Henry Cabot Lodge

• Born: May 12, 1850
• Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
• Died: November 9, 1924
• Place of death: Cambridge, Massachusetts

American representative (1887-1893) and senator (1893-1924)

Combining integrity, acumen, and strong Republican partisanship, Lodge helped shape U.S. political history throughout his thirty-seven-year tenure as a congressman and senator.

Area of achievement Government and politics

Early Life

Henry Cabot Lodge was born into an environment dominated by wealth and prestige. Often called Cabot or Cabot Lodge by contemporaries, the future senator could claim several noteworthy ancestors. His most famous progenitor, George Cabot, served in the United States Senate and acted as confidant to such notables as George Washington and John Adams. His mother, Anna Cabot Lodge, could trace her lineage through many generations of a distinguished colonial family. John Ellerton Lodge, Henry’s father, continued his family’s tradition of success in shipping and other mercantile concerns. Though not as steeped in the nation’s past as the Cabots (the Lodges had come to the United States from Santo Domingo in 1781), the Lodges could also count themselves among Boston’s finest families at the time of Henry’s arrival.

Cabot Lodge matured and received his formal education in the city’s blue-blood milieu. Prominent men of the time, Charles Sumner and George Bancroft among others, frequently visited his childhood home. Yet Lodge described his youth as that of a normal boy. He learned to swim and sail in the waters off Nahant on the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts. Later in life, he would make his home in this area, which he came to love above all others. Lodge was a proper although sometimes mischievous child, taking part in the usual juvenile pranks. He maintained an especially close relationship with his mother, and this bond grew even stronger after his father’s death in 1862 and continued until Anna’s death in 1900. The family Henry’s mother, his sister, her husband, and he made a grand tour of Europe in 1866. The following fall, he entered Harvard College. His matriculation coincided with the start of Charles W. Eliot’s tenure as the institution’s president, an exciting period of change and growth. Though never more than an average student, Lodge benefited from his years at Harvard. Specifically, he began a lifelong friendship with one of his mentors, Henry Adams.

Lodge ascended slowly to national prominence. He married Anna Cabot Mills Davis, or Nannie as she was called, a cousin of his mother and member of an equally prominent family, the day after his college graduation in 1871. Lodge’s social stratum had felt the impact of the rapid change that occurred after the Civil War, and Lodge, like many others in his social class, wondered about his place in the new order. He first did literary work for the North American Review under the tutelage of Henry Adams. Under Adams’s prodding, Lodge began to take an active interest in politics. Adams urged him to work for reform. In the 1870’s, this meant attempting to elect honest men to office. Political independents first attracted Lodge’s attention, but he soon drifted into the Republican Party. He absorbed what happened around him and learned the nuances of the political world. At the same time, he furthered his literary reputation and did graduate study at Harvard. Lodge worked under his close friend Adams, and in 1876 he received his Ph.D. in history one of the first Americans to gain this degree. He thereafter lectured at his alma mater and published The Life and Letters of George Cabot in 1877. Four years later, he published A Short History of the English Colonies in America (1881). These major works, supplemented by numerous shorter pieces, established him as a literary scholar of some note. He continued to write and publish throughout his life.

Politics, however, became Lodge’s principal concern. In 1879, he secured the Republican nomination to represent Nahant, by then his place of residence, in the state legislature. The candidate showed a marked determination to achieve his goals, a quality he would exhibit throughout his public career. Lodge served two one-year terms and accumulated a respectable record. In 1880, he went as a delegate to his party’s national convention. The next year, he lost in his bid for a state senate seat and for a United States congressional nomination. He failed again to secure the latter two years later but distinguished himself through party service. He remained loyal to Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine, even though he lost several close personal friends because of it. At the same time, he began a friendship with Theodore Roosevelt; like Henry Adams, Roosevelt would remain a lifelong intimate. In 1886, Lodge’s fortunes improved. He won election to the United States House of Representatives and took his seat on December 5, 1887. He would remain in an elected national office until his death in 1924.

