George M. Robeson

Early life

George M. Robeson was born on March 16, 1829, in Oxford Furnace, New Jersey, near Belvidere in Warren County. Robeson's family was of Scottish origin, and was long-established in New Jersey; he was a descendant of Andrew Robeson, who served as surveyor-general of New Jersey in 1668. His father was Philadelphia Judge William Penn Robeson and his mother was the daughter of U.S. Congressman George C. Maxwell, who served in the 12th U.S. Congress from 1811 to 1813 representing Hunterdon, New Jersey. His brother William P. Robeson Jr. was a brevetted Brigadier general in the Union Army. Robeson was the nephew of U.S. Congressman John Patterson Bryan Maxwell.

Robeson received a bachelor's degree from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) at the age of 18 in 1847. Upon graduation, he studied law in Newark in former New Jersey Chief Justice Joseph C. Hornblower's law office. Hornblower, at the time, was involved in an abortive attempt to create a law school at the College of New Jersey; it is not clear whether Robeson's continuing education was related to this effort, but in any case, Robeson received a master's degree from the college in 1850, and was admitted to the bar in the same year. He was admitted as a legal counselor in 1854. He initially set up his law practice in Newark, but then moved his practice to Jersey City. In 1858, he was appointed public prosecutor for Camden County.

Civil War

By the outbreak of the Civil War Robeson had become associated with the Republican party. During the war he served on the state's Sanitary Commission and worked at recruiting and organizing troops for the New Jersey militia. For this latter work, late in the war he was given a commission as a brigadier general in the New Jersey Militia by Gov. Joel Parker; this appointment was essentially ceremonial, and did not involve service on active duty during the war.

Attorney General of New Jersey (1867–1869)

Robeson was appointed Attorney General of New Jersey by Gov. Marcus L. Ward in 1867. Perhaps the most significant event of Robeson's relatively short career as Attorney General was his prosecution of Bridget Durgan, a young Irish immigrant working as a maid, for the murder of Mary Ellen Coriell, wife of her employer. Robeson was able to gain a conviction of Durgan on circumstantial evidence, persuading the jury not to factor in Durgan's age and gender during their deliberations. The jury took only one hour to convict Durgan of murder, and sentenced her to death. Robeson gained national attention for securing a death sentence for a young woman, something that 19th-century juries were reluctant to specify. Durgan was hanged on August 30.

Robeson resigned as attorney general on June 22, 1869, to become United States Secretary of the Navy.

Secretary of the Navy (1869–1877)

On June 25, 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Robeson Secretary of the Navy, replacing Adolph E. Borie, who had resigned earlier that same day. Borie had found the duties of running the Navy Department demanding, and had apparently never particularly wanted the job anyway; one source suggests that he had taken the job as a courtesy to Grant for having offered it, and had spent his weeks in office simply waiting for an appropriate moment to resign. Robeson's appointment to the position was pushed by New Jersey Senator Alexander G. Cattell. The change came as a surprise to the general public, all the more so because Robeson was, at the time, largely unknown outside of New Jersey. He ended up serving in the position from June 26, 1869, until March 12, 1877, making him one of the longest-serving Naval secretaries of the 19th century, second only to Lincoln's secretary, Gideon Welles. Robeson came to the job with no previous experience related to maritime matters.

As a cabinet member Robeson expressed support for the administration's reconstruction policies, including emancipation and granting of citizenship, complete with voting rights, for African-Americans. During an 1870 speech in Norfolk, Virginia, a very strong expression of such support—perhaps ill-advised in a Southern city—helped start a riot, involving, at first, the throwing of eggs at Robeson, and later gunfire. He filled in for Grant at certain public events, notably the 1873 dedication of a site in Philadelphia for the Centennial Exposition, which was successfully staged in 1876—Later, in 1874, he supported Senate Bill S.617, dubbed the "inflation bill," under which $400 million in greenbacks (paper currency) was to be placed into circulation, along with an equivalent amount of specie-backed money. Both houses overwhelming approved the bill, and Grant was expected to quickly sign it. However, after some deliberation, the President vetoed the bill, and an attempt to override the veto failed in the Senate.

Departmental control (1869)

Robeson's predecessor, Adolph Borie, had had little interest in running the Navy Department and let the service's seniormost uniformed officer, Vice Admiral David Dixon Porter, exercise unprecedented authority over the department. Porter proved to be an autocratic administrator, and caused considerable mischief during Borie's 14-week tenure at the department. One particularly controversial move involved changing a long-standing interpretation of a law defining the rank and standing of non-line officers within the navy, effectively demoting all these officers by one or more ranks so that all would be outranked by all line officers with comparable seniority. This would cause bitterness and have an adverse effect on the development of engineering and other specializations within the navy for decades to come.

