Robert Brown Elliott (11 August 1842 – 9 August 1884) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-SC 3) from 4 March 1871 to 1 November 1874, succeeding Solomon L. Hoge and preceding Lewis C. Carpenter.
Biography[]
Robert Brown Elliott was born in Liverpool, England in 1842, and he graduated from Eton College and served in the British Royal Navy before settling in South Carolina in 1867 and becoming a lawyer in Columbia. He helped organize the local Republican Party, formed the nation's first African-American law firm, served in the State House from 1868 to 1870 and 1874 to 1876, in the US House of Representatives from 1871 to 1874, and South Carolina Attorney General from 1876 to 1877. He supported laws suppressing the Ku Klux Klan and protecting Black civil rights, and he worked on John Sherman's 1880 presidential campaign and served as a delegate to the 1880 Republican National Convention. He worked for the Treasury Department in New Orleans until he was dismissed in 1882, and he found few clients for his law firm and died destitute in 1884.