Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
Speaker 2: and I'm Holly Frye. I don't remember exactly what was
Speaker 2: happening when, like the first seed was planted for this episode,
Speaker 2: but I am pretty sure I was on discord, which
Speaker 2: means I was playing a game, whatever it was. Things
Speaker 2: were winding down and somebody said I moved that the
Speaker 2: meeting be adjourned. We were not in a meeting, but well,
Speaker 2: we all knew what that meant, and I found that
Speaker 2: whole moment hilarious. So that's stuck in my brain, even
Speaker 2: though the exact surroundings of what was happening did not.
Speaker 2: And then in the weeks after that, just random references
Speaker 2: to Robert's Rules of Order kept popping up at odd
Speaker 2: places in my life, until I was finally like, Okay,
Speaker 2: who is Robert? Robert was Henry Martin Robert, so unlike
Speaker 2: what I had always assumed, Robert was his last name,
Speaker 2: not his first name. My first experience with Robert's Rules
Speaker 2: of Order was in four AH meetings in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: and to me, it somehow felt like something out of
Speaker 2: my parents' generation. But Henry Martin Robert lived way before that,
Speaker 2: and he was connected to multiple events that we have
Speaker 2: covered on the show before, most of them really had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with parliamentary procedure. I know all of
Speaker 2: you know how much I like to read from old
Speaker 2: historical documents on the podcast. And if you're thinking, Tracy,
Speaker 2: are you about to trick us into listening to you
Speaker 2: read Robert's Rules of Order? No, we are not going
Speaker 2: to read Robert's.
Speaker 1: Rules of Order.
Speaker 2: Because I don't want to, and I also don't want
Speaker 2: people who are super familiar with it to yell at
Speaker 2: me about getting anything wrong. This is way about his
Speaker 2: life than the specifics of Robert's rules, all right.
Speaker 1: So, Henry Martin Robert was born May second, eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven on his grandfather's plantation near Robertville, South Carolina, And yes,
Speaker 1: Robertville was named for the Robert family, although they were
Speaker 1: descended from Huguenots, who probably would have pronounced it in
Speaker 1: a more French way because who wouldn't want you anyway?
Speaker 1: The white families in this area were tightly connected through
Speaker 1: various intermarriages. Henry's parents Joseph Thomas Robert and Adeline Lawton
Speaker 1: were cousins.
Speaker 2: Henry was one of six children born to Joseph and Adeline,
Speaker 2: and four of those children survived until adulthood. This family
Speaker 2: was devoutly religious. They had been devoutly religious for generations.
Speaker 2: Those ancestors who first immigrated to North America included Pierre Robert,
Speaker 2: who became pastor of South Carolina's first French Huguenot church. Eventually,
Speaker 2: the Robertses had become Baptists, and Henry's father and grandfather
Speaker 2: were both Baptist ministers. His father, Joseph Thomas Robert, also
Speaker 2: trained as a doctor.
Speaker 1: In the years before the US Civil War, there were
Speaker 1: white clergy who used the Bible and religion to justify slavery,
Speaker 1: but Joseph Robert's religious convictions eventually led him to oppose slavery.
Speaker 1: Some of the more recent writing on Henry Martin Robert
Speaker 1: makes it sound like his father was a vocal abolitionist
Speaker 1: who manumitted his enslaved workforce and moved the family to
Speaker 1: the free state of Ohio to get away from the institution.
Speaker 1: Many of the more recent writings also assigned this viewpoint
Speaker 1: to Henry's mother, Adeline as well as to Henry himself.
Speaker 1: The reality is a.
Speaker 2: Little bit more complicated. Though they did not go straight
Speaker 2: from South Carolina to Ohio, they moved several times between
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty nine and eighteen forty nine. The exact reasons
Speaker 2: for all those moves aren't clearly documented, but it was
Speaker 2: pretty common for past to move from one congregation to
Speaker 2: another for all kinds of reasons. The family's first move
Speaker 2: was to Covington, Kentucky, in eighteen thirty nine. Kentucky was
Speaker 2: a slave state and there were both pro and anti
Speaker 2: slavery factions in Covington. They were in Covington for less
Speaker 2: than two years before moving to Lebanon, Ohio, so a
Speaker 2: free state, but then five years later they moved to Georgia,
Speaker 2: a slave state, where Joseph served as pastor of the
Speaker 2: First Baptist Church of Savannah. In eighteen forty nine, they
Speaker 2: moved back to Robertville. When the family moved yet again
Speaker 2: to Portsmouth, Ohio, they were in a free state, but
Speaker 2: they were in a town that had a lot of
Speaker 2: Southern sympathizers. Although there are family stories about Adeline trying
Speaker 2: to teach enslave children to read in her youth and
Speaker 2: coming to oppost slavery as well. She also maintained strong
Speaker 2: Southern sympathies and clearly missed her plantation life in South
Speaker 2: Carolina and Henry Martin robert views on slavery are not
Speaker 2: specifically detailed in his public writings or in the papers
Speaker 2: that have been made available to historians and biographers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I read a whole paper that was published back in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve that was like, his personal views on almost
Speaker 2: everything are a total mystery. And while there is a
Speaker 2: biography that came out after that paper was written, it
Speaker 2: also is not very specific about his views on pretty
Speaker 2: much anything. We'll talk about that a little bit more
Speaker 2: on the Friday Behind the Scenes. While the Roberts family
Speaker 2: was living in Portsmouth, Ohio, Henry Martin Roberts was appointed
Speaker 2: to the US Military Academy at West Point in New York,
Speaker 2: where he hoped to train as an engineer. He was sixteen,
Speaker 2: That made him one of the youngest cadets in his class.
