[2] However, unlike many other Southern whites who represented the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, Martin was an avid supporter of the New Deal, which he saw as a way to improve North Carolina, which was a very backward and underdeveloped state at the time.

[2] Martin began his career in the National Recovery Administration, a New Deal agency created to counter the effects of the Great Depression.

[2] His abilities as an administrative counselor and deputy Chief of Mission gained him attention from the State Department, which rapidly advanced his career.

[4] While serving as ambassador to Thailand, Martin came to the attention of Richard Nixon, during a banquet for King Bhumibol Adulyadej at the Embassy in Bangkok.

[2] Karnow described the reasons for Martin's appointment as ambassador by President Richard Nixon because he was the ideal "fall guy" should South Vietnam collapse.

[2] Martin was one of the few U.S. diplomats who was still committed to winning the Vietnam war, and as a liberal Democrat, any failures in Saigon on his part would not reflect badly on the Republican Nixon administration.

[2] Karnow noted that the disdain and contempt he was held in Washington could be seen in the fact that neither Nixon nor his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger mentioned him even once in their respective memoirs.

[2] Though not in his memoirs, Kissinger does give accolades to Martin indirectly while relating the circumstances surrounding the U.S. evacuation from Saigon in his book "Ending the Vietnam War."

[2] In common with many other American diplomats, Martin found President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to be a "prickly" personality who was too sensitive to any slight, real or imagined.

[8] Through Martin had difficult relations with Thiệu, he had an unbounded confidence in his regime, and his dispatches to Washington during almost all of his entire time in Saigon portrayed South Vietnam in a very optimistic light.

[10] Reflecting his tendency to put the best possible gloss on South Vietnam, Martin in his cables to Washington downplayed these concerns, stating that the ARVN would not collapse.

With the PAVN advancing on Saigon, Martin continued to give optimistic reports about the ability of the ARVN to hold out, and stated that he was against an evacuation.

[18] On 3 April 1975, Martin at a meeting with Thiệu admitted that the situation had become grim with the North Vietnamese taking the Central Highlands, but promised him that the United States would send more military aid to help the ARVN hold a line along the Mekong river.

Martin also refused to classify the Vietnamese common law wives of Americans and their illegitimate children as refugees under the grounds he disapproved of premarital sex.

General Homer D. Smith, the American military attaché was able to perform an end-run around Martin's order by having an embassy secretary, Eva Kim, type up an unofficial document known as an "affidavit of support" bearing the seal of the embassy together with a blank space for the name of the Vietnamese refugee and another blank space for an American promising to be financially responsible for the said refugee when he or she arrived in the United States that was photocopied thousands of times.

[20] Browne was finally forced to have his wife and children fly out in one of the last passenger flights out of Saigon airport to Hong Kong as it proved impossible to leave via the embassy.

[20] Unable to exit via his car, Martin was forced to walk four blocks down from the embassy to his house where he picked up his wife, Dorothy, together with one suitcase and a model of a Buddhist pagoda.

[20] Upon returning to the American embassy, Martin gave the model of the pagoda as a gift to Jean‐Marie Merillon, the French ambassador who was frenetically trying to negotiate a compromise peace.

[20] Later on the same day, Kissinger ordered Martin to blow up the satellite terminal at the embassy in Saigon, saying "I want you heroes home".

[27] While Martin was serving as Ambassador to Thailand, his adopted nephew, Marine 1st Lt Glenn Dill Mann, was killed near Chu Lai, South Vietnam, in November 1965, while attacking enemy positions at Thach Tru with his UH-1 helicopter gunship.

[28] The helicopter that evacuated the ambassador out of Saigon, on the same day the Vietnam War ended, is on display at the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum in San Diego, California.