Soon after his appointment Robeson took steps to rein in Porter. Porter was discouraged from appearing personally at the Navy Department Office building, only visiting four times during Robeson's tenure. On November 16, 1870, Robeson wrote Porter a letter outlining the limits on Porter's authority, and ordering the admiral to report regularly to Robeson's Naval Office in writing. Porter became a staunch critic of Robeson for the remainder of his career, accusing him of corruption on a massive scale; nonetheless, on many policy matters (notably on the proper organization of the force, around monitors for coast defense and unarmored sailing vessels with auxiliary steam power for high-seas commerce raiding) the two had similar ideas, and Robeson's first annual report to Congress in 1869 reflected many of the ideas of Porter. Porter's influence would decline over time, while that of Rear Admiral Daniel Ammen, a close friend to President Grant, would increase.

Exploration

During his term as Secretary Robeson authorized a number of exploratory missions. Prominent among these was the Polaris Expedition, the United States' first serious attempt at arctic exploration, an attempt to be the first nation to reach the North Pole. Despite Congress' general reluctance to spend money, Robeson was able to obtain $50,000 in funding for the expedition. On June 29, 1871, at 7 pm, USS Polaris, sailed from the New York Naval Yard, with Charles Francis Hall, a veteran of two previous arctic expeditions, in command.

The expedition soon fell into disarray. On October 24 Hall fell sick after drinking a cup of coffee, and died two weeks later. After a perfunctory attempt to reach the pole by dog sled, in June 1872 the crew abandoned the mission and turned south. They were stopped by pack ice, and ended up split into two parties; one group rode an ice floe southward, while the other had to overwinter aboard ship, but both parties were ultimately rescued.

Upon the crew's return, Robeson, on June 5, 1873, opened an investigation into what had happened. While circumstantial evidence suggested that Hall had been murdered, lacking a body and most of the expedition's journals, the entire crew was cleared of wrongdoing. However, In 1968, Hall's body was recovered, and modern scientific testing revealed he had been poisoned with arsenic.

Hall, before his death, named Robeson Channel in honor of Secretary Robeson.

Another mission undertaken during Robeson's term was an 1872-73 expedition to Nicaragua to investigate possible routes for a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The expedition, led by Commander Alexander F. Crosman, USN, departed the United States for Nicaragua on March 10, 1872, and arriving at Greytown, Nicaragua on April 7. Five days later the expedition suffered a major setback when Crosman drowned in a boat accident; he was temporarily replaced by Commander Chester Hatfield, commander of USS Kansas, the screw steamer that had delivered the crew to Nicaragua, and later, after a brief withdrawal for regrouping, by Commander Edward P. Lull. Over the next year three principal route options were surveyed and evaluated by civil engineers and a Navy hydrographer, while biological and geological studies were produced and samples gathered. Hatfield, back in command of the Kansas, made detailed climate observations over a six-month period. A historical essay on previous efforts to initiate canal development (most of which never got beyond the drawing board) was produced by historian J. P. Nourse of the U. S. Naval Observatory. Late in the expedition, in April 1873, a partially successful attempt was made to blast away several obstructions in the Rio San Juan, using kegs of gunpowder and several "torpedoes" (in this case, still meaning mines, being used here as simple explosive charges) acquired from the recently established Torpedo Station at Newport. The expedition had returned to the United States and submitted a preliminary report by December 1, 1874.

Submarine and torpedo testing (1869–1875)

During Robeson's tenure as Navy secretary, the development of submarine and torpedo technologies was encouraged by the U.S. Navy. Though not the first submarine to be offered to the Navy, a hand-crank-powered submarine called Intelligent Whale was evaluated during Robeson's term. Built in 1863, partly with government funds (available because one of the promoters, Oliver Halstead, had connections within the Lincoln administration), the vessel was privately tested in 1866, with a man successfully exiting the craft while submerged, attaching an explosive charge to a scow, re-entering the craft, and detonating the charge, destroying the scow. Difficulty finding a crew to man the vessel, and a protracted dispute over ownership (which ended with Halstead in possession of the craft), delayed further testing. Finally, in October 1869, the vessel's existence was brought to the attention of Secretary Robeson; and after a committee appointed by Robeson gave a favorable opinion on the boat's merits, on October 29 Robeson signed an agreement with Halstead to purchase the submarine for $50,000--$12,500 up front, another $12,500 upon successful completion of testing, and the final $25,000 when all "secrets and inventions" connected with the craft were signed over. Actual testing did not take place until 1872; this was judged to be unsuccessful, as the vessel leaked profusely, and the initial payment was the only money the Navy would end up spending on the vessel.