Speaker 2: He graduated in eighteen fifty seven, and during his last
Speaker 2: year at the academy, he also served as a mathematics instructor.
Speaker 2: Math is, of course a huge part of engineering and
Speaker 2: a lack of mathema proficiency was one of the main
Speaker 2: reasons that cadets failed out of that course of study.
Speaker 2: Henry really excelled at math, though so much so that
Speaker 2: they had him teaching it before he had even graduated,
Speaker 2: and then he graduated fourth in his class overall. When
Speaker 2: he graduated, he became a second lieutenant in the Army
Speaker 2: Corps of Engineers, and for a year he continued teaching
Speaker 2: at West Point. I will say, if you can do
Speaker 2: your studies and have the job of teaching and still
Speaker 2: graduate fourth, I think you're terrifying as an achiever in
Speaker 2: a good way. After that, his first assignment was to
Speaker 2: Washington Territory. He set out on October third, eighteen fifty eight,
Speaker 2: taking a steamship south, crossing the Isthmus of Panama by
Speaker 2: train and making the rest of the voyage by sea.
Speaker 2: He contracted malaria while traveling across Panama, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: really given any time to recover. Once he arrived in Washington,
Speaker 2: he and his unit were immediately set to work building
Speaker 2: a road. The United States was at war with indigenous
Speaker 2: nations in the Pacific Northwest, and the Army Corps of
Speaker 2: Engineers was building roads and bridges and surveying for railroad
Speaker 2: lines to facilitate troop movements in that conflict. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: not the only place that wars with indigenous people were
Speaker 2: going on, but he was. That's where he was located
Speaker 2: at that point. Robert's work building roads was disrupted by
Speaker 2: an incident we covered on the show almost a decade ago.
Speaker 2: That was the Pig War, and we will run that
Speaker 2: episode as a Saturday Classic, but briefly, because of some
Speaker 2: unspecific treaty language, the United States and the United Kingdom
Speaker 2: were both claiming to control San Juan Island, which is
Speaker 2: east of Vancouver Island and northwest of Seattle. On June fifteenth,
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty nine, an American named Lyman Cutler shot and
Speaker 2: killed a pig that was rooting through his crops. And
Speaker 2: this pig was the property of the Hudson's Bay Company,
Speaker 2: so this became an international incident. As this dispute escalated,
Speaker 2: Robert and a ten man engineering team were sent to
Speaker 2: the island to build fortifications in a camp along with
Speaker 2: a one hundred man army detachment. They built an earthen
Speaker 2: redoubt that was nicknamed Robert's Gopher Hole. In doing so,
Speaker 2: they totally changed the landscape of San Juan Island. Much
Speaker 2: of it had been covered by fir trees which were
Speaker 2: felled to build that redoubt, leaving a prairie behind. The
Speaker 2: Remains of this redoubt are still visible today. It's a
Speaker 2: National Historic Landmark that's part of San Juan Island National
Speaker 2: Historic Park. This redoubt is sometimes credited with helping to
Speaker 2: keep this standoff from turning into an active shooting war.
Speaker 2: It offered cover for cannons from an army steamer that
Speaker 2: had been dragged up a hill, so that made it
Speaker 2: possible for a very small American force to hold the
Speaker 2: island against pretty much any attack that the British could muster.
Speaker 2: But the building process for this did not go very smoothly.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of difficult, dirty labor, A lot
Speaker 2: of it was more physically grueling than the engineers were
Speaker 2: used to. The army detachment was simultaneously frustrated that Robert
Speaker 2: was not rationing out enough whiskey and also able to
Speaker 2: get access to enough illicit alcohol that drunkenness and misbehavior
Speaker 2: were ongoing problems. There were two mutinies, a court martial
Speaker 2: and at least one duel that had to be broken up. Eventually,
Speaker 2: President James Buchanan ordered General Winfield Scott to the island
Speaker 2: to try to restore calm. By that point, Robert's engineering
Speaker 2: team had finished the redoubt and were building other defenses
Speaker 2: and a larger camp. Scott ultimately negotiated a joint occupation
Speaker 2: of San Juan Island, so those defenses and camp facilities
Speaker 2: were no longer needed. Robert was sent back to the
Speaker 2: road project that he had been working on before the
Speaker 2: Pig War, but in April of eighteen sixty Robert asked
Speaker 2: to be relieved of duty. He was chronically ill and
Speaker 2: also frustrated by the work he was doing didn't really
Speaker 2: line up with what he had been studying at West
Speaker 2: Point or hoping to do. Another frustration was what he
Speaker 2: saw as a lack of discipline and protocol in the
Speaker 2: men who were serving under him. Initially, he did not
Speaker 2: get a response to this request, and he became very ill.
