{{Short description|American politician}} {{Other people|Robert Elliott}} {{Use mdy dates|date=November 2020}} {{Infobox officeholder | name = Robert Brown Elliott | image = Robert Brown Elliott (Daguerreotype print) Trim Edit.jpg | caption = Elliott {{circa}} 1871–1874 | state1 = South Carolina | district1 = 3rd | term_start1 = March 4, 1871 | term_end1 = November 1, 1874 | predecessor1 = Solomon L. Hoge | successor1 = Lewis C. Carpenter | order2 = 29th | office2 = South Carolina Attorney General | term_start2 = December 14, 1876 | term_end2 = May 29, 1877 | governor2 = Contested between Daniel Henry Chamberlain and Wade Hampton III | predecessor2 = William Stone | successor2 = James Conner | order3 = 28th | office3 = Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives | governor3 = Franklin I. Moses, Jr.<br>Daniel Henry Chamberlain | term_start3 = November 24, 1874 | term_end3 = April 14, 1876 | predecessor3 = Samuel J. Lee | successor3 = Contested between William Henry Wallace and Edmund William McGregor Mackey | state_house4 = South Carolina | district4 = Aiken County | term_start4 = November 24, 1874 | term_end4 = April 14, 1876 | state_house5 = South Carolina | district5 = Barnwell County | term_start5 = November 24, 1868 | term_end5 = March 1, 1870 | birth_date = {{birth date|1842|8|11|mf=y}} | birth_place = Liverpool, England, U.K. | death_date = {{death date and age|1884|8|9|1842|8|11|mf=y}} | death_place = New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. | resting_place = St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 | party = Republican | profession = Lawyer, civil servant | signature = Robert Brown Elliott signature.svg | allegiance = {{nowrap|{{flag|United States|name=United States of America|1867|size=23px}}}} | branch = {{Flagicon image|Flag of South Carolina.svg}} South Carolina National Guard | rank = Commanding General | service_years = 1869–1871 | battles = Reconstruction }}
'''Robert Brown Elliott''' (August 11, 1842{{spnd}}August 9, 1884) was a British-born American politician of British Afro-Caribbean ethnic background. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina, serving from 1871 to 1874.
==Early life and education== He was born in 1842 in Liverpool, England,to parents likely from the British West Indies. He attended High Holborn Academy in London, England and then studied law, graduating from Eton College in 1859.{{citation needed|date=March 2022}} From there he joined the British Royal Navy. Elliott arrived in Boston in 1867, and by late that year he was living in Charleston, South Carolina.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/elliott-robert-brown-1842-1884/|title=ROBERT BROWN ELLIOTT (1842–1884)|last=Cho|first=Nancy|date=June 4, 2008}}</ref><ref name="BAIC">Black Americans in Congress - Robert Brown Elliott: Representative, 1871–1874, Republican from South Carolina http://history.house.gov/People/Listing/E/ELLIOTT,-Robert-Brown-(E000128)/</ref> He was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1868 and began practicing law in Columbia, the state capital.
