoke of my grandfather in such terms that, great as was my admiration for my own father, it paled in comparison to the respect, bordering on awe, I was brought up to have for my grandfather.

Over my own lifetime, as I have studied General Robert’s life and works, that respect, while it has matured, has not diminished; it has increased. There is much to admire in his relations with his family, his care of his friends, his church activity, his lifelong devotion to great literature, and his quite remarkable career in the Army, principally as a river and harbor engineer, continuing after his retirement from the service. What is of most interest to posterity, however, is naturally what he has left to parliamentary law.

The story of how he came to feel the need for a manual of parliamentary law, and then to write and publish his first edition, has been often told, including in the introduction to Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised.

In the almost half-century between the first edition’s publication and his death, he significantly re-edited and expanded it three times– with the last, the 325-page 1915 Robert’s Rules of Order Revised, requiring, he said, more work than the three previous editions combined. He thereafter wrote the 599-page treatise, Parliamentary Law, and a text for classroom teaching, Parliamentary Practice. In all of this, he was greatly influenced by the vast quantity of letters he received from those seeking resolution of parliamentary quandaries not clearly answered in the then-existing work.

With this experience, he fully grasped the need for continuing development of parliamentary law and consequent revision of the parliamentary manual. Accordingly, he looked to my father to carry on the legacy. In a letter to his publisher dated September 17, 1922, he wrote: "After my death I expect my son, Prof. Henry M. Robert, Jr., of the [U.S.] Naval Academy to continue my work. He has delivered lectures on parliamentary law and is now preparing the index to [the book] Parliamentary Law. He is enthusiastic about both these books, and I expect him to revise them when, say in 20 years, it may be advisable."

Indeed, after General Robert’s death his family, generation after generation, has viewed continuing that legacy through regular updating revisions as a sacred trust. In doing so, we have striven to fulfill his aim that [s]ome knowledge of parliamentary law may be justly regarded as a necessary part of the education of every man and woman, every boy and girl.

To all who seek to know more about how Robert’s Rules came to be, and about its remarkable original author, I am pleased to commend this book.

Henry Martyn Robert III

1920-2019

CHAPTER I — ROBERTVILLE: HOMELAND

Soldiers and Men of God of South Carolina

W hen a people perish, said Carl Sandburg , it is because, they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along (based on Hosea 4:6). This fault was never Henry Martyn Robert ‘s—he had too much to remember.

Basket Fires in the Twilight

Drumbeats and hymns to the glory of God mingled in Robert’s mind as he lay in his cradle, lulled by the soft South Carolina sunshine that first bright day of his life, May 2, 1837. For generations the family had proudly given their sons to the army and to the church. The nearby village of Robertville had been named for Revolutionary War hero John Robert, Henry Martyn Robert’s great-grandfather. Henry’s own father was the pastor of the Baptist church there.

But it would be some time before young Henry took much interest in his famous ancestors. Even the Revolutionary War adventures of John Robert under Swamp Fox General Francis Marion could hardly capture his attention. And as for Pasteur Pierre Robert, founder of the line —well, after all, Henry’s interests were those of other boys. What profit is ancestor worship compared to a romp in the woods?

Basket fires flaming in the night, now that was something! Lighted by the enslaved servants as night fell in the piney woods clearing where the Robert summer home stood, the baskets were of iron and supported by fifty-foot poles located at some distance from each of the four comers of the house. They held the pinecones, dried grass, and brush that turned into fiery torches when set on fire. Henry, his brother Joseph, and sister Mattie thought it was great fun! For quite a while the youngsters thought the sole purpose of the basket fires was for their own sport. Only later did they learn that the giant torches kept away mosquitoes.¹

This summer home in the woods was Henry’s earliest and happiest memory. The whole family moved to the pine-scented sanctuary every summer. It was much cooler there than at the manor house located in a clearing near the center of the plantation which caught the full blast of the hot sun.²

Life was good for Henry at the summer place. There was plenty of room. The living part of the house was one huge floor. The windows had slatted shades, but no glass. That was all the better —the open windows let in more air.³

If there were a breeze at all, it blew in a cooling draft under the house itself. The wind had a free channel under the structure, for it stood on stilts ten or twelve feet off the ground. This elevation, which gave a sort of tree-house effect, was needed for health in the swampy forests of South Carolina’s lowlands. Such practical considerations were of little concern to the Robert children, but they took great satisfaction in their tree house, and they liked to lie under it for the shade and pleasant breeze on sultry days. The house-on-stilts to them was just another arrangement for their pleasure, like the basket fires.

Life was comfortable at the summer place for the Roberts family. The house slaves were taken along when the family migrated. Of these, the cooks were expert, and the Robert children ate with zest. There were also housemaids to keep the place neat and others to keep the young Robert children safe from snakes.

Life on the plantation itself was filled with interest for a growing boy. Henry liked to go on hunting trips with the neighbor young people. There was something about these trips his mother and father didn’t quite like. The young boys among the enslaved population were taken along as gunbearers, but Joseph and Adeline Robert didn’t like the idea of slavery and so insisted that their son carry his own gun.⁴

Young Henry rode horseback. On his rides and hunts he took in the colorful sights, sounds, and pleasant odors of the South Carolina lowlands. Whenever Uncle William was along, Henry was always reminded of how history had been made in the region. Uncle William also told him how much of it had been made by their own Robert ancestors. Henry listened respectfully and as time went on even with some attention.

The coastal country where the Robert plantation lay was a bountiful land. Balmy winds that crossed the Gulf Stream just a few miles offshore blew across the countryside. Forests of pine, oak, and giant cypress draped with Spanish moss were everywhere. The vegetation was lush. In the spring brightly blooming azaleas, magnolias, and jessamine filled the eyes with beauty and the nostrils with perfume.

Historic sites were everywhere. Black Swamp was used as a hideout for the enslaved servants and horses of General Francis Marion during the Revolution. John Robert moved to Black Swamp and founded Robertville as a result of General Marion’s use of the region as a refuge. A fellow soldier named Samuel Maner scouted Black Swamp for Marion and told John Robert what good country it was.

At Pocataligo, the Yemassee struck the first blow in the Native American Uprising of 1771. This was the savage war in which Landgrave Smith II, another Robert ancestor, had fought.

Both earlier and later history mingled in the region. DeSoto passed through the country and got the consent of Queen Cofitachequi to open the burial ground at Silver Bluff in a search for treasure. And for this he was richly rewarded by his find