Speaker 2: A couple of months later, while trying to blaze a
Speaker 2: pack trail to Fort Vancouver, he finally received word that
Speaker 2: he could return to Washington, d C. Once he was
Speaker 2: relieved by another officer. That happened, and he left in
Speaker 2: September of eighteen sixty. That, of course, was not long
Speaker 2: before the start of the US Civil War, and we
Speaker 2: will get into that after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2: Brother against brother is one of the cliches that comes
Speaker 2: up a lot around the US Civil War, and the
Speaker 2: Robert family was one that really did have members on
Speaker 2: opposite sides. Henry Martin Robert's father, Joseph, stayed in the North,
Speaker 2: something that most sources attribute to his feelings on the
Speaker 2: issue of slavery. Henry's mother, Adeline, was more conflicted. She
Speaker 2: stayed with her husband, but she still felt a deep
Speaker 2: loyalty to her home state of South Carolina. She really
Speaker 2: hated being cut off from all of her family there
Speaker 2: because of the war. She was also terrified that her brothers,
Speaker 2: who joined the Confederate Army, would wind up facing her
Speaker 2: son Henry in combat because Henry remained with the United
Speaker 2: States Army.
Speaker 1: Although South Carolina seceded from the Union over the issue
Speaker 1: of slavery, Henry Martin Robert's decision to remain in the
Speaker 1: US Army doesn't seem to have been about slavery at all,
Speaker 1: or if it was, that's not something that he left
Speaker 1: any kind of record of in the material that's been
Speaker 1: available to biographers and historians. Robert thought South Carolina did
Speaker 1: have the right to secede, but he also thought that
Speaker 1: if states seceded, they would eventually destroy themselves through factionalism
Speaker 1: and division. Like his mother, he felt a sense of
Speaker 1: loyalty to South Carolina, but he thought it was in
Speaker 1: the state's best interest to preserve the Union. Robert had
Speaker 1: actually been thinking about leaving the army before the Civil
Speaker 1: War started. He had been offered a job as a professor.
Speaker 1: He had also married Helen Marie Thresher in December of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty. They had been courting for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: with a lot of that courtship happening through letters while
Speaker 1: he was in the Pacific Northwest. But when he heard
Speaker 1: about the Battle of Fort Sumter in April of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, he ended his furlough a week early and
Speaker 1: he went to Washington, d c. He was promoted to
Speaker 1: first lieutenant and assigned to work under Major John G.
Speaker 1: Bernard fortifying the area around the capitol. Robert still had
Speaker 1: not fully recovered from malaria, though, and soon his illness
Speaker 1: was one again, affecting his ability to work, he was
Speaker 1: transferred to Philadelphia, where the work was expected to be
Speaker 1: less strenuous, and then in April of eighteen sixty two
Speaker 1: he was transferred again, this time to New Bedford, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: where it was helped that the cooler climate would help
Speaker 1: him recover.
Speaker 2: He had an experience while living in New Bedford that
Speaker 2: later led him to study and write about parliamentary law.
Speaker 2: Although some of the details are fuzzy and some of
Speaker 2: the accounts of this are conflicting, there was a meeting.
Speaker 2: It was probably a public meeting, it was probably held
Speaker 2: at a church, and it was probably about the local defenses.
Speaker 1: If you are familiar with the form.
Speaker 2: Of governance known as the New England town meeting, meaning
Speaker 2: that rather than electing a representative government, the entire body
Speaker 2: of eligible voters acts as the town's legislature and open meetings.
Speaker 2: This was not that New Bedford was chartered as a
Speaker 2: city in eighteen forty seven, and by definition of open
Speaker 2: town meetings are four towns, not cities. So New Bedford
Speaker 2: had a mayor and a board of aldermen and a
Speaker 2: common council, but it could also convene more general meetings
Speaker 2: on matters of public good whatever the details of this meeting.
Speaker 2: Robert was elected to serve as its chair, maybe because
Speaker 2: he was there in his officer's uniform so he seemed
Speaker 2: like a logical person to put in charge. Some accounts
Speaker 2: say that this meeting went on for fourteen hours and
Speaker 2: was generally terrible, and others say that it actually didn't
Speaker 2: go all that badly, But Robert wasn't happy about it.
Speaker 2: He wasn't expecting to have to chair a meeting and
Speaker 2: didn't know what to do. In his opinion, his study
Speaker 2: at West Point and his army service had not prepared
Speaker 2: him for this at all. Some things he thought he
Speaker 2: needed to know but didn't know included which motions took
Speaker 2: precedence over others, which were debatable, and which could be amended.
Speaker 2: So he said, quote, I plunged in, trusting to providence
Speaker 2: that the ass Asembly would behave itself. But with the
Speaker 2: plunge went the determination that I would never again attend
Speaker 2: to any meeting until I knew something on the subject
Speaker 2: of parliamentary law. After this experience, he reportedly made himself
Speaker 2: kind of a little quick reference in case he found
Speaker 2: himself in this situation again, just a sheet of paper
Speaker 2: that listed out the types of motions that could be
Speaker 2: put forth during a meeting according to their rank, along
Speaker 2: with which of the motions could be debated or amended.
Speaker 2: He did not start working on the book that would
Speaker 2: become Robert's Rules of Order until a bit later, though.
