Robert Roberts Hitt, Later Life (Sparks, 1908)

In 1867 and 1868 he made a tour of Europe and Asia,daily taking down in shorthand notes his impressions of the peoples and conditions of the countries and places visited. Upon his return he was again employed by the government in confidential cases, including missions to Santo Domingo and to the southern states to investigate the Ku Klux Klan, after which he became private secretary to Senator O. P. Morton, and in December of the same year was appointed secretary of legation at Paris, by President Grant, which position he held for six years. In 1880, upon the request of Mr. Blaine, then secretary of state. President Garfield appointed him assistant secretary, which position he resigned to become a candidate for Congress, to which he was elected in 1882. He served continuously from the Forty-eighth to the Fifty-eighth Congress. While serving his twelfth term, Mr. Hitt died on September 20, 1906 at Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island.