Of more importance in the long term, John Holland, who would, in the 1890s, produce the first operational submarines for both Britain and the United States, submitted his first (unsuccessful) design to the U. S. Navy during Robeson's tenure.

In mid-1869 either Robeson or his predecessor Borie (sources differ) ordered the establishment of a research facility, the United States Naval Torpedo Station, on Goat Island, in the harbor of Newport, Rhode Island. This facility was dedicated to the development of torpedoes and torpedo equipment, explosives, and electrical equipment. Through the 1870s its efforts focused on the refinement of fixed and towed mines and spar torpedoes. With regard to self-propelled torpedoes, while engineers at the facility did study the design of the Whitehead torpedo (developed by English expatriate Robert Whitehead at his workshop at Fiume, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and marketed to world navies from 1866), they rejected it and embarked on developing a very similar machine, with a design incorporating essentially all that they knew about the Whitehead, with gaps in the available information being filled in by the station's staff. Robeson issued a vague specification calling for this

Virginius incident and war crisis (1873)

Starting in 1870 the former Confederate blockade runner SS Virgin, renamed SS Virginius, operating under whatever national flag best served its operators' interests at any given moment, made several trips to Cuba, delivering weapons to revolutionaries fighting the Ten Years' War, the first of three late-19th-century uprisings against Spanish rule over the island. On October 31, 1873, the Spanish warship Tornado finally ran down and captured Virginius during another such smuggling expedition. The ship was taken to Santiago, Cuba, and initially caused only a minor diplomatic stir. However, over the next few days news began to reach the outside world that some of the crewmen and passengers from the ship, including numerous British and American citizens, had been taken ashore, hastily tried, and executed by firing squad. Both the U.S. and Britain sent naval vessels to Cuba to halt the executions, but before they arrived two additional groups of men from the vessel were executing, bringing the total number killed to 53, out of 155 people on board. This caused outrage among many Americans, and with war a real possibility, on November 14, 1873, President Grant ordered the Navy to be put on a war footing. Accordingly, Secretary Robeson ordered a number of U.S. warships, elements of the North Atlantic Squadron, to proceed to Key West, Florida, 90 miles from Cuba, and prepare for action. Because the ships involved were operating independently, and were widely dispersed, the force did not finish assembling until late January 1874, by which time the crisis had largely passed, as the questionably legal nature of Virginius' activities became more fully understood. Changes within the Spanish government (including the restoration of the monarchy, ending an experiment in democratic rule that had lasted little more than a year) drew out the final negotiations, regarding (mainly) indemnities for the families of the executed crew members and passengers, until early 1875.

Identifying and Addressing Weaknesses in the Navy

With the wind-down of the Virginius crisis, in January 1874 it was decided that, with a large group of front-line ships assembled (at Key West) for the first time in years, it would be an appropriate time for the U.S. Navy to stage a series of maneuvers, to test new and unproven tactical doctrines adopted since the end of the Civil War. The maneuvers, conducted in February and March, became a fiasco: the assembled force, made up of four monitors and 12 unarmored screw sloops (with other vessels filling in at times), had a great deal of difficulty keeping formation, and when in formation could move at a speed of only four and a half knots.

If this was not proof enough of the U.S. Navy"s lack of readiness, while the Virginius Affair was unfolding many Americans took notice of a state-of-the-art Spanish broadside ironclad, the Arapiles, which was undergoing repairs at a New York shipyard. Spanish governments of the 1860s and 1870s had, after a long lull, begun to provide funding for a significant modernization program for the Spanish Navy, which included funding for the construction or purchase of seven seagoing ironclads. In contrast, the United States, during its Civil War-era build-up, had spent a great deal of money building large numbers of less elaborate, less expensive types for blockade and coastal work; and when the war was over, Congress had decided that, rather than spending money on new ships, they would wait until the existing ones wore out to purchase new vessels, no matter how far this left the Navy behind technologically in the interim. So long as this state of affairs existed the U.S. Navy would be no match for the navy of Spain, much less those of any of the major powers. One U.S. officer opined that two of the modern Spanish warships could have decimated the entire American flotilla at Key West, the best ships the U.S. Navy could offer at the time.

Further emphasizing this backwardness, a Navy Department exhibit at the 1876 Centennial Exposition was noted mainly for the obsolescence of the technology that was exhibited, in contrast to what the War Department and foreign naval powers put on display.