Speaker 2: The first of Henry and Helen's five children was born
Speaker 2: on April eighteenth, eighteen sixty five. I was a daughter,
Speaker 2: also named Helen, and about four months later Henry asked
Speaker 2: for another transfer. He had been dealing with the effects
Speaker 2: of malaria at this point for more than five years,
Speaker 2: and he needed the help of aids to carry out
Speaker 2: his regular duties in the field.
Speaker 1: He asked to.
Speaker 2: Be sent to the United States Military Academy to teach instead,
Speaker 2: and this request was granted and he was put in
Speaker 2: charge of the Department of Practical Military Engineering at West Point,
Speaker 2: and he taught there until the autumn of eighteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2: That year, Robert was promoted to major and named Chief
Speaker 2: Engineer of the Military Division of the Pacific. He and
Speaker 2: the family moved to San Francisco, where they lived until
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy one. A lot of his engineering work from
Speaker 2: this point on focused on shorelines, rivers, and lighthouses, and
Speaker 2: he worked on some of the infrastructure around the Presidio
Speaker 2: in San Francisco. His time in San Francisco also included
Speaker 2: a lot of work with social, religious and reform organizations.
Speaker 2: He was on the board of trustees of San Francisco's
Speaker 2: first Baptist Church and on the board of directors at
Speaker 2: the YMCA. His work with the Baptist Church included establishing
Speaker 2: Sunday School for Chinese immigrants. This was about a decade
Speaker 2: before the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act banned all
Speaker 2: immigration from China to the United States, and San Francisco
Speaker 2: had a significant population of Chinese workers, who were frequently
Speaker 2: the targets of racism, discrimination, and violence. He also served
Speaker 2: as treasurer of the Society for the Rescue of Fallen Women,
Speaker 2: which was a ministry that essentially tried to rescue women
Speaker 2: from sex work. Something Robert noticed while working with these
Speaker 2: and other organizations in San Francisco was that there were
Speaker 2: a lot of disputes and a lot of time spent
Speaker 2: in meetings arguing California had become a US territory after
Speaker 2: the Mexican American War ended in eighteen forty eight. It
Speaker 2: had become a state in eighteen fifty, so is still
Speaker 2: pretty new in terms of being part of the United States.
Speaker 2: A lot of people living there were relative newcomers from
Speaker 2: other parts of the US. People all had their own
Speaker 2: ideas about how to do things, and those ideas were
Speaker 2: informed by whether they had previously been living somewhere that
Speaker 2: had been colonized by Britain, France, or Spain, whether they
Speaker 2: had indigenous or African ancestry, what kinds of organizations they
Speaker 2: had experience with. People just all had different ideas of
Speaker 2: how to do things, and they wasted a lot of
Speaker 2: time arguing over the substance of their meetings, but also
Speaker 2: over procedural questions about how the meeting itself should be conducted.
Speaker 2: So Robert thought there really needed to be one uniform
Speaker 2: rule set which could be used all over the United States,
Speaker 2: so that as people moved around and tried to establish
Speaker 2: new organizations and tried to run meetings, they would at
Speaker 2: least all start out on the same page when it
Speaker 2: came to the way that the meeting should be structured
Speaker 2: and organized.
Speaker 1: He started reviewing the books that were already available about
Speaker 1: parliamentary laws, that is, the various rules protocols, standards, and
Speaker 1: points of etiquette that are used to govern meetings of
Speaker 1: legislatures or non legislative organistsations. Those non legislative organizations that
Speaker 1: conduct their meetings according to parliamentary law are often called
Speaker 1: deliberative assemblies. Robert intended for his work to be used
Speaker 1: by deliberative assemblies, not by legislatures. When Robert started this research,
Speaker 1: the major works on parliamentary law in the United States
Speaker 1: included Thomas Jefferson's eighteen oh one Manual of Parliamentary Practice
Speaker 1: and Luther S. Cushing's seventeen forty five Rules of Proceeding
Speaker 1: and Debate in Deliberative Assemblies that was more often known
Speaker 1: as Cushing's Manual.
Speaker 2: Cushing's Manual was in pretty common use, but Robert really
Speaker 2: didn't think either of these works was well suited for
Speaker 2: non legislative bodies. Thomas Jefferson was Thomas Jefferson and Luther S.
Speaker 2: Cushing had been clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives,
Speaker 2: so both of their works were informed by working in legislatures.
Speaker 2: He also thought that these rules a lot of the
Speaker 2: time were too specific and too complicated for something like
Speaker 2: a non legislative local organization. And some of the rules
Speaker 2: just were not relevant to those kinds of organizations. He
Speaker 2: also got a copy of the Congressional Manual and John M.
