Life and Career
Robertson was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, the son of Josephine Ragland (née Willis) and Franklin Pierce Robertson. He graduated from the University of Richmond in 1907. Robertson was elected to the Virginia State Senate as a Democrat in 1915 and he served from 1916 to 1922. Robertson served in the United States Army during World War I. Robertson served as Commonwealth Attorney for Rockbridge County, Virginia from 1922 to 1928.
In 1932, Robertson was elected from Virginia's 7th congressional district to the U.S. House of Representatives, and was reelected six times. In 1946, he won a special election for the right to complete the final two years of Senator Carter Glass' term and took office on the day after the election. He won the seat in his own right in 1948, and was reelected two more times without serious opposition.
Among his legislation is the Pittman–Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act which creates the formula for federal sharing of ammunition tax with states to establish wildlife areas. The program is still in effect and is a primary financing source for wildlife areas.
Robertson was a typical Byrd Democrat, and was very conservative on social issues. He was chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs from 1959 until 1966. In 1956, Robertson was one of the 19 senators who signed The Southern Manifesto, condemning the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education and the resulting public desegregation.
When President Lyndon Johnson sent his wife, Lady Bird, on a train trip through the South to encourage support for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Robertson was one of four Southern Senators who refused to meet with her on the whistle-stop trip. In retaliation, President Johnson personally recruited State Senator William B. Spong, Jr., a considerably more liberal Democrat, to run against Robertson in the 1966 Democratic primary. By this time, even some Byrd Democrats were moving away from obstinate resistance to integration as espoused by Robertson and the Organization's patriarch, Harry F. Byrd, Sr. Spong defeated Robertson in the primary in one of the biggest upsets in Virginia political history—an event that is considered the beginning of the end of the Byrd Organization's long dominance of Virginia state politics.
Robertson's best known son is televangelist Pat Robertson.
Read more about this topic: Absalom Willis Robertson
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“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)