From the time he came into office George Robeson had been aware of the material shortcomings of the U.S. Fleet, and had tried to obtain funding for new construction. Congress refused to provide such funding, and even after the events surrounding the Virginius Affair shed light on just how badly the service needed competitive ships, funding for new ships was still denied, although some funding for the repair of existing vessels was allocated. Robeson's staff had (ostensibly) already inspected and evaluated these vessels, and determined that most had decayed beyond the point of economical repair. Apparently believing that desperate measures had to be taken, in July 1874 Robeson decided to commit a bold and illegal act: under the guise of rebuilding several ships, Robeson instead delivered five armored ships—four twin-turreted monitors of the Miantonomoh class and the never-completed single-turret monitor USS Puritan—that department surveyors had judged rotted beyond repair to carefully selected shipbuilders, who then laid down five new, broadly similar ships, which were given the same names as the old vessels. These were then represented to Congress and the public as actually being the original vessels, thoroughly overhauled. This was the second time Robeson had arranged for new ships to be built without authorization from Congress: in 1871-72 the Secretary had ordered the construction of six new unarmored vessels, again concealing the fact by turning older vessels with the same names over to the yards that were building the new vessels, and representing the new ones as "rebuilds." In both cases the yards were allowed to scrap the original vessels, along with (over time) dozens of additional vessels deemed unrepairable that had quietly been turned over to them, with the proceeds the yards obtained from the sale of recovered materials supplementing the money paid to the yards for building the new ships.

Report on U.S. Navy (1875)

On December 6, 1875, Secretary Robeson released his annual report on the condition of the U.S. Navy. He stated that by 1875 the U.S. Navy was as strong as it had been at any time during Grant's presidency. It included 147 ships of every class and description, including twenty-six sailing vessels without even auxiliary power. Of the 147 ships, 80 were available for war, including sixteen ironclads and two experimental spar-torpedo ships, USS Alarm and USS Intrepid. There was a total of 1,195 guns on all the ships, including Gatling guns (said to be mounted on every ship in the Navy) and experimental breech-loading howitzers; and the Torpedo School at Newport was developing efficient torpedoes (of unspecified types) that could cause great destruction. Concerning the five double-turreted monitors that Robeson had ordered "rebuilt" in June 1874 (the fact that they were actually new ships was still a secret), the Secretary pressed Congress for funding to complete the ships.

Critics, notably Porter, strongly disagreed with much of what Robeson said in his report, pointing out that in 1869 the number of ships in the fleet had been stated as 203, far greater than the 147 total he cited for 1875; how this could be reconciled with Robeson's statement that the Navy was as strong as it had been at any other time during Grant's term was left unclear. As far as ship tonnage was concerned, they accused him of misrepresenting the size of the U.S. fleet by stating the tonnages of American ships and foreign ships in different types of tons. Criticism of attempts to mislead in Robeson's report would play a major role in triggering the Congressional investigation of the following year.

House Investigations and Corruption Allegations (1872-76)

Robeson's management of the Department of the Navy was investigated on multiple occasions. On May 22, 1872, a Select Committee to Investigate Alleged Abuses in the Navy Department, created in response to news reports of impropriety in the department, held a hearing. During this hearing Robeson was accused of having amassed a fortune worth more than $500,000 in the two-and-a-half years since his appointment. Robeson and his political ally, former Senator Alexander Cattell, were both said to have profited immensely (to the tune of more than $1.2 million) from no-bid contracts for the sale of coal, iron plate, timber, and brick to the Navy. Robeson was also accused of drawing $93,000 out of department funds on January 1, 1870, when most of the department's clerical staff had the day off, without proper accounting; he stated that this was to make a long-overdue payment to a shipbuilder who, years earlier, had not been paid for incorporating late-requested modifications into three monitors his firm had built. In the end Robeson's principal accuser, Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun, who had (strangely) been allowed to run the proceedings, failed to produce any witnesses or other proof to back his accusations, and the matter was dropped.

The Navy, and Robeson's administration of it, was investigated a second time in July 1876 by the House Committee on Naval Affairs, chaired by Representative Washington C. Whitthorne. This time a very wide array of charges were made, not all aimed directly at Robeson, but virtually all painting his oversight in a bad light. Major charges made against the Navy Department as an institution included:

--letting contracts without any competitive bidding process being required; and when competitive bidding was required, raising prices paid by the Navy by covertly raising the amounts of winning bids after the winners had been announced, simply by erasing the original figure and entering a higher one. The actual winners still won, but were only paid on the basis of their actual bids, leaving the difference to be divided up among department personnel and facilitators;

--failing to get authorization to sell naval property (notably stockpiles of ships' machinery that had been built, but never installed in any ship), and failing to deliver the proceeds from the sale of such commodities to the Treasury, as required by law;

U.S. Senate run (1876)

In 1876, Robeson was nominated by the Republican Party to run for the New Jersey U.S. Senate seat. However, corruption charges against Robeson caused him to lose the election.