Life’s Work

Lodge began his congressional tenure by watching, waiting, and learning. He quickly came to understand that a lawmaker must be practical as well as principled. He and Nannie immersed themselves in Washington society. Lodge continued his close association with Roosevelt and Adams, and he developed new friendships, such as that with the British diplomat Spring Rice. In the House, the nascent legislator proved to be an honest, hardworking, and vain combatant. Though an open-minded person, he was a single-minded politician. He established himself as a principled partisan, one who would support the party but who maintained a strong sense of right and wrong. Lodge did not fail to support President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, when he thought the chief executive had acted properly. Lodge chaired the House Committee on Elections. He devoted considerable energy to the cause of civil service reform and trying to pass the Force Bill, a forerunner to the voting rights acts of the 1960’s. In 1891, the congressman turned his attention to capturing a United States Senate seat. He succeeded when the Massachusetts legislature elected him to the position in 1892.

Lodge held his Senate seat for thirty-two years. The specifics of such a lengthy term are too numerous for individual coverage, but two issues, immigration policy and foreign affairs, deserve special attention. Lodge witnessed the changes in the United States brought on by industrialization and urbanization. One of these was the marked increase in the number of foreign immigrants arriving annually. Their presence was made even more apparent by their propensity to crowd into the slums of the nation’s largest cities. There, they seemed to contribute disproportionately to numerous social ills: squalor, labor unrest, crime, pauperism, and disease. In addition, an ever-increasing percentage of the new arrivals came from nontraditional sources of immigrants. Lodge, along with many other Americans, viewed their influx as a threat to the nation’s social and political fabric and tried to bring about their exclusion. In the Senate, and earlier in the House, he made numerous speeches on behalf of the literacy test, the most widely advocated means of general restriction. Lodge worked with the provision’s other supporters to secure its ultimate passage in 1917. He also served for a time as the chair of the Senate Committee on Immigration and as a Senate appointee on the United States Immigration Commission from 1907 to 1910.

Lodge earned his greatest reputation in the area of foreign policy. His father’s association with shipping influenced him in this field. As a child, he had considered a nautical career. The years of his Senate tenure provided numerous opportunities for him to exercise his knowledge and pursue his interest in world affairs. After 1890, American involvement in foreign events dramatically increased. Lodge was one of many public figures who advocated preparedness for international conflict, a large navy, and an aggressive global policy. He believed, simply, in imperialism and expansion. As senator, he contended that the United States should establish naval superiority over its rivals. Naval supremacy, he believed, would be followed by American dominance of the international marketplace. Yet Lodge balked at entanglement in European alliances.

A number of events from 1892 to 1924 allowed the senator to refine his theories and ideas and put them into use. In 1893, he supported American annexation of Hawaii. Two years later, he stood behind President Cleveland’s attempts to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in regard to the Venezuela boundary crisis. Lodge, in this instance, claimed party politics should stop at the water’s edge. His active participation in the affair and the strong sense of nationalism that he displayed won for him a place on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When the Cuban insurrection of 1895 escalated into war between the United States and Spain, Lodge applauded American involvement. The senator reveled in the subsequent American victory, though he realized it saddled the nation with global responsibility. He saw the acquisition of new territory as expansion, not imperialism. In his mind, the new lands were dependencies, not colonies. The senator used strategic and economic arguments to defend his position, and he worked diligently to solve the myriad problems related to the takeover of former Spanish possessions. Lodge also helped work out an acceptable Isthmanian Canal treaty. In 1902 and 1903, he won acclaim for his service on the Alaskan Boundary Tribunal, which successfully negotiated a settlement of the border’s long-disputed location. His praiseworthy effort, however, failed to earn for him the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee.

New foreign policy concerns, as well as many domestic issues, came to the forefront following Woodrow Wilson’s election to the presidency in 1912. During the period prior to his victory, Lodge had had to watch his party divide into two camps, one of which broke away to support the candidacy of his close personal friend Theodore Roosevelt. Now the senator found much to dislike about the new chief executive. He believed Wilson had deserted his true convictions for political expediency. This is not to say Lodge never supported the president, but the two men were often at odds. Differing opinions about the conduct of foreign affairs produced the most serious confrontations.