Speaker 2: Barclay's Digest of Rules and Practices of the House, but
Speaker 2: again these were rules for legislatures. That wasn't quite what
Speaker 2: he wanted in the end. In eighteen sixty nine, he
Speaker 2: wrote a brief pamphlet of basic rules, which he had
Speaker 2: printed at his own expense and handed out to friends, family,
Speaker 2: and colleagues. He started working on a short manual that
Speaker 2: would be suitable for wider distribution, but he wasn't able
Speaker 2: to finish it before being transferred to Portland, Oregon, where
Speaker 2: he wound up being a lot busier with his engineering
Speaker 2: work than In late eighteen seventy three, Robert was sent
Speaker 2: to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to oversee the construction of lighthouses around
Speaker 2: Lake Michigan. When he got there at the very end
Speaker 2: of descem much of the lake was frozen and temperatures
Speaker 2: were well below zero fahrenheit. That put a stop to
Speaker 2: pretty much all of the work that had to be
Speaker 2: done outside. His wife and children also stayed behind in Dayton,
Speaker 2: Ohio for a while, and so this finally gave him
Speaker 2: time to really focus on his work on parliamentary law,
Speaker 2: and then he continued that work after the weather warmed
Speaker 2: up and his family got to Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: Henry's wife, Helen, played a key part in this book.
Speaker 1: Henry had written out his rules of order, including rules
Speaker 1: for obtaining the floor and introducing business, types of motions
Speaker 1: and their order of precedence, committees, debates, voting, and officers,
Speaker 1: as well as some miscellaneous rules. But Helen pointed out
Speaker 1: that these rules were only really useful to someone who
Speaker 1: already knew how to run a meeting. People who were
Speaker 1: just getting started would want to know how to convene
Speaker 1: a meeting, how to call it to order, and what
Speaker 1: was supposed to happen from there.
Speaker 2: Henry didn't want people to open the book and think
Speaker 2: it was all just basics though. He was trying to
Speaker 2: update and reform parliamentary law into something that could be
Speaker 2: used and endorsed by respected organizations all around the country.
Speaker 2: But he also saw his wife's point, and he wound
Speaker 2: up writing a second part to the book, titled Organization
Speaker 2: and Conduct of Business, to supplement the rules that were
Speaker 2: in the first part. The finished book was one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy six pages long, and it was meant to
Speaker 2: be easy to carry around and use. In eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: he had this book typeset and four thousand copies printed,
Speaker 2: but he had trouble finding someone to bind and distribute it.
Speaker 2: Robert had written this book because he thought what was
Speaker 2: already available was inadequate, but publishers thought there was no
Speaker 2: way some random military engineer's parliamentary law book would supplant
Speaker 2: Cushing's manual. He finally worked out a deal with publisher
Speaker 2: s C. Griggson Company, in which Robert paid for almost
Speaker 2: all of the binding costs himself. Copies of the book
Speaker 2: were earmarked to give away eight hundred by the publisher
Speaker 2: and two hundred by Robert, and the publisher would pay
Speaker 2: Robert forty percent of the retail price of any of
Speaker 2: the other three thousand copies that were sold. The Pocket
Speaker 2: Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies, or just
Speaker 2: Robert's Rules of Order, sold for seventy five cents. They
Speaker 2: sent those thousand free copies to parliamentarians, schools, and organizational
Speaker 2: leaders all over the United States, and to book reviewers,
Speaker 2: and this book was very well received. In the words
Speaker 2: of A review in a San Francisco newspaper quote, it
Speaker 2: is less cumbersome than Jefferson, more American than Cushing, and
Speaker 2: better adapted than either to the common wants of the masses.
Speaker 2: A review in the Chicago Standard wrote, quote, a book
Speaker 2: more needed has not appeared in many a day. We
Speaker 2: are happy to find that this one meets the case
Speaker 2: so admirably.
Speaker 1: Side note. One of the places that Robert sent free
Speaker 1: copies of his book was the seminary for Friedman, where
Speaker 1: his father worked. Henry's mother, Adeline, died in eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: so she never returned to the South after the start
Speaker 1: of the Civil War, but his father had moved south
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy because of his health. He got a
Speaker 1: job at Augusta Bible Institute, which was one of several
Speaker 1: schools for free black people established by the American Baptist
Speaker 1: Home Mission Society. Joseph Thomas. Robert served as the institute's
Speaker 1: first president. It later moved to Atlanta, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirteen it was renamed Morehouse College. Robert sent the free
Speaker 1: books in eighteen seventy seven, when the institute was still
Speaker 1: in Augusta, Georgia.
Speaker 2: We will talk more about his life and Robert's rules
Speaker 2: after a sponsor break Henry Martin. Robert had thought that
Speaker 2: those three thousand copies of his Rules of Order would
Speaker 2: last for two years, but they sold out in only
Speaker 2: six months. Even though he had no formal training as
Speaker 2: a parliamentarian. This meant that he was immediately seen as
Speaker 2: a big authority on parliamentary law. So many people wrote
Speaker 2: to him with questions, and some of those questions were
Speaker 2: very specific. He tried to individually answer all of these
Speaker 2: letters and also to use the kinds of questions that
Speaker 2: people were asking him to inform later revisions and updates
Speaker 2: to his rules. At the same time, though, he also
Speaker 2: encouraged the people writing him to adapt these rules to
Speaker 2: their circumstances and just to approach problems and disputes with
Speaker 2: common sense, patience, and understanding, rather than trying to rigidly
Speaker 2: adhere to rules for their own sake. Also, Robert's whole
Speaker 2: goal here was for people to be able to run
Speaker 2: their meetings efficiently and effectively, and to that end, he
Speaker 2: also wanted to write articles and other material about parliamentary
Speaker 2: law and to create a shorter version of his rules,
Speaker 2: specifically for churches. This led to a dispute with his publisher,
Speaker 2: who was afraid that if he kept reprinting the same
Speaker 2: rules in other publications, he was going to lose control
Speaker 2: over the copyright of his work. As Robert revised and
Speaker 2: added to his rules of order, he also continued to
Speaker 2: serve in the Army Corps of Engineers. In eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: he was appointed to a board of engineers to select
Speaker 2: a site for a port on the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 2: The board selected the island of Galveston, Texas as the
Speaker 2: side of this port, and Robert worked on a series
Speaker 2: of jetties to change the way the river water moved
Speaker 2: through the gulf and to make the water deep enough
Speaker 2: for ships to be able to navigate over a sandbar.
