Robert Martin Douglas
Robert Martin Douglas (1849-1917) was a North Carolina Supreme Court
justice and political figure. At the beginning of his career, the
young attorney served the Republican governor of the state and
President Ulysses S. Grant's Reconstruction administrations.
Born on January 28, 1849 at his maternal grandmother's home in
Rockingham County, North Carolina, he was the first of two sons of
Senator Stephen A. Douglas
(Democrat of Illinois) and Martha Martin, originally of North
Carolina. Martha died after the birth of her third child, a
daughter, in 1853, and the unnamed infant died a few weeks later.
Robert was only four. He and his brother Stephen spent considerable
time when young with their maternal grandmother and the Martin
family in their mother's home state. After his father married Adele
Cutts, from a Maryland Catholic family, with his permission she had
the boys baptized and reared them as Catholic.
The family
split their time between homes in Washington, DC and Chicago,
Illinois during his father's Senate service. Douglas graduated from
Georgetown College in Washington, DC in 1867. He later earned a
Master's degree and a doctoral degree in law from the same
institution.
In the aftermath of the American Civil War,
Douglas turned away from the Democratic Party to which his father
had belonged. He believed that the party had died during the war. he
became a leading Republican and active in Reconstruction era
governments.
During 1868, Douglas served as private secretary to
the Governor of North Carolina. From 1869 to 1873, he was appointed
private secretary to President Ulysses S. Grant.
For the next
decade, he served as United States Marshal for North Carolina. In
1888 he was appointed to serve as Master in Chancery to the United
States Circuit Court. He continued until 1896, when he was elected
as a Republican to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
In 1901,
Justice Douglas and Chief Justice David M. Furches (also a
Republican) were impeached by the Democratic Party-controlled North
Carolina House of Representatives "for issuing an allegedly
unconstitutional mandamus ordering the State Treasurer to pay out
money." Neither was removed from office by the necessary two-thirds
vote of the North Carolina Senate, although a simple majority of
senators favored removal. Douglas served his eight-year term and
then retired from the court.
On June 23, 1874, Douglas
married Jessie Madeline Dick, daughter of the Honorable Robert Paine
Dick, a Supreme Court justice of North Carolina. They had four
children together:
Madeleine Douglas (who later married Col.
Edward Warren Myers),
Robert
Dick Douglas (1875-1960),
Stephen Arnold Douglas (b. 1879),
and
Martin F. Douglas (b. 1886).
Robert Martin Douglas
died at his home in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 8, 1917.
Biography from the State Library, North Carolina
Robert Martin Douglas, associate justice of the North Carolina
Supreme Court, was born on 28 January 1849 near Douglas, Rockingham
County, the son of Stephen A. Douglas
of Illinois, prominent U.S. senator and Democratic presidential
candidate in 1860, and Martha D. Martin. His maternal grandfather,
Robert Martin, had large plantations on the Dan River and on the Pearl
River in Mississippi. When Robert Douglas was four years old his mother
died, leaving him and his brother Stephen A. Douglas, Jr., in the care
of their grandmother, Mary Martin. After their father's marriage to
Adèle Cutts, the boys lived primarily in Washington, D.C. Following the
death of his father in 1861, Robert was reared by his stepmother. He
became a Roman Catholic and was educated in private schools, Loyola
College, and Georgetown University. From Georgetown he was awarded an
A.B. in 1867, a master's degree in 1870, and an honorary doctor of laws
degree in 1897.
Although his father had been a national leader in the antebellum
Democratic party, Robert Douglas followed his deathbed admonition to
"support the Constitution" and cast his lot with the Republican party.
Upon graduation from Georgetown he went to North Carolina to oversee his
property; in July 1868 Governor William W. Holden appointed him private
secretary to the governor and an aide with the rank of colonel. On a
visit to Washington in March 1869 Douglas called on his former neighbor
and greatly admired family friend, Ulysses S. Grant, who had just become
president. Intending only to offer his congratulations, young Douglas
found himself with an appointment as assistant secretary to the
president. After seven months, he became the president's private
secretary and remained in that position for the balance of the first
term. As a native southerner and trusted friend of the president,
Douglas was able to reinforce Grant's moderate attitude toward the
South.
In 1873 Douglas was appointed U.S. marshal in North Carolina's new
Western District of the United States Circuit Court and settled in
Greensboro. On 24 June 1874 he married Jessie Madeleine Dick, the
daughter of Robert Paine Dick, who had been an associate justice of the
state supreme court and was then a federal district judge. Law
enforcement work and the influence of his father-in-law led to the study
of law under Judge Dick and Judge John H. Dillard. Douglas passed the
North Carolina bar in 1885, and by the next year he was serving as the
standing master in chancery of the Western District of the United States
Circuit Court.
Douglas was nominated for the North Carolina Supreme Court on the
Republican ticket in 1896. The Republican-Populist fusion victory in
that election enabled him to take his seat as an associate justice on 1
Feb. 1897. He served on the court eight years until he was defeated for
re-election in 1904. His reputation as an able jurist was widespread. A
contemporary, William P. Bynum, wrote that as a judge "he was noted for
his learning, his fairness, his patience and his utter impartiality. His
written opinions display not only a thorough comprehension of
fundamental legal principles, but an ornateness of style and lucidity of
expression which have never been excelled by any member of that court."
The bitterness of partisan state politics, however, enmeshed him in an
impeachment proceeding in 1901. The Democrats, newly returned to power
in a racist campaign, feared that the Republicans on the court might try
to overturn the recently passed constitutional amendment on suffrage
that required a literacy test and poll tax but exempted most illiterate
whites by a "grandfather clause." Consequently, they were determined to
purge the court of its Republicans, David M. Furches and Robert Douglas.
Articles of impeachment were drawn on a technical violation of the
constitution concerning tenure of office. The 1899 Democratic
legislature had attempted to oust Republicans and Populists by creating
new state offices with the same duties as existing offices. The state
supreme court had ruled on a number of the disputed office-holding
cases, and in the case of Theophilus White the court had issued
mandamuses on the state auditor and state treasurer ordering the payment
of White's salary. The Democrats charged that the mandamuses violated a
section of the constitution stating that in a claims suit the court
could only make recommendations. Despite the fact that the impeachment
proceeding was politically motivated, Locke Craig presented an
impeachment resolution in the North Carolina House of Representatives in
January 1901. A strong Democratic minority led by Henry G. Connor sided
with the Republicans and fought the resolution, but it passed. The
senate procedure began in February and the trial lasted from 14 to 28
March. The justices were acquitted on all five articles.
After leaving the supreme court in 1905, Douglas returned to Greensboro
where he practiced law, wrote articles, and became involved in business
and civic affairs in the community. He was an organizer of the first
chamber of commerce in Greensboro, a director of the first streetcar
company in the city, and a director of the Greensboro Loan and Trust
Company. As a writer he contributed to the Youth's Companion magazine,
and several of his historical addresses were published—the best known
being The Life and Times of Governor Alexander Martin (1898). From 1906
to 1910 he served a term on the North Carolina Corporation Commission.
He also was active in the Guilford Battleground Company and was a
trustee of the Catholic orphanage in North Carolina.
Douglas had three sons, Robert Dick, Stephen Arnold, and Martin F., and
one daughter, Madeleine. His son Robert, an attorney, was appointed
attorney general of the state in 1900–1901.
He died on 8 February 1917. A portrait of Justice Douglas hangs
in the North Carolina Justice Building, Raleigh.
Any contributions to this item will be
gratefully accepted
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