Lodge disapproved of the choice of William Jennings Bryan as secretary of state. He also found fault with Wilson’s Mexican policies and his attitudes toward the growing conflict in Europe. While the president tried to adhere to a policy of neutrality in regard to the latter, Lodge and Congressman Gardner championed preparedness. As hostilities in Europe increased and actions by both sides pulled the United States into the conflict, Wilson began to formulate plans for a moderate peace. Lodge thought Germany should be totally defeated and believed the Allies should impose a harsh settlement. He sharply criticized the president’s Fourteen Points, and he refused to support the treaty that Wilson helped draft at the Paris Conference in 1919. Lodge thought Congress should have been consulted during the peacemaking process, believed the League of Nations would compromise American sovereignty, and contended certain treaty provisions would infringe on the Senate’s foreign policy prerogatives. For these reasons, he led the fight to defeat Wilson’s peace plan. When a compromise could not be worked out, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty. Right or wrong, Lodge, by then Foreign Relations Committee chair, used his power and position to ensure defeat of the president’s measure. The senator felt so strongly about his actions that he wrote The Senate and the League of Nations (1925) to explain and justify his behavior.

Significance

Friends and associates lauded Lodge’s numerous accomplishments following his death in 1924. He was remembered for community service, scholarship, public service, and friendship. Many of those who had known him talked or wrote of his industry and tenacity of purpose. One who paid tribute quoted the senator’s campaign speech made at Symphony Hall in Boston in January, 1911: “The record is there for the world to see. There is not a page on which the people of Massachusetts are not welcome to look. There is not a line that I am afraid or ashamed to have my children or grandchildren read when I am gone.” Such is a fitting epitaph. Lodge, statesman, author, lawmaker, and Republican politician, who once wondered about his place in a nation in transition, found it in honestly serving his country for thirty-seven years.

Further Reading

Cooper, John Milton, Jr. Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. A history of the League of Nations focusing on President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to create the organization and his failure to win Senate ratification for America’s participation in the league. Describes the role of Lodge and other isolationists in defeating ratification.

Garraty, John A. Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953. A most complete treatment of Lodge, though Garraty emphasized the senator’s foreign policy activities in the coverage of his career after 1900. The work also contains commentary by Lodge’s grandson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. The author is generally sympathetic to the subject of his study.

Lawrence, William. Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biographical Sketch. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925. Written by the bishop of Boston, who was a close personal friend of the senator. More of a testimonial than a legitimate history. Still, a useful source.

Link, Arthur S. Wilson. 5 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947-1965. The most complete biography of Lodge’s major opponent in foreign policy and other areas. It offers another perspective on some of Lodge’s most important legislative struggles.

Lodge, Henry Cabot. Early Memories. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913. An autobiographical account of Lodge’s early life. Written many years after the events that it describes, it is very impressionistic. It nevertheless provides insight into aspects of the senator’s early life that is not obtainable elsewhere.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884-1918. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925. Not complete, judicious, or objective, yet the two volumes provide access to the workings of the very close friendship that existed between the two men. Also details both men’s thoughts on many issues.

Schriftgiesser, Karl. The Gentleman from Massachusetts: Henry Cabot Lodge. Boston: Little, Brown, 1944. A good sketch of the senator that covers most of the important events of his life. Written in the immediate post-New Deal era, it tends to be critical of Lodge.

Widenor, William C. Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for American Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Deals primarily with foreign policy matters and foreign affairs. Widenor stresses the importance of understanding the senator’s ideas to comprehend more fully his actions; he also argues that the senator was every bit as much an idealist as his bitterest foe, Woodrow Wilson.

Zimmerman, Warren. First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Describes how Lodge, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, John Hay, and Alfred T. Mahan articulated American imperialism and made the United States a world power during the early years of the twentieth century.