Speaker 2: Robert's return home from Galveston was disrupted by the Johnstone
Speaker 2: flood on May thirty first, eighteen eighty nine. Was stuck
Speaker 2: on his train for two days and spent a week
Speaker 2: in Altoona, Pennsylvania before he was able to continue on.
Speaker 2: Prior host Sarah and Deblina covered the Johnstown flood on
Speaker 2: the show in twenty twelve, and we ran that episode
Speaker 2: as a Saturday Classic back in twenty eighteen, but briefly
Speaker 2: an earth and dam owned by the South Fork Fishing
Speaker 2: and Hunting Club failed, causing massive flooding and damage downstream
Speaker 2: and killing more than twenty two hundred people. This flood
Speaker 2: became notorious both for the catastrophic damage and death and
Speaker 2: because of survivor's lengthy and unsuccessful efforts to collect damages
Speaker 2: from the club, whose members included people like Andrew Carnegie,
Speaker 2: Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellin. In February of eighteen ninety,
Speaker 2: Robert was named Engineer Commissioner for the District of Columbia.
Speaker 2: While he was in Washington, d C. He continued to
Speaker 2: focus both on his engineering work and on social reform.
Speaker 2: For example, he didn't think it was feasible to totally
Speaker 2: ban alcohol or sex work, but he saw both of
Speaker 2: them as the causes of various societal problems, so he
Speaker 2: wanted to limit and regulate them. Of course, this was
Speaker 2: something else in his life that was influenced by his
Speaker 2: own religious beliefs, and he also kept working on his
Speaker 2: rules and answering people's letters about them. This added up
Speaker 2: to a lot of work, and Robert left this role
Speaker 2: in October of eighteen ninety one after a doctor diagnosed
Speaker 2: him with neurasthenia brought on by overwork. By the following year,
Speaker 2: Robert's rules had been through twenty one printings, with more
Speaker 2: than one hundred and forty thousand copies in circulation, but
Speaker 2: salees started to drop in eighteen ninety three in the
Speaker 2: wake of the financial panic that year, and his publisher
Speaker 2: also went out of business. Then, on October tenth, eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, his wife Helen died suddenly of heart failure.
Speaker 2: Robert continued working, though, including on various defense projects, when
Speaker 2: the Spanish America War started in eighteen ninety eight. By
Speaker 2: that point he was getting close to the army's mandatory
Speaker 2: retirement age of sixty four. He turned sixty four on
Speaker 2: May second, nineteen oh one, and retired with the rank
Speaker 2: of brigadier general, and by that point had also been
Speaker 2: named Chief of Engineers. Robert had been awarded this promotion
Speaker 2: on April thirtieth, nineteen oh one, so just a couple
Speaker 2: of days before he retired, which had involved a considerable
Speaker 2: amount of jockeying. A few years before Chief of Engineers,
Speaker 2: William P. Craighill had retired, Robert and his friend and
Speaker 2: colleague John M. Wilson were the same age, with birthdays
Speaker 2: on May second and October eighth, respectively. In addition to
Speaker 2: being a few months older, Robert had seniority, and both
Speaker 2: men thought that when Craig Hill retired, Robert would be promoted,
Speaker 2: and then when Robert retired, Wilson would be promoted, so
Speaker 2: both men would retire with the distinction and benefits that
Speaker 2: came with the rank of brigadier general. Both of them
Speaker 2: were surprised when Wilson got the promotion instead. Wilson protested
Speaker 2: this decision and then spearheaded a whole campaign, complete with
Speaker 2: newspaper editorials and letters to President William McKinley, to try
Speaker 2: to get Robert promoted before his retirement. McKinley was reluctant
Speaker 2: to allow this because of the precedent that it would set,
Speaker 2: but ultimately Wilson did retire a few months early and
Speaker 2: Robert was promoted.
Speaker 1: A few days after his retirement. On May eighth, nineteen
Speaker 1: oh one, Robert married Isabelle Livingston Hoagland. They went on
Speaker 1: a honeymoon to Cuba, and after they got back, Henry
Speaker 1: started consulting as a civilian engineer. A massive hurricane had
Speaker 1: struck Galveston on September eighth, nineteen hundred. Past hosts covered
Speaker 1: this hurricane in an episode called Five Historical Storms that
Speaker 1: was also a Saturday Classic in twenty eighteen and again briefly.
