John Hay

American writer and government administrator

• Born: October 8, 1838
• Birthplace: Salem, Indiana
• Died: July 1, 1905
• Place of death: Newbury, New Hampshire

After a distinguished career as presidential assistant, poet, novelist, editor, and historian, Hay served as U.S. secretary of state and helped to implement the foreign policy initiatives that elevated the United States to world power.

Early Life

John Milton Hay was the fourth child of Dr. Charles and Helen Leonard Hay. Charles Hay, an Indiana country physician of Scottish and German lineage who was the grandson of Adam Hay, who emigrated from Germany to Virginia about 1750. Hay’s mother, who had been born Helen Leonard, had deep New Englandroots.

Shortly after Hay’s birth, his family moved to Warsaw, Illinois, where he began his education, studying first in the local public schools and then at a private academy in Pittsfield, Pike County. An excellent student and a voracious reader, he had completed six books of Vergil in Latin by the time he was twelve. In 1852, when he was fourteen, he enrolled at a Springfield college. Though barely more than a high school, the institution prepared him to enter Brown University as a sophomore three years later. Quickly establishing himself as a scholar, he was graduated near the top of his class in 1858. He also demonstrated a flair for rhyming that resulted in his election as class poet.

Although Hay was born and reared in the West, his education at Brown gave him an appreciation for polished, sophisticated eastern society. His trim, handsome features and neat mustache, combined with his courtly manners, social charm, conversational wit, and appreciation for feminine beauty, marked him as a true gentleman. Accompanying these traits, however, were periodic rounds of melancholy that remained throughout his life.

Hay returned to Warsaw after graduating from Brown, but remained only briefly before moving back to Springfield, the state capital. In 1859, he joined the law office of his uncle, Milton Hay, and began preparing for a legal career. He also had the opportunity to observe the inner workings of state politics and to meet such figures as Stephen A. Douglas, Senator Lyman Trumbull, and Abraham Lincoln, whose law office was next door to Milton Hay’s. After Lincoln’s election as president of the United States in 1860, his secretary, John G. Nicolay, persuaded the president-elect that young John Hay would be valuable as an assistant secretary.

Hay remained with Lincoln until near the end of the Civil War, receiving callers, writing letters, smoothing the ruffled feathers of politicians and generals, and listening to the jokes, stories, and innermost concerns of the wartime president. In early 1864, Hay received an appointment as assistant adjutant general, with the rank of major, and was assigned to the White House as a military aide. Although not a military expert, Hay had a sensitivity for the political implications of military affairs that made him an invaluable asset in Lincoln’s efforts to bring the war to a swift conclusion. Hay’s association with Lincoln had a profound impact upon his career.

Life’s Work

Hay’s apprenticeship in diplomacy began in March, 1865, just before the end of the Civil War, when Secretary of State William H. Seward appointed him secretary to the American legation at Paris. There he enjoyed the social delights of diplomatic life at the court of Napoleon III and composed verse that expressed his youthful democratic political ideas. He had little influence, however, in diplomatic matters. In mid-1867, after a brief furlough in the United States, he accepted an appointment as American chargé d’affaires in Vienna, Austria. With few serious diplomatic duties to perform, he traveled extensively, making tours of Poland and Turkey before his resignation in August, 1868. Ten months later, he became secretary of the American legation in Madrid, Spain, where he served until the summer of 1870.

After his initial round of diplomatic assignments, Hay embarked upon a remarkable literary career. In 1871, he published Pike County Ballads and Other Pieces , a collection of poems that celebrated life in Warsaw and the other Mississippi River towns of his youth. In Castilian Days , which appeared the same year, he reflected upon his travels in Spain. These books mirrored his early democratic optimism, established his reputation as a major literary figure, and led to friendships with authors such as Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Bret Harte. He also exercised his considerable talents as an editor for Whitelaw Reid’s powerful New York Tribune.

Hay’s writings acquired an increasingly conservative tone after his marriage in January, 1874, to Clara L. Stone, a daughter of Amassa Stone, a wealthy Cleveland industrialist and railroad builder. Already a gentleman by predisposition and education, Hay became an aristocrat by marriage. The extent of his change in attitude became fully apparent in 1884 with the publication of The Bread-Winners , a stinging attack against both labor unions and social mobility, and a defense of European-style class stratification. In the meantime, Hay had commenced an even more significant literary venture. In 1875, he and John Nicolay initiated their massive Abraham Lincoln: A History . By its completion in 1890, the project numbered ten volumes. Although it overly idealizes Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay’s work remains a landmark study of the life of the sixteenth president.

Although Hay devoted most of his energies between 1870 and 1897 to literary and historical pursuits, he never completely divorced himself from foreign policy concerns. From 1879 to 1881, he served as assistant secretary of state, learning much about the intricacies of foreign policy formulation. During the next fifteen years, he traveled extensively in Europe, acquiring a wealth of information and contacts that would be beneficial in future diplomatic endeavors.

Hay also maintained close ties with leading Republican politicians. When his friend William McKinley won the presidency in 1896, Hay received the appointment as ambassador to Great Britain. Convinced of the necessity of forging strong relations with the British, he used his considerable charm and tact to smooth friction created by the recent Venezuelan boundary dispute and the ongoing pelagic sealing controversy. When the Spanish-American War erupted in 1898, Hay’s efforts ensured a stance of sympathetic neutrality on the part of England toward American intervention in Cuba.