Legal career in Camden County

Robeson left office a few days after President Grant's departure from office, in March 1877. Having failed in the U.S. Senate bid, Robeson returned to his law practice in Camden County. One of the more prominent cases he dealt with as a private-sector attorney involved his serving on the defense team for Benjamin F. Hunter, who had loaned a music publisher, John M. Armstrong, $12,000, then taken out an insurance policy on Armstrong for $26,000, hired a hit man to murder Armstrong for the insurance money, and set up another man for the crime. Though the man who was set up, Ford W. Davis, was held for a time, ultimately Hunter was indicted for murder and, on June 10, 1878, was put on trial. After a 23-day trial Hunter was convicted, and after his appeal was rejected, he was executed on July 10, 1879.

U.S. Representative (1879–1883)

In 1878, Robeson ran for and was elected to the U.S. Congress, representing New Jersey's 1st Congressional District through two terms, from March 4, 1879, through March 3, 1883. During his second term he served as chairman of both the House Republican Conference and the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Navy. Serving in these roles he was criticized in the Democratic-leaning Puck magazine for his role in getting a large surplus allocated to the Navy; however, this allocation would prove to be of great significance to the Navy, as it helped to pay for the service's first steel-hulled ships, known as the ABCD Ships. This event is characterized by historians as marking the birth of the "New Navy." Robeson was defeated in a bid for a third term by Democrat Thomas M. Ferrell; the defeat was reputedly engineered by a fellow Republican, William J. Sewell, who won a Senate seat in the same election.

In 1880, Robeson, while he still serving in the House of Representatives, made another run for the U.S. Senate, but was again defeated.

Private Life and Death

On January 23, 1872, Robeson married Mary Isabella (Ogston) Aulick, a widow with a son, Richmond Aulick. Robeson and Mary had a daughter named Ethel Maxwell Robeson. After Robeson was defeated in a bitter 1882 Congressional race which left him $60,000 in debt, forcing him to sell his Washington D.C. property, including his luxurious mansion, his wife took their daughter to Britain and did not come back. Ethel would marry William Sterling, the son of British Maj. John Barton Sterling, on November 22, 1910, in Christ Church, Mayfair, England. Mary's son, Richmond, remained in the United States, and graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1889.

In New Jersey people began to refer to the now-destitute Robeson derisively as "Poor Roby." However, a friend, James L. Hayes, came to Robeson's aid, helping him to acquire a small house near the State House in Trenton in which he could live and practice law. During this period he served as attorney for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

By 1891 Robeson appeared to be mounting something of a comeback: he took up residence in a much more opulent house, and expressed an interest in running a house seat for the fourth time. However, the Trenton district in which he now lived was content with a Democratic ticket backed by a great deal of power and influence, and nothing became of Robeson's inquiry into public office.

In 1885 Robeson was sued for $278 by a liveryman named James Cambel, and later settled for $50. Robeson continued practicing law until his death at the age of 68 on September 27, 1897. He is buried at Belvidere Cemetery in Belvidere, New Jersey.

Historical reputation

Historians have generally been short on praise for Robeson, although, because the various accusations made against him never led to any action being taken against him, they have rarely been as severe as one might expect. Expectations of him upon his appointment as Secretary of the Navy were apparently low, with contemporaries describing him as a "first-rate judge of wine, a second-rate trout fisherman, and a third-rate New Jersey lawyer;" it was generally believed that the punch line for this sentence was that he would make a fourth-rate Secretary of the Navy. A more recent commentator has described him as a successful businessman whose company Grant enjoyed, who was content to leave naval matters in the hands of the admirals. An early 20th-century historian described him as an impatient and high-strung administrator, while a more recent one more has described him as "a capable if often slipshod administrator, shadowed by suspicions of corruption." Less charitably, a history student from MIT described Robeson as "one of the more corrupt politicians of the period . . . quite a strong claim to make, considering that during Grant's administration scandals involved a Secretary of the Treasury, a Secretary of War, Grant's personal secretary, and the Vice-President of the United States, but it is borne out by the revelations of the Congressional committee which investigated the Navy in 1876, after seven years of Robeson's stewardship"

Historically, Robeson is often mentioned by biographers of Ulysses S. Grant.