Speaker 1: Galveston was on a low lying island and this hurricane
Speaker 1: caused a massive storm surge. More than six thousand people died,
Speaker 1: and the city faced immense damage. Henry Martin, Robert Alfred Noble,
Speaker 1: and Henry Clay Ripley were tasked with finding a way
Speaker 1: to protect the city, which they did by building a
Speaker 1: massive sea wall and raising the city. Robert also worked
Speaker 1: on a causeway bridge linking Galveston to the mainland. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, the government of Mexico invited Robert to work
Speaker 1: on improvements to the port of Fronterra in the state
Speaker 1: of Tabasco, and Isabelle went with him. They did not
Speaker 1: get to see this project through to completion, though, due
Speaker 1: to the Mexican Revolution. Resident Porfirio Diaz was forced out
Speaker 1: of office on May eleventh, nineteen eleven. He went into
Speaker 1: exile and the Robertses went back to the United States.
Speaker 1: By this point, there had been a number of updates
Speaker 1: and reprintings of robert Truls of Order. The first one
Speaker 1: to be specifically framed as a revised edition came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifteen. In nineteen sixteen, Robert started work on
Speaker 1: a much longer work called Parliamentary Law, which he intended
Speaker 1: for the use of professional parliamentarians and people who taught
Speaker 1: parliamentary procedure. He also worked on a shorter training manual
Speaker 1: called Parliamentary Practice, which included lessons and drills. Parliamentary Practice
Speaker 1: was published in nineteen twenty one, and Parliamentary Law in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two. His wife Isabelle and daughter in law
Speaker 1: Sarah Corbin Robert were a very big part of getting
Speaker 1: these books written, as was their friend Mildred Anderson. And
Speaker 1: that was because at this point Robert was advancing in age,
Speaker 1: and he had developed cataracts and hearing laws, and he
Speaker 1: just needed people to help take notes and dictation as
Speaker 1: he wrote out this work. Henry Martin Robert died in Hornell,
Speaker 1: New York, on May eleventh, nineteen twenty three, at the
Speaker 1: age of eighty six. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Speaker 1: Robert's Rules of Order became the almost ubiquitous manual of
Speaker 1: parliamentary procedure in the United States. Not every organization uses it,
Speaker 1: of course, but there are still a lot of nonprofits,
Speaker 1: student governments, homeowners' associations, and other organizations that rely on it.
Speaker 1: This includes some legislative bodies, like some of the New
Speaker 1: England town meetings that we mentioned earlier. There's some suggestion
Speaker 1: that Robert's Rules of Order did more than just give
Speaker 1: existing organizations a formal framework on how to conduct meetings
Speaker 1: more efficiently and in a more orderly way, that it
Speaker 1: also inspired the creation of new organizations by providing a
Speaker 1: practical reference for how to do it. And the words
Speaker 1: of historian Don H. Doyle, writing an American Quarterly in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty quote, Robert's remarkable achievement came about because his
Speaker 1: book both stimulated and fed a soaring popular demand for
Speaker 1: parliamentary law. It's definitely true that there was an explosion
Speaker 1: of organizations, especially organizations devoted to some kind of social
Speaker 1: or political reform, in the progressive era of the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In other words, after Robert's
Speaker 1: Rules came out, a lot of those letters Robert personally
Speaker 1: answered came from people who were trying to start or
Speaker 1: manage organizations for women's suffrage or racial equality, prohibition, and
Speaker 1: other social and political issues. For example, Carrie Chapman Kat
Speaker 1: once wrote to Robert to say that she had been
Speaker 1: running suffrage meetings with his rules for thirty years.
Speaker 2: At the same time, there have been increasing criticisms of
Speaker 2: Robert's Rules in more recent years. Although he wrote it
Speaker 2: for non legislative bodies, it was informed by existing rules
Speaker 2: for parliamentary procedure. Those had roots that mostly went back
Speaker 2: to the British Parliament. So this comes from a very
Speaker 2: Eurocentric perspective and from the rules of governing bodies that
Speaker 2: were made up exclusively of men at the time.
Speaker 1: Aside from that, even a brief overview of re Robert
Speaker 1: Rules can seem overwhelming to someone who doesn't already have
Speaker 1: a background in it, which can make meetings less accessible
Speaker 1: to newcomers. The twelfth edition of Roberts Rules came out
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, and it is definitely not a pocket
Speaker 1: sized book. It's eight hundred and sixteen pages long, perhaps
Speaker 1: if you have very big pockets. Roberts Rules in Brief,
Speaker 1: which came out the same year as two hundred twenty
Speaker 1: four pages. There are various quick references in cheat sheets,
Speaker 1: but still all of this can just feel like a lot.
Speaker 1: It's also possible for people to use Robert Trulls in
Speaker 1: bad faith to get their own way or to silence people,
Speaker 1: especially if those other people that are being silenced are
Speaker 1: not as familiar with the rules. Some organizations instead focus
Speaker 1: on methods that emphasize consensus building and collaboration rather than
Speaker 1: formal rule sets, for things like introducing motions, controlling the
Speaker 1: floor voting, and determining when it is acceptable to interrupt
Speaker 1: the person speaking.
Speaker 2: At the same time. Some of the criticisms of are unfounded.
Speaker 2: For example, the US Congress does not use Robert's rules
Speaker 2: of order. Most legislative bodies, apart from things like New
Speaker 2: England town meetings, have their own specific rules. So if
Speaker 2: you are mad about something going on with the Senate
Speaker 2: or House rules in the United States, you're going to
Speaker 2: need to find somebody else to blame besides Henry Martin.