In August, 1898, McKinley appointed Hay secretary of state. Although not an aggressive imperialist, Hay believed firmly that the United States should play a larger role in world affairs, and he worked vigorously throughout his tenure to accomplish that goal. During McKinley’s administration, Hay focused much attention on affairs in Asia and the Pacific Ocean. In treaty negotiations to end the Spanish-American War, he supported the president’s decision to acquire the Philippine Islands and then encouraged strong action to crush the insurrection led by Emilio Aguinaldo. Hay’s most significant assertion of American influence in Asia was the famous Open Door notes, which sought assurances from the major powers that equal trading rights would be guaranteed within their spheres of interest. The following year, when the Boxer Rebellion triggered discussion of a partition of China by the European powers, Hay issued a second Open Door circular designed to preserve China’s territorial integrity.

Hay also negotiated several treaties that paved the way for construction of the Panama Canal. In 1901, after the U.S. Senate rejected an earlier version, he concluded the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with England, which abrogated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 and allowed the United States to construct and fortify an Isthmian canal. Two years later he negotiated the Hay-Herrán Treaty with Colombia, by which that nation was to allow the United States to build a canal across Panama. When Colombia refused to ratify the document, a convenient revolt erupted in Panama, and President Theodore Roosevelt promptly recognized its new government; Hay followed up by working out a treaty with Philippe Bunau-Varilla in which Panama gave the United States rights to a Canal Zone through which a canal would be constructed.

One of the most persistent Anglo-American problems as the twentieth century dawned was a controversy over the location of the Canada-Alaska boundary. In January, 1903, after months of effort, Hay and British ambassador Michael Herbert signed a treaty that called for the establishment of a tribunal made up of six impartial judges, three representing each side, to resolve the matter. President Roosevelt generated new controversy when he appointed Senators Henry Cabot Lodge and George Turner to the tribunal, but the American position prevailed when the British jurist, in an effort to preserve Anglo-American harmony, rejected the views of his two Canadian colleagues and voted with the American representatives. Settlement of the Alaska boundary dispute was one of Hay’s last major accomplishments. On July 1, 1905, after an extended illness, he died in Newbury, New Hampshire.

Significance

John Hay was a major literary and diplomatic figure whose life and works symbolize the momentous transformation of American society and the significant expansion of the nation’s role in world affairs during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The dramatic shift in Hay’s ideological perspective between the publication of Pike County Ballads and the appearance of The Bread-Winners suggests the growing uneasiness within the American upper class over labor unrest, immigration, political radicalism, and other perceived threats to the status quo.

Hay’s high literary reputation and his ability to inspire trust and make friends also made it possible for him to gain the respect and friendship of those with whom he strenuously disagreed. Thus he retained the friendship of anti-imperialists such as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, even when they opposed his conduct of American policy in the Philippines. When his reputation led to his election in 1904 as a charter member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters over such great writers as Henry Adams and Henry James, he rectified the error by arranging for their election on a later ballot.

Hay’s accomplishments as secretary of state had lasting foreign policy implications. The Open Door notes undergirded American policy in Asia through World War II and beyond. The Panama Canal treaties and construction of the canal vastly expanded the nation’s political and economic stake in Central America and the Caribbean region. The Hay-Herbert Treaty and the settlement of the Alaska boundary dispute contributed to a new era of Anglo-American friendship, which became a foundation stone of twentieth century foreign policy. Finally, Hay’s skill, dignity, and restraint as a negotiator helped to placate some of the ill will created by Theodore Roosevelt’s bellicosity in foreign policy matters. By the time of his death, Hay had participated fully in the emergence of the United States as a world power.

Bibliography

Beale, Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956. John Hay is a central figure in this detailed, well-researched account of American expansion under Theodore Roosevelt. This volume is essential to understanding the values as well as the political and economic forces behind American imperialism.

Campbell, Charles S. The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865-1900. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. A well-written synthesis of scholarship on American foreign relations during the last thirty-five years of the nineteenth century. Excellent source of historical context for understanding foreign policy issues during the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations. Deals with Hay primarily in relation to the Open Door policy and Anglo-American relations.

Clymer, Kenton J. John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975. A full-length treatment of Hay, this volume is especially useful for its explanation of his intellectual background and literary career. Although sympathetic to Hay, it is less satisfactory, on balance, in its discussion of his diplomatic service. Organized thematically, the volume is generally quite readable; the lack of a continuing chronology, however, sometimes makes it difficult to keep events in perspective.

Dennett, Tyler. John Hay: From Poetry to Politics. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1933. The best single biography of John Hay. Based upon extensive research into unpublished manuscripts, published works, and official documents. Although sympathetic to Hay and his accomplishments, it also admits his defects and failures.

Dulles, Rhea Foster. “John Hay.” In An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century, edited by Norman A. Graebner. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. Summarizes Hay’s major accomplishments as secretary of state. Pictures Hay as an implementor rather than as an initiator of policy whose ability to compromise and to accommodate were his major assets.

Hay, John. At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings. Edited by Michael Burlingame. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Compilation of 220 letters and telegrams that Hay drafted when he worked for President Lincoln. The documents, including some Hay composed for Lincoln’s signature, provide a picture of Lincoln’s presidency and Hay’s position within it.

McCullough, David. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977. A colorful, prizewinning study of the social, economic, political, and technological events surrounding construction of the Panama Canal. Based upon archival and manuscript sources from both sides of the Atlantic as well as interviews with surviving participants. Sympathetic to Hay in respect to his relationship with Roosevelt.

Thayer, William Roscoe. Life and Letters of John Hay. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915. A detailed account drawn heavily from Hay’s personal letters, many of which are quoted at length or reprinted in their entirety. Although severely dated in interpretation, it remains a useful background source, especially on Hay’s early life.

Zimmerman, Warren. First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. John Hay’s activities as secretary of state to Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt are examined in this study of five people who helped make American an international power at the start of the twentieth century.