==Career== Elliott arrived in South Carolina in 1867 at the age of 25, where he established a law practice. Elliott helped organize the local Republican Party and served in the state constitutional convention in 1868 as a delegate from the Edgefield district.<ref name="BAIC"/> In the late 1860s he was hired by AME bishop and fellow future congressman Richard H. Cain to be an associate editor of the paper, the ''South Carolina Leader'' (renamed the ''Missionary Record'' in 1868), along with another future congressman, Alonzo J. Ransier.<ref>CAIN, Richard Harvey. History, Art & Archives, United States House of Representatives. [http://history.house.gov/People/Detail/10470?ret=True]</ref> Around the same time, Elliott formed the nation's first known African-American law firm, Whipper, Elliott, and Allen, with William Whipper and Macon B. Allen.<ref>Hornby, D. Brock (Spring 2020). [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3639320 "History Lessons: Instructive Legal Episodes From Maine's Early Years — Episode 1: Becoming a Lawyer."] Green Bag 2d. 23: 195.</ref>
In 1868, he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. The next year he was appointed assistant adjutant-general; he was the first African-American commanding general of the South Carolina National Guard. As part of his job, he helped form a state militia to fight the Ku Klux Klan.<ref name="BAIC"/>
Elliott was elected as a Republican to the Forty-second United States Congress, defeating Democrat John E. Bacon. He was re-elected to the Forty-third United States Congress, defeating Democrat William H. McCann. In Congress in April 1871 he gave a notable speech on the "Bill to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution", also known as the "Ku Klux Bill".<ref>Simmons, William J., and Henry McNeal Turner. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. GM Rewell & Company, 1887. p466-473</ref> He again "delivered a celebrated speech" in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1875.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section4/section4_elliott.html |accessdate=August 27, 2009 |title=Biographical Sidebar: Robert B. Elliott |work=America's Reconstruction - People and Politics After the Civil War |publisher=University of Houston |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080905202939/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section4/section4_elliott.html |archivedate=September 5, 2008 }}</ref> He resigned on November 1, 1874, to serve as sheriff and fight political corruption in South Carolina. He served again in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he was elected as Speaker of the House.<ref name="BAIC"/> left|thumb|324x324px|United States Congressman Robert Brown Elliott of South Carolina in 1872 He ran successfully for South Carolina Attorney General in 1876. In the state elections that year, white Democrats regained dominance of the state legislature. The following year, 1877, when the last of the federal troops were withdrawn from South Carolina, he was forced out of office.<ref name="BAIC"/> In 1878 he formed a law partnership with D. Augustus Straker and T. McCants Stewart.<ref>Simmons 1887, p744-751</ref>
He continued to be involved in politics, working on then-Treasury Secretary John Sherman's campaign for President in 1880, and was a delegate to the 1880 Republican National Convention. In January 1881 he was part of a black delegation that met with President James Garfield to protest the lack of civil and political rights in the South. However, his law practice faltered. In 1879, he was appointed a customs inspector for the Treasury Department in Charleston, South Carolina. He contracted malaria while working in that capacity on a trip to Florida. In 1881, he was transferred to New Orleans, and in 1882 he was dismissed. In New Orleans he again attempted to practice law, but found few clients. Impoverished, he died in New Orleans on August 9, 1884.<ref name="BAIC"/>
== Legacy == In 1998, the South Carolina House of Representatives unveiled a portrait of Elliott, painted by South Carolina artist Larry Francis Lebby. The portrait now hangs in the gallery of the House chambers.<ref>"Robert Brown Elliott 1842-1884". ''South Carolina State House Gallery Portraits''. 2023.</ref><ref>"Week In Review" (PDF). March 24, 1998. Retrieved August 9, 2023.</ref>
==See also== *List of African-American United States representatives
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== *{{cite book |chapter=Robert Brown Elliott |title=Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 |others=Prepared under the direction of the Committee on House Administration by the Office of History & Preservation, U. S. House of Representatives |location=Washington |publisher=Government Printing Office |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-16-080194-5 }} *{{cite book |last=Lamson |first=Peggy |title=The Glorious Failure: Black Congressman Robert Brown Elliott and the Reconstruction in South Carolina |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |year=1973 |isbn=0-393-05451-9 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/gloriousfailureb00lams }} * Black Americans in Congress - Robert Brown Elliott: Representative, 1871–1874, Republican from South Carolina http://history.house.gov/People/Listing/E/ELLIOTT,-Robert-Brown-(E000128)/
==External links== {{CongBio|E000128}} *[http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/490/Robert_B_Elliott_a_talented_political_force/ African American Registry Board] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050310135638/http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/490/Robert_B_Elliott_a_talented_political_force |date=March 10, 2005 }}
{{s-start}} {{s-par|us-hs}} {{US House succession box |state=South Carolina |district=3 |before=Solomon L. Hoge |years=1871–1874 |after=Lewis C. Carpenter}} {{s-end}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elliot, Robert B.}} Category:1842 births Category:1884 deaths Category:African-American state legislators in South Carolina Category:Speakers of the South Carolina House of Representatives Category:African-American United States representatives Category:South Carolina attorneys general Category:People educated at Eton College Category:Republican Party United States representatives from South Carolina Category:People from Aiken County, South Carolina Category:People from Barnwell County, South Carolina Category:African-American politicians of the Reconstruction era Category:English emigrants to the United States Category:Politicians from Liverpool Category:Black British politicians Category:American politicians of Caribbean descent Category:19th-century United States representatives Category:19th-century members of the South Carolina General Assembly