Speaker 1: Robert.
Speaker 2: He is not the cause of philibus. No, he did
Speaker 2: not make that happen in Congress. I have some listener
Speaker 2: mail to take us out.
Speaker 1: Fabulous.
Speaker 2: This is from K and k wrote, Hi, Tracy and Holly,
Speaker 2: I always get excited for disease related episodes because it's
Speaker 2: something I've always found fascinating. In this episode, that episode,
Speaker 2: being the one on measles, turned out to be relevant
Speaker 2: to my academic life, which at the moment is the
Speaker 2: same as my life in general. I'm a PhD student
Speaker 2: in education and am at the stage of knowing enough
Speaker 2: about my dissertation topic to start info dumping at the
Speaker 2: slightest invitation, but not yet to the writing and dedicated
Speaker 2: research stage. I'm studying polio, specifically how it contributed to
Speaker 2: the formation of disabled identity in the United States, but
Speaker 2: also filling in some of the archival gaps what happened
Speaker 2: when someone who wasn't a middle class, white, urban educated
Speaker 2: nine to twelve year old got polio. As part of
Speaker 2: my information gathering, I'm working on a paper on schools
Speaker 2: as sites of healthcare, specifically how schools became trial sites
Speaker 2: for vaccines. So I was delighted to hear you discuss
Speaker 2: measles vaccine trials, and then immediately disgusted but not surprised,
Speaker 2: to hear that disabled children were used as guinea pigs.
Speaker 2: This happens over and over with medical advances, and it's
Speaker 2: horrifying and infuriating, so I really appreciate that you explicitly
Speaker 2: call out the horror and fury. Willowbrook is a notorious
Speaker 2: name in disability history. It was famously the subject of
Speaker 2: an expose film by a young GERALDO Rivera that exposed
Speaker 2: the deplorable and inhumane conditions of the institution, which led
Speaker 2: to public outcry and years of legal cases that eventually
Speaker 2: shuddered the institution. It comes up frequently in my disability
Speaker 2: studies courses, and every single time I have to brace
Speaker 2: myself because it's always worse than I remember. Thank you
Speaker 2: as always for the work you do, and so as
Speaker 2: not to end on a downer, here's some cats. My
Speaker 2: torty baby shark toposts will display her belly, but it
Speaker 2: is such a trap. The two babies on the tree
Speaker 2: are my cat nieces Pesto and Yoki the pastas or
Speaker 2: sisters from the same litter and are spoiled rotten by
Speaker 2: my sibling and sib in law.
Speaker 1: Best K.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much K for this email, which also
Speaker 2: included some potential episode topics related to Kay's dissertation research.
Speaker 2: I very much appreciated this email. These kitty cats so adorable.
Speaker 1: The tummy trap them. I feel lucky because none of
Speaker 1: mine have a tummy trap. I've even our cat that
Speaker 1: came to us feral.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: If you can get your hand on his tummy, he's like, oh, relaxing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's the one I would have thought would be
Speaker 1: setting the trap, but he doesn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Both of ours do a thing where they flump
Speaker 2: over on their signs and they want to be petted
Speaker 2: kind of aggressively to me, like on the side slash
Speaker 2: slash belly area, and neither of them do the thing
Speaker 2: where they suddenly aggressively attack you. Uh. But they will
Speaker 2: sort of do a thing that is like a little
Speaker 2: bunny kick, but very lightly and like I'm putting my
Speaker 2: teeth on you. I'm not biting you. I'm just putting
Speaker 2: my teeth on you, which is sort of funny to
Speaker 2: me because it's like all of the motions of the
Speaker 2: tummy trap cat bitiness, but like in the most gentlest,
Speaker 2: delicatenest way. It's because they were raised together. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: they've taught each other to temper that behavior and be
Speaker 2: like no, no, if you're playing with me, you're playing
Speaker 2: with me. Yeah, don't be throwing those claws and teeth out. No,
Speaker 2: they're so good. This is why you should always get
Speaker 2: two kittens together. I feel strongly on this issue. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we intentionally when we got them, were looking at rescues
Speaker 2: and intentionally looking for a pair of kittens because we
Speaker 2: did not have any other cats in the house, because
Speaker 2: I had come to Massachusetts with a cat who had
Speaker 2: eventually passed away at the age of nineteen, and so
Speaker 2: since we had no other cats in the house, we
Speaker 2: definitely wanted two kittens together because it is definitely better
Speaker 2: for kittens to have behaviorally, it's so much other cats around,
Speaker 2: so much easier. They had also been taken care of
Speaker 2: by a foster family who, in my opinion, was really good.
Speaker 2: They also had other cats to sort of teach the
Speaker 2: kittens how to be.
Speaker 1: Cats, how to be good citizens. They've taught them cat
Speaker 1: parliamentary procedure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they know. They know which motions can be
Speaker 2: debated and amended. So anyway, thank you again so much
Speaker 2: for this email. If you would like to send us
Speaker 2: a note about this or any other podcasts or a
Speaker 2: history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, we're on some social
Speaker 2: media at miss in History, Facebook, the x Thing, Instagram,
Speaker 2: is it right now? And you